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."
He cast on me a scandalized look.
"Very good, sir!" he answered and touched his cap.
He must have thought me either a raving lunatic or an unabashed
adventurer. A moment more and the car disappeared in the direction of
the city. I was free! The girl made no attempt to conceal her amusement.
Behind the door was a gray felt hat. I took it down and looked at the
size. It was within a quarter of my own.
"Look here," I suggested, holding out a five-dollar bill, "I want a
Wishing Cap. Let me take this, will you?"
"The house is yours!" she laughed.
Over on the candy counter was a tray of corncob pipes. I helped myself
to one, to a package of tobacco and a box of matches. I hung my derby on
the vacant peg behind the door. Then I turned to my hostess.
"You're a good girl," I said. "Good luck to you."
For a moment something softer came into her eyes.
"And good luck to you, sir!" she replied. As I passed down the steps she
threw after me: "I hope you'll find--what you're looking for!"
* * * * *
In my old felt hat and smoking my corncob I trudged along the road in
the mellow sunlight, almost happy. By and by I reached the trolley line;
and for five cents, in company with a heterogeneous lot of country
folks, Italian laborers and others, was transported an absurdly long
distance across the state of New York to a wayside station.
There I sat on a truck on the platform and chatted with a husky,
broad-shouldered youth, who said he was the "baggage smasher," until
finally a little smoky train appeared and bore me southward. It was the
best holiday I had had in years--and I was sorry when we pulled into
Pleasantdale and I took to my legs again.
In the fading afternoon light it indeed seemed a pleasant, restful
place. Comfortable cottages, each in its own yard, stood in neighborly
rows along the shaded street. Small boys were playing football in a
field adjoining a schoolhouse.
Presently the buildings became more scattered and I found myself
following a real country road, though still less than half a mile from
the station. Ahead it divided and in the resulting triangle, behind a
well-clipped hedge, stood a pretty cottage with a red roof--Hastings', I
was sure.
I tossed away my pipe and opened the gate. A rather pretty woman of
about thirty-five was reading in a red hammock; there were half a dozen
straw easy chairs and near by a teatable, with the kettle steaming. Mrs.
Hastings looked up at my step on the gravel path and smiled a welcome.
"Jim has been playing golf over at the club--he didn't expect you until
five," she said, coming to meet me.
"I don't care whether he comes or not," I returned gallantly. "I want to
see you. Besides, I'm as hungry as a bear." She raised her eyebrows. "I
had only an egg or so and a glass of milk for luncheon, and I have
walked--miles!"
"Oh!" she exclaimed. I could see she had had quite a different idea of
her erstwhile employer; but my statement seemed to put us on a more
friendly footing from the start.
"I love walking too," she hastened to say. "Isn't it wonderful to-day?
We get weeks of such weather as this every autumn." She busied herself
over the teacups and then, stepping inside the door for a moment,
returned with a plate piled high with buttered toast, and another with
sandwiches of grape jelly.
"Carmen is out," she remarked; "otherwise you should be served in
greater style."
"Carmen?"
"Carmen is our maid, butler and valet," she explained. "It's such a
relief to get her out of the way once in a while and have the house all
to oneself. That's one of the reasons I enjoy our two-weeks' camping
trip so much every summer."
"You like the woods?"
"Better than anything, I think--except just being at home here. And the
children have the time of their lives--fishing and climbing trees, and
watching for deer in the boguns."
The gate clicked at that moment and Hastings, golf bag on shoulders,
came up the path. He looked lean, brown, hard and happy.
"Just like me to be late!" he apologized. "I had no idea it would take
me so long to beat Colonel Bogey."
"Your excuses are quite unnecessary. Mrs. Hastings and I have discovered
that we are natural affinities," said I.
My stenographer, quite at ease, leaned his sticks in a corner and helped
himself to a cup of tea and a couple of sandwiches, which in my opinion
rivaled my eggs and milk of the early afternoon. My walk had made me
comfortably tired; my lungs were distended with cool country air; my
head was clear, and this domestic scene warmed the cockles of my heart.
"How is the Chicopee & Shamrock reorganization coming on?" asked
Hastings, striving to be polite by suggesting a congenial subject for
conversation.
"I don't know," I retorted. "I've forgotten all about it until Monday
morning. On the other hand, how are your children coming on?"
"Sylvia is out gathering chestnuts," answered Mrs. Hastings, "and Tom is
playing football. They'll be home directly. I wonder if you wouldn't
like Jim to show you round our place?"
"Just the thing," I answered, for I guessed she had household duties to
perform.
"Of course you'll stay to supper?" she pressed me.
I hesitated, though I knew I should stay, all the time.
"Well--if it really won't put you out," I replied. "I suppose there are
evening trains?"
"One every hour. We'll get you home by ten o'clock."
"I'll have to telephone," I said, remembering my wife's regular
Saturday-night bridge party.
"That's easily managed," said Hastings. "You can speak to your own house
right from my library."
