The Wide House

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  But Stuart was looking at him irascibly. “Oh, damn,” he said again. “You are a wonderful help to me, Sam.”

  Sam smiled. When he smiled, the ancient furrows in his tired face disappeared, and his expression was all gay sweetness and amusement. Even his weary eyes danced. “Perhaps you are wiser,” he said. “The more one thinks, the more one loses the outline of reality. You are like a child, Stuart. You see simply. That is why, perhaps, you are wiser.”

  But Stuart was still bewildered, and more and more impatient. “Let’s get down to facts,” he said, in an angry tone. “Haven’t you noticed something, recently? Our sales are falling off. Fewer farmers are coming into town. The customers are more prudent, and they are buying cheaper articles, and fewer of them. What is the matter? Where has the money gone? There is no less money in the damned country. Where is it hiding? Where has it gone?”

  Sam was serious again. “Let us ask, rather: ‘Where has the confidence of the people gone?’ Something has affected the confidence of the people. What is it? When you can answer that, during each falling off of confidence, then you can solve the riddle of panics. Sometimes it is but a rumor. Sometimes there is a whisper that crops have failed, or are smaller. Sometimes one suspects the political Party which is in power. But again: it is like the man who looks at a big distant mountain and finds it small, or the man who looks up at a small mountain and decides it is large. Money is very intangible. It is an imaginary thing. It is at hand if the confidence of the people remains, and it is lost if the confidence fails. I may be wrong, indeed. But I fear I am right.” Stuart stared at him irascibly. “You are still talking gibberish. I only know this: that our indebtedness is enormous, and our sales are falling off. That is the fact we must face. Damn you, sir, and your ‘intangible’ mountains! Philosophy never put decent amounts on the right side of the ledger, and never made red ink disappear on the wrong side. You can look at things calmly, and talk riddles. But I’m not calm, damned if I am! I see bankruptcy staring us in the face if things go on this way.”

  Sam was very grave. “You are right, Stuart. People are beginning, already, to talk of a ‘panic.’ Wall Street speaks of it as an inevitable thing. But I am no financier. I am no student of business history. I am only a shopkeeper. I know nothing.”

  He paused, then said, almost as if in apology: “Do you know what I think we should do? Retrench. Conserve. Economize. Sell what we haf, and buy replacements only with cash. And those replacements small. We should operate in a narrower, a more cautious, circle. In the meantime, we should hurry to pay off our indebtedness, as fast as we can. What do you call it? ‘Pull in the belt.’” And he smiled at Stuart gently.

  He knew, even before Stuart’s face took on a frightened and enraged expression, that what he had said must raise furious resistance in the other man. He said hurriedly: “Please understand me. With no debts, we can afford to make smaller profits. Even in a panic, people must live. They buy smaller, cheaper. But they still buy. The shopkeeper who weathers the storm is a man who has no debts, sells what he can, and lives frugally on the small profits, until the storm passes. He is what you haf said: ‘marking time.’ That is the wise thing: ‘marking time.’ For, inevitably, financial storms pass. There are many wrecks left behind. But the man who as hurried to make himself solvent is not one of the wrecks.”

  Stuart looked at him, appalled and incensed, full of his old nameless fear. “You talk like a coward, Sam! It is people like you who make panics! You have no confidence!”

  But Sam said, very gravely: “I haf confidence that the storm will pass, but unless I take care I haf no confidence that I shall not be wrecked. I wish to take precautions. I shut my doors and my windows, and bolt them, so that the storm will pass by with as little damage as possible. To leave open the doors and the windows is to invite destruction.”

  Stuart felt in himself the old sick sinking that always accompanied any suggestion of economy or caution. He exclaimed: “Oh, what a niggling soul you have, Sam! What an over-cautious, tiptoeing, miserable soul! You would count pennies. You would measure out each yard of calico before you buy it, and then buy half a yard. Is that the way great enterprises are continued, and expanded? By mean little souls who are afraid to buy two yards because they are not certain they will sell them immediately? By those who have no confidence that a customer has the cash with which to buy two yards?”

