Gods Men

by Pearl S. Buck

  “You’ve made a great success, William.” She was not at all sure that this was the right thing to say and with his next words she knew it was not.

  “I’m not thinking only in terms of personal success. It is easy to be successful here in America. Anyone with brains can make money.”

  “But you do like money, William.” Her sense of being wrong compelled her to justify what she had said. Besides, it was true. In his own way William valued money far more than she did or ever could.

  “It is only common sense to have money.” His voice was dry, his eyes severe and gray. “Without it one is hamstrung. There is no freedom without money.”

  She remembered something she had heard her father once say. “A man needs enough room to swing a cat in.” Room, that was what money gave. A big house to live in, months in which to idle beside the sea, to live winter in summer and summer in winter, to buy without asking the price.

  “Yet you don’t seem to enjoy life very much, William,” she said rather painfully. She had a profound capacity for enjoyment without a sense of guilt. Her father had frankly enjoyed getting rich and he distrusted all charities. She teased him sometimes by saying that he had become a Christian Scientist so that he could ignore the sufferings of others.

  He had grinned and refused to be teased. “Maybe you’re right, daughter. Who knows why we do anything?”

  Then he had turned grim. “If I see somebody starving, with my own eyes, I’ll feed ’em. I won’t pay out good cash for what I don’t see. Ten to one they’re lazy. If they hustled like I did. …”

  Even going to church, while a social duty, had nothing to do with giving his money to strangers. Roger Cameron had cultivated no conscience in his children and Candace had grown up believing that pleasure was her normal occupation, once the dinner was planned and the children cared for. But no pleasure she devised could coax William from himself, or whatever it was that he dwelled upon in his soul. A ball which she planned as happily as a child might plan a birthday party fretted him with detail. A dish badly served spoiled his dinner. A servant who was not well trained—but of servants she would not think. He demanded of those in his service a degree of obedience and respect and outward decorum which had made her wretched until her father had found her crying one day. He had a way of coming to see her alone when he knew William was at his office. He took a cab and came all the way from Wall Street to arrive at three o’clock in the afternoon or at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  On one such a visit he said, after he had inquired as to the cause of the tears his shrewd eyes had seen in spite of powder and even a dash of rouge, “You can’t find Americans who’ll give William the service he wants. We don’t respect ourselves enough yet. We’ve always got to be showing that we’re independent and don’t have to obey anybody. Besides, we’re too honest. When we hate anybody we act ugly. You hire your house full of English, Candy—they can act nice while they’re stirrin’ up poison for you. An English servant can polish your shoes as though he loved it. Of course he don’t.”

  So she had filled the house with English servants, and a butler and a housekeeper kept their eyes upon William, the master.

  “I don’t know that life is merely to be enjoyed,” William now said.

  She was still crouching beside him. Idly she had taken one of his hands and playing with the fingers, she noticed the strange stiffness of his muscles.

  “What’s life for?” she asked, not expecting an answer. “I don’t know, I don’t suppose anyone does, exactly. We’re here, that’s all.”

  “It is for something more than amusement.” He disliked her playing with his hand and he drew it away, ostensibly to light a cigarette.

  She felt his dislike and got to her feet gracefully, took his head between her hands and kissed his forehead.

  “Poor darling, you’re so serious.”

  “I don’t need your pity.”

  “Oh, no, William, I didn’t mean that. Only, I enjoy life so much.”

  She drew back and met the hurt look she feared. Why could she never learn how easily wounded he was? She cried out. “How silly we are to keep talking about nothing when you haven’t even told me your real news! When are your father and mother coming?”

  He was relieved to be able to withdraw from her. “I had a cable this afternoon. They sailed the thirteenth on an Empress ship.”

  “Then in a fortnight—”

  “More or less. Just when I shall be busiest.”

  “Never mind, I’ll look after them. Dad has time, too, now he’s retired enough to stop away from the office if he likes. And there’s Jeremy and Ruth—”

  “I shall need Jeremy.”

  Of the young men with whom he had begun the paper only Jeremy was left. One by one the others had deserted him. Martin Rosvaine had gone into the production of motion pictures and Blayne into the State Department with aspirations for an ambassadorship. He had not missed these two, but he had been sorry when Seth James quarreled with him, for he valued Seth’s brilliant and effervescent mind, the ideas which poured forth like sparks from a rocket. Most of them were useless, but he watched the scintillating performance because there were always one or even two or three ideas upon which he seized. They had made a good pair, for Seth’s weakness was his inability to discriminate between good ideas and foolish ones, and the paper would have been bankrupt had he been given authority. For that reason, William told himself, he had been compelled to keep control in his own hands even to the extent of buying up stock. Jeremy, of course, had never been a threat. He worked when he wished and William had learned to hire an understudy for him. But even yet he missed Seth, who had left him in anger and still refused to communicate with him.

