The doctor laughed at this.
"Oh, I know," said Annie, "I know the fraudulent reputation I've got for
good works."
"Your charity to tramps is the opprobrium of Hatboro'," the doctor
consented.
"Oh, I don't mind that. It's easy when people ask you for food or money,
but the horrible thing is when they ask you for work. Think of me, who
never did anything to earn a cent in my life, being humbly asked by a
fellow-creature to let him work for something to eat and drink! It's
hideous! It's abominable! At first I used to be flattered by it, and try
to conjure up something for them to do, and to believe that I was helping
the deserving poor. Now I give all of them money, and tell them that they
needn't even pretend to work for it. _I_ don't work for my money, and
I don't see why they should."
"They'd find that an unanswerable argument if you put it to them," said the
doctor. He reached out his hand for the paper-cutter, and then withdrew it
in a way that made her laugh.
"But the worst of it is," she resumed, "that I don't love any of the people
that I help, or hurt, whichever it is. I did feel remorseful toward Mrs.
Savor for a while, but I didn't love her, and I knew that I only pitied
myself through her. Don't you see?"
"No, I don't," said the doctor.
"You don't, because you're too polite. The only kind of creature that I can
have any sympathy with is some little wretch like Idella, who is perfectly
selfish and naughty every way, but seems to want me to like her, and a
reprobate like Lyra, or some broken creature like poor Ralph. I think
there's something in the air, the atmosphere, that won't allow you to live
in the old way if you've got a grain of conscience or humanity. I don't
mean that _I_ have. But it seems to me as if the world couldn't go on
as it has been doing. Even here in America, where I used to think we had
the millennium because slavery was abolished, people have more liberty, but
they seem just as far off as ever from justice. That is what paralyses me
and mocks me and laughs in my face when I remember how I used to dream of
doing good after I came home. I had better stayed at Rome."
The doctor said vaguely, "I'm glad you didn't," and he let his eyes dwell
on her with a return of the professional interest which she was too lost in
her self reproach to be able to resent.