VII. BLACKLOCK GOES INTO TRAINING
This brings me to the ugliest story my enemies have concocted against me. No one appreciates more thoroughly than I that, to rise high, a man must have his own efforts seconded by the flood of vituperation that his enemies send to overwhelm him, and which washes him far higher than he could hope to lift himself. So I do not here refer to any attack on me in the public prints; I think of them only with amusement and gratitude. The story that rankles is the one these foes of mine set creeping, like a snake under the fallen leaves, everywhere, anywhere, unseen, without a trail. It has been whispered into every ear—and it is, no doubt, widely believed—that I deliberately put old Bromwell Ellersly “in a hole,” and there tortured him until he consented to try to compel his daughter to marry me.
It is possible that, if I had thought of such a devilish device, I might have tried it—is not all fair in love? But there was no need for my cudgeling my brains to carry that particular fortification on my way to what I had fixed my will upon. Bromwell Ellersly came to me of his own accord.
I suppose the Ellerslys must have talked me over in the family circle. However this may be, my acquaintance with her father began with Sam's asking me to lunch with him. “The governor has heard me talk of you so much,” said he, “that he is anxious to meet you.”
I found him a dried-up, conventional old gentleman, very proud of his ancestors, none of whom I had ever heard of, and very positive that a great deal of deference was due him—though on what grounds I could not then, and can not now, make out. I soon discovered that it was the scent of my stock-tip generosity, wafted to him by Sammy, that had put him hot upon my trail. I hadn't gone far into his affairs before I learned that he had been speculating, mortgaging, kiting notes, doing what he called, and thought, “business” on a large scale. He regarded business as beneath the dignity and the intellect of a “gentleman”—how my gorge does rise at that word! So he put his great mind on it only for a few hours now and then; he reserved the rest of his time for what he regarded as the proper concerns of a gentleman—attending to social “duties,” reading pretentious books, looking at the pictures and listening to the music decreed fashionable.
They charge that I put him “in a hole.” In fact, I found him at the bottom of a deep pit he had dug for himself; and when he first met me he was, without having the sense to realize it, just about to go smash, with not a penny for his old age. As soon as I had got this fact clear of the tangle, I showed it to him.
“My God, what is to become of me?” he said, That was his only thought—not, what is to become of my wife and daughter; but, what is to become of “me!” I do not blame him for this. Naturally enough, people who have always been used to everything become, unconsciously, monsters of egotism and selfishness; it is natural, too, that they should imagine themselves liberal and generous if they give away occasionally something that costs them, at most, nothing more serious than the foregoing of some extravagant luxury or other. I recite his remark simply to show what manner of man he was, what sort of creature I had to deal with.
I offered to help him, and I did help him. Is there any one, knowing anything of the facts of life, who will censure me when I admit that I—with deliberation—simply tided him over, did not make for him and present to him a fortune? What chance should I have had, if I had been so absurdly generous to a man who deserved nothing but punishment for his selfish and bigoted mode of life? I took away his worst burdens; but I left him more than he could carry without my help. And it was not until he had appealed, in vain to all his social friends to relieve him of the necessity of my aid, not until he realized that I was his only hope of escaping a sharp comedown from luxury to very modest comfort in a flat somewhere—not until then did his wife send me an invitation to dinner. And I had not so much as hinted that I wanted it.
I shall never forget the smallest detail of that dinner—it was a purely “family” affair, only the Ellerslys and I. I can feel now the oppressive atmosphere, the look as of impending sacrilege upon the faces of the old servants; I can see Mrs. Ellersly trying to condescend to be “gracious,” and treating me as if I were some sort of museum freak or menagerie exhibit. I can see Anita. She was like a statue of snow; she spoke not a word; if she lifted her eyes, I failed to note it. And when I was leaving—I with my collar wilted from the fierce, nervous strain I had been enduring—Mrs. Ellersly, in that voice of hers into which I don't believe any shade of a real human emotion ever penetrated, said: “You must come to see us, Mr. Blacklock. We are always at home after five.”