Armitage and I were together every day. He attracted me for the
usual reason of congeniality, and also because he was giving me a
liberal education. I have never cared for books or, with two or three
exceptions, for book men. About both there is for me an atmosphere of
staleness, of tedium. I prefer to get what is in the few worth-while
books through the medium of some clear and original mind--such a mind
as Armitage had. He ought to have been a great man. No, he was a great
man; what I mean to say is that his talents ought to have won his
greatness recognition. He did not lack capacity or energy; he showed a
high degree of both in the management and increase of his fortune. He
lacked that species of vanity, I guess it is, which spurs a man to make
himself conspicuous. Also he had a kind of laziness, and chose to be
active only in the way that was easiest and most agreeable for him--the
making of money.
His father had been rich, and his grandfather; his great grandfather
had been one of the richest men in Revolutionary times. His father
was regarded as a crank because he had imagination, and therefore
despised the conventional ideas of his own generation; to be regarded
as thoroughly sane and sensible, you must be careful to be neither,
but to pattern yourself painstakingly upon the particular form
of feeble-mindedness and conventional silliness current in your
time. Armitage’s father resolved that his son should not have his
individuality clipped and moulded and patterned by college and caste
into the familiar type of upper-class man. So Armitage went to public
school, graduated from it into a factory, then into an office, himself
earned the money to carry out the ambitions for study and travel with
which his father had inspired him.
I think there was nothing worth the knowing about which Armitage had
not accurate essential information--books, plays, pictures, music,
literature, history, economics, science, medicine, law, finance. He
was a good shot and a good horseman, could run an automobile, take it
to pieces, put it together again. He was a practical mechanic and a
practical railroad man. He had a successful model farm. “It doesn’t
take long to learn the essentials about anything,” said he, “if you
will only put your whole mind on it and not let up till you’ve got what
you want. And the trouble with most people--why, they are narrow and
ignorant and incompetent--it isn’t lack of mind, but lack of interest.
They have no curiosity.” Nor was my friend Armitage a smatterer. He
didn’t try to _do_ everything; he contented himself with knowledge, and
_did_ only one thing--made money out of railroads.
When he saw that I really wished to be educated, he amused himself by
educating me. Not in a formal way, of course; but simply talking along,
about whatever happened to come up. I have never known a man to get
anywhere, who did not have an excellent memory. Lack of memory--which
means lack of the habit and power of giving attention--is the cause of
more failures than all other defects put together. If you don’t believe
it, test the failures you know; perhaps you might even test your own
not too successful self. I had an unusual memory; and I don’t think
Armitage or anyone ever told me anything worth knowing that I did not
stick to it and keep it where I could use it instantly.
Several months after his wife and mine departed, we were walking in the
park one afternoon--the usual tramp round the upper reservoir to reduce
or to keep in condition. He said in the most casual way:
“My wife is coming next week, and will get her divorce at once.”
Taking my cue from his manner I showed even less surprise then I felt.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” said I.
“Really?” said he carelessly. “Everyone knows.” He laughed to himself.
“She is to marry Lord Blankenship--the Earl of Blankenship.”
“And the children?” said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Her people will look
after them. She has spoiled them beyond repair. I have no interest
in them--nor they in me.” After a little tramping in silence, he
halted and rested his hands on the railing and looked away across the
lakelike reservoir, its surface tossed up into white caps by the
wind. “I loved her when we were married,” said he. “That caused all
the mischief. I let her do as she pleased. She was a fine girl--good
family but poor. She pretended to be in sympathy with my ideas.” His
lip curled in good-humored contempt. “I believed in her enthusiasm.
My father--wonderfully sane old man--warned me she was only after our
money, but I wouldn’t listen. Tried to quarrel with him. He wouldn’t
have it--gave me my way. It’s not strange I believed in her. She looked
all that’s high-minded--and delicate--and what they call aristocratic.
Well, it _is_ aristocratic--the reality of aristocracy.”
“Perhaps she was sincere,” said I, out of the depths of my own
experience, “perhaps she honestly imagined she liked and wanted the
sort of life you pictured. We are all hypocrites, but most of us are
unconscious hypocrites.”
“No doubt she did deceive herself--in part at least,” he admitted. “For
a year or so after our marriage she kept up the bluff. I didn’t catch
on--didn’t find her out--until we began to differ about bringing up the
children. Even then, I loved her so that I let her have her way until
it was too late.”
“But,” said I, “don’t you owe it to them to----”
He interrupted with an impatient, “Didn’t I try? But it was hopeless.
To succeed in this day, I’d have had to take the children away off
into the woods, with the chances that even there the servants I’d
be compelled to have would spoil them--would keep them reminded of
the rotten snobbishness they’ve been taught.” He laughed at me with
mocking irony. “You have a daughter,” said he. “What about her?”
“I was thinking of your boy,” said I.
He frowned and looked away. After a long pause--“Hopeless--hopeless,”
said he. “Believe me--hopeless. The boy is like her. No, I’ll have to
begin all over again.”