Part 12 (1/2)
”What you said made me want to drink it,” she said to Howard. ”I was glad to hear your lecture on the weather. I had never thought of it before, but New York really has a fine climate. And only this afternoon I let that stupid Englishman--Plymouth--you've met him? No?--Well, at any rate, he was denouncing our climate and for the moment I forgot about London.”
”Frightful there, isn't it, after October and until May?”
”Yes, and the air is usually stale even in the late spring. When it's warm, it's sticky. And when it's cold, it's raw.”
”You are a New Yorker?”
”Yes,” said Miss Trevor faintly, and for an instant showing surprise at his ignorance. ”That is, I spend part of the winter here--like all New Yorkers.”
”All?”
”Oh, all except those who don't count, or rather, who merely count.”
”How do you mean?” Howard was taking advantage of her looking into her plate to smile with a suggestion of irony. She happened to glance up and so caught him.
”Oh,” she said, smiling with frank irony at him, ”I mean all those people--the ma.s.ses, I think they're called--the people who have to be fussed over and reformed and who keep shops and--and all that.”
”The people who work, you mean?”
”No, I mean the people you never meet about anywhere, the people who read the newspapers and come to the bas.e.m.e.nt door.”
”Oh, yes, I understand.” Howard was laughing. ”Well, that's one way of looking at life. Of course it's not my way.”
”What is your way?”
”Why, being one of those who count only in the census, I naturally take a view rather different from yours. Now I should say that _your_ people don't count. You see, I am most deeply interested in people who read newspapers.”
”Oh, you write for the papers, like Jim Segur? What do you write?”
”What they call editorials.”
”You are an editor?”
”Yes and no. I am one of the editors who does not edit but is edited.”
”It must be interesting,” said Miss Trevor, vaguely.
”More interesting than you imagine. But then all work is that. In fact work is the only permanently interesting thing in life. The rest produces dissatisfaction and regret.”
”Oh, I'm not so very dissatisfied. Yet I don't work.”
”Are you quite sure? Think how hard you work at being fitted for gowns, at going about to dinners and b.a.l.l.s and the like, at chasing foxes and anise seed bags and golf b.a.l.l.s.”
”But that is not work. It is amusing myself.”
”Yes, you think so. But you forget that you are doing it in order that all these people who don't count may read about it in the papers and so get a little harmless relaxation.”
”But we don't do it to get into the papers.”
”Probably not. Neither did this--what is it here in my plate, a lamb chop?--this lamb gambol about and keep itself in condition to form a course at Segur's dinner. But after all, wasn't that what it was really for? Then think how many people you support by your work.”