IV

It is hardly necessary to say that I threw overboard my partners and

saved myself. Indeed, I emerged from the crisis--liberally bespattered

with mud, it is true--but richer than when I entered it. Since I was

doing the act that was the supreme proof of my possessing the courage

and the skill for leadership in business--since I was definitely

breaking with the old-fashioned morality--I felt it was the part of

wisdom to do the thing so thoroughly, so profitably, that instead of

being execrated I should be admired. There were attacks on me in the

newspapers; there were painful interviews with my partners--not so

painful to me as they would have been had I not been able to remind

them of their own unsuccessful treacheries and to enforce the spoken

reminder with the documentary proof. But on the whole I came off

excellently well--as who does not that “gets away with the goods?”

In these days of increased intelligence and consequent lessened

hypocrisy, the big business man is the object of only perfunctory

hypocrisies from outraged morality. It has been discovered that the

farmer watering his milk or the grocer using solder-“mended” scales

is as bad as the man who “reorganizes” a railway or manipulates a

stock--is worse actually because the massed mischief of the million

little business rascals is greater than the sensational misdeeds of

the few great rascals. It has been discovered that human nature is

good or bad only according to the opportunities and necessities, not

according to abstract moral standards. And the cry is no longer, “Kill

the scoundrel,” but, “That fellow had the sense to outwit us. We must

learn from him how to sharpen our wits so that we won’t let ourselves

be robbed.” A healthful sign this, that masses of men are ceasing from

twaddle about vague ideals and are educating themselves in practical

horse sense. It may be that some day the honest husbandman will learn

to guard his granary not only against the robber with the sack in the

dark of the morn, but also against the rats and mice who pilfer ten

bushels to every one that is stolen. Of one thing I am certain--until

men learn to take heed in the small, they will remain easy prey in the

large.

Far from doing me harm, my bold stroke was of the greatest

benefit--from the standpoint of material success, and that is the

only point of view I am here considering. It did me as much good with

the world as it has done me with you, gentle reader. For while you

are exclaiming against my wickedness you are in your secret heart

confessing that if I had chosen the ideally honest course, had retired

to obscurity and poverty, you would have approved--and would have lost

interest in me. Why, if I had chosen that ideal course, I doubt not I

should have lost my railway position. My directors would have waxed

enthusiastic over my “old-fashioned honesty,” and would have looked

round for another and shrewder and stronger man to whom to intrust the

management of their railway--which would not pay dividends were it run

along the lines of old-fashioned honesty. The outburst of denunciation

soon spent itself, like a summer storm beating the giant cliffs of a

mountain. Of what use to rage futilely against my splendid immovable

fortune? The attacks, the talk about my bold stroke, the exaggerations

of the size of the fortune I had made, all served to attract attention

to me, to make me a formidable and an interesting figure. I leaped from

obscurity into fame and power--and I had the money to maintain the

position I had won.

* * * * *

Long before, indeed as soon as we moved to Manhattan, my wife had

joined fashionable and exclusive Holy Cross Church and had plunged

straightway into its charity work. A highly important part of her

Brooklyn education had been got in St. Mary’s, in learning how to do

charity work and how to make it count socially. Edna genuinely loved

charity work. She loved to patronize, loved to receive those fawning

blessings and handkissings which city poverty becomes adept at giving

the rich it lives off of. The poor family understands perfectly that

the rich visit and help not through mere empty sentimental nonsense of

brotherhood, but to have their vanities tickled in exchange for the

graciousness of their condescending presence and for the money they

lay out. As the poor want the money and have no objection to paying

for it with that cheap and plentiful commodity, cringing--scantily

screening mockery and contempt--rich and poor meet most comfortably in

our cities. Not New York alone, but any center of population, for human

nature is the same, city and country, San Francisco, Bangor--Pekin or

Paris, for that matter.

There is a shallow fashion of describing this or that as peculiarly New

York, usually snobbishness or domestic unhappiness or wealth worship,

dishonest business men or worthless wives. It is time to have done

with such nonsense. New York is in no way peculiar, nor is any other

place, beyond trifling surface differences. New York is nothing but

the epitome of the whole country, just as Chicago is. If you wish

to understand America, study New York or Chicago, our two universal

cities. There you find in one place and in admirable perspective a

complete museum of specimens of what is scattered over three and a

half million square miles. For, don’t forget, New York is not the few

blocks of fashionable district alone. It is four million people of all

conditions, tastes, and activities. And the dominant force of struggle

for money and fashion is no more dominant in New York than it is in

the rest of America. New York is more truly representative of America

than is Chicago, for in Chicago the Eastern and Southern elements are

lacking and the Western element is strong out of proportion.

