Читать книгу Making Money - Owen Johnson - Страница 7

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They dined that night on the top of the Astor roof, where in the midst of aërial gardens one forgot that another city waited toiling below. Their table was placed by an embrasure from which they could scan the dark reaches toward the west where the tenements of the city, broken by the occasional uprising of a blatant sign, mathematically divided into squares by rows of sentinel lights, rolled somberly toward the river. To the south, vaguely defined by the converging watery darkness, the city ran down to flaming towers in the glistening haze that seemed a luminous vapor rising from dazzling avenues.

Wherever the eye could see myriad lights were twinkling: brooding and fraught with the dark mystery of lonely, distant river banks; red, green and golden on the rivers, crossing busily on a purposeful way; intruding and bewildering in the service of industry from steel skeletons against the sky; magic and dreamlike on the fairy spread of miraculous bridges; winking and dancing with the spirit of gaiety from the theaters below and the roof gardens above; that in the summer, suddenly spread a new and brilliant city of the night above the tired metropolis of the day. Looking down on these myriad points of light one seemed to have suddenly come upon the nesting of the stars; where planets and constellations germinated and took flight toward the swarming firmament.

The incomparable drama of the spectacle affected the four young men on the threshold of life in a different way. Bojo, to whom the sensation was new, felt a sort of prophetic stimulation as though in the glittering sweep below lay the jewel which he was to carry off. Granning, who had broken into the monastic routine of his life to make an exception of this gathering of the clans, looked out in reverence, stirred to deeper questionings of the spirit. Marsh, more dramatically attuned, felt a sensation of weakness, as though suddenly confronted with the gigantic scheme of the multitude; he felt the impotence of single effort. While DeLancy, who dined thus every night, seeing no further than the festooned gardens, the brilliant splashes of color, the faces of women flushed in the yellow glow of candle-lights, hearing only the pleasant thrumming sounds of a hidden orchestra, rattled on in his privileged way.

"Well, now that the Big Four is together again, let's divide up the city." He sent a sweeping gesture toward the stenciled stretch of blocks below and continued: "Boscy, what'll you have? Take your choice. I'll have a couple of hotels, a yacht and a box at the opera. Next bidder, please!"

But Bojo without attention to this chatter said:

"Remember the night before we went to college and we picked out what we intended to make. Came pretty close to it too, didn't we?"

Marsh looked up quickly, seized by a sudden dramatic suggestion.

"Well, here we are again. I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's tell the truth—no buncombe—just what each expects to get out of life."

"But will we tell the truth?" said Bojo doubtfully.

"I will."

"Of course we all want to make a million first," said Fred DeLancy, laughing. "Roscy's got his, so I suppose he wants ten. First place, is it admitted each of us wants a million? Every properly brought up young American ought to believe in that, oughtn't he?"

"Freddie, behave yourself," said Bojo severely. "Be serious."

"Serious," said DeLancy, with an offended air. "I'll be more serious than any of you and I'll tell more of the truth and when I do you won't believe me."

"Go on, Roscy, start first."

"Freddie's right in one respect. I intend to treble what I've got in ten years or go bankrupt," said Marsh instantly. He flung the stub of his cigar out into the night, watched it a moment in earthbound descent, and then leaned forward over the table, elbows down, hands clasped, the lights laying deep shadows about the hollowed eyes, the outstanding ears accentuating the irregularity and oddity of the head. "I'm not sure but that would be the best thing for me. If I had to start at the bottom I believe I'd do something. I mean something big."

A half-concealed smile passed about the group, accustomed to the speaker's dramatic instincts.

"Well, I've got to start at life in a different way. The trouble is, in this American scheme I have no natural place unless I make one. Abroad I could settle down to genteel loafing and find a lot of other congenial loafers, who would gamble, hunt, fish, race, globe-trot, beat up Africa in search of big sport, or drift around fashionable capitals for a bit of amusement; either that or if I wanted to develop along the line of brains there's a career in politics or a chance at diplomacy. Here we are developing millionaires as fast as we can turn them out and never thinking how we can employ them. What's the result? The daughters of great fortunes marry foreign titles as fast as they get the chance in order to get the opportunity to enjoy their wealth to the fullest, because here there is no class so limited and circumscribed without national significance as our so-called Four Hundred; the sons either become dissipated loafers, professional amateurs of sport, or are condemned to piling more dollars on dollars, which is an absurdity."