  But now Sam’s gravity had become stern. He said slowly: “You do not understand me. It is you, now, who are talking what you call gibberish. If a customer does not haf the confidence that tomorrow he will haf two more dollars he will not spend one dollar today. That is what is happening. The customers of the country do not believe that tomorrow they will haf two dollars, so today they spend one dollar, or nothing. That is a fact which must be understood. Why they fear they will not haf two dollars, I do not know. I haf said I am no student of financial histories. I only know I am confronted with the frightened woman who is afraid that tomorrow she will not haf the two dollars, so she will hoard what she has to buy bread for her family when the next day there are no dollars.”

  Stuart, in his ancient fear, got up, and began to stride about the room, running his hands through his hair, rubbing his hands together.

  “You are afraid,” said Sam, watching him grievedly. “You know, in your heart, that ladies in the shops spend fifty cents, not two dollars, for already they fear that tomorrow they will need the money for bread. Yet you will not listen. You will not buy only one yard today because you will not believe that tomorrow you cannot sell two yards. Yet you may not sell half a yard. That is what I am telling you: buy only one yard today, with cash, and pay, if you can, for the many yards you bought yesterday. And quickly.”

  “Oh, the fools!” cried Stuart, swinging upon his friend. “Don’t they understand, using your damned idiotic metaphor, that if they don’t buy two yards today they won’t be able to buy half a yard tomorrow?”

  Sam smiled sadly. “Perhaps the poor ladies do not understand economics,” he said. “And, as we deal with the poor ladies, we must cut our cloth to the measure of their fears.” Stuart stood before him, his face working furiously, his color very bad. “All right, all right!” he cried, with elaborate bitterness. “What is your solution, then?”

  Stuart poked the fire again. Sam’s face was wrinkling with his grave thoughts. Stuart watched him, the fear thicker on him than ever, his fists clenching. Then Sam sat back in his chair and stared somberly at his friend.

  “I haf been wondering, and hoping,” he said. “I haf been waiting for you to talk to me. I haf given you my advice. But I shall not use the metaphors. I shall speak plainly. But first, I must ask you a question: What is your cash, in the banks?”

  Stuart flushed. He bit his lip. Then he said furiously: “I can raise—”

  But Sam lifted his hand, slowly. “I haf not asked what you can ‘raise.’ I haf asked what your cash is.”

  Stuart exploded. “In actual cash, damn you, about ten thousand dollars!”

  Sam stared at him in grave silence. He shook his head a little. Then he said: “And your own indebtedness, my poor Stuart, is over one hundred thousand dollars.”

  He sighed. He put his little brandy glass to his lips, but took it away again, untasted.

  “From the shops, from the last six months of custom, you shall haf but five thousand dollars,” he continued. “That will be nothing to pay on your indebtedness. For, unfortunately, a man must live, also, as well as pay his debts.”

  Bitterly, Stuart exclaimed: “You are afraid that I will ruin you, as well as myself!”

  Sam looked at him, and before that look Stuart colored. “Always, you accuse me of bad things,” said the Jew sadly, “Yet, in your heart, you do not believe it.”

  Stuart made a disordered gesture. “I’m always apologizing to you, it seems. I won’t, now. You know I have a rotten tongue.”

  He fell into his chair. He clenched his hands grimly on his knees. He glared at the fire
, his face twisting. “Oh, damn, damn,” he muttered. Then he turned his glare desperately upon his friend. “I can always borrow, again,” he said. “My house is practically paid for. Besides, curse it, haven’t we a huge amount of stock on hand, which ought to be worth something?”

  Sam appeared a little more eager. “That is what I am saying! Sell what we haf. Pay off the indebtedness. Buy a little more, and that only for cash, when we can. That is the way of ‘pulling in the belt’ until the table is set again.”

  “But you’ve forgotten that we have a shipment coming in soon, amounting to at least twenty-five thousand dollars!”

  Sam shook his head. “We cannot accept it. The shops in New York will buy it, perhaps, on the docks.” He stood up. He said sternly: “I haf meant to tell you that We cannot accept the shipment”

  Stuart looked up at him. His face was dark. “Sam, you have money.”

