“Really,” replied he—and she refused to meet his gaze. “Not as much as I have, because you have more of that sort of things in your life than I have in mine. No, not nearly as much. But seriously. And because you are truthful you will not deny it.”
She repeated the slight derisive laugh. She accompanied it with a derisive glance that swept down and up his baggy clothing, his homely exterior—but avoided his kind, gently smiling gray eyes. He was not deceived. It set his blood to tingling to feel that he could weave about one person, this one person, the same spell with which he could bind the multitude. He went on:
“Working together at that broken automobile we got unusually well acquainted, very quickly—you and I—the real you and the real I.... I had never before met a woman of your kind—of your class, I suppose you’d say. And neither had you ever met a man of my kind.”
“Yes—that was it,” she said unsteadily.
“But, as I said before, I do not want you,” he went on and, hearing, you would have realized why he had such power as an orator. “Even if I could get you, I should not know what to do with you. So—if we ever talk together again, it will not be through my seeking.”
He bowed with dignity and grace—for, whenever he was unconscious of himself—on the platform or when absorbed in earnest conversation—his awkwardness dropped from him, revealing his homeliness as attractive. He went on uptown, dazed, wondering at himself, doubting whether he was awake. Had he indeed seen Eleanor Clearwater? Had they said to each other the things he was amazedly recalling? Awe of male externals of ornamentation and pretense he had never felt. But his awe for fashion and manner in women had been deep and painful—and reverent. What had become of this? Certainly no other woman he had known, or for that matter seen, possessed the awe-inspiring qualities to such a degree as this woman. Ever since that night of toil with the automobile he had been idealizing and worshiping her as the embodiment of woman, the paradise from which he was forever barred. Yet, alone with her for the first time, and in circumstances which ought to have made him speechless, he had disregarded her disdain, had smiled at her scorn, had spoken his heart to her as he had never ventured to speak it to himself in the privacy and the ecstasy of his secret dreams! “I guess I am a queer chap,” he said to himself. “I’m always giving myself surprises. I never know what I’ll do next.”
It is an excellent thing for a modest man of real merit to discover that he has unsuspected resources of steady courage. It was an excellent thing for George Helm. From that day he took on a new dignity and assurance—created about himself the atmosphere that inspires men to confidence in their leaders. He changed the liking of his followers into that passionate loyalty which is the great force in the world of action. For most men cannot reason and judge; they must choose a party and a leader by instinct and must trust themselves to that party and that leader implicitly. The story of history is the story of loyalty—and of loyalty betrayed. The mass has trusted and worshiped a class; the class has become infatuated with itself, has trampled on and betrayed the mass.
George Helm had won, the previous fall, because the mass of the people in that district had at last become more than suspicious of the honesty and fidelity of their chosen leaders. He had come at just the right time. And he now won again—an overwhelming victory that could not be reversed by election frauds, with Branagan no longer assenting and assisting—a victory that frightened Reichman not only for his damaged machine but also for his personal safety; for, a Democratic county prosecutor, a subtle henchman of Branagan’s, had been elected along with Helm, and Reichman knew that Judge Powers would desert him the instant it became to his interest so to do.
“No wonder,” replied Helm, with a smile. “I haven’t any place yet. I’m trying to find my place.... If the choice in, say, Lincoln’s day, had been what it is now—between serving a knave and serving a fool—between serving a knave that’s owned by its money and serving a fool that’s enslaved to the knave by its folly—if Abe Lincoln had had choice between those two rotten apples, I wonder which he would have chosen?”
“Lincoln was a practical man,” said Branagan. “He had all the cranks and romantic reformers down on him. Don’t you believe what the histories say. I know because I lived then.”