35CHAPTER IIUNDERSTANDING
“What is it, Elice? You’re transparent as spring water. Out with it.”
“Out with what, Steve?”
“The secret information of vital importance that you’re holding back with an effort for a favorable moment to deliver. The present isn’t particularly dramatic, I’ll admit, but it’s the best circumstances permit.”
“You’re simply absurd, Steve; more so than usual.”
“No, merely ordinarily observant. I’ve known you some time, and the symptoms are infallible. When you get that absent, beyond-earth look in your eyes, and sit twisting around and around that mammoth diamond ring your uncle gave you on your sixteenth birthday—Come, I’m impatient from the toes up. Who is engaged now?”
“No one, so far as I know.”
“Married, then; don’t try to fool me.”
“Who told you, Steve Armstrong?”36
“No one.” The accompanying laugh was positively boyish. “I knew it was one or the other. Come, ’fess up. I’ll be good, honest.”
“You get younger every day, Steve,” grudgingly. “If you keep on going backward people will be taking me for your mother soon instead of—merely myself.”
“You shouldn’t go away then, Elice. I’m tickled sick and irresponsible almost to have you back. I’m not to blame. But we’re losing valuable time. I’m listening.”
“You swear that you don’t know already—that you aren’t merely making fun of me?”
“On my honor as full professor of chemistry. I haven’t even a suspicion.”
“I wonder if you are serious—somehow I never know. I’ll risk it anyway, and if you’re just leading me on I’ll never forgive you, Steve, never. It’s Margery.”
“Margery! The deuce it is—and Harry Randall, of course.”
“Certainly. Who’d you think it was: Professor Wilson with his eight children?”
“Now I call that unkind, Elice. After all the interest I’ve shown, too! Honest, though, I am struck all in a heap. I never dreamed of such a thing—now.”37
The result of the revelation was adequate and Miss Gleason relented.
“It was rather ‘sudden,’ as they say. No one knew of it except their own families.”
“Sudden! I should decidedly say so. I certainly thought they at least were to be depended upon, were standbys. When did it happen?”
“Last evening. Agnes Simpson just told me before you came.”
“She did, did she? I thought she looked wondrous mysterious when I met her down the street. It was justifiable, though, under the circumstances. I suppose they, the Randalls, have gone away somewhere?”
“No; that’s the funny part of it. They haven’t gone and aren’t going.”
“Not at all?”
“No. I’m quoting Agnes.”
“And why aren’t they going? Did Agnes explain that?”
“Steve, you’re horrid again.”
“No; merely curious this time. Agnes is something of an authority, you’ll admit.”
“Yes; I guess I’ll have to admit that. I didn’t ask her, though, Steve Armstrong. She suggested gratis—that Harry couldn’t afford38it. They went into debt to buy furnishings for the house as it was.”
“I don’t doubt it. History pays even less than chemistry, and the Lord knows—No; I don’t doubt it.”
“Knows what, Steve?”
“Who knows what?”
“The one you suggested.”
“Oh! I guess you caught the inference all right. No need to have put it in the abstract. We professors of the younger set are all in the same boat. We’d all have to go into debt under like circumstances.”
Elice Gleason meditated.
“But Harry’s been a full professor now a long time,” she commented; “two years longer than you.”
“And what difference does that make? He just lives on his salary.”
“Is that so? I never thought of it that way. I don’t think I ever considered the financial side before at all.”
Armstrong looked his approval.
“I dare say not, Elice; and I for one am mighty glad you didn’t. Life is cheap enough at best without adding to its cheapness unnecessarily.”39
The girl seemed scarcely to hear him, missing the argument entirely.
“I suppose, though,” she commented reflectively, “when one does think of it, that it’ll be rather hard on Margery to scrimp. She’s always had everything she wants and isn’t used to economizing.”
Armstrong sat a moment in thought. He gave his habitual shrug.
“She should have thought of that before the minister came,” he dismissed with finality. “It’s a trifle late now.”
“They’ve been putting it off for a long time, though,” justified the girl, “and probably she thought—one has to cease delaying some time.”