  Sam was silent Then he turned away. “Yes. I haf the money. For my people. I cannot spend that money, to buy goods which we shall not be able to sell, perhaps for a long time. I cannot take that money, which belongs to my people.”

  Stuart said, in an evil tone: “You will not—lend—that money, to save me. And in the final event, to save yourself.”

  For the first time in many years, he saw anger in Sam’s brown eyes, as the other faced him fully. “You speak of saving yourself, and me, Stuart! But there would need to be no talk of saving, if you had not been rash, and foolish, with your money! Always haf I warned you. But no, you would not listen. You must spend. It must be a house of useless treasures, or women, or jewels, or horses, or other lavishness. And now you speak to me of ‘saving’ you! You would eat the substance that does not belong to you, that was gathered slowly, and painfully, for the use of those who haf no hope, not even of life, if I do not use my money for them!”

  Stuart, in his shame, was defensively enraged. He shouted: “If I go down, you go also, remember! Or perhaps you would buy me out, at your own price! You would throw me out!” He sprang to his feet. He stood there, violently trembling, before his friend.

  But Sam only gazed at him with the quiet anger increasing in his eyes. For one moment Stuart saw contempt in them, and then great compassion mingled with the anger. Sam went to a table in a corner and brought out a single sheet of paper. He looked at it steadily, sat down by the fire. He said, not glancing at Stuart:

  “Here are the figures, my Stuart. Simple figures. They can be understood. They will not take time to explain. Then, if you will, we can forget them.

  “For the shops, we haf seventeen thousand dollars, in the banks. That is all. Our indebtedness: it is eighty-two thousand dollars. Our stock in the shops: we haf ninety thousand dollars invested. The stock, it is moving slowly. Slowly, slowly, like a river in the early winter, freezing, until it will not move at all, before the spring. The clerks, they must be paid. The indebtedness, it must be lifted, the payments on the debts made regularly. Next month, Stuart, you will draw as your share less than four hundred dollars, I, also. Yet you haf your personal debts to meet, to the banks. Your mortgages, your expenses. And always the clerks, who live on their wages, which we give them. It is the clerks, just now, of whom I am thinking.”

  Stuart looked down at him in silence, then he sank heavily back into his chair. Sam lifted his eyes and regarded him with the utmost gravity.

  “You haf spoken of my private funds, in the banks, for my people. I haf told you before that if you needed my money, it is yours. I haf a fund—it is seven thousand dollars—above that which I haf saved for my people. It is yours, Stuart, if you will haf it. If you need it.”

  Stuart did not speak. He stared heavily before him at a point between his polished boots.

  Sam sighed. Then he said in a more cheerful tone: “Your ten thousand dollars, Stuart, and my seven—it can help you. But only if we do not buy. If we economize. If we live frugally. If we sell what we haf, and buy no more. Until the river melts in the spring, and moves again.”

  Stuart glanced up at him with the upflinging of the head which told of desperation.

  “All our profits, Stuart, they must go to pay off the indebtedness of the shops. We must take nothing. Your ten thousand dollars, my seven, this must serve us for our private expenses, until the river moves again.”

  “My God!” cried Stuart, “I spend nearly two thousand a month, myself! How long will the money last me?”

  But Sam said with gentle inexorableness: “You must cut your expenses, my friend.”

  “But how?”

  Sam sighed again. He hesitated. Then he looked sternly at his friend. “You haf showed me the diamond necklace and earrings which you haf bought for a certain lady in Chicago. They must be returned. There will be a little loss. They were twelve thousand dollars, Stuart? They must be returned. The jeweler—surely he will give you eleven thousand dollars for their return, if not the full price.”

  Stuart glowered. He looked away. “I paid only two thousand down on them, Sam.”

  Sam’s head dropped wearily. “Return them. He will, perhaps, give you fifteen hundred dollars for their return. Then you will not be in debt.”

  Stuart pondered this gloomily. Then his fear, like a mad animal, leapt at his throat again, and in the extremity of his panic he jumped to his feet. “I can’t, I tell you! I can’t live like a niggardly beggar! I can’t economize! It—it would kill me! What do you know? Nothing! How can you understand a man like me?”

