Donaldson with hands in his pockets
stood in front of Arsdale, who had slumped down into
a big leather chair, and admired his work. There
was much still to be done, but, comparing the man
before him with the thing he had brought in here some
thirty hours before, the improvement was most satisfactory.
Arsdale, with trimmed hair and clean, shaven face,
in a new outfit from shoes to collar, and sane even
if depressed, began to look a good deal of a man.
“How do you feel now?” inquired Donaldson.
Arsdale hitched forward and resting
his chin in his hands, elbows on knees, stared at
the floor.
“Like hell,” he answered.
Donaldson frowned.
“You deserve to, but you oughtn’t,”
he said.
“Oh, I deserve it all right. I deserve
it and more!”
“Yes, you do. But that does n’t
help any.”
Arsdale groaned.
“There is n’t any help.
I ’ve made a beastly mess out of my
life, out of myself.”
“I wish I could disagree, but I can’t,”
answered Donaldson.
He walked up and down a moment before
the fellow studying him. He was worried and
perplexed. The task before him was an unpleasant
one. He had to overcome a natural repugnance
to interference in the life of another. Under
ordinary circumstances he would have watched Arsdale
go to his doom with a feeling of nothing but indifference.
In his own passion for individual liberty he neither
demanded nor accepted sympathy for personal misfortunes
or mistakes, and in turn was loath to trespass either
upon the rights or duties of another, but his own life,
through the medium of the boy’s sister, was so
inextricably entangled with this other that now he
recognized the inevitability of such interference.
On his success or failure to arouse Arsdale largely
depended the happiness of the girl.
“No,” he reflected aloud,
“the question is n’t how much punishment
you deserve, for the pain you suffer personally does
n’t, unfortunately, remedy matters in the slightest.
It wouldn’t do you any good for me to kick
you about the room or I ’d do it. It would
n’t do you any good for me to turn you over
to the police or I ’d do that. You ’re
hard to get hold of because there’s so little
left of you.”
Arsdale made no reply. He remained motionless.
“But,” continued Donaldson
with emphasis, “that does n’t make it any
the less necessary. You ’ve got to
pull what is left together you ’ve
got to play the man with what remains. You can’t
get all the punishment you deserve and so you ’ve
got to deserve less. This, not for your own
sake, but for the sake of the girl, for
the sake of the girl you struck.”
“Don’t!”
Arsdale quailed. He glanced
up at Donaldson with a look that made the latter see
again Barstow’s dog Sandy as he had tottered
in his death throes. But the mere fact that
the man quivered back from this shameful thing was
encouraging. It was upon this alone that Donaldson
based his hope, upon this single drop of uncorrupted
Arsdale blood which still nourished some tiny spot
in the burned out brain.
“You must make such reparation
as you can,” continued Donaldson. “Your
life is n’t long enough to do it fully, but you
can accomplish something towards it if you start at
once.”
Arsdale shook his head.
“It’s all a beastly mess. It ’s
too late!”
Donaldson’s lips tightened.
“Well,” he asked, “if
you are n’t going to do what you can, what do
you propose?”
Thickly Arsdale answered,
“I know a way; I ’m going to pull out
for the sake of Elaine!”
Donaldson started as at the cut of
a whip-lash. Then he straightened to meet face
to face this new development. Somehow this contingency
had never occurred to him. Now for the moment
it disarmed him, for it brought him down, like a wounded
bird, to the level of Arsdale himself. As voiced
by the latter the act expressed the climax of simpering
cowardice. Donaldson, in the first shock of finding
himself included in the same indictment with the very
man for whom he had had so little mercy, felt the
same powerlessness that had paralyzed this other.
He was shorn of his strength. He blinked as
stupidly at Arsdale as Arsdale had blinked at him.
But even as he stood with loose lips
before the infirm features of the younger man, he
realized that Arsdale’s talk had been the chatter
of a child. He had used the phrase idly and,
although it was possible he might in just as idle
a mood commit the act itself, Donaldson was convinced
that it was not yet a fixed idea. With this came
the inspiration which gave him a fresh grip upon himself,
that revealed his great opportunity; he would make
Arsdale see all that he himself had learned in these
few days. So in reality he would be giving the
best of his life to another.
