“No,” Pelleas said, “those are hardest. But not even those.”
O, I could not have loved him if he had talked to Hobart about resignation and rewards. Yet perhaps to some these are another language for victory—I do not know.
“Isn’t that better,” Pelleas demanded, “than taking morphine-for-beetles? Besides, after a while you learn what that Other Strength is. You learn Who it is. And how near that Someone is. But not always at first—not at first.”
“But alone ... one is so deucedly alone ...” said Hobart uncertainly.
“Of course,” Pelleas said, “we need an amazing lot of little human cheerings-up. The part of us with which we are acquainted has to be cheered up somewhat. Well, and isn’t it—isn’t it? Look at the charming things that are always happening! And these help one to believe right and left.”
I hardly heard Nichola come in with the tea. Hobart absently took the heavy tray from her and then, while she arranged it:—
“But in the last analysis,” he said, “you’ve got to dig your way out of things alone, haven’t you? Nobody can help you.”
“No!” Pelleas cried, “no, you have not. Not when you learn Who the strength is....”
But with that my attention wandered from Pelleas to Nichola. My Royal Sèvres always looks so surprised at Nichola’s brown hands upon it that I have long expected it to rebuke her for familiarity. And if it had done so at that moment I could have been no more amazed than to see Nichola, still bent above the tray, rest her hands on her knees and look sidewise and inquiringly at Hobart Eddy.
“What nonsense, anyway,” Pelleas was saying, “every one can help every one else no end. It’s not in the big lonely fights that we can help much—but it’s in the little human cheerings-up. When we get strength the next thing to do is to give it. Beetles or not—it’s merely a point of moral etiquette to do that!”