“Tell me about your new work,” she suggested. It was as an elderly lady might ask a very recent freshman about his studies in the new college. Nevertheless, he told her.
Somehow he felt himself on the defensive. The champion of egoism was about to shift square about and become altruist; for he made no attempt to conceal that his interest in taking up the complicated affairs of big business was prompted not by the wish of making a large fortune larger, but solely because of the conviction growing upon him that his responsibilities to others overshadowed the desires of self.
“Suddenly my need of others and their need of me has been made clear to me,” he explained quietly. “I can no longer fare alone.... I used to be completely self-sustaining; I had no desires that I could not supply, for I was careful to keep my wants within my powers to satisfy them; I had need for no one, and therefore I never felt the call of co-operation. But the moment that a man finds his happiness gripped by another——” he hesitated, for it was a difficult matter to phrase—“the moment the needs of his spirit call to the spirit of another, then he sees how all are bound together, dependent one upon another.... I express the thought badly; I doubt if I can truly reason out the change that has come over me, but its results are clear—I go to my appointed task, a little late, to be sure, but at last with clear vision of what that appointed task is.... My caterpillar-views,” he laughed softly, “look very odd now; perhaps I have broken my predestined chrysalis ... or perhaps it is the American father speaking in me at last. At any rate, my wander-years are over. I have been an English aristocrat, I find, in spite of my poverty—they are the greatest of natural loafers; ‘barbarians,’ somebody called them, and rightly. The English are most excellent loafers, exquisites at it. The American in me, I feel, is going to be no loafer; I can sense him pulling at me and driving me at service.... And I am still consistent with myself,” he talked to fill in the empty spaces; she did not seem inclined to help much; “for I am still honest, and, you know, I never agreed to be more than that.”
The night was pleasantly mild. A misshapen moon rose slowly over the Lake and began to light up hill and valley. No hint of the freakish weather of the afternoon was suggested by this warm summer evening; the old earth hummed with its crickets and frogs, and rustled its leaves lazily as if pretending that it had never been unruly in its life. It was too fine to go indoors, the two young persons agreed.
Topics of conversation grew uncomfortably scarce until Richard remembered Phœbe. What had she meant by her attitude towards Walter? Surely she did not intend to marry the boy, yet if ever mortal man was encouraged by woman that chap was Walter. And if she did not intend seriously to live up to her implied promise, wouldn’t it be dangerous to lead him on?
Jerry sprang eagerly into the welcome topic. “I haven’t had such a shock since——” she could not think of a concrete comparison, at least none that she cared to mention in this company—“well, since ever so long. Isn’t it unbelievable?”
“I think it is splendid!” he spoke warmly. “If she cares for him in the right way—and I have faith that she does—it will be one of the best arrangements that could be made.”
“Cares for him?” repeated Jerry. “How could she!”
“It is just one more beautiful mystery,” he said quietly. “Why do you insist upon thinking your own view-point is the whole truth?”
There was not the slightest suggestion of offence in his question. He seemed to be addressing not Jerry in particular, but the whole human species.