CHAPTER XLIV
For a man of Lester's years—he was now forty-six—to be tossed out in the
world
without a definite connection, even though he did have a present
income (including this new ten thousand) of fifteen thousand a year, was a
disturbing and discouraging thing. He realized now that, unless he made
some very fortunate and profitable arrangements in the near future, his
career was virtually at an end. Of course he could marry Jennie. That would
give him the ten thousand for the rest of his life, but it would also end his
chance of getting his legitimate share of the Kane estate. Again, he might
sell out the seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of moderate interest-
bearing stocks, which now yielded
him about five thousand, and try a
practical investment of some kind—say a rival carriage company. But did he
want to jump in, at this stage of the game, and begin a running fight on his
father's old organization? Moreover, it would be a hard row to hoe. There
was the keenest rivalry for business as it was, with the Kane Company very
much in the lead. Lester's only available capital was his seventy-five
thousand dollars. Did he want to begin in a picayune, obscure way? It took
money to get a foothold in the carriage business as things were now.
The trouble with Lester was that, while blessed with a fine imagination and
considerable insight, he lacked the ruthless, narrow-minded insistence on
his individual superiority which is a necessary element in almost every great
business success. To be a forceful figure in the business world means, as a
rule, that you must
be an individual of one idea, and that idea the God-
given one that life has destined you for a tremendous future in the
particular field you have chosen. It means that one thing, a cake of soap, a
new can-opener, a safety razor, or speed-accelerator, must seize on your
imagination with tremendous force, burn as a raging flame, and make itself
the be-all and end-all of your existence. As a rule, a man needs poverty to
help him to this enthusiasm, and youth. The thing he has discovered, and
with which
he is going to busy himself, must be the door to a thousand
opportunities and a thousand joys. Happiness must be beyond or the fire
will not burn as brightly as it might—the urge will not be great enough to
make a great success.
Lester did not possess this indispensable quality of enthusiasm. Life had
already shown him the greater part of its so-called joys. He saw through the
illusions that are so often and so noisily labeled pleasure. Money, of course,
was essential, and he had already had money—enough to keep him
comfortably. Did he want to risk it? He looked about him thoughtfully.
Perhaps he did. Certainly he could not comfortably contemplate the thought
of sitting by and watching other people work for the rest of his days.
In the end he decided that he would bestir himself and look into things. He
was, as he said to himself, in no hurry; he was not going to make a mistake.
He
would first give the trade, the people who were identified with v he
manufacture and sale of carriages, time to realize that he was out of the
Kane Company, for the time being, anyhow, and open to other connections.
So he announced that he was leaving the Kane Company and going to
Europe, ostensibly for a rest. He had never been abroad, and Jennie, too,
would enjoy it. Vesta could be left at home with Gerhardt and a maid, and
he and Jennie would travel around a bit, seeing what Europe had to show.
He wanted to visit Venice and Baden-Baden, and the great watering-places
that had been recommended to him. Cairo
and Luxor and the Parthenon
had always appealed to his imagination. After he had had his outing he
could come back and seriously gather up the threads of his intentions.
The spring after his father died, he put his plan into execution. He had
wound up the work of the warerooms and with a pleasant deliberation had
studied out a tour. He made Jennie his confidante, and now, having
gathered together their traveling comforts they took a steamer from New
York to Liverpool. After a few weeks in the British Isles they went to Egypt.
From
there they came back, through Greece and Italy, into Austria and
Switzerland, and then later, through France and Paris, to Germany and
Berlin. Lester was diverted by the novelty of the experience and yet he had
an uncomfortable feeling that he was wasting his time. Great business
enterprises
were not built by travelers, and he was not looking for health.
Jennie, on the other hand, was transported by what she saw, and enjoyed
the new life to the full. Before Luxor and Karnak—places which Jennie had
never dreamed existed—she learned of an older civilization, powerful,
complex, complete. Millions of people had lived and died here, believing in
other gods, other forms of government, other conditions of existence. For the
first time in her life Jennie gained a clear idea of how vast the world is. Now
from this point of view—of decayed Greece, of fallen Rome,
of forgotten
Egypt, she saw how pointless are our minor difficulties, our minor beliefs.
Her father's Lutheranism—it did not seem so significant any more; and the
social economy of Columbus, Ohio—rather pointless, perhaps. Her mother
had worried so of what people—her neighbors—thought, but here were dead
worlds of people, some bad, some good.
Lester explained that their
differences in standards of morals were due sometimes to climate,
sometimes to religious beliefs, and sometimes to the rise of peculiar
personalities like Mohammed. Lester liked to point out how small
conventions bulked in this, the larger world, and vaguely she began to see.
Admitting that she had been bad—locally it was important, perhaps, but in
the sum of civilization, in the sum of big forces, what did it all amount to?
They would be dead after a little while, she and Lester and all these people.
Did anything matter except goodness—goodness of heart? What else was
there that was real?
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
