“Good God, what money! What a heavy shapeless mass! What an old, moss-grown stump of a fortune! For twenty years it has had to take care of itself. For twenty years not a single experienced hand has touched it. It looks like a fund for widows and orphans.”
“You mean that the investments are safe as a rock,” mumbled Hedvig. “But surely that is a good thing!”
“Yes, but the interest, Mrs. Hill, the interest! You don’t get much more than three and a half per cent. and you could get six. You allow a hundred thousand a year to run through your fingers. That is to make yourself a laughing stock to God and man. As an expert I can’t bear to see such an absurdity. Allow me to make some dispositions for you. You can submit them for the approval of your brothers.”
Hedvig worried and pondered long before she said yes. But the hundred thousand were stronger than her fears. And thus Levy had lured her into his world, the money-world. She began by questioning him on all occasions in a woman’s way, ignorantly, persistently, suspiciously. And he would reply. He answered not only patiently but willingly, quickly, ardently, enthusiastically. He explained the whole economic mechanism of credits, bills, mortgages, debentures, shares. The whole of this finely balanced system of suspicion and confidence made a deep impression on Hedvig. To her over-cautious spirit it seemed like balancing on the edge of the abyss. His quick purposeful assurance seemed to her something supernatural, almost creepy. But she had to hear more and more. Oh, it was deliciously exciting to hear Levy talk of money. It was only now she began to grasp what money was. And she felt as if she were in a swing, feeling giddy at the fact of owning so much.
Yes, Levy’s interest became more and more eager. Hedvig had already been lured from her gold-heap where she had enjoyed the twilight. Her money was no longer like a wall protecting her against the world. No, it was instead a medium in which she moved about. It formed the thousand connections, the tentacles and nerves thanks to which she at once felt what was happening in the town, in the country, in Europe, in the whole world.
Levy tore Hedvig with him half way into life, at least into that kind of life which consists of movement and business. He showed to her confined and numbed egoism another kind of egoism that was world-embracing, intensely awake and technically brilliant. He was the personification of that egoism. It was something different from Percy’s laissez-aller and cool, submissive irony. It was wheels that rolled. It was diamond cut diamond. It was power, destiny. Hedvig sometimes became quite frightened at his passionate discourse, frightened as if she had come out into the strong daylight without a dark corner to which to retreat. And she no longer had her money to protect her. It had become his confederate, it betrayed her to him, it was in love with him. Hedvig had no way out but to assume a forced reserve, a sudden cold, and sheer rudeness. But that had no effect on him at all. He was insensitive to everything which was not logic. Then in her anxiety she crept behind her dead husband, draped herself in crêpe, fled to the shadows and became just piety and memory. That was the only thing that hitherto could damp Levy’s eagerness. The world-embracing, hot and cold romance of money shrank up violently and he became gradually colder and colder, more formal and more ironical, till at last he said good-bye with a bow that was really a shrug of the shoulders.
So today Mrs. Hedvig had to assume her crêpe.
During the soup Levy raised the question of the mortgage. That was a mere nothing, a bagatelle. They would buy the house by auction, no doubt about that. It would certainly be good business, because the house was, as it happened, valued much too high. Other people are frightened of houses that are assessed too high. But we are not, Mrs. Hill. For we know of a certain little insurance company that will take the house with open arms. They need it on their books. A house that is bought for 200,000 but can be taken up at 300,000 improves the position at once by 100,000—not for the shareholders but for the Board of Directors.
Levy’s face suddenly became contemptuous and almost offended. This topic seemed to upset him. It was not worthy of the occasion or of his feelings:
“Well, that’s that,” he exclaimed. “I am tired of the house property swindle. That’s for inferior people, philistines and small fry. I really can’t understand your brother Peter’s taste. I admit that he has a brutal sort of natural business shrewdness, but he lives like an old-fashioned craftsman amidst modern improvements. Before 1905 we believed that business consisted in cheating each other and the State. Yes, I believed it too. But that is now old-fashioned, hopelessly old-fashioned. Nowadays we have at last grasped the fact that the really lucrative business is the positive one in which money really makes a contribution.... That is to say shares, industrial shares! We live in the age of a most tremendous industrial boom. The whole world is becoming industrialised. You must be blind not to see in which direction the royal road of capital leads. Money and wheels are related. Shares, industrial shares! Invest your money in forests, waterfalls and iron mines! Send it to the saw mills, the harbours and the ammunition works!”