Neale had set the wheels of his business life whirring at such speed and
there were so many of them that they continued to turn clatteringly
around and around after Martha had gone away, not only from him but from
America; for she had sailed at once with her father for Berlin. Neale
watched them whirring for weeks before he perceived that they were
running down, and for weeks after that before he perceived that he felt
no impulse to keep them moving. There didn't seem to be much point to
things, any more. Martha had done what in his heart he wanted done. And
yet he was far from satisfied. He missed her outrageously, missed having
her there, didn't know what to do with himself. And yet he had not been
overjoyed at what he had been on the point of doing with himself. He
must be hard to suit, he thought, fretting to feel himself still
confused and uncertain, with no zest in things. Damn it, what _did_ he
want?
A week after Martha's departure he had a letter from Grandfather,
written on blue-lined paper, reading, "Dear Neale: Wharton just came in
to say he wants the Melwin spruce and heard you had bought them. He
wanted 'em for twelve hundred (couldn't find out what you'd paid for
them I guess). I said fifteen hundred and stuck to it. He squirmed some.
But I knew through Ed that he wanted them for a New York order he's got
for big stuff. And there aren't any others around here that'll come up
to his specifications. So I made him toe the mark. He left a check for
$300 (which I enclose) and will pay spot cash for the rest before
beginning to cut."
Neale sat at his desk, looking hard at the piece of cheap paper which
brought him the news that in a short time he would have eight hundred
dollars more in the bank than he had had before. And without turning his
hand over. All he had done was to know that the Melwin spruce were
worth a lot more than was thought by the Iowa cousin who had inherited
that distant wood-lot. Easy money! Somebody had paid him high for that
piece of knowledge,--who? Wharton, of course, would certainly get it out
of somebody's else hide, or he would never have gone in for the deal.
He sat dreaming, remembering his timber-cruising trip, remembering the
choppers and woodmen he had known around Grandfather's. Men like that
would work all a year around in all weathers, all their days, to get as
much as he would have for doing nothing.
He drew a long breath and turned to enter the check in his check-book. A
queer sort of a world. And after all, he stood in much the same relation
to the Gates family as the lumbermen did to him, working enough sight
harder for enough sight less money. That seemed to be the way things
were. But it didn't seem quite square.
A hasty mental calculation showed him that with this money he would have
over two thousand dollars. Clear. Not so bad! He considered the matter,
wondering why he felt no more elation, and decided that it was because
he could not for a moment think of anything he specially wanted to do
with two thousand dollars. Always before this he had thought he was
making money to give to Martha. Was it possible that he had been using
Martha as an excuse? No, no, he explained hastily to himself, the point
was that Martha had, all women had, some definite use to make of money.
It bought things they wanted and thought important, suburban houses and
mahogany twin beds and what not. Martha could easily have spent that sum
to buy things that pleased her. The only use he could think of for it
was to use it over again to make more money. And then what? It didn't
seem much of a life to do that over and over.
He looked around him at the busy outer office, filled with haste and a
sense of the importance of its processes. There was more to it than
making money. That was the foolish, reforming-professor's idea of
"sordid business." You were in it, not because you wanted the money but
because it was the biggest game in the world, and it was fun to win
out. All right then. He _would_ win out.
But no matter how much time he put into his efforts to win out, there
was a lot of time left over. Neale did not succeed in filling that
leisure to his satisfaction. He went out more than he had ever before,
accepted invitations to dinner from all the married men in the office
and lunched with all the unmarried, and had them out for meals with him.
But still there was time left over. He went to the theater, to loud
hearty farces that made him laugh, at first; but they very soon seemed
all cut by the same pattern and he found himself sitting them out as
grimly and smilelessly as Americans read their comic supplements.
It was not that he was lonely because he was alone. Never in his life
had he found the slightest alleviation to loneliness in merely having
some one, any one, with him. The truth was that when he was alone he
fell to thinking. And he did not know what to make of his thoughts. They
mostly consisted of an answerless question, so answerless in the nature
of things, that it was foolish to formulate it--the same old question
you always ran into when you stopped to think, "what are you doing all
this _for_, anyhow?"
In football days that question had been silenced by the instant fierce,
all-sufficient answer, "For the team!" What was the present equivalent
of the team now? It looked remarkably like Neale Crittenden, all by
himself--not such a very big inspiring goal when you stopped to think of
it. The best thing evidently was not to do much stopping to think.
One evening unwarily he allowed something alarming to happen to him,
something worse than stopping to think. After a solitary dinner at
Reisenweber's he strolled along 59th Street, and, as it seemed too early
to go back to his room and he had nothing else to do that evening,
stepped into a concert at Carnegie Hall. He stepped in to get rid of a
few hours of his restless uneasiness and he came out so devoured by
restless uneasiness that he could not think of going to bed, but walked
up and down the streets for hours trying to forget the shouts of the
brass, the long sweet cries of the violins. They seemed to call his name
over and over ... to summon him out, up, to some glory ... little by
little they died away, leaving him in the same flat, inner silence as
before, hearing nothing but the banging clatter of the elevated and the
clang of the surface-car bells. A little before dawn he went back to
bed, exhausted. What sort of a life was this, anyhow?
