“Certainly,” said Lee. Then he laughed at Mauney’s sober aspect. “Don’t be alarmed. My disaffection has not, at present, any political aspect, you know. My rebellion is not against the government. It’s just a plain, homely, disposition of grouch.”
“I see,” smiled Mauney. “Do you know, I like that.”
“And I knew you would, my son,” continued Lee, almost affectionately. “You’ve got inoculated, somehow, with the same virus. You’ve caught the disease somewhere. We belong to a great fraternity that doesn’t wear any silver badge. A person has to be born to it, to some degree, and then he has to get properly messed up, into the bargain.”
“How do you mean—messed up?”
“Oh, just that everything goes wrong. Plans smashed, ideas smashed, everything smashed,” laughed Lee with just a small trace of queer seriousness in his face. “Fate picks out a few of us to join this big fraternity. We always know each other when we meet without any masonic sign. Our watchword is discontent—unexplainable discontent. We are just misfits, my son,” he concluded, with a slap at Mauney’s knee.
Mauney could not help liking his new friend who, though evidently not much older than himself, called him “my son” so easily, and who, either consciously or otherwise, had succeeded in establishing a most unexpected bond between them. But his skillful, verbal harangue on the present topic was still puzzling to him, so that, after a moment, he put a question.
“Do you mean that the people who live at this boarding house all belong to a secret fraternity?”
“Yes and no!” said Lee. “It’s a fraternity, as I’ve said, secret enough from all who don’t belong. But it hasn’t any organized constitution and no particular purpose or aim.” As he paused, his black eyes softened with a visionary aspect. “It’s distributed all over the world. You don’t join it. You’re either in it or not. If you’re in it you find it impossible to get too much worked up over any enthusiasm. You prefer irony to barbarous optimism. You retire by choice, into the shadow of things. Do you get me?”
“I think so, yes,” nodded Mauney. “You all feel out of gear with things, all the time.”