“Elice! Elice!” Armstrong laughed banteringly. “I believe you’ve got the June bug fluttering in your bonnet too. It’s contagious this time of year, isn’t it?”
“Shame on you, Steve!” The voice was dripping with reproach. “You always will be personal. You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Not a bit, honest now?”
“I say you ought to be ashamed to make fun of me that way.”
“But honest—”40
“Well,” reluctantly, “maybe I did just a bit. We too have been engaged quite a while.”
“Almost as long as the Randalls.”
“Yes.”
The quizzical look left Armstrong’s eyes, but he said nothing.
“And I suppose every woman wants a home of her own. It’s an instinct. I think I understand Margery.”
From out the porch of the Gleason cottage, shaded from the curious by its climbing rose-vines, the girl looked forth at the sputtering electric globe on the corner.
“And, besides, people get to talking and smiling and making it unpleasant for a girl after so long. It was so with Margery. I know, although she never told me. It bothered her.”
“You say after so long, Elice. How long?”
“I didn’t mean any particular length of time, Steve. There isn’t any rule by which you can measure gossip, so far as I know.”
“Approximately, then.”
“Oh, after a year, I suppose. It’s about then that there’s a comment or two sandwiched between the red and blue decks at bridge parties.”
“And we’ve been engaged now three years. Do they ever sandwich—”41
“How do I know. They don’t do it to one’s face.”
“But Margery—you say they made it uncomfortable for her.”
“Steve Armstrong,” the voice was intentionally severe, “what possesses you to-night? I can’t fancy what put that notion into your head.”
“You did yourself,” serenely, “just now. I never happened to stumble upon this particular continent before, and I’m intent on exploration and discovery. Honest, do they,” he made an all-inclusive gesture, “talk about you and me?”
“I tell you they don’t do those things to our faces.”
“You’re evading the question, girl Elice.”
“They’re not unpleasant intentionally.”
“Still evasion. Out with it. Let’s clear the air.”
The girl drummed on the arm of her chair, first with one hand, then with the other. At last she looked the questioner fairly in the face.
“Frankly, Steve, they do; and they have for a year. But I don’t mind. I didn’t intend to say anything to you about it.”
The look of the boy vanished from the other’s eyes.
“I—see,” he commented slowly.42
“People are horrid that way, even people otherwise nice,” amplified the girl. “As soon as any one they know has an—affair it immediately becomes public property. It’s almost as bad as a murder case. The whole thing is tried and settled out of court.”
The figure of the man settled down in his chair to the small of his back. His fingers locked over one knee.
“I suppose it was something of that kind Darley had in mind,” he said.
“Darley Roberts? When?”
“We were talking about—similar cases a few days ago.”
“You were?” There was just a shade of pique in the tone. “He must be a regular fount of wisdom. You’re always quoting him.”
“He is,” tranquilly. “By the way, with your permission, he’s going to call with me to-morrow night.”
“With my permission!” The girl laughed. “You’ve solicited, and received, that several times before—and without result. I’m almost beginning to doubt the gentleman’s existence.”
“You won’t much longer. I invited him and he accepted. He always does what he says he’ll do.”43
“Very well,” the voice was non-committal. “I’m always glad to meet any of your friends.”
Armstrong warmed, as he always did when speaking of Darley Roberts.
“You will be when you know him, I’m sure. That’s why I asked him to come. He’s an odd chap and slow to thaw, but there isn’t another lawyer in town, not even in the department, who’s got his brains.”
“They couldn’t have, very well, could they?” evenly.
“I’ll admit that was a trifle involved; but you know what I mean. He’s what in an undergraduate they call a grind. The kind biographers describe as ‘hewing forever to the line.’ If we live and retain reasonably good health we’ll hear of him some day.”
“And I repeat,” smilingly, “I’ve heard of him a great deal already.”
Armstrong said nothing, which indicated mild irritation.
“Excuse me, Steve,” said the girl, contritely. “I didn’t mean to be sarcastic; that just slipped out. He has acted sort of queer, though, considering he’s your room-mate and—I had that in mind. I am interested, however, really. Tell me about him.”44
Armstrong glanced at his companion; his gaze returned to his patent leather pumps, which he inspected with absent-minded concentration.
