“What I was going to say is that I will take this opportunity of saying
good-bye.”
“You like Italy?” I could see Mumsie was brimming with merriment.
“Yes, I like Italy,” she threw her head back as if to bring her chin
into special prominence. “But, now it is so beastly common, full of
trippers, German and American. One meets them everywhere and cannot get
away from them. Their ways are”—she paused for the word—“uncouth.
Naples?—No! Rome?—No! Florence? Yes. Florence has the best tea-room in
Europe.”
“Venice must be very interesting,” suggested Mrs. Bassett, with a half
sigh that told me she felt her prospects of seeing Italy were remote,
and her desire to do so great, “the Palace of the Doges,—the Lion of
St. Mark.”
“Venice is no place to go to; most disappointing. There is not a decent
tea-room in the place.”
Mumsie seemed amused at this, and Ethel Bassett grinned broadly. After
this last delivery the lady with a few more gushes shook hands with us
all and beamed upon Ethel and me. Possibly this was by way of recompense
for her earlier slight.
Mrs. Mount seems a woman of whims; no doubt is of a nervous disposition.
At the rink only two days ago she was, I am sure, on the verge of
declaring herself my friend. To-day she announces she is off to Europe
and treats me as if she had never seen me before.
I waited until soup was finished at dinner to-night ere I thanked Mr.
Bang for his good offices. “Possibly you have more than that to thank
him for,” suggested Mumsie.
“I have thanked him for the skins,” I replied.
“Possibly there is something else,” she added.
I looked at my benefactor but his face was inscrutable. He evidently had
no desire to have this line of conversation pursued, for he put in:
“Mrs. Malone is one of the few women in this city for whom I have a
regard.”
“Oh!” I said. I couldn’t help it. A man has no right suddenly to make
that sort of statement.
“She has had a hard time of it,” cried Uncle, “drunken husband—one of
the old families—and has been forced to fight her way by writing trash
for the society columns,——”
“Mrs. Malone is a good friend, and a good woman, and you know you always
read the social columns,” asserted Mumsie interrupting her husband.
“Of course, to laugh at———”
“You read it, nevertheless; and therefore justify those columns in the
newspaper.”
“A newspaper is supposed to tell the news—the news!” he emphasized.
“Isn’t the social column news?”
“No. It’s a free advertising column for social climbers.”
“Which you and everybody else reads, either because of your gaping
curiosity, or because you are a cynical old stick.”
“Exactly!”
This time Mumsie had downed Uncle beautifully and I was glad. Uncle did
not seem to mind, however, for he turned to me and continued:
“Remember, my dear, as your young mind seems set upon these vain things,
Mrs. Malone is a woman who can make or break the social future of any
boy or girl in this city. That is why she can command almost any
invitation she cares to ask for. Our lady society-writers on the whole,
and Mrs. Malone in particular, are, anyhow, just.”
“They are, and kindly too,” agreed Mr. Bang. “Of course, they display
their personal bias occasionally; they would not be human, if they
didn’t. I know one girl at least who first gained a reputation as a
belle and then won a rich husband through Mrs. Malone’s good offices.”
“Evidently Mrs. Malone is not as exacting as you are,” I ventured.
“The girl’s mother happens to be an old friend of Mrs. Malone’s,”
retorted Mr. Bang with unnecessary severity. “The newspapers as a rule
give their society reporters free scope,” he went on, “they being awake
enough not to overlook the wives and daughters of good advertisers. But
occasionally notices are inspired. I know this because of experiences I
gained when I attended a public ball in Toronto. I did not know many of
the ladies present, as is to be supposed; but outside the few I danced
with, saw a rather pretty girl I knew. I did not ask her to dance for
the reason I did not think her people amounted to much. Next day’s paper
contained a triumphant account of this damsel’s appearance, etc., etc.,
and I felt sorry I had not asked her to dance, and then I knew myself to
be a snob.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed.
“And you certainly were!” said Mumsie.
“Never mind, Jack,” laughed Uncle, “you have anyhow the strength to
confess your old weakness.”
“A day or two later I met the lady who puts together the society news
for that particular paper. The ball came up for discussion, and I
introduced the subject of the belle. ‘Oh, yes, quite pretty, is she not?
I do not know her myself; she is a friend of our general manager’s, who
asked me to notice her favourably,’ was my friend’s reply. This actually
consoled me,” he went on, “but I could not absolve myself of
snobbishness.”
