"How do you know that that isn't what I've felt too--from the beginning?" he demanded of her, almost with truculence.
"You say I sit on my money-bags and smile--you abuse me with doing no good with my money--how do you know I haven't been studying the subject all this while, and making my plans, and getting ready to act? You never did believe in me!"She sniffed at him. "I don't believe in you now, at all events," she said, bluntly.
He assumed the expression of a misunderstood man.
"Why, this very day"--he began, and again was aware that thoughts were coming up, ready-shaped to his tongue, which were quite strangers to his brain--"this whole day I've been going inch by inch over the very ground you mention; I've been on foot since morning, seeing all the corners and alleys of that whole district for myself, watching the people and the things they buy and the way they live--and thinking out my plans for doing something.
I don't claim any credit for it. It seems to me no more than what a man in my position ought to do. But I own that to come in, actually tired out from a tramp like that, and get blown-up by one's own sister for selfishness and heartlessness and miserliness and all the rest of it--Imust say, that's a bit rum."
Louisa did not wince under this reproach as she might have been expected to do, nor was there any perceptible amelioration in the heavy frown with which she continued to regard him.
But her words, uttered after some consideration, came in a tone of voice which revealed a desire to avoid offense.
"It won't matter to you, your getting blown-up by me, if you're really occupying your mind with that sort of thing.
You're too used to it for that."
He would have liked a less cautious acceptance of his assurances than this--but after all, one did not look to Louisa for enthusiasms. The depth of feeling she had disclosed on this subject of London's poor still astonished him, but principally now because of its unlikely source.
If she had been notoriously of an altruistic and free-handed disposition, he could have understood it.
But she had been always the hard, dry, unemotional one;by comparison with her, he felt himself to be a volatile and even sentimental person. If she had such views as these, it became clear to him that his own views were even much advanced.
"It's a tremendous subject," he said, with loose largeness of manner. "Only a man who works hard at it can realize how complicated it is. The only way is to start with the understanding that something is going to be done.
No matter how many difficulties there are in the way, SOMETHING'S GOING TO BE DONE! If a strong man starts out with that, why then he can fight his way through, and push the difficulties aside or bend them to suit his purpose, and accomplish something."Mrs. Dabney, listening to this, found nothing in it to quarrel with--yet somehow remained, if not skeptical, then passively unconvinced. "What are your plans?"she asked him.
"Oh, it's too soon to formulate anything," he told her, with prepared readiness. "It isn't a thing to rush into in a hurry, with half baked theories and limited information.
Great results, permanent results, are never obtained that way.""I hope it isn't any Peabody model-dwelling thing.""Oh, nothing like it in the least," he assured her, and made a mental note to find out what it was she had referred to.
"The Lord-Rowton houses are better, they say,"she went on, "but it seems to me that the real thing is that there shouldn't be all this immense number of people with only fourpence or fivepence in their pocket.
That's where the real mischief lies."
He nodded comprehendingly, but hesitated over further words.
Then something occurred to him. "Look here!" he said.
"If you're as keen about all this, are you game to give up this footling old shop, and devote your time to carrying out my plans, when I've licked 'em into shape?"She began shaking her head, but then something seemed also to occur to her. "It'll be time enough to settle that when we get to it, won't it?" she observed.
"No--you've got to promise me now," he told her.
"Well that I won't!" she answered, roundly.
"You'd see the whole--the whole scheme come to nothing, would you?"--he scolded at her--"rather than abate a jot of your confounded mulishness.""Aha!" she commented, with a certain alertness of perception shining through the stolidity of her mien.
"I knew you were humbugging! If you'd meant what you said, you wouldn't talk about its coming to nothing because Iwon't do this or that. I ought to have known better.
I'm always a goose when I believe what you tell me."A certain abstract justice in her reproach impressed him.
"No you're not, Lou," he replied, coaxingly. "I really mean it all--every word of it--and more. It only occurred to me that it would all go better, if you helped.
Can't you understand how I should feel that?"She seemed in a grudging way to accept anew his professions of sincerity, but she resisted all attempts to extract any promise. "I don't believe in crossing a bridge till I get to it," she declared, when, on the point of his departure, he last raised the question, and it had to be left at that.
He took with him some small books she had tied in a parcel, and told him to read. She had spoken so confidently of their illuminating value, that he found himself quite committed to their perusal--and almost to their endorsement.
He had thought during the day of running down to Newmarket, for the Cesarewitch was to be run on the morrow, and someone had told him that that was worth seeing.
By the time he reached his hotel, however, an entirely new project had possessed his mind. He packed his bag, and took the next train for home.
