The Last Gentleman

will leave.”
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œDr. Vaught, Kitty and I are getting married. I am going to take a good position with your father, settle down on the South Ridge, and, I hope, raise a family.”
    â€œYes,” said Sutter after a pause.
    â€œI think I’m going to be a pretty fair member of the community. God knows the place could use even a small contribution of good will and understanding.”
    â€œBeyond a doubt. Good will and understanding. Yes. Very good.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œWell what?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that?”
    â€œNothing. I think you’ll be very happy. In fact I’ll go further than that. I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with your fugues. And I take it back: I don’t think you are kidding me.”
    â€œI see. Dr. Vaught.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI know you think there is something wrong with if—”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œYes. I know you think there is everything wrong with it.”
    â€œNonsense.” Sutter laughed. “Would you rather join me here?”
    â€œNo, but—”
    â€œBut what?”
    â€œBut nothing.” The engineer rose. “There is nothing wrong with it. Truthfully I see now there is nothing wrong with such a life.”
    â€œRight!”
    â€œIt is better to do something than do nothing—no reflection, sir.”
    â€œNo reflection.”
    â€œIt is good to have a family.”
    â€œYou are quite right.”
    â€œBetter to love and be loved.”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    â€˜To cultivate whatever talents one has.”
    â€œCorrect.”
    â€œTo make a contribution, however small.”
    â€œHowever small.”
    â€œTo do one’s best to promote tolerance and understanding between the races, surely the most pressing need before the country.”
    â€œBeyond question the most pressing need. Tolerance and understanding. Yes.”
    The engineer flushed. “Well, isn’t it better?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œViolence is bad.”
    â€œViolence is not good.”
    â€œIt is better to make love to one’s wife than to monkey around with a lot of women.”
    â€œA lot better.”
    â€œI am sure I am right.”
    â€œYou are right.”
    The engineer gazed gloomily at the chuck wagon, a large red dining cottage across the quadrangle. Cookie, a Chinese with a black cap and a queue, came out and seizing the branding iron rang it around the iron triangle.
    â€œYou know, Dr. Vaught, I have lived a rather abnormal and solitary life and have tended to get things backwards. My father was a proud and solitary man. I had no other family. For a long time I have had a consuming desire for girls, for the coarsest possible relations with them, without knowing how to treat them as human beings. No doubt, as you suggested, a good part of my nervous condition stems from this abnormal relationship—or lack of relationship—”
    â€œAs I suggested? I never suggested any such goddamn thing.”
    â€œAt any rate,” the engineer went on hurriedly, looking down at the other, “I think I see for the first time the possibility of a happy, useful life.”
    â€œGood. So?”
    â€œDr. Vaught, why was that man screaming?”
    â€œWhat man?”
    â€œThe man you told me about—the Deke from Vanderbilt—with the lovely wife and children—you know.”
    â€œOh, Scotty. Christ, Barrett, for somebody with fugues, you’ve got quite a memory.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œDon’t worry about Scotty. You won’t scream. I can assure you, you will not scream.”
    â€œThen it is better not to?”
    â€œAre you asking me?”
    â€œYes.”
    Sutter shrugged.
    â€œYou have nothing more to tell me?”
    â€œNo, Barrett, nothing.” To his surprise, Sutter answered him quietly, without making a face or cursing.
    The engineer laughed with relief. “For the first time I think I really might live like other men—rejoin the human race.”
    â€œI hope you’ll all be happy. You and the race, I mean.”
    â€œOh, I forgot something. It was something Kitty said to tell you. God, I’m selfish.”
    â€œBut in the future you’re going to be unselfish.”
    â€œWhat? Oh. Yes,” said the engineer, smiling. He declined to conspire with Sutter’s irony. “Kitty said to tell you Lamar was going to