“And a knowledge of the fault in yourself enables you to remark it in
others,” I said, not caring much if I offended or not.
“That’s it exactly. Isn’t Little Partner getting severe?” he said.
“Snobbery is always disgusting.”
This was not the answer I had anticipated. I could only smile in answer;
what else could I do? Mumsie smiled too, while Mr. Bang naively added,
“Had I had an English Public School education, I should have had it
knocked out of me in my boyhood. Snobbishness is an inherent human
failing. It is only the truly Christlike spirit that is free from it.”
This kaleidoscopic character had given himself another turn and
presented a new picture. I had never recognized in him religious
inclinations, and had gathered from his tirades against people in high
places, that his was a democratic nature. Mumsie evidently had a similar
impression, for she asked:
“How comes it, Jack, that you have developed such a high regard for the
English, and please, when did you take religion?”
“I have not ‘taken’ religion as the cynical call it, but Christ seems to
me the perfect man, free from every vice and worldliness and
meanness—and looked at in the light of His ideal what a paltry
organization your society is.”
“And the Englishman?”
“We Canadians, as boys in the process of ancestor worship, look upon the
Englishman as a superior being. As youths we meet the remittance-man and
consider ourselves infinitely his superior. As grown men we recognize
the salt of the earth to be the English. And”—he paused—“it is the
judgment of grown manhood that counts.”
“How is Timkins?” asked Uncle with an aggression that displayed a marked
desire to change the subject, “is he a millionaire yet?”
“He is getting on that way.”
“And, who is Mr. Timkins?” I asked, interested in anyone with whom this
extraordinary Bang was acquainted.
“Timkins is of Jack’s school of philosophy—Jack, tell your Little
Partner about Timkins.”
“Ha! Timkins is a chap, who has been through the mill out West. He reads
the news of the stock-market, knows the especial affiliations of each
newspaper, broker, and many of the reporters. He works on the theory
that all newspaper talk in the stock-market is inspired, and governs
himself accordingly—and makes money.” Mr. Bang looked at Mumsie and
then at me somewhat defiantly.
“You means he gambles in the market!” suggested Mumsie.
“Auntie,” replied Mr. Bang with mock gravity, (I assume it was affected,
though it seemed so real) “I’m afraid you stick to the respectable at
any and every cost. This is the great Canadian tendency.” Turning to me,
he continued, (and I put down his words as I am able, for I am not used
to the phrases of the market, but I think I have it). “According to Mr.
Timkins, the tendency people have to cater to the respectable is played
upon by those who sell stocks. A purchaser comes to a broker with money
he wishes to employ. Nine times out of ten he is a buyer and probably
names an issue or two that have suggested themselves to him. Nine times
out of ten, the broker has special affiliations, so he hedges the
customer about with one objection after another, until he has him on the
path he wishes. In this process, if all else fails, the broker intimates
that the course the customer would pursue would be gambling, shrugs his
shoulders and leaves the old reliable spirit of respectability to do the
rest.”
“And—the rest?” asked Uncle.
“Is that the customer buys what the broker wishes him to buy—and
loses.”
“Always?” asked Mumsie. “You are much too positive, Jack.”
“Well, Auntie, I think I’m justified. People who follow the advice of
those so-called brokers lose nineteen times out of twenty; statistics
show it.”
“Why ‘so-called’ brokers?”
“Because the term broker means one who buys and sells on commission, but
many of our brokers are really what in England is called a jobber, who
speculate for themselves and underwriters.
“And your friend Mr. Timkins?”
“Plays a lone hand and wins. He is the twentieth or the hundredth, as
the case may be.”
“I don’t think that is a very respectable way to make money,” objected
Mumsie.
“If you take the ordinary broker’s advice, there is no fear of your
making money—according to Timkins.”
“Bother Timkins!”
“People make money selling stocks, not buying them.”
“You mean short selling?” asked Uncle becoming interested.
“Either short selling or promoting, and there is really not much
difference.”
“I never could get at the bottom of this short selling, do tell me what
it means?”
“I have told you often,” Uncle said to his wife. “No woman has ever been
able to understand it and not overly many men. In ordinary commerce a
man buys and sells later: the short seller in the market, or the bear,
sells first and buys afterwards: it is the simple reversal of a simple
process.”