Again I barefacedly excused myself to my butler on the ground of
important business. As we strolled through the gateway we were met by a
sturdy little boy with tousled hair. He had on an enormous gray sweater
and was hugging a pigskin.
"We beat 'em!" he shouted, unabashed by my obviously friendly presence.
"Eighteen to nothing!"
"Tom is twelve," said Hastings with a shade of pride in his voice. "Yes,
the schools here are good. I expect to have him ready for college in
five years more."
"What are you going to make of him?" I asked.
"A civil engineer, I think," he answered. "You see, I'm a crank on fresh
air and building things--and he seems to be like me. This cooped-up city
life is pretty narrowing, don't you think?"
"It's fierce!" I returned heartily, with more warmth than elegance.
"Sometimes I wish I could chuck the whole business and go to farming."
"Why not?" he asked as we climbed a small rise behind the house. "Here's
my farm--fifteen acres. We raise most of our own truck."
Below the hill a cornfield, now yellow with pumpkins, stretched to the
farther road. Nearer the house was a kitchen garden, with an apple
orchard beyond. A man in shirtsleeves was milking a cow behind a tiny
barn.
"I bought this place three years ago for thirty-nine hundred dollars,"
said my stenographer. "They say it is worth nearer six thousand now.
Anyhow it is worth a hundred thousand to me!"
A little girl, with bulging apron, appeared at the edge of the orchard
and came running toward us.
"What have you got there?" called her father.
"Oh, daddy! Such lovely chestnuts!" cried the child. "And there are
millions more of them!"
"We'll roast 'em after supper," said her father. "Toddle along now and
wash up."
She put up a rosy, beaming face to be kissed and dashed away toward the
house. I tried to remember what either of my two girls had been like at
her age, but for some strange reason I could not.
Across the road the fertile countryside sloped away into a distant
valley, hemmed in by dim blue hills, below which the sun had already
sunk, leaving only a gilded edge behind. The air was filled with a soft,
smoky haze. A church bell in the village struck six o'clock.
"_The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way_,"
I murmured.
"For 'plowman' read 'golfer,'" smiled my host. "By George, though--it is
pretty good to be alive!" The air had turned crisp and we both
instinctively took a couple of deep breaths. "Makes the city look like
thirty cents!" he ejaculated. "Of course it isn't like New York or
Southampton."
"No, thank God! It isn't!" I muttered as we wandered toward the house.
"I hope you don't mind an early supper," apologized Mrs. Hastings as we
entered; "but Jim gets absolutely ravenous. You see, on weekdays his
lunch is at best a movable feast."
Our promptly served meal consisted of soup, scrambled eggs and bacon,
broiled chops, fried potatoes, peas, salad, apple pie, cheese, grapes
plucked fresh from the garden wall, and black coffee, distilled from a
shining coffee machine. Mrs. Hastings brought the things hot from the
kitchen and dished them herself. Tom and Sylvia, carefully spruced up,
ate prodigiously and then helped clear away the dishes, while I produced
my cigar case.
Then Hastings led me across the hall to a room about twelve feet square,
the walls of which were lined with books, where a wood fire was already
crackling cozily. Motioning me to an old leather armchair, he pulled up
a wooden rocker before the mantel and, leaning over, laid a regiment of
chestnuts before the blazing logs.
I stretched out my legs and took a long pull on one of my
Carona-Caronas. It all seemed too good to be true. Only six hours before
in my marble entrance hall I had listened disgustedly to the cackle of
my wife's luncheon party behind the tapestry of my own dining room.
After all, how easy it was to be happy! Here was Hastings, jolly as a
clam and living like a prince on--what? I wondered.
"Hastings," I said, "do you mind telling me how much it costs you to
live like this?"
"Not at all," he replied--"though I never figured it out exactly. Let's
see. Five per cent on the cost of the place--say, two hundred dollars.
Repairs and insurance a hundred. That's three hundred, isn't it? We pay
the hired man thirty-five dollars and Carmen eighteen dollars a month,
and give 'em their board--about six hundred and fifty more. So far nine
hundred and fifty. Our vegetables and milk cost us practically
nothing--meat and groceries about seventy-five a month--nine hundred a
year.
"We have one horse; but in good weather I use my bicycle to go to the
station. We cut our own ice in the pond back of the orchard. The schools
are free. I cut quite a lot of wood myself, but my coal comes high--must
cost me at least a hundred and fifty a year. I don't have many doctors'
bills, living out here; but the dentist hits us for about twenty-five
dollars every six months--that's fifty more. My wife spends about three
hundred and the children as much more. Of course that's fairly liberal.
One doesn't need ballgowns in our village.
"My own expenses are, railroad fare, lunches, tobacco--I smoke a pipe
mostly--and clothes--probably about five hundred in all. We go on a big
bat once a month and dine at a table-d'hôte restaurant, and take in the
opera or the play. That costs some--about ten dollars a clip--say,
eighty for the season; and, of course, I blow the kids to a camping trip
every summer, which sets me back a good hundred and fifty. How does that
come out?"