“I have told you before, I guess, about all I know. He’s a good deal of an enigma to me, even yet.”
“By the way, how did you happen to get acquainted with him, Steve?” From the manner spoken the question might or might not have been from genuine interest. “You’ve never told me that.”
“Oh, it just happened, I guess. We were in the collegiate department together at first.” He laughed shortly. “No, it didn’t just happen either after all. I went more than half way—I recognize that now.”
The girl said nothing.
“Looking back,” continued the man, “I see the reason, too. He fascinated me then, as he does yet. I’ve had comparatively an easy enough sort of life. I was brought up in town, where there was nothing particular for a boy to do, and when it came college time my father backed me completely. Darley was the opposite exactly, and he interested me. He was unsocial; somehow that interested me more. I used to wonder why he was so when I first knew him; bit by bit I gathered45his history and I wondered less. He’s had a rough-and-tumble time of it from a youngster up.” The voice halted suddenly, and the speaker looked at his companion equivocally. “Still interested, are you, Elice? I don’t want to be a bore.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you the story then as I’ve patched it together from time to time. I suppose he had parents once; but as they never figured, I infer they died when he was young. He came from the tall meadows out West straight to the University here. How he got the educational ambition I haven’t the remotest idea; somehow he got it and somehow he came. It must have been a rub to make it. He’s mentioned times of working on a farm, of chopping ties in Missouri, of heaving coal in a bituminous mine in Iowa, of—I don’t know what all. And still he was only a boy when I first saw him; a great, big, over-aged boy with a big chin and bigger hands. The peculiar part is that he wasn’t awkward and never has been. Even when he first showed up here green the boys never made a mark of him.” Again the short expressive laugh. “I think perhaps they were a bit afraid of him.”
“And he got right into the University?”
“Bless you, no; only tentatively. He had a46lot of back work to make up at the academy. That didn’t bother him apparently. He swallowed that and the regular course whole and cried for more.” Armstrong stretched lazily. His hands sought his pockets. “I guess that’s about all I know of the story,” he completed.
“All except after he was graduated.” It was interest genuine now.
“So you have begun to take notice at last,” commented Armstrong, smilingly. “I’m a betterraconteurthan I imagined. When it comes to being specific, though, after he graduated, I admit I can’t say much authoritatively. He’ll talk about anything, ordinarily, except himself. I know of a dozen cases from the papers, some of them big ones, that he’s been concerned in during the last few years; but he’s never mentioned them to me. He seemed to get in right from the start. How he managed to turn the trick I haven’t the slightest conception; he simply did. As I said before, he grows to be more of an enigma to me all the time.”
Apparently the girl lost interest in the party under discussion; at least she asked no more questions and, dilatory as usual when not definitely directed, Armstrong dropped the lead. For a minute they sat so, gazing out into the night,47silent. Under stimulus of a new thought, point blank, whimsical, came a change of subject.
“By the way,” commented Armstrong, “I’m considering quitting the University and going into business, Elice. What do you think of the idea?”
“What—I beg your pardon, Steve.”
The other repeated the question, all but soberly this time.
“Do you mean it, Steve, really, or are you just drawing me out?”
“Mean it!” Armstrong laughed. “Perhaps, and perhaps not. I don’t know. What do you think of the notion, anyway?”
The girl looked at him steadily, a sudden wrinkle between her eyes.
“You have something special in mind, I judge, Steve; something I don’t know about. What is it?”
“Special!” Armstrong laughed again, shortly this time. “Yes, I suppose so; though I didn’t know it when I first asked the question. Now I’m uncertain—you take the suggestion so seriously. Graham, the specialty man, made me an offer to-day to go in with him. Five thousand dollars a year to start with, and a prospect of more later on.”48
The wrinkle between the girl’s eyes smoothed. Her hands recrossed in her lap.
“You refused the offer, I judge,” she said.
“No; that is, I told him I’d take the matter under advisement.” Armstrong glanced at his companion swiftly; but she was not looking at him and he too stared out into the night. “I wanted to hear what you said about it first.”
“Steve!”
