"Has anything gone wrong?" There was so much of interest and sympathy in
her tone, as Joe put the simple question, that John turned and looked into
her face. The magic of moonlight softens the hardest features, makes
interest look like friendship, and friendship like love; but it can harden
too at times, and make a human face look like carved stone.
"No, there is nothing wrong," John answered presently; "what made you
think so?"
"You spoke a little regretfully," answered Joe.
"Did I? I did not mean to. Perhaps one is less gay and less hopeful at
some times than at others. It has nothing to do with success or failure."
"I know," answered Joe. "One can be dreadfully depressed when one is
enjoying one's self to any extent. But I should not have thought you were
that sort of person. You seem always the same."
"I try to be. That is the great difference between people who live to work
and people who live to amuse and be amused."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean," said John, "that people who work, especially people who have to
do with large ideas and great movements, need to be more or less
monotonous. The men who succeed are the men of one idea or at least they
are the men who only have one idea at a time."
"Whereas people who live to amuse and be amused must have as many ideas as
possible."
"Yes, to play with," said John, completing the sentence. "Their life is
play, their ideas are their playthings, and so soon as they have spoiled
one toy they must have another. The people who supply ideas to an idle
public are very valuable, and may have great power."
"Novel-writers, and that sort of people," suggested Joe.
"All producers of light literature and second-rate poetry, and a very
great variety of other people besides. A man who amuses others may often
be a worker himself. He raises a laugh or excites a momentary interest by
getting rid of his superfluous ideas and imaginations, reserving to
himself all the time the one idea in which he believes."
"Not at all a bad theory," said Joe.
"There are more men of that sort with you in Europe than with us. You need
more amusement, and you will generally give more for it. You English, who
are uncommonly fond of doing nothing, give yourselves vast trouble in the
pursuit of pleasure. We Americans, who are ill when we are idle, are
content to surround ourselves with the paraphernalia of pleasure when
office hours are over; but we make very little use of our opportunities
for amusement, being tired out at the end of the day with other things
which we think more important. The result is that we have no such thing as
what you denominate 'Society,' because we lack the prime element of
aristocratic social intercourse, the ingrained determination to be idle."
"You are very hard on us," remarked Joe.
"Excuse me," returned John, "you are compensated by having what we have
not. Europeans are the most agreeable people in the world, wherever mutual
and daily conversation and intercourse are to be considered. The majority
of you, of polite European society, are not troubled with any very large
ideas, but you have an immense number of very charming and attractive
small ones. In America there are only two ideas that practically affect
society, but they are very big ones indeed."
"What?" asked Joe laconically, growing interested in John's queer lecture.
"Money and political influence," answered John Harrington. "They are the
two great motors of our machine. All men who are respected among us are in
pursuit of one or the other, or have attained to one or the other by their
own efforts. The result is, that European society is amusing and
agreeable; whereas Americans of the same class are more interesting, less
polished, better acquainted with the general laws that govern the
development of nations." "Really, Mr. Harrington," said Joe, "you are
making us out to be very insignificant. And I think it would be very dull
if we all had to understand ever so many general laws. Besides, I do not
agree with you."
"About what, Miss Thorn?"
"About Americans. They talk better than Englishmen, as a rule."
"But I am comparing Americans with the whole mass of Europeans," John
objected. "The English are a rather silent race, I should say."
"Cold, you think?" suggested Joe.
"No, not cold. Perhaps less cold than we are; but less demonstrative."
"I like that," answered Joe. "I like people to feel more than they show."
"Why?" asked John. "Why should not people be perfectly natural, and show
when they feel anything, or be cold when they do not?" "I think when you
know some one feels a great deal and hides it, that gives one the idea of
reserved strength."
They had reached a distant part of the ice, and were slowly skating round
the limits of a little bay, where the slanting moonbeams fell through tall
old trees upon the glinting black surface. They were quite alone, only in
the distance they could hear the long-drawn clang and ring of the other
skaters, echoing all along the lake with a tremulous musical sound in the
still bright night. "You must be very cold yourself, Mr. Harrington," Joe
began again after a pause, stopping and looking at him.
John laughed a little.
"I?" he cried. "No, indeed, I am the most enthusiastic man alive."
"You are when you are speaking in public," said Joe. "But that may be all
comedy, you know. Orators always study their speeches, with all the
gestures and that, before a glass, don't they?"
"I do not know," said John. "Of course I know by heart what I am going to
say, when I make a speech like that of the other evening, but I often
insert a great deal on the spur of the moment. It is not comedy. I grow
very much excited when I am speaking."
"Never at any other time?" asked Joe.
"Seldom; why should I? I do not feel other things or situations so
strongly."
"In other words," replied Joe, "it is just as I said; you are generally
very cold."
"I suppose so," John acquiesced, "since you will not allow the occasions
when I am not cold to be counted."
