Paul was silent for a few moments. "That seems to me a decent programme. My wife can go to Europe, and—and when the time is up, marry Waldo. It's easy as rolling off a log." He clapped his strong hand on the wooden arm of his chair, so that it resounded. "My father will be terribly cut up. My aunt—God knows what she will say or do. As for myself"—he paused while he lit a fresh cigar—"I shall have to go into politics."
"Politics?"
"Yes. I'd like to go to Congress." Paul sat back in his chair with the air of one taking a fresh brace on life. "I've always intended to, sooner or later. Had it at the back of my mind. But now—well, if I were sent to Washington, and presently got a foreign mission, my wife might feel sorry for a few minutes that I bored her. Yet I wouldn't have her back. Waldo is welcome to her. The real reason," he added, suddenly, after another pause, "is that I've been asked. One of the Republican State Committee spoke to me about it in June, just before I went to Newport. The election isn't until a year from this autumn. I told him I'd think it over. I've got to do something to counteract this disgrace, and to forget it. Well, I must be going. I'll see you again as soon as I hear from my wife."
Gordon detained him. "You mustn't take too despondent a view of it. After all, it's not your fault, it's your misfortune. All your friends will recognize that; and no one will be able to understand how any woman could weary of the love of a man like you, and prefer a listless, pleasure-seeker, such as Clarence Waldo."
Paul shrugged his shoulders. "It's the spirit of the age, I suppose. I'm not sorry, I tell you, but I'm piqued. We are shells upon the beach. The tide sweeps us along even though we know it is the tide, and can say of the next man, 'what a fool he is, to drift like that!' But what is a fellow to do? How is he to escape? I'm a millionaire—I'm likely to be several times that if nothing breaks. I didn't wish to go to Newport, but I went. I don't care for half the things I do, but they have to be done; that is, I do them of my own accord, when the time comes, and, though I kick, I know I should regret not doing them merely because they seem to be the proper things for people of my kind. There you are. I have a sort of double self, as you know. It isn't that I'm weak, it's—what do you call it?—the force of my environment. And a millionaire's environment has a pressure of two hundred pounds to the square inch. It's the same with the women. What with rich food, splendid apparel, perpetual self-indulgence, and the power which money gives them to gratify every whim, is it any wonder that they don't let a little thing like the marriage vow stand in the way of their individual preferences? Who is to hold them to account? The church? Some of them go to church, but in their hearts they are satisfied that this is the only world. And as to loss of social position—of which they really would be afraid—the tide is with them. There are too many sympathizers. Or at least, it is inconvenient to be obliged to hurt other people's feelings in a free country."
"Rather a formidable indictment against Newport," said Gordon.
"It isn't against Newport. It's against the plutocracy all over the country. Newport merely happens to be the place where very rich men with social instincts most do congregate in summer. My domestic tragedy is typical, yet sporadic. Every season has its crop, but, numerically, it is small. Infidelity is only one of the phases of the spirit—but the spirit is rampant. Money-money-money, luxury-luxury-luxury, self-self-self (individualism, they call it), and in the process everything is thrown overboard, except the American flag, and life becomes one grand hurrah, boys, with no limitations, save murder and lack of physical cleanliness. And I belong to the procession, my dear fellow. I'm disgusted with it at the moment, that's why I rail. But in six months I shall be in it again. See if I'm not."
"You're simply depressed, Paul, and no wonder," said Gordon, with genial solicitude. "But we mustn't judge our plutocracy—aristocracy, or whatever you choose to call the personal representatives of the prosperity of the country—by the antics of a few, disgusting as they are. I agree that their behavior apes the frivolity and license of the old French court without its elegance, and I don't suppose that the founders of our institutions ever included a leisure class as a part of their scheme. Absorbed in ideals, they neglected to take poor human nature sufficiently into account. We have lost the buffalo, but we have acquired a leisure class, and we must make the best of it, not the worst. We can't cut their heads off; this is a free country. It would be dreadful—dreadful, wouldn't it, if our institutions, of which we are so proud, were to produce merely the same old thing over again—a leisure class of voluptuaries?" Gordon paused for a moment and his smile died away at the vision which his words evoked. "I don't intend to believe it; you don't. There are students of destiny who maintain that nations rise, reach maturity and decline by regular economic laws, but that human nature never really improves. That's fatalism. The free play of human individualism is having its last grand chance here in these United States. If our aristocracy proves no better than any other—if the rich and powerful are to sneer at morals and wallow in licentiousness, we couldn't blame society if it should try a strong dose of socialism, with its repressing, monotonous dead level, rather than accept the doctrine that the law of supply and demand is the sole ruler of the universe. But as good Americans we can't afford to judge our plutocracy, as yet, by the vices of a few people at Newport."
"They sin in such a cold-blooded way," said Paul. "If they really cared, as some of the foreigners do, one could understand; but they don't."
"I know. It's one of the canons of old-world traditions that adultery is almost redeemed by the possession of an artistic sense. To commit the one without possessing the other, may be no worse morally, yet it seems much more vulgar. But we mustn't take them too seriously, even though they are our countrymen and women. They are the exceptions—the excrescences. Look at your father, for instance. He belongs to them—but he is not of them. The same is true of yourself; and it is a privilege, with all its responsibilities, a privilege I envy you. Who wouldn't be a multi-millionaire if he could? What is more alluring than power?"