“I tell you,” said Redfield angrily, “the whole thing had grown intolerable. It didn’t begin yesterday; it dates back three years ago, and—”
“Just how did it begin?” the Poet interrupted.
“Well, it began with money—not debts, strange to say, but the other way around! My father died and left me about eight thousand dollars—more than I ever hoped to hold in my hand at once if I lived forever. It looked bigger than a million, I can tell you. I was a bank-teller, earning fifteen hundred dollars a year and playing at art on the side. We lived on the edge of nowhere and pinched along with no prospect of getting anywhere. When that money fell in my lap I saw the way out—it was like a dream come true, straight down from heaven. I’d picked up a good deal about the bond business in the bank—used to take a turn in that department occasionally; and it wasn’t like tackling something new. So I quit my bank job and jumped in for myself. After the third month I made expenses, and the second year I cleaned up five thousand dollars—and I’m not through yet,” he concluded with a note of triumph.
“And how does all that affect Elizabeth?” asked the Poet quietly.
“Well, Elizabeth is one of those timid creatures, who’d be content to sit on a suburban veranda all her days and wait for the milk wagon. She couldn’t realize that opportunity was knocking at the door. How do you think she wanted to invest that eight thousand—wanted me to go to New York to study in the League; figured out that we could do that and then go to Paris for a year. And if she hadn’t got to crying about it, I might have been fool enough to do it!”
He took a turn across the room and then paused before his caller with the air of one about to close a debate. The Poet was scrutinizing the handle of his umbrella fixedly, as though the rough wood presented a far more important problem than the matter under discussion.
“Elizabeth rather showed her faith in you there, didn’t she?” he asked, without looking up. “Eight thousand dollars had come into the family, quite unexpectedly, and she was willing to invest it in you, in a talent she highly valued; in what had been to her the fine thing in you—the quality that had drawn you together. There was a chance that it might all have been wasted—that you wouldn’t, as the saying is, have made good, and that at the end of a couple of years you would not only have been out the money, but out of a job. She was willing to take the chance. The fact that you ignored her wishes and are prospering in spite of her isn’t really the answer; a man who has shaken his wife and child—who has permitted them to be made the subjects of disagreeable gossip through his obstinate unreasonableness isn’t prospering. In fact, I’d call him a busted community.”
“Oh, there were other things!” exclaimed Redfield. “We made each other uncomfortable; it got to a point where every trifling thing had to be argued—constant contention and wrangle. When I started into this business I had to move into town. After I’d got the nicest flat I could hope to pay for that first year, Elizabeth insisted on being unhappy about that. It was important for me to cultivate people who would be of use to me; it’s a part of this game; but she didn’t like my new acquaintances—made it as hard for me as possible. She always had a way of carrying her chin a little high, you know. These people that have always lived in this town are the worst lot of snobs that ever breathed free air, and just because her great-grandfather happened to land here in time to say good-bye to the last Indian is no reason for snubbing the unfortunates who only arrived last summer. If her people hadn’t shown the deterioration you find in all old stock, and if her father hadn’t died broke, you might excuse her; but this thing of living on your ancestors is no good—it’s about as thin as starving your stomach on art and feeding your soul on sunsets. I tell you, my good brother,”—with an ironic grin on his face he clapped his hand familiarly on the Poet’s shoulder,—“there are more things in real life than are dreamed of in your poet’s philosophy!”
EVERY TRIFLING THING HAD TO BE ARGUED