The Seventh Noon | Page 3

n't reported it yet. I don't know as I care to have my name coupled with it in these days of newspaper notoriety--even though it may be my one bid for fame."
Donaldson drew a package of Durham from his pocket and fumbled around until he found a loose paper. He deftly rolled a cigarette, his long fingers moving with the dexterity of a pianist. He smoked a moment in silence, exhaling the smoke thoughtfully with his eyes towards the ceiling. The dog, his neck outstretched on Donaldson's knee, blinked sleepily across the room at his master. The gas, blown about by drafts from the open window, threw grotesque dancing shadows upon the stained, worn boards of the floor. Finally Donaldson burst out, ever recurring to the one subject like a man anxious to defend himself,
"Barstow, I tell you that merely to cling to existence is not an act in itself either righteous or courageous. If we owe obligations to individuals we should pay them to the last cent. If we owe obligations to society, we should pay those, too,--just as we pay our poll tax. But life is a straight business proposition--pay in some form for what you get out of it. There are no individuals in my life, as I said. And what do I owe society? Society does not like what I offer--the best of me--and will not give me what I want--the best of it. Very well, to the devil with society. Our mutual obligations are cancelled."
Barstow, still busy with his work, shook his head.
"You come out wrong every time," he insisted. "You don't seem to get at the opportunities there are in just living."
The young man took a long breath.
"So?" he demanded between half closed teeth. "No?" he challenged with bitter intensity. "You are wrong; I know all that it is possible for life to mean! That's the trouble. Oh, I know clear to my parched soul! I was made to live, Barstow,--made to live life to its fullest! There isn't a bit of it I don't love,--love too well to be content much longer to play the galley slave in it. To live is to be free. I love the blue sky above until I ache to madness that I cannot live under it; I love the trees and grasses, the oceans, the forests and the denizens of the forests; I love men and women; I love the press of crowds, the clamor of men; I love silks and beautiful paintings and clean white linen and flowers; I love good food, good clothes, good wine, good music, good sermons, and good books. All--all it is within me to love and to desire mightily. How I want those things--not morbidly--but because I have five good senses and God knows how many more; because I was made to have those things!"
"Then why don't you keep after them?" demanded Barstow coldly.
"Because the price of them is so much of my soul and body that I 'd have nothing left with which to enjoy them afterwards. You can't get those things honestly in time to enjoy them, in one generation. You can't get them at all, unless you sell the best part of you as you did when you came to the Gordon Chemical Company. Oh Lord, Barstow, how came you to forget all the dreams we used to dream?"
Barstow turned quickly. There was the look upon his face as of a man who presses back a little. For a moment he appeared pained. But he answered steadily,
"I have other dreams now, saner dreams."
"Saner dreams? What are your saner dreams but less troublesome dreams,--lazier dreams? Dreams that fit into things as they are instead of demanding things as they should be? You sleep o' nights now; you sleep snugly, you tread safely about the cage they trapped you into."
"Then let me alone there. Don't--don't poke me up."
Donaldson snapped away his cigarette.
"No. Why should I? But I 'll have none of it. That damned Barnum, 'Society,' shall not catch me and trim my claws and file my teeth."
He laughed to himself, his lips drawn back a little, rubbing behind the pup's ears. The dog moved sleepily.
"Barstow," he continued more calmly, "this is n't a whine. I 'm not discouraged--it is n't that. I 'm not frightened, nor despondent, nor worried, understand. I know that things will come out all right by the time I 'm fifty, but I shall then be fifty. I 'd like a taste of the jungle now--a week or two of roaming free, of sprawling in the sunshine, of drinking at the living river, of rolling under the blue sky. I 'd like to slash around uncurbed outside the pale a little. I 'd like to do it while I 'm young and strong,--I 'd like