Ascher looked at me quite gravely. For a moment I was afraid that he was going to say something about the paradoxical brilliance of the Irish mind. I made haste to stop him.
“That’s Mrs. Ascher’s metaphor,” I said, “not mine. I should never have thought of it. I don’t know enough about the artistic soul to appreciate the feelings of people who give birth to cash registers. But the idea is plain enough. Tim Gorman will be bitterly disappointed if he does not see girls in cheap restaurants putting actual shillings into those machines of his.”
“From my wife’s point of view,” said Ascher, “and from mine, too, that ought to be an important consideration. It’s the artist’s feeling; but business and art—unfortunately business and art——”
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t kiss and be friends,” I said. “They’re not nearly such irreconcilable enemies as business and religion. Now that those two have lain down together like a lion and a lamb—I don’t quite see how they do it, but in that new philosophy of yours it seemed quite a simple matter—there’s no real reason why art shouldn’t come in too.”
But Ascher shook his head. He did not seem hopeful of a marriage between art and business. He knows a good deal about both of them, far more, by his own confession, than he knows about religion.
CHAPTER VIII.
Ascher was very generous to me in the matter of letters of introduction. A large bundle of them arrived at my hotel two days after I paid my visit to his office. There must have been fifty or sixty of them altogether. I sent for an atlas and found that I had a friend ready made for me in every port of any importance in the West Indies and on the east coast of South America as far down as Buenos Aires, and in a good many places inland. I was fascinated by the idea of such a tour; but it was plainly not an excursion to be undertaken without care and consideration. I lingered in New York for a fortnight, buying some additional clothes, getting together a few books on the South American republics, and working out steamboat routes.
I saw young Tim Gorman. He called on me, sent by Mrs. Ascher, to thank me for my good offices. I deserved no thanks; but on the general principle of taking what I could get I allowed the boy to pour gratitude all over me.
“I think,” I said, “you ought to do fairly well out of the thing, financially, I mean.”