Gods Men

by Pearl S. Buck

  He saw Jeremy looking at him with a peculiar and pitying gaze and he averted his eyes.

  “I’d like to say something to you, William, if you’ll let me,” Jeremy said after a moment.

  “Well?” William heard his own voice harsh.

  “Perhaps we can’t say such things to each other. We never have, somehow. Perhaps if we could we would both feel better.”

  “Say what you like,” William said. He sat down abruptly at the desk and pretended to fill his fountain pen with ink.

  “Roosevelt has got everything he wanted because he is warm toward everybody. He is full of a sort of—of—love, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” William said. “He is full of loose ideas, so far as I am concerned.”

  “I know some of his ideas are crazy,” Jeremy admitted. “But everything else about him is so right that he can just about think as he likes.”

  William dropped the pen and it fell on the floor. His gray eyes were furious under his black brows and his lips tightened. “I suppose you mean his father is rich, his mother is socially correct, they live on the right street, all the sort of things that I haven’t!”

  “You know I don’t mean that,” Jeremy said. “We’d better drop it.”

  They had dropped it and he was too proud to tell Jeremy that he did know what he meant. For William was beginning to know that he lacked one grace among his gifts. He could not win love from ordinary people. He excused himself by saying that it was because they felt his superiorities, his obvious mental power, his ability to do easily what others did only by effort. The superior man, he told himself, turning the pages of his Nietzsche, must always be hated by his inferiors, but even this hatred could be turned to advantage and used as a tool for further power for good.

  “I must expect hatred,” William thought. “I must accept it as my due because I am not understood. What the common man cannot understand he hates.”

  Sometimes he thought even Jeremy hated him. But such moments passed and he was careful to seem kinder to his friend, more quick to help him, more patient with his frailties, his headaches, his manners.

  William, relentlessly remembering his defeat, was further disturbed by an editorial in the Crimson before the class elections. Roosevelt wrote:

  “There is a higher duty than to vote for one’s personal friends, and that is to secure for the whole class leaders who really deserve the positions.”

  These were the words of a man determined to be a liberal in spite of class and property. While the Gold Coast repudiated them, votes belonged to the many.

  William never forgave Franklin Roosevelt. He had already begun to believe that the people anywhere in the world were clods and fools and now he was convinced of their folly. The Boers who fought England were clods and fools. The Chinese he remembered upon the streets of Peking were clods and fools. From now on he spoke to no one at Harvard except those who lived on the Gold Coast.

  Yet he heard one day a remark that horrified him again. A pallid professor with long mustaches said these words with an emphasis too fervent for William’s taste: “The American people control their own destiny.”

  William began then in earnest the study of the history and government of his own country. He perceived to his dismay that the professor’s remark was a true one. Clods and fools though they might be, the American people elected their rulers, laughed at them, despised or admired them, obeyed or disobeyed them, clung to them or rejected them. He began after that to look at the people he passed on the street with consternation and even fear. Out of ignorance apparent upon their faces, obvious in their crude speech, these men chose from among themselves certain ones upon whom they bestowed the powers of state. It was monstrous. For months William felt himself in a den of lions. He tried to talk to Jeremy, who first laughed at him and then tried to explain:

  “Americans aren’t just people—they are Americans.”

  William had no such reverence. What he saw beyond the Gold Coast reminded him ominously of the streets and roads of China. He had feared the common people there. Had they not risen up in all their folly against men like his father? Von Ketteler had been murdered by an ignorant clod. He remembered that dignified German, who at the Fourth of July celebrations at the American Embassy had more than once spoken to him with courtesy. The common people could rise against their betters anywhere and kill them, unless they were taught and controlled.

  Yet, how to control these boisterous, independent, noisy jokesters who were the common folk of his own country? They would not tolerate a real ruler. They had no respect for those above them. They delighted to pull down the great and destroy them. Look at Admiral Dewey, a hero for an hour, whose plaster triumphal arch, designed for marble, fell to dust and was carted away by the garbage collectors! The whim of the people was the most frightening force in the world.