"I grieve for the millionaire," interjected DeLancy flippantly.

"And yet you want to triple what you've got," said Bojo with a smile.

"I'm coming to that—wait. Now the idea of money grubbing is distasteful to me. What I want is a great opportunity which only money can give. I have, I suppose, if a conservative estimate could be made, pretty close to two million dollars—which means around one hundred thousand a year. Now if I want to settle down and marry, that's a lot; but if I want to go in and compete with other men, the leaders, that's nothing at all. Now the principal interest I've got ahead is the Morning Post; it's not all mine, but the controlling share is. It's a good conservative nursery rocking-horse. It can go rocking on for another twenty years, satisfied with its little rut. Now do you understand why I want more money? I want a million clear to throw into it. I don't want it to be a profitable high-class publication—I want it to be the paper in New York."

"But are you willing to go slow, to learn every rope first?" said Granning with a shake of his head.

"You know I am," said Marsh impatiently. "I've plugged at it harder than any one on the paper this summer and last too."

"Yes, you work hard—and play hard too," Granning admitted.

Marsh accepted the admission with a pleased smile and continued enthusiastically:

"Exactly. Win or lose, play the limit! That's my motto, and there's something glorious in it. I'm going to work hard, but I'm going to play just as hard. I want to live life to its fullest; I want to get every sensation out of it. And when I'm ready I'm going to make the paper a force, I'm going to make myself feared. I want to round myself out. I want to touch everything that I can, but above all I want to be on the fighting line. After this period of financial buccaneering there's going to come a great period—a radical period, the period of young men."

"Roscy, you want to be noticed," said DeLancy.

"I admit it. If you had what I have, wouldn't you? I repeat, I want the sensation of living in the big way. Granning shakes his head— I know what he's thinking."

"Roscy, you're a gambler," said Granning, but without saying all he thought.

"I am, but I'm going to gamble for power, which is different, and that's the first step to-day; that's what they all have done."

"You haven't told us what your ambition is," said Bojo.

"I want to make of the Morning Post not simply a great paper but a great institution," said Marsh seriously. "I believe the newspaper can be made the force that the church once was. Now the church was dominant only as it entered into every side of the life of the community; when it was not simply the religious and political force, but greater still, the social force. I believe the newspaper will become great as it satisfies every need of the human imagination. There are papers that print a Sunday sermon. I would have a religious page every day, just as you print a woman's page and a children's page. I'd run a legal bureau free or at nominal charges, and conduct aggressive campaigns against petty abuses. I'd organize the financial department so as to make it personal to every subscriber, with an investment bureau which would offer only a carefully selected list for conservative investors and would refuse to deal in seven per cent. bonds and fifteen per cent. shares. I would have a great auditorium where concerts and plays would be given at no higher price than fifty cents."

"Hold up! How could you get plays on such conditions?" said DeLancy, who had been held breathless by this Utopian scheme.

"Any manager in the city with a sense of publicity would jump at the chance of giving an afternoon performance, expenses paid, under such conditions, especially as the list would be guaranteed. Then, above all, I'd give the public fiction, the best I could get and first hand. What do you think gives Le Petit Parisien and Le Petit Journal a circulation of about a million each and all over France? Serial novels. Do you know the circulation of papers in New York? There are only three over a hundred thousand and the greatest has hardly a quarter of a million. However, I won't go on. You see my ideas make an institution—the modern institution, replacing and absorbing all past institutions."

"And what else do you want?" said Bojo, laughing.

"I want that by the time I'm thirty-five. I want ten millions and I want to be at forty either senator or ambassador to Paris or London. I want to build a yacht that will defend the American cup and to own a horse that will win the derby.

"And will you marry?"

"The most beautiful woman in America."

The four burst into laughter simultaneously, none more heartily than Marsh, who added:

"Remember, we're to tell the truth, and that's what I'd like to do." He concluded: "Win or lose, play the limit. Never mind, Granny; when I'm broke, you'll give me a job. Up to you. Confess."

Granning began diffidently, for he was always slow at speech and the fluency of Marsh's recital intimidated him.

"I don't know that there's anything so interesting in my future," he began, turning the menu nervously in his hands and fixing a spot on the tablecloth where a wine stain broke the white monotony. "You see, I'm different from you fellows. You're facing life in a different sort of way. I'm not sure but what there's more danger in it than you think, but the fact is you're all looking for the gamble. You want what you want, Roscy, by the time you're thirty-five. Bojo and Fred want a million by the time they're thirty. You're looking for the easy way—the quick way. You may get it and then you may not. You've got friends, opportunities—perhaps you will."

