第35章

When his name was reached James said "Hardy" in a clear distinct voice that brought from the gallery a round of applause sharply checked by the presiding officer. Killen gave his vote for Frome tremulously and shrank from the storm he had evoked. Rawson could be seen standing on his seat, one foot on the top of his desk, shaking his fist at him in purple apoplectic rage, the while his voice rose above the tumult, "You damned Judas! You damned little traitor!"The presiding officer beat in vain with his gavel for quiet. Not until they had worn themselves to momentary exhaustion could the roll-call be continued.

Miller and Pitts voted for Frome and stirred renewed shouts of support and execration.

"Takes one more change to elect Frome. All depends on Reilly now," Rawson whispered hoarsely to Jeff. "If he sticks we're safe for another twenty-four hours."But Reilly, knowing the decisive moment had come, voted for Frome and gave him the one more needed to elect. Pandemonium was loose at once. The Transcontinental forces surrounded him and fought off the excited men he had betrayed who tried to get at him to make him change his vote. The culminating moment of months of battle had come and mature men gave themselves to the abandon of the moment like college boys after a football game.

When at last the storm had subsided Ashton, who had seen several thousand dollars go glimmering because his initial came at the beginning of the alphabet instead of at the close, in the hope of still getting into the bandwagon in time moved to make the election unanimous. His suggestion was rejected with hoots of derision, and Frome made the conventional speech of acceptance to a House divided against itself.

Jeff joined his cousin as he was descending the steps to the lower hall. "Don't blame yourself, old man. It would have happened anyhow in a day or two. They were looking for a chance to desert. We couldn't have held them. Better luck next time."James found cold comfort in such consolation. He was dissatisfied with the part he had played in the final drama. Instead of being the hero ofthe hour, he was the unfortunate whose blunder had started the avalanche. Yet he was gratified when Rawson said in effect the same thing as Jeff.

"And I'm going to have the pleasure of telling that damned little Killen what I think of him," the politician added with savage satisfaction.

"Don't blame him. He's only a victim. What we must do is to change the system that makes it possible to defeat the will of the people through money," Jeff said.

"How are you going about it?" Rawson demanded incredulously. "We'll go after the initiative and referendum right now while thepeople are stirred up about this treachery. The very men who threw us down will support us to try and square themselves. The bill will slip through as if it were oiled," Jeff prophesied.

"Oh, hang your initiative and referendum. I'm a politician, not a socialist reformer," grinned Rawson.

James said nothing.

PART 2

If the years were bringing Jeff a sharper realization of the forces that control so much of life they were giving him too the mellowness that can be in revolt without any surrender of faith in men. He could for instance now look back on his college days and appreciate the kindness and the patience of the teachers whom he had then condemned. They had been conformists. No doubt they had compromised to the pressure of their environment. But somehow he felt much less like judging men than he used to in the first flush of his intellectual awakening. It was perhaps this habit of making allowance for weakness, together with his call to the idealism in them, that made him so effective a worker with men.