“A man,” Pelleas continued, “ought to have something more important to will away than his house and his watch and his best bed. A man’s poor soul, now—unless he is an artist, which he probably is not—has no chance verbally to leave anybody anything.”
“It makes its will every day,” said I.
“Even so,” Pelleas contended, “it ought to die rich if it’s anything of a soul.”
And that is true enough.
“Suppose,” Pelleas suggested, “the telegrams were to contain something like this: ‘And from my spirit to yours I bequeath the hard-won knowledge that you must be true from the beginning. But if by any chance you have not been so, then you must be true from the moment that you know.’ Why not?”
Why not, indeed?
“I think that would be mine to give,” Pelleas said reflectively; “and what would yours be, Etarre?” he asked.
At that I fell in sudden abashment. What could I say? What would I will my poor life to mean to any one who chances to know that I have lived at all? O, I dare say I should have been able to formulate many a fine-sounding phrase about the passion for perfection, but confronted with the necessity I could think of nothing save a few straggling truths.
“I don’t know,” said I uncertainly; “I am sure of so little, save self-giving. I should like to bequeath some knowledge of the magic of self-giving. Now Nichola,” I hazarded, to evade the matter, “would no doubt say: ‘And from my soul to your soul this word about the universe: Helping is why.’”
“But you—you, Etarre,” Pelleas persisted; “what would the real You will to others, in this mortuary telegram?”