Ellery sank into a chair with weariness.
"Tell me about it," he said.
Then Dick stiffened again.
"There isn't anything to tell."
"See here," said Norris. "This isn't only a question of the lighting
franchise. The city may walk in darkness and be damned for all I care;
but I can't bear that you should walk in darkness. Do you realize what
it means? You have fought your first public battle on a basis of truth.
You make your first public appearance in league with evil. You are
killing the hope of your public career before it is fairly in bud."
"I know it," said Dick.
"Percival, you've stirred this city into consciousness. It's been
wonderful how you have done it so swiftly, for it is your doing. The
decent elements are marching forward into control and it belongs to you
to march at their head. The thing has got to go on. If you don't lead
it, some one else will."
"I know it."
"And you are going to give up?" Ellery urged, incredulous.
"I haven't decided. Perhaps I have done with politics."
"And if you abandon your public career, what are you going to do?"
"What do other failures do?"
"Oh, stuff!" exclaimed Norris, and began to pace the room. "Then you did
not vote for the franchise because you believed in it. Somebody has a
pull on you. I'd never have believed that any man in this wide world
would get a pull on Dick Percival."
"Well, somebody has," said Dick shortly. "I wouldn't say so much as that
to any mortal but yourself. Now spare me, Ellery, and don't carry it any
further. Do you think," he went on bitterly, "that I have not gone over
the whole ground and told myself the old truths that never mean anything
to you until life rams them home on your consciousness? A man may creep
out from under the machinery of state law, and escape from the
punishment he deserves; but from the laws under which we really live,
there is no escape. It is reap what you sow; hate and you shall be
hated; sin and suffer. And it isn't as though one went out to sow. One
sows perforce, every minute, whether he will or not. In some instances
the reaping is singularly little fun, Ellery."
"Well, whatever hold this mysterious some one has on you, be a man.
Stand up and own yourself and let the consequences go hang."
"I know some men could. You could. That's the advantage of having taken
a good many hard blows. You learn to stand up against them," Dick
answered slowly. "You know other people's opinion has always been a god
to me. I haven't the strength to defy it now."