"It will be accepted, if you will let it."
"Let it?" she laughed. "I shall be delighted." She saw him swayed a
little toward her. "It's a matter of business, isn't it?"
"Purely. Good-night."
When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Woodburn was saying to Mrs.
Leighton: "I do not contend that it is impossible, madam, but it is very
difficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like yours, to have the
feelings of a gentleman. How can a business man, whose prosperity, whose
earthly salvation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one else, be
delicate and chivalrous, or even honest? If we could have had time to
perfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and develop
what was good in it, we should have had a perfect system. But the virus
of commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the best of a
divine institution, and tempted us to make the worst. Now the curse is on
the whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, the stamp of
every success. What does not sell is a failure; and what sells succeeds."
"The hobby is oat, mah deah," said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside to
Alma.
"Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn?" Alma asked.
"Surely not, my dear young lady."
"But he's been saying that awtusts are just as greedy aboat money as
anybody," said his daughter.
"The law of commercialism is on everything in a commercial society," the
Colonel explained, softening the tone in which his convictions were
presented. "The final reward of art is money, and not the pleasure of
creating."
"Perhaps they would be willing to take it all oat in that if othah people
would let them pay their bills in the pleasure of creating," his daughter
teased.
"They are helpless, like all the rest," said her father, with the same
deference to her as to other women. "I do not blame them."
"Oh, mah goodness! Didn't you say, sir, that Mr. Beaton had bad manners?"
Alma relieved a confusion which he seemed to feel in reference to her.
"Bad manners? He has no manners! That is, when he's himself. He has
pretty good ones when he's somebody else."
Miss Woodburn began, "Oh, mah--" and then stopped herself. Alma's mother
looked at her with distressed question, but the girl seemed perfectly
cool and contented; and she gave her mind provisionally to a point
suggested by Colonel Woodburn's talk.
"Still, I can't believe it was right to hold people in slavery, to whip
them and sell them. It never did seem right to me," she added, in apology
for her extreme sentiments to the gentleness of her adversary.
"I quite agree with you, madam," said the Colonel. "Those were the abuses
of the institution. But if we had not been vitiated on the one hand and
threatened on the other by the spirit of commercialism from the
North--and from Europe, too--those abuses could have been eliminated, and
the institution developed in the direction of the mild patriarchalism of
the divine intention." The Colonel hitched his chair, which figured a
hobby careering upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. Leighton and the
girls approached their heads and began to whisper; they fell
deferentially silent when the Colonel paused in his argument, and went on
again when he went on.
At last they heard Mrs. Leighton saying, "And have you heard from the
publishers about your book yet?"
Then Miss Woodburn cut in, before her father could answer: "The coase of
commercialism is on that, too. They are trahing to fahnd oat whethah it
will pay."
"And they are right--quite right," said the Colonel. "There is no longer
any other criterion; and even a work that attacks the system must be
submitted to the tests of the system."
"The system won't accept destruction on any othah tomes," said Miss
Woodburn, demurely.