Storm felt that the end must come soon; he must get away, come what might, from these surroundings.
The next day when he and George were bowling along the Long Island roads in Abbott’s car, he broached the subject.
“Do you remember that I said some time ago I would like to chuck the trust company job and get away somewhere for a time? I’ve just about made up my mind to do it.”
“Don’t be a fool, Norman!” George advised with the roughness of sudden feeling in his tones. “I know you are dragging your anchor just now, but you’ll come up in the wind all right. We all get over things in time; we have to. You would never get such a position as you have with the Mammoth Trust, and you haven’t the temperament to start out for yourself.”
“I’m not dependent on that position, as it happens,” Storm remarked coldly, but his pulses leaped at the inward significance of the statement. What was fifteen thousand a year in a treadmill of precedent and prejudice to a hundred and twelve thousand and the world before him?
“I know you are not, but the remains of your father’s estate won’t last you long.” George spoke with dogged patience. “You are not the sort to tie yourself down later to an inferior position where you would feel galled and embittered by the driving methods of the average commercial concern. You’ve got it pretty easy there, Norman, with the Mammoth people.”
“I don’t care! I have enough for myself if I never do another stroke of work and I have no one else to consider. I want to be my own master! I want to be free!”
The cry was wrung from him in an unguarded upward surge of exasperation, but George shook his head.
“We are none of us that, ever,” he said slowly. “We think that we can fly from our memories, but we can’t old man. It is only from within us that resignation comes, and peace, and finally, if we are strong and patient enough, something that passes for happiness.”
“How do you know all this?” Storm demanded. “Where did you get your philosophy?”