  Upon this William pondered, knowing now his own lack of charm, that strange senseless power to attract his fellows, the charm which young Franklin Roosevelt possessed as easily as he possessed height, fearlessness, and ready laughter. Without this frail gift, William told himself proudly, he must rely upon his brains and devise a means of teaching and controlling the wild beast of the multitudes. He would lead them wisely, insidiously, charming them through words, himself never seen.

  In that third year in college he wrote to his father to say that he would not come back to China. “I feel I am needed more here than there. The truth is, I am not impressed by American civilization. I intend to start some sort of newspaper, something ordinary people will read, or at least look at, and so do what I can to enlighten my fellow countrymen.”

  Some day, William vowed to his own heart, he would be the editor and owner of a newspaper, perhaps even a chain of newspapers, by which he could defeat any man he disliked or disapproved. To dislike was to disapprove. Money, of course, he must have but he would get it somehow. Quite stupid men were able to get rich.

  Meanwhile, Franklin Roosevelt did not win the Phi Beta Kappa key, and William felt assuaged when he himself was among the chosen.

  Yet the college years, as they passed, were good ones. He became a member of the Cameron family and spent his vacations with them, after brief duty visits to his grandparents and his sisters. It was accepted now that William was independent and different. Henrietta was proudly silent with him, Ruth worshiped him timidly, and his grandparents tried, somewhat in vain, to treat him as an ordinary young man. They knew he was extraordinary. Even Mrs. Cameron saw that now. It was pleasant to have about her a handsome young man who knew how to dress and was always ready to do what she needed done. He paid little attention to Candace, she reflected after each vacation, and he behaved like a strong elder brother to her poor son. She introduced William to the ladies at her Christmas At Home and forgot to mention that his father was a missionary, leaving the impression that he was connected with the diplomatic corps in Peking. William did not correct her.

  His dreams hovered about the many happy weeks he spent in the great square house on Fifth Avenue. Each summer he accepted a job that Mr. Cameron offered him. He went to Europe with Jeremy, a combination secretary and guide, and they shared a valet. Together the two young men wandered about old cities and sailed the Mediterranean. It was a matter of course that William would always go home with Jeremy when the journey was over. He had his own two rooms in the vast Cameron house. They opened into Jeremy’s suite. From there he seldom wrote to or heard from his sisters and his grandparents, and Peking he had nearly forgotten. The Camerons had become his family.

  He thought about the Camerons a great deal, pondering again the question of how, through them, he might reach vague heights he imagined but could not see. Among the many things he discussed with Jeremy this was not one. William was not crude. He had lived too long among Chinese, even though only servants. He felt crudity in his mother and shrank from it, but he forgave her because of her willingness to sacrifice. His mother was “for” him, as he put it, and whe
n he discovered this quality in any person, he overlooked all else. Nevertheless he was glad that during his college years his mother was remote in Peking. He was still not yet sure that the Camerons were entirely “for” him, not even Jeremy. This uncertainty made him pleasantly diffident and unselfish in his dealings with each of them. To Jeremy, he gradually became someone always willing to spare him tiresome stairways when he wanted a book from the library, and so he wore away dislike. To William’s listening silence Jeremy in vacations talked more freely than at college, uncovering a delicate and poetic mind, racked with questions, and a spirit confounded by conscience. Thus Jeremy spoke on the solid matter of money.

  “I know that if my father had not been rich I would now have been dead. But I wish I could owe my life to something else.”

  “Perhaps you might say that you owe it to your father’s being so able as to get rich,” William had suggested.

  “I don’t know that merely being able to get rich is anything particularly noble,” Jeremy had replied.

  “Not everyone can do it, nevertheless,” William said. “Your father must have had some natural gift.”

  A look of aversion came upon Jeremy’s pale and too mobile face. “The gift is only that of being able to overcome someone less strong in the competitive game.”

