“I used to wear a mustache,” said I, “but I cut it off because—I don’t recall why.”
In fact I did recall. I noted one day that I had a good mouth and better teeth than most men have. And it came to me how absurd it was to hang a bunch of hair from my upper lip to trail in the soup and to embalm the odors of past cigars for the discomfort of my nose. Edna kept after me for a time to let it grow again. But reading in some novel she regarded as authoritative that mustaches were “common,” she desisted. And I found my boyish appearance highly useful. It led men to underestimate me—a signal advantage in the contests of wit against wit in which I daily engaged with a view to wrenching a fortune for myself away from my fellow men.
My mother went on to urge me to make my face look older and more formidable. Now that she had learned what a grand person I was she feared others would not realize it. Edna, who, as I have said, was shrewdness personified where her own interests were involved, immediately saw the dangerous bearings of this newly aroused vanity of our kin. “I forgot to caution you,” said she, “not to mention our prosperity. If we were talked about now, it might be lost entirely. The only reason Godfrey and I came to you so soon with the news of it was because we wanted to do something for you right away. And we knew we could trust you not to get us into trouble. Don’t talk about us. If you hear people talking, if they ask you questions, pretend you don’t understand and don’t know. You see, it may be spies from our enemies.”
One glance round that circle of eager faces was enough to convince that Edna had made precisely the impression she desired. I could see that my mother and old Weeping Willie, the shrewd of the five—the two to whom Edna and I owed most by inheritance—were prepared to deny knowing us if that would aid in safeguarding the precious prosperity. My father and sister were obviously disappointed that they could not go about boasting of our magnificence and getting from the neighbors the envy and respect due the near relations of a plutocrat. But there was no danger of their being indiscreet; Edna could breathe freely. And when the two families were tucked away in the midst of a large and secluded farm, she could tell what genealogical stories she pleased without fear of being confounded by the truth.
By three o’clock we were back in Brooklyn. Edna felt and looked triumphant. The crowning of the day’s work had been small but significant. A heavy rain storm that came up while we were on the way back must have made the servants think we had cut short our woodland outing. As we were going to bed that might Edna roused herself from deep study and broke a long silence with, “I hesitated whether to tell them you had become president of the road.”
I had noted that seeming slip of hers, so unlike her cautious reticence.
“Then I remembered they’d be sure to see it in the papers,” continued she. “And I decided it was best to tell and quiet them.”
While the old folks were industriously settling themselves in the New Jersey woods— Here let me relieve my mind by saying a few words in mitigation of the unfilial and snobbish conduct of Edna and me. I admit we deserve nothing but condemnation. I admit I am more to blame than she because I could have compelled her to act better toward our families, though of course I could not have changed her feelings—or my own, for that matter. But, as often happens in this world, the thing that was in motive shameful turned out well. We and our families had grown hopelessly apart. Intercourse with them could not but have been embarrassing and uncomfortable for both sides. When we got them the farm, got them away from the malarial and squalid part of Passaic into a healthful region where they lived in much better health and in a comfort they could appreciate, we did the best possible thing for them, as well as for ourselves. Do not think for a moment that because I am ashamed of my snobbish motives I am therefore advocating the keeping up of irksome and absurd ties merely out of wormy sentimentality. It has always seemed to me, when we have but the one chance at life, the one chance to make the best of our talents and opportunities, that only moral or mental weakness, or both, would waste the one chance in the bondage of outworn ties. When one has outgrown any association, lop it off relentlessly, say I. If the living lets the dying cling to it, the dying does not live but the living dies. If you are associated with anyone in any way—business, social, ties of affection, whatever you please—and if you do not wish to lose that one, then keep yourself alive and abreast of him or her. And if you let yourself begin to decay and find yourself cut away, whose is the fault, if fault there be? We—Edna and I—perhaps did not do all we might to make our outgrown families happy; I say perhaps, though I am by no means sure that we did not do all that was in our power, for they certainly would have got no pleasure out of seeing more of two people so uncongenial to them in every respect. At any rate, we did not leave our families to starve or to suffer. Hard though my charming, lovely wife was, I cannot conceive her sinking to that depth. On the whole, I feel that we could honestly say we took the right course with them. That is, we helped them without hindering ourselves. We did the right thing, though not in the right way.
While our families were choosing a farm, were fixing up the buildings to suit their needs and tastes, were moving themselves from their ancient haunts, Edna was as industriously busy making far deeper inroads on the new prosperity. She was planning the conquest of New York.