Thus the germ of the desire for social service was sowed in him. It thrived pretty steadily during the winter that followed. He got himself introduced to the proper people and almost before he knew it he found himself volunteering in gymnasium work and pledged to give occasional evening talks on athletic subjects. The organization in which he worked was, he found to his satisfaction, like Madge's—Madge's, you observe, not Beatrice's—Working Girls' League, designed to help the very lowest classes of wage-earners. It had its clubrooms on the lower East Side and set itself up as a rival attraction to the saloon-haunting gangs of that interesting neighborhood, and since it dealt with the roughest section of the population it did not hesitate to employ means that other organizations would have hesitated to sanction. Beer and tobacco were sold on the place; billiards and card games were freely encouraged, though there was a rule against playing anything for money; but the chief interest of the place was athletic. Herein lay a problem, for it was found that in the hands of the descendants of Nihilists and pillars of the Mano Negra such respectable sports as boxing and wrestling were prone to degenerate into bloody duels.
It was in this matter that James first made himself felt. Happening into the building at an unaccustomed hour one afternoon, he became aware of strange noises issuing from an upper floor, and dashing up to the gymnasium discovered two brawny young Italians apparently trying to brain each other with Indian clubs. In a storm of righteous and unaffected wrath he rushed into the fray, separated the combatants and treated them to such a torrent of obloquy as they had never heard even among their own associates. Too astonished and fascinated to reply, they allowed themselves to be hustled from the room by James and literally kicked down the stairs and out of the building without so much as getting into their clothes, running several blocks in their gymnasium costumes. They aroused no particular attention, for at that time even the East Side was becoming accustomed to the sight of scantily clad youths using the streets as a cinder track, but it was more than an hour before, timid and peaceful, the offenders ventured to slip back into the clubhouse and their trousers.
From that day on James practically ran the Delancy Street Club. It never became a very large or famous organization, partly for the reason that it was purposely kept rather small, but it did much good in its own quiet way. It soon became the chief extra-business interest in James' life; it effectually drove the last vestiges of what he learned to refer to mentally as "that foolishness" from his head; his nights became full of sleep and empty of visions. And by the spring of the next year he found himself slipping into an intermittent but perfectly easy friendship with Madge Elliston, founded, naturally enough, on their common interest in social matters. He fell into the habit of running up to New Haven for week-ends, and into the habit of seeing Madge on those Saturday evenings. He liked talking to her about social problems; he soon caught up with her in the matter of knowledge and experience, and it was from a comfortingly similar viewpoint that they were able to discuss such matters as methods of handling evening classes, the moral effects of workmen's compensation and the great and growing problem of dance halls and all that it involves. They both found much to help and instruct them in each other's views; the mere dissimilarities of the state laws under which they worked furnished ample material for discussion, and their friendship was always tightened by the fact that they were, so to speak, marching abreast, running up against successive phases of their work at about the same time.
It need cause no surprise that such a relation should have remained practically static for a period of three years or more. Each of them had much to think of beside social work. James had eight or nine hours' work per day and all the absorbing interests of metropolitan life to keep him from spending overmuch time over it. And Madge, as we know, was already an extremely busy young woman. For a long time their common interest hardly amounted to more than an absorbing topic of conversation during their meetings. The stages by which it became the agent of something greater were quite imperceptible.
There was just one exterior fact that served as a landmark in the progress of his feeling. Some months before—shortly after Harry had so unexpectedly gone abroad—Madge had started a series of Saturday night dances for her working girls—that was at the time when the dance craze was spreading among all classes of society—and she asked James to help her give some exhibitions of new dances, to get the thing well launched. James rather hesitated in accepting this invitation.
"I'll do it, of course, if you really want me to," he said; "but I don't see why you want to drag me all the way up here for that. Why don't you ask somebody in town?"
"That's just the point," replied Madge; "I shall want you to give a little individual instruction to the girls, if you will, and I think it would be just as well if the person who did that had no chance of meeting the girls about town, in other capacities...! Beside, you happen to dance rather better than any one I know up here."
"Oh, nonsense!" said James. "I'll come," he added in the next breath.
It was from just about the time of those dances, James thought, that the personal element in his relation to Madge began to overbalance the intellectual. He had had his moments of being rather attracted by her, of course—the episode of Aunt Selina's dinner was a fair example—but such moments had been mere sparks, soulless little heralds of the flame that now began to burn brightly and warmly. Hitherto he had primarily been interested in her; now he began definitely to like her. And then, before long, something more.
It is interesting to compare the processes by which the two brothers fell in love with the same woman. Harry's experience might be likened to a blinding but illuminating flash of lightning; James' to the gentle but permeating effect of sunrise. Both were held at first by the purely intellectual side of Madge's character, but by different aspects of it. Harry was primarily attracted to her by her active wit; this had at first repelled James, made him somewhat afraid of her, until he discovered the more solid qualities of her mind. Both at last fell in love with her as a person, not as a member of the female sex nor as a thinking machine. Both passions were founded upon solid rock; neither could be uprooted without violent and far-reaching results.