I was telling of my wife’s blossoming as Lady Bountiful in search

not of a heavenly crown, but of what human Lady Bountiful always

seeks--social position. Charity covers a multitude of sins; the

greatest of them is hypocrisy. I have yet to see a charitable man

or woman or child whose chief and only noteworthy object was not

self-glorification. The people who believe in brotherhood do not go in

for charity. They wish to abolish poverty, whereas charity revels in

poverty and seeks to increase it, to change it from miserable poverty

which might die into comfortable pauperism which can live on, and

fester and breed on, and fawn on and give vanity ever more and more

exquisite titillations. Holy Cross, my wife’s new spiritual guide, was

past master of the pauper-making and pauper-utilizing arts. Its rector

and his staff of slimy sycophants had the small standing army of its

worthy poor trained to perfection. When my wife went down among them,

she returned home with face aglow and eyes heavenly. What a treat those

wretches had given her! And in the first blush of her enthusiasm she

dispensed lavishly, where the older members of the church exacted the

full measure of titillation for every dollar invested and awarded extra

sums only to some novelty in lickspittling or toadeating.

Were I not sure I should quite wear out the forbearance of gentle

reader, I should linger to describe this marvelous charity plant for

providing idle or social-position-hunting rich women with spiritual

pleasures-- I had almost said debaucheries, but that would be intruding

my private and perhaps prejudiced opinion. I have no desire to

irritate, much less shake the faith of, those who believe in Holy Cross

and its “uplift” work. And I don’t suppose Holy Cross does any great

amount of harm. The poor who prostitute themselves to its purposes are

weak things, beyond redemption. As for the rich who waste time and

money there, would they not simply waste elsewhere were there no Holy

Cross?

My wife was, at that time, a very ignorant woman, thinly covered with

a veneer of what I now know was a rather low grade of culture. That

veneer impressed me. It had impressed our Brooklyn friends of St.

Mary’s. But I fancy it must have looked cheap to expert eyes. Where her

surpassing shrewdness showed itself was in that she herself recognized

her own shortcomings. Rare and precious is the vanity that comforts and

sustains without self-deception. She knew she wasn’t the real thing,

knew she had not yet got hold of the real thing. And when she began to

move about, cautiously and quietly, in Holy Cross, she realized that at

last she was in the presence of the real thing.

My big responsibilities, my associations in finance, had been giving

me a superb training in worldly wisdom. I think I had almost as strong

a natural aptitude for “catching on” to the better thing in speech and

manner and in dress as had Edna. It is not self-flattery for me to

say that up to the Holy Cross period I was further advanced than she.

Certainly I ought to have been, for a man has a much better opportunity

than a woman, and one of the essentials of equipment for great affairs

is ability to observe accurately the little no less than the large.

Looking back, I recall things which lead me to suspect that Edna saw my

superiority in certain matters most important to her, and was irritated

by it. However that may be, a few months in Holy Cross and she had

grasped the essentials of the social art as I, or any other masculine

man, never could grasp it. And her veneer of “middle-class” culture

disappeared under a thick and enduring coating of the best New York

manner.

“What has become of _you_?” I said to her. “I haven’t seen you in

weeks.”

“I don’t understand,” said she, ruffling as she always did when she

suspected me of indulging in my coarse and detestable sense of humor.

“Why, you don’t act like yourself at all,” said I. “Even when we’re

alone you give the uncomfortable sense of dressed-up--not as if _you_

were ‘dressed-up,’ but as if _I_ were. I feel like a plowboy before a

princess.”

She was delighted!

“You,” I went on, “are now exactly like the rest of those women in

Holy Cross. I suppose it’s all right to look and talk and act that way

before people. At least, I’ve no objection if it pleases you. But for

heaven’s sake, Edna, don’t spoil our privacy with it. The queen doesn’t

wear her coronation robes all the time.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said she.

