"A desire to serve is not an illusion," Thompson said defensively.
"One would have to define service before one could dispute that," Carr
returned casually. "What I mean is that the people who send you here
have not the slightest conception of what they send you to. When you get
here you find yourself rather at sea. Isn't it so?"
"In a sense, yes," Thompson reluctantly admitted.
"Oh, well," Carr said, with a gesture of dismissing the subject, "that
is your private business in any case. We won't get on at all if we begin
by discussing theology, and dissecting the theological motive and
activities. Do you hunt or fish at all, Mr. Thompson?"
Mr. Thompson did not, and expressed no hankering for such pursuits.
There came a lapse in the talk. Carr got out his pipe and began stuffing
the bowl of it with tobacco. Tommy Ashe sat gazing impassively over the
meadow, slapping at an occasional mosquito.
"Tommy might give you a few pointers on game," Carr remarked at last.
"He has the sporting instinct. It hasn't become a commonplace routine
with him yet, a matter of getting meat, as it has to the rest of us up
here."
Ashe made his first vocal contribution.
"If you're going to be about here for awhile," said he pleasantly,
"you'll find it interesting to dodge about after things in the woods
with a gun. Keeps you fit, for one thing. Lots of company in a dog and a
gun. Is it a permanent undertaking, this missionary work of yours, Mr.
Thompson?"
"We hope to make it so," Mr. Thompson responded.
"I should say you've taken on the deuce of a job," Tommy commented
frankly.
Thompson had no inclination to dispute that. He had periods of thinking
so himself.
The conversation languished again.
Without ever having been aware of it Thompson's circle of friends and
acquaintances had been people of wordy inclination. Their thoughts
dripped unceasingly from their tongue's end like water from a leaky
faucet. He had never come in contact with a type of men who keep silent
unless they have something to say, who think more than they speak. The
spinster aunts had been voluble persons, full of small chatter, women of
no mental reservations whatever. The young men of his group had not been
much different. The reflective attitude as opposed to the discursive was
new to him. New and embarrassing. He felt impelled to talk, and while he
groped uncertainly for some congenial subject he grew more and more
acutely self-conscious. He felt that these men were calmly taking his
measure. Especially Sam Carr.
He wanted to go on talking. He protested against their intercourse
congealing in that fashion. But he could find no opening. His
conversational stock-in-trade, he had the sense to realize, was totally
unlike theirs. He could do nothing but sit still, remain physically
inert while he was mentally in a state of extreme unrest. He ventured a
banality about the weather. Carr smiled faintly. Tommy Ashe observed
offhand that the heat was beastly, but not a patch to blizzards and
frost. Then they were silent again.