He was less away from the city than usual, now, spent more time at his
desk, which was usually in those days heaped with work that had formerly
been done by other men. The office was shifting its routine, rearranging
the work to meet the strain of the Manager's failing health. It was
whispered that Mr. Gates--the "young Mr. Gates"--though only
fifty-three, might have to pull out altogether. That would mean
promotion all around. Neale knew by the character of the work on his
desk that when promotion was served out, he would get his share.
Flittingly once or twice, it occurred to him that all the managers of
departments were but mortal, and that in time all their private offices
would be filled by the men now working at desks in the outer rooms. How
would he like in the end to move into Mr. Gates' office, he wondered?
This thought, casual and fantastic though it was, moved him to inquire
whatever was the matter with Mr. Gates' health anyhow? He was told that
the older man was "threatened with a complete nervous breakdown due to
overwork." Neale like all other American business-men had heard that
phrase all his life. The very wording of it was as familiar to him as
the name of a standard make of soap or collar. But he found he did not
after all really know what it meant. What happened to anybody who had a
complete nervous breakdown? Mr. Gates came and went about as usual
although not so regularly, looking about the same--spare, dry, hard,
well dressed, well shaved, attentive, silent. Neale looked at him with
some curiosity, wondering how a threatened nervous breakdown showed
itself, and deciding skeptically that there was probably the same amount
of nervousness about it as about everything--less in it than people made
out--money for specialists mostly.
One day he was consulting a letter-file near the door to the manager's
office, which stood ajar. Over the file, Neale could see the familiar
scene: Mr. Gates' private secretary standing to the right of his
employer in a respectful attitude, a bunch of letters in his hand. Mr.
Gates adjusted his eye-glasses, their fine gold chain gleaming yellow
against the hard gray of his thin cheeks. He took a letter off the pile
and held it up before him. To Neale's astonishment the paper shook as
though a high wind were blowing through the room. A look of anxious
effort came into the older man's face. He leaned his elbows on the table
and tried to take the letter in both hands, but it fell out of his
trembling fingers upon the desk and slid to the floor. Mr. Gates
stooped, secured it with difficulty and lifted his head to recover his
position. As he did this, with rather a jerk to get his balance, the
drooping loop of his eye-glass chain caught on the key of the drawer and
tore his glasses off. They fell on the desk with a little tinkling
clatter, broken; and instantly Mr. Gates flung the letter from him, put
both hands over his face and burst into tears. Neale heard the sound of
his sobbing. His secretary, looking concerned, but not surprised, sprang
to the heavy door and slammed it shut.
Neale stood frozen with one hand on a letter in the file, frightened for
the first time in his life, so frightened that it made him sick. When he
recovered presence of mind enough to move, he tip-toed away to his own
desk and sat down before it, shaken. So that was a nervous breakdown!
Good God!
He wasn't so sure he wanted to move up ultimately into that office.
For a long time after this he was haunted by the recollection of that
scene, and especially by the sound of those strange, shocking sobs.
Sometimes they woke him up at night, as though it were a sound in the
room. They recurred to him at the most inopportune moments, in a train,
at table, as he undressed for the night in a bedroom of a country hotel.
He would have given anything not to have heard them. He tried everything
to drown them out.
He turned again at this time to books, and took down from the shelves,
volumes he had not looked at since college, books of speculation,
abstract thought, history. He found Gregg's marks in one or two and
wondered how Gregg was liking it being a professor out in California.
That was far away, and so was Gregg. And so were the books. They looked
different in his hand; remembered pages had not the same message. He
could not seem to put his mind on them as he had. It wandered to other
things. A long time since he had tried to use his mind in that way. He
had had mighty little time for reading abstract stuff.
Once, starting off on a trip sure to be tiresome, with a long wait in
the late evening at Hoosick Junction, he chanced to put into his valise
a volume of Emerson. He read the newspaper on the train up, the news,
the financial page, and what was going on in the world of sports. But he
left the paper in the train, and as he settled himself for the dreary
wait in the dreary, dusty, empty station he opened the Emerson. What
were some of those places he used to think so fine?... "Society is a
joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the better securing
of the bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture
of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is
its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and
customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist....
"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a
reverence for our past act or word.... But why should you keep your head
over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you
contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place?
Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule
of wisdom ... to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed
present, and live ever in a new day. Leave your theory as Joseph his
coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee!"