In the darkness the man’s face colored.
“Elice, aren’t you—ashamed a bit to doubt me?”
“No.” She was looking at him now smilingly. “I don’t doubt you. I know you.”
“You fancy I refused point blank, without waiting to tell you about it?”
For the third time the girl’s fingers crossed and interlocked. That was all.
“Elice!” The man moved over to her, paused so, looking down into her face. “Tell me, I’m dead in earnest. Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you absolutely, Steve; but that doesn’t prevent my knowing you.”
“And I tell you I took the matter under advisement.”
“He persuaded you to. You refused at first even to consider it.”49
Smilingly she returned his injured look fair in the eyes. Still smiling, she watched him as in silence he recrossed slowly to his place.
“Yes, you’re right—as usual,” he admitted at last. “You do know me. Apparently all my friends know me, better than I know myself.” He shrugged characteristically. “But you haven’t answered my question yet. What do you think of my accepting?”
“I try never to think—about the useless. You won’t accept.”
“You may be mistaken, may compel me to against my best judgment.”
“No, you won’t do that. I shan’t influence you in the least.”
For answer Armstrong stood up, his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders square. A minute perhaps he stood so. Once he cleared his throat. He sat down. An instant later he laughed—naturally, in genuine amusement.
“I surrender, Elice,” he said; “foot, horse, and officers. I can succeed in deceiving myself, easily; but when it comes to you—” He dropped his hands hopelessly. “On the square, though, and between ourselves, do you want me to quit the University and accept this—job? It’s a good lead, I realize.”50
“I’d rather not say either way,” slowly. “I repeat that it’s useless to disagree, when nothing would be gained.”
“Disagree! We never disagree. We never have in all the time we’ve known each other.”
“We’ve never discussed things where disagreement was probable.”
“Maybe that’s right. I never thought of it before.” A pause. “Has that harmony been premeditated on your part?”
“Unconsciously so, yes. It’s an instinct with me, I think, to avoid the useless.”
Armstrong stared across the dim light of the porch. Mentally he pinched himself.
“Well, I am dumb,” he commented, “and you are wonderful. Let’s break the rule, though, for once, and thresh this thing out. I want your opinion on this Graham matter, really. Tell me, please.”
“Don’t ask me,” repeated the girl. “You’d remember what I said—and it wouldn’t do any good. Let’s forget it.”
“Of course I’d remember. I want to remember,” pressed the man. “You think I ought to accept?”
A moment the girl hesitated; then she looked him fair.51
“Yes,” she said simply.
“And why? Tell me exactly why, please? You’re not afraid to tell me precisely what you think.”
“No, I’m not afraid; but I think you ought to realize it without my putting it in words.”
Armstrong looked genuine surprise.
“I suppose I ought—probably it’s childishly obvious, but—tell me, Elice.”
“To put it selfishly blunt, then, since you insist, I think you ought to for my sake. If an income you can depend upon means nothing in particular to you you might consider what it would mean to me.”
Unconsciously the lounging figure of the man in the chair straightened itself. The drawl left his voice.
“Since we have stumbled upon this subject,” he said quietly, “let’s get to the bottom of it. I think probably it will be better for both of us. Just what would it mean to you, that five thousand dollars a year?”
“Don’t you know, Steve, without my telling you?”
“Perhaps; but I’d rather you told me unmistakably.”
As before the girl hesitated, longer this time;52involuntarily she drew farther back until she was completely hidden in the shadow.
