"Oh!--Yes, naturally, but--"
"Well, I think this is the call plainly due me from my Reunion party
last year."
"No! Not at all! At the same time, it has been since that day that I
have had you on my mind so much."
He said this in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, but a certain
nervousness had broken through into his manner. He took a turn up and
down the room, and returned suddenly to his seat.
"Oh, have you had me on your mind?"
"Do you remember my saying that day," he began, resolutely, "that I was
not sure whether I had got the better of you or you had got the better
of me?"
"I remember very well."
"Well, I have come to tell you that--you have won."
He had plucked a pencil from the arsenal of them in his breast-pocket,
and with it was beating a noiseless tattoo on his open left palm. With
an effort he met her eyes.
"I say you were right," came from him nervously. "Don't you hear?"
"Was I? Won't you tell me just what you mean?"
"Don't you know?"
"Really I don't think I do. You see, when I used that expression that
day, I was speaking only of the editorship--"
"But I was speaking of a theory of life. After all, the two things seem
to have been bound together rather closely--just as you said."
He restored his pencil to his pocket, palpably pulled himself together,
and proceeded:
"Oh, my theory was wholly rational--far more rational than yours;
rationally it was perfect. It was a wholly logical recoil from the
idleness, the lack of purpose, the slipshod self-indulgence under many
names that I saw, and see, everywhere about me. I have work to
do--serious work of large importance--and it seemed to me my duty to
carry it through at all hazards. I need not add that it still seems so.
Yet it was a life's work, already well along, and there was no need for
me to pay an excessive price for mere speed. I elected to let everything
go but intellect; I felt that I must do so; and in consequence, by the
simplest sort of natural law, all the rest of me was shriveling up--had
shriveled up, you will say. Yet I knew very well that my intellect was
not the biggest part of me. I have always understood that.... Still, it
seems that I required you to rediscover it for me in terms of everyday
life...."
"No, no!" she interrupted, "I didn't do that. Most of it you did
yourself. The start, the first push--don't you know?--it came from
Fifi."
"Well," he said slowly, "what was Fifi but you again in miniature?"
"A great deal else," said Sharlee.
Her gaze fell. She sunk her chin upon her hand, and a silence followed,
while before the mind's eye of each rose a vision of Fifi, with her
wasted cheeks and great eyes.
"As I say, I sacrificed everything to reason," continued Queed,
obviously struggling against embarrassment, "and yet pure reason was
never my ideal. I have impressed you as a thoroughly selfish person--you
have told me that--and so far as my immediate environment is concerned,
I have been, and am. So it may surprise you to be told that a life of
service has been from the beginning my ambition and my star. Of course I
have always interpreted service in the broadest sense, in terms of the
world; that was why I deliberately excluded all purely personal
applications of it. Yet it is from a proper combination of reason
with--the sociologist's 'consciousness of kind'--fellow-feeling,
sympathy, if you prefer, that is derived a life of fullest efficiency. I
have always understood the truth of this formula as applied to peoples.
It seems that I--rather missed its force as to individuals. I--I am
ready to admit that an individual life can draw an added meaning--and
richness from a service, not of the future, but of the present--not of
the race but ... well, of the unfortunate on the doorstep. Do you
understand," he asked abruptly, "what I am trying to tell you?"
She assured him that she understood perfectly.
A slow painful color came into his face.
"Then you appreciate the nature and the size of the debt I owe you."
"Oh, no, no, no! If I have done anything at all to help you," said
Sharlee, considerably moved, "then I am very glad and proud. But as for
what you speak of ... no, no, people always do these things for
themselves. The help comes from within--"
"Oh, _don't_ talk like that!" broke from him. "You throw out the idea
somehow that I consider that I have undergone some remarkable conversion
and transformation. I haven't done anything of the sort. I am just the
same as I always was. Just the same.... Only now I am willing to admit,
as a scientific truth, that time given to things not in themselves
directly productive, can be made to pay a good dividend. If what I said
led you to think that I meant more than that, then I have, for once,
expressed myself badly. I tell you this," he went on hurriedly, "simply
because you once interested yourself in trying to convince me of the
truth of these views. Some of the things you said that night managed to
stick. They managed to stick. Oh, I give you that. I suppose you might
say that they gradually became like mottoes or texts--not scientific, of
course ... personal. Therefore, I thought it only fair to tell you that
while my cosmos is still mostly Ego--I suppose everybody's is in one way
or another--I have--made changes, so that I am no longer wholly out of
relation with life."
"I am glad you wanted to tell me," said Sharlee, "but I have known it
for--oh, the longest time."
"In a certain sense," he hurried on--"quite a different sense--I should
say that your talk--the only one of the kind I ever had--did for me the
sort of thing ... that most men's mothers do for them when they are
young."
She made no reply.
"Perhaps," he said, almost defiantly, "you don't like my saying that?"
"Oh, yes! I like it very much."
"And yet," he said, "I don't think of you as I fancy a man would think
of his mother, or even of his sister. It is rather extraordinary. It has
become clear to me that you have obtained a unique place in my
thought--in my regard. Well, good-night."
She looked up at him, without, however, quite meeting his eyes.
"Oh! Do you think you must go?"
"Well--yes. I have said everything that I came to say. Did you want me
to stay particularly?"
"Not if you feel that you shouldn't. You've been very good to give me a
whole evening, as it is."
"I'll tell you one more thing before I go."
He took another turn up and down the room, and halted frowning in front
of her.
