Kitabı oku: «The "Goldfish"», sayfa 10

Brotherly love? How can there be such a thing when there is a single sick baby dying for lack of nutrition—a single convalescent suffocating for want of country air—a single family without fire or blankets? Suggest to your wife that she give up a dinner gown and use the money to send a tubercular office boy to the Adirondacks—and listen to her excuses! Is there not some charitable organization that does such things? Has not his family the money? How do you know he really has consumption? Is he a good boy? And finally: "Well, one can't send every sick boy to the country; if one did there would be no money left to bring up one's own children." She hesitates—and the boy dies perhaps! So long as we do not see them dying, we do not really care how many people die.

Our altruism, such as it is, has nothing abstract about it. The successful man does not bother himself about things he cannot see. Do not talk about foreign missions to him. Try his less successful brother—the man who is not successful because you can talk over with him foreign missions or even more idealistic matters; who is a failure because he will make sacrifices for a principle.

It is all a part of our materialism. Real sympathy costs too much money; so we try not to see the miserable creatures who might be restored to health for a couple of hundred dollars. A couple of hundred dollars? Why, you could take your wife to the theater forty times—once a week during the entire season—for that sum!

Poor people make sacrifices; rich ones do not. There is very little real charity among successful people. A man who wasted his time helping others would never get on himself.

* * * * *

It will, of course, be said in reply that the world is full of charitable institutions supported entirely by the prosperous and successful. That is quite true; but it must be remembered that they are small proof in themselves of the amount of real self-sacrifice and genuine charity existing among us.

Philanthropy is largely the occupation of otherwise ineffective people, or persons who have nothing else to do, or of retired capitalists who like the notoriety and laudation they can get in no other way. But, even with philanthropy to amuse him, an idle multi-millionaire in these United States has a pretty hard time of it. He is generally too old to enjoy society and is not qualified to make himself a particularly agreeable companion, even if his manners would pass muster at Newport. Politics is too strenuous. Desirable diplomatic posts are few and the choicer ones still require some dignity or educational qualification in the holders. There is almost nothing left but to haunt the picture sales or buy a city block and order the construction of a French château in the middle of it.

I know one of these men intimately; in fact I am his attorney and helped him make a part of his money. At sixty-four he retired—that is, he ceased endeavoring to increase his fortune by putting up the price of foodstuffs and other commodities, or by driving competitors out of business. Since then he has been utterly wretched. He would like to be in society and dispense a lavish hospitality, but he cannot speak the language of the drawing room. His opera box stands stark and empty. His house, filled with priceless treasures fit for the Metropolitan Museum, is closed nine months in the year.

His own wants are few. His wife is a plain woman, who used to do her own cooking and, in her heart, would like to do it still. He knows nothing of the esthetic side of life and is too old to learn. Once a month, in the season, we dine at his house, with a mixed company, in a desert of dining room at a vast table loaded with masses of gold plate. The peaches are from South Africa; the strawberries from the Riviera. His chef ransacks the markets for pheasants, snipe, woodcock, Egyptian quail and canvasbacks. And at enormous distances from each other—so that the table may be decently full—sit, with their wives, his family doctor, his clergyman, his broker, his secretary, his lawyer, and a few of the more presentable relatives—a merry party! And that is what he has striven, fought and lied for for fifty years.

Often he has told me of the early days, when he worked from seven until six, and then studied in night school until eleven; and of the later ones when he and his wife lived, like ourselves, in a Fourteenth Street lodging house and saved up to go to the theater once a month. As a young man he swore he would have a million before he died. Sunday afternoons he would go up to the Vanderbilt house on Fifth Avenue and, shaking his fist before the ornamental iron railing, whisper savagely that he would own just such a house himself some day. When he got his million he was going to retire. But he got his million at the age of forty-five, and it looked too small and mean; he would have ten—then he would stop!

By fifty-five he had his ten millions. It was comparatively easy, I believe, for him to get it. But still he was not satisfied. Now he has twenty. But apart from his millions, his house and his pictures, which are bought for him by an agent on a salary of ten thousand dollars a year, he has nothing! I dine with him out of charity.