I had jotted the items down, as he went along, on the back of an
envelope.
"Thirty-three hundred and eighty dollars," I said, adding them up.
"It seems a good deal," he commented, turning and gazing into the fire;
"but I have usually managed to lay up about fifteen hundred every
year--besides, of course, the little I give away."
I sat stunned. Thirty-three hundred dollars!--I spent seventy-two
thousand!--and the man lived as well as I did! What did I have that he
had not? But Hastings was saying something, still with his back toward
me.
"I suppose you thought I must be an ungrateful dog not to jump at the
offer you made me this morning," he remarked in an embarrassed manner.
"It's worried me a lot all day. I'm really tremendously gratified at
your kindness. I couldn't very well explain myself, and I don't know
what possessed me to say what I did about my not being willing to
exchange places with you. But, you see, I'm over forty. That makes a
heap of difference. I'm as good a stenographer as you can find, and so
long as my health holds out I can be sure of at least fifty dollars a
week, besides what I earn outside.
"I've never had any kink for the law. I don't think I'd be a success at
it; and frankly, saving your presence, I don't like it. A lot of it is
easy money and a lot of it is money earned in the meanest way there
is--playing dirty tricks; putting in the wrong a fellow that's really
right; aggravating misunderstandings and profiting by the quarrels
people get into. You're a high-class, honorable man, and you don't see
the things I see." I winced. If he only knew, I had seen a good deal!
"But I go round among the other law offices, and I tell you it's a
demoralizing profession.
"It's all right to reorganize a railroad; but in general litigation it
seems to me as if the lawyers spend most of their time trying to make
the judge and jury believe the witnesses are all criminals. Everything a
man says on the stand or has ever done in his life is made the subject
of a false inference--an innuendo. The law isn't constructive--it's
destructive; and that's why I want my boy to be a civil engineer."
He paused, abashed at his own heat.
"Well," I interjected, "it's a harsh arraignment; but there's a great
deal of truth in what you say. Wouldn't you like to make big money?"
"Big money! I do make big money--for a man of my class," he replied with
a gentle smile. "I wouldn't know what to do with much more. I've got
health and a comfortable home, the affection of an honest woman and two
fine children. I work hard, sleep like a log, and get a couple of sets
of tennis or a round of golf on Saturdays and Sundays. I have the
satisfaction of knowing I give you your money's worth for the salary you
pay me. My kids have as good teachers as there are anywhere. We see
plenty of people and I belong to a club or two. I bear a good reputation
in the town and try to keep things going in the right direction. We have
all the books and magazines we want to read. What's more, I don't worry
about trying to be something I'm not."
"How do you mean?" I asked, feeling that his talk was money in my moral
pocket.
"Oh, I've seen a heap of misery in New York due to just wanting to get
ahead--I don't know where; fellows that are just crazy to make 'big
money' as you call it, in order to ride in motors and get into some sort
of society. All the clerks, office boys and stenographers seem to want
to become stockbrokers. Personally I don't see what there is in it for
them. I don't figure out that my boy would be any happier with two
million dollars than without. If he had it he would be worrying all the
time for fear he wasn't getting enough fun for his money. And as for my
girl I want her to learn to do something! I want her to have the
discipline that comes from knowing how to earn her own living. Of course
that's one of the greatest satisfactions there is in life anyway--doing
some one thing as well as it can be done."
"Wouldn't you like your daughter to marry?" I demanded.
"Certainly--if she can find a clean man who wants her. Why, it goes
without saying, that is life's greatest happiness--that and having
children."
"Certainly!" I echoed with an inward qualm.
"Suppose she doesn't marry though? That's the point. She doesn't want to
hang round a boarding house all her life when everybody is busy doing
interesting things. I've got a theory that the reason rich
people--especially rich women--get bored is because they don't know
anything about real life. Put one of 'em in a law office, hitting a
typewriter at fifteen dollars a week, and in a month she'd wake up to
what was really going on--she'd be _alive_!"
"'_The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings_!'"
said I. "What's Sylvia going to do?"
"Oh, she's quite a clever little artist." He handed me some charming
sketches in pencil that were lying on the table. "I think she may make
an illustrator. Heaven knows we need 'em! I'll give her a course at
Pratt Institute and then at the Academy of Design; and after that, if
they think she is good enough, I'll send her to Paris."
"I wish I'd done the same thing with my girls!" I sighed. "But the
trouble is--the trouble is--You see, if I had they wouldn't have been
doing what their friends were doing. They'd have been out of it."
"No; they wouldn't like that, of course," agreed Hastings respectfully.
"They would want to be 'in it'"
I looked at him quickly to see whether his remark had a double entendre.
"I don't see very much of my daughters," I continued. "They've got away
from me somehow."
"That's the tough part of it," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose rich
people are so busy with all the things they have to do that they haven't
much time for fooling round with their children. I have a good time with
mine though. They're too young to get away anyhow. We read French
history aloud every evening after supper. Sylvia is almost an expert on
the Duke of Guise and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew."