  To this William put up silence, and into the silence Jeremy continued to talk. “Sons of rich men always complain of their father’s riches, I suppose. Yet there ought to be some way of living without stamping all the ants to death.”

  Still William made no answer. Jeremy had come to no grips with life. The trouble with Jeremy was that he wanted nothing. He himself wanted everything; success with the newspaper he meant to have, and after that a wife beautiful and wealthy, a mansion to live in, a place in the world where he could be unique in some fashion he did not yet know, and the means to all this, he perceived, was money. He was perfectly sure that money was what he wanted first of all.

  In his quiet way he reflected further upon the Cameron family. His brotherly relation to Jeremy he could easily develop. Quite honestly, he liked Jeremy. Candace he would consider as time passed. He was too nearly an intellectual to be in haste for marriage. Mrs. Cameron he understood and did not fear. His thoughts, flying like tentative gray hawks, now lit warily near the image of Mr. Cameron. This man was the central figure, the most important man, the one whom he must approach with real finesse. Mr. Cameron knew secrets. Pondering upon that vague and unimpressive person, William perceived that behind the nondescript face, the long and narrow mouth, there was something immense, a power strong and profoundly restrained. He guessed by some intuition of like mind that Mr. Cameron never told his true thoughts to his family, certainly at least not to women, and probably not to his delicate and oversensitive son. Into that loneliness William determined to go, not with deceit but with honesty.

  “Mr. Cameron,” he said on Easter Sunday, “I would like to ask your advice about something.”

  “Why not?” Mr. Cameron replied. Sunday was a day on which he drowsed. It was now afternoon, however, and late enough for him to have recovered from the immensities of dinner. He had slept, had waked, had walked in the garden with his wife and daughter to see the promise of some thousands of daffodils, and had come in again to reread the newspaper in the small sitting room off the drawing room, which was his favorite resting place. There William had come, after waiting patiently in his own room, from which he could see the prowling among the daffodils. Jeremy and Candace had gone with their mother to see their grandparents.

  He sat down at a respectable distance from Mr. Cameron and upon a straight-back chair. His childhood in Peking had taught him deference to elders, and he would not have been comfortable had he chosen one of the deep chairs upholstered in brown leather.

  “I would like to talk about my future, sir,” he said.

  “What about it?” Mr. Cameron asked. His eyes roved to the newspaper at his feet. The financial section was uppermost and he was disgusted to see that the profits of a rival company had risen slightly above those of his own.

  “I want to get rich,” William said simply.

  Mr. Cameron’s gray eyebrows, bunched above his eyes, quivered like antennae. “What do you want to get rich for?” he demanded. He stared at William with something more than his usual careless interest.

  “I see that here in America a man cannot get any of the things he wants unless he is rich,” William replied.

  Mr. Cameron smiled and agreed suddenly. “You’re damn right!” He kicked the newspaper from his feet, sat back, and felt in his pocket for a cigar. It was a short thick one, and he lit it and puffed out a cloud of blue and fragrant smoke. The vague barrier that stood always between himself and his son’s friends fell away. He felt he could talk to William. He had always wished that he could talk to young men and tell them the things he knew. If an older man had talked to him when he was young he would have got along faster.

  “I’ll tell you.” He shifted his cigar to the corner of his mouth. “If you want to get rich, William, you’ll have to quit thinking about anything else. You’ll have to concentrate. You have to put your mind to it.”

  “Yes, sir.” William sat at attention, his hands folded upon his crossed knees. They were small hands, as Mr. Cameron remembered his wife had said they were, and they were already covered with surprisingly heavy black hair. William’s hair on his head was black, too, in contrast to his light gray-green eyes. An odd-looking boy, Mr. Cameron reflected, though so handsome.

  “Have you thought of any special line?” Mr. Cameron asked.

  William hesitated. “Did you, sir, at my age?”