“What it means to me you can’t help knowing, but I’ll repeat it if you insist.” She drew a long breath. Her voice lowered. “First of all, it would mean home, a home of my own. You don’t know all that that means because you’re a man, and no man really does understand; but to a woman it’s the one thing supreme. You think I’ve got one now, have had all my life; but you don’t know. Father and I live here. We keep up appearances the best we can; we both have pride. He holds his position in the University; out of charity every one knows, although no one is cruel enough to tell him so. We manage to get along somehow and keep the roof tight; but it isn’t living, it isn’t home. It’s a perpetual struggle to make ends meet. His time of usefulness is past, as yours will be past when you’re his age; and it’s been past for years. I never admitted this to a human being before, but I’m telling it to you because it’s true. We’ve kept up this—fight for years, ever since I can remember, it seems to me. We’ve never had income enough to go around. I haven’t had a new dress in a year. I haven’t the heart to ask for it. Everything I have has been darned and patched53and turned until it won’t turn again. It isn’t poverty such as they have on the East Side, because it isn’t frank and open and aboveboard; but it’s genteel poverty in the best street of the town: University Row. It’s worse, Steve, because it’s unadmitted, eternally concealed, hopeless. It isn’t a physical hunger, but again a worse one: an artistic hunger. I’m a college graduate with letters on the end of my name when I choose to use them. I’ve mixed with people, seen the niceties of life that only means can give, couldn’t help seeing them; and they’re all beyond my reach, even the common ones. If I didn’t know anything different I shouldn’t feel the lack; but I do know. I’m not even to blame for knowing. It was inevitable, thrust upon me. I’m the hungry child outside the baker’s window. I can look and look—and that is all.”
The voice ceased. Frankly, unhesitatingly, the face came out of the shadow and remained there.
“I think you understand now what I mean, Steve, unmistakably. I suppose, too, you think me selfish and artificial and horrid, and I shan’t deny it. I am as I am and I want things. To pretend that I don’t would be to lie—and I54won’t lie to you whatever happens. I simply won’t. We both know what your place in the University means; I perhaps better than you, because I’ve seen my father’s experience. I don’t often get bitter, but I come very near it when I look back and think how my mother had to plan and scrimp. I feel like condemning the whole University to the bottomless pit. I suppose Margery Randall would resent it if I told her so, but honestly I pity her; the more so because I’ve always envied her in a way. She’s not used to denying herself anything, and there’s bound to be a reckoning. It’s inevitable, and then—I don’t like to think of how it will be then. It’s a tragedy, Steve, nothing more or less.”
Opposite the man sat motionless in his place looking at her. All trace of his usual lounging attitude was absent. He was not even smoking. For almost a full minute after she was done he sat; then he arose abruptly. This time he did not offer to come over to her.
“So this is the way you feel,” he commented at last, slowly. “It’s a new phase of you entirely, Elice, that I admit; but at least I’m glad to know it.” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “In plain English, you’d barter my position and ambition gladly for—things.55Frankly I didn’t think that of you, Elice, before. I imagined I knew you better, knew different.”
Responsive, instinctively the girl started to rise. Her breath came quick. Swiftly following came second thought and she sank back, back into the shadow. She said nothing.
A moment the man waited, expecting an answer, a denial, something; when nothing came he put on his hat with meaning deliberation.
“I repeat I’m very glad you told me, though, even if I do have to readjust things a bit.” He shrugged his shoulders. Despite the wounded egotism that was urging him on, it was the first real cloud that had arisen on the horizon of their engagement and he was acutely self-conscious. “Rest assured, however, that I shall consider your point of view before I say yes or no to Graham. Just now—” He halted, cleared his throat needlessly; abruptly, without completing the sentence or giving a backward glance, he started down the walk. “Good-night, Elice,” he said.
56CHAPTER IIIPLEASURE
“The trouble with you, Darley,” said Armstrong, “is that you took your course in the University in too big doses. You went on the principle that if a little grinding is good for a man a perpetual dig must be a great deal better.” He was in the best of humor this Sunday night, and smiled at the other genially. “A college course is a good deal like strychnine. Taken in small doses over a long period of time it is a great tonic. Swallowed all at once—you know what happens.”
From her place in a big easy chair Elice Gleason watched with interest the result of the badinage, but Roberts himself made no comment.
“You started in,” continued Armstrong, “to do six years’ work in four—and did it. You were a human grinding machine and you ground very fine, that I’ll admit; but in doing so you missed a lot that was more valuable, a lot that57while it doesn’t make credit figures in the sum total of university atmosphere.”
“For instance?” suggested the other, laconically.
“Well, for one thing, you never joined a fraternity. I know,” quickly, “that the frats are abused, as every good thing is abused, but fundamentally they’re good. When it comes to humanizing a man, rounding him out, which is the purpose of college life, they’re just as essential as a course in the sciences.”
