The result is the almost complete estrangement between my wife and me. Every month we have a fierce quarrel over the waste, often a quarrel that lasts the month through and breaks out afresh every time we meet. She denounces me as a miser, a vulgarian. She goads me into furious outbursts before the children. What with my battles against stupidity and insolence down-town, and my battles against waste in my family, my life is one long contention. However, I suppose this is the lot of all the great men who play large parts on the world’s stage. No wonder those who fancy we are on earth to seek and find happiness regard life as a ghastly fraud.
“What’s the demnition total, Burridge?” I asked, when he appeared with his arms full of books and papers.
“Ninety-two thousand, four, twenty-six, fifty-one,” he answered, in a tone of abject apology.
I could not restrain an indignant expostulation. “That’s seventy-three hundred and four above last month. Impossible! You’ve made a mistake in adding.”
He went over his figures nervously and flushed scarlet. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, in a tone of terror. “The total is ninety-five thousand instead of ninety-two.”
Ten thousand-odd above month before last! Eighty-nine hundred above the same month last year! I had to restrain myself from physical violence to Burridge. I ordered him out of the room—giving as my reason anger at his mistake in addition. I wanted to hear no more, as I felt sure the details of the shameful waste would put me in a rage which would impair my health. The total was enough for my purpose—we were now living at the rate of more than a million dollars a year! I took the eleven o’clock train for my place on Long Island.
When I reached my railway station none of my traps was there. In my angry preoccupation I had forgotten to telephone from the Fifth Avenue house; and, of course, neither Pigott nor the butler nor Burridge nor Ridley nor any of my herd of blockhead servants had had the consideration to repair my oversight. Yet there are fools who say money will buy everything. Sometimes I think it won’t buy anything but annoyances.
So I had to go to my place in a rickety, smelly station-surrey—and that did not soothe my rage. However, as I drove into and through my grounds—there isn’t a finer park on Long Island—I began to feel somewhat better. There is nothing like lands and houses to give one the sensation of wealth, of possession. I have often gone into my vaults and have looked at the big bundles and boxes of securities; and, by setting my imagination to work, I have got some sort of notion how vast my wealth and power are. But bits of paper supplemented by imagination are not equal to the tangible, seeable things—just as a hundred-dollar bill can’t give one the sensation in the fingers and in the eyes that a ten-dollar gold piece gives. That is why I like my big houses and my city lots and my parked acres in the country—yes, and my yacht and carriages and furniture, my servants and horses and dogs, my family’s jewels and finery.
But the instant I entered the house my spirits soured again, curdled into an acid fury.
I had sent my son down there with his mother to await my sentence upon him for his crimes—his insults to me, his waste of nearly a million of my money, his violation of his word of honour, his forgery. I had been assuming that in those five weeks of waiting he was suffering from remorse and suspense, was thinking of his crimes against me and of my anger and justice. As I entered the large drawing-room unannounced, they were about to go in to luncheon. “They” means my wife and James, and Walter and Aurora, who had gone down to the country for the week-end. “They” means also ten others, six of whom were guests staying in the house. As I stood dumfounded, five more who had been to church came trooping in. I had gone, expecting a house of mourning. I had found a revel.