We smoked silently for some moments. Hastings' ideas interested me, but
I felt that he could give me something more personal--of more value to
myself. The fellow was really a philosopher in his quiet way.
"After all, you haven't told me what you meant by saying you wouldn't
change places with me," I said abruptly. "What did you mean by that? I
want to know."
"I wish you would forget I ever said it, sir," he murmured.
"No," I retorted, "I can't forget it. You needn't spare me. This talk is
not _ex cathedra_--it's just between ourselves. When you've told me why,
then I will forget it. This is man to man."
"Well," he answered slowly, "it would take me a long time to put it in
just the right way. There was nothing personal in what I said this
morning. I was thinking about conditions in general--the whole thing. It
can't go on!"
"What can't go on?"
"The terrible burden of money," he said.
"Terrible burden of money!" I repeated. What did he mean?
"The weight of it--that's bowing people down and choking them up. It's
like a ball and chain. I meant I wouldn't change places with any man in
the millionaire class--I couldn't stand the complexities and
responsibilities. I believe the time is coming when no citizen will be
permitted to receive an income from his inherited or accumulated
possessions greater than is good for him. You may say that's the wildest
sort of socialism. Perhaps it is. But it's socialism looked at from a
different angle from the platform orators--the angle of the individual.
"I don't believe a man's money should be taken away from him and
distributed round for the sake of other people--but for the protection
of the man himself. There's got to be a pecuniary safety valve. Every
dollar over a certain amount, just like every extra pound of steam in a
boiler, is a thing of danger. We want health in the individual and in
the state--not disease.
"Let the amount of a man's income be five, ten, fifteen or twenty
thousand dollars--the exact figure doesn't matter; but there is a limit
at which wealth becomes a drag and a detriment instead of a benefit! I'd
base the legality of a confiscatory income tax on the constitutionality
of any health regulation or police ordinance. People shouldn't be
permitted to injure themselves--or have poison lying round. Certainly
it's a lesson that history teaches on every page.
"Besides everybody needs something to work for--to keep him fit--at
least that's the way it looks to me. Nations--let alone mere
individuals--have simply gone to seed, died of dry rot because they no
longer had any stimulus. A fellow has got to have some idea in the back
of his head as to what he's after--and the harder it is for him to get
it, the better, as a rule, it is for him. Good luck is the worst enemy a
heap of people have. Misfortune spurs a man on, tries him out and
develops him--makes him more human."
"Ever played in hard luck?" I queried.
"I? Sure, I have," answered Hastings cheerfully. "And I wouldn't worry
much if it came my way again. I could manage to get along pretty
comfortably on less than half I've got. I like my home; but we could be
happy anywhere so long as we had ourselves and our health and a few
books. However, I wasn't thinking of myself. I've got a friend in the
brokering business who says it's the millionaires that do most of the
worrying anyhow. Naturally a man with a pile of money has to look after
it; but what puzzles me is why anybody should want it in the first
place."
He searched along a well-filled and disordered shelf of shabby books.
"Here's what William James says about it:
"'We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who
elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. We have
lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of
poverty could have meant--the liberation from material attachments; the
unbribed soul; the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we
are or do, and not by what we have; the right to fling away our life at
any moment irresponsibly--the more athletic trim, in short the moral
fighting shape.... It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty
among the educated class is the worst moral disease from which our
civilization suffers.'"
"I guess he's about right," I agreed.
"That's my idea exactly," answered Hastings. "As I look at it the curse
of most of the people living on Fifth Avenue is that they're perfectly
safe. You could take away nine-tenths of what they've got and they'd
still have about a hundred times more money than they needed to be
comfortable. They're like a whole lot of fat animals in an
inclosure--they're fed three or four times a day, but the wire fence
that protects them from harm deprives them of any real liberty. Or
they're like goldfish swimming round and round in a big bowl. They can
look through sort of dimly; but they can't get out! If they really knew,
they'd trade their security for their freedom any time.
"Perfect safety isn't an unmixed blessing by any means. Look at the
photographs of the wild Indians--the ones that carried their lives in
their hands every minute--and there's something stern and noble about
their faces. Put an Indian on a reservation and he takes to drinking
whisky. It was the same way with the chaps that lived in the Middle Ages
and had to wear shirts of chainmail. It kept 'em guessing. That's merely
one phase of it.
"The real thing to put the bite into life is having a Cause. People
forget how to make sacrifices--or become afraid to. After all, even
dying isn't such a tremendous trick. Plenty of people have done it just
for an idea--wanted to pray in their own way. But this modern way of
living takes all the sap out of folks. They get an entirely false
impression of the relative values of things. It takes a failure or a
death in the family to wake them up to the comparative triviality of the
worth of money as compared, for instance, to human affection--any of the
real things of life.
