Sara let it go. “Oh, I don’t really mind,” she said, “only I’ve never been there, and I sort of wanted to see what it’s like. Never mind, we’ll go somewhere else.” But they didn’t; they stayed in Chicago.
So now he was a member of the legislature and in Springfield. The politicians came and went. The climbers avoided Matthew. Colored acquaintances were a debit to rising men. The other politicians knew him—jollied him and liked him—even drew him out for a rollicking evening now and then; but noted that he did not quite “belong.” He was always a trifle remote—apart. He never could quite let himself go and be wholly one of them. But he liked them. They lived.
There were several members of the House who were not politicians. They did not count. They fluttered about, uttering shrill noises, and beat their wings vainly on unyielding iron bars.
Then there were men in politics who were not members of the legislature. Grave, well-dressed men of business and affairs. They came for confidential conferences with introductions from and connections with high places, governors, brokers, railway presidents, ruling monarchs of steel, oil, and international finance. And from Sammy; especially from Sammy and Sara. Money was nothing to them, and money was all. A thousand dollars—ten thousand—it was astounding, the sums at their command and the ease with which they distributed it. There was no crude bribery as on State Street—but Matthew soon learned that it was curiously easy to wake up a morning a thousand dollars richer than when one went to bed; and no laws broken, no questions asked, no moral code essentially disarranged. Matthew disliked these men esthetically, but he saw much of them and conferred with one or another of them nearly every week. It was his business. They did not live broadly or deeply, but they ruled. There was no sense blinking that fact. Matthew often forwarded registered express packages to Sara.
And he came to realize that legislating was not passing laws; it was mainly keeping laws from being passed.
Then there were the reformers. He held them—most of them—in respectful pity; palliators, surface scratchers. He listened to them endlessly and gravely. He read their tracts conscientiously, but only now and then could he vote as they asked. They were so ignorant—so futile. If only he, as a practical politician, might tell them a little. Birth control? Mothers’ pensions? Restricted hours of labor for women and children? He agreed in theory with them all, but why ask his judgment? Why not ask the Rulers who put him in the legislature? And without the consent of these quiet, calm gentlemen who represented Empires, Kingdoms, and Bishoprics, what could he do, who was a mere member of the legislature?
Yet he could not say this, and if he had said it, they would not have understood. They pleaded with him—he that needed no pleas. One was here now—the least attractive—one stocking awry on her big legs, a terrible hat and an ill-fitting gown. She was president of the Chicago local of the Box-Makers’ Union. Her breasts were flat, her hips impossible, her hair dead straight, and her face white and red in the wrong places.
“How would you like your daughter down there?” she bleated.
“I haven’t one.”
“But if you did have?”
“I’d hate it. But I wouldn’t be fool enough to think any law would take her away.”
“Well, what would?”
“Power that lies in the hands of the millionaire owners of factory stocks and bonds; and the bankers that guide and advise them. Transfer that power to me or you.”
“That’s it. Now help us to get this power!”
“How?”
“By voting—”
“Pish!”
“But how else? Are you going to sit down and let these girls go to death and hell?”
“I’m not responsible for this world, madam.”
“Listen—I know a woman—a woman—like you. She’s just been elected International President of the Box-Makers. She can talk. She knows. She’s been everywhere. She’s a lady and educated. I’m just a poor, dumb thing. I know what I want-but I can’t say it. But she’ll be in Chicago soon—I’m going to bring her to plead for this bill.”
“Spare me,” laughed Matthew.
But he kept thinking of that poor reformer. And slowly and half-consciously—stirred by a thousand silly, incomplete arguments for impossible reform measures—revolt stirred within him against this political game he was playing. It was not moral revolt. It was esthetic disquiet. No, the revolt slowly gathering in Matthew’s soul against the political game was not moral; it was not that he discerned anything practical for him in uplift or reform, or felt any new revulsion against political methods in themselves as long as power was power, and facts, facts. His revolt was against things unsuitable, ill adjusted, and in bad taste; the illogical lack of fundamental harmony; the unnecessary dirt and waste—the ugliness of it all—that revolted him.
He saw no adequate end or aim. Money had been his object, but money as security for quiet, for protection from hurt and insult, for opening the gates of Beauty. Now money that did none of these was dear, absurdly dear, overpriced. It was barely possible—and that thought kept recurring—it was barely possible that he was being cheated, was paying too high for money. Perhaps there were other things in life that would bring more completely that which he vaguely craved.
It seemed somehow that he was always passive—always waiting—always receptive. He could never get to doing. There was no performance or activity that promised a shining goal. There was no goal. There was no will to create one. Within him, years ago, something—something essential—had died.
Yet he liked to play with words, cynically, on the morals of his situation as a politician. In his office today, he was talking with a rich woman who wanted his vote for limiting campaign funds. He looked at her with narrowed eyes:
“We have got to stop this lying and stealing or the country will die,” she said impatiently.
He watched his unlighted cigarette.
“Lying? Stealing? I do not see that they are so
