“No, I can’t,” said Laura, “I never can, no matter how hard I try. I just keep thinking of the rotten truth, the dirty truth, and nothing but the awful truth.”
“We ought to remember,” said Rudyard, who was able to enjoy everything, “the profound insight stated in the sentence, ‘Joy is our duty.’”
“I don’t feel joyous,” said Laura, “and I don’t feel like forcing myself to be joyous, whether or not it is a duty. I don’t like life, life does not like me, and I am unhappy.”
“Laura is right,” said Edmund, seeking to show sympathy, “she has a right to her feelings. When I used to get peevish as a child, I would say: ‘What should I do? I have nothing to do?’ My mother always used to have just one answer: ‘Go knock your head against the wall’ was what my mother always said. She was a big help.”
“Tick, tick, tick,” said Laura, “that’s just life passing away, second by second.”
TWO: “HOW MUCH MONEY DOES HE MAKE?”
During the week, Edmund Kish had been visited by Israel Brown, the most admired of all the teachers known to the circle. Israel Brown was a man of incomparable learning. He was lean, tall, hollow-cheeked, and Christ-like in appearance. When he conversed, he spoke with a passion and rush such that one might suppose that the end of his life or of the world were in the offing. He did not seem to belong to this world and this life, although he appeared to all to know about everything in this world. He was a teacher of philosophy, but he touched upon many other subjects, ancient coins, legal codes, marine architecture, the writing of the American Constitution and the theology of the early Church Fathers. No matter whom he met and no matter where he was, Israel Brown rushed to tell his listener whatever his listener seemed to care about. He was able to correct and contradict whatever his listener said to him without offending him. He said hurriedly: “You will pardon me if I point out—,” and then told his listener facts about the subject which the listener for the most part did not know existed, or were known to anyone.
Thus on this day when Israel Brown stopped at Edmund Kish’s house to get the compendium he had lent Edmund, one of his most devoted students, he was introduced to Edmund’s mother and he spoke to