  The quarrel had been over a small matter, a difference of opinion so common to them that William had not troubled even to be polite. He had merely thrown abrupt words over his shoulder one night when they were all working long past midnight. Seth had said something about a story of some long-orphaned children in a foster home on a Pennsylvania farm. The farmer had lost his temper at a boy—he was still a boy, though a man in years—and the boy in terror and self-defense had rushed forward with a pitchfork, which had pierced the farmer’s leg. The wound was slight but the farmer had hacked the boy with an ax with which he was chopping wood and the boy had bled to death within an hour. There had been scandal enough so that Seth had gone impetuously to the scene himself to check the copy he was reading, and had come back flaming with anger at the conditions he found in the farmhouse: two half-starved grown girls, both mentally retarded, and a fat cruel old woman, and the boy hastily buried without anyone coming to investigate. The farmer lay in bed and babbled about self-protection. Seth had routed out police and they in turn had produced a thin frightened woman who claimed that she was only an employee of the organization that had placed the children and that she did not know whether there were any relatives. In the end the local publicity had spread to reach Ohio, whereupon Clem Miller of all people had come to Pennsylvania to see what was going on. He had taken the two girls away with him and had told the police that the place was not fit for any children, big or little.

  To Seth Clem had said with furious zeal, “I hope you’ll tell William to make a real spread of this. Everybody in America ought to know about it. It’s a strange and pitiful thing—this was my grandfather’s place. He hung himself in that barn because he was too softhearted to get a neighbor off a farm—mortgage was called in. I came here myself when I was a kid, not knowing. These people were here already. I ran away—wanted all the kids to come with me, but only one would come.”

  “It’s nothing but a local mess and of no significance,” William had said upon getting Clem’s message.

  “But the boy’s death is significant,” Seth had insisted. “The very fact that orphaned children could be farmed out like that to such people, and no one care—”

  “Well, no one does care,” William had retorted.

  Seth’s answer had taken a long
moment in coming and William, his mind upon his editorial, had not turned around. It came at last.

  “You don’t care, that’s a fact,” Seth had said in a still voice. “You don’t care about anybody, damn you!”

  He stalked to the door. “I’m not coming back here.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” William said.

  He had been very angry, nevertheless, when Seth walked out of the office. During the sleepless night in which he told Candace nothing except that the bread sauce on the pheasant he had eaten for dinner had not agreed with him, he made up his mind that when Seth came back in the morning he would ignore the whole matter. Otherwise he would have to fire him. But Seth did not come back. William had never heard from him since, but so far as he knew he was doing nothing of any use. He had backed two or three quixotic magazines, none of which were succeeding. Fortunately for Seth his father, old Mackenzie James, and Aunt Rosamond, too, had left him plenty of money. When William thought of their quarrel, as he often did, he was still convinced that he was right. A local murder in itself was not important. But William could never forget a wound and Seth had wounded him deeply. This was important.

  He felt himself misunderstood; of all his men he thought that Seth had understood him best. For William did not think only of himself. All that he did, his monstrous effort, his tireless work, was, he believed, to make people know the truth. Why else did he scan every photograph that was to be printed, why read and read again the galley proofs except that he might make sure that the people were given truth and nothing but the truth? He had tried to say something like this to Seth one day and Seth had laughed.

  “Truth is too big a word for one man to use,” Seth had declared. “For decency’s sake, let’s say truth as one man sees it.”

  To this William had not replied. It was not truth as he or anyone else saw it. Surely truth was an absolute. It was an ideal, it was what was right, and right was another absolute. Facts had little to do with either. Facts, William often declared to his young subeditors, were only trees in a forest, useless until they were put to use, bewildering until they were chosen, cut down, and organized. The policy was to establish what was right, as a man might build his house.

  “Our materials are facts,” William often said to his staff, looking from one tense young face to the other. The men admired him for his success, swift and immense. He was upheld by their admiration and only Seth had insisted on seeing the confusion behind their eyes. “When we know what we want to prove, we go out and find our facts. They are always there,” William said.

  After Seth had deserted him, for to William, it could be called nothing but desertion, he had only Jeremy of the old gang. The rest of his huge staff was made up of many young men, whose names he was careful to remember if they were executives. To the others he paid no heed. They came and went and he judged them by the pictures they sent in and the copy they wrote. His young subeditors made up the paper, but he himself was the editor-in-chief, and mornings were hideous if he did not approve what they had done. For he must approve. No one went home unless he did—no one except Jeremy, whom he could not control. Jeremy alone at midnight put his hat on the side of his head and took up his walking stick. He would always be a little lame, and he made the most of his limp when he went into William’s office.

  “Good night, William, I’ve had enough for today.”

  William never answered. Had Jeremy not been the son of Roger Cameron he would have thrown him out and closed the door.

  “Ruth and I will take care of your parents,” Candace was saying. “They’ll stay here, I suppose?”

  “I suppose so,” William replied. He rose. “I shall have to get back to the office tonight, Candace. We’d better have dinner at once.”

