The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence. It was a
silence most grateful to Tracy’s feelings. He wouldn’t have broken it
for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his
spine. He kept saying to himself:
“How unanswerable it all is–how absolutely unanswerable! It is basely,
degradingly selfish to keep those ,unearned honors, and–and–oh, hang
it, nobody but a cur–‘
“What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!
This outburst was from Barrow. It flooded Tracy’s demoralized soul with
waters of refreshment. These were the darlingest words the poor
vacillating young apostate had ever heard–for they whitewashed his shame
for him, and that is a good service to have when you can’t get the best
of all verdicts, self-acquittal.
“Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy.”
Tracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all
ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now. Was it possible that a
reasonable argument could be made against that man’s desolating speech?
He was burning to hear Barrow try it. He knew how to start him, and keep
him going: it was to seem to combat his positions–a process effective
with most people.
“What is it you object to in Tompkins’s speech, Barrow?”
“Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man
to do what you wouldn’t do yourself.”
“Do you mean–”
“Why here’s what I mean; it’s very simple. Tompkins is a blacksmith; has
a family; works for wages; and hard, too–fooling around won’t furnish
the bread. Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in
England he is suddenly an earl–income, half a million dollars a year.
What would he do?”
“Well, I–I suppose he would have to decline to–”
“Man, he would grab it in a second!”
“Do you really think he would?”
“Think?–I don’t think anything about it, I know it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s not a fool.”
“So you think that if he were a fool, he–”
“No, I don’t. Fool or no fool, he would grab it. Anybody would.
Anybody that’s alive. And I’ve seen dead people that would get up and go
for it. I would myself.”
“This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort.”
“But I thought you were opposed to nobilities.”
“Transmissible ones, yes. But that’s nothing. I’m opposed to
millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”
“You’d take it?”
“I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its
burdens and responsibilities.”
Tracy thought a while, then said:
“I don’t know that I quite get the bearings of your position. You say
you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance
you would–”
“Take one? In a minute I would. And there isn’t a mechanic in that
entire club that wouldn’t. There isn’t a lawyer, doctor, editor, author,
tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn’t a human being
in the United States that wouldn’t jump at the chance!”
“Except me,” said Tracy softly.
“Except you!” Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so
choked him. And he couldn’t get any further than that form of words;
it seemed to dam his flow, utterly. He got up and came and glared upon
Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, “Except
you!” He walked around him–inspecting him from one point of view and
then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that
formula at him; “Except you!” Finally he slumped down into his chair
with the air of one who gives it up, and said:
“He’s straining his viscera and he’s breaking his heart trying to get
some low-down job that a good dog wouldn’t have, and yet wants to let on
that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn’t do it. Tracy,
don’t put this kind of a strain on me. Lately I’m not as strong as I
was.”
“Well, I wasn’t meaning to put–a strain on you, Barrow, I was only
meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way–”
“There–I wouldn’t give myself any worry about that, if I was you. And