The Squirrel-Cage. Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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СКАЧАТЬ said nothing, but did not drop her earnest eyes.

      He thrust his hands into his pockets and returned this intent gaze, a new expression on his face. Then picking up a tool, and drawing a long breath, he said, with the accent of a man who takes an unexpected resolution: “Well, I will tell you.”

      He returned to his work, tightening various small screws under the railing, speaking, as he did so, in a reasonable, quiet tone, with none of the touch of badinage which had thus far underlain his manner to the girl. “It’s very simple—nothing romantic or sudden about it all. I did not like the insurance business as I saw it from the inside, and the more I saw of it, the less I liked it. I couldn’t see how I could earn my living at it and arrive at the age of forty with an honest scruple left. Not that the insurance business is, probably, any worse than any other—only I knew about it from the inside. So far as I could guess the businesses my friends were in weren’t very different. At least, I didn’t think I could improve things by changing to them. Also, it was going to grow more and more absorbing—or, at least, that was the way it affected the older men I knew—so that at forty I shouldn’t have any other interests than getting ahead of other people in the line of insurance.

      “Now, what was I to do about it? I can’t make speeches, and nobody but crack-brained soreheads like me would listen to them if I did. I’m not a great philosopher, with a cure for things. But I didn’t want to fight so hard to get unnecessary things for myself that I kept other people from having the necessaries, and didn’t give myself time to enjoy things that are best worth enjoying. What could I do? I bothered the life out of Dr. Melton and myself for ages before it occurred to me that the thing to do, if I didn’t like the life I was in, was to get out of it and do something harmless, at least, if I didn’t have gumption enough to think of something worth while, that might make things better.

      “I like the cabinet-maker’s trade, and I couldn’t see that practicing it would interfere with my growing all the honest scruples that were in me. Oh, I know that it’s the easiest thing in the world for a carpenter to turn out bad work for the sake of making a little more money every day; I haven’t any illusions about the sanctity of the hand-crafts. But, anyhow, I saw that as a maverick cabinet-maker I could be pretty much my own master. If I had strength of mind enough I could be honest without endless friction with partners, employers, banks, creditors, employés, and all the rest of the spider web of business life. At any rate, it looked as though there were a chance for me to lead the life I wanted, and I had an idea that if I started myself in square and straight, maybe after a little while I could see clearer about how to help other people to occupations that would let them live a little as well as make money, and let them grow a few scruples into the bargain.

      “You see, there’s nothing mysterious about it—nor interesting. Just ordinary. I’m living the way I do because I’m not smart enough to think of a better way. But one advantage of it is that I have a good deal of time to think about things. Maybe I’ll think of a way to help, later. And, anyway, just to look at me is proof that you don’t have to get ground up in the hopper like everybody else or shut the door of the industrial squirrel-cage on yourself in order not to starve. Perhaps that’ll give some cleverer person the courage to start out on his own tangent.”

      Lydia drew a long breath at the conclusion of this statement. “Well—” she said, inconclusively; “well!” After a pause she advanced, “My sister’s husband is in the insurance business.”

      “You see,” said the workman, drilling a hole with great rapidity, “you see I ought not to talk to you. I can’t without being impolite.”

      Lydia seemed in no haste to assure him that he had not been. She pulled absently a loose lock of hair—a little-girl trick that came back to her in moments of abstraction—and looked down at her feet. When she looked up, it was to say with a bewildered air, “But a man has to earn his living.”

      Rankin made a gesture of impatience, and stopped working to answer this remark. “A living isn’t hard to earn. Any healthy man can do that. It’s earning food for his vanity, or his wife’s, that kills the average man. It’s coddling his moral cowardice that takes the heart out of him. Don’t you remember what Emerson says—Melton’s always quoting it—‘Most of our expense is for conformity to other men’s ideas? It’s for cake that the average man runs in debt.’ He must have everything that anyone else has, whether he wants it or not. A house ever so much bigger and finer than he needs, with ever so many more things in it than belong there. He must keep his wife idle and card-playing because other men’s wives are. He must have his children do what everyone else’s children do, whether it’s bad for their characters or not. Ah! the children! That’s the worst of it all! To bring them up so that these futile complications will be essentials of life to them! To teach them that health and peace of mind are not too high a price for a woman to pay for what is called social distinction, and that a man must—if he can get it in no other way—pay his self-respect and the life of his individuality for what is called success—”

      Lydia broke in with a sophisticated amusement at his heat. “Why, you’re talking about Newport, or the Four Hundred of New York—if there is any such thing! The rest of America—why, any European would say we’re as primitive as Aztecs! They do say so! Endbury’s not complicated. Good gracious! A little, plain, middle-western town, where everybody that is anybody knows everybody else!”

      “No; it’s not complicated compared with European standards, but it’s more so than it was. Why, in Heaven’s name, should it strain every nerve to make itself as complicated as possible as fast as it can? We’re free yet—we’re not Europeans so shaken down into a social rut that only a red revolution can get us out of it. Why can’t we decide on a rational—” He broke off to say, gloomily: “The devil of it is that we don’t decide anything. We just slide along thinking of something else. If people would only give, just once in their lives, the same amount of serious reflection to what they want to get out of life that they give to the question of what they want to get out of a two-weeks’ vacation, there aren’t many folks—yes, even here in Endbury that seems so harmless to you because it’s so familiar—who wouldn’t be horrified at the aimless procession of their busy days and the trivial false standards they subscribe to with their blood and sweat.”

      “My goodness!” broke in Lydia.

      The exclamation came from her extreme surprise, not only at the extraordinary doctrine enunciated, but at the experience, new to her, of hearing convictions spoken of in ordinary conversation. The workman took it, however, for a mocking comment on his sudden fluency. He gave a whimsical grimace, and said, as he began picking up his tools, “Ah, I shouldn’t have given in to you. When I get started I never can stop.” His expression altered darkly. “But I hate all that sort of thing so! I hate it!”

      Lydia shrank back from him, startled, but aroused. “Well, I hate hate!” she cried with energy. “It’s horrid to hate anything at all, but most of all what’s wrong and doesn’t know it’s wrong. That needs help, not hate.”

      He had slung his tool-box on his shoulder before she began speaking, and now stood, ready for departure, looking at her intently. Even in the dim light of the hall she was aware of a wonderful change in his face. She was startled and thrilled by the expression of his eyes in the moment of silence that followed.

      Finally, “You’ve given me something to remember,” he said, his voice vibrating, and turned away.

      CHAPTER VI

      LYDIA’S GODFATHER

      Lydia stood where he left her, listening to the sound of his footsteps die down the walk outside. She was still standing there when, some time later, the door to the dining-room behind her opened and a tiny СКАЧАТЬ