  “Yes, I did,” Mr. Cameron replied. “That’s the trick of it. You have to think of something that people want—not a few rich people, mind you, but all the ones who don’t have much money. You have to think of something that they must buy and yet that won’t cost too much. That’s how I thought of the Stores. I was clerk in a general store.”

  William knew the Cameron Stores very well. There was one in almost every city. He had wandered about them more than once, looking at the piles of cheap underwear and kitchen utensils and groceries and dishes and baby carriages and linoleum, everything that an ordinary family might want and nothing that Mrs. Cameron would have had in her own house. It was repellent stuff.

  “I’ve thought of a newspaper,” William said.

  Mr. Cameron looked blank. “What about a newspaper?”

  “A cheap newspaper,” William said distinctly. “With lots of pictures so that people will first look and then read.”

  “I never thought of such a thing,” Mr. Cameron said. He stared at William, digesting the new and remarkable idea. “There are already plenty of newspapers.”

  “Not the kind I mean,” William said.

  “What kind do you mean?” Mr. Cameron asked. “I thought I knew about every kind there was.”

  “I suppose you do, sir,” William said. “What I am thinking of, though, is new for America. I got the idea from England—and a little bit, perhaps, from the New York World, and then the Journal. But I didn’t think of doing anything myself until I began to hear about Alfred Harmsworth in England. Have you seen his papers, sir?”

  “No,” Mr. Cameron said. “When I’m in London I always read the Times—maybe look at the Illustrated Times on the side.”

  “My paper,” William said, as if it already existed, “is what’s called tabloid size and it is to have everything in it that can interest the masses. It won’t be for people like you, Mr. Cameron. It will have plenty of pictures. I’ve noticed even in college that most of the men don’t really read much but they will always look at pictures.”

  “I hope you don’t mean yellow journalism,” Mr. Cameron said severely.

  “No, I don’t,” William said. “I hope I can do something more subtle than that.” He paused and then went on thoughtfully, his eyes on the patterned carpet. “I thought, if you approved, I would talk with Jeremy about it
and some day we might go in on it together.”

  Mr. Cameron was pleased. It might be the very thing for Jeremy, easy work, sitting behind a desk. He had often wondered what to do with his fragile son, but he was too prudent to show approval. “Well, it would depend on what Jeremy wants. Newspapers cost a lot of money to start.”

  William was calm. “That’s why I want to get rich.” He was too wise to repeat what his mother had often told him, even before he went to Chefoo. His mother had sown in him early the seeds of common sense. “You can’t have but so many friends,” she had said. “And each friend ought to count for something.” He had seen the folly of useless friends in the English school; his speaking acquaintance there with the British Ambassador’s son had served him more usefully than the horde of missionaries’ children.

  At college he had selected from among Jeremy’s friends three whom he was transferring to himself, Blayne Parker, Seth James, and Martin Rosvaine. Blayne William still doubted because he was a poet, and Jeremy supplied to him something that William knew was not in himself. Seth and Martin he was resolved to keep. Yet there was no reason why the five of them, Jeremy included, should not stay together after college. Seth’s father alone could, if he would, supply the capital they would need. Meanwhile he was getting into their clubs.

  “Got it all figured out, eh?” Mr. Cameron said. A look of admiration came over his face, mingled with reluctance. If Jeremy had been this sort of a fellow, he would have got him into the Stores. Invitation was on the tip of his tongue. “How would you like—” He swallowed the words. William would be too smart, maybe, ten years from now when he himself was getting to be an old man. He might not be able to cope with that new young smartness in case it opposed him. It was all right to give young men a chance, but not the whole chance. On the other hand, William might be the making of the Stores, at the time when he needed somebody. If the boy married Candy, for example, it would be almost as good as though he were born into the family. This would take time to think out. He leaned back and crossed his hands on the small paunch that hung incongruously on his lean frame. “When the time comes,” he said dreamily, “I might be able to do something myself, William. Only might, that is. I can’t tell from year to year, government being what it is in this country.”