We saw very little of Ascher and nothing at all of his wife during the
first two days of our voyage. My idea was that they stayed in their
cabins--they had engaged a whole suite of rooms--in order to avoid
drifting into an intimacy with Gorman and me. A millionaire would
naturally, so I supposed, be suspicious of the advance of any one who
was not a fellow millionaire. I was mistaken. Ascher was simply seasick.
When he recovered, two days before Mrs. Ascher raised her head from
the pillow, he showed every sign of wanting to know Gorman and had no
objection to dining with me.
In the meanwhile I found out a great deal about Gorman. He was
delightfully unreserved, not only about his own past, but about his
opinions of people and institutions. Old Dan Gorman had, it appeared,
married a new wife when he was about sixty. This lady turned Michael,
then a young man, out of the house. He bore her no ill will whatever,
though she deprived him in the end of his inheritance as well as his
home. For several years he “messed about”--the phrase is his--with
journalism, acting as reporter and leader writer for several Irish
provincial papers, a kind of work which requires no education or
literary talent. Then he, so to speak, emerged, becoming somehow,
novelist, playwright, politician. I have never made out how he achieved
his success. I do not think he himself knows that. According to his
own account--and I never could get him to go into details--“things just
happened to come along.”
He was entirely frank about his opinions. He regarded landlords as the
curse of Ireland and said so to me. He did not seem satisfied that they
are innocuous, even when, being deprived of their estates, they are no
longer landlords. I do not like being called a curse--hardly any one
does--but I found myself listening to the things which Gorman said about
the class to which I belong without any strong resentment. His treatment
of us reminded me of Robbie Burns’ address to the devil. The poet
recognised that the devil was a bad character and that the world would
be in every way a brighter and happier place if there were no such
person. But his condemnation was of a kindly sort, not wholly without
sympathy. He held out a hope that “ould Nickie Ben” might still “hae
some stake”--stake in the country I suppose--if he would take thought
and mend. The reformation would have to be a drastic one, nothing less
than a complete change of his habits, character and opinions. But such a
thing was not wholly impossible. That was very much what Gorman thought
about me.
Next to Irish landlords Gorman disliked financiers more than any other
people in the world. He did not, by his own confession, know anything
about them; but he had got into touch with a group of journalists in
London which specialises in abuse of the class. Gorman repeated all the
stock arguments to me and illuminated the subject with some very well
worn apologues.
“A financier,” he said, “is a bloated spider, which sits in a murky den
spinning webs and sucks the life-blood of its victims.”
I wondered how Ascher would like this kind of talk if he ever joined our
party.
There was not, of course, the same note of personal bitterness in
Gorman’s condemnation of financiers which I noticed in his attacks on
landlords. He had learned to hate my class during the impressionable
years of childhood. He had only found out about financiers when he was a
grown man. And no one, not even a convert to a new faith, ever believes
anything with real intensity except what he was taught before he was
eight years old. But it was not to be expected that Ascher would be as
patient as I was, even if the abuse with which Gorman assailed his class
lacked something of the conviction with which he attacked me.
I asked Gorman one evening why, holding the opinions he did, he had
chosen as his table mates a banker and an unrepentant landlord. He had
a whole shipload of passengers to choose from, most of them, no doubt
believers in democracy, some of them perhaps even socialists, the kind
of socialists who travel first class on crack Cunard steamers. He seemed
surprised at the question and did not answer me at once. An hour or so
after we had passed away from the subject he returned to it suddenly and
explained that it was necessary to distinguish between individuals
and the classes to which they belong. A class, so I understood, may be
objectionable and dangerous in every way though the men who form it are
delightful.
“Take the Irish priests, for instance,” he said. “The minute we get Home
Rule, we’ll----”
He paused significantly.
“Deal with them?” I suggested.
He nodded with an emphasis which was positively vicious.
“All the same,” he said, “there are lots of priests whom I really
like, capital fellows that I’d be glad to dine with every day in the
week--except Friday.”
Apparently he was glad to dine with Ascher and me every day in the week,
including Friday.
“There’s no sense,” he said, “in refusing to talk to a man just because
you don’t like his opinions.”
