IV

No one had noticed that the young man Semicorn in the dimness at the far end of the table had come to his feet, nor was anyone prepared for his flaming forth as he was about to do.

“Th’ only word you said that ain’t smoose,” he began, pointing at Fitzjerald, “is you could’n’ fool anybody. You’re different than other finks like toads is different than snakes. They ain’t no excuse for you. You don’t even want what that is we’re fighting for ‘n’ you don’t know. My father, he was a coal digger ‘n’ I ain’t ashamed. Maybe I’m ashamed he was a scissorbill, only he didn’ know any better. No, sir, you couldn’ fool anybody.”

His words were very distinct, his voice was clear and hot, but in his excitement he fell back upon the rooty lingual formations in which he was fluent, the vernacular of his nativity, enriched from the dictionaries of the hobo, the lumberjack, the I. W. W. zealot. A curious kind of tongue, not pure in its crudity, but unstable and changing from an overlay of acquired grammar.

“I knew a gyppo like you,” he continued. “He was a Cockney clocker with a high lead outfit in Montana. We was riggers up ‘n’ gandy dancers. He’d be reading books ‘n’ throwing the bull he was for us, but when as we asked him to stamp in he in and turned us up to th’ bull-whacker, who was a fink, too, ‘n’ then th’ boss slapped us on th’ behind with our pay checks. You’d have society be like it is, wage slaves, scissorbills, bosses, pie in th’ sky ‘n’ capitaliss just an so you could feel better than somebody. You ain’t no better than a coal digger but for th’ way you can talk. It ain’t what you know. Why shouldn’ their chilern be educated? What’s anybody got they ain’t entitled to? Their ain’t no betters, people being born all equal and same. What makes them different is th’ wage system. Nobody’s pulling that stuff on me. I ain’t fooled with th’ dehorn talk I hear around here. I might have met some nice people who can’t help being what they are, any more’n my father could. What do they know about free speech, hiring somebody to set in th’ office ‘n’ write letters to th’ papers? Nothing. We fight for it. I been in jail for it. Two hundred of us who could get there was at a convention last week in Chicago ‘n’ we counted a hundred ‘n’ eighty’d been in jail for free speech. We don’t care what th’ brass check papers say. Th’ labor papers, they called us a bummery convention. We’ll make them eat that off th’ ground yet. You’re wrong about why the rich act like they wasn’t rich ‘n’ take some of us on their lap. They’re scared. They know we’ve got th’ idea to break empires ‘n’ scatter kingdoms like they was dust, abolish the wage system, make th’ bosses go to work. Put us in jail! We’ll fill all th’ jails they got. Show me anybody here’s been in jail for what they believed.”

Through all this wild speech Jael gazed attentively at the young man. Her face was impassive. When he had stopped Fitzjerald boomed:

“My God! What a lot I don’t know about this language, and it’s my trade. What is a fink, Semicorn, and a scissorbill?”

His manner was easy, familiar, conversational. Semicorn was instantly dehorned; and sank in a state of sullen embarrassment. He could not think how to answer the question. To define his words would deflate their importance, make them silly. Unable to think of anything right to say, he sat there shifting his eyes, trying not to look at anyone or be looked at. In spite of himself he was obliged to look at Capuchin. Everyone else was looking at him. He had been leaning further and further toward the young man until he lay lengthwise along the edge of the table in front of Miss Lillibridge, apparently very anxious to fix Semicorn’s eye.

“I didn’t get your name,” he said.

“Semicorn.”

The young man’s voice was defiant and suspicious. He was not sure of Capuchin, whose expression when he became excited was extraordinary. His jaws locked, his chin came forward, and his lips Contorting to finish his syllables in front of his teeth made him appear to be either grinning or grimacing. His teeth were gleaming white. He never used tobacco. His eyes, with a glint of light running in them, were as inscrutable as a black fluid. Now he extended his hand. In doing so he edged further along the table. A glass was overturned; mechanically he set it right again. The young man slowly extended his hand.

“Mr. Semicorn. Yes, of course. One of the men they sent to Leavenworth. I’m glad to meet you. I merely wanted to say, Mr. Semicorn, if you will come with me to New Freedom—I’m going back tomorrow—I’ll put you somewhere. We need young men like yourself. Would you care to be editor of our state paper? A chain of papers perhaps. I’ll put you anywhere you say. Think it over. That’s all, Mr. Semicorn.”

