The Dominant Dollar Part 8

"Unfortunately," commented Roberts, drily, "the att.i.tude 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."

"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 partic.i.p.ating 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 s.h.i.+fted easily; "we'll pa.s.s 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.

"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.

"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?"

"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 s.h.i.+fted 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 pa.s.sive sensation? We lazy folks--"

"Pardon me," interrupted Armstrong, "but I want to antic.i.p.ate 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.

"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 pa.s.sivity, not pleasure. And so on down the list. Superior, conscious power exercised defeats its own purpose. It is, as men say, unsportsmanlike. Held in reserve, pa.s.sive, completely under control, it makes of a human being a G.o.d. 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 overhead back 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 pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 circ.u.mstances 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'm tired of reading about life and hearing about life. I want to live it" (_Page 66_)]

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 pa.s.sive." 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 leave because its roots are sunk there deep. I want to be transplanted perforce out into the suns.h.i.+ne. 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 her seat 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.

"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.