“I must believe it,” he said vehemently. “I must--or there is nothing
left.” Then, simply, as if he were relating some impersonal anecdote, he
told me his story, one of those swift, inevitable, pregnant romances of
two outlanders in this great wilderness which we call New York.
“I met her in a language class. We were both taking Spanish. It was to
help her in the corporation office where she worked. We lunched at the
same place. We used to talk, to help out over lessons. She was French.
Her name was Toinette.”
He handed me his watch, open. The print was dim and vague, but in the
very poise of the head was the incarnation of mirth and youth. “She is
very lovely,” I said. I should have said it in any case. In this case it
happened to be true.
“She is little and quick and brown and laughing. We Greeks love
laughter. She laughed at me because she said I had solemn eyes like an
owl. Then I kissed her and she did not laugh, but clung to me, and I
felt her tears. That evening we heard 'La Bohême.' hand in hand, and I
played it to her afterward. I have played it to her ever since. When I
would speak to her of marriage she would set her fingers to my lips
and the joy would die out of her face. Once she said I must go back and
forget her. Then it was my turn to laugh. We do not love and forget, we
Greeks.
“She had a brother serving in the Argonne. He died dragging a wounded
comrade to safety. She was very proud of it. But the heart that had been
working so poorly almost stopped working at all when they brought her
the news. She sent for me to tell me that she must go to the hospital.
That was why she would not let me speak of marriage. Her heart had
always been weak, and she feared she might be an invalid and a burden
on me. As if that mattered! 'So I could not let you speak,' she said,
'because I loved you so, and I might have been weaker than my heart.'
They took her to the Samaritan. That is her room, just beyond where you
see the speck of light. Every night I stand where I can see it and make
my music for her. So it was arranged between us.”
“But,” I began, and bit my tongue into silence.
“True,” he said equably. “At such a distance she cannot hear. It
does not matter. She knows I make my music for her. That is all that
matters.”
“How long since you have seen her?”
“April the 24th.”
“And this is August! Four months! Good Heavens, man, how is that?”
“'_Anangke,_ Fate.” he murmured. “It could not be otherwise.”
“Surely it could,” I protested. “Won't they let you see her?”
He shook his head.
“But that's barbarous! Think what she must be suffering.”
“Oh, no. She understands. It is I who suffer.”
“Needlessly,” I cried. “It can be arranged. You _must_ see her. Four
months! Will you let me arrange it?”
“It is useless.”
I believe I took him by the shoulder and shook him. “Don't be a fool,”
I bade him savagely. “I tell you, you _shall_ see her. At once.
To-morrow.”
He turned upon me eyes like those of an animal that pleads dumbly
against torture. “It cannot be,” he said.
“Why?”
“She is dead,” he whispered.
“Dead?” I loosed my grasp on him. “But you play--How can she--When
did you--” All my thought and speech were jumbled within me. “Dead?” I
finally contrived to get out. “When did she die?”
“On the last day of April. When they told me of it the little children
were dancing in the park. She was like a little lovely child herself.
They told me she was dead, but it is only at times that I am weak enough
to believe them.”
I gazed at him, utterly bewildered. He returned my look with a gaze of
infinite despair.
“To-morrow,” he said bravely, “I shall again know that she is alive and
loving me.”
Later I learned how the blow had fallen; a grim and brutal experience
for so gentle a spirit as his.
Three weeks after his Toinette was admitted to the Samaritan a
forlorn-hope operation was determined upon. Happily, Orpheus knew
nothing about it until it was all over, with unexpected promise of
success and even complete cure. Once a week they let him see her. On
the other six days he might call at the office for such information as
a stolid and blank official chose to dole out. But no official could
interpose his stolidity between Orpheus, piping at dead of night, and
his Eurydice lying happily awake in the far upper wing of the hospital,
knowing that he made his music for her and perhaps hearing it--who
knows?--with the finer ear of the spirit. Vary his choice as he might,
he told me, she always knew what he had played and could tell when
they next saw each other. So all went well with those two young, brave
hearts, and the meager reports grew increasingly hopeful, until one
bright spring morning Orpheus paid his unfailing daily visit for
information. A brusque young brute of an interne was at the desk, the
regular official having stepped out.
“Twenty-one?” he repeated in reply to Orpheus's gentle-voiced question.
“That's the heart case. Died yesterday afternoon.”
