Windyridge

by W. Riley

"You are wonderfully sure of yourself," returned his opponent, "but let us be fair to our pretensions. If you are for the defence let me be for the prosecution. Does one serve his country better when he leaves the thick of the fray to study maps and tactics? If one has the opportunity to live is it sufficient to vegetate? For every opportunity of usefulness that Windyridge can offer London can provide a score, and Miss Holden's lot was cast in London. Is she living her life? That, I take it, is her problem."

"Yes," I said, "it is something like that."

"I accept your challenge," replied the Cynic, "and I agree that it is not what we do but what we are capable of doing that counts. But the most effective workman is not he who undertakes the largest variety of jobs, but he who puts himself into his work. You speak of vegetating, and you ask if Miss Holden is living her life. What is life? The man who rises early and retires late, and spends the intervening hours in one unceasing rush does not know the meaning of life; whereas the farmer who goes slowly and steadily along the track of the hours, or the student who devotes only a portion of his time to his books and spends the rest in recreation, or the business man who declines to sacrifice himself upon the altar of Mammon—these men live. And it is the man who lives who benefits his fellows. To visit the sick, to clothe the naked, to dole out sympathy and charity to the poor is noble work, but it is not necessarily the most effective way of helping them. The man who sits down to study the problem of prevention—the root causes of misery and injustice—and who discovers and publishes the remedy, is the truer and more valuable friend, though he never enter a slum or do volunteer work in a soup kitchen."

"And whilst we are diagnosing the conditions rather than the case the patient dies," said the vicar's wife. "We stop our sick visiting and our soup kitchens, and bid the people suffer and starve in patience whilst we retire into our studies to theorise over causes."

"To refer to your illustration of a moment ago, my dear madam, the battle need not stop because one or two men of insight retire to serve their country by studying maps and tactics. We need not chain up the Good Samaritan, but we shall be of far greater service to humanity if, instead of forming a league for the supply of oil and wine and plasters, we inaugurate measures to clear the road of robbers. 'This ought ye to do and not to leave the other undone.'"

"You admit, then, that some may find their opportunity of service in work of this baser sort?"

"No work is base which is done with a pure motive and done well. All I contend for is that when instinct bids any of us withdraw for a time, or even altogether, it is wise to trust our instincts. If Miss Holden had devoted herself to a life of pleasure and selfish isolation she might have been charged with cowardly flight from duty. We all know she has done nothing of the kind, and therefore I say her intuition was trustworthy, and she must not accuse herself of selfishness."

"I agree with all my heart," said the vicar's wife; "but the problems which she left unsolved are no nearer solution."

"How do you know that?" he asked. "The war may be nearer its end because your unheroic soldier sheathed his sword and put on his thinking-cap. That unsoldier-like action may have saved the lives of thousands and brought about an honourable peace. I do not know that Miss Holden has done much to solve the general problem, but I dare assert that she views it more clearly, and could face it more confidently than she could have done a year ago—that is to say, she has solved her own problem."

"There is some truth in that," I said. "Windyridge has given me clearer vision, and I am more optimistic on that account. Mr. Evans told me on the occasion of our first meeting that I should find human nature the same here as elsewhere, and that is so. But the type is larger in the village than it is in the town, and I can read and understand it better. Yet one thing town and country alike have proved to me, and that is what you, Mr. Evans, asserted so confidently—that selfishness is the root of sin. How are we to conquer that?"