“But it’s gambling, I’ve read so in the papers,” protested Mumsie.
“So are lots of things; in fact, it is a rare process in this world that
is not a gamble,” replied Mr. Bang with heat. “I know the whole
argument, but let me say that anyone who buys a stock because he thinks
it will go up is as much of a gambler as he who sells it because he
thinks it will go down. In England, where the fundamentals are sought
for, and the people are not so much humbugged as they are here, the
prejudice against ‘selling a bear’ in the market is unknown.”
“You’re joking.”
“Indeed I am not: our land is filled with milk-fed sophistries and the
men who propagate them. The ordinary mind is incapable of matching the
processes of the wit of our stock exchanges. Let us examine the
processes of one of our millionaires. He buys a water-power for a
trifle: organizes it into a stock company, and sells stock to the widow
and orphan at an advance of anywhere from a hundred to a thousand per
cent. profit. He makes his money not because he holds the stock, but
because he sells it—because the public buys it.”
“That sounds reasonable,” grimly asserted Uncle.
“But the interesting study is that of the public. The promoter makes a
grant of say, $50,000 to a charity. The foolish woman in the country,
doctor, or lawyer, reasons that one who would give so much to the public
must be really very godly and would not cheat a poor body, so he or she
puts money into any old proposition such philanthropists advance. This,
I fancy, is token of the shallowness of the ordinary mind in financial
matters, and such shallowness explains why some men easily accumulate
wealth, the result of labour.”
I believe Mr. Bang can see no good in anybody or anything, his is—in
spite of his personal kindness, like the gift of the furs—a narrow
nature. Mumsie, I am sure, was not convinced, no more was I; probably
she remained silent out of weariness.
“Jack, you certainly would not increase your popularity by publishing
such statements,” said Uncle.
“I know that well. Timkins tried it with the result that throughout the
financial districts every man’s voice was against him. When you cannot
refute a man’s statement, the next thing to do is drown it with calumny.
The inference the public draws is that a liar cannot speak the truth, or
a dishonest man honest, or a fool occasionally wise. So the thing to do
is to persuade the public that one’s enemy is a liar, a rascal or a
fool.”
“But, what has become of Timkins?”
“He fell into bad ways; he misjudged the limitations of _The Tarbrush_,
the sheet to which he contributed, and wrote up the President of a
rascally mining promotion. The President of the Mining Company was also
President of a social club to which the editor and proprietor were
ambitious members. In the process of re-establishing themselves the two
jelly-fish wrote a letter of apology to the injured president, promising
to receive no more communications from the offender. That illustrates
the processes of a certain type of financial newspaper, for, after all,
the writer was not responsible, as the article had passed a sub-editor.”
“And Timkins?”
“Timkins will go to London. As a budding author he can establish himself
there. All Canadian writers, as soon as they begin to gain a footing in
the literary world here, go to England. Canada is a land whose people do
not seem to trust their own.”
I am weary—it has been the most difficult job I ever knew—of writing
all these expressions of Mr. Bang’s, but doing so is anyhow practice for
the book I am some day to write. How agreeable a character he would be,
did he say pleasant things, instead of unpleasant; were he constructive,
instead of a puller-down. But as I have decided before, he would never
do in a novel—never. And now about novels. Mr. Bang appears to have
opinions on all subjects. I thought, therefore, I would ask him what he
knows about novel writing.
But before I could frame the question, Mumsie began to tell of her
gossip in the tea-room and of having related the story of the drowsy
domestic.
“How old was she?” asked Mr. Bang.
“About twenty-five,” Mumsie replied patiently, though apparently not a
little surprised at the enquiry.
“It might not have been the girl’s fault at all: extreme drowsiness is
often developed in a change of climate, especially in the case of young
people, and possibly the girl was not accustomed to hard work———”
“She never did enough around here to keep herself warm,” retorted Uncle.
“You can find much more worthy objects for your sympathy, my boy.”
Advancing obscure and outlandish theories is evidently a habit with Mr.
Bang.
Mumsie reported Mrs. Mount’s conversation. Uncle and Mr. Bang roared
when they heard what she said about the tea-rooms. I’m afraid there is
some point in that I don’t quite see: I shall not ask, because to do so
would display ignorance, but what could be more natural than that a lady
travelling should visit especially those cities with the nice tea-rooms?