“But last night I played to her,” protested Orpheus in a piteous,
stricken whisper, “and she heard and answered. It cannot be.”
“Nutty!” said the interne to the information official who returned at
this point. “Takes'em that way sometimes. Better get him out before he
busts loose.”
They got him out without trouble. He wandered into Our Square and
watched the children dancing-in the May. They seemed to him like unreal
creatures moving in a world of unrealities. More and more unreal grew
everything about him until late that night he faced the grim reality
of a barred door which kept him from his beloved dead, and that door
he attacked with such fury and power that it took two policemen, in
addition to the hospital corps, to subdue him. As he was a foreigner and
vague and sorrow-stricken, the magistrate naturally gave him two months.
He came out dazed but steadied. The one hold he had upon happiness
was the delusion to which he so pathetically clung, the pretense,
passionately cherished, that she was still alive. Poor Orpheus! He had
indeed gone down into Hades for his Eurydice and stayed there. If he
could find solace in his limbo of minor madness, perhaps that was best
for him.
So thought the Little Red Doctor, wise in human suffering, to whom alone
I told the story of Orpheus. Said the Little Red Doctor first: “There
are times when I blame my old friend Death for doing a job by halves”;
and second: “Cure him? Who wants to cure peace with pain! Let him play
his music”; and third: “God help that interne if I ever meet up with
him!”
If Death resented his friendly opponent's strictures, he never showed
it, but kept on doing business as usual in Our Square. And Orpheus
continued to make, among the broken glens of our brick-and-stucco sky
line, his music manifold to ears that heard not. As for the interne, the
Little Red Doctor did, in the fullness of time, meet up with him, and
improved the occasion to lay down certain ethics and principles of
conduct as pertaining to the profession of healing. Whereupon the
interne, who should have known better, being not more than half again as
big as the Little Red Doctor, treated the lesson in a light and flippant
vein, and asserted that when he wished to learn his business he wouldn't
apply to a half-boiled shrimp.
Thus it happened that he who had come forth from the hospital an interne
intact and unafraid returned thereto a battered and terrified patient
with a broken nose and two displaced ribs urgently requiring
attention. The practice of medicine in Our Square, as exemplified by
so thoroughgoing an exponent as the Little Red Doctor, is not wholly a
lily-fingered science.
_Minora cano!_ And why should I sing of such lesser matters as the
correction of the interne, when there awaits my historical pen a
conflict worthy of Euripides's own strophes! Cyrus the Gaunt and the
Bonnie Lassie had been serving the midnight rarebit to three of their
uptown friends who had dropped down through the slums to the friendly
little old house with the dancing figurines in the window, and Cyrus
had undertaken to pilot his friends to the corner, lest their evening
raiment be locally misinterpreted and resented. Coming, later than my
wont, from the Elite Restaurant, I crossed Our Square a few rods in
advance of them. Orpheus stood in his corner, piping to his lost young
love. From without there approached him swiftly a dark group, close
gathered. It was the Shadow Gang, from Second Avenue, bent upon
reprisals. There were eight or nine of them, under the leadership of
“Mixer” Boyle, a local middle-weight of ill repute. They closed in upon
the Greek, and as I ran, shouting for Terry the Cop, I saw him go down
under the pack. More than music was in that soul, however. If he was
Orpheus, he had something, too, in him of Thersites and Achilles and
Agamemnon. Like a bear struggling from beneath an onset of dogs, he
up-heaved his big shoulders. From behind me came an answering shout,
not Terry the Cop, indeed, but the next best thing, Cyrus the Gaunt,
followed closely by the Rev. Morris Cartwright, Gerrit Bascom, and two
other visions of white shirt fronts protruding and black coat tails
streaming in the wind. They passed me as if I were a milestone, and the
battle was joined.
Cyrus the Gaunt is a mighty man of his hands. But the hands are those of
an amateur. Mixer Boyle's are those of a professional. They crossed, and
Cyrus went down under a left swing. Before the Mixer could turn he
was toppled with the blessing (full arm to the ear) of the Rev. Morris
Cartwright. Two others fell upon the Rev. Morris and the Rev. Morris
fell upon the Mixer, and then they all rose and went at it again.
