Cash registers have not got souls. I am as sure of that as I am of anything.
“That boy,” she went on, “that passionate, brave, pure boy, he must not be dragged down, defiled. His soul——”
It was Tim Gorman’s soul then, not the cash registers, which she was worrying about. Having seen her presentation of the boy’s head, having it at that moment before my eyes, I understood what she meant. But I was not going to let myself be swept again into the regions of artistic passion to please Mrs. Ascher.
“Well,” I said, “it does seem rather a shady way of making money. But after all——”
I have mentioned that Mrs. Ascher never stands upright. She went very near it when I mentioned money.
She threw her head back, flung both her arms out wide, clenched her fists tightly, and, if the expression is possible, drooped backwards from her hips. A slightly soiled light-blue overall is not the garment best suited to set off the airs and attitudes of high tragedy. But Mrs. Ascher’s feelings were strong enough to transfigure even her clothes.
“Money!” she said. “Oh, Money! Is there nothing else? Do you care for, hope for, see nothing else in the world? What does it matter whether you make money or not, or how you make it?”
It is only those who are very rich indeed or those who are on the outer fringe of extreme poverty who can despise money in this whole-hearted way. The wife of a millionaire—the millionaire himself probably attaches some value to money because he has to get it—and the regular tramp can say “Oh, money? Is there nothing else?” The rest of us find money a useful thing and get what we can of it.
Mrs. Ascher let her arms fall suddenly to her sides, folded herself up and sat down, or rather crouched, on the floor. From that position she looked up at me with the greatest possible intensity of eye.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking of my husband. But he hates money just as much as I do. All he wants is to escape, to have done with it, to live peaceably with me, somewhere far away, far, far away from everywhere.”