“Unfortunately,” commented Roberts, drily, “the attitude of a student to the Greeks is a good deal like that of woman to man. She can’t marry until she is asked. I was likewise never sufficiently urged.”
“In that case,” laughed Armstrong, “I’ll have to acquit you on that count. There wasn’t, however, anything to prevent you warming up socially. No student has to be asked to do that. You and Elice, for instance, took your courses at the same time. Normally you would have met at social doings on a hundred occasions; and still you have never really done so until to-night, several years after you were graduated. You can’t square yourself on that score.”58
“No,” acquiesced Roberts with judicial slowness; “and still a man with one suit of clothes and that decidedly frayed at the seams labors under appreciable social disadvantages even in a democratic university.” He smiled, a tolerant, reminiscent smile. “I recall participating tentatively a bit early in my career, but the result was not entirely a success. My stock went below par with surprising rapidity; so I took it off the market.”
Armstrong glanced at the listening girl swiftly. Purposely he was trying to draw the other man out—and for her benefit. But whatever the girl was thinking her face was non-committal. He returned to the attack.
“All right,” he shifted easily; “we’ll pass charge number two likewise. One thing at least, however, you’ll admit you could have done. You might have taken up athletics. You were asked often enough, I know personally—nature did a lot for you in some things; and as for clothes—the fewer you have in athletics the better. You could have mixed there and warmed up to your heart’s content. Isn’t it so?”
This time Roberts laughed.
“I was engaged in athletics—all the time I was in the University,” he refuted.59
“The deuce you were! I never knew before—All right, I bit. How was that, Darley?”
“Simple enough, I’m sure,” drily. “I venture the proposition that I sawed more wood and stoked more furnaces during my course than any other student that ever matriculated. I had four on the string constantly.”
Armstrong sank back in his chair lazily.
“All right, Darley,” he accepted; “when you won’t be serious there’s no use trying to make you so. I surrender.”
“Serious!” Roberts looked at the younger man peculiarly. “Serious!” he echoed low. “That’s just where your diagnosis fails, my friend. It’s the explanation as well why I never did those ‘other things,’ as you call them, that students do and so humanize themselves.” Involuntarily his eyes went to the girl’s face, searched it with a glance. “It is, I suppose, the curse of my life: the fact that I can’t be different. I seem to be incapable of digressing, even if I want to.”
For answer Armstrong smiled his sceptical smile; but the girl did not notice. Instead, for the first time, she asked a question.
“And you still think to digress, to enjoy oneself, is not serious, Mr. Roberts?” she asked.60
“No, emphatically not. I’m human, I hope, even if I haven’t been humanized. I think enjoyment of life by the individual is its chief end. It’s nature.”
“But you said—”
“Pardon me,” quickly; “I couldn’t have made myself clear then. We’re each of us a law unto himself, Miss Gleason. What is pleasure to me, perhaps, is not pleasure to you. I said I was never asked to join a fraternity. It’s true. It’s equally true, though, that I wouldn’t have joined had I been asked. So with the social side. I wouldn’t have been a society man if I’d had a new dress suit annually and a valet to keep it pressed. I simply was not originally bent that way. Killing time, politely called recreation, merely fails to afford me pleasure. For that reason I avoid it. I claim no credit for so doing. It’s not consecration to duty at all, it’s pure selfishness. I’m as material as a steam engine. My pleasure comes from doing things; material things, practical things. For a given period of time my pleasure is in being able to point to a given object accomplished and say to myself: there, ‘Darley, old man, you started out to do it and you’ve done it.’ Is that clear, Miss Gleason?”61
“And if you don’t accomplish it, what then?” commented Armstrong.
“I shall at least have tried,” returned the other, carelessly. “I can call the attention of Saint Peter to that fact.”
Armstrong leaned back farther in his chair. His eyes sought the ceiling whimsically.
“That would naturally bring up the old problem,” he philosophized, “of whether it were better to attempt to do a thing and fail or not to make the attempt and retain one’s self-confidence.”