Joe looked down as she stood, and moved her skates slowly on the ice; the
shadows hid her face.
"Do you know," she said presently, "you lose a great deal; you must, you
cannot help it. You only like people in a body, so as to see what you can
do with them. You only care for things on a tremendously big scale, so
that you may try to influence them. When you have not a crowd to talk to,
or a huge scheme to argue about, you are bored to extinction."
"No," said John; "I am not bored at present, by any means."
"Because you are talking about big things. Most men in your place would be
talking about the moonlight, and quoting Shelley."
"To oblige you, Miss Thorn, I could quote a little now and then," said
John, laughing. "Would it please you? I dare say you have seen elephants
stand upon their hind legs and their heads alternately. I should feel very
much like one; but I will do anything to oblige you."
"That is frivolous," said Joe, who did not smile.
"Of course it is. I am heavy by nature. You may teach me all sorts of
tricks, but they will not be at all pretty."
"No, you are very interesting as you are," said Joe quietly. "But I do not
think you will be happy."
"It is not a question of happiness."
"What is it then?"
"Usefulness," said John.
"You do not care to be happy, you only care to be useful?" Joe asked.
"Yes. But my ideas of usefulness include many things. Some of the people
who listen to me would be very much astonished if they knew what I dream."
"Nothing would astonish me," said Joe, thoughtfully. "Of course you must
think of everything in a large way--it is your nature. You will be a great
man."
John looked at his companion. She had struck the main chord of his nature
in her words, and he felt suddenly that thrill of pleasure which comes
from the flattery of our pride and our hopes. John was not a vain man, but
he was capable of being intoxicated by the grandeur of a scheme when the
possibility of its realization was suddenly thrust before him. Like all
men of exceptional gifts who are constantly before the public, he could
estimate very justly the extent of the results he could produce on any
given occasion, but his enthusiastic belief in his ideas could see no
limit to the multiplication of those results. His strong will and natural
modesty about himself constantly repressed any desire he might have to
speak over-confidently of ultimate success, so that the prediction of
ultimate success by some one else was doubly sweet to him. We Americans
have said of ourselves that we are the only nation who accomplish what we
have boasted of. Rash speech and rash action are our national
characteristics, and lead us into all manner of trouble, but in so far as
such qualifications or defects imply a positive conviction of success,
they contribute largely to the realization of great schemes. No one can
succeed who does not believe in himself, nor can any scheme be realized
which has not gained the support of a sufficient number of men who believe
in it and in themselves.
John was gratified by Miss Thorn's speech, for he saw that it was
spontaneous.
"I will try to be great," he said, "for the sake of what I think is
great."
There was a short pause, and the pair by common consent skated slowly out
of the shadow into the broad moonlight.
"Not that I believe you will be happy if you think of nothing else," said
Joe presently.
"In order to do anything well, one must think of nothing else," answered
John.
"Many great men find time to be great and to do many other things," said
Joe. "Look at Mr. Gladstone; he has an immense private correspondence
about things that interest him, quite apart from the big things he is
always doing."
"When a man has reached that point he may find plenty of time to spare,"
answered Harrington. "But until he has accomplished the main object of his
life he must not let anything take him from his pursuit. He must form no
ties, he must have no interests, that do not conduce to his success. I
think a man who enters on a political career must devote himself to it as
exclusively as a missionary Jesuit attacks the conversion of unbelievers,
as wholly as a Buddhist ascetic gives himself to the work of uniting his
individual intelligence with the immortal spirit that gives it life."
"I do not agree with you," said Joe decisively, and in her womanly
intelligence of life she understood the mistake John made. "I cannot agree
with you. You are mixing up political activity, which deals with the
government of men, with spiritual ideas and immortality, and that sort of
thing."
"How so?" asked John, in some surprise.
"I am quite sure," said Joe, "that to govern man a man must be human, and
the imaginary politician you tell me of is not human at all."
"And yet I aspire to be that imaginary politician," said John.
"Do not think me too dreadfully conceited," Joe answered, "in talking
about such things. Of course I do not pretend to understand them, but I am
quite sure people must be like other people--I mean in good ways--or other
people will not believe in them, you know. You are not vexed, are you?"
She looked up into John's face with a little timid smile that might have
done wonders to persuade a less prejudiced person than Harrington.
"No indeed! why should I be vexed? But perhaps some day you will believe
that I am right."
"Oh no, never!" exclaimed Joe, in a tone of profound conviction. "You will
never persuade me that people are meant to shut themselves from their
fellow-creatures, and not be human, and that."
"And yet you were so good as to say that you thought I might attain
greatness," said John, smiling.
"Yes, I think you will. But you will change your mind about a great many
things before you do."
John's strong face grew thoughtful, and the white moonlight made his
features seem harder and sterner than ever. Slowly the pair glided over
the polished black ice, now marked here and there with clean white curves
from the skates, and in a few minutes they were once more within hail of
the remainder of their party.