He slammed the book shut again. It made him feel as that confounded
music had, stirred up, restless, unhappy, ashamed. It was a voice from
another sort of world, a voice that he would rather not hear, because
there was nothing to be made of what it said. What could you _do_ about
it? Neale detested stirring up ideas about which there was nothing to be
done. And he knew a great deal more now than he once had about the many,
many things that could not be done.
But shutting the book, even slamming it shut, did not silence the voice.
He sat alone under the one smoky kerosene lamp, staring into the dusty,
dreary, empty waiting-room and heard it clear and calm and summoning,
"Leave your theory as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and
flee!" He looked about him desperately, but there was not a soul in the
station save himself, nor a house near the tracks. There was not a sound
to drown out the deep humanity of that summoning, challenging voice.
He made an impatient rebellious gesture. Summoning? That was all very
well. But to what? To something better than he had, more worth while
than he was? Well, what was there? Where could it be found? Those vague
high-sounding phrases were easy enough to write, but what could you _do_
about it in real life? What was the matter with what he had?
The matter with it was that it was bare and dingy and empty, like the
room in which he sat. But what was not? Everything was like that, if you
didn't believe the nonsense written about it, if you looked at it and
saw it. It wasn't to be supposed that he, Neale Crittenden, would go and
be a missionary, was it, or any of those pious priggish make-shift
devices to pretend that you were doing something worth while? Or join
the Salvation Army and beat a drum? He was an American business-man.
What in hell did Emerson think you _could_ do?
He got up and walked restlessly around the dreadful little room,
helpless before its bareness. Nothing to read in the place, not even a
time-table. Nothing but the Emerson. He went over to where it lay on the
bench, opened his valise, put the book back in, down among his shirts,
and snapped the valise shut on it. A whistle sounded down the track. He
looked at his watch. No, his train was not due for half an hour yet. He
went to the door and watched a through freight roll past, noting the
names on the cars as they flashed into the light from the
station-agent's window,--N. Y. Central, Pere Marquette, Wabash, Erie,
Boston and Maine,--shoes and groceries and hardware, structural-steel,
cement--all the thousand things needed every day to keep the wheels of
daily material life moving, all made, bought and sold, shipped and
handled by men like him. All necessary honest goods, all necessary
honest work ... but that couldn't be _all_ of life! The train pounded
off, the silence of the night closed in on him, and in that silence he
heard the echo of those appalling sobs, and the slam of the door. Queer
thing, human life was, wasn't it? Think of poor Mr. Gates paying that
price, and very likely for something he didn't care so much about when
he got it. It wasn't the price you paid, that bothered Neale. If it were
something worth your while, you were willing to pay all you had. But to
pay so much, just to make money for Neale Crittenden ... he couldn't see
it that way. He'd have a smoke on it anyhow.
As he filled his pipe it came to him that once before he had felt the
same aching restlessness, so intense that it was pain. That was the time
when he had gone stale. He'd been put out of the game, and had sat on
the side-lines eating his heart out. He was there again, gone stale, out
of the game. He had the strength, he had the speed, now as then. Why was
it he stood outside the game? Other men were giving their souls to it.
Maybe he _was_ a quitter, after all. There had certainly been quitting
or _something_ the matter in his relations with Martha ... how empty
life was without Martha.... But he was mighty glad he wasn't going to
marry her.
He was a fine specimen anyhow!
"Well now, well now," he shook himself together, "let's consider all
this. What's the best thing to do when you go stale and have a slump?"
Atkins had showed him what to do that other time. He had actually
profited by it in the end, profited immensely by being temporarily out
of the game, so that he could consider and understand the real
inwardness of what it was all about.
Why, perhaps that was what he needed to do now, pull out for a while,
get away from the whole thing, look at it from a distance, get a line on
what it was all about.
He sucked on his pipe, cocking his head sidewise to look at the ceiling,
his hands deep in his pockets. There was nothing to hinder his taking a
year off. He had money enough. And not a tie on earth to prevent his
doing as he pleased. He'd lose his job, of course. But he didn't seem to
be just madly in love with his job anyhow. And there were other jobs.
"Well, by George, why not?"
Where should he go? Anywhere that wasn't the lumber business. There was
the whole world, the round globe hurtling through the infinite. What in
God's name was he doing in Hoosick Junction?
There was England; and France; and Italy; and after that, why, anywhere
again! Wherever he pleased ... the East, China, and where there were
Malays and jungles. When his money gave out, if he still wanted to stay
on he could earn his living as well there as here. "There!" That meant
anywhere else. Anywhere else must be less dusty and frowsy and empty
than here.
Why under the sun had he not thought of this before? Their damned old
labels do stick after all. But he would soak them off!
His heart unfolded from its painful tight compression. The way out? Why
had he been so long in seeing it? The way out was to put on your hat and
go.
_BIRTHDAYS IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES_