Judson and Company, like all old-established houses, was honeycombed with carelessness and wastefulness. To begin with, it treated its employees on a basis of mixed business and benevolence, and that is always bad unless the benevolence is merely an ingenious pretext for getting out of your people work that you don’t pay for. But Mr. Judson, having a good deal of the highfaluting grand seigneur about him, made the benevolence genuine. Then, the theory was that the Judsons were born merchants, and knew all there was to be known, and did not need to attend to business. Mr. Judson, being firmly convinced of his greatness, and being much engaged socially and in posing as a great merchant at luncheons and receptions to distinguished strangers and the like, put me in full control as soon as he made me general manager. He interfered in the business only occasionally, and then merely to show how large and generous he was—to raise salaries, to extend unwise credits, to bolster up decaying mills that had long sold goods to the house, to indorse for his friends. Friends! Who that can and will lend and indorse has not hosts of friends? What I have waited to see before selecting my friends is the friendship that survives the death of its hope of favours—and I’m still waiting.
As soon as I became partner I confirmed in detail the suspicion, or, rather, the instinctive knowledge, which had kept me from looking elsewhere for my opportunity.
I recall distinctly the day my crisis came. It had two principal events.
The first was my discovery that Mr. Judson had got the firm and himself so entangled that he was in my power. I confess my impulse was to take a course which a weaker or less courageous man would have taken—away from the course of the strong man with the higher ambition and the broader view of life and morals. And it was while I seemed to be wavering—I say “seemed to be” because I do not think a strong, far-sighted man of resolute purpose is ever “squeamish,” as they call it—while, I say, I was in the mood of uncertainty which often precedes energetic action, we, my wife and I, went to dinner at the Judsons.
That dinner was the second event of my crucial day. Judson’s family and mine did not move in the same social circle. When people asked my wife if she knew Mrs. Judson—which they often maliciously did—she always answered: “Oh, no—my husband keeps our home life and his business distinct; and, you know, New York is very large. The Judsons and we haven’t the same friends.” That was her way of hiding our rankling wound—for it rankled with me as much as with her; in those days we had everything in common, like the humble people that we were.
I can see now her expression of elation as she displayed the note of invitation from Mrs. Judson: “It would give us great pleasure if you and your husband would dine with us quite informally,” etc. Her face clouded as she repeated, “quite informally.” “They wouldn’t for worlds have any of their fashionable friends there to meet US.” Even then she was far away from the time when, to my saying, “You shall have your victoria and drive in the park and get your name in the papers like Mrs. Judson,” she laughed and answered—honestly, I know—“We mustn’t get to be like these New Yorkers. Our happiness lies right here with ourselves and our children. I’ll be satisfied if we bring them up to be honest, useful men and women.” That’s the way a woman should talk and feel. When they get the ideas that are fit only for men everything goes to pot.
But to return to the Judson dinner—my wife and I had never before been in so grand a house. It was, indeed, a grand house for those days, though it wouldn’t compare with my palace overlooking the park, and would hardly rank to-day as a second-rate New York house. We tried to seem at our ease, and I think my wife succeeded; but it seemed to me that Judson and his wife were seeing into my embarrassment and were enjoying it as evidence of their superiority. I may have wronged him. Possibly I was seeking more reasons to hate him in order the better to justify myself for what I was about to do. But that isn’t important.
My wife and I were as if in a dream or a daze. A whole, new world was opening to both of us—the world of fashion, luxury, and display. True, we had seen it from the outside before; and had had it constantly before our eyes; but now we were touching it, tasting it, smelling it—were almost grasping it. We were unhappy as we drove home in our ill-smelling public cab, and when we reentered our little world it seemed humble and narrow and mean—a ridiculous fool’s paradise.
We did not have our customary before-going-to-sleep talk that night, about my business, about our investments, about the household, about the children—we had two, the boys, then. We lay side by side, silent and depressed. I heard her sigh several times, but I did not ask her why—I understood. Finally I said to her: “Minnie, how’d you like to live like the Judsons? You know we can afford to spread out a good deal. Things have been coming our way for twelve years, and soon——”
She sighed again. “I don’t know whether I’m fitted for it,” she said; “I think all those grand things would frighten me. I’d make a fool of myself.”