“Don’t you?” cried I, laughing. “What a charming fraud you are!” And

I seized her in my arms and kissed her. And she seemed to yield and

to return my caresses. But I was uncomfortable. She would not drop

that new manner. The incident seems trifling enough; perhaps it was

trifling. But it stands out in my memory. It marks the change in our

relationship. I recall it all distinctly--how she looked, how young and

charming and cold, what she was wearing, the delicate simple dress

that ought to have made her most alluring to me, yet made me feel as if

she were indeed alluring, but not for _me_. A subtle difference there,

but abysmal; the difference between the woman who tries to make herself

attractive for the sake of her husband and the woman who makes toilets

in the conscious or half-conscious longing successfully to prostitute

herself to the eyes of the public. I recall every detail of that

incident; yet I have only the vaguest recollection of our beginning to

occupy separate bedrooms. By that time the feeling of alienation must

have grown so strong that I took the radical change in our habits as

the matter of course.

Many are the women, in all parts of the earth, who have sought to climb

into the world of fashion by the broad and apparently easy stairway

of charity. But most of them have failed because they were unaware

of the secret of that stairway, an unsuspected secret which I shall

proceed to point out. It seems, as I have said, a particularly easy

stairway--broad, roomy, with invalid steps. It is, in fact, a moving

stairway so cunningly contrived that she--it is usually she--who

ascends keeps in the same place. She goes up, but at exactly her

ascending rate the stairway goes down. She sees other women making

apparently no more effort than she ascending rapidly, and presently

entering the earthly heaven at the top. Yet there she stands, marking

time, moving not one inch upward, and there she will stand until she

wearies, relaxes her efforts, and finds herself rapidly descending.

But how do the women who ascend accomplish it? I do not know. You must

ask them. I only know the cause of the failure of the women who do

not ascend. If I knew why the others succeeded I should not tell it. I

would not deprive fashionable women of the joy of occupying a difficult

height from which they can indulge themselves in the happiness of

sneering and spitting down at their lowlier sisters. And I have no

sympathy with the aspirations or the humiliations of those lowlier

sisters.

My energetic and aspiring wife presently found herself on this

stairway, with no hint as to its secret, much less as to the way

of overcoming its peculiarity. She toiled daily in Holy Cross. She

subscribed to everything, she helped in everything. She was the proud

recipient of the rector’s loud praises as his “most devoted, least

worldly, most spiritual helper.” But--not an invitation of the kind

she wanted. Everyone was “just lovely” to her. Whenever any charitable

or spiritual matter was to be discussed, no matter how grand and

exclusive the house in which the discussion was to be held, there was

my wife in a place of honor, eagerly consulted--and urged to subscribe.

But nothing unworldly. They understood how spiritual she was, did

those sweet, good people. They knew Saint Edna wished no social

frivolities--no dinners or theater parties, no bridge or dancing.

She was a wise lady. She hid her burning impatience. She smiled

and purred when she yearned to scowl and scratch. She waited, and

prayed for some lucky accident that would swing her across the

invisible, apparently nonexistent but actually impassable dead line.

She had expected snubs and cold shoulders. Never a snub, never a

cold shoulder. Always smiles and gracious handshakings and amiable

familiarities, but those always of the kind that serve to accentuate

caste distinction instead of removing it. For the first time in her

life, I think, she was completely stumped. She could combat obstacles.

She might even have found a way to fight fog. But how ridiculous to

make struggles and thrust out fists when there is nothing but empty,

sunny air!

She held church lunches and dinners at our house--of course, had me on

duty at the dinners. All in vain. The distinction between the spiritual

and the temporal remained in force. The grand people came, acted as if

they were delighted, complimented her on her house, on her hospitality,

went away, to invite her to similar dreary functions at their houses.

And my, how it did cost her! No wonder Holy Cross made a pet of her and

elected me to the board of vestrymen.

Once in a while she would find something in her net, so slyly cast, so

softly drawn. She would have a wild spasm of joy; then the something

would turn out to be another climber like herself. Those climbers

avoided each other as devils dodge the font of holy water. The climber

she would have caught would be one who, ignorant of the intricacies of

New York society, was under the impression that the Mrs. Godfrey Loring

so conspicuous in Holy Cross must be a social personage. They would

examine each other--at a series of joyous entertainments each would

provide for the other, would discover their mutual mistake--and-- You

know the contemptuous toss with which the fisherman rids himself of a

bloater; you know the hysterical leap of the released bloater back into

the water.

