The first was my discovery that Mr. Judson had got the firm and
himself so entangled that he was in my power. I confess my impulse
was to take a course which a weaker or less courageous man would have
taken--away from the course of the strong man with the higher ambition
and the broader view of life and morals. And it was while I seemed to
be wavering--I say “seemed to be” because I do not think a strong,
far-sighted man of resolute purpose is ever “squeamish,” as they
call it--while, I say, I was in the mood of uncertainty which often
precedes energetic action, we, my wife and I, went to dinner at the
Judsons.
That dinner was the second event of my crucial day. Judson’s family and
mine did not move in the same social circle. When people asked my wife
if she knew Mrs. Judson--which they often maliciously did--she always
answered: “Oh, no--my husband keeps our home life and his business
distinct; and, you know, New York is very large. The Judsons and we
haven’t the same friends.” That was her way of hiding our rankling
wound--for it rankled with me as much as with her; in those days we had
everything in common, like the humble people that we were.
I can see now her expression of elation as she displayed the note of
invitation from Mrs. Judson: “It would give us great pleasure if you
and your husband would dine with us quite informally,” etc. Her face
clouded as she repeated, “quite informally.” “They wouldn’t for worlds
have any of their fashionable friends there to meet US.” Even then she
was far away from the time when, to my saying, “You shall have your
victoria and drive in the park and get your name in the papers like
Mrs. Judson,” she laughed and answered--honestly, I know--“We mustn’t
get to be like these New Yorkers. Our happiness lies right here with
ourselves and our children. I’ll be satisfied if we bring them up to be
honest, useful men and women.” That’s the way a woman should talk and
feel. When they get the ideas that are fit only for men everything goes
to pot.
But to return to the Judson dinner--my wife and I had never before been
in so grand a house. It was, indeed, a grand house for those days,
though it wouldn’t compare with my palace overlooking the park, and
would hardly rank to-day as a second-rate New York house. We tried to
seem at our ease, and I think my wife succeeded; but it seemed to me
that Judson and his wife were seeing into my embarrassment and were
enjoying it as evidence of their superiority. I may have wronged him.
Possibly I was seeking more reasons to hate him in order the better to
justify myself for what I was about to do. But that isn’t important.
My wife and I were as if in a dream or a daze. A whole, new world was
opening to both of us--the world of fashion, luxury, and display. True,
we had seen it from the outside before; and had had it constantly
before our eyes; but now we were touching it, tasting it, smelling
it--were almost grasping it. We were unhappy as we drove home in our
ill-smelling public cab, and when we reentered our little world it
seemed humble and narrow and mean--a ridiculous fool’s paradise.
We did not have our customary before-going-to-sleep talk that night,
about my business, about our investments, about the household, about
the children--we had two, the boys, then. We lay side by side, silent
and depressed. I heard her sigh several times, but I did not ask her
why--I understood. Finally I said to her: “Minnie, how’d you like to
live like the Judsons? You know we can afford to spread out a good
deal. Things have been coming our way for twelve years, and soon----”
She sighed again. “I don’t know whether I’m fitted for it,” she said;
“I think all those grand things would frighten me. I’d make a fool of
myself.”
It amuses me to recall how simple she was. Who would ever suspect
her of having been so, as she presides over our great establishments
in town and in the country as if she were born to it? “Nonsense!” I
answered. “You’d soon get used to it. You’re young yet, and a thousand
times better looking than fat old Mrs. Judson. You’ll learn in no time.
You’ll go up with me.”
“I don’t think they’re as happy as we are,” she said. “I ought to be
ashamed of myself to be so envious and ungrateful.” But she sighed
again.
I think she soon went to sleep. I lay awake hour after hour, a
confusion of thoughts in my mind--we worry a great deal over nice
points in morals when we are young. Then, suddenly, as it seemed to me,
the command of destiny came--“You can be sole master, in name as well
as in fact. You _are_ that business. He has no right there. Put him
out! He is only a drag, and will soon ruin everything. It is best for
him--and you _must_!”
I tossed and turned. I said to myself, “No! No!” But I knew what I
would do. I was not the man to toil for years for an object and then
let weakness cheat me out of it. I knew I would make short shrift of a
flabby and dangerous and short-sighted generosity when the time came.
One morning, about six months later, Mr. Judson came to me as I was
busy at my desk and laid down a note for five hundred thousand dollars,
signed by himself. “It’ll be all right for me to indorse the firm’s
name upon that, won’t it?” he said, in a careless tone, holding to a
corner of the note, as if he were assuming that I would say “Yes,” and
he could then take it away.
