I laughed. What nonsense! As if any sensible person—and she is unquestionably shrewdly sensible—ever looks at those things except when some one is by, noting their “devotion to art.” I said: “Certainly my family has the most amazing disregard of money—of value. If it were not——”
“You started to say something about last month’s accounts,” she interrupted.
“The total was ninety-five thousand,” I said, looking sternly at her. “You are now living at the rate of more than a million a year. In ten years we have jumped from one hundred thousand a year to a million a year. And this madness grows month by month.”
She—shrugged her shoulders!
“I came to say to you, madam—” I went on, furiously.
“Did you look at the items?” she cut in coldly.
“No,” I replied; “I could not trust myself to do it.”
“Twenty-seven thousand of last month’s expenses went toward paying a small instalment on your little place for your own amusement in the Adirondacks. I had nothing to do with it. None of us but you will ever go there.”
This was most exasperating. I can’t account for my leaping into such a trap, except on the theory that my preoccupation with the railway matters must have made me forget ordering that item into my domestic accounts instead of into my personal accounts down-town. Of course, my contention of my family’s extravagance was sound. But I had seemed to give the whole case away, had destroyed the effect of all I had said, and, as I glanced at my wife, I saw a triumphant, contemptuous smile in her eyes. “You are always trying to punish some one else for your own sins,” she said. “The truth is that the only truly prodigal member of the family is yourself.”
Me prodigal with my own wealth! But I did not answer her. One is at a hopeless disadvantage in discussion with a woman. They are insensible to reason and logic except when they can gain an advantage by using them. It’s like having to keep to the rules in a game where your antagonist keeps to them or makes his own rules as it suits him. “Nevertheless,” I said, “the waste in my establishments must stop and your son James must come to his senses. It was about him that I came.”