"That's where you'll never learn, you old fossil," said Marsh. "If you'd get out and meet people, why, some time you'd strike a man with a nice fat contract in his pocket looking for just the reliable—" he stopped, not wishing to add, "old plodder that you are."

Granning shook his head emphatically. Among these boyish types he seemed of another generation, a rather roughly hewn type of a district leader of fixed purpose and irresistible momentum.

"Not for me," he said decisively. "There's one thing I've got strong, where I have the start over you and a good thing it is, too: I know my limitations. I'm not starting where you are. My son will; I'm not. Hold up; it's the truth, and the truth is what we're telling. You can gamble with life—you've got something to fall back on. I'm the fellow who's got to build. Yes, I'll be honest. I want to make a million, too, I suppose, as Fred said, like every American does. After all, if you're out to make money, it's a good thing to try for something high. There isn't much chance for romance in what I'm doing. I've got to go up step by step, but it means more to me to get a fifty-dollar raise than that next million can mean to you, Roscy. That's because I look back, because I remember."

He stopped and the memories of the existence out of which he had dragged himself, of which he never spoke, threw thoughtful shadows over the broad forehead. All at once, taking a knife, he drew a long straight line on the table, inclining upward like the slope of a hill, with a cross at the bottom and one at the top, while the others looked on, puzzled.

"You see there's not much banging of drums or dancing in what I've got ahead and not much to tell until I get there. You know how a mole travels; well, that's me." He laid his finger on the cross at the bottom and then shifted it to the cross at the top. "Here's where I go in and here's where I come out. In between doesn't count."

"And what besides that?" said Bojo.

"Well," said Granning simply, "I don't know what else. I'd like to get off for a couple of months and see Europe and what they're doing over in France and Germany in the steel line."

"But all that'll happen. What would you really like to get out of life?" said Marsh, smiling—"you old unimaginative bear!"

"I'd like to go into politics in the right sort of way; I think every man ought. Perhaps I'll marry, have a home and all that sort of thing some day. I think what I'd like best would be to get a chance to run a factory along certain lines I've thought out—a cooperative arrangement in a way. There's so much to be worked out along the lines of organization and efficiency." He thought over the situation a moment and then concluded with sudden diffidence as though surprised at the daring of his self-confession. "That's about all there is to it, I guess."

When he had ended thus clumsily, DeLancy took up immediately, but without that spirit of good-humored raillery which was characteristic. When he spoke in matter-of-fact, direct phrases, the three friends looked at him in astonishment, realizing all at once an undivined intent underneath all the lightness of that attitude by which they had judged him.

"One thing Granning said strikes at me—knowing your limitations," he said with a certain defiance, as though aware that he was going to shock them. "I suppose you fellows think of me as a merry little jester, an amusing loafer, happy-go-lucky and all that sort of stuff. Well, you're mistaken. I know my limitations, I know what I can do and what I can't. I'm just as anxious to get ahead as any of you, and you can bet I don't fool myself. I don't sit down and say, 'Freddie, you've got railroads in your head—you're an organizer—you'd shine at the bar—you'd push John Rockefeller off the map,' or any of that rot. No, sir! I know where I stand. On a straight out-and-out proposition I wouldn't be worth twenty dollars a week to any one. But just the same I'm going to have my million and my automobile in five years. Dine with me five years from this date and you'll see."

"Well, Fred, what's the secret? How are you going to do it?" said Bojo, a little suspicious of his seriousness.

But DeLancy as though still aware of the necessity of further explanations before his pronouncement continued:

"I said I didn't fool myself and I don't. I haven't got ability like Granning over here, who's entirely too modest and who'll end by being an old money-bags—see if he doesn't. I haven't got a bunch of greenbacks left me or behind me like Roscy or Bojo. My old dad's a brick; he's scraped and pinched to put me through college on the basis of you fellows. Now it's up to me. I haven't got what you fellows have got, but I've got some very valuable qualities, very valuable when you keep in mind what you can do with them. I have a very fine pair of dancing legs, I play a good game of bridge and a better at poker, I can ride other men's horses and drive their automobiles in first-rate style, I wear better clothes than my host with all his wad, and you bet that impresses him. I know how to gather in friends as fast as you can drum up circulation, I can liven up any party and save any dinner from going on the rocks, I can amuse a bunch of old bores until they get to liking themselves; in a word, I know how to make myself indispensable in society and the society that counts."