I agreed. I even offered proof of my agreement. I was at that moment
talking to Gorman and I certainly did not like his opinions.
When Ascher joined us at dinner on the third evening of our voyage, he
turned out to be a very quiet, gentle little man with no outward sign of
great wealth about him. He drank nothing but Perrier Water which was
a surprise and, I fancy, something of a disappointment to Gorman. He
expected Ascher to order champagne and was quite ready to take his turn
in paying for the wine. Ascher smoked half a cigarette after dinner and
another half cigarette before he went to bed. Gorman confided to me that
millionaires and half-crown cigars had always been associated in his
mind before he met Ascher. To me the most surprising thing about the
man was the low opinion he had of himself and his own abilities. He
was deferential to Gorman and even seemed to think what I said worth
listening to. He knew all about Gorman’s two novels and his play. He had
read many of Gorman’s newspaper articles. He used to try and make
Gorman talk about literature and art. Gorman, being a man of great
intelligence, hates talking about literature, and suspects that any one
who accuses him of art is poking fun at him. Ascher took both literature
and art quite seriously. He evidently thought that men who write books
belong to a superior class. As a matter of fact Ascher has far more
brains than any author I have ever met; but he does not know this.
Ascher lay down without protest under all the outrageous things which
Gorman said about financiers. His extreme meekness seemed to stimulate
Gorman.
“No qualities,” said Gorman, “are required for success as a financier
except a low kind of cunning and a totally unscrupulous selfishness.”
Ascher seemed to agree with him. I wanted to point out that considering
the very large number of men who are cunning and the general prevalence
of selfishness the number of successful financiers is surprisingly
small. But Gorman did not give me a chance of speaking.
“Political life in every modern state,” said Gorman, “is poisoned,
poisoned at its source by the influence of the great financial houses.
Democracy is in shackles. Its leaders are gagged. Progress is stopped.
Politics are barren----” He delivered this oration at dinner one night,
and when he came to the barrenness of politics he knocked over Ascher’s
bottle of Perrier Water with a sweep of his hand “and it is the subtle
influence of the financiers, the money kings, what the Americans used to
call the Gold Bugs, which is responsible for the mischief.”
Ascher assented with a sort of wavering smile.
“The proof of what I say,” said Gorman, “is to be found in the
well-known fact----”
I interrupted him at this point. He had cited his well-known fact to
me several times. The son of a Liberal Cabinet Minister married the
daughter of a well-known Conservative who had been a Cabinet Minister.
It may be my stupidity but I cannot see how that union proves that
financiers control politics. I am not, and never shall be either a money
king or a gold bug, but in mere dread of hearing Gorman produce his
well-known fact again I took up the task of defending the class to which
Ascher belongs.
“After all, Gorman,” I said, “you ought to be a little grateful. You
know perfectly well that there wouldn’t be any politics if financiers
and other capitalists did not pay for them.”
“That’s just what I say,” said Gorman.
“No,” I said. “That’s not what you say. You say that financiers poison
politics. But there’s the greatest difference between paying for
a performance and poisoning the performers. Take a theatre for
instance----”
“Talking of theatres,” said Gorman, “there’s a rattling good circus
going on in New York at present. I’ll take you two men to see it some
night.”
But I was not going to let Gorman ride away in this manner from an
argument in which he was being worsted.
“Do let me finish what I am saying,” I said. “All your Parliaments and
legislative assemblies are simply national theatres kept up for the
amusement of the people. Somebody has to put up the money to keep them
going. The ordinary man won’t do it. You can’t even get him to vote
without hypnotising him first by means of a lot of speeches and
newspaper articles and placards which stare at him from hoardings. Even
after you’ve hypnotised him you have to drag him to your polling booth
in motor cars. He wouldn’t go if you didn’t. As for paying for your
show, you know perfectly well that there’d be no money for the running
of it if it weren’t for a few financiers and rich men.”
One of Gorman’s most delightful characteristics is that he bears no
malice when an argument goes against him.
“Begad, you’re right,” he said. “Right all the way along. At the present
moment I’m on my way to America to get money for the Party. There’s
a man I have my eye on out in Detroit, a fellow with millions, and an
Irishman. I mean to get a good subscription out of him. That’s why I’m
on this ship.”
