* * * * *
In the smoker of the accommodation, to which I retired, I sat oblivious of my surroundings until we entered the tunnel. So far as I could see, Hastings had it on me at every turn—at thirty-three hundred a year—considerably less than half of what I paid out annually in servants' wages. And the exasperating part of it all was that, though I spent seventy-two thousand a year, I did not begin to be as happy as he was! Not by a jugful. Face to face with the simple comfort of the cottage I had just left, its sincerity and affection, its thrifty self-respect, its wide interests, I confessed that I had not been myself genuinely contented since I left my mother's house for college, thirty odd years before. I had become the willing victim of a materialistic society.
I had squandered my life in a vain effort to purchase happiness with money—an utter impossibility, as I now only too plainly saw. I was poisoned with it, as Hastings had said—sick with it and sick of it. I was one of Hastings' chaingangs of prosperous prisoners—millionaires shackled together and walking in lockstep; one of his school of goldfish bumping their noses against the glass of the bowl in which they were confined by virtue of their inability to live outside the medium to which they were accustomed.
I was through with it! From that moment I resolved to become a free man; living my own life; finding happiness in things that were worth while. I would chuck the whole nauseating business of valets and scented baths; of cocktails, clubs and cards; of an unwieldy and tiresome household of lazy servants; of the ennui of heavy dinners; and of a family the members of which were strangers to each other. I could and would easily cut down my expenditures to not more than thirty thousand a year; and with the balance of my income I would look after some of those sick babies Hastings had mentioned.
I would begin by taking a much smaller house and letting half the servants go, including my French cook. I had for a long time realized that we all ate too much. I would give up one of my motors and entertain more simply. We would omit the spring dash to Paris, and I would insist on a certain number of evenings each week which the family should spend together, reading aloud or talking over their various plans and interests. It did not seem by any means impossible in the prospect and I got a considerable amount of satisfaction from planning it all out. My life was to be that of a sort of glorified Hastings. After my healthy, peaceful day in the quiet country I felt quite light-hearted—as nearly happy as I could remember having been for years.
It was raining when I got out at the Grand Central Station, and as I hurried along the platform to get a taxi I overtook an acquaintance of mine—a social climber. He gave me a queer look in response to my greeting and I remembered that I had on the old gray hat I had taken from the quick lunch.
"I've been off for a tramp in the country," I explained, resenting my own instinctive embarrassment.
"Ah! Don't say! Didn't know you went in for that sort of thing! Well, good night!"
He sprang into the only remaining taxi without asking me to share it and vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke. I was in no mood for waiting; besides I was going to be democratic. I took a surface car up Lexington Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent Italian gentleman for thirty blocks. The car was intolerably stuffy and smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic. By the time I reached the cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour. I turned up my coat collar and ran to my house.
Somehow I felt like a small boy as I threw myself panting inside my own marble portal. My butler expressed great sympathy for my condition and smuggled me quickly upstairs. I fancy he suspected there was something discreditable about my absence. A pungent aroma floated up from the drawing room, where the bridge players were steadily at work. I confess to feeling rather dirty, wet and disreputable.