"I don't believe I could, exactly," said Siward, amused. "With us, the social system, as an established and finished system, has too recently been evolved from outer chaos to be characteristic of anything except the crudity and energy of the chaos from which it emerged. The balance between wealth, intelligence, and breeding has not yet been established--not from lack of wealth or intelligence. The formula has not been announced, that is all."
"What is the formula?" insisted Plank.
"The formula is the receipt for a real society," replied Siward, laughing. "At present we have its uncombined ingredients in the raw--noisy wealth and flippant fashion, arrogant intelligence and dowdy breeding--all excellent materials, when filtered and fused in the retort; and many of our test tubes have already precipitated pure metal besides, and our national laboratory is turning out fine alloys. Some day we'll understand the formula, and we'll weld the entire mass; and that will be society, Mr. Plank."
"In the meanwhile," repeated Plank, unsmiling, "I want to be part of the best we have. I want to be part of the brightness of things. I mean, that I cannot be contented with an imitation."
"An imitation?"
"Of the best--of what you say is not yet society. I ask no more than your footing among the people of this city. I wish to be able to go where such men as you go; be permitted, asked, desired to be part of what you always have been part of. Is it a great deal I ask? Tell me, Mr. Siward--for I don't know--is it too much to expect?"
"I don't think it is a very high ambition," said Siward, smiling. "What you ask is not very much to ask of life, Mr. Plank."
"But is there any reason why I may not hope to go where I wish to go?"
"I think it depends upon yourself," said Siward, "upon your capacity for being, or for making people believe you to be exactly what they require. You ask me whether you may be able to go where you desire; and I answer you that there is no limit to any journey except the sprinting ability of the pilgrim."
Plank laughed a little, and his squared jaws relaxed; then, after a few moments' thought: "It is curious that what you cast away from you so easily, I am waiting for with all the patience I have in me. And yet it is always yours to pick up again whenever you wish; and I may never live to possess it."
He was so perfectly right that Siward said nothing; in fact, he could have no particular interest or sympathy for a man's quest of what he himself did not understand the lack of. Those born without a tag unmistakably ticketing them and their positions in the world were perforce ticketed. Siward took it for granted that a man belonged where he was to be met; and all he cared about was to find him civil, whether he happened to be a policeman or a master of fox-hounds.