“No.”
“How long have you been in this country?”
“Only a few days.”
“You’ve never been in America before?”
Then Barrow communed with himself. “Now what odd shapes the notions of
romantic people take. Here’s a young, fellow who’s read in England about
cowboys and adventures on the plains. He comes here and buys a cowboy’s
suit. Thinks he can play himself on folks for a cowboy,
all inexperienced as he is. Now the minute he’s caught in this poor
little game, he’s ashamed of it and ready to retire from it. It is that
exchange that he has put up as an explanation. It’s rather thin,
too thin altogether. Well, he’s young, never been anywhere, knows
nothing about the world, sentimental, no doubt. Perhaps it was the
natural thing for him to do, but it was a most singular choice, curious
freak, altogether.”
Both men were busy with their thoughts for a time, then Tracy heaved a
sigh and said,
“Mr. Barrow, the case of that young fellow troubles me.”
“You mean Nat Brady?”
“Yes, Brady, or Baxter, or whatever it was. The old landlord called him
by several different names.”
“Oh, yes, he has been very liberal with names for Brady, since Brady fell
into arrears for his board. Well, that’s one of his sarcasms–the old
man thinks he’s great on sarcasm.”
“Well, what is Brady’s difficulty? What is Brady–who is he?”
“Brady is a tinner. He’s a young journeyman tinner who was getting along
all right till he fell sick and lost his job. He was very popular before
he lost his job; everybody in the house liked Brady. The old man was
rather especially fond of him, but you know that when a man loses his job
and loses his ability to support himself and to pay his way as he goes,
it makes a great difference in the way people look at him and feel about
him.”
“Is that so! Is it so?”
Barrow looked at Tracy in a puzzled way. “Why of course it’s so.
Wouldn’t you know that, naturally. Don’t you know that the wounded deer
is always attacked and killed by its companions and friends?”
Tracy said to himself, while a chilly and boding discomfort spread itself
through his system, “In a republic of deer and men where all are free and
equal, misfortune is a crime, and the prosperous gore the unfortunate to
death.” Then he said aloud, “Here in the boarding house, if one would
have friends and be popular instead of having the cold shoulder turned
upon him, he must be prosperous.”
“Yes,” Barrow said, “that is so. It’s their human nature. They do turn
against Brady, now that he’s unfortunate, and they don’t like him as well
as they did before; but it isn’t because of any lack in Brady–he’s just
as he was before, has the same nature and the same impulses, but they–
well, Brady is a thorn in their consciences, you see. They know they
ought to help him and they’re too stingy to do it, and they’re ashamed of
themselves for that, and they ought also to hate themselves on that
account, but instead of that they hate Brady because he makes them
ashamed of themselves. I say that’s human nature; that occurs
everywhere; this boarding house is merely the world in little, it’s the
case all over–they’re all alike. In prosperity we are popular;
popularity comes easy in that case, but when the other thing comes our
friends are pretty likely to turn against us.”
Tracy’s noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty
damp and clammy. He wondered if by any possibility he had made a mistake
in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the cross
of other people’s unprosperity. But he wouldn’t listen to that sort of
thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead resolutely
along the course he had mapped out for himself.
Extracts from his diary:
Have now spent several days in this singular hive. I don’t know quite
what to make out of these people. They have merits and virtues, but they
have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get along with.