THE CRAWFORDS.
Through strong striving to secure his life, Mr. Crawford lost it--both
in God's sense of loss and his own. He narrowly escaped being put in
prison, died instead, and was put into God's prison to pay the uttermost
farthing. But he had been such a good Christian that his
fellow-Christians mourned over his failure and his death, not over his
dishonesty! For did they not know that if, by more dishonesty, he could
have managed to recover his footing, he would have paid everything? One
injunction only he obeyed--he provided for his own; of all the widows
concerned in his bank, his widow alone was secured from want; and she,
like a dutiful wife, took care that his righteous intention should be
righteously carried out; not a penny would she give up to the paupers
her husband had made.
The downfall of the house of cards took place a few months after
George's return to its business. Not initiated to the mysteries of his
father's transactions, ignorant of what had long been threatening, it
was a terrible blow to him. But he was a man of action, and at once
looked to America; at home he could not hold up his head.
He had often been to Potlurg, and had been advancing in intimacy with
Alexa; but he would not show himself there until he could appear as a
man of decision--until he was on the point of departure. She would be
the more willing to believe his innocence of complicity in the
deceptions that had led to his ruin! He would thus also manifest
self-denial and avoid the charge of interested motives! he could not
face the suspicion of being a suitor with nothing to offer! George had
always taken the grand rôle--that of superior, benefactor, bestower. He
was powerful in condescension!
Not, therefore, until the night before he sailed did he go to Potlurg.
Alexa received him with a shade of displeasure.
“I am going away,” he said, abruptly, the moment they were seated.
Her heart gave a painful throb in her throat, but she did not lose her
self-possession.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To New York,” he replied. “I have got a situation there--in a not
unimportant house. _There_ at least I am taken for an honest man. From
your heaven I have fallen.”
“No one falls from any heaven but has himself to blame,” rejoined Alexa.
“Where have I been to blame? I was not in my father's confidence. I knew
nothing, positively nothing, of what was going on.”
“Why then did you not come to see me?”
“A man who is neither beggar nor thief is not willing to look either.”
“You would have come if you had trusted me,” she said.
“You must pardon pride in a ruined man,” he answered. “Now that I am
starting to-morrow, I do not feel the same dread of being
misunderstood!”
“It was not kind of you, George. Knowing yourself fit to be trusted, why
did you not think me capable of trusting?”
“But, Alexa!--a man's own father!”
For a moment he showed signs of an emotion he had seldom had to repress.
“I beg your pardon, George!” cried Alexa. “I am both stupid and selfish!
Are you really going so far?”
Her voice trembled.
“I am--but to return, I hope, in a very different position!”
“You would have me understand--”
“That I shall then be able to hold up my head.”
“Why should an innocent man ever do otherwise?”
“He can not help seeing himself in other people's thoughts!”
“If we are in the right ought we to mind what people think of us?” said
Alexa.
“Perhaps not. But I will make them think of me as I choose.”
“How?”
“By compelling their respect.”
“You mean to make a fortune?”
“Yes.”
“Then it will be the fortune they respect! You will not be more worthy!”
“I shall not.”
“Is such respect worth having?”
“Not in itself.”
“In what then? Why lay yourself out for it?”
“Believe me, Alexa, even the real respect of such people would be
worthless to me. I only want to bring them to their marrow-bones!”
The truth was, Alexa prized social position so dearly that she did not
relish his regarding it as a thing at the command of money. Let George
be as rich as a Jew or an American, Alexa would never regard him as her
equal! George worshiped money; Alexa worshiped birth and land.
Our own way of being wrong is all right in our own eyes; our neighbor's
way of being wrong is offensive to all that is good in us. We are
anxious therefore, kindly anxious, to pull the mote out of his eye,
never thinking of the big beam in the way of the operation. Jesus
labored to show us that our immediate business is to be right ourselves.
Until we are, even our righteous indignation is waste.
While he spoke, George's eyes were on the ground. His grand resolve did
not give his innocence strength to look in the face of the woman he
loved; he felt, without knowing why, that she was not satisfied with
him. Of the paltriness of his ambition, he had no inward hint. The high
resolves of a puny nature must be a laughter to the angels--the bad
ones.
“If a man has no ambition,” he resumed, feeling after her objection,
“how is he to fulfill the end of his being! No sluggard ever made his
mark! How would the world advance but for the men who have to make their
fortunes! If a man find his father has not made money for him, what is
he to do but make it for himself? You would not have me all my life a
clerk! If I had but known, I should by this time have been well ahead!”
Alexa had nothing to answer; it all sounded very reasonable! Were not
Scots boys everywhere taught it was the business of life to rise? In
whatever position they were, was it not their part to get out of it? She
did not see that it is in the kingdom of heaven only we are bound to
rise. We are born into the world not to rise in the kingdom of Satan,
but out of it And the only way to rise in the kingdom of heaven is to do
the work given us to do. Whatever be intended for us, this is the only
way to it We have not to promote ourselves, but to do our work. It is
the master of the feast who says: “Go up.” If a man go up of himself, he
will find he has mistaken the head of the table.
More talk followed, but neither cast any light; neither saw the true
question. George took his leave. Alexa said she would be glad to hear
from him.
Alexa did not like the form of George's ambition--to gain money, and so
compel the respect of persons he did not himself respect But was she
clear of the money disease herself? Would she have married a poor man,
to go on as hitherto? Would she not have been ashamed to have George
know how she had supplied his needs while he lay in the house--that it
was with the poor gains of her poultry-yard she fed him? Did it improve
her moral position toward money that she regarded commerce with
contempt--a rudiment of the time when nobles treated merchants as a
cottager his bees?
George's situation was a subordinate one in a house of large dealings in
Wall Street.