"I don't object to inequality of mere wealth in itself, because I
wouldn't dignify money to that extent. Of course I do object to a
situation where the rich man can buy life and health for his sick child
and the poor man can't. Too many sick babies! That'll be attended to,
all right, in time. I wouldn't take away one man's money for the sake of
giving it to others--not a bit of it. But what I would do would be to
put it out of a man's power to poison himself with money.
"Suicide is made a crime under the law. How about moral and intellectual
suicide? It ought to be prevented for the sake of the state. No citizen
should be allowed to stultify himself with luxury any more than he
should be permitted to cut off his right hand. Excuse me for being
didactic--but you said you'd like to get my point of view and I've tried
to give it to you in a disjointed sort of way. I'd sooner my son would
have to work for his living than not, and I'd rather he'd spend his life
contending with the forces of nature and developing the country than in
quarreling over the division of profits that other men had earned."
I had listened attentively to what Hastings had to say; and, though I
did not agree with all of it, I was forced to admit the truth of a large
part. He certainly seemed to have come nearer to solving the problem
than I had even been able to. Yet it appeared to my conservative mind
shockingly socialistic and chimerical.
"So you really think," I retorted, "that the state ought to pass laws
which should prevent the accumulation--or at least the retention--of
large fortunes?"
Hastings smiled apologetically.
"Well," he answered, "I don't know just how far I should advocate active
governmental interference, though it's a serious question. You're a
thousand times better qualified to express an opinion on that than I am.
"When I spoke about health and police regulations I was talking
metaphorically. I suppose my real idea is that the moral force of the
community--public opinion--ought to be strong enough to compel a man to
live so that such laws would be unnecessary. His own public spirit, his
conscience, or whatever you call it, should influence him to use
whatever he has above a certain amount for the common good--to turn it
back where he got it, or somebody else got it, instead of demoralizing
the whole country and setting an example of waste and extravagance. That
kind of thing does an awful lot of harm. I see it all round me. But, of
course, the worst sufferer is the man himself, and his own good sense
ought to jack him up.
"Still you can't force people to keep healthy. If a man is bound to
sacrifice everything for money and make himself sick with it, perhaps he
ought to be prevented."
"Jim!" cried Mrs. Hastings, coming in with a pitcher of cider and some
glasses. "I could hear you talking all the way out in the kitchen. I'm
sure you've bored our guest to death. Why, the chestnuts are burned to a
crisp!"
"He hasn't bored me a bit," I answered; "in fact we are agreed on a
great many things. However, after I've had a glass of that cider I must
start back to town."
"We'd love to have you spend the night," she urged. "We've a nice little
guestroom over the library."
The invitation was tempting, but I wanted to get away and think. Also it
was my duty to look in on the bridge party before it became too sleepy
to recognize my presence. I drank my cider, bade my hostess good night
and walked to the station with Hastings. As we crossed the square to the
train he said:
"It was mighty good of you to come out here to see us and we both
appreciate it. Hope you'll forgive my bluntness this morning and for
shooting off my mouth so much this evening."
"My dear fellow," I returned, "that was what I came out for. You've
given me something to think about. I'm thinking already. You're quite
right. You'd be a fool to change places with anybody--let alone a
miserable millionaire."
* * * * *
In the smoker of the accommodation, to which I retired, I sat oblivious
of my surroundings until we entered the tunnel. So far as I could see,
Hastings had it on me at every turn--at thirty-three hundred a
year--considerably less than half of what I paid out annually in
servants' wages. And the exasperating part of it all was that, though I
spent seventy-two thousand a year, I did not begin to be as happy as he
was! Not by a jugful. Face to face with the simple comfort of the
cottage I had just left, its sincerity and affection, its thrifty
self-respect, its wide interests, I confessed that I had not been myself
genuinely contented since I left my mother's house for college, thirty
odd years before. I had become the willing victim of a materialistic
society.
I had squandered my life in a vain effort to purchase happiness with
money--an utter impossibility, as I now only too plainly saw. I was
poisoned with it, as Hastings had said--sick _with_ it and _sick of_ it.
I was one of Hastings' chaingangs of prosperous prisoners--millionaires
shackled together and walking in lockstep; one of his school of goldfish
bumping their noses against the glass of the bowl in which they were
confined by virtue of their inability to live outside the medium to
which they were accustomed.
I was through with it! From that moment I resolved to become a free
man; living my own life; finding happiness in things that were worth
while. I would chuck the whole nauseating business of valets and scented
baths; of cocktails, clubs and cards; of an unwieldy and tiresome
household of lazy servants; of the ennui of heavy dinners; and of a
family the members of which were strangers to each other. I could and
would easily cut down my expenditures to not more than thirty thousand a
year; and with the balance of my income I would look after some of those
sick babies Hastings had mentioned.