In her place the girl shifted restlessly, as though the digression annoyed her.
“To return to the starting point,” she said, “you think the greatest pleasure in life is in action, not in passive sensation? We lazy folks—”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Armstrong, “but I want to anticipate and enter an objection. Some of us aren’t lazy. We’re merely economical of our energies.”
“We lazy folks,” repeated the girl, evenly, “are sometimes inclined to think differently.”
This time Roberts hesitated, his face a blank as he studied the two before him. Just perceptibly he leaned forward. His big hands closed on the chair arms.62
“Are you really interested in hearing the definition of pleasure as I have formulated it for myself, Miss Gleason?” he asked; “I repeat, as I have formulated it for myself?”
“Yes.”
Again Roberts hesitated, his face inscrutable, his body motionless as one asleep.
“Pleasure,” he began low, “is power; conscious, unquestionable, superior power. In a small way we all experience it when we are hungry and have the ability to satisfy that hunger. The big animal feels it when the lesser animal is within its reach and the big animal knows it. The lover tastes it when he knows another returns that love completely, irresistibly—knows, I say. The student comprehends it when he is conscious of ability to solve the problem presented, to solve it unqualifiedly. The master of men realizes it when those in his command obey him implicitly; when his word is law. Pleasure is not necessarily an exercise of that power, in fact is not generally so; but it lies in the consciousness of ability to exercise it at will. For the big animal to annihilate the less would bring pain, not pleasure. Hunger satisfied is passivity, not pleasure. And so on down the list. Superior, conscious power exercised defeats its own purpose.63It is, as men say, unsportsmanlike. Held in reserve, passive, completely under control, it makes of a human being a god. This to me is pleasure, Miss Gleason.”
For a moment after he ceased speaking the room was quiet. Armstrong still sat staring at the ceiling; but the smile had left his lips. The girl was watching the visitor frankly, the tiny pucker, that meant concentration, between her eyebrows. Roberts himself broke the silence.
“You’ve heard my definition, Miss Gleason,” he laughed; “and no doubt think me a savage or something of that kind. I shan’t attempt to deny it if you do either. Just as a matter of curiosity and of interest, though, so long as the subject is up, I’d like to hear your own definition.” Of a sudden he remembered. “And yours, too, Armstrong,” he added.
The wrinkle vanished from the girl’s forehead. She smiled in turn. An observer might have said she sparred for time. “After you, Steve,” she accepted.
Armstrong shifted in his seat elaborately.
“This is indeed a bit sudden,” he remarked in whimsical commonplace, “however—” His hands went into his pockets automatically. His eyes followed a seam on the paper overhead64back and forth, before halting preparatorily.
“Pleasure with me,” he began, “is not practical, but very much the reverse.” His lips twitched humorously. “Neither has it reference to any superior power. I wouldn’t give one single round penny, providing I had it, to be able to whistle and have a thousand of my fellows dance to the tune—against their wishes. If I could whistle so sweetly or so enchantingly that they’d caper nimbly because they wanted to, because the contagion was irresistible, then—” The whimsical look passed as suddenly as it had come. “Pleasure with me, I think,” he continued soberly, “means appreciation by my fellow-men, in big things and in little things. I’m a kind of sunflower, and that is my sun. I’d like to be able to play marbles so well that the kids would stare in amazement; to fashion such entrancing mud pies that the little girls would want to eat them; to play ball so cleverly that the boys would always choose me first in making up sides; to dance so divinely that the girls would dream about it afterward; to tell so entertaining a story that men would let their cigars go dead while they listened, or under different circumstances the ladies would split their gloves applauding—if they happened to have them on; last of all, to write a novel so different and interesting that the reading public, and that means every one, would look on the cover after they’d turned the last sheet to see who the deuce did it; then trim the lamp afresh, loosen their collar comfortably and read it through again. This to me spells pleasure in capitals all the way through: plain appreciation, pure and simple, neither more nor less.”
“I’m tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I want to live it” (Page 66)
“I’m tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I want to live it” (Page 66)
65
Again silence followed, but a far different silence than before. Of that difference the three in the room were each acutely conscious; yet no one made comment. They merely waited, waited until, without preface, the girl completed the tacit agreement.