It was like oxygen to one struggling
for breath through congested lungs. He went
to the window and in great deep-chested inhalations
stood for a moment drinking in not only the fresh air
but with it the spirit of the eager, turbulent world
which was bathed in it, the world that he now saw
so clearly. The sun flashing from the neighboring
windows glinted its glad message of life; the rumbling
of the passing traffic roared it to him in a thundering
message, like that of shattered sea waves; the deep
cello-like undernote of the city itself sang it to
him. And the message of all the voices was just,
“It is good to live! It is good to be!”
He turned back, seeing a new man in
the chair before him. Here was a brother a
brother in a truer sense than a better man could have
been. Coming from different directions, along
different roads, through different temptations, they
had reached at last the crumbling edge of the same
dark chasm. They faced the same eternal problem.
That made them brothers. But Donaldson had
already seen, already learned; that made him the stronger
brother.
His face was alight, his body alert,
as he came to Arsdale’s side. The latter
looked up at him in surprise, feeling his presence
before he saw. Donaldson’s first words
stirred him,
“You can’t pull out,”
he said, “because you ’re out already.
You must pull in. Don’t you see, you
must pull back!”
“You don’t understand what I mean.”
“A great deal better than you
yourself do. And in the light of that understanding
I tell you that you can’t do it, that
it is n’t the way.”
“I ’m no good to any one,”
Arsdale complained dully. “I don’t
see why it would n’t be better for everyone
if I just quit.”
The word quit was a biting gnome to Donaldson.
“I know,” he answered.
“But it is n’t right all because
you don’t know and you can’t know what
you ’re quitting. You can’t just
look around you and see. You wouldn’t
just be quitting the girl who perhaps does n’t
need you, though you can’t even tell that; you
would n’t be quitting just your friends who
can get along without you though even that
is n’t sure; you ’d be quitting the others,
the unseen others, the unknown others, who are waiting
for you, perhaps a year from now, perhaps twenty years
from now, but in their need waiting for you.
They are waiting for you, understand, and for no one
else. Just you, no matter how weak you are,
or how poor you are, or how worthless you are, because
it is you and no one else who will fit into their lives
to help complete them.”
“I ’d bring nothing but
trouble. I ’ve been no good to any
one.”
“You can’t help being
good to some one. Queer it sounds, but I believe
that’s true. A man never lived, so mean
that he didn’t do good to some one.”
“You believe that?” demanded Arsdale.
“Yes. I know that.
I know that, Arsdale!” he answered, his lips
tremulous, a deep-seated light in his eyes. “I
know that you can’t possibly be so useless,
so cowardly, so utterly bad, but what you ’re
still more useless, still more of a coward, still worse
when you quit! Maybe we can’t see how maybe
at the time we can’t realize it, but it’s
so. Some one will get at the good in us if we
just fight along, no matter how we may cover it up.”
Arsdale straightened in his chair.
His shaking fingers clutched the chair arms.
But the next second his face clouded.
“Tell me what good I ’ve
done,” he demanded aggressively.
Donaldson smiled. He could n’t
very well tell the man the details of these last few
days and what they meant to him, but they proved his
claim. Arsdale had been, if nothing else, a connecting
link. It was he, even this self-indulgent weakling,
who had brought Donaldson to his own, who had led
Donaldson, through a series of self-revealing incidents,
to where he could stand quivering with the truth of
life, and give of his strength back to this man to
pay the debt. Yes, he knew what Arsdale had
accomplished, and before he was through the latter
should feel its effect.
“Man,” answered Donaldson
almost solemnly, “you have done your good even
you, in spite of yourself.”
“But not to Elaine where I should have done
most!”
Donaldson’s hand rested a moment on Arsdale’s
shoulder.
“Yes,” he said, “I
like to think you have been of some service even to
her.”
Arsdale rose to his feet.
“If I could think that if I could
look her in the eyes again!”
