"I thought not.You haven't lived long enough yet.Well, I'll finish, anyhow.""I'll remember," said Susan."I'll think about it until I do understand.""I hope so.The weather and the scenery make me feel like philosophizing.Finally, if you come through the second stage all right, you'll enter the third stage.There, you'll see that you were right at first when you thought only the strong could afford to do right.And you'll see that you were right in the second stage when you thought only the strong could afford to do wrong.For you'll have learned that only the strong can afford to act at all, and that they can do right or wrong as they please _because they are strong_.""Then you don't believe in right, at all!" exclaimed the girl, much depressed, but whether for the right or for her friend she could not have told.
"Now, who said that?" Demanded he, amused."What _did_ I say?
Why--if you want to do right, be strong or you'll be crushed;and if you want to do wrong, take care again to be strong--or you'll be crushed.My moral is, be strong! In this world the good weaklings and the bad weaklings had better lie low, hide in the tall grass.The strong inherit the earth."They were silent a long time, she thinking, he observing her with sad tenderness.At last he said:
"You are a nice sweet girl--well brought up.But that means badly brought up for the life you've got to lead--the life you've got to learn to lead.""I'm beginning to see that," said the girl.Her gravity made him feel like laughing, and brought the tears to his eyes.The laughter he suppressed.
"You're going to fight your way up to what's called the triumphant class--the people on top--they have all the success, all the money, all the good times.Well, the things you've been taught--at church--in the Sunday School--in the nice storybooks you've read--those things are all for the triumphant class, or for people working meekly along in `the station to which God has appointed them' and handing over their earnings to their betters.But those nice moral things you believe in--they don't apply to people like you--fighting their way up from the meek working class to the triumphant class.You won't believe me now--won't understand thoroughly.But soon you'll see.Once you've climbed up among the successful people you can afford to indulge--in moderation--in practicing the good old moralities.
Any dirty work you may need done you can hire done and pretend not to know about it.But while you're climbing, no Golden Rule and no turning of the cheek.Tooth and claw then--not sheathed but naked--not by proxy but in your own person.""But you're not like that," said the girl.
"The more fool I," repeated he.
She was surprised that she understood so much of what he had said--childlike wonder at her wise old heart, made wise almost in a night--a wedding night.When Burlingham lapsed into silence, laughing at himself for having talked so far over the "kiddie's" head, she sat puzzling out what he had said.The world seemed horribly vast and forbidding, and the sky, so blue and bright, seemed far, far away.She sighed profoundly."I am so weak," she murmured."I am so ignorant."Burlingham nodded and winked."Yes, but you'll grow," said be.
"I back you to win."
The color poured into her cheeks, and she burst into tears.
Burlingham thought he understood; for once his shrewdness went far astray.Excusably, since he could not know that he had used the same phrase that had closed Spenser's letter to her.
Late in the afternoon, when the heat had abated somewhat and they were floating pleasantly along with the washing gently a-flutter from lines on the roof of the auditorium, Burlingham put Eshwell at the rudder and with Pat and the violin rehearsed her."The main thing, the only thing to worry about," explained he, "is beginning right." She was standing in the center of the stage, he on the floor of the auditorium beside the seated orchestra."That means," he went on, "you've simply got to learn to come in right.We'll practice that for a while."She went to the wings--where there was barely space for her to conceal herself by squeezing tightly against the wall.At the signal from him she walked out.As she had the utmost confidence in his kindness, and as she was always too deeply interested in what she and others were doing to be uncomfortably self-conscious, she was not embarrassed, and thought she made the crossing and took her stand very well.He nodded approvingly.
"But," said he, "there's a difference between a stage walk and walking anywhere else--or standing.Nothing is natural on the stage.
If it were it would look unnatural, because the stage itself is artificial and whatever is there must be in harmony with it.So everything must be done unnaturally in such a way that it _seems_natural.Just as a picture boat looks natural though it's painted on a flat surface.Now I'll illustrate."He gave her his hand to help her jump down; then he climbed to the stage.He went to the wings and walked out.As he came he called her attention to how he poised his body, how he advanced so that there would be from the auditorium no unsightly view of crossing legs, how he arranged hands, arms, shoulders, legs, head, feet for an attitude of complete rest.He repeated his illustration again and again, Susan watching and listening with open-eyed wonder and admiration.She had never dreamed that so simple a matter could be so complex.When he got her up beside him and went through it with her, she soon became as used to the new motions as a beginner at the piano to stretching an octave.
But it was only after more than an hour's practice that she moved him to say:
"That'll do for a beginning.Now, we'll sing."She tried "Suwanee River" first and went through it fairly well, singing to him as he stood back at the rear door.He was enthusiastic--cunning Burlingham, who knew so well how to get the best out of everyone! "Mighty good--eh, Pat? Yes, mighty good.You've got something better than a great voice, my dear.