He got back to his place on the bench beside Miss Lillibridge without seeing her at all, though he had been lying almost across her lap.

“And I’ll tell you what a fink is, Mr. Fitzjerald,” he said, setting his face that way. “We named the animal. The fink’s conscience is like one of those cute cardboard things you use to send coins by mail, with holes cut in it to fit quarters, dimes and nickels. His principles are the holes. He would take a raise in his pay to blow the whistle two minutes early in a factory full of ten-year-old children working twelve hours a day. He isn’t cross-eyed but he never goes where he’s looking, and he keeps his civility for his superiors. Civility, Mr. Fitzjerald, is an attribute of the species ass.”

“And a scissorbill. What’s that?” Fitzjerald asked, with deep interest.

“A scissorbill, Mr. Fitzjerald, is a man who thanks the boss for his pay check.”

Jael suspected there had been a beginning to these amenities downstairs. She was secretly diverted. Nevertheless she intervened.

“Where is this New Freedom you speak of?” she asked. “May anybody go?”

“You haven’t seen the evening papers, then,” said Capuchin.

“I’m afraid we don’t read the newspapers very regularly,” said Jael.

“Above it,” he commented, speaking audibly to himself as on this new idea. Such a thing as intelligent people not reading the newspapers had never occurred to him.

“Maybe you haven’t heard much about the Freemen’s League,” he said.

“Indeed, we have, though,” said Jael. “We’ve followed it with joy. How you turned everything upside down, elected your own governor, your own legislature, your own judges, when nobody thought it was possible, and then rewrote the constitution as the people wished. We haven’t seen that yet—the constitution, I mean. We’re looking for it.”

“To look is to see,” said Capuchin. “Here it is—copies of it. I brought them with me.”

He pulled a large quantity of printed matter from his pocket and passed it around, getting up to serve the inert De Grouse, but overlooking Lillibridge as if she were non-existent. “There’s a paragraph in it,” he was saying, “purposely a little obscure, which was to give the governor power to change the name of the state by proclamation. That was one of the ideas I couldn’t talk much about. I go by psychology in these matters. Sounds are important. People can’t see their ideas. Seeing, as somebody says, is the most imperfect of the senses. Hearing came first. That may be. They have to hear their ideas. A sound—you must give your people a sound. Fancy the French revolution without its three sounds—liberty, equality, fraternity! But you can’t discuss these matters publicly, can you? New Freedom. The state of New Freedom. Don’t you like it? I arranged it with the governor before I left and he did it this afternoon. The people of course think they did it. They have named their own state. And the capital, too. Its name has been changed in the same way to Liberty.”

Grinling spoke.

“I’ve been commenting on your revolution,” he said. “I don’t know if you have seen any of it.”

“Oh, yes,” said Capuchin. “In the ‘New World.’ Very fair, I thought, only you—”

“I have nothing to do with ‘The New World,’” said Grinling.

“Oh, no,” said Capuchin, quickly. “I meant the—uh... it was the—uh—”

Grinling left him swinging.

“In ‘The People’s Witness,’” said Jael.

“Yes—yes,” said Capuchin.

“The news we have to go on isn’t always clear,” said Grinling. “It occurs to me—”

Capuchin interrupted. “That’s the next thing we’ve got to do. I’m boiling a kettle of water now for the reptile press. If I had the time I might sue half the newspapers in the country for libel. They keep leery little men out there all the time trying to get something on me. Their editors call me crook, traitor, irreligionist, dictator setting up a Russian form of government in their privately owned United States. They walk in my tracks. I’m registered now at a little hotel here under an assumed name because I don’t want to be bothered. I shouldn’t be surprised at all if they were sitting on the doorstep below, waiting to serenade me.” He added: “It might ruin me. Think what they would make of me in a dress suit.” He was evidently pleased with this remark, thinking that by referring thus lightly to his mistake in dress he got rid of it.

“I was thinking,” said Grinling, “you might give us an intimate outline of events from the beginning—how you got started, I mean, what your means were, and what has really happened.”