My sympathies are just as keen for these poor women and children as ever, but as these men say, 'charity begins at home,' and we mustn't do anything to bring on war prices again, or to send stocks tumbling about our heads, must we?" He leaned back in his chair again and sighed. "Sympathy is an expensive luxury, Ifind," he added.
Arkwright rose stiffly and pushed Stanton away from him with his hand. He moved like a man coming out of a dream.
"Don't talk to me like that," he said in a low voice. The noise about the table ended on the instant, but Arkwright did not notice that it had ceased. "You know I don't understand that,"he went on; "what does it matter to me!" He put his hand up to the side of his face and held it there, looking down at Stanton.
He had the dull, heavy look in his eyes of a man who has just come through an operation under some heavy drug. "'Wall Street,'
'trusts,' 'party leaders,'" he repeated, "what are they to me?
The words don't reach me, they have lost their meaning, it is a language I have forgotten, thank God!" he added. He turned and moved his eyes around the table, scanning the faces of the men before him.
"Yes, you are twelve to one," he said at last, still speaking dully and in a low voice, as though he were talking to himself.
"You have won a noble victory, gentlemen. I congratulate you.
But I do not blame you, we are all selfish and self-seeking. Ithought I was working only for Cuba, but I was working for myself, just as you are. I wanted to feel that it was I who had helped to bring relief to that plague-spot, that it was through my efforts the help had come. Yes, if he had done as I asked, Isuppose I would have taken the credit."
He swayed slightly, and to steady himself caught at the back of his chair. But at the same moment his eyes glowed fiercely and he held himself erect again. He pointed with his finger at the circle of great men who sat looking up at him in curious silence.
"You are like a ring of gamblers around a gaming table," he cried wildly, "who see nothing but the green cloth and the wheel and the piles of money before them, who forget in watching the money rise and fall, that outside the sun is shining, that human beings are sick and suffering, that men are giving their lives for an idea, for a sentiment, for a flag. You are the money-changers in the temple of this great republic and the day will come, I pray to God, when you will be scourged and driven out with whips. Do you think you can form combines and deals that will cheat you into heaven? Can your 'trusts' save your souls--is 'Wall Street' the strait and narrow road to salvation?"The men about the table leaned back and stared at Arkwright in as great amazement as though he had violently attempted an assault upon their pockets, or had suddenly gone mad in their presence.
Some of them frowned, and others appeared not to have heard, and others smiled grimly and waited for him to continue as though they were spectators at a play.
The political leader broke the silence with a low aside to Stanton. "Does the gentleman belong to the Salvation Army?" he asked.
Arkwright whirled about and turned upon him fiercely.
