V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

"I don't mean that exactly, and I--I really don't mean to apply anything to your father, of course. I only mean--to--to speak quite impersonally--that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along it's going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all--isn't it rather hard ever to get happiness that way? Perhaps we might find that the real way to be happy was just in the other direction. That was all I meant.... Don't you think, really," the queer man hurried on, as if fearing an interruption, "it stands to reason it's not possible to be happy through money? It's so segregating, it seems to me--it must be that way. And isn't that really just what we all want it for?--to make a--a sort of little class to ourselves, to wall ourselves off from the rest--from what seems to be--life. It elevates in a sense, of course--but don't you think it often elevates to a--a sort of rocky little island?"

They seemed to be personal words, in despite of his exordium, and V. Vivian boggled a little over the last of them, doubtless perceiving that he was yielding fast to his old enemy (as indicated to O'Neill) and once more being too severe with these people, who after all had never had a chance....

Cally looked briefly away, up the sunny street. She raised a white-gloved hand and touched her gay hair, which showed that, though she hesitated, she was perfectly at ease. She had just been struck with that look suggestive of something like sadness upon the man's face, which she had noticed that night in the summer-house. She herself was inclined to connect this look with his religiosity, associating religion, as she did, exclusively with the sad things of life. Or did it come somehow from the contrast between his shabby exterior and that rather shining look of his, his hopefulness incurable?...

She replied, in her modulated and fashionable voice: "I don't agree with you at all. I'm afraid your ideas are too extraordinary"--she pronounced it extrord'n'ry, after Mr. Canning--"for me to follow. But before I go--"

"They do seem extraordinary, I know," broke from him, as if he could not bear to leave the subject--"but at least they're not original, you know.... I think that must be just the meaning of the parable of the rich young man.--Don't you, yourself?"

"The parable of the rich young man?"

She looked at him with dead blankness. Passers-by hopped over the coal-hole and glanced up at the pair standing engrossed upon the doorstep. Such as knew either of them concluded from their air that Mr. Beirne was worse again this morning.

V. Vivian's gaze faltered and fell.

"Just a--a little sort of story," he said, nervously--"you might call it a little sort of--allegory, illustrating--in a way--how money tends to--to cut a man off from his fellows.... This man, in the sort of--of story, was told to give away all he had, not so much to help the poor, so it seems to me, as to--"

"I see. And of course," she said, vexed anew--how did she seem always to be put at a disadvantage by this man, she, who could put down a Canning, alas, only too easily and well?--"of course that's just what you would do?"