His face softened; he put his hand again over mine. “I cannot blame you—only myself. It is the way you were brought up. But I want you to change, Will. I want you to see yourself and me as we are—I want you to love me. We will work together, you and I—work to find some of the good things in life—the real things. I know we’ll find them if we try—if we really pull together.”
Three weeks later he was dead.
This talk with my father, and one or two others we had subsequently, made a great impression on me. When he died of pneumonia, after an illness of only a few days, leaving me utterly alone in the world, I resolved to take his advice, for my own good, and act differently. The business he left me was indeed in a precarious condition. He had drawn from it heavily during the last ten years to meet my mother’s demands—and more lately, mine—and handicapped thus by a depleted capital it was going down-hill rapidly.
I realized then that life was not worth living unless one were rich—really rich—for money held everything desirable. My father was right—the social prestige my mother had maintained was a sham. Without the solidity of real wealth it could never be anything but a bubble that might burst at any moment. I resolved then to settle down; to work untiringly at this business that had been left me.
I found, when my father’s affairs had been settled up, a truly astounding number of debts. It has never been my way to do things by halves; I sold the Arch Street house, settled the debts, and moved the business and myself to New York for a fresh start.
The two years that followed I devoted exclusively to work and saw myself in a fair way, ultimately, to succeed in my ambition. I lived for business during these two years—I did nothing else—I thought of nothing else. The pleasures of life that I had given up I did not begrudge. They were only postponed. This was my big chance—my only chance for wealth and happiness through life—and I was unwilling to do even the smallest thing to jeopardize it.
Then I met Ruth Wilson, and six months later we were married. She was five years younger than I—a girl with beauty, of a family nearly the equal of the Durrants, and with all the social graces—in a word, a girl of whom any man might be proud.
I knew she would make me a good wife; it was a safe, satisfactory step for me to take. I was glad of this, for I was now as cautious of the things I did as formerly I had been careless.
We took an apartment on Riverside Drive, and were very happy. We had no children. I do not like children; I cannot stand their crying. And besides they are difficult and expensive to bring up properly—father’s arraignment of me in my younger days showed me that—and it was obvious that no girl of the grace and beauty of Ruth should be so handicapped. That she disagreed with me did not alter my opinion, for I realized that she was hardly more than a child and could not understand things as I did.
Our life during these first years of marriage was very satisfactory. I worked all day at the office, and two or three nights a week played in a game of cards which we held regularly at the club. I did not introduce these men to Ruth—they were not her kind—she would not have understood them. Indeed I should not have played in the game at all, except that I found the mental relaxation stimulating and helpful to me, for I was at this time working very hard. My luck, too, seemed to have changed permanently for the better. Whereas in Philadelphia I had frequently lost, I now won steadily—sums sufficiently large to justify in themselves, the amount of time I gave to the pursuit.