The Governors eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 248 pages of information about The Governors.

The Governors eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 248 pages of information about The Governors.
common sense, for which few save those who had known him well, like Norris Vine, had given him credit.  He stood now with his back to Vine, looking down across the Square below, glittering with lights aflame with the busy night life of the great city.  The jingle of hansom bells, and the distant roar of traffic down one of the great thoroughfares, was never out of their ears; but in this place, cut off from the house by the trap-door through which they had climbed, it was cooler by far than the smoking-room, which they had deserted half an hour before.

For some reason Deane seemed to wish to let the subject rest for a moment.  He stood close to the little parapet, looking towards the horizon, watching the dull glare of lights, whose concentrated reflection was thrown upon a bank of heavy clouds.

“You have not told me, Norris,” he remarked, “what you think of my attempted roof-garden.”

“It is cool, at any rate,” Norris Vine answered.  “I wonder why one always feels the heat more in London than anywhere else in the world.”

“It is because they have been so unaccustomed to it over here that they have made no preparations to cope with it,” Deane answered.  “Then think of the size of the place!  What miles of pavements, and wildernesses of slate roofs, to attract the sun and keep out the fresh air.  Vine, who are these men?” he asked, turning towards him abruptly.

Norris Vine smiled.

“Don’t you think,” he said, “that you can give me your advice better if you do not know?  I can tell you this, at any rate.  They are men who deserve whatever may happen to them.  They are not of your world, my friend.  They are the men who have sucked the life-blood out of many and many a prosperous town-village in our country.  Don’t think that I hesitate for one moment for their sakes.  I tell you frankly that my first idea was to give the whole thing away in the Post.”

“It would have been,” Deane remarked, with a faint smile, “the biggest journalistic scoop of the century.”

Vine nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I should have done it but for one man’s advice.  It was John Drayton who showed me what the other side of the thing might be.  He pointed out that the innocent would suffer for the guilty, in fact hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the innocent, would be ruined that these few men might be punished.  It was his belief that the publication of this document, and the arrest of the men concerned in it, would cause the worst panic that had ever been known in America.  That is why I stayed my hand and came over here to consult you.”

The ambassador sighed, as he resumed his seat and lit another cigar.

“Drayton was right,” he remarked softly.  “He is a man of common sense, and yet we must remember that great reforms are never instituted without sacrifices.  Could the country stand such a sacrifice as this?  It is not a matter to be decided in a moment.”

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Project Gutenberg
The Governors from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.