The Beauty and the Bolshevist

								

Crystal. Crystal is a good deal of a proposition, I grant you. The
revolution seems to me simpler. If a majority of our fellow countrymen
really want it, they are going to get it in spite of you and me; and if
they don’t want it, they won’t have it no matter how Crystal talks to
you at parties. So cheer up, Eddie, and have a cigar.”
“They can, they will,” said Eddie, not even troubling to wave away the
cigar this time. “You don’t appreciate what an organized minority of
foreign agitators can do in this country. Why, they can—”
“Well, if a minority of foreigners can put over a revolution against
the will of the American people, we ought to shut up shop, Eddie.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“No.”
“You mean you wouldn’t fight it?”
“You bet your life I’d fight it,” said Mr. Cord, gayly, “but I fight
lots of things without being afraid of them. What’s the use of being
afraid? Here I am sixty-five, conservative and trained to only one
game, and yet I feel as if I could manage to make my own way even
under soviet rule. Anyway, I don’t want to die or emigrate just because
my country changes its form of government. Only it would have to be the
wish of the majority, and I don’t believe it ever will be. In the
meantime there is just one thing I am afraid of—and that’s the thing
that you and most of my friends want to do first—suppressing free
speech; if you suppress it, we won’t know who wants what. Then you
really do get an explosion.”
Eddie had got Mr. Cord to be serious now, with the unfortunate result
that the older man was more shocking than ever.
“Free speech doesn’t mean treason and sedition,” Eddie began.
“It means the other man’s opinion.”
There was a pause during which Eddie became more perturbed and Mr. Cord
settled back to his habitual calm.
“Wouldn’t you suppress anything?” Verriman asked at length, willing
to know the worst. “Not even such a vile sheet as Liberty?”
“Do you ever see it, Eddie?”
“Read a rotten paper like that? Certainly not. Do you?”
“I subscribe to it.” And, bending down, Mr. Cord unlocked a drawer in
his desk and produced the issue of the preceding day.
“I notice you keep it locked up,” said Eddie, and felt that he had
scored.
“I have to,” replied Mr. Cord, “or else Crystal gets hold of it and
cuts it all up into extracts—she must have sent you some—before I get a
chance to read it. Besides, it shocks Tomes. You ought to talk to
Tomes, Eddie. He thinks about as you do—”
At this moment the door opened and Tomes himself entered.
“Mr. Moreton would like to see you, sir.”
Even Cord’s calm was a little disturbed by this unexpected news.
“Mr. Moreton!” he exclaimed. “Not—not—not—not?”
“No, sir,” said Tomes, always in possession of accurate information.
“His brother, I believe.”