Well, recently Johnson has gone into charity himself. I am told he has given away two millions! That is an exact tenth of his fortune. He is a religious man—in this respect he has outdone most of his brother millionaires. However, he still has an income of over a million a year—enough to satisfy most of his modest needs. Yet the frugality of a lifetime is hard to overcome, and I have seen Johnson walk home—seven blocks—in the rain from his club rather than take a cab, when the same evening he was giving his dinner guests peaches that cost—in December—two dollars and seventy-five cents apiece.

The question is: How far have Johnson's two millions made him a charitable man? I confess that, so far as I can see, giving them up did not cost him the slightest inconvenience. He merely bought a few hundred dollars' worth of reputation—as a charitable millionaire—at a cost of two thousand thousand dollars. It was—commercially—a miserable bargain. Only a comparatively few people of the five million inhabitants of the city of New York ever heard of Johnson or his hospital. Now that it has been built, he is no longer interested. I do not believe he actually got as much satisfaction out of his two-million-dollar investment as he would get out of an evening at the Hippodrome; but who can say that he is not charitable?

* * * * *

I lay stress on this matter of charity because essentially the charitable man is the good man. And by good we mean one who is of value to others as contrasted with one who is working, as most of us are, only for his own pocket all the time. He is the man who is such an egoist that he looks on himself as a part of the whole world and a brother to the rest of mankind. He has really got an exaggerated ego and everybody else profits by it in consequence.

He believes in abstract principles of virtue and would die for them; he recognizes duties and will struggle along, until he is a worn-out, penniless old man, to perform them. He goes out searching for those who need help and takes a chance on their not being deserving. Many a poor chap has died miserably because some rich man has judged that he was not deserving of help. I forget what Lazarus did about the thirsty gentleman in Hades—probably he did not regard him as deserving either.

With most of us a charitable impulse is like the wave made by a stone thrown into a pool—it gets fainter and fainter the farther it has to go. Generally it does not go the length of a city block. It is not enough that there is a starving cripple across the way—he must be on your own doorstep to rouse any interest. When we invest any of our money in charity we want twenty per cent interest, and we want it quarterly. We also wish to have a list of the stockholders made public. A man who habitually smokes two thirty-cent cigars after dinner will drop a quarter into the plate on Sunday and think he is a good Samaritan.

The truth of the matter is that whatever instinct leads us to contribute toward the alleviation of the obvious miseries of the poor should compel us to go further and prevent those miseries—or as many of them as we can—from ever arising at all.

So far as I am concerned, the division of goodness into seven or more specific virtues is purely arbitrary. Virtue is generic. A man is either generous or mean—unselfish or selfish. The unselfish man is the one who is willing to inconvenience or embarrass himself, or to deprive himself of some pleasure or profit for the benefit of others, either now or hereafter.

By the same token, now that I have given thought to the matter, I confess that I am a selfish man—at bottom. Whatever generosity I possess is surface generosity. It would not stand the acid test of self-interest for a moment. I am generous where it is worth my while—that is all; but, like everybody else in my class, I have no generosity so far as my social and business life is concerned. I am willing to inconvenience myself somewhat in my intimate relations with my family or friends, because they are really a part of me—and, anyway, not to do so would result, one way or another, in even greater inconvenience to me.

Once outside my own house, however, I am out for myself and nobody else, however much I may protest that I have all the civic virtues and deceive the public into thinking I have. What would become of me if I did not look out for my own interests in the same way my associates look out for theirs? I should be lost in the shuffle. The Christian virtues may be proclaimed from every pulpit and the Banner of the Cross fly from every housetop; but in business it is the law of evolution and not the Sermon on the Mount that controls.

The rules of the big game are the same as those of the Roman amphitheater. There is not even a pretense that the same code of morals can obtain among corporations and nations as among private individuals. Then why blame the individuals? It is just a question of dog eat dog. We are all after the bone.

