第35章

Then Barrow communed with himself."Now what odd shapes the notions of romantic people take.Here's a young, fellow who's read in England about cowboys and adventures on the plains.He comes here and buys a cowboy's suit.Thinks he can play himself on folks for a cowboy, all inexperienced as he is.Now the minute he's caught in this poor little game, he's ashamed of it and ready to retire from it.It is that exchange that he has put up as an explanation.It's rather thin, too thin altogether.Well, he's young, never been anywhere, knows nothing about the world, sentimental, no doubt.Perhaps it was the natural thing for him to do, but it was a most singular choice, curious freak, altogether."Both men were busy with their thoughts for a time, then Tracy heaved a sigh and said, "Mr.Barrow, the case of that young fellow troubles me.""You mean Nat Brady?"

"Yes, Brady, or Baxter, or whatever it was.The old landlord called him by several different names.""Oh, yes, he has been very liberal with names for Brady, since Brady fell into arrears for his board.Well, that's one of his sarcasms--the old man thinks he's great on sarcasm.""Well, what is Brady's difficulty? What is Brady--who is he?""Brady is a tinner.He's a young journeyman tinner who was getting along all right till he fell sick and lost his job.He was very popular before he lost his job; everybody in the house liked Brady.The old man was rather especially fond of him, but you know that when a man loses his job and loses his ability to support himself and to pay his way as he goes, it makes a great difference in the way people look at him and feel about him.""Is that so! Is it so?"

Barrow looked at Tracy in a puzzled way."Why of course it's so.

Wouldn't you know that, naturally.Don't you know that the wounded deer is always attacked and killed by its companions and friends?"Tracy said to himself, while a chilly and boding discomfort spread itself through his system, "In a republic of deer and men where all are free and equal, misfortune is a crime, and the prosperous gore the unfortunate to death." Then he said aloud, "Here in the boarding house, if one would have friends and be popular instead of having the cold shoulder turned upon him, he must be prosperous.""Yes," Barrow said, "that is so.It's their human nature.They do turn against Brady, now that he's unfortunate, and they don't like him as well as they did before; but it isn't because of any lack in Brady--he's just as he was before, has the same nature and the same impulses, but they--well, Brady is a thorn in their consciences, you see.They know they ought to help him and they're too stingy to do it, and they're ashamed of themselves for that, and they ought also to hate themselves on that account, but instead of that they hate Brady because he makes them ashamed of themselves.I say that's human nature; that occurs everywhere; this boarding house is merely the world in little, it's the case all over--they're all alike.In prosperity we are popular;popularity comes easy in that case, but when the other thing comes our friends are pretty likely to turn against us."Tracy's noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty damp and clammy.He wondered if by any possibility he had made a mistake in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the cross of other people's unprosperity.But he wouldn't listen to that sort of thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead resolutely along the course he had mapped out for himself.

Extracts from his diary:

Have now spent several days in this singular hive.I don't know quite what to make out of these people.They have merits and virtues, but they have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get along with.

I can't enjoy them.The moment I appeared in a hat of the period, I noticed a change.The respect which had been paid me before, passed suddenly away, and the people became friendly--more than that--they became familiar, and I'm not used to familiarity, and can't take to it right off; I find that out.These people's familiarity amounts to impudence, sometimes.I suppose it's all right; no doubt I can get used to it, but it's not a satisfactory process at all.I have accomplished my dearest wish, I am a man among men, on an equal footing with Tom, Dick and Harry, and yet it isn't just exactly what I thought it was going to be.I--I miss home.Am obliged to say I am homesick.Another thing--and this is a confession--a reluctant one, but I will make it: The thing I miss most and most severely, is the respect, the deference, with which I was treated all my life in England, and which seems to be somehow necessary to me.I get along very well without the luxury and the wealth and the sort of society I've been accustomed to, but I do miss the respect and can't seem to get reconciled to the absence of it.There is respect, there is deference here, but it doesn't fall to my share.It is lavished on two men.One of them is a portly man of middle age who is a retired plumber.Everybody is pleased to have that man's notice.

He's full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar, and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any dog in the kennel barks.The other person is a policeman at the capitol-building.He represents the government.The deference paid to these two men is not so very far short of that which is paid to an earl in England, though the method of it differs.Not so much courtliness, but the deference is all there.

Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too.

It does rather look as if in a republic where all are free and equal, prosperity and position constitute rank.