The Empty Sack Part 52

"Then it can do the other thing."

Bob's tone became significant.

"And you realize what-what the other thing might be?"

"You bet I do! You can't live in Murderers' Row without having _that_ rubbed into you."

They talked softly, in a corner of the visitors' room, because other little groups were scattered about, each centering round some sullen, swarthy man, wreathed in mystery and darkness.

"That's all right, old chap," Bob agreed; "but you see, don't you, that it's only a stand for an idea?"

"It's a stand for telling the truth, isn't it?"

"The truth-as you see it?"

"The truth as it is-as I'm willing to bank on it."

"Banking on it in a way that-that may call for a great deal of pluck."

"Well, I've got a great deal of pluck."

"Yes-if you've got enough. It's one thing to say so now, and another to prove it when the time comes."

In his suppressed vehemence Teddy grasped Bob's wrist, as the hands of both lay on the small table above which their heads came together.

"I've got the pluck for anything but to go before their court and say what you want me to say. I took the money because my father and mother, after slaving for society all their lives, had a right to it; I shot a man because they'd got me so jumpy with all the wrongs they'd done me that I didn't know what my hand was up to. If they won't let me have my kind of justice, they'll just have to dope me out their own, and I'll swallow it."

Another conversation, in the same spot, and with heads together in the same way, was gentler.

"I know pretty well what they're going to hand me out-and it'll be all right. What kind of life would I have now, even if they acquitted me?

What could I have had even if I'd never got into this sc.r.a.pe at all? I'm not cut out for big things. I'm just the same size as poor old dad, and I'd have gone the same way. Ma's got it straight-it's not good enough.

Think of rotting in an office all your life just to reach the gorgeous sum of forty-five a week, and when you've got it to be chucked into the h.e.l.l of the unemployed! Say, Bob, why can't everyone have enough in a world where there's plenty to go round?"

"I guess it's because we haven't the right kind of world."

"But why haven't we? We've been at it long enough."

"Perhaps not. That may be where the trouble lies. When life came on this planet, to begin with, it took millions of years to get it anywhere.

n.o.body knows how long it was before the thing that lived in the water could creep on the land; but it was time to be reckoned by ages. When you come to ages, the human race is young. It's made a life for itself which it doesn't know how to swing. In a few more ages it may learn; but it hasn't learned as yet."

Teddy reflected.

"So you've just got to take it as it is."

"That seems to be the number. We may kick because it isn't perfect, but we don't know how to make it perfect, and that's all there is to say."

"It's easier for your kind to say than for ours."

"It's not as easy as it seems for any kind. I don't see anyone, rich or poor, who hasn't to spend most of his energy in bucking up. The poor think it's easier for the rich, because they have the money; and the rich think it's easier for the poor, because they haven't the responsibilities. So there you are. I begin to think that making yourself strong-_hard_-tough in your inner fiber-is about the biggest a.s.set you can bring to life."

"Or death," Teddy said, softly.

"Or death," Bob agreed.

On another occasion, Teddy was in another mood.

"If I didn't get it now, I guess it would have come along later; so that it's just as well to have it over."

Bob's mind went back to Stenhouse's view of Teddy's character.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, just what I say. You can't see red like me without being a more dangerous cuss than you mean to be. I'd have got into trouble sometime, even if I hadn't done this." Before Bob could find a response Teddy went on: "I suppose you think that because I don't say anything about Flynn I haven't got him on my mind. Well, you're wrong."

"Oh, I didn't think that."

"But what _can_ I say? I think and think and think, and then begin thinking again. So that," he jerked out, "that's a reason, too."

"A reason for what, Teddy?"

He answered obliquely.

"I can't keep up that kind of thinking. I'll go crazy if I do. I'd rather be sent to where I can get another point of view. I don't care what kind of point of view it is, so long as it isn't this one. If I could come face to face with Flynn, I believe I could make him understand. Do you suppose there's any chance of that?"

It was inevitable that, in the long run, speculative questions should lead them farther still.

"What do you suppose G.o.d is?" Teddy said, unexpectedly, one day.

Bob smiled.

"Ask me something easier."

"But you must have some idea."

"I'm not sure that I have."

"Don't you believe in G.o.d? I should have thought that you'd be the kind of cuss who would."

"I don't know that you can call it believing. It's more like-like having a kind of instinct-helped out by a little thinking."

"Have I got the instinct?"

"Can't you tell that yourself?"

"If I told you you'd howl."

"No, I shouldn't. Go to it."