No corporation would shorten the working day except by reason of self-interest or legal compulsion. No business man would attack an abuse that would take money out of his own pocket. And no one of us, except out of revenge or pique, would publicly criticize or condemn a man influential enough to do us harm. The political Saint George usually hopes to jump from the back of the dead dragon of municipal corruption into the governor's chair.

We have two standards of conduct—the ostensible and the actual. The first is a convention—largely literary. It is essentially merely a matter of manners—to lubricate the wheels of life. The genuine sphere of its influence extends only to those with whom we have actual contact; so that a breach of it would be embarrassing to us. Within this qualified circle we do business as "Christians & Company, Limited." Outside this circle we make a bluff at idealistic standards, but are guided only by the dictates of self-interest, judged almost entirely by pecuniary tests.

I admit, however, that, though I usually act from selfish motives, I would prefer to act generously if I could do so without financial loss. That is about the extent of my altruism, though I concede an omnipresent consciousness of what is abstractly right and what is wrong. Occasionally, but very rarely, I even blindly follow this instinct irrespective of consequences.

There have been times when I have been genuinely self-sacrificing. Indeed I should unhesitatingly die for my son, my daughters—and probably for my wife. I have frequently suffered financial loss rather than commit perjury or violate my sense of what is right. I have called this sense an instinct, but I do not pretend to know what it is. Neither can I explain its origin. If it is anything it is probably utilitarian; but it does not go very far. I have manners rather than morals.

Fundamentally I am honest, because to be honest is one of the rules of the game I play. If I were caught cheating I should not be allowed to participate. Honesty from this point of view is so obviously the best policy that I have never yet met a big man in business who was crooked. Mind you, they were most of them pirates—frankly flying the black flag and each trying to scuttle the other's ships; but their word was as good as their bond and they played the game squarely, according to the rules. Men of my class would no more stoop to petty dishonesties than they would wear soiled linen. The word lie is not in their mutual language. They may lie to the outside public—I do not deny that they do—but they do not lie to each other.

There has got to be some basis on which they can do business with one another—some stability. The spoils must be divided evenly. Good morals, like good manners, are a necessity in our social relations. They are the uncodified rules of conduct among gentlemen. Being uncodified, they are exceedingly vague; and the court of Public Opinion that administers them is apt to be not altogether impartial. It is a "respecter of persons."

One man can get away with things that another man will hang for. A Jean Valjean will steal a banana and go to the Island, while some rich fellow will put a bank in his pocket and everybody will treat it as a joke. A popular man may get drunk and not be criticized for it; but the sour chap who does the same thing is flung out of the club. There is little justice in the arbitrary decisions of society at large.

In a word we exact a degree of morality from our fellowmen precisely in proportion to its apparent importance to ourselves. It is a purely practical and even a rather shortsighted matter with us. Our friend's private conduct, so far as it does not concern us, is an affair of small moment. He can be as much of a roue as he chooses, so long as he respects our wives and daughters. He can put through a gigantic commercial robbery and we will acclaim his nerve and audacity, provided he is on the level with ourselves. That is the reason why cheating one's club members at cards is regarded as worse than stealing the funds belonging to widows and orphans.

So long as a man conducts himself agreeably in his daily intercourse with his fellows they are not going to put themselves out very greatly to punish him for wrongdoing that does not touch their own bank accounts or which merely violates their private ethical standards. Society is crowded with people who have been guilty of one detestable act, have got thereby on Easy Street and are living happily ever after.

I meet constantly fifteen or twenty men who have deliberately married women for their money—of course without telling them so. According to our professed principles this is—to say the least—obtaining money under false pretenses—a crime under the statutes. These men are now millionaires. They are crooks and swindlers of the meanest sort. Had they not married in this fashion they could not have earned fifteen hundred dollars a year; but everybody goes to their houses and eats their dinners.

There are others, equally numerous, who acquired fortunes by blackmailing corporations or by some deal that at the time of its accomplishment was known to be crooked. To-day they are received on the same terms as men who have been honest all their lives. Society is not particular as to the origin of its food supply. Though we might refuse to steal money ourselves we are not unwilling to let the thief spend it on us. We are too busy and too selfish to bother about trying to punish those who deserve punishment.