But how it was funny! My wife did not take me into her confidence as to

her social struggles. She maintained with me the same sweet, elegant

exterior of spiritual placidity with which she faced the rest of the

world. Nevertheless, in a dim sort of way I had some notion of what

she was about--though, as I was presently to discover, I was wholly

mistaken in my idea of her progress.

“What has happened to Mrs. Lestrange?” I said to her one evening at

dinner. “Is she ill?”

She cast a quick, nervous glance in the direction of the butler. I,

looking at him by way of a mirror, thought I saw upon his aristocratic

countenance a faint trace of that insolent secret glee which fills

servants when their betters are humiliated before them. “Mrs.

Lestrange?” she said carelessly. “Oh, I see her now and then.”

“But you’ve been inseparable until lately,” said I. “A quarrel, I

suppose?”

“Not at all,” said my wife tartly.

And she shifted abruptly to another subject. When I went to the little

study adjoining my sitting room to smoke she came with me. There she

said:

“Please don’t mention Mrs. Lestrange before the servants again.”

“Why, what’s up?” said I. “Did she turn out to be a crook?”

“Heavens, no! How coarse you are, Godfrey. Simply that I was terribly

mistaken in her.”

“She looked like a confidence woman or a madam,” said I. “Didn’t you

tell me she was a howling swell?”

“I thought she was,” said my wife, and I knew something important was

coming; only that theory would account for her admitting she had made

a mistake. “And in a way she was. But they caught her several years

ago taking money to get some dreadful low Western people into society.

Since then she’s asked--she herself--because she’s well connected and

amusing. But she can’t help anyone else.”

“Oh, I see,” said I. “And you don’t feel strong enough socially as yet

to be able to afford the luxury of her friendship.”

“Strong enough!” said Edna with intense bitterness. “I have no position

at all--none whatever.”

I was surprised, for until that moment I had been assuming she was on

or near the top of the wave, moving swiftly toward triumphant success.

“You want too much,” said I. “You’ve really got all there is to get.

At that last reception of yours you had all the heavy swells. My valet

told me so.”

“Reception to raise funds for the orphanage,” said Edna with a vicious

sneer--the unloveliest expression I had ever seen on her lovely

face--and I had seen not a few unlovely expressions there in our many

married years, some of them extremely trying years. “I tell you I am

nobody socially. They take my money for their rotten old charities.

They use me for their tiresome church work--and they do nothing for

me--nothing! How I _hate_ them!”

I sat smoking my cigar and watching her face. It was a wonderfully

young face. Not that she was so old; on the contrary, she was still

young in years. I call her face wonderfully young because it had that

look of inexhaustible, eternal youth which is rare even in the faces

of boys and girls. But that evening I was not thinking so much of her

youth and her beauty as of a certain expression of hardness, of evil

passions rampant--envy and hatred and jealousy, savage disappointment

over defeats in sordid battles.

“Edna,” said I, hesitatingly, “why don’t you drop all that? Can’t you

see there’s nothing in it? You’re tempting the worst things in your

nature to grow and destroy all that’s good and sweet--all that makes

you--and me--happy. People aren’t necessary to us. And if you must have

friends, surely _all_ the attractive people in New York aren’t in that

little fashionable set. Judging from what I’ve seen of them, they’re a

lot of bores.”

“They look bored here,” retorted she. “And no wonder! They come as a

Christian duty.”

I laughed. “Now, honestly, are those fashionable people the best

educated, the best in any way--any real way? I’ve talked with the men,

and the younger ones--the ones that go in for society--are unspeakable

rotters. I wouldn’t have them about.”

Edna’s eyes flashed, and her form quivered in a gust of hysterical

fury--the breaking of long-pent passion, of anger and despair, taking

me as an excuse for vent. “Oh, it’s terrible to be married to a man who

_always_ misunderstands!--one who can’t sympathize!” cried she. It was

a remark she often made, but never before had she put so much energy,

so much bitterness into it.

“What do I misunderstand?” I asked, more hurt than I cared to show.

“Where don’t I sympathize?”

“Let’s not talk about it!” exclaimed she. “If I weren’t a remarkable

woman I’d have given up long ago--I’d give up now.”

Before you smile at her egotism, gentle reader, please remember that

husband and wife were talking alone; also that with a few pitiful

exceptions all human beings think surpassingly well of themselves, and

do not hesitate to express that good opinion privately. I guess there’s

more lying done about lack of egotism and of vanity generally than

about all other matters put together.

