Читать книгу: «Ladies and Gentlemen», страница 15
How to Choke a Cat Without Using Butter
This writer has always contended that the ability to make a great individual fortune is not necessarily an ability based on superior intelligence – that in the case of the average multi-millionaire it merely is a sort of sublimated instinct, in a way like the instinct of a rat-terrier for smelling out hidden rats. The ordinary dull-nosed dog goes past a wainscoting and never suspects a thing; then your terrier comes along and he takes one whiff at the bottom of that baseboard and immediately starts pawing for his prey. He knows. It’s his nature to know. Yet in other regards he may be rather an uninteresting creature, one without special gifts.
And so it is with many of our outstanding dollar-wizards, or at least so it would appear to those on the outside looking in. They differ from the commonplace run of mortals only in their ken for detecting opportunities to derive dividends from quarters which we cannot discern. Peel off their financial ratings from them and they’d be as the rest of us are – or even more so.
Now Mr. E. Randall Golightly, the pressed-brick magnate, would impress you as being like that. When it came to amassing wealth – ah, but there was where he could show you something! Otherwise he offered for the inspection of an envying planet the simple-minded easy-going unimportant personality of a middle-aged gentleman who was credulous, who was diffident in smart company, who was vastly ignorant of most matters excepting such matters as pertained to his particular specialty which, as just stated, was getting rich and richer. Out in the world away from his office and his plants, he had but little to say, thus partly concealing the fact that on the grammar side at least his original education wofully had been neglected. He was quiet and self-effacing, also he was decent and he was kindly.
But when a smart young man representing Achievements came by appointment, asking for an interview on the general subject of his early struggles, Mr. Golightly became properly flattered and suddenly vocal. Achievements was a monthly magazine devoted to purveying to the masses recipes for attaining success in business, the arts, the crafts, the sciences and the professions, the theory of its editors being that the youth of the land, reading therein how such-and-such leaders attained their present prominence, would be inspired to step forth and do likewise. Deservedly it had a large national circulation. Rotarians all over the country bought it regularly and efficiency experts prescribed it for their clients as doctors prescribe medicine for ailing patients.
Mr. Golightly was no bookworm, but he knew about Achievements, as what seasoned go-getter did not? The project outlined by the caller appealed to him. It resuscitated a drowned vanity in his inner being. So willingly enough he talked, giving dates and figures, and the young scribe took notes and still more notes and then went back to his desk and wrote and wrote and wrote. He wrote to the extent of several thousand words and his pen was tipped with flaming inspiration. He had such a congenial theme, such a typical Achievementalesque topic. Lord, how he ripped off the copy!
In due time a messenger brought to Mr. Golightly sundry long printed slips of an unfamiliar aspect called “galley proofs.” Mr. Golightly read these through, making a few minor corrections. He told nothing at home regarding what was afoot; he was saving it up as a pleasant surprise for Mrs. Golightly and the two Misses Golightly. Anyhow, he had got out of the habit of telling at home what happened at the office.
One day in advance of publication date he received a copy of the issue of the magazine containing the interview with him. It was more than a mere content. Practically it dominated the number; it led everything else. And it was more than an interview. It was a character study, a eulogy for honest endeavor, a tribute to outstanding performance, an example to oncoming generations – and fully illustrated with photographs and drawings by a staff artist. It was what they called in the Achievements shop a whiz and a wow.
A happy pride, almost a boyish pride, puffed up Mr. Golightly as he walked into his thirty-thousand-a-year apartment on upper Park Avenue that afternoon after business hours. A terrible and a devastating humility deflated him an hour later when, without waiting for dinner, he escaped thence to his club, there to sit through a grief-laden evening in a secluded corner of the reading-room. Regret filled him; elsewise he had a sort of punctured look as though all joy and all hope of future joy had seeped out of his body through many invisible leaks.
As for domestic peace, future fireside comfort, agreeable life in the collective bosom, if any, of his family – ha, ha! To himself within he laughed a hollow despairing laugh. He began to understand why strong men in their prime might look favorably upon suicide as an escape from it all.
In his ears, like demoniac echoes, rang the semi-hysterical laments of his womenfolk. There was, to begin with, the poignant memory of what that outraged woman, Mrs. Golightly, had cried out:
“Wouldn’t it be just like him to disgrace us this way? I ask you, wouldn’t it?” Ignoring his abased presence she was addressing her two daughters, her deep voice rising above their berating tones. “What else could we have expected from such a father and such a husband? Does he think of us? Does he give a thought to my efforts to be somebody ever since we moved here to New York? Does he care for all my scheming to get you girls into really exclusive society? Or to get you married off into the right set? Do our ambitions mean anything to him? No, no, NO! What does he do? To gratify his own cheap cravings for notoriety he lets this shameful detestable vulgar rag expose us before the whole world. We’ll be the laughing stock of everybody. Can you hear what the Hewitt Strykers will say when they read these awful admissions?”