I am old who once was young, but never do I look upon the stricken field
without remembering that in my prime I was a man of deeds and juggled
deftly with seventy-five-pound dumb-bells. Talents of this sort are
never wholly wasted. Upon attaining the outskirts of the mêlée I
selected the largest hostile bulk in reach, seized it around the hips,
and lifted it clear. It struggled and developed a solid fist which,
in contact with my jaw, utterly destroyed my equilibrium. I fell, but
contrived so to twist myself that the hostile bulk fell beneath me. It
lay quiet. But when I strove to rise, a paralysis across my shoulders
strongly advised against it. So I sat upon my captive's chest and
dizzily watched the combat.
Now do I fully understand why war correspondents are not permitted at
the front. It destroys their special usefulness. The fighting spirit and
historical accuracy are totally incompatible. Nobody could have had a
better view of the stirring events which succeeded than I. The forces
and topography of the combat were clear in my mind: nearly two to one
in favor of the enemy, but with our party fighting on home soil and in
momentary hope of reenforcements. Yet all that I can recall is the sound
of thumps and stifled curses and a confused mess of strained faces,
violently working arms, and broad white shirt fronts now splotched with
a harsher color. Then it seemed to me that I saw a little circle cleared
about the mighty Greek, and a heavy cane which he brandished by the
middle in both hands gave me the clue. The odds were balancing better,
though still with the invaders. As if the Fates themselves were
concerned to assure a more even field, there sounded a far, furious
whoop, and the Little Red Doctor descended joyously upon the riot. At
this critical juncture my captive came to and bit me in the leg. I
lost all interest, temporarily, in the art and practice of war
correspondence.
Having secured a hold (not prescribed by the formal rules of wrestling,
I am informed) with my knee upon my opponent's neck, I turned to view
the battle again. The defenders were against the fence now; but alas!
the Rev. Morris Cartwright was on his hands and knees, and one of
the other uptown knights was reeling. The gangsters pressed in hard,
striving to edge around the Greek and get him in the rear. Cyrus, with
his heavy fists, guarded one side of him; the Little Red Doctor was
fighting like a fury on the other. I prayed (kneeling upon my captive's
neck) for Heaven's success to the just, and Terry the Cop.
A shrill shout marked the next swift development.
“_Look out! He's got a knife!_”
A bright gleam of steel slanted toward Cyrus's shoulder. But the deft
Greek had seen it. He chopped with his stick. The knife whirled free
and descended. Like a football team plunging for a loose ball, the
contestants dived for it. For a moment they groveled, struggling. Then
out of the mass rose a shriek of the uttermost agony. It seemed to me
that the group was stricken into sudden silence and immobility. Slowly
it disintegrated, drawing apart in two sections. A half-doubled figure
ran, staggering and dodging, into the shadows. A policeman's whistle
shrilled. The gangsters turned and ran. Mine ran too. He tried, I regret
to say, to give me a parting kick as I let him up. On the ground lay the
knife. There was just a little trickle of red on it.
Cyrus picked it up and looked around. Every man of our party was
battered, but none was stabbed.
“Must have got his own man in the mix-up,” quoth the Little Red Doctor.
“Come to my place and get fixed up.” After much minor repairing with
plaster and patch we separated upon our respective ways, disheveled,
disreputable, but exultant. Orpheus, with his face one mass of cuts and
bruises, went back, if you will believe it, to play the final “Bohême”
to the little beam of light in the window.
“I hope,” he whispered to me, “that she could not hear the noise. It
would frighten her.”
In consideration of my strained back the Little Red Doctor escorted me
home. As we set foot to the steps we heard a soft groan from the black
areaway. From between two barrels the physician dragged a cowering
wretch. His hands were pressed to his abdomen. There was a pool of blood
where he had crouched.
“The Samaritan Hospital for you,” said the Little Red Doctor.
“Not me!” snarled the youth. “Guess again.”
“Got any last message?” asked the doctor coolly.
The young fellow's eyelids fluttered. “Am I croaked?” he said.
“Unless you're on the table within the hour.”
The gangster summoned his bravado. “Let'er go as she lies. No Samaritan
for mine. I was there oncet. They don't allow you no cigs. 'No smoking.'
I'll croak foist.”
The Little Red Doctor scratched his head in perplexity. I looked at
the wounded man. His face was sullen and brave, but his hands were
quivering.
“Take him up to my room, doctor,” I said.
That is how I came by my first lodger. His name was Pinney the Rat.
