第144章 PART FIFTH(19)

"You inferred it from the quality of my piety?"March laughed,and then suddenly sobered."Yes,I saw him.It's going rather hard with him,I'm afraid.The amputation doesn't heal very well;the shock was very great,and he's old.It 'll take time.There's so much pain that they have to keep him under opiates,and I don't think he fully knew me.At any rate,I didn't get my piety from him to-day.""It's horrible!Horrible!"said Mrs.March."I can't get over it!

After losing his hand in the war,to lose his whole arm now in this way!

It does seem too cruel!Of course he oughtn't to have been there;we can say that.But you oughtn't to have been there,either,Basil.""Well,I wasn't exactly advising the police to go and club the railroad presidents.""Neither was poor Conrad Dryfoos."

"I don't deny it.All that was distinctly the chance of life and death.

That belonged to God;and no doubt it was law,though it seems chance.

But what I object to is this economic chance-world in which we live,and which we men seem to have created.It ought to be law as inflexible in human affairs as the order of day and night in the physical world that if a man will work he shall both rest and eat,and shall not be harassed with any question as to how his repose and his provision shall come.

Nothing less ideal than this satisfies the reason.But in our state of things no one is secure of this.No one is sure of finding work;no one is sure of not losing it.I may have my work taken away from me at any moment by the caprice,the mood,the indigestion of a man who has not the qualification for knowing whether I do it well,or ill.At my time of life--at every time of life--a man ought to feel that if he will keep on doing his duty he shall not suffer in himself or in those who are dear to him,except through natural causes.But no man can feel this as things are now;and so we go on,pushing and pulling,climbing and crawling,thrusting aside and trampling underfoot;lying,cheating,stealing;and then we get to the end,covered with blood and dirt and sin and shame,and look back over the way we've come to a palace of our own,or the poor-house,which is about the only possession we can claim in common with our brother-men,I don't think the retrospect can be pleasing.""I know,I know!"said his wife."I think of those things,too,Basil.

Life isn't what it seems when you look forward to it.But I think people would suffer less,and wouldn't have to work so hard,and could make all reasonable provision for the future,if they were not so greedy and so foolish.""Oh,without doubt!We can't put it all on the conditions;we must put some of the blame on character.But conditions make character;and people are greedy and foolish,and wish to have and to shine,because having and shining are held up to them by civilization as the chief good of life.We all know they are not the chief good,perhaps not good at all;but if some one ventures to say so,all the rest of us call him a fraud and a crank,and go moiling and toiling on to the palace or the poor-house.We can't help it.If one were less greedy or less foolish,some one else would have and would shine at his expense.We don't moil and toil to ourselves alone;the palace or the poor-house is not merely for ourselves,but for our children,whom we've brought up in the superstition that having and shining is the chief good.We dare not teach them otherwise,for fear they may falter in the fight when it comes their turn,and the children of others will crowd them out of the palace into the poor-house.If we felt sure that honest work shared by all would bring them honest food shared by all,some heroic few of us,who did not wish our children to rise above their fellows--though we could not bear to have them fall below--might trust them with the truth.But we have no such assurance,and so we go on trembling before Dryfooses and living in gimcrackeries.""Basil,Basil!I was always willing to live more simply than you.You know I was!""I know you always said so,my dear.But how many bell-ratchets and speaking-tubes would you be willing to have at the street door below?

I remember that when we were looking for a flat you rejected every building that had a bell-ratchet or a speaking-tube,and would have nothing to do with any that had more than an electric button;you wanted a hall-boy,with electric buttons all over him.I don't blame you.Ifind such things quite as necessary as you do.""And do you mean to say,Basil,"she asked,abandoning this unprofitable branch of the inquiry,"that you are really uneasy about your place?

that you are afraid Mr.Dryfoos may give up being an Angel,and Mr.

Fulkerson may play you false?"

"Play me false?Oh,it wouldn't be playing me false.It would be merely looking out for himself,if the new Angel had editorial tastes and wanted my place.It's what any one would do.""You wouldn't do it,Basil!"