The Seventh Noon Part 31

"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 pa.s.sing 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, "G.o.d, 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 h.e.l.lish smoke-hunger--you don't know anything of that."

"It's a part of the same h.e.l.lish 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!"