A thrill of delight ran through me at this stretch of the hand of my
opportunity for which I had been planning for years, and for which
I had been waiting in readiness for nearly three months. I looked
steadily at the note. “I don’t know,” I said, slowly, raising my eyes
to his. His eyes shifted and a hurt expression came into them, as if
he, not I, were refusing. “I’m busy just now. Leave it, won’t you? I’ll
look at it presently.”
“Oh, certainly,” he said, in a surprised, shy voice. I did not look up
at him again, but I saw that his hand--a narrow, smooth hand, not at
all like mine--was trembling as he drew it away.
We did not speak again until late in the afternoon. Then I had to go
to him about some other matter, and, as I was turning away, he said,
timidly: “Oh, about that note----”
“It can’t be indorsed by the firm,” I said, abruptly.
There was a long silence between us. I felt that he was inwardly
resenting what he must be calling the insolence of the “upstart” he had
“created.” I was hating him for the contemptuous thoughts that seemed
to me to be burning through the silence from his brain to mine, was
hating him for putting me in a false position even before myself with
his plausible appearance of being a generous gentleman--I abhor the
idea of “gentleman” in business; it upsets everything, at once.
When he did speak, he only said: “Why not?”
I went to my desk and brought a sheet of paper filled with figures. “I
have made this up since you spoke to me this morning,” I said, laying
it before him.
That was false--a trifling falsehood to prevent him from
misunderstanding my conduct in making a long and quiet investigation.
The truth is that that crucial paper was the work of a great many days,
and not a few nights, of thought and labour--it was my cast for my
million.
The paper seemed to show at a glance that the firm was practically
ruined, and that Mr. Judson himself was insolvent. It was to a certain
extent an over-statement, or, rather, a sort of anticipation of
conditions that would come to pass within a year or two if Mr. Judson
were permitted to hold to his course. While in a sense I took advantage
of his ignorance of our business and his own, and also of his lack of
familiarity with all commercial matters, yet, on the other hand, it
was not sensible that I should tide him over and carry him, and it was
vitally necessary that I should get my million. Had he been shrewder,
I should have got it anyhow, only I should have been compelled to use
methods that, perhaps, would have seemed less merciful.
I sat beside him as he read; and, while I pitied him, for I am human,
after all, I felt more strongly a sense of triumph, that I, the poor,
the obscure, by sheer force of intellect, had raised myself up to where
I had my foot upon the neck of this proud man, ranking so high among
New York’s distinguished merchants and citizens. I have had many a
triumph since, and over men far superior to Judson; but I do not think
that I have ever so keenly enjoyed any other victory as this, my first
and most important.
Still, I pitied him as he read, with face growing older and older, and,
with his pride shot through the vitals, quivering in its death agony.
I said, gently, when he had finished and had buried his face in his
hands: “Now, do you understand, Mr. Judson, why I won’t sign away my
commercial honour and my children’s bread?”
He shrank and shivered, as if, instead of having spoken kindly to him,
I had struck him. “Spare me!” he said, brokenly. “For God’s sake, spare
me!” and, after a moment, he groaned and exclaimed: “and I--_I_--have
ruined this house, established by my grandfather and held in honour for
half a century!” A longer pause, then he lifted his haggard face--he
looked seventy rather than fifty-five; his eyeballs were sunk in deep,
blue-black sockets; his whole expression was an awful warning of the
consequences of recklessness in business. I have never forgotten it. “I
trust you,” he said; “what shall I do?”
He placed himself entirely in my hands; or, rather, he left his affairs
where they had been, except when he was muddling them, for more than
six years. I dealt generously by him, for I bought him out by the
use of my excellent personal credit, and left him a small fortune in
such shape that he could easily manage it. He was free of all business
cares; I had taken upon my shoulders not only the responsibilities of
that great business, but also a load of debt which would have staggered
and frightened a man of less courageous judgment.
I did not see him when the last papers were signed--he was ill and
they were sent to his house. Two or three weeks later I heard that he
was convalescent and went to see him. Now that he was no longer in my
way, and that the debt of gratitude was transferred from me to him, I
had only the kindliest, friendliest feelings for him. Those few weeks
had made a great change in me. I had grown, I had come into my own,
I realised how high I was above the mass of my fellow-men, and I
was insisting upon and was receiving the respect that was my due. My
sensations, as I entered the Judson house, were vastly different from
what they were when the pompous butler admitted me on the occasion
of the one previous visit, and I could see that he felt strongly the
alteration in my station. I felt generous pity as I went into the
library and looked down at the broken old failure huddled in a big
chair. What an unlovely thing is failure, especially grey-haired
failure! I said to myself: “How fortunate for him that this helpless
creature fell into my hands instead of into the hands of some rascal or
some cruel and vindictive man!” I was about to speak, but something in
his steady gaze restrained me.
“I have admitted you,” he said, in a surprisingly steady voice, when he
had looked me through and through, “because I wish you to hear from me
that I know the truth. My son-in-law returned from Europe last week,
and, learning what changes had been made, went over all the papers.”
He looked as if he expected me to flinch. But I did not. Was not my
conscience clear?
“I know how basely you have betrayed me,” he went on. “I thank you for
not taking everything. I confess your generosity puzzles me. However,
you have done nothing for which the law can touch you. What you have
stolen is securely yours. I wish you joy of it.”
My temper is not of the sweetest--dealing with the trickeries and
stupidities of little men soon exhausts the patience of a man who has
much to do in the world, and knows how it should be done. But never
before or since have I been so insanely angry. I burst into a torrent
of abuse. He rang the bell; and, when the servant came, calm and clear
above my raging rose his voice, saying, “Robert, show this person to
the door.” For the moment my mind seemed paralysed. I left, probably
looking as base and guilty as he with his wounded vanity and his
sufferings from the loss of all he had thrown away imagined me to be.
I confess that that was a very bad quarter of an hour. But, to make
a large success in this world, and in the brief span of a lifetime,
one must submit to discomforts of that kind occasionally. There are
compensating hours. I had one last week when I attended the dedication
of the splendid two-million-dollar recitation hall I have given to ----
University.
Not until I was several blocks from Judson’s did the sense of my
wrongs sting me into rage again. I remember that I said: “Infamous
ingratitude! I save this fine gentleman from bankruptcy, and my reward
is that he calls me a thief--me, a millionaire!”
Millionaire! In that word there was a magic balm for all the wounds to
my pride and my then supersensitive conscience--a justification of the
past, a guarantee of the future.
With my million safely achieved, I looked about me as a conqueror looks
upon the conquered. A thousand dollars saved is the first step toward
a competence; a million dollars achieved is the first step toward a
Crœsus; and, in matters of money, as in everything else, “it is the
first step that counts,” as the French say. I was filled with the
passion for more, more, more. I felt myself, in imagination, growing
mightier and mightier, lifting myself higher and more dazzlingly
above the dull mass of work-a-day people with their routines of petty
concerns.
In the days of our modesty my wife used to plan that we would retire
when we had twenty thousand a year--enough, she then thought, to
provide for every want, reasonable or unreasonable, that we and the
children could have. Now, she would have scorned the idea of retiring
as contemptuously as I would. She was eager to do her part in the
process of expansion and aggrandisement, was eager to see us socially
established, to put our children in the position to make advantageous
marriages. We would be outshone in New York by none!
To win a million is to taste blood. The million-mania--for, in a sense,
I’ll admit it is a mania--is roused and put upon the scent, and it
never sleeps again, nor is its appetite ever satisfied or even made
less ravenous.
A few years, and I left dry-goods for finance, where the pursuit of my
passion was more direct and more rapidly successful. Every day I fixed
my thoughts upon another million; and, as all who know anything about
the million-mania will tell you, the act of fixing the thought upon a
million, when one has earned the right to acquire millions, makes that
million yours, makes all who stand between you and it aggressors to be
clawed down and torn to pieces. As I grew my rights were respected more
and more deferentially. Men now bow before me. They understand that I
can administer great wealth to the best advantage, that I belong to
one of that small class of beings created to possess the earth and to
command the improvident and idealess inhabitants thereof how and where
and when to work.
My family?
I confess they have not risen to my level or to the opportunities I
have made for them. Naturally, with great wealth, the old simple
family relationship was broken up. That was to be expected--the duties
of people in our position do not permit indulgence in the simple
emotions and pastimes of the family life of the masses. But neither,
on the other hand, was it necessary that my wife should become a cold
and calculating social figure, full of vanity and superciliousness,
instead of maintaining the proud dignity of her position as my wife.
Nor was it necessary that my children should become selfish, heartless,
pleasure-seekers, caring nothing for me except as a source of money.
I suppose I am in part responsible--my great enterprises have left
me little time for the small details of life, such as the training
of children. They were admirably educated, too. I provided the best
governesses and masters, and saw to it that they learned all that a
lady or a gentleman should know; and in respect of dress and manners I
admit that they do very well, indeed. Possibly, the complete breaking
up of the family, except as it is held together by my money, is due to
the fact that we see so little of one another, each having his or her
separate establishment. Possibly I am a little old-fashioned, a little
too exacting, in my idea of wife and children. Certainly they are
aristocratic enough.
My son James is the thorn in my side. And, whenever I have a moment’s
rest from my affairs, I find myself thinking of him, worrying over him.
The latest development in his character is certainly disquieting.
He was twenty-five years old yesterday. He was educated at our most
aristocratic university here, and at one in Europe of the same kind. It
was his mother’s dream that he should be “brought up as a gentleman”;
and that fell in with my ideas, for I did not wish him to be a
money-maker, but the head of the family I purposed to found upon my
millions, which are already numerous enough to secure it for many
generations. “There is no call for him to struggle and toil as I have,”
I said to myself. “The sort of financial ability I possess is born
in a man and can’t be taught or transmitted by birth. He would make
a small showing, at best, as a business man. As a gentleman he will
shine. He only needs just enough business training to enable him to
supervise those who will take care of his fortune and that of the rich
woman he will marry.” I was determined that he should marry in his own
class--and, indeed, he is not a sentimentalist, and, therefore, is not
likely to disregard my wishes in that matter.
When he was eighteen I caught him in a fashionable gambling-house one
night when I thought he was at his college. I could not but admire
the coolness with which he made the best of it: stood beside me as I
sat playing faro, then went over to a roulette table and lost several
hundred dollars on a few spins of the ball. But the next day I took him
sharply to task--it was one thing for me to play, at my age and with my
fortune, I explained, but not the same for him, at his age, and with
nothing but an allowance.
He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Really, governor,” he said,
“a man must do as the other fellows in his set do. Didn’t you see whom
I was with? If you wish me to travel with those people I must go their
gait.”
That was not unreasonable, so I dismissed him with a cautioning. At
twenty he went abroad, and, a year after he had returned, his bills
and drafts were still coming. I sent for him. “Why don’t you pay your
debts, sir?” I demanded, angrily, for such conduct was directly
contrary to my teaching and example.
He gave me his grandest look--he is a handsome, aristocratic-looking
fellow, away ahead of what Judson must have been at his age. “But, my
dear governor,” he said, “a gentleman pays his debts when he feels like
it.”
“No, he don’t,” I answered, furiously, for my instinct of commercial
promptness was roused. “A scoundrel pays his debts when he feels like
it. A gentleman pays ’em when they’re due.”
His reply was a smile of approval, and “Excellent! The best epigram
I’ve heard since I left Paris. You’re as great a genius at making
phrases as you are at making money.”
I caught him speculating in Wall Street--“One must amuse one’s self,”
he said, cheerfully. But I was not to be put off this time. I had
had some reports on his life--many wild escapades, many fantastic
extravagances. The terrible downfall of two young men of his set made
me feel that the time for discipline was at hand. But, as I was very
busy, I had only time to read him a brief lecture on speculation and to
exact from him a promise that he would keep out of Wall Street. He gave
the promise so reluctantly that I felt confident he meant to keep it.
A week ago yesterday morning he came into my bedroom, before I was up,
and said to my valet, Pigott: “Just take yourself off, Piggy!” And,
when we were alone, he began: “Mother said I was to come straight to
you.”
“What is it?” I demanded, my anger rising--experience has taught me
that the more offhand his manner, the more serious the offence I should
have to repair.
“I broke my promise to you about speculating, sir,” he replied, much as
if he were apologising for having jostled me in a crowd.
I sat up in bed, feeling as if I were afire. “And does a gentleman keep
his promises only when he feels like it?” I asked.
“But that isn’t all,” he went on. “My pool’s gone smash--you were on
the other side and I never suspected it. And I’ve got a million to pay,
besides----”
He took out his cigarette case, and lighted a cigarette with great
deliberation.
“Besides--what?” I said, wishing to know all before I began upon him.
“I wrote your name across the back of a bit of paper,” he answered,
hiding his face in a big cloud of smoke.
I fell back in the bed, feeling as if I had been struck on the head
with a heavy weight. “You scoundrel!” I gasped.
“Sour grapes,” he muttered, his cheeks aflame and his eyes blazing at
me.
[Illustration: “_‘Don’t get apoplectic,’ he said, calmly; ‘you know you
stole your start.’_”]
“What do you mean?” I said, my mind in confusion.
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes,” he quoted, “and the children’s
teeth are set on edge.”
I half sprang from the bed at this insolence. “Don’t get apoplectic,”
he said, calmly; “you know you stole your start.”
At this infamous calumny I leaped upon him and flung him bodily out of
the room. It was several hours before I was calm enough to dismiss the
incident sufficiently to take up my affairs.
This has come at a particularly unfortunate time for me, as I am in the
midst of several delicate, vast, and intricate negotiations, involving
many millions and demanding all my thought. He has gone down on Long
Island in care of his mother. It will be at least ten days before I
can take up his case and dispose of it. I am undecided whether to give
him another trial under severe conditions or to cast him off and make
his younger brother my principal heir and successor. I confess to a
weakness for him--possibly because he is so audacious and fearless.
His younger brother is entirely too smooth and diplomatic with me; if
I should elevate him, he would fancy that he had deceived me with his
transparent tricks.
However, we shall see.