“Oh, I don’t mind a glass of champagne now and then, after I’ve brought my host under condemnation for ordering it,” said Kane.
“And I want to let my heart out to-night,” Ray pursued. “I may not have the chance to-morrow. Besides, as to the gambling, it isn’t I betting on my book; it’s Brandreth. I don’t understand yet why he wants to do it. To be sure, it isn’t a great risk he’s taking.”
“I rather think he has to take some risks just now,” said Kane, significantly. He lowered his soft voice an octave as he went on. “I’m afraid that poor Henry, in his pursuit of personal perfectability, has let things get rather behindhand in his business. I don’t blame him—you know I never blame people—for there is always a question as to which is the cause and which is the effect in such matters. My dear old friend may have begun to let his business go to the bad because he had got interested in his soul, or he may have turned to his soul for refuge because he knew his business had begun to go to the bad. At any rate, he seems to have found the usual difficulty in serving God and Mammon; only, in this case Mammon has got the worst of it, for once: I suppose one ought to be glad of that. But the fact is that Henry has lost heart in business; he doesn’t respect business; he has a bad conscience; he wants to be out of it. I had a long talk with him before he went into the country, and I couldn’t help pitying him. I don’t think his wife and daughter even will ever get him back to New York. He knows it’s rather selfish to condemn them to the dulness of a country life, and that it’s rather selfish to leave young Brandreth to take the brunt of affairs here alone. But what are you to do in a world like this, where a man can’t get rid of one bad conscience without laying in another?”
In his pleasure with his paradox Kane suffered Ray to fill up his glass a second time. Then he looked dissatisfied, and Ray divined the cause. “Did you word that quite to your mind?”
“No, I didn’t. It’s too diffuse. Suppose we say that in our conditions no man can do right without doing harm?”
“That’s more succinct,” said Ray. “Is it known at all that they’re in difficulties?”
Kane smoothly ignored the question. “I fancy that the wrong is in Henry’s desire to cut himself loose from the ties that bind us all together here. Poor David has the right of that. We must stand or fall together in the pass we’ve come to; and we cannot helpfully eschew the world except by remaining in it.” He took up Ray’s question after a moment’s pause. “No, it isn’t known that they’re in difficulties, and I don’t say that it’s so. Their affairs have simply been allowed to run down, and Henry has left Brandreth to gather them up single-handed. I don’t know that Brandreth will complain. It leaves him unhampered, even if he can do nothing with his hands but clutch at straws.”
“Such straws as the Modern Romeo?” Ray asked. “It seems to me that I have a case of conscience here. Is it right for me to let Mr. Brandreth bet his money on my book when there are so many chances of his losing?”
“Let us hope he won’t finally bet,” Kane suggested, and he smiled at the refusal which instantly came into Ray’s eyes. “But if he does, we must leave the end with God. People,” he mused on, “used to leave the end with God a great deal oftener than they do now. I remember that I did, myself, once. It was easier. I think I will go back to it. There is something very curious in our relation to the divine. God is where we believe He is, and He is a daily Providence or not, as we choose. People used to see His hand in a corner, or a deal, which prospered them, though it ruined others. They may be ashamed to do that now. But we might get back to faith by taking a wider sweep and seeing God in our personal disadvantages—finding Him not only in luck but in bad luck. Chance may be a larger law, with an orbit far transcending the range of the little statutes by which fire always burns, and water always finds its level.”
“That is a better Hard Saying than the other,” Ray mocked. “‘I’ faith an excellent song.’ Have some more champagne. Now go on; but let us talk of A Modern Romeo.”