After the Little Red Doctor had saved his body, many and various
visitors climbed my stair for the purpose of saving the Rat's soul. The
Rev. Morris Cartwright came all the way downtown (with an ear tastefully
framed in surgeon's plaster) to convert him to decency. Cyrus the Gaunt
strove manfully to convert him to the gospel of work with offers of
regenerating labor in Canadian wildernesses. MacLachan the Tailor
undertook to curse him into sobriety. Our French David and our German
Jonathan dropped in separately to forecast to him respectively the
Entente and the Alliance arguments of the Great War and to hint at
enlistment when he should be recovered. Herman Groll undertook to
convert him to music. All of this he accepted with noncommittal and
rather contemptuous tolerance. It served to pass the time of his
halting recovery. As a patient he was docile; as a guest he was not
inconsiderate, though I could hardly say that he was grateful. To
Orpheus alone of his visitors he exhibited a distinctive attitude.
When the Greek dropped in upon us Pin-ney's face became a mask of cold
watchfulness. He would freeze up into silence, following the big, gentle
visitor's every movement with his unwinking eyes. The Little Red Doctor
noted this with uneasiness.
“That's not a rat,” he warned me. “It's a rattlesnake. And I don't like
the way it looks at our Greek friend.”
“What can he have against Orpheus?”
“Probably thinks it was he that knifed him.”
“It wasn't. I can swear to that much.”
“Save your breath. You'll never argue the resolve to get even out of the
mind of a gangster.”
“What shall I do? Tell Orpheus to keep away?”
“No. But see that our patient doesn't get his hands on any sort of
weapon.” Strangely enough, the wounded man seemed to exercise a strange
fascination upon the Greek. Day after day he would come and sit, talking
or reading, while the gangster lay silent, maturing murder in his soul.
What a pair they made; the secretive, time-abiding, venomous Rat and the
gentle madman!
In time the Rat's patience was rewarded. He got his weapon. He got it
from the Bonnie Lassie. She had taken to dropping in upon us to see my
lodger. She, at least, did not try to convert him. At first she just sat
and twinkled at him, and the man does not live who can resist the Bonnie
Lassie when she twinkles. On her second visit she brought him cigarettes
in profusion and announced that she was going to sculp him in miniature,
and proceeded forthwith to do it. Before the job was done they were
sworn comrades. She would sit by his couch with her modeling tools and
clay and work while he boasted in a hoarse, thin pipe of the evil things
he had done. He was openly flattered that she should make him the chief
figure of a group to be called “Ambush.” One day while she was absorbed
in a difficult line he quietly annexed her compasses. A pair of
compasses is two excellent stilettos. Pinney the Rat secreted his booty
in the bed. That evening I found him cautiously practicing, first with
his right, then with his left hand, what I supposed to be that method
pugilistically termed an uppercut. Had I been more expert, I might have
noted that his thumb was turned sidewise and upward.
Concern and ignorance were choicely blended in the Rat's manner when,
next day, the Bonnie Lassie came in to inquire for her lost tool,
bringing as usual some “smokes.”
“Do you like this kind better?” she asked.
“They're all right,” said the Rat. “But, say, lady, not wishin' to ast
too much--”
“Go on,” she encouraged him as he--
“Woddya know,” pursued the patient hesitantly, “about a big, fat cig
with funny letters like this on?”
“Those look like Greek letters,” said the Bonnie Lassie, studying the
marks which he had scrawled. “I'll see if I can get some for you.”
Search for that brand proved unavailing, however. It seemed to be a
special importation.
“Where did you ever smoke them?” she asked the Rat.
“Over to th' S'maritan.”
“Do they serve cigarettes in the hospital?”
“They do--I don't think! It was a little lady there give'em to me on the
quiet. She seen what them big stiffs o' doctors never seen, that I was
goin' batty for a smoke. She sneaked'em in to me. She was one real baby!
Some guy outside useter send'em in to her to give me.”
“Was she a nurse?”
“No; a case. Pretty near all in when she came. After she got well nobody
wanted her to leave; and she didn't want to, I guess. So they made a job
for her. I useter tell her she was hired out for sunshine. I ain't seen
her since.” He sighed.
“Would you like to see her?”
Pinney the Rat's eyes became human. “Oh, Gee!” he murmured.
“I'll bring her,” said the Bonnie Lassie. “Whom shall I ask for?”