“What is your idea of the Mediterranean trip?” Uncle asked, looking
towards Mr. Bang. I verily believe Uncle asked the question to draw him
out, for my especial benefit. How Uncle could dream of my being
entertained by such expressions of ill-nature I don’t know. I hope he is
not slyly poking fun at me.
“The Mediterranean trip is a most beneficial experience for a Canadian:
it teaches him to value his own country. ‘Thank God I live in Canada,’
is the exclamation of most of us, as we view the filth of Naples, hear
its noise, and suffer from its chilling winds, when the weather is
mean.”
“See Naples and die,” quoted Uncle.
“Among my grandfather’s papers,” said Mr. Bang, “is a letter from one of
his staff when on a visit to Naples in 1823. The writer says he would
value the place more, if there was less noise and more honesty.”
“There is Pompeii,” suggested Mumsie. “That’s some compensation.”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Bang reflectively, “there is Pompeii. Pompeii will
always remind me of Captain Jinks, an English gentleman-guide, who
according to his own account, had already gone through two fortunes,
and, unsatisfied with past exploits, wanted to go through mine.”
Mr. Bang paused for us to laugh, though my mirth must have sounded
hollow, for I merely followed Uncle’s example. I could not see anything
clever in the remark.
“The vast majority of people,” Mr. Bang continued, “who go to Italy in
the winter are of the Mrs. Mount type, mere slaves of silly fashion.
Jinks told me of a Yankee, who gave him a commission at five hundred
dollars, to write a genealogy, tracing his descent from a citizen of
Pompeii, who, as a butcher, flourished previous to A.D. 78. The only
fact upon which the descent was to be based was a fancied similarity of
names.”
Now was my chance; I cut in.
“It is a puzzle to me, Mr. Bang, that with all your varied experiences,
you have never attempted to write a book.”
“He has literary ideas too,” seconded Mumsie, evidently approving of my
attempt at conversation.
“Perhaps, some day,” gravely responded the adventurer, “in the meantime
I am supplying Timkins with mighty thoughts.”
“Drat Timkins, but if it must be Timkins, what has he to say on book
building?”
“Have a story and tell it, use simple language and be consistent, and
above all make your characters stand out. That’s his gospel. No matter
how you do it, make each character announce himself in the first
sentence he utters; and maintain it no matter if your character is like
nothing on the earth above, and talks a dialect that never was uttered
by tongue of man, make him say, ‘It is I, Jacques, who says it.’”
“Jack has, as always, the right idea,” said Uncle.
“Oh you men!” said Auntie.
“In painting and sculpture it is the same. The great masters, both with
the brush and the chisel, formed lines out of proportion and introduced
figures in impossible positions, but they told their story, they reached
their aim. So with letters.”
“And then out West we have the animal fakers. Lord! how the men of the
wilds do hate those fellows who hear the dear beasts talk like Sunday
teachers.”
“They make lots of money,” suggested Uncle, ever practical.
“So they do, and so do the chaps who manufacture quack medicines.”
I won’t write any more of this dialogue; I’m tired and it is all really
much the same. I really wonder more and more as the days go by, why I
bother over Mr. Bang. I suppose I give him more space than Uncle for two
reasons; one, because he says more; secondly, because his aggressive
manner impresses itself upon me. I dislike the man exceedingly.
But what he said about writing, I have taken to heart. Let me analyze my
diary to date. Of characters I have Mumsie first. Then Uncle and Mr.
Bang—one the same character as the other, only more so. I’ll leave
Uncle out of it as a character, and hold out Mr. Bang. Then there’s Mrs.
Mount. She is a character certainly. And then I believe I am a character
too.
One, two, three, four real, live characters, that would do for a story.
If Mr. Bang would only elope, or commit a murder, or flare-up in some
way, I might make this into something. As it is there is too much
philosophy and talk in this diary and too little action. However, Mrs.
Lien’s party is coming, and with the passing of New Year’s Day society
will get under way again. I wonder what Mumsie was hinting at in
suggesting that I had something more for which my thanks were due to Mr.
Bang. Could it be—did he inspire that notice in the newspaper—ask Mrs.
Malone to insert it. Had he wished to please me he could not have done
better, but then why is he inconsistent? He condemns social ambition and
conceit in others. Why should he encourage it in me?
The furs are to be home to-morrow evening.