On the contrary we are likely to discover surprising virtues in the most unpromising people. There are always extenuating circumstances. Indeed, in those rare instances where, in the case of a rich man, the social chickens come home to roost, the reason his fault is not overlooked is usually so arbitrary or fortuitous that it almost seems an injustice that he should suffer when so many others go scot-free for their misdeeds.

Society has no conscience, and whatever it has as a substitute is usually stimulated only by motives of personal vengeance. It is easier to gloss over an offense than to make ourselves disagreeable and perhaps unpopular.

We have not even the public spirit to have a thief arrested and appear against him in court if he has taken from us only a small amount of money. It is too much trouble. Only when our pride is hurt do we call loudly on justice and honor.

Even revenge is out of fashion. It requires too much effort. Few of us have enough principle to make ourselves uncomfortable in attempting to show disapproval toward wrongdoers. Were this not so, the wicked would not be still flourishing like green bay trees. So long as one steals enough he can easily buy our forgiveness. Honesty is not the best policy—except in trifles.

CHAPTER VI
MY FUTURE

When I began to pen these wandering confessions—or whatever they may properly be called—it was with the rather hazy purpose of endeavoring to ascertain why it was that I, universally conceded to be a successful man, was not happy. As I reread what I have written I realize that, instead of being a successful man in any way, I am an abject failure.

The preceding pages need no comment. The facts speak for themselves. I had everything in my favor at the start. I had youth, health, natural ability, a good wife, friends and opportunity; but I blindly accepted the standards of the men I saw about me and devoted my energies to the achievement of the single object that was theirs—the getting of money.

Thirty years have gone by. I have been a leader in the race and I have secured a prize. But at what cost? I am old—a bundle of undesirable habits; my health is impaired; my wife has become a frivolous and extravagant woman; I have no real friends: my children are strangers to me, and I have no home. I have no interest in my family, my social acquaintances, or in the affairs of the city or nation. I take no sincere pleasure in art or books or outdoor life. The only genuine satisfaction that is mine is in the first fifteen-minutes' flush after my afternoon cocktail and the preliminary course or two of my dinner. I have nothing to look forward to. No matter how much money I make, there is no use to which I can put it that will increase my happiness.

From a material standpoint I have achieved everything I can possibly desire. No king or emperor ever approximated the actual luxury of my daily life. No one ever accomplished more apparent work with less actual personal effort. I am a master at the exploitation of intellectual labor.

I have motors, saddle-horses, and a beautiful summer cottage at a cool and fashionable resort. I travel abroad when the spirit moves me; I entertain lavishly and am entertained in return; I smoke the costliest cigars; I have a reputation at the bar, and I have an established income large enough to sustain at least sixty intelligent people and their families in moderate comfort. This must be true, for on the one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month I pay my chauffeur he supports a wife and two children, sends them to school and on a three-months' vacation into the country during the summer. And, instead of all these things giving me any satisfaction, I am miserable and discontented.

The fact that I now realize the selfishness of my life led me to-day to resolve to do something for others—and this resolve had an unexpected and surprising consequence.

Heretofore I had been engaged in an introspective study of my own attitude toward my fellows. I had not sought the evidence of outside parties. What has just occurred has opened my eyes to the fact that others have not been nearly so blind as I have been myself.

James Hastings, my private secretary, is a man of about forty-five years of age. He has been in my employ fifteen years. He is a fine type of man and deserves the greatest credit for what he has accomplished. Beginning life as an office boy at three dollars a week, he educated himself by attending school at night, learned stenography and typewriting, and has become one of the most expert law stenographers in Wall Street. I believe that, without being a lawyer, he knows almost as much law as I do.

