The Side Of The Angels Part 15

Thor hurried on. "Yes, I know how you feel. But to me it seems a duty."

"Seems a--_what_?"

The son felt obliged to be apologetic. "You see, father, so few men of the old American stock are going into politics nowadays--"

"Well, why should they?"

"The country has to be governed."

"Lots of fools to do that who are no good for anything else. Why should _you_ dirty your hands with it?"

"That isn't the way I look at it."

"It's the way you _will_ look at it when you know a little more about it than you evidently do now. Of course, with your money you'll have a right to fritter away your time in anything you please; but as your father I feel that I ought to give you a word of warning. You wouldn't be a Masterman if you didn't need it--on that score?"

"What score?"

"The score of being caught by every humbugging socialistic scheme--"

"I'm not a socialist, father."

"Well, what are you? I thought you were."

"I'm not now. I've pa.s.sed that phase."

"That's something to the good, at any rate."

"With politics in this country as they are--and so many alien peoples to be licked into shape--it's no use looking for the state to undertake anything progressive for another two hundred years."

"Ah! Want something more rapid-firing."

"Want something immediate."

"And you've found it?"

"Only in the conviction that whatever's to be done must be done by the individual. I've no theories any longer. I've finished with them all.

I'm driven back on the conclusion that if anything is to be accomplished in the way of social betterment it must be by the man-to-man process in one's own small sphere. If we could get that put into practice on a considerable scale we should do more than the state will be able to carry out for centuries to come."

"Put what into practice?"

"The principle that no man shall let a friend or a neighbor suffer without relief when he can relieve him."

"Thor, you should have been G.o.d."

"I don't know anything about G.o.d, father. But if I were to create a G.o.d, I should make that his first commandment."

Masterman squared himself in front of his son. "So that's behind this scheme of yours for taking over Fay's lease. You're trying to trick me into doing what you know I won't do of my own accord. What could _you_ do with the lease but make a present of it to old Fay? Politics be hanged! Come, now. Be frank with me."

Thor threw back his head. "I can't be wholly frank with you, father; but I'll be as frank as I can. I do want to help the poor old chap; you'd be sorry for him if you'd been seeing him as I have; but that was only one of my motives. Leaving politics out of the question, I have others. But I don't want to speak of them--yet. Probably I shall never need to speak of them at all."

Thor was willing that his father should say, "It's the girl!" but he contented himself with the curt statement: "I'm sorry, Thor; but you can't have the lease. I'm going to sell the place."

"But, father," the young man cried, "what's to become of Fay?"

"Isn't that what you asked me just now about Len Willoughby? Who do you think I am, Thor? Am I in this world to carry every lame dog on my back?"

"It isn't a question of every lame dog, but of an old tenant and an old friend."

"Toward whom I have what you're pleased to call a moral responsibility.

Is that it?"

"That's it, father--put mildly."

"Well, I don't admit your moral responsibility; and, what's more, I'm not going to bear it. Do you understand?"

Thor felt himself growing white, with the whiteness that attended one of his surging waves of wrath. He clenched his fists. He drew away. But he couldn't keep himself from saying, quietly, with a voice that shook because of his very effort to keep it firm: "All right, father. If you don't bear it, I will."

He was moving toward the door when Archie called after him, "Thor, for G.o.d's sake, don't be a _fool_!"

He answered from the threshold, over his shoulder, "It's no use asking me not to do as I've said, father, because I can't help it." He was in the hall when he added, "And if I could, I shouldn't try."

CHAPTER XI

By the time his anger had cooled down, Thor regretted the words with which he had left his father's presence, and continued to regret them.

They were braggart and useless. Whatever he might feel impelled to do, for either Leonard Willoughby or Jasper Fay, he could do better without announcing his intentions beforehand. He experienced a sense of guilt when, on the next day, and for many days afterward, his father showed by his manner that he had been wounded.

Lois Willoughby showed that she, too, had been wounded. The process of "easing the first one off," besides affording him side-lights on a woman's heart, involved him in an erratic course of blowing hot and cold that defeated his own ends. When he blew cold the chill was such that he blew hotter than ever to disperse it. He could see for himself that this seeming capriciousness made it difficult for Lois to preserve the equal tenor of her bearing, though she did her best.

He had kept away from her for a week or more, and would have continued to do so longer had he not been haunted by the look his imagination conjured up in her eyes. He knew its trouble, its bewilderment, its reflected heartache. "I'm a d.a.m.ned cad," he said to himself; and whenever he worked himself up to that point remorse couldn't send him quickly enough to pay her a visit of atonement.

He knew she was at home because he met one or two of the County Street ladies coming away from the house. With knowing looks they told him he should find her. They did not, however, tell him that she had another visitor, whose voice he recognized while depositing his hat and overcoat on one of the Regency chairs in the tapestried square hall.

"Oh, don't go yet," Lois was saying. "Here's Dr. Thor Masterman. He'll want to see you."

But Rosie insisted on taking her departure, making polite excuses for the length of her call.

She was deliciously pretty; he saw that at once on entering. Wearing the new winter suit for which she had pinched and saved, and a hat of the moment's fas.h.i.+on, she easily dazzled Thor, though Lois could perceive, in details of material, the "cheapness" that in American eyes is the most d.a.m.ning of all qualities. Rosie's face was bright with the flush of social triumph, for the County Street ladies had been kind to her, and she had had tea with all the ceremony of which she read in the accredited annals of good society. If she had not been wondering whether or not the County Street ladies knew her brother was in jail, she could have suppressed all other causes for anxiety and given herself freely to the hour's bliss.

But she would not be persuaded to remain, taking her leave with a full command of graceful niceties. Thor could hardly believe she was his fairy of the hothouse. She was a princess, a marvel. "Beats them all,"

he said, gleefully, to himself, referring to the ladies of County Street, and almost including Lois Willoughby.

He did not quite include her. He perceived that he couldn't do so when, after having bowed Rosie to the door, he returned to take his seat in the drawing-room. There was a distinction about Lois, he admitted to himself, that neither prettiness nor fine clothes nor graceful niceties could rival. He wondered if she wasn't even more distinguished since this new something had come into her life--was it joy or grief?--which he himself had brought there.

Her greeting to him was of precisely the same shade as all her greetings during the past two months. It was like something rehea.r.s.ed and executed to perfection. When she had given him his tea and poured another cup for herself, they talked of Rosie.