III

Capuchin had wished his absence to be treated with dignified mystery. Only the governor was supposed to know where he was or when he should return. Nevertheless at the station, besides the governor, were fifty or sixty men, mostly members of the legislature, each one impatient to get his recognition; also two hundred or more curious idlers. The instant he alighted he was surrounded. Many hands were outstretched, some holding papers or waving them to catch his eye. There was a confusion of voices. To all of this he was deaf and blind. Pointing to the name on the end of the railroad station he said to the governor: “Why hasn’t that been changed?”

“They say they won’t,” the governor answered.

“Who says they won’t?” Capuchin shouted. “Give them twenty-four hours or we’ll change it ourselves. We’ll pass a bill to make them elevate their tracks. Tell them that. They won’t, eh!”

Then while brushing himself with his pocket broom he began to shake hands, but with an absent, exasperated air. He stopped and beckoned the governor to come close. “Don’t put anything like that in writing,” he said. “Understand? Intimate it. That’s enough.”

The governor nodded, winked knowingly, and made off. He walked as one does in a furrow, lifting one foot higher than the other, loosely.

Capuchin had forgotten to introduce him to either Dwind or Semicorn. He had forgotten them in fact. He looked around for his bag, which someone had already taken up, and started for his office. The distance was only two squares and he was an hour making it. As he silenced the importunities of one by saying, “All right, all right. We’ll see about it,” or “Fine idea! Bring it to me when I’m not so busy,” and pushed a few steps on, another would break in and again he would stop. One read to him a long typewritten treatise on single tax, and simply could not be stopped. Capuchin put the paper in his pocket. Another had a bill for free seeds, another a bill for gas and fertilizer to be distributed by the state at cost, another a bill to abolish the State Agricultural College on the ground that it had the capitalistic view of production.

Everyone seemed to know that he had no hours, no habits, no time at all, and that the way to get his attention was to dangle an object before it. If it was an interesting object he could not resist the impulse to examine it; and to hold his attention it was necessary only to keep the object moving, until a more interesting one got interposed. Then he turned to that one, forgetting the other instantly.

A voice behind him said, “D’j’u see the speculators boosted wheat two cents?”

Off he went at once on the economics and ethics of grain speculation, treating it not as a subject but as an object. He could see the speculators at their nefarious work. He saw them putting up the price of wheat to discredit him and the Freemen’s League.

Another voice asked, “What are we going to do about it?”

That was a new object. Instantly he visualized the future of New Freedom. The word was integration. He pronounced it as if he had originated its sound and meaning. They were going to integrate the activities of New Freedom, integrate agriculture and industry together, base one upon the other, as it should be, and so achieve economic liberty, spiritual freedom and common prosperity. It had been once like that in a crude way on the farms of their forefathers. Everything they wanted, those forefathers, they raised and made for themselves. The community self-contained. That was it. Farming at the base, then their own grist mills, saw mills, tanneries, boot and shoe shops, spinning wheels, looms, forges, soap kettles, smoke houses. Labor contentedly integrated. Secure from exploitation. Modernly it had to be achieved on a large scale. A whole state regarded as one community. But there was the model in full principle. No speculators. No middlemen. No advertising. No unfair exchange. Idyllic existence realized.

As he talked the object became clearer, even vivid. Much of this he was seeing for the first time. His inspirations came to him in that way, under stress of vocal excitement. And when he spoke in this mood, hearing new and unexpected ideas from himself, he seemed enchanted; a gazing, slightly startled expression played in his eyes.

His office was still where it was at first, in the publishing plant of the Freemen’s League organ. As at last they came to the door his chief organizer broke in with a report on the state of the League, and that stopped him again.

“Go right in,” he said to Dwind and Semicorn. “I’ll be through here in a minute.”

For an hour more he stood there on the pavement, talking, listening a little, making decisions, giving instructions, while Anx. Plaino, as he well knew, was looking on from across the street.

With a dismissing gesture of both hands he broke away and dashed inside. His private office was a room not more than ten feet square. There were two wooden chairs and a sectional bookcase with a hat and some old shoes in it. His desk was half-buried in papers, books, pamphlets and letters that had fallen off all around; what had not fallen of had been slipping the other way toward the center, leaving only a trough or little valley in which he worked.

Semicorn was there alone.

“Where is Mr. Dwind?” Capuchin asked.

“Gone to the hotel,” said Semicorn. “What am I to do?”

Capuchin pressed his temples and covered his eyes, trying to remember everything.

“What are you to do?... Mr. Semicorn... yes.” He looked up, then began dusting his person briskly. “Pending further events, Mr. Semicorn, you will be my fido akatees. That is to say, you will stick around. I need somebody with me all the time. Maybe you can think of a way to keep these people off. You see how it is. I never get any time to think. Come with me now.”

He led the way out through a back door. He was going to buy the newspaper. That he could not forget.