“Look her in the eyes!
Keep those eyes before you! Never get where
those eyes can’t follow you! And as you
look take my word for it that even there by a strange
chance you ’ve done your good.”
The man in Arsdale was at the top.
For a second he faced Donaldson as one man should
face another. Then he tottered and fell back
in his chair, covering his face with his hands.
“It’s too late,” he groaned, “God,
it’s too late!”
Donaldson seized him by the shoulder
and dragged him to his feet not in anger,
not in contempt, but in his naked eagerness to make
the man see. Half supporting him, he drew him
to the window. He threw it wide open.
“Too late!” he cried,
waving his hand at the brisk scene upon the street.
“Too late! It is n’t too late so
long as there’s a living world out there, so
long as there’s a man or a woman out there!
It isn’t too late because there’s work
for you to do, work for others that you ’ve
shirked. What is it? I don’t know,
but it’s there. Dig around until you find
it. Maybe to-day it was only to give a nickel
to the blind beggar at the corner, maybe it was only
to help an old lady across the street, maybe it was
to do some kindness to your sister. I don’t
know what it was, but I know it was something, and
went undone because of you.”
Arsdale, leaning against the window-sill,
strained towards Donaldson.
“That’s a queer idea,” he whispered
hoarsely.
“And another thing,” continued
Donaldson, “tangled up with those duties are
all the joys of the world. You ’ve
been looking for them somewhere else I
’ve been looking for them somewhere else but
it is n’t any use. They are right there
with your duties in the keeping of other
people, the unseen others. And they couldn’t
be bought, not with all the gold in the world.
They must be given if you get them at all.”
Arsdale was listening eagerly.
It was as much the spirit back of the words as the
words themselves that made him feel the stirring of
a new power which was a new hope.
“You!” he exclaimed.
“You make a man feel that you know! But
the hellish smoke-hunger you don’t
know anything of that.”
“It’s a part of the same
hellish selfishness which eats the vitals out of everything.
Get out of yourself, get into the lives of others,
and the smoke-hunger will quit you. You could
n’t go down where you ’ve been and
made a beast of yourself if you cared more about others
than yourself. The power that drove you down
there would n’t mean anything if a stronger
power held you back. The point is, Arsdale, the
point is, that all by himself a man is n’t worth
much. He does n’t count. Either he
dries up or he rots.”
“That’s true! That’s
true!” answered Arsdale. “And I ’ve
rotted. If only I had found you a year ago!”
“A year ago is dead and buried.
Let it alone. Think of the live things; think
of the Now! There ’s a big, strong world
all around you, pulsating with life; there ’s
sunshine in the morning and stars at night and
they are alive; there are flowers, and birds, and
grasses all alive; there are live men and
women, live questions, and there is your sister.
The world would be alive would be worth
while if you had only her. She ’s a world
in herself.”
“You are right. Man, how you know!”
“Can’t you see it yourself? Can’t
you feel the thrill of it all?”
“Yes,” answered Arsdale,
his eyes as alive as Donaldson’s, “I see.
I feel. And if I had your strength ”
“You have the strength!
You have everything you need in just your beating
heart and the days ahead of you. Buck up to it! Go
and meet life half-way. Throw yourself at life!
The trouble with you and me is that we stand still,
all curled up in ourselves as in a chrysalis.
You must give yourself room, you must break free
from your own selfish conceit, you must reach a point
where you don’t give a damn about yourself!
Do you hear where all the worrying you
do is about others? Then don’t worry.”
Arsdale was breathing through his
nostrils, his lips closed.
“It’s going to be a hard
fight,” he said. “It ’s going
to be a hard fight, but you make me feel as though
I could do it.”
“A hard fight,” cried
Donaldson. “Why, man, I ’d strip
myself down to you I ’d go back to
where you stand to-day for the fighting chance you
have.”
“You’d what?”
Donaldson caught his breath.
For a moment he was silent, staring at the eager
life upon the street. Then he turned again to
Arsdale.
“I ’d like to swap places
with you that’s all,” he said.