The Mayor of Warwick

by Herbert M. Hopkins

"Corruption in politics is common enough everywhere, I 'm afraid," Leigh remarked.

"It's worse here," Emmet declared bitterly; "and here it's a question of class against class as well. Warwick is said to be the wealthiest city of its size in the country, and the offices have been handed around in a certain set ever since the Declaration of Independence. The labour unions are uncommonly strong, too, and if they would only hang together, they could have things their own way. I can depend upon the support of my own crowd, but there are always mutual jealousies to be reckoned with between the various unions. Besides, the labouring man will talk boldly enough at times about equality, but he still has a sneaking admiration for the fellow that lives in a big house, and a corresponding distrust of one of his own kind. Let me give you an illustration of it. The other day, Judge Swigart's manager, Anthony Cobbens, was swaggering around the barn down here, talking with some of the men about his horses and dogs, and poking a little fun at me on the side. Such things have their effect. I heard one of the men say afterward that Cobbens was as friendly with them as if he were n't rich at all. It's a fact that he was flattered by the fellow, even when he saw through him."

There was something rather magnificent in the scorn that blazed in the speaker's eyes as he told this incident, and Leigh felt that, no matter what his faults might be, sycophancy never was and never could be one of them.

"It's all the more pitiful," he remarked, "because he gets nothing for it but the contempt he deserves. But I 've heard of this Cobbens. It seems to me that Miss Wycliffe compared him to a weasel."

Emmet laughed, but almost immediately the intensity of his mood returned. "Cobbens is one of your own graduates," he went on, almost as if he held his listener responsible for that fact. "I knew him as a boy, and played with him on the streets. Perhaps that's the reason he 's my worst enemy to-day. His mother was a dressmaker and a widow, but somehow, by hook and by crook, he managed to work his way through St. George's Hall. Then he became a lawyer and married one of the richest girls in town. What she saw in him, nobody knows, but he's a hypnotist, and no mistake. Now she's dead, and so are her parents, and Cobbens and his mother live in her great house and ride in her carriages. He 's a high roller, right in with the judge and his crew, and there is n't a more corrupt politician in this town. There 's a fine specimen of your college graduate!"

"I hope you don't regard him as a typical college graduate," Leigh protested good-naturedly.

Had he been familiar with the alumni of the Hall, he could have made his argument strong by personal examples unlike Anthony Cobbens, but he made his defence of the college graduate general, answering the well-known objections to him in the well-known way. It was evident that Emmet regarded colleges and universities as identified with entrenched privilege everywhere, and with corruption in local politics particularly. It was inevitable that he should have been influenced in this view by his own concrete experiences. The iron had entered into his soul, and its scar was not to be effaced by an evening's conversation. Not infrequently life will be interpreted to a passionate nature by one or two persons, be they friends or enemies. To Emmet, Cobbens and the bishop loomed much larger in the general scheme of things than their intrinsic importance warranted. It was interesting, having heard the bishop's opinion of Emmet, to get Emmet's view of the bishop, a view that was by no means without a certain reluctant respect and admiration. Leigh felt that his prejudice was impassioned, rather than intellectual, and would yield gradually to a change of circumstances, whereas the bishop would never revise his judgment. He was impressed also by the fact that Miss Wycliffe could never fully appreciate the conditions that had produced the man whose cause she had chosen to champion, or see that he must needs be a radical, if he thought at all, at least in the present stage of his development. Leigh's own experience in life enabled him to look into both camps with comprehension, for he belonged to the comparatively small class of the cultivated poor, and his struggles had been no less intense than those of the man before him, though for different ends. The effect of what he said was conciliatory, but his visitor was merely convinced that this particular college graduate was an exception to the rule.

"You 're not much like the bishop," he remarked. "I don't say that he is n't the real thing in the way of a gentleman, but he 's as proud as the Old Boy himself."

"I don't know how proud the Old Boy may be," Leigh answered, laughing, "or what he has to be proud of, but I 've discovered that Bishop Wycliffe, underneath his apparent frigidity, has one of the kindest hearts in the world."

"We all know that," Emmet assented. "He's one of the most charitable men in town. I 'm bound to say, too, that he does n't know anything about the inside workings of that political ring, but it's because he does n't want to know. He just naturally ranges himself with his own class on such a question."