Part 36 (1/2)
School-teaching could only be a matter of necessity; her plea of curiosity must cover something deeper that she withheld.
”I know,” she continued, ”if I may say it, ever so much from books; but I have only the faintest notions of life. Now, isn't that terribly muggy? People--and their conditions and circ.u.mstances--can only be learned by going to the original sources.”
This was not illuminative. She had only added to his befuddlement and he bent forward, soliciting some more lucid statement of her position.
”I had hoped to go ahead and never have to explain, for I fear that in explaining I seem to be appraising myself too high; but you won't believe that of me, will you? If I took one of these college positions and proved efficient, and had good luck, I should keep on knowing all the rest of my life about the same sort of people, for the girls who go to college are from the more fortunate cla.s.ses. There are exceptions, but they are drawn largely from homes that have some cultivation, some sort of background. The experiences of teachers in such inst.i.tutions are likely to cramp. It's all right later on, but at first, it seems to me better to experiment in the wider circle. Now--” and she broke off with a light laugh, eager that he should understand.
”It's not, then, your own advantage you consult; the self-denial appeals to you; it's rather like--like a nun's vocation. You think the service is higher!”
”Oh, it would be if I could render service! Please don't think I feel that the world is waiting for me to set it right; I don't believe it's so wrong! All I mean to say is that I don't understand a lot of things, and that the knowledge I lack isn't something we can dig out of a library, but that we must go to life for it. There's a good deal to learn in a city like this that's still in the making. I might have gone to New York, but there are too many elements there; it's all too big for me. Here you can see nearly as many kinds of people, and you can get closer to them. You can see how they earn their living, and you can even follow them to church on Sunday and see what they get out of that!”
”I'm afraid,” he replied, after deliberating a moment, ”that you are going to make yourself uncomfortable; you are cutting out a programme of unhappiness.”
”Why shouldn't I make myself uncomfortable for a little while? I have never known anything but comfort.”
”But that's your blessing; no matter how much you want to do it you can't remove all the unhappiness in the world--not even by dividing with the less fortunate. I've never been able to follow that philosophy.”
”Maybe,” she said, ”you have never tried it!” She was seeking neither to convince him nor to accomplish his discomfiture and to this end was maintaining her share of the dialogue to the accompaniment of a smile of amity.
”Maybe I never have,” he replied slowly. ”I didn't have your advantage of seeing a place to begin.”
”But you have the advantage of every one; you have the thing that I can never hope to have, that I don't ask for: you have the power in your hands to do everything!”
His quick, direct glance expressed curiosity as to whether she were appealing to his vanity or implying a sincere belief in his power.
”Power is too large a word to apply to me, Miss Garrison. I have had a good deal of experience in politics, and in politics you can't do all you like.”
”I didn't question that: men of the finest intentions seem to fail, and they will probably go on failing. I know that from books; you know it of course from actual dealings with the men who find their way to responsible places, and who very often fail to accomplish the things we expect of them.”
”The aims of most of the reformers are futile from the beginning.
Legislatures can pa.s.s laws; they pa.s.s far too many; but they can't make ideal conditions out of those laws. I've seen it tried.”
”Yesterday, when you were able to make that convention do exactly what you wanted it to, without even being there to watch it, it must have been because of some ideal you were working for. You thought you were serving some good purpose; it wasn't just spite or to show your power.
It couldn't have been that!”
”I did it,” he said doggedly, as though to destroy with a single blunt thrust her tower of illusions--”I did it to smash a man named Thatcher.
There wasn't any ideal nonsense about it.”
He frowned, surprised and displeased that he had spoken so roughly. He rarely let go of himself in that fas.h.i.+on. He expected her to take advantage of his admission to point a moral; but she said instantly:--
”Then, you did it beautifully! There was a certain perfection about it; it was, oh, immensely funny!”
She laughed, tossing her head lightly, a laugh of real enjoyment, and he was surprised to find himself laughing with her. It seemed that the Thatcher incident was not only funny, but that its full humorous value had not until that moment been wholly realized by either of them.
She rose quickly. One of her gloves fell to the floor and he picked it up. The act of restoring it brought them close together, and their talk had, he felt, justified another searching glance into her face. She nodded her thanks, smiling again, and moved toward the door. He admired the tact which had caused her to close the discussion at precisely the safe moment. He was a master of the art of closing interviews, and she had placed the period at the end of the right sentence; it was where he would have placed it himself. She had laughed!--and the novelty of being laughed at was refres.h.i.+ng. He and Thatcher had laughed in secret at the confusion of their common enemies in old times; but most men feared him, and he had the reputation of being a mirthless person. He had rarely discussed politics with women; he had an idea that a woman's politics, when she had any, partook of the nature of her religion, and that it was something quite emotional, tending toward hysteria. He experienced a sense of guilt at the relief he found in Sylvia's laughter, remembering that scarcely half an hour earlier he had been at pains to justify himself before his wife for the very act which had struck this girl as funny. He had met Mrs. Ba.s.sett's accusations with evasion and dissimulation, and he had accomplished an escape that was not, in retrospect, wholly creditable. He hated scenes and tiresome debates as he hated people who cringed and sidled before him.
His manner of dealing with Thatcher had been born of a diabolical humor which he rarely exercised, but which afforded him a delicious satisfaction. It was the sort of revenge one reserved for a foe capable of appreciating its humor and malignity. The answer of laughter was one to which he was unused, and he was amazed to find that it had effected an understanding of some vague and intangible kind between him and Sylvia Garrison. She might not approve of him, he had no idea that she did; but she had struck a chord whose vibrations pleased and tantalized.
She was provocative and, to a degree, mystifying, and the abrupt termination of their talk seemed to leave the way open to other interviews. He thought of many things he might have said to her at the moment; but her period was not to be changed to comma or semicolon; she was satisfied with the punctuation and had, so to speak, run away with the pencil! She had tossed his political aims and strifes into the air with a bewildering dismissal, and he stood like a child whose toy balloon has slipped away, half-pleased at its flight, half-mourning its loss.