“He has been at our house to see Mr. Briggs,” Helen replied. She remembered Mr. Rathburn as a quiet, and an exceedingly polite man, with a gray, pointed beard, fond of talking about his hobby, the cultivation of roses.
“I think we’ve got him where we want him, now,” Farley continued. “He’s been pretty foxy, but we’ve caught him napping in that big water-supply steal. He engineered the whole job. It must have cost the city a half-million dollars more than it should have cost. They say he pulled out a hundred thousand for himself. But it’s going to queer him for good!”
“Do you mean that you are going to have him prosecuted?” Helen asked.
Farley could not keep from smiling at the simplicity of the question. “Hardly that. That would be more than we could hope for. But if we can only have the thing investigated, and get the people to realize what’s been done, why, his political career will be over. There’s a whole gang of ’em in with him; but most of ’em have covered their tracks.” Farley sighed. “It’s strange,” he said, “how hard it is to rouse public opinion. Sometimes I believe our people are the most indifferent in the world. They haven’t any sense of personal responsibility. That’s why we have so many rascals in public life. If I were going in for rascality,” he concluded, with a laugh, “I’d become a politician. It’s the safest and the most profitable way of making money. Big returns and mighty little risk.”
Farley apparently did not notice the look of distress in Helen’s eyes. Encouraged by her questions, he went on to give her an account of the way in which the club had been founded. “I’d been doing the political work in New York for the Gazette for three years,” he said; “so that gave me a chance to see things from the inside. And what I did see made me so sick that I thought of quitting the business. But one night I was talking things over with Jimmy Barker. You’ve heard of him, of course. He made me look at things from another point of view. Jimmy’s father left him half a million dollars, and Jimmy, instead of spending it all on himself, is blowing it in on his philanthropic schemes. Lately he’s been living down on the East Side and working for a reform in the tenement-house laws. Well, he made me see that, instead of quitting political work, because the society wasn’t good enough for me, I ought to stay in it and help to make it a little cleaner, if I could. So he got me to bring together a lot of fellows that looked at things as we did and we formed a sort of organization. At first we had only a few rooms downtown. Now we have a house uptown and a pretty big membership. It’s all Jimmy’s work. He’s given us a lot of money, and when we got discouraged he’s kept us going by his enthusiasm—and his money, too. I never knew such a man; nothing discourages him.” Farley’s eyes flashed through his big glasses in the glow of talk. Helen realized for the first time that at moments he was almost handsome.
“Douglas has often spoken to me about the work of your club,” she remarked. “He says it is having a great influence in New York.”
“I wish we could persuade him to come in with us,” Farley said, wistfully. “I’ve been trying to get him for months. He’s just the kind of man we need most. You know we’ve been careful to keep absolutely non-partisan. We have public men from both parties among our members. It’s been pretty hard keeping ’em together. There are a lot of hot-heads among reformers, you know,” he went on, smiling. “I suppose when a man gets a strong bias in any direction it’s apt to throw him off his equilibrium. But most of our men have seen that partisanship would be the death of us. Our great point is to keep the city government out of politics as much as possible. Of course, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, except there seems to be a sort of weakness in human nature for following a banner and going in crowds.”
“Then you don’t pay attention to politics outside of New York?” Helen asked.
“Only indirectly,” Farley replied. “Some time we hope we can have a National organization like our city club to look after some of those rascals down in Washington. But as I was saying,” Farley resumed, eagerly, “if I could only get Mr. Briggs to join us, then he’d meet our men, and they’d get to understand him. They don’t understand him now. They think he’s been an out-and-out machine man. Of course, that’s all nonsense. I only wish we had more machine men like him.”
Helen turned her head away. Dorothy and Jack were playing games with Miss Munroe. When Jack looked up quickly she noticed a little movement of the head that always reminded her of his father. The first time she had noticed this resemblance it had given her a thrill of happiness.