In her agony, the poor mother waved aloft the clutched copy of Achievements and seared him with a devastating sidewise glare. “Can’t you hear the Pewter-Walsbergs gloating and snickering when they find out that your father’s first name is Ephraim and that he used to be called ‘Eph’ for short and that he started life as a day-laborer and that then he worked at the trade of a bricklayer and that secretly all these years he’s been paying his dues in a dirty old union and carrying a dirty old union card – a thing which even I, knowing his common tastes as I did, never suspected before! But here’s a picture of it printed in facsimile to prove it!” And now she beat with a frenzied forefinger on a certain page of the offending periodical. “And then he goes on to tell how with his own hands he made some of the very bricks that went into the office-building where his office is now! And then – then – then – oh, how can I ever hold up my head again? – then he says that when we were first married we had to live on twelve dollars a week and do all our own housework and that I even used to wash out his undershirts!”
“Oh, mommer!” This was the senior Miss Golightly, bemoaning their ruin.
“And well may you say ‘Oh, mommer’ – with the invitations out for your formal début next week!”
“Oh, popper!” exclaimed the stricken Miss Golightly. In the shock of the moment she had temporarily forgotten about her scheduled début. “Oh, popper, how could you do such a thing to me!”
“And Evelyn here expecting to join the Junior League – what chance has the poor child now? How can she ever forgive you?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” screamed the younger Miss Golightly, not addressing anyone in particular.
It was at this point that Mr. Golightly had grabbed his hat and clamped it on his degraded head and fled from this house of vain and utter repinings.
Late at night he crept in, almost as a burglar might creep in, and sought the seclusion of his room, not daring again to face his three women. Early next morning before any of them had risen to intercept him with her further lamentations, he crept out again and at his office spent a haunted forenoon. Every time his telephone buzzed he flinched. And when, following lunch for which he had absolutely no appetite, the girl on the private switchboard rang to tell him Mrs. Golightly herself was on the line he flinched more than ever as he told the exchange to plug in the connection, then braced himself for the worst. If his daughters were resolved never again to speak to him, so be it. At least he would take the blow standing. If it was to be a separation, a divorce even, so be that, too. He had only himself to blame.
“Hello,” he said, wanly; and awaited the explosion.
“Oh, Ephie!” Mrs. Golightly was calling him by an old pet name – a beloved, homely name he had not heard her speak for years – and over the singing wire her voice came to him flutingly, yes, actually with affectionate flutings and thrills in it. “Oh, Ephie, you’ll never guess what has happened! Oh, Ephie, Mrs. Pewter-Walsberg just called up! You know what she stands for in society? You know how I’ve worked and schemed to get in with her crowd and how I’ve subscribed for her pet charities and offered to serve on her tiresome committees and all? Well, she just called up. She’s going to let her daughter, Millicent, be on the receiving line for Harriet’s début. She’s going to see that Evelyn gets into the Junior League right away. Her word is just law there. And she’s invited you and me to dine with them next Thursday – one of those small intimate dinners that she’s so famous for. Isn’t it wonderful? And it’s all due to you, dear, and I’m so grateful and the girls are both so grateful that I just had to ring you up to tell you.”
“Humphphe-e-e!” Mr. Golightly got his breath back, as a diver emerging from an ice-water bath might. “Did you say grateful?”
“Of course, you dear old stupid! It seems – listen to this, Ephie – it seems that Mr. Pewter-Walsberg saw a copy of that adorable magazine on the news-stand this morning and saw your name on the cover and bought it out of curiosity and he read what it said about you and he was so delighted with it that he didn’t wait until tonight to show it to her – Mrs. Pewter-Walsberg, I mean. He came right on uptown with it and read it to her. And she says – they both say, in fact – it took a great strong silent resolute man like you to see that the trend of the day is for democracy; and that it’s high time the lower orders who aren’t in society should know that there are no barriers to keep out those who rise by their own efforts from humble beginnings, but just the other way around; and that when ordinary people find out how far you’ve climbed – your position in business and our position in society and all – it’s calculated to make them more satisfied with their lot and keep down anarchy and socialism and all such dreadful things. And she says Mr. Pewter-Walsberg will take it as a very great favor if you can arrange for these clever magazine people to interview him next – it seems they started forty years ago without a cent out in Illinois or some such outlandish place. Think of it, dear – a man like Herbert Pewter-Walsberg, with a hundred and fifty millions behind him – asking for a favor from you! Isn’t it just too wonderful?.. Hold the wire, Ephie, the girls are here waiting to congratulate you on being so smart in their behalf and to beg your pardon, as I do, for being so sort of excited as we all three were last night. But they didn’t understand then, and neither did I. But now we do, and we do so appreciate it all – you splendid brilliant shrewd old darling, you! Ephie dearest, tell me this – how did you ever come to figure out such a marvelous stroke of genius all by yourself?”
“Maria,” answered Mr. Golightly, and, as he answered, his chest expanded perceptibly and brushed against the edge of his desk, “if you’d been in the pressed-brick game as long as I have, you’d know there are several ways of killing a cat besides choking it to death with butter.”
