The "Goldfish" Part 18

We had grown into a highly complicated system, in which we had a settled orbit. This...o...b..t 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sengers! 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 c.o.xcombs.

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 embarra.s.sment. 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.ses; 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 G.o.d 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 portieres 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_?"