Gradually I have raised his wages until he is now getting fifty dollars a week. In addition to this he does night-work at the Bar Association at double rates, acts as stenographer at legal references, and does, I understand, some trifling literary work besides. I suppose he earns from thirty-five hundred to five thousand dollars a year. About thirteen years ago he married one of the woman stenographers in the office—a nice girl she was too—and now they have a couple of children. He lives somewhere in the country and spends an unconscionable time on the train daily, yet he is always on hand at an early hour.

What happened to-day was this: A peculiarly careful piece of work had been done in the way of looking up a point of corporation law, and I inquired who was responsible for briefing it. Hastings smiled and said he had done so. As I looked at him it suddenly dawned on me that this man might make real money if he studied for the bar and started in practice for himself. He had brains and an enormous capacity for work. I should dislike losing so capable a secretary, but it would be doing him a good turn to let him know what I thought; and it was time that I did somebody a good turn from an unselfish motive.

"Hastings," I said, "you're too good to be merely a stenographer. Why don't you study law and make some money? I'll keep you here in my office, throw things in your way and push you along. What do you say?"

He flushed with gratification, but, after a moment's respectful hesitation, shook his head.

"Thank you very much, sir," he replied, "but I wouldn't care to do it. I really wouldn't!"

Though I am fond of the man, his obstinacy nettled me.

"Look here!" I cried. "I'm offering you an unusual chance. You had better think twice before you decline such an opportunity to make something of yourself. If you don't take it you'll probably remain what you are as long as you live. Seize it and you may do as well as I have."

Hastings smiled faintly.

"I'm very sorry, sir," he repeated. "I'm grateful to you for your interest; but—I hope you'll excuse me—I wouldn't change places with you for a million dollars! No—not for ten million!"

He blurted out the last two sentences like a schoolboy, standing and twisting his notebook between his fingers.

There was something in his tone that dashed my spirits like a bucket of cold water. He had not meant to be impertinent. He was the most truthful man alive. What did he mean? Not willing to change places with me! It was my turn to flush.

"Oh, very well!" I answered in as indifferent a manner as I could assume. "It's up to you. I merely meant to do you a good turn. We'll think no more about it."

I continued to think about it, however. Would not change places with me—a fifty-dollar-a-week clerk!

Hastings' pointblank refusal of my good offices, coming as it did hard on the heels of my own realization of failure, left me sick at heart. What sort of an opinion could this honest fellow, my mere employee—dependent on my favor for his very bread—have of me, his master? Clearly not a very high one! I was stung to the quick—chagrined; ashamed.

* * * * *

It was Saturday morning. The week's work was practically over. All of my clients were out of town—golfing, motoring, or playing poker at Cedarhurst. There was nothing for me to do at the office but to indorse half a dozen checks for deposit. I lit a cigar and looked out the window of my cave down on the hurrying throng below. A resolute, never-pausing stream of men plodded in each direction. Now and then others dashed out of the doors of marble buildings and joined the crowd.

On the river ferryboats were darting here and there from shore to shore. There was a bedlam of whistles, the thunder of steam winches, the clang of surface cars, the rattle of typewriters. To what end? Down at the curb my motor car was in waiting. I picked up my hat and passed into the outer office.

"By the way, Hastings," I said casually as I went by his desk, "where are you living now?"

He looked up smilingly.

"Pleasantdale—up Kensico way," he answered.

I shifted my feet and pulled once or twice on my cigar. I had taken a strange resolve.

"Er—going to be in this afternoon?" I asked. "I'm off for a run and I might drop in for a cup of tea about five o'clock."

"Oh, will you, sir!" he exclaimed with pleasure. "We shall be delighted. Mine is the house at the crossroads—with the red roof."

"Well," said I, "you may see me—but don't keep your tea waiting."

As I shot uptown in my car I had almost the feeling of a coming adventure. Hastings was a good sort! I respected him for his bluntness of speech. At the cigar counter in the club I replenished my case.

Then I went into the reception room, where I found a bunch of acquaintances sitting round the window. They hailed me boisterously. What would I have to drink? I ordered a "Hannah Elias" and sank into a chair. One of them was telling about the newest scandal in the divorce line: The president of one of our largest trust companies had been discovered to have been leading a double life—running an apartment on the West Side for a haggard and passée showgirl.

"You just tell me—I'd like to know—why a fellow like that makes such a damned fool of himself! Salary of fifty thousand dollars a year! Big house; high-class wife and family; yacht—everything anybody wants. Not a drinking man either. It defeats me!" he said.

None of the group seemed able to suggest an answer. I had just tossed off my "Hannah Elias."

"I think I know," I hazarded meditatively. They turned with one accord and stared at me. "There was nothing else for him to do," I continued, "except to blow his brains out."

The raconteur grunted.

"I don't just know the meaning of that!" he remarked. "I thought he was a friend of yours!"

"Oh, I like him well enough," I answered, getting up. "Thanks for the drink. I've got to be getting home. My wife is giving a little luncheon to thirty valuable members of society."

I was delayed on Fifth Avenue and when the butler opened the front door the luncheon party was already seated at the table. A confused din emanated from behind the portières of the dining room, punctuated by shouts of female laughter. The idea of going in and overloading my stomach for an hour, while strenuously attempting to produce light conversation, sickened me. I shook my head.

"Just tell your mistress that I've been suddenly called away on business," I directed the butler and climbed back into my motor.

"Up the river!" I said to my chauffeur.

We spun up the Riverside Drive, past rows of rococo apartment houses, along the Lafayette Boulevard and through Yonkers. It was a glorious autumn day. The Palisades shone red and yellow with turning foliage. There was a fresh breeze down the river and a thousand whitecaps gleamed in the sunlight. Overhead great white clouds moved majestically athwart the blue. But I took no pleasure in it all. I was suffering from an acute mental and physical depression. Like Hamlet I had lost all my mirth—whatever I ever had—and the clouds seemed but a "pestilent congregation of vapors." I sat in a sort of trance as I was whirled farther and farther away from the city.

At last I noticed that my silver motor clock was pointing to half-past two, and I realized that neither the chauffeur nor myself had had anything to eat since breakfast. We were entering a tiny village. Just beyond the main square a sign swinging above the sidewalk invited wayfarers to a "quick lunch." I pressed the button and we pulled to the gravel walk.

"Lunch!" I said, and opened the wire-netted door. Inside there were half a dozen oilcloth-covered tables and a red-cheeked young woman was sewing in a corner.

"What have you got?" I asked, inspecting the layout.

"Tea, coffee, milk—eggs any style you want," she answered cheerily. Then she laughed in a good-natured way. "There's a real hotel at Poughkeepsie—five miles along," she added.

"I don't want a real hotel," I replied. "What are you laughing at?"

Then I realized that I must look rather civilized for a motorist.

"You don't look as you'd care for eggs," she said.

"That's where you're wrong," I retorted. "I want three of the biggest, yellowest, roundest poached eggs your fattest hen ever laid—and a schooner of milk."

The girl vanished into the back of the shop and presently I could smell toast. I discovered I was extremely hungry. In about eight minutes she came back with a tray on which was a large glass of creamy milk and the triple eggs for which I had prayed. They were spherical, white and wabbly.

"You're a prize poacher," I remarked, my spirits reviving.

She smiled appreciatively.

"Going far?" she inquired, sitting down quite at ease at one of the neighboring tables.

I looked pensively at her pleasant face across the eggs.

"That's a question," I answered. "I can't make out whether I've been moving on or just going round and round in a circle."

She looked puzzled for an instant. Then she said shrewdly:

"Perhaps you've really been going back."

"Perhaps," I admitted.

I have never tasted anything quite so good as those eggs and that milk. From where I sat I could look far up the Hudson; the wind from the river swayed the red maples round the door of the quick lunch; and from the kitchen came the homely smells of my lost youth. I had a fleeting vision of the party at my house, now playing bridge for ten cents a point; and my soul lifted its head for the first time in weeks.

"How far is it to Pleasantdale?"

"A long way," answered the girl; "but you can make a connection by trolley that will get you there in about two hours."

"Suits me!" I said and stepped to the door. "You can go, James; I'll get myself home."