Read-Aloud Plays Part 15

Pay me back? Why, if he could, naturally; but that wasn't my idea, that was only incidental. My idea was to get him into the habit of hard work.

MARGARET

But he always _did_ work!

ROGER

Oh, he worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic--night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more.

That's how he always got into trouble: loafing in between.

MARGARET

Don't you remember how splendid he was the day he had just finished something? He seemed to have pa.s.sed out of himself into a s.h.i.+ning humility. It was said of Sh.e.l.ley: _"Sun-treader!"_... Don't you remember?

ROGER

Yes.... Oh hang it! Why couldn't he have been only that! Yes, I remember.

I hoped that six months or so at the office--but no. Anyhow, it's all over now.

MARGARET

What were you going to say?

ROGER

I suppose I might as well say it: I don't believe the office would have changed him, after all. That is, permanently. He'd have done his best for a while, and then--. No, nothing could help him.

MARGARET

Is that what you have made up your mind about?

ROGER

Oh, that. Yes, that's what started me thinking. Everybody has difficulties, troubles, and I believe in helping a fellow every time. Life piles up too high against one sometimes, but a little shove from the other side will move it away. I never believed in the devil take the hindmost, at all. But this was different.

MARGARET

Different, how? What do you mean?

ROGER

I mean that as long as a fellow's difficulties are outside him you can help him, because as soon as they are removed he's himself again; but when they are inside, part of the man himself, there's nothing you can do.

Nothing. You can save a person from the world, but not from himself.

That's where the devil comes in. I see it now. I believe in the devil.

MARGARET

Oh! But _Arthur_....

ROGER

I know you think I'm a brute for speaking of Arthur in connection with the devil, but it wasn't the old-fas.h.i.+oned devil I meant. I meant the devil of unfitness. Arthur wasn't _fit_. He had every chance. We can't get away from what life is. Life shoves people to the wall every day. I've had to fight hard myself. I admit things aren't fair all round, but Arthur had his chance, two or three chances, and he just--dropped out. He couldn't _survive_. And it seems to me that for those who loved him it may be a good thing after all that he didn't have to go on.

MARGARET

Roger! You shan't say that! You shan't!

ROGER

I don't want to, Margaret, but that's what life itself says. We can't get behind life. We can't beat evolution and the law of survival.

MARGARET

But his talent, his fine talent--and his exquisite nature!

ROGER

I know. But there it is. It's kinder in the long run to be cruel, if the truth is cruel. We've got to be true to things as they are.

MARGARET

But take things as they are! He wasn't vicious about--about women, he was like a child. Of course they got his money, but even so, they weren't all mere schemers. Some of them were very decent. Why, one of them--

ROGER

What the deuce do _you_ know about them? What about one of them?

MARGARET

She cried. She said she knew it wasn't right, that he couldn't marry her, but she did like him, and she had children of her own.... I'm sure she was very tender to him.

ROGER

Who told you? Where did you see her?

MARGARET

_There._

ROGER

There! In my own house?

MARGARET

Yes.

ROGER