Said I: “You are indeed a wonder, dear. In this country one sees many

astonishing transformations. But I doubt if there have been many equal

to the transformation of the girl I married into the girl who’s sitting

before me.”

“And what good has it done me?” demanded she. “How I’ve worked away at

myself--inside and out--and all for nothing!”

“You’ve still got _me_,” said I jovially, yet in earnest too. “Lots of

women lose their husbands. I’ve never had a single impulse to wander.”

In the candor of that intimacy she gave me a most unflattering look--a

look a woman does well not to cast at a man unless she is more

absolutely sure of him than anyone can be of anything in this uncertain

world. I laughed as if I thought she meant that look as a jest; I put

the look away in my memory with a mark on it that meant “to be taken

out and examined at leisure.” But she was absorbed in her chagrin over

her social failure; she probably hardly realized I was there.

“Well, what’s the next move?” inquired I presently.

“You’ve got to help,” replied she--and I knew this was what she had

been revolving in her mind all evening.

“Anything that doesn’t take me away from business, or keep me up too

late to fit myself for the next day.”

“Business--always business,” said she, in deepest disgust. “Do you

_never_ think of anything else?”

“My business and my family--that’s my life,” said I.

“Not your family,” replied she. “You care nothing about them.”

“Edna,” I said sharply, “that is unjust and untrue.”

“Oh, you give them money, if that’s what you mean,” said she

disdainfully.

“And I give them love,” said I. “The trouble is I give so freely that

you don’t value it.”

“Oh, you are a good husband,” said she carelessly. “But I want you to

take an interest.”

“In your social climbing?”

“How insulting you are!” she cried, with flashing eyes. “I am trying to

claim the position we are entitled to, and you speak of me as if I were

one of those vulgar pushers.”

“I beg your pardon,” said I humbly. “I was merely joking.”

“I’ve often told you that your idea of humor was revolting.”

I felt distressed for her in her chagrin and despair. I was ready to

bear almost anything she might see fit to inflict. “What do you want me

to do?” I asked. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Do you need more money?”

“I need help--real help,” said she.

“Money’s god over the realm of fashion, the same as it is over that

of--of religion--of politics--or anything you please. And luckily I’ve

got that little god in my employ, my dear.”

“If you are so powerful,” said she, “put me into fashionable

society--make these people receive me and come to my house.”

“But they do,” I reminded her.

“I mean _socially_,” cried she. “_Can’t_ I make you understand? Why are

business men so dumb at anything else? Compel these people to take me

as one of them.”

“Now, Edna, my dear,” protested I, “be reasonable. How can I do that?”

“Easily, if you’ve got real power,” rejoined she. “It’s been done

often, I’ve found out lately. At least half the leaders in society

got in originally by compelling it. But you, going round among men

intimately--you must know it--must have known all along. If you’d

been the right sort of man I’d not have to humiliate myself by asking

you--by saying these dreadful things.” Her eyes were flashing and her

bosom was heaving. “Women have hated men for less. But I must bear

my cross. You insist on degrading me. Very well. I’ll let myself be

degraded. I’ll say the things a decent man would not ask a woman to

say----”

“Edna, darling,” I pleaded. “Honestly, I don’t understand. You’ll have

to tell me. And it’s not degrading. We have no secrets from each other.

We who love each other can say anything to each other--anything. What

do you wish me to do?”

“Use your power over the men. Frighten them into ordering their wives

to invite us and to accept our invitations. You do business with a lot

of the men, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said I.

“You can benefit or injure them, as you please, can’t you?--can take

money away from them--can put them in the way of making it?”

“Yes,” said I; “to a certain extent.”

“And how do you use this power?”

“In building up great enterprises. I am founding a city just now, for

instance, where there was nothing but a swamp beside a lake, and----”

“In making more and more money for yourself,” she cut in, “you think

only of yourself.”

“And you--what do _you_ think of?” said I.

“Not of myself,” cried she indignantly. “Never of myself. Of Margot.

Of you. Of the family. I am working to build _us_ up--to make _us_

somebody and not mere low money grubbers.”

I did not see it from her point of view. But I was not inclined to

aggravate her excitement and anger.

“Why shouldn’t you use your powers for some unselfish purpose?” she

went on. “Why not try to have higher ambition?”