Before the first month was over, Hazelrigg had made George Helm the chief spokesman of the party in its campaign against the rapacities of the plutocracy. The old wheel-horse orators, familiar and more or less discredited slobberers of virtuous sentiments from mouths raw and ragged with corruption, were angered and made futile attempts to “haze” the new favorite. Hazelrigg soon quelled that mutiny. Of all the understrappers at the beck and call of a machine boss, the orators—they upon whose lips the people hang spellbound—are the lowest, the most despised by their fellow slaves and the most brutally worked and the most meagerly paid.
As Sayler had taken the muzzle from the press of the State to make his “object lesson” thoroughly effective, in a few weeks George Helm became famous—newspaper famous—the beanstalk variety of fame, showy but perishable. Bill Desbrough came up to see him.
“The lecture scheme’s off—isn’t it?” said he.
“By no means,” replied Helm. “I’ll let you into my secret, Bill. You’re close-mouthed—closer mouthed than I am.”
“I doubt it,” said Desbrough.
“Yes, for I’m telling you my secret—and you’ll not tell anybody. Here’s the secret! By those lecture tours I’m going to build up in every part of this State a machine of my own—groups of people I can trust and who feel they can trust me. There’s some skullduggery back of this spasm of party virtue. It won’t last. We must hurry and make all we can out of it.”
Most men cannot see the obvious, even when it is pointed out to them. The occasional rare man—the man of genius of one kind or another—is he who sees the obvious without assistance. In between these two classes lies a third class, not small like that of genius—yet not huge like the other. To this third class—those able to see the obvious if and when it is pointed out to them—belonged William Desbrough. He reflected on what George Helm had said; and up went his admiration a considerable number of notches. Said he:
“George, what a run you’ll give ’em!”
Helm clapped him on the shoulder with his loud, joyous, boyish laugh. “Put all your money on that, Bill!” cried he.
Helm’s successes wrought in him the usual swift change. The temperament of success, the ability to throw one’s whole concentrated self into an enterprise, involves a highly organized nervous system—hence, extreme sensitiveness, torments from anxiety and from self-doubt. Only an iron constitution could have borne the fatigues of that first campaign of his—the now famous “buggy” campaign—with its nerve strain of the man fighting again desperate odds to save himself from ruin under avalanches of ridicule. And when he finally “made good” in his home district, the question at once arose, “But can I make good at the capital?” This question was in the way to be answered with an emphatic yes.