"What the deuce is he driving at?" Marsh broke in with a puzzled expression.

"Why am I sitting down in a broker's office drawing fifty dollars a week, just to smoke long black cigars? Because I know a rap what's going on? No. Because I know people, because I'm a cute little social runner who brings custom into the office; because my capital is friends and I capitalize my friends."

"Oh, come now, Fred, that's rather hard," said Bojo, feeling the note of bitterness in this cynical self-estimate.

"It's the truth. What do you think that old fraud of a Runker, my boss, said to me last week when I dropped in an hour late? 'Young man, what do you come to the office for—for afternoon tea?' And what did I answer? I said 'Boss, you know what you've got me here for, and do you want me to tell you what you ought to say? You ought to say, "Mr. DeLancy, you've been working very hard in our interest these nights and though we can't give you an expense account, you must be more careful of your health. I don't want to see you burning the candle at both ends. Sleep late of mornings."' And what did he say, the old humbug? He burst out laughing and raised my salary. He knew I was wise."

"Well, what's the point of all this?" said Granning after the laugh. "Never heard you take so long coming to the point before."

"The point is this: there're three ways of making money and only three: to have it left you like Roscy, to earn it like Granning, and to marry it—"

"Like you!"

"Like me!"

The others looked at him with constraint, for at that period there was still a prejudice against an American man who made a marriage of calculation. Finally Granning said:

"You won't do that, Freddie!"

"Indeed I will," said DeLancy, but with a nervous acceleration. "My career is society. Oh, I don't say I'm going to marry for money and nothing else. It's much easier than that. Besides, there's the patriotic motive, you know. I'm saving an American fortune for American uses, American heiresses for American men. Sounds like American styles for American women," he added, trying to take the edge off the declaration with a laugh. "After all, there's a lot of buncombe about it. A broken-down foreigner comes over here with a reputation like a Sing-Sing favorite, and because he calls himself Duke he's going to marry the daughter of Dan Drake to pay up his debts and the Lord knows for what purposes in the future—and do you fellows turn your back on him and raise your eyebrows as you did a moment ago? Not at all. You're tickled to death to go up and cling to his ducal finger. Am I right, Roscy?"

"Yes, but—"

"But I'm an American and will make a damned sight better husband, and American children will inherit the money instead of its being swallowed up by a rotten aristocracy. There's the answer."

"It's the way you say it, Fred," said Bojo uneasily.

"Because I have the nerve to say it. This is all I'm worth and this is the only way to get what we all want."

"You'll never do it," said Granning with decision; "not in the way you say it."

"Granning, you're a babe in the woods. You don't know what life is," said DeLancy, laughing boisterously. "After all, what are you going to do? You're going to put away the finest days of your life to come out with a pile when you're middle-aged and then what good will it do you? I knew I'd shock you. Still there it is—that's flat!" He drew back, lighting a cigar to cover his retreat and said: "Bojo next. I dare you to be as frank."

Bojo, thus interrogated, took refuge in an evasive answer. The revelations he had listened to gave him a keen sense of change. On this very evening when they had come together for the purpose of celebrating old friendship, it seemed to him that the parting of their ways lay clearly before him.

"I don't know what I shall do," he said at last. "No, I'm not dodging; I don't know. Much depends on certain circumstances." He could not say how vividly their different announced paths represented to him the difficulties of his choice. "I'd like to do something more than just make money, and yet that seems the most natural thing, I suppose. Well, I'd like a chance to have a year or two to think things over, see all kinds of men and activities—but I don't know, by next week I may be at the bottom—striking out for myself and glad of a chance."

He stopped and they did not urge him to continue. After DeLancy's flat exposition each had a feeling of the danger of disillusionment. Besides, Fred and Roscoe were impatient to be off, Fred to a roof garden, Marsh to the newspaper. Bojo declined DeLancy's invitation, alleged the necessity of unpacking, in reality rather desirous of being alone or of a quieter talk with Granning in the new home.

"Here's to us, then," said Marsh, raising his glass. "Whatever happens the old combination sticks together."

Bojo raised his glass thoughtfully, feeling underneath that there was something irrevocably changed. The city was outside sparkling and black, but there was a new feeling in the night below, and the more he felt the multiplicity of its multifold expressions the more it came to him that what he would do he would do alone.