I would begin by taking a much smaller house and letting half the
servants go, including my French cook. I had for a long time realized
that we all ate too much. I would give up one of my motors and entertain
more simply. We would omit the spring dash to Paris, and I would insist
on a certain number of evenings each week which the family should spend
together, reading aloud or talking over their various plans and
interests. It did not seem by any means impossible in the prospect and I
got a considerable amount of satisfaction from planning it all out. My
life was to be that of a sort of glorified Hastings. After my healthy,
peaceful day in the quiet country I felt quite light-hearted--as nearly
happy as I could remember having been for years.
It was raining when I got out at the Grand Central Station, and as I
hurried along the platform to get a taxi I overtook an acquaintance of
mine--a social climber. He gave me a queer look in response to my
greeting and I remembered that I had on the old gray hat I had taken
from the quick lunch.
"I've been off for a tramp in the country," I explained, resenting my
own instinctive embarrassment.
"Ah! Don't say! Didn't know you went in for that sort of thing! Well,
good night!"
He sprang into the only remaining taxi without asking me to share it and
vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke. I was in no mood for waiting;
besides I was going to be democratic. I took a surface car up Lexington
Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent
Italian gentleman for thirty blocks. The car was intolerably stuffy and
smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic. By the time I reached the
cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour. I turned up my coat
collar and ran to my house.
Somehow I felt like a small boy as I threw myself panting inside my own
marble portal. My butler expressed great sympathy for my condition and
smuggled me quickly upstairs. I fancy he suspected there was something
discreditable about my absence. A pungent aroma floated up from the
drawing room, where the bridge players were steadily at work. I confess
to feeling rather dirty, wet and disreputable.
"I'm sorry, sir," said my butler as he turned on the electric switch in
my bedroom, "but I didn't expect you back this evening, and so I told
Martin he might go out."
A wave of irritation, almost of anger, swept over me. Martin was my
perfect valet.
"What the devil did you do that for!" I snapped.
Then, realizing my inconsistency, I was ashamed, utterly humiliated and
disgusted with myself. This, then, was all that my resolution amounted
to after all!
"I am very sorry, sir," repeated my butler. "Very sorry, sir, indeed.
Shall I help you off with your things?"
"Oh, that's all right!" I exclaimed, somewhat to his surprise. "Don't
bother about me. I'll take care of myself."
"Can't I bring you something?" he asked solicitously.
"No, thanks!" said I. "I don't need anything that you can give me!"
"Very good, sir," he replied. "Good night, sir."
"Good night," I answered, and he closed the door noiselessly.
I lit a cigarette and, tossing off my coat, sank into a chair. My mere
return to that ordered elegance seemed to have benumbed my
individuality. Downstairs thirty of our most intimate friends were
amusing themselves at the cardtables, confident that at eleven-thirty
they would be served with supper consisting of salads, ice-cream and
champagne. They would not hope in vain. If they did not get it--speaking
broadly--they would not come again. They wanted us as we were--house,
food, trappings--the whole layout. They meant well enough. They simply
had to have certain things. If we changed our scale of living we should
lose the acquaintance of these people, and we should have nobody in
their place.
We had grown into a highly complicated system, in which we had a settled
orbit. This orbit was not susceptible of change unless we were willing
to turn everything topsy-turvy. Everybody would suppose we had lost our
money. And, not being brilliant or clever people, who paid their way as
they went by making themselves lively and attractive, it would be
assumed that we could not keep up our end; so we should be gradually
left out.
I said to myself that I ought not to care--that being left out was what
I wanted; but, all the same, I knew I did care. You cannot tear yourself
up by the roots at fifty unless you are prepared to go to a far country.
I was not prepared to do that at a moment's notice. I, too, was used to
a whole lot of things--was solidly imbedded in them.
My very house was an overwhelming incubus. I was like a miserable snail,
forever lugging my house round on my back--unable to shake it off. A
change in our mode of life would not necessarily in itself bring my
children any nearer to me; it would, on the contrary, probably
antagonize them. I had sowed the seed and I was reaping the harvest. My
professional life I could not alter. I had my private clients--my
regular business. Besides there was no reason for altering it. I
conducted it honorably and well enough.
Yet the calm consideration of those very difficulties in the end only
demonstrated the clearer to me the perilous state in which I was. The
deeper the bog, the more my spirit writhed to be free. Better, I
thought, to die struggling than gradually to sink down and be suffocated
beneath the mire of apathy and self-indulgence.
Hastings' little home--or something--had wrought a change in me. I had
gone through some sort of genuine emotional experience. It seemed
impossible to reform my mode of life and thought, but it was equally
incredible that I should fall back into my old indifference. Sitting
there alone in my chamber I felt like a man in a nightmare, who would
give his all to be able to rise, yet whose limbs were immovable, held by
some subtle and cruel power. I had read in novels about men agonized by
remorse and indecision. I now experienced those sensations myself. I
discovered they were not imaginary states.
My meditations were interrupted by the entrance of my wife, who, with an
anxious look on her face, inquired what was the matter. The butler had
said I seemed indisposed; so she had slipped away from our guests and
come up to see for herself. She was in full regalia--elaborate gown,
pearls, aigret.