“And pleasure to me,” she said slowly, “means something different than it does to either of you. In a way, with you both pleasure is active. With me it’s passive.” She laughed shortly, almost nervously. “Maybe I’m lazy, I don’t know; but I’ve worked so long that I’m weary to death of commonplace and repression and denial and—dinginess. I want to be a free individual and have leisure and opportunity to feel things, not to do them. I’m selfish, hopelessly selfish, morbidly selfish; but I am as I am. I’m like the plant that’s raised in a cellar and can’t leave66because its roots are sunk there deep. I want to be transplanted perforce out into the sunshine. I’m hungry for it, hungry. I’ve caught glimpses of things beyond through my cellar window, but glimpses only. I repeat, I want to feel unhampered. I know pretty things and artistic things when I see them, and I want them: to wear, to live among, to look at. I want to travel, to hear real music, to feel real operas and know real plays—not imitations. I’m tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I want to live it, be a part of it—not a distant spectator. That is what pleasure means to me now; to escape the tyranny of repression and of pennies and be free—free!”
For the third time silence fell; a silence that lasted longer far than before, a silence which each was loth to break. While she was speaking, at first Armstrong had shifted about in his chair restlessly; at the last, his hands deep in his pockets, he had sat still. Once he had looked at her, peculiarly, the tolerant half smile still on his lips; but she had not returned the look, and bit by bit it vanished. That was all.
For a minute perhaps, until it became awkward at least, the silence lasted—to be broken finally by the girl herself. Slowly she arose from her67seat and, tall, slender, deliberately graceful, came from her place in the shadow into the light.
“I’m a bit ashamed to have brought out the family skeleton and aired it to-night,” she said evenly. Under drooping lids she looked from one face before her to the other swiftly. “I don’t know why I did it exactly. I’m a bit irresponsible, I guess, to-night. We are all so, I think, at times.” As deliberately as she did everything she took a seat. Her hands folded in her lap. “If you’ll forget it I’ll promise not to offend in the same way again.” She smiled and changed the subject abruptly. “I see by the papers,” she digressed, “that at last we’re to have a trolley line in town. The same authority informs us as well that you are the moving spirit, Mr. Roberts.”
“Yes.” It was the ordinary laconic, non-committal man of business who answered. A pause, then a significant amplification. “This is the age of the trolley. There are a hundred miles of suburban lines contracted for as well. No one will recognize this country as it is now ten years hence.”
“And this suburban line you speak of—I suppose you’re the spirit back of that too?” queried the girl.
“Yes.” This time there was no amplification.68
“So that was what you had in mind the other night when we were talking,—what you wouldn’t tell me,” commented Armstrong, a shade frostily.
“One thing, yes.” Roberts ignored the tone absolutely. “I was not at liberty to make the announcement at that time. The deal was just closed last night.”
Armstrong made no further comment, but his high spirits of the early evening had vanished not to return, and shortly thereafter Roberts arose to go. Promptly, seemingly intentionally so, Armstrong followed. In the vestibule, his hat in his hand, by design or chance he caught the visitor’s eye.
“Pardon me a moment,” he apologized, “I—forgot something.”
Perforce Roberts waited while the other man returned to the tiny library they had just vacated. The girl was standing within precisely as when they had left and, as Armstrong did not close the door, the visitor knew to a certainty that his presence as listener and spectator was intentional. It was all a premeditated scene, the climax of the evening.
“By the way, Elice,” said the actor, evenly, “I’ve been considering that Graham offer carefully69since I spoke to you about it the other night.” He did not look at her but stood twirling his hat judicially in his hand. “I tried to convince myself that it was for the best to accept; but I failed. I told him so to-day.”
There was a pause.
“Yes,” suggested the girl.
Another pause.
“I hope you’re not—disappointed, Elice.”
Still another pause, appreciable, though shorter than before.
“No; I’m not disappointed,” replied the girl then. At last Armstrong had glanced up and, without looking himself, the listener knew as well as though he had seen that the speaker was smiling steadily. “I’m not disappointed in the least, Steve.”