James Wheaton's code of morals was very simple. Honesty he knew to be the best policy; he had learned this in his harsh youth, but he had no instinct for the subtler distinctions in matters of conduct. Behind glass and wire barricades in the bank where he had spent so many of his thirty-five years, he had known little real contact with men. He knew the pains and penalties of overdrafts; and life resolved itself into a formal kind of accountancy where the chief thing was to maintain credit balances. His transfer from a clerical to an official position had widened his horizon without giving him the charts with which to sail new seas. Life had never resolved itself into capital letters in his meditations; he never indulged in serious speculation about it. It was hardly even a game for the soul to play with him; if he had been capable of analyzing his own feelings about it he would have likened it to a mechanical novelty, whose printed instructions are confusingly obscure, but with a little fumbling you find the spring, and presto! the wheels turn and all is very simple.
He tore up the note with irritation and threw it into the waste paper basket. He called the Chinese servant, who explained that a boy had left it in the course of the morning and had said nothing about an answer.
The Bachelors' did not usually muster a full table at Sunday dinner. All Clarkson dined at noon on Sunday, and most of the bachelors were fortunate enough to be asked out. Wheaton was not frequently a diner out by reason of his more slender acquaintance; and to-day all were present, including Raridan, the most fickle of all in his attendance. It had pleased Wheaton to find that the others had been setting him apart more and more with Raridan for the daily discipline they dealt one another. They liked to poke fun at Raridan on the score of what they called his mad social whirl; there was no resentment about it; they were themselves of sterner stuff and had no patience with Raridan's frivolities; and they were within the fact when they assumed that, if they wished, they could go anywhere that he did. It touched Wheaton's vanity to find himself a joint target with Raridan for the arrows which the other bachelors fired at folly.
The table cheer opened to-day with a debate between Caldwell and Captain Wheelock as to the annual cost to Raridan of the carnation which he habitually wore in his coat. This, in the usual manner of their froth, was treated indirectly; the aim was to continue the cross-firing until the victim was goaded into a scornful rejoinder. Raridan usually evened matters before he finished with them; but he affected not to be listening to them now.
"I was reading an article in the Contemporary Review the other day that set me to thinking," he said casually to Wheaton. "It was an effort to answer the old question, 'Is stupidity a sin?' You may not recall that a learned Christian writer—I am not sure but that it was Saint Francis de Sales,—holds that stupidity is a sin."
The others had stopped, baffled in their debate over the carnation and were listening to Raridan. They never knew how much amusement he got out of them; they attributed great learning to him and were never sure when he began in this way whether he was speaking in an exalted spiritual mood and from fullness of knowledge, or was merely preparing a pitfall for them.
Warry continued:
"But while this dictum is very generally accepted among learned theologians, it has nevertheless led to many amusing discussions among men of deep learning and piety who have striven to define and analyze stupidity. It is, however, safe to accept as the consensus of their opinions these conclusions." He made his own salad dressing, and paused now with the oil cruet in his hand while he continued to address himself solely to Wheaton: "Primarily, stupidity is inevitable; in the second place it is an offense not only to Deity but to man; and thirdly, being incurable, as"—nodding first toward Wheelock and then toward Caldwell—"we have daily, even hourly testimony, man is helpless and cannot prevail against it."
"Now will you be good?" demanded Wheaton gleefully. He had an air of having connived at Raridan's fling at them.
"Oh, I don't think!" sneered Caldwell. "Don't you get gay! You're not in this."