"There's nothing the matter with me," I answered, though I know full
well I lied--I was poisoned.
"Well, that's a comfort, at any rate!" she replied, amiably enough.
"Where's Tom?" I asked wearily.
"I haven't any idea," she said frankly. "You know he almost never comes
home."
"And the girls?"
"Visiting the Devereuxs at Staatsburg," she answered. "Aren't you coming
down for some bridge?"
"No," I said. "To tell you the truth I never want to see a pack of cards
again. I want to cut the game. I'm sick of our life and the useless
extravagance. I want a change. Let's get rid of the whole thing--take a
smaller house--have fewer servants. Think of the relief!"
"What's the matter?" she cried sharply. "Have you lost money?"
Money! Money!
"No," I said, "I haven't lost money--I've lost heart!"
She eyed me distrustfully.
"Are you crazy?" she demanded.
"No," I answered. "I don't think I am."
"You act that way," she retorted. "It's a funny time to talk about
changing your mode of life--right in the middle of a bridge party! What
have you been working for all these years? And where do I come in? You
can go to your clubs and your office--anywhere; but all I've got is the
life you have taught me to enjoy! Tom is grown up and never comes near
me. And the girls--why, what do you think would happen to them if you
suddenly gave up your place in society? They'd never get married so long
as they lived. People would think you'd gone bankrupt! Really"--her eyes
filled and she dabbed at them with a Valenciennes handkerchief--"I think
it too heartless of you to come in this way--like a skeleton at the
feast--and spoil my evening!"
I felt a slight touch of remorse. I had broached the matter rather
roughly. I laid my hand on her shoulder--now so round and matronly, once
so slender.
"Anna," I said as tenderly as I could, "suppose I _did_ give it all up?"
She rose indignantly to her feet and shook off my hand.
"You'd have to get along without me!" she retorted; then, seeing the
anguish on my face, she added less harshly: "Take a brandy-and-soda and
go to bed. I'm sure you're not quite yourself."
I was struck by the chance significance of her phrase--"Not quite
yourself." No; ever since I had left the house that morning I had not
been quite myself. I had had a momentary glimpse--had for an instant
caught the glint of an angel's wing--but it was gone. I was almost
myself--my old self; yet not quite.
"I didn't mean to be unkind," I muttered. "Don't worry about me. I've
merely had a vision of what might have been, and it's disgusted me. Go
on down to the bridge fiends. I'll be along shortly--if you'll excuse my
clothes."
"Poor boy!" she sighed. "You're tired out! No; don't come down--in those
clothes!"
* * * * *
I laughed a hollow laugh when she had gone. Really there was something
humorous about it all. What was the use even of trying? I did not seem
even to belong in my own house unless my clothes matched the wall paper!
I lit cigarette after cigarette, staring blankly at my silk pajamas laid
out on the bed.
I could not change things! It was too late. I had brought up my son and
daughters to live in a certain kind of way, had taught them that
luxuries were necessities, had neglected them--had ruined them perhaps;
but I had no moral right now to annihilate that life--and their
mother's--without their consent. They might be poor things; but, after
all, they were my own. They were free, white and twenty-one. And I knew
they would simply think me mad!
I had a fixed place in a complicated system, with responsibilities and
duties I was morally bound to recognize. I could not chuck the whole
business without doing a great deal of harm. My life was not so simple
as all that. Any change--if it could be accomplished at all--would have
to be a gradual one and be brought about largely by persuasion. Could it
be accomplished?
It now seemed insuperably difficult. I was bound to the wheel--and the
habits of a lifetime, the moral pressure of my wife and children, the
example of society, and the force of superficial public opinion and
expectation were spinning it round and round in the direction of least
resistance. As well attempt to alter my course as to steer a locomotive
off the track! I could not ditch the locomotive, for I had a trainload
of passengers! And yet--
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. I--successful? Yes, success
had been mine; but success was failure--naught else--failure, absolute
and unmitigated! I had lost my wife and family, and my home had become
the resort of a crew of empty-headed coxcombs.
I wondered whether they were gone. I looked at the clock. It was
half-past twelve--Sunday morning. I opened my bedroom door and crept
downstairs. No; they were not gone--they had merely moved on to supper.
My library was in the front of the house, across the hall from the
drawing room, and I went in there and sank into an armchair by the fire.
The bridge party was making a great to-do and its strident laughter
floated up from below. By contrast the quiet library seemed a haven of
refuge. Here were the books I might have read--which might have been my
friends. Poor fool that I was!
I put out my hand and took down the first it encountered--John Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress. It was a funny old volume--a priceless early edition
given me by a grateful client whom I had extricated from some
embarrassment. I had never read it, but I knew its general trend. It was
about some imaginary miserable who, like myself, wanted to do things
differently. I took a cigar out of my pocket, lit it and, opening the
book haphazard, glanced over the pages in a desultory fashion.