  Left alone after dinner, Candace put the two boys to bed, annoying the nurse Nannie by this unwanted help. The house was so silent afterward that she went to her own room and turned on all the rose-shaded lights and lay down to read, and then could not read. Instead she thought about William, whom she loved in spite of her frequent disappointment in their life together. She was not a stupid woman, although her education had been foolish, as she now knew. A finishing school and some desultory travel were all she had accomplished before her wedding day, and since then her life had been shaped around William’s driving absorption in the newspapers. She could not understand this absorption. Her father had worked, too, but only when it was necessary. Other people worked for him and he fired them when they did not do what he told them. A few hours in his offices sufficed to bring the money rolling in from hundreds of stores all over the country. It would have been so pleasant if William had been willing to go into the Cameron Stores, but this he had refused to do. She did not know what he really wanted. When they were married she supposed he wanted only to be rich, for of course only rich men were successful. Yet he could have been rich almost at once had he taken the partnership her father had later offered him.

  Thus she discovered that he wanted something beyond money. Yet what more was there than a handsome and comfortable home, a wife such as she tried to be and really was, wasn’t she, and dear, healthy boys? One day, soon after they were married, in those days when she still thought that she could help him, she had said she thought his picture papers were childish and he had replied coldly that most people were childish and his discovery of this fact had given him the first idea for his papers.

  “I like people and you hate them,” she had then declared in one of her flashes.

  “I neither like them nor hate them,” he had replied.

  Yet she believed that he loved her, and she knew she loved him. Why, she did not fully know. Who could explain a reason for love? Seth James had once wanted her to marry him. Since they were children he had talked about it, and Seth was good to the soul of him, kind and honest—yet she could not love him.

  Surely it was strange not to know William better after years of marriage. She knew every detail of his body, his head, nobly shaped, but the eyes remote and deep under the too heavy brows; a handsome nose William had, and a fine mouth except that it was hard. His figure was superb, broad-shouldered, lean, tall, but when he was naked she looked away because he was hairy. Black hair covered his breast, his arms, his shoulders and legs. She disliked the look of his hands, though she loved him. Yet how little love revealed! What went on in his mind? They were often silent for hours together. What did he long for above all? It was not herself, nor even the two boys, though he had been pleased that his children were boys. He did not care for girls, and this she had not understood until one day Ruth had told her that in Peking the Chinese always felt sorry for a man when his child was born a girl. It was a sign of something unsuccessful in his house. No matter how many sons a Chinese had he always wanted more.

  “But William isn’t Chinese,” she had told Ruth, making a wry face.

  Ruth had given her pretty laugh. Then she had shaken her head rather soberly. “He’s not really American, though, Candy.”

  What was really American? Jeremy was American, and Ruth had adapted herself to him, copying even his speech. They were quite happy since they had the two girls. Ruth had been absurdly grateful when Jeremy seemed really to prefer girls.

  She loved Jeremy with her whole tidy little being and had no thought for anyone else, except William. William she was proud of and afraid of, and the only quarrel she had with Jeremy was when she asked him not to make William angry. Jeremy, of course, was afraid of nothing, not even of William.

  Yet William loved his country. He was capable of sudden long speeches about America. Once at an office banquet to celebrate his first million readers, William had talked almost an hour and everybody listened as though hypnotized, even Candace herself. The big hotel dining room was still and suddenly she began to smell the flowers, the lilies and roses, on the tables, although she had not noticed their fragrance before. Words had poured out of William as though he had kept them pent in him. She heard the echoes of them yet.

 
“It is the hour of American destiny.

  —We have been sowing and now we are about to reap.

  —I see the harvest in terms of the whole world.

  —The world will listen to our voices, speaking truth.

  —We are young but we have learned in our youth to control the forces of water and air—the forces which are locked into ore and coal.

  —Old countries are dying and passing away. England is weak with age, an ancient empire, her rulers grown tired. France is sunk in dreams and Italy slumbers. But we of America, we are awake. The name America will be heard among every people. It is our time, our hour. It is we who will write the history of the centuries to come. …”

  Candace had listened, alarmed and half ashamed and yet fascinated. This was William, her husband!

  That night in the silence of their own house she had been unusually silent. He had seemed exhausted, his face pallid as water under a gray sky, and he did not speak to her.

  “You were very eloquent tonight, William,” she had said at last, because something was necessary to be spoken between them. “I suppose your preacher father is somewhere in you, after all.”

  “I wasn’t preaching,” he had said harshly. “I was telling the truth.”

  At this moment the telephone rang upon the small rosewood table beside her bed and, lifting the receiver, she heard her father’s nasal voice.

  “William?”

  “William is at the office, Father,” she told him. “There’s only me at home.”

  He hesitated. “You in bed, Candy?”

  “Not really. I’m just upstairs because I don’t like being downstairs alone.”

  “Maybe I’ll come around. Your mother’s got a sick headache and she’s gone to sleep.”

  “Do, Father. I’ll come down and be waiting.”

  Such visits at night were not unusual. Her father liked to walk in darkness when the city streets were empty, and once or twice a month he rang the doorbell and when the door was opened stood peering doubtfully into the hall. “William here?”