Part 12 (1/2)
So Eveley looked upon Mr. Hiltze with great friendliness and sympathy, though she did glance up at the National Building as they went by, noticing the light in Nolan's window, wondering if he was working hard--and if the work necessitated the presence of the new, good-looking stenographer the firm had lately acquired.
”Now, my idea of Americanization,” Mr. Hiltze was saying when she finally tore her thoughts away from the National Building, ”is pure personal effort. You take a club, and mix a lot of nationalities, and types, and interests up together--they work upon one another, and work upon you, and you get nowhere. But take an individual. Get chummy with him. Be with him. Study him. Make him like you--interest him in your work, and your sport, and your life--and there you have an American pretty soon. Club work is not definite, not decisive. It is the personal touch that counts.
You could fritter away hours with a baseball club, and end at last just where you began. But you put the same time into definite personal contact with one individual foreigner--a girl, of course it would be in your case--it is young men in mine. You take a girl--a foreigner--win her confidence, then her interest, then her love--and you've made an American. That is the only Americanization that will stick. Suppose in a whole year you have won only one--still see what you have done. That one will go out among her friends, her relatives, she will marry and have children--and your Americanization is sown and re-sown, and goes on multiplying itself--yes, forever.”
”You are right,” said Eveley. ”And you find me a girl, and I will do it.”
”It is a bargain,” he said quickly, stopping in the street to grasp her hand. ”You are a little thoroughbred, aren't you? It may take time, but as I go about among the young men I work with--well, I am pretty sure to find a girl among them.”
CHAPTER X
THE ORIGINAL FIXER
”Oh, Nolan,” came Eveley's voice over the telephone, in its most wheedling accent, ”I am so sorry to spoil our little party for to-night, but it is absolutely necessary just this once. The most utterly absurd case of painful duty you ever heard of. And although you do not exactly approve of my campaign, you would simply have to agree with me this time.
And--”
”Well, since I can't help it, I can stand it,” he said patiently. ”What is it this time? Some silly woman finding it her duty to house and home all straying and wounded cats, or a young girl determined to devote her life to the salvation of blue-eyed plumbers, or--”
”It is a man,” she interrupted, rather acidly.
”Ah,” came in guarded accents.
There was silence for a tune.
”A man,” he repeated encouragingly, though not at all approvingly.
”Yes. A long time ago he very carelessly engaged himself to a giddy little b.u.t.terfly in Salt Lake City, and he doesn't want to marry her at all, but he feels it is his duty because they have been engaged for so many years. Isn't it pitiful?”
”But it is none of your business,” he began sternly.
”It is another engagement with the enemy in my campaign,” she insisted.
”Oh, just think of it--the insult to love, the profanation of the sacrament of marriage--the--the--the insult to womanhood--”
”You said insult before.”
”Yes, but just think of it. I feel it is my duty to save him.”
”Where did you come across him?”
”He is the new member of our firm. I told you about him long ago. The good-looking one. He has been with us six months, but I am just getting acquainted with him. We had luncheon together to-day, and he told me about it. He doesn't like social b.u.t.terflies at all, he likes clever, practical girls, with high ideals, and--”
”Like you, of course.”
”Yes, of course. I explained my theory to him, and he was perfectly enchanted with it. But he could not quite grasp it all in those few minutes--it is rather deep, you know--and so he is coming up to dinner to-night to make a thorough study of it. He feels it is his one last hope, and if it fails him, he is lost in the sea of a loveless marriage.”
”I do not object to your fis.h.i.+ng him out of the loveless sea,” Nolan said plaintively. ”But I do object to his eating the steak you promised me.”
”Think of the cause,” she begged. ”Think of the glory of winning another duty-bound soul to the boundless principles of freedom. Think of--”