"_That is that which I seek for, even to be rid of this heavy Burden;
but get it off myself, I cannot; nor is there any man in our country
that can take it off my shoulders_--"
So the Pilgrim had a burden too! I turned back to the beginning and read
how Christian, the hero, had been made aware of his perilous condition.
"_In this plight therefore he went home, and refrained himself as long
as he could, that his Wife and Children should not perceive his
distress, but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble
increased: Wherefore at length he brake his mind to his Wife and
Children; and thus he began to talk to them: 'Oh, my dear Wife,' said
he, 'and you the Children of my bowels, I, your dear Friend, am in
myself undone by reason of a Burden that lieth hard upon me.' ... At
this his_ _Relations were sore amazed; not for that they believed that
what he had said to them was true, but because they thought that some
frenzy distemper had got into his head; therefore, it drawing toward
night, and they hoping that sleep might settle his brains, with all
haste they got him to bed: But the night was as troublesome to him as
the day; wherefore, instead of sleeping, he spent it in sighs and
tears_."
Surely this Pilgrim was strangely like myself! And, though sorely beset,
he had struggled on his way.
"_Hast thou a Wife and Children_?
"_Yes, but I am so laden with this Burden that I cannot take that
pleasure in them as formerly; methinks I am as if I had none_."
Tears filled my eyes and I laid down the book. The bridge party was
going home. I could hear them shouting good-bys in the front hall and my
wife's shrill voice answering Good night! From outside came the toot of
horns and the whir of the motors as they drew up at the curb. One by one
the doors slammed, the glass rattled and they thundered off. The noise
got on my nerves and, taking my book, I crossed to the deserted drawing
room, the scene of the night's social carnage. The sight was enough to
sicken any man! Eight tables covered with half-filled glasses; cards
everywhere--the floor littered with them; chairs pushed helter-skelter
and one overturned; and from a dozen ash-receivers the slowly ascending
columns of incense to the great God of Chance. On the middle table lay
a score card and pencil, a roll of bills, a pile of silver, and my
wife's vanity box, with its chain of pearls and diamonds.
Fiercely I resolved again to end it all--at any cost. I threw open one
of the windows, sat myself down by a lamp in a corner, and found the
place where I had been reading. Christian had just encountered Charity.
In the midst of their discussion I heard my wife's footsteps in the
hall; the portières rustled and she entered.
"Well!" she exclaimed. "I thought you had gone to bed long ago. I had
good luck to-night. I won eight hundred dollars! How are you feeling?"
"Anna," I answered, "sit down a minute. I want to read you something."
"Go ahead!" she said, lighting a cigarette, and throwing herself into
one of the vacant chairs.
"_Then said Charity to Christian: Have you a family? Are you a married
man_?"
"CHRISTIAN: _I have a Wife and_ ... _Children_."
"CHARITY: _And why did you not bring them along with you_?"
"_Then Christian wept and said: Oh, how willingly would I have done it,
but they were all of them utterly averse to my going on Pilgrimage_."
"CHARITY: _But you should have talked to them, and_ _have endeavored to
have shown them the danger of being behind_.
"CHRISTIAN: _So I did, and told them also what God had shewed to me of
the destruction of our City; but I seemed to them as one that mocked,
and they believed me not_.
"CHARITY: _And did you pray to God that He would bless your counsel to
them_?
"CHRISTIAN: _Yes, and that with much affection; for you must think that
my Wife and poor Children were very dear unto me_.
"CHARITY: _But did you tell them of your own sorrow and fear of
destruction?--for I suppose that destruction was visible enough to you_.
"CHRISTIAN: _Yes, over and over, and over. They might also see my fears
in my countenance, in my tears, and also in my trembling under the
apprehension of the Judgment that did hang over our heads; but all was
not sufficient to prevail with them to come with me_.
"CHARITY: _But what could they say for themselves, why they come not_?
"CHRISTIAN: _Why, my Wife was afraid of losing this World, and my
Children were given to the foolish Delights of youth; so, what by one
thing and what by another, they left me to wander in this manner
alone_."
An unusual sound made me look up. My wife was weeping, her head on her
arms among the money and débris of the card-table.
"I--I didn't know," she said in a choked, half-stifled voice, "that you
really meant what you said upstairs."
"I mean it as I never have meant anything since I told you that I loved
you, dear," I answered gently.
She raised her face, wet with tears.
"That was such a long time ago!" she sobbed. "And I thought that all
this was what you wanted." She glanced round the room.
"I did--once," I replied; "but I don't want it any longer. We can't live
our lives over again; but"--and I went over to her--"we can try to do a
little better from now on."
She laid her head on my arm and took my hand in hers.
"What shall we do?" she asked.
"We must free ourselves from our Burden," said I; "break down the wall
of money that shuts us in from other people, and try to pay our way in
the world by what we are and do rather than by what we have. It may be
hard at first; but it's worth while--for all of us."
She disengaged one hand and wiped her eyes.
"I'll help all I can," she whispered.
"That's what I want!" cried I, and my heart leaped.
Again I saw the glint of the angel's wing!