“Jus' leave word for Miss Tony that Pin--that No. 7, Men's Surgical--is
hurted again, but O. K., and could she come and see him, maybe, some
day.” She came at once, Pinney the Rat's Miss Tony. She was little and
quick and brown and lovely, but not laughing. There was a depth of woe
and loss in her big eyes. Let that be my excuse that I did not at once
identify her as Eurydice--that and the fact that, as far as I knew,
Eurydice was dead and buried these four months and lived only in
Orpheus's resolutely self-deluded mind.
For Pinney's sake, his visitor summoned up the phantom of past gayety.
She shook, first her finger and then her little fist at him, upbraiding
him in quaintly accented English, while he lay and visibly worshiped.
“You haf sayed that you will go straight. An' now voilà you, wit' your
pro-mess broke an' a stick in your estomac.”
“Yessum,” said Pinney the Rat.
“That learn you something? That learn you to be'ayve?”
“Yessum,” assented that murderous gangster like an abashed schoolboy.
“You give me your han' now that you be a good boy an' go no more wit'
_les Apaches_ an' get you a job?”
The Rat's face hardened. He squirmed away from those clear eyes. “I got
one little account to square up,” he muttered. “After that if I make my
getaway, I'll join the Salvationists if you tell me to. An' say, Miss
Tony, you know them cigs you useta gimme? Them with the dinky letters
on?”
The girl's trembling hand went to her throat. She looked at him
strangely.
“If I could get a handful o' them,” he continued shyly, “they--I--it'd
kinda remind me when--when you ain't here. How's me unknown friend on
the outside that useta send'em in?”
Miss Tony leaned her head against the wall and burst into a passion of
tears. I led her out, still sobbing, while the ex-Men's Surgical No. 7
sat up in his bed and cursed himself with wild, blasphemous, wondering
oaths.
Whatever surmise our young gangster may have entertained he kept to
himself. And, on the following morning, sterner matters claimed his
attention, for, while I was out, Orpheus, the Greek, dropped in, and
Pinney, once more the Rat, saw the hour of his revenge upon his supposed
assailant at hand. For the Greek, forgetful of caution, had seated
himself well within arm's length of the patient's couch. Beneath the
sheet the Rat clutched the needle-pointed compasses and waited. Should
he risk the jump and the stroke? No! He might miss. And he knew, from
the memory of the Battle of Our Square, the Greek's swiftness of eye and
hand. He must get him nearer. It was a time for strategy.
“Hey, sport. Got a smoke on you?”
Orpheus drew a box from his pocket, extracted a fattish cylinder, and
leaned forward to the other--not quite far enough. “Gimme a light, will
ye?” piped the Rat hoarsely, taking the cigarette in his left hand.
His right was working, wriggling slowly, slowly out from beneath the
sheet. Orpheus struck a match and leaned toward the bed. His heart was
almost over the lurking point. Slowly advancing the tip for the flame,
Pinney the Rat--now the Rattlesnake with death in his stroke--raised
his arm to blind his victim's vision against the blow. The movement
brought the flimsy-papered cylinder directly before his own eyes.
Familiar characters leaped out at him from the paper.
“Gawd!” croaked Pinney the Rat.
Though it had the sound of an oath, it was perhaps as near a prayer as
the gangster had ever uttered. His frame, tense as a spring, slumped
back among the covers. Orpheus dropped the match. “What is it?” he cried
with quick concern. “You suffer?”
“Where didje get that cig?”
“The cigarette? From Greece. I always smoke this kind.”
“Have ye--didje ever send 'em to a little lady in the S'maritan Hospital
fer a--a guy she was good to?”
“Yes.” The Greek's eyes widened. He began to shake through all his
frame. “My God! You knew her?”
“Did I _know_ her?” The Rat turned away and closed his eyes. His
right hand moved furtively under the bed clothing, away from his body.
Something fell, with a soft clink between the bed and the wall. The
Rat shuddered and sighed like a man freed from a great peril, “Go on.
Spiel,” he bade Orpheus.
“Spiel?” queried the trembling Greek. “Spill your talk. Tell me about
her.” Orpheus opened his heart and spoke. To that silent listener (for
Pinney the Rat uttered no word) he poured forth his love and longing and
his delusion, speaking of the girl as if she still lived. One word from
Pinney might have brought the climax, perhaps disastrously, for that
mind, desperately clinging to its delusion, might have collapsed under
too sudden a shock of reality. The Rat lay quiet, drinking it in and
revolving tangled problems. There were strange echoes in the Greek's
talk which he failed to understand.