“Curious,” I said. “I’m after money too. I have some investments in
Canadian railway shares--nothing much, just a few thousands, but a good
deal to me. I’m a little uneasy----”
I looked at Ascher. A man in his position, the head of one of the great
financial houses, ought to be able to give very good advice about my
shares. A word from him about the prospects of Canada generally and the
companies in which I am interested in particular, would be very valuable
to me. Gorman was also looking inquiringly at Ascher. I daresay a tip on
the state of the stock market would be interesting to him. I do not know
whether party funds are invested or kept on deposit receipt on a
bank; but Gorman is likely to have a few pounds of his own. Ascher
misinterpreted our glances. He thought we wanted to know why he was
going to America.
“The condition of Mexico at present,” he said, “is causing us all some
anxiety. My partner in New York wants to have a consultation with me.
That’s what’s bringing me over.”
“Ah!” said Gorman. “I rather respect those Mexicans. It’s pleasant to
hear of wealthy men like you being hit sometimes.”
“It’s not exactly that,” said Ascher. “As a firm we don’t lose directly
whatever happens in Mexico. What we have to consider is the interest
of our customers, the people, some of them quite small people, who went
into Mexican railways on our advice. Banking houses don’t put their
money into investments. That’s not our business. But banking is a very
dull subject. Let’s talk of something else.”
He turned to me as he spoke.
“You were speaking just now,” he said, “about the necessity of putting
up money for the support of theatres. If we are to have any real
dramatic art in England----”
Banking is a fascinatingly interesting subject compared to art; but
Ascher does not think so, and Ascher had taken hold of the conversation.
He appealed to Gorman as a man whose services to literature and drama
had never been properly recognised. He appealed to me as a member of
a cultured class. Neither of us was sympathetic or responsive. Gorman
knows that he has never rendered any service to literature at all, that
he wrote novels because he wanted money in the days before a grateful
country paid him £400 a year for walking round the lobbies of the House
of Commons, that he tumbled into his play by accident and made money out
of it because a very charming lady was more charming than usual in the
part he wrote for her.
Gorman--this is one of the advantages of being an Irishman--has no
illusions about himself. I have none about my class. It is not cultured
and does not want to be.
When Ascher had smoked his half cigarette we left the dining saloon and
went to our special corner in the lounge. Ascher talked on till nearly
ten o’clock about art and drama and music as if they were the only
things of any interest or importance in the world. Then he went to
bed. Gorman and I agreed that art, drama, and music are of very little
importance and less interesting than anything else. Gorman’s weekly
articles, quite the best things of their kind then being published, are
all about art, so he has a perfect right to express his opinion. What we
wanted to hear Ascher talk about was money.
“I’ve always wanted to know what high finance really is,” I said.
“It seems a pity not to be able to find out now we’ve got a man who
understands it.”
“I’ll take him in hand to-morrow,” said Gorman. “There’s no use our
having him to dine with us and looking after him all the way across if we
don’t get anything out of him.”
Gorman’s words were cryptic. I wanted to get knowledge--the sort of
knowledge which would satisfy my curiosity--out of Ascher; chiefly
knowledge though I would not have refused a little inside information
about Canadian affairs. Gorman might very well want something more. He
might want a subscription to the funds of his party. I hoped he would
not get it; either out of Ascher or out of the man at Detroit of whom he
spoke. I am not a member of any political party but I hate that to which
Gorman belongs. If I were attached to a party and if Gorman’s friends
joined it in a body, I should leave it at once. My opinion, so far as I
have any opinion, is that what Ireland wants is to be let alone. But if
the Irish Nationalist Party were to adopt a policy of deliberately doing
nothing and preventing other people from doing anything I should not
support it. I should then search about for something revolutionary and
try to insist on carrying it out. Nothing would induce me to be on the
same side as Gorman and his friends. Such is the nature of an Irish
gentleman.
I lay awake for a long time that night, smoking cigarettes in my berth
and meditating on the fact that, of the three of us I was the one who
was going to America for purely selfish purposes. Gorman was trying to
get money for his party, for his own ultimate advantage no doubt, but
in the first instance the money was not for himself but for a cause.
