“Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?
Keep them at puddling iron?”
Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him.
“Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses.
I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these
wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out
their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder
which any man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish
all social ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh, May?”
The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this
woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and,
receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.
“I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or
'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do
the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing
more,--hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste,
reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?” He pointed to
Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. “So many nerves to sting them to
pain. What if God had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into
your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?”
“You think you could govern the world better?” laughed the Doctor.
“I do not think at all.”
“That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive
deep enough to find bottom, eh?”
“Exactly,” rejoined Kirby. “I do not think. I wash my hands of all
social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my
operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside
of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more
popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible.”
The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.
“God help us! Who is responsible?”
“Not I, I tell you,” said Kirby, testily. “What has the man who pays
them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or
butcher who takes it?”
“And yet,” said Mitchell's cynical voice, “look at her! How hungry she
is!”
Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of
the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, “What
shall we do to be saved?” Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight
of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which
looked the soul of his class,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.
Mitchell laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.
“Money has spoken!” he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the
air of an amused spectator at a play. “Are you answered?”--turning to
Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.
Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil
beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare
mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the
two.
“Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to
quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so
Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very
clear the answer, too!--I think I remember reading the same words
somewhere: washing your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am
innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'”
Kirby flushed angrily.
“You quote Scripture freely.”
“Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may
amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,
ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of
the Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its
voice, what has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small
Way,--n'est ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut
korl better,--or your destiny. Go on, May!”
“I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night,” rejoined the Doctor,
seriously.
He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a
vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done
here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life
by a waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on
complacently:
“Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great
man? do you understand?” (talking down to the capacity of his hearer:
it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)--“to live a
better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself
anything he chooses. God has given you stronger powers than many
men,--me, for instance.”
May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was
magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the
Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will,
with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.
“Make yourself what you will. It is your right.
“I know,” quietly. “Will you help me?”