Tracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with his radical friends in England. It was as if some eavesdropping phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and retreat. Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on Tracy's conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that he was all conscience and one blister. This man's deep compassion for the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often uttered himself. The pity in this man's voice and words was the very twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.
The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence. It was a silence most grateful to Tracy's feelings. He wouldn't have broken it for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his spine. He kept saying to himself:
"How unanswerable it all is—how absolutely unanswerable! It is basely, degradingly selfish to keep those unearned honors, and—and—oh, hang it, nobody but a cur—"
"What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!"
This outburst was from Barrow. It flooded Tracy's demoralized soul with waters of refreshment. These were the darlingest words the poor vacillating young apostate had ever heard—for they whitewashed his shame for him, and that is a good service to have when you can't get the best of all verdicts, self-acquittal.
"Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy."
Tracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now. Was it possible that a reasonable argument could be made against that man's desolating speech? He was burning to hear Barrow try it. He knew how to start him, and keep him going: it was to seem to combat his positions—a process effective with most people.
"What is it you object to in Tompkins's speech, Barrow?"
"Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man to do what you wouldn't do yourself."
"Do you mean—"
"Why here's what I mean; it's very simple. Tompkins is a blacksmith; has a family; works for wages; and hard, too—fooling around won't furnish the bread. Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in England he is suddenly an earl—income, half a million dollars a year. What would he do?"
"Well, I—I suppose he would have to decline to—"
"Man, he would grab it in a second!"
"Do you really think he would?"
"Think?—I don't think anything about it, I know it."
"Why?"
"Because he's not a fool."
"So you think that if he were a fool, he—"
"No, I don't. Fool or no fool, he would grab it. Anybody would. Anybody that's alive. And I've seen dead people that would get up and go for it. I would myself."
"This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort."
"But I thought you were opposed to nobilities."
"Transmissible ones, yes. But that's nothing. I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
"You'd take it?"
"I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its burdens and responsibilities."
Tracy thought a while, then said:
"I don't know that I quite get the bearings of your position. You say you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance you would—"
"Take one? In a minute I would. And there isn't a mechanic in that entire club that wouldn't. There isn't a lawyer, doctor, editor, author, tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn't a human being in the United States that wouldn't jump at the chance!"
"Except me," said Tracy softly.
"Except you!" Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so choked him. And he couldn't get any further than that form of words; it seemed to dam his flow, utterly. He got up and came and glared upon Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, "Except you!" He walked around him—inspecting him from one point of view and then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that formula at him; "Except you!" Finally he slumped down into his chair with the air of one who gives it up, and said:
"He's straining his viscera and he's breaking his heart trying to get some low-down job that a good dog wouldn't have, and yet wants to let on that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn't do it. Tracy, don't put this kind of a strain on me. Lately I'm not as strong as I was."
"Well, I wasn't meaning to put—a strain on you, Barrow, I was only meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way—"
"There—I wouldn't give myself any worry about that, if I was you. And besides, I can settle what you would do. Are you any different from me?"
"Well—no."
"Are you any better than me?"
"O,—er—why, certainly not."
"Are you as good? Come!"
"Indeed, I—the fact is you take me so suddenly—"
"Suddenly? What is there sudden about it? It isn't a difficult question is it? Or doubtful? Just measure us on the only fair lines—the lines of merit—and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success, and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate—come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you to do it!"
Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for that last remark. Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up briskly and said:
"But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions—your principles, if they are principles. You are inconsistent. You are opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could. Am I to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an earl?"
"I certainly don't."
"And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for accepting an earldom if it was offered?"
"Indeed I wouldn't."
"Well, then, who would you blame?"
"The whole nation—any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter—and on absolutely free and equal terms."
"Come, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not differences?"
"Indeed I am not. I am entirely clear-headed about this thing. If I could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I should be a rascal to accept them. And if enough of the mass would join me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do otherwise than help in the attempt."