As I came in I met, on the stairs, Orpheus going out. His face was
alight with a strange radiance.
“That Mr. Pinney knows her,” he said. “He knows my Toinette. She was
once good to him.” Then, in a confidential and triumphant whisper: “So
she lives in another heart beside my own.” It was as if his delusion,
his creed, his religion of love that was stronger than death, had been
blessed with convincing proof.
Wondering greatly, I returned to my patient. He was lost in thought and
greeted me only with an absent nod. Not until I started the tea for our
luncheon did he speak. “Say, boss, about that big wop.”
“Well?”
“He's a good guy, ain't he?”
“He is.”
“But--say. A little bit on the slant here?” He knuckled his head. “Huh?”
“Perhaps. What have you been saying to him?”
“Nothin'. I been listenin'. A great line of talk about the little lady.
But--say, boss. What's his kink?”
“Couldn't you tell?”
“Sometimes I thought I got him,” said the Rat reflectively. “And
sometimes I don't get him at all. Seems like he speaks of _her_ like she
was a dead person.”
“Well, she is.”
The Rat's jaw dropped. “Who is?”
“Orpheus's--the wop, as you call him--the woman he loved.”
“Are _you_ nutty, too? Wasn't she in here to see me only yesterday?”
Light broke in upon me in a great wave. “Merciful powers!” I shouted.
“_Your_ Miss Tony--his Toinette? It can't be. She died in a hospital the
day before May Day.”
“Ferget it! She moved out _cured_ a week before May Day. Don't I know?
Didn't I go humping up to Room 21 to see her, and find an old hen with
a face like a mustard plaster and a busted mainspring?” The number woke
remembrance within me. “What became of the woman in 21?”
“Croaked a few days later.”
Then the whole tragic comedy of errors was made plain to me. In turn I
made it clear to my lodger.
“Who's loony now?” he demanded triumphantly. “You chase out an' find the
wop an' let's square this.”
All very simple, but there was the matter of Orpheus's mental condition
to be considered. What would be the outcome of so violent a confirmation
of his delusion? Or was it a delusion, since it was a fact? Neither the
Rat nor I could lay any claim to be metaphysicians. Obviously this was
a case for the Little Red Doctor, together with such consultants as he
might care to call in.
At the summons of its official physician Our Square mustered its
intellectual forces in the Bonnie Lassie's Studio and sat in solemn
conclave upon the problem. First of all we sent for the Rat's Miss Tony,
and what the Bonnie Lassie said to her in the little back room and what
she said to the Bonnie Lassie is a secret of womankind. Not even Cyrus
the Gaunt was told. All that we heard of it was a cry and a sound of
happy sobbing and another sound of broken laughter; and then the little,
quick, brown, lovely face was turned to us from the steps outside, and
MacLachan observed that two Bonnie Lassies in one house was a strain
on human credulity as well as on human eyesight, and the Bonnie Lassie
returned to us with _her_ eyesight looking a trifle strained.
“Somebody at the Greek consulate,” said she, “told her that Mister
Phil-il-op--Mr. Orpheopoulos had gone back to Greece, and she's been
breaking her poor dear little heart over it. Men are _all_ imbeciles.”
“Thanking you in behalf of one and all,” returned Cyrus the Gaunt, “will
the volcano of wisdom whom I have the felicity of calling wife tell us
who is to break it to Orpheus?”
“Pinney the Rat.”
Several protests were promptly entered. “That roughneck?” said
MacLachan, whose urgency in the cause of abstinence had not been well
received. “Take thought of the effect on the poor, stray-witted Greek
lad.”
“I'm not thinking of the effect upon him at all,” said the Bonnie
Lassie. “I'm thinking of the effect upon Pinney.”
“Think aloud,” invited the Little Red Doctor. “What beneficial effect
will the reunion of two loving hearts have upon an incised stab wound in
a third party's abdomen?”
“Isn't this wound healed?”
“Practically.”
“Did you ever know any person to go crazy or get crazier from joy?”
“No.”
“There are your two patients disposed of, on the medical side. What I am
attempting is an experiment in psychology. You've all had your chance at
saving the Rat's soul. I'll have mine.”
She perched herself upon a modeling stool and expounded. The Rat, she
explained, had never had an opportunity to do anything but harm in his
life. Therefore he did harm with pride, because it was doing something.
“He's like all of us; he wants to work to some effect. Give him a chance
to make himself effective for good, and you may see a change.”