The Brimming Cup

They had both lowered their voices instinctively, seeing Vincent emerge

from the house-door and saunter towards them immaculate in a gray suit.

Mr. Welles was not at all glad to see him at this moment. "Here, let me

have the mattock," he said, taking it out of Mrs. Crittenden's hands, "I

want to try it myself."

He felt an anticipatory impatience of Vincent's everlasting talk, to

which Mrs. Crittenden always had, of course, to give a polite attention;

and imitating as well as he could, the free, upward swing of his

neighbor, he began working off his impatience on the unresisting earth.

But he could not help hearing that, just as he expected, Vincent plunged

at once into his queer, abrupt talk. He always seemed to think he was

going right on with something that had been said before, but really, for

the most part, as far as Mr. Welles could see, what he said had nothing

to do with anything. Mrs. Crittenden must really be a very smart woman,

he reflected, to seem to know what he meant, and always to have an

answer ready.

Vincent, shaking his head, and looking hard at Mrs. Crittenden's rough

clothes and the handful of earth in her fingers, said with an air of

enforced patience with obvious unreasonableness, "You're on the wrong

track, you know. You're just all off. Of course with you it can't be

pose as it looks when other people do it. It must be simply

muddle-headed thinking."

He added, very seriously, "You infuriate me."

Mr. Welles, pecking feebly at the ground, the heavy mattock apparently

invested with a malicious life of its own, twisting perversely, heavily

lop-sided in his hands, thought that this did not sound like a polite

thing to say to a lady. And yet the way Vincent said it made it sound

like a compliment, somehow. No, not that; but as though it were awfully

important to him what Mrs. Crittenden did. Perhaps that counted as a

compliment.

He caught only a part of Mrs. Crittenden's answer, which she gave,

lightly laughing, as though she did not wish to admit that Vincent could

be so serious as he sounded. The only part he really heard was when she

ended, ". . . oh, if we are ever going to succeed in forcing order on the

natural disorder of the world, it's going to take everybody's shoulder

to the wheel. Women can't stay ornamental and leisurely, and elegant,

nor even always nice to look at."

Mr. Welles, amazed at the straining effort he needed to put forth to

manage that swing which Mrs. Crittenden did so easily, took less than

his usual small interest in the line of talk which Vincent was so fond

of springing on their neighbor. He heard him say, with his air of always

stating a foregone conclusion, something so admitted that it needed no

emphasis, "It's Haroldbellwrightism, pure and simple, to imagine that

anything you can ever do, that anybody can ever do, will help bring

about the kind of order you're talking about, order for everybody. The

only kind of order there ever will be, is what you get when you grab a

little of what you want out of the chaos, for your own self, while

there's still time, and hold on to it. That's the only way to get

anywhere for yourself. And as for doing something for other people, the

only satisfaction you can give anybody is in beauty."