“I give you my word,” Dick Elliot said, and he threw back his great shoulders and threw up his square chin, and his brown eyes blazed at Trefethen—“I give you my word, Mr. Lord, that if that man Trefethen should get alone with a bunch of us to-night, feeling the way we do, I’d hate to be responsible for his safety. I believe we’d hurt him.”
This nervous English and the muscles that loomed back of it gave the guest of honor a sensation. He pulled at his cigar, and his eyes did not meet the football captain’s.
At last, “You’re a belligerent young lot,” he reflected aloud, and then, “I dare say the man’s a beast,” he brought out slowly, “but you boys ought not to be swept away by half of a question. Remember, there are always two sides—get at the other and found your judgment on knowledge—don’t let personal feeling place you.”
“It isn’t all personal feeling, Mr. Lord,” Van Arden threw at him eagerly. “It’s the big question of the day; it happens to have fired a broadside into us just this minute, and we’re hurt and howling—but it’s the big question we’re up against—the magnates—the huge overweight fortunes that destroy the balance. You’re an unprejudiced man”—and Trefethen smiled inwardly—“you know they don’t play the game fairly, these captains of industry—don’t you?”
“I do not,” Trefethen said with emphasis. “I know of no proof for a general statement like that. Of course there is plenty of advantage taken—you can’t help that when men are human and the stake is worth while, but—”
“You can’t help it?” Dick Elliot flung at him. “Of course you can help it—if you’re civilized and decent. What’s a standard for if not to live up to, Mr. Lord? What would you think of a football man that ‘took advantage’ and then said he couldn’t help it because he was human and the game was worth while? We’re penalized if we try that on; we’re kicked out if we keep it up—and that’s right. Lord, that stake looks bigger to us than a billion dollars! I don’t see why fair play isn’t the thing—the only thing—for a white man after he leaves college as much as before.”
“Hold on, Mr. Elliot, give me a show,” Trefethen protested. “I’m not advocating dishonesty. I was going to say that there are hosts of men who have made fortunes honorably—don’t you hope to be rich yourselves?”
There was a short stillness, and Pearly—the richest—broke it. They turned in their chairs and looked at him surprised. “Seems this way to me—like th’ story in th’ op’ra, y’ see. When the gold shines over the waters of the Rhine, an’ the Rhine-maidens guard it, it’s nice, an’ everybody would like it. But when the ugly dwarf, Alberich, climbs up and grabs it, you feel as if you’d rather get nothin’ than get it by turnin’ into a beast like that.”
“Hooray for Pearly! He’s turning into poetry,” Jimmy Selden contributed in an undertone, but Van Arden’s keen face was alert and serious.
“It’s so, what Pearly says—he wouldn’t have any money but clean money. Nor I. But there’s more. Even if huge fortunes are made straight we don’t want them—Americans. We don’t want kings, good or bad, and we don’t want plutocrats, good or bad. They don’t fit us. We won’t have them, either, I’ll bet,” he added sagely, this college editor, speaking as a man with his hand on the pulse of the people.