  But Sam only regarded him somberly, and compassion again changed his face. He said, looking up at his partner:

  “Stuart, what is it you are afraid of? What is it that frightens you so?”

  And Stuart said, his words leaping from the dark subconscious depths of him without volition: “I’m afraid of the world.”

  He sat down again, and looked at the fire. He said, almost inaudibly, as if he were speaking in a dream, “There is something you’ve forgotten, or haven’t mentioned. I owe you fourteen thousand dollars, which you lent me. It was seventeen. I have paid you three. You didn’t speak of it. You haven’t forgotten it?”

  Sam said softly: “Haf I asked you for it, Stuart?”

  Stuart put his hands over his face. “No! No! You never would, Sam.”

  Then Sam said again, with deep compassion: “You are afraid of the world you say, Stuart What is it that makes you afraid?”

  Stuart dropped his hands. They fell between his big knees in a gesture of exhaustion. He stared again at the fire, and his handsome dissipated features were stricken and grim.

  “I know what the world is, Sam.”

  “I know too, Stuart. But still I am not afraid of it. I know the worst it can do. But still I am not afraid. When one knows the ultimate, one knows that beyond it there is nothing worse, there is no more terrible thing to face.”

  Stuart did not seem to have heard him. The firelight filled the sockets of his staring eyes, and gave them a despairing appearance. He began to speak, and his voice was mechanical, as though those subconscious depths were speaking now through his mouth, without the knowledge of his alert mind:

  “I was never a very bad lad. I—I was somewhat like a puppy. I was ready to be friendly with every man. If a man spoke kindly to me, I loved him. The world seemed a beautiful and exciting place to me, full of friendliness and adventure and goodness. That was when I was a young lad. Even when I saw evil things, and saw the twisted mouths about me, and the nasty eyes, I thought it only an accident. A rare thing. A troubling thing. But not universal. Never universal. I read the lies of the good men who had died long ago. The ‘dignity of man,’ the ‘brotherhood of men,’ the ‘fatherhood of God.’ They had been said so often that I believed that everyone knew them, and practiced them. They seemed lovely things to me, things universally accepted. Sometimes, perhaps, there were errors committed, but these were committed by only a few who had never heard of the things I believed were true, and understood. Those who were in error were criminals, just hated and rejected by the whol
e world. And I believed all this until I was nearly twenty years old!”

  He laughed bitterly. Sam had listened to that grim and monotonous voice with deep and unmoving attention. He waited.

  “I understood lies. I was an uncommon young liar myself,” Stuart’s voice went on, meditatively. He still looked only at the fire. “But they were harmless lies, never calculated to hurt a soul. Yes, I understood those lies. They were spice to life, or said in kindness, or in merriment, and no one was expected to believe them as truth. But lies said to injure, to maim, to cause suffering or destruction, or spoken out of viciousness or cruelty—these I never believed existed. I did not believe it until I was nearly twenty years old!”

  Sam still waited. Again, Stuart passed his hands over his face with a tired and rubbing gesture. His skin, after their passage, was mottled and drawn.

  “I understood the little malices, the annoyance of temper, the antagonism of one mind to another. I indulged in them myself. But I did not believe there were enormous malices without cause, which would set one man against another to the death. I did not believe there were cruelties which came only because one man was stronger than his neighbor, and he wished to destroy that weaker neighbor out of beastlike and reasonless malignance. I did not understand that cruelty and malignance were human attributes as much a part of the nature of men as the color of their eyes and the shape of their noses. I still believed, until I was nearly twenty years old, that there was goodwill in men, and a better part!”

  Sam made a faint involuntary sound, but Stuart did not hear it. A sick excitement possessed him. He twisted his fingers strongly together, as if in great pain. He went on:

  “But there was one thing I did not know at all, until I had grown to manhood. I did not know there was hatred. Oh, there were some lads of my age whom I disliked, whom I avoided, even in England, and when I came to America. I had my fights with these lads, when they called me ‘dirty Irishman,’ and other things. But still, I did not believe in hatred. But now I know that there is only hatred in the world, and cruelty, and murderous greed and enmity. I know that every man is set against his neighbor, like a’mad wild animal, and that there is no decency or kindness anywhere.”