And Gorman is a politician, a member of a notoriously corrupt and
unscrupulous professional class. Ascher was taking a long journey in
order to devise some means of rescuing his clients’ property from the
clutches of a people which had carried the principles of democracy
rather further than is usual. And Ascher is a financier. No one expects
anything but enlightened greed from financiers. I belong by birth and
education to an aristocracy, a class which is supposed to justify its
existence by its altruism. There was no doubt a valuable lesson to be
learned from these considerations. I fell asleep before I found out
exactly what it was.
Gorman did as he promised. He took Ascher in hand next day. He made
the poor man walk up and down the deck with him. There is nothing on
shipboard more detestable than that tramp along the deck. Only the
strongest minded man can avoid counting his steps, making an estimate of
yards, and falling into the bondage of trying to walk a fixed number of
miles. Conversation and even coherent thought become impossible when the
mind is set on the effort to keep count of the turns made at the end of
the deck. I am sure that Ascher did not enjoy himself; but Gorman kept
him at it for more than an hour. I watched them from the deck chair in
which I sat, rolled up very comfortably in my rug. At one o’clock, when
we ought to have gone down to lunch, Gorman stopped opposite my chair.
He proclaimed his success jubilantly.
“We’ve been talking about finance,” he said, “high finance. Pity you
wouldn’t join us.”
Ascher bowed towards me. Gorman described Ascher’s manners as foreign.
I daresay they are. There is a certain flavour of formal courtesy
about them which Englishmen rarely practise, of which Irishmen of my
generation, partly anglicised by their education, have lost the trick.
“Sir James would only have been bored,” said Ascher.
“Not he,” said Gorman, “he’s just as keen as I am to know what bankers
do with money.”
“It’s a dull trade,” said Ascher, “very dull. Some day I shall give it
up and devote the rest of my time to----”
“Don’t say art,” said Gorman.
Ascher opened his eyes and looked at Gorman with a mild kind of wonder.
“Of course,” he said, “I can never be an artist. I haven’t got the
temperament, the soul, the capacity for abandon. But I might find
enjoyment, the highest pleasure, in understanding, in appreciating,
perhaps even in encouraging----”
“Sort of Mecenas,” said Gorman. “I wonder if Mecenas was a banker. He
seems to have been a rich man.”
“He was a descendant of kings,” I said, “but that’s no reason why he
shouldn’t have made money.”
“Anyhow,” said Gorman, “you’d find art just as dull as banking if you
went in for it systematically.”
“But artists----!” said Ascher, “genuine artists! Men with inspiration!”
“Selfish conceited swine,” said Gorman.
“Well,” I said, “you ought to know. You’re an artist yourself. Ascher
told me so yesterday.”
“I remember your two novels,” said Ascher, “and I recognised in them the
touch, the unmistakable touch.”
“Let’s go down to lunch,” said Gorman.
He left the deck as he spoke. Even Gorman does not like to stand
self-convicted of being a selfish conceited swine. Ascher laid his hand
on my arm as we went down to the saloon.
“What a brilliant fellow he is,” he whispered. “I never realised before
how magnificently paradoxical your Irish minds are. That pose of abject
self depreciation which is in reality not wholly a pose but a vehement
protest against the shallow judgment of a conventionalised culture----”
Ascher’s language was a little confusing to me, but I could guess at
what he meant. Gorman appeared to him to be an unappreciated Oscar
Wilde, one of those geniuses--I am bound to admit that they are mostly
Irish--who delude the world into thinking they are uttering profound
truths when they are merely outraging common sense.
It would be going too far perhaps to say that Ascher fawned on Gorman
during luncheon. He certainly showed his admiration for him very
plainly.
During the afternoon we talked finance again. Ascher did it because he
wanted to please Gorman. I listened and learned several things which
interested me very much. I got to understand, for instance, why a
sovereign is sometimes worth more, sometimes less, when you try to
exchange it for dollars or francs; a thing which had always puzzled me
before. I learned why gold has to be shipped in large quantities from
one country to another by bankers, whereas I, a private individual, need
only send a cheque to pay my modest debts. I learned what is meant by
a bill drawn on London. It took me nearly half an hour to grasp that.