"I am thinking of making an experiment in practical social work next
year. What would be your opinion of a free night-school for working
boys?"
Sharlee, greatly surprised by the question, said that the field was a
splendid one.
He went on at once: "Technical training, of course, would be the nominal
basis of it. I could throw in, also, boxing and physical culture. Buck
Klinker would be delighted to help there. By the way, you must know
Klinker: he has some first-rate ideas about what to do for the working
population. Needless to say, both the technical and physical training
would be only baits to draw attendance, though both could be made very
valuable. My main plan is along a new line. I want to teach what no
other school attempts--only one thing, but that to be hammered in so
that it can never be forgotten."
"What is that?"
"You might sum it all up as the doctrine of individual responsibility."
She echoed his term inquiringly, and he made a very large gesture.
"I want to see if I can teach boys that they are not individuals--not
unrelated atoms in a random universe. Teach them that they live in a
world of law--of evolution by law--that they are links, every one of
them, in a splendid chain that has been running since life began, and
will run on to the end of time. Knock into their heads that no chain is
stronger than its weakest link, and that _this means them_. Don't you
see what a powerful socializing force there is in the sense of personal
responsibility, if cultivated in the right direction? A boy may be
willing to take his chances on going to the bad--economically and
socially, as well as morally--if he thinks that it is only his own
personal concern. But he will hesitate when you once impress upon him
that, in doing so, he is blocking the whole magnificent procession. My
plan would be to develop these boys' social efficiency by stamping upon
them the knowledge that the very humblest of them holds a trusteeship of
cosmic importance."
"I understand.... How splendid--not to practice sociology on them, but
to teach it to them--"
"But could we get the boys?"
She felt that the unconsciousness with which he took her into
partnership was one of the finest compliments that had ever been paid
her.
"Oh, I think so! The Department has all sorts of connections, as well as
lots of data which would be useful in that way. How Mr. Dayne will
welcome you as an ally! And I, too. I think it is fine of you, Mr.
Queed, so generous and kind, to--"
"Not at all! Not in the least! I beg you," he interrupted, irritably,
"not to go on misunderstanding me. I propose this simply as an adjunct
to my own work. It is simply in the nature of a laboratory exercise. In
five years the experiment might enable me to check up some of my own
conclusions, and so prove very valuable to me."
"In the meantime the experiment will have done a great deal for a
certain number of poor boys--unfortunates on your doorstep...."
"That," he said shortly, "is as it may be. But--"
"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, "why are you honest in every way but one? Why
won't you admit that you have thought of this school because you would
like to do something to help in the life of this town?"
"Because I am not doing anything of the sort! Why will you harp on that
one string? Good heavens! Aren't you yourself the author of the
sentiment that a sociologist ought to have some first-hand knowledge of
the problems of society?"
Standing, he gazed down at her, frowning insistently, bent upon staring
her out of countenance; and she looked up at him with a Didymus smile
which slowly grew. Presently his eyes fell.
"I cannot undertake," he said, in his stiffest way, "to analyze all my
motives at all times for your satisfaction. They have nothing whatever
to do with the present matter. The sole point up for discussion is the
practical question of getting such a school started. Keep it in mind,
will you? Give some thought as to ways and means. Your experience with
the Department should be helpful to me in getting the plan launched."
"Certainly I will. If you don't object, I'll talk with Mr. Dayne about
it, too. He--"
"All right. I don't object. Well, good-night."
Sharlee rose and held out her hand. His expression, as he took and shook
it, suddenly changed.
"I suppose you think I have acquired the habit," he said, with an abrupt
recurrence of his embarrassment, "of coming to you for counsel and
assistance?"
"Well, why shouldn't you?" she answered seriously. "I have had the
opportunity and the time to learn some things--"
"You can't dismiss your kindness so easily as that."
"Oh, I don't think I have been particularly kind."
"Yes, you have. I admit that. You have."
He took the conversation with such painful seriousness that she was glad
to lighten it with a smile.
"If you persist in thinking so, you might feel like rewarding me by
coming to see me soon again."
"Yes, yes! I shall come to see you soon again. Certainly. Of course," he
added hastily, "it is desirable that I should talk with you more at
length about my school."
He was staring at her with a conflict of expressions in which, curiously
enough, pained bewilderment seemed uppermost. Sharlee laughed, not quite
at her ease.
"Do you know, I am still hoping that some day you will come to see me,
not to talk about anything definite--just to talk."
"As to that," he replied, "I cannot say. Good-night."
Forgetting that he had already shaken hands, he now went through with it
again. This time the ceremony had unexpected results. For now at the
first touch of her hand, a sensation closely resembling chain-lightning
sprang up his arm, and tingled violently down through all his person. It
was as if his arm had not merely fallen suddenly asleep, but was singing
uproariously in its slumbers.
"I'm so glad you came," said Sharlee.
He retired in a confusion which he was too untrained to hide. At the
door he wheeled abruptly, and cleared himself, with a white face, of
evasions that were torturing his conscience.
"I will not say that a probable benefit to the boys _never_ entered into
my thoughts about the school. Nor do I say that my next visit will be
_wholly_ to talk about definite things, as you put it. For part of the
time, I daresay I should like--just to talk."
Sharlee went upstairs, and stood for a long time gazing at herself in
the mirror. Vainly she tried to glean from it the answer to a most
interesting conundrum: Did Mr. Queed still think her very beautiful?