Gorman pretended to see it sooner than I did, but when he tried to
supplement Ascher’s explanation with one of his own he floundered
hopelessly.
It was while we were at tea that afternoon that Mrs. Ascher put in an
appearance for the first time. She was a tall, lean woman, with dark red
hair--Gorman called it bronze--and narrow eyes which never seemed quite
open. Her face was nearly colourless. I was inclined to attribute this
to her long suffering from seasickness, but when I got to know her
better I found out that she is never anything but pallid, even when she
has lived for months on land and has been able to eat all she wants. The
first thing she did after we were introduced to her was to put her hands
up to her ears and give a low moan, expressive of great anguish. Ascher
explained to us that she was very musical and suffered acutely from the
ship’s band. I made up my mind definitely that she was not the sort of
woman I like. Gorman, on the other hand, took to her at once. He could
not stop the band, but he led the lady away to a distant corner of the
writing room.
For the rest of the voyage Gorman devoted himself to her. I do not mean
to suggest that he flirted with her either frivolously, or with yearning
artistic seriousness. Gorman enjoys the society of women and is never
long happy without it, but I do not think he cares for love-making in
any form. Besides he spent most of his time in her company watching her
playing Patience. Owen Meredith wrote a poem in which he glorified the
game of chess as an aid to quiet conjugal love-making. But so far as I
know no one has suggested that Canfield--it was Mrs. Ascher’s favourite
kind of Patience--has ever been used as an excuse for flirtation. No
woman, not even if she has eyes of Japanese shape, can look tenderly at
a man when she has just buried a valuable two under a pile of kings and
queens in her rubbish heap.
The result of Gorman’s devotion to the lady was that I was left to
improve my acquaintance with her husband. The more I talked to Ascher
the better I liked him. His admiration for his wife’s sensitiveness to
sound was very touching. I am convinced that he knew a great deal
more about music than she did and appreciated it more. But her sudden
outbursts of petulance when the band played seemed to Ascher a plain
proof that she had the spirit of an artist. He confided in me that
it gave him real pleasure to see her and Gorman together because, as
artists, they must have much in common. Ascher has a very simple and
beautiful nature. No one with any other kind of nature could put up with
Mrs. Ascher as a wife.
Mere simplicity of soul and beauty of character would not, I am afraid,
have kept me at Ascher’s side for the rest of the voyage. Virtue, like
the innocence of the young, is admirable but apt to be tiresome.
What attracted me most to Ascher was his ability, the last thing he
recognised in himself. When he found out that I was interested in his
business he talked to me quite freely about it, though always with a
certain suggestion of apology. There was no need for anything of the
sort. He revealed to me a whole world of fascinating romance of which I
had never before suspected the existence. Some day, perhaps, a poet--he
will have to be a great poet--will discover that the system of credit
by means of which our civilisation works, deserves an epic. Neither
the wanderings of Ulysses nor the discoveries of a traveller through
Paradise and Purgatory make so splendid an appeal to the imagination
as this vastly complex machine which Ascher and men like him guide. The
oceans of the world are covered thick with ships. Long freight trains
wind like serpents across continents. Kings build navies. Ploughmen turn
up the clay. The wheels of factories go round. The minds of men bend
nature to their purposes by fresh inventions. Science creeps forward
inch by inch. Human beings everywhere eat, drink and reproduce
themselves. The myriad activities of the whole wide world go profitably
on. They can go on only because the Aschers, sitting at their office
desks in London or New York, direct the purchase or sale of what are but
scratches with a pen on bits of paper.
There is, no doubt, another way of looking at the system. The ships, the
kings, the mighty minds, the common men, are all of them in bondage
to Ascher and his kind. He and his brother financiers are the unseen
rulers, the mysteriously shrouded tyrants of the world. This system of
credit, which need not be at all or might be quite other than it is, has
given them supreme, untempered power, which they use to the injury of
men. This is Gorman’s view. But is it any less romantic than the other?
An epic can be written round a devil as greatly as round a hero. Milton
showed us that. What is wanted in a poet’s theme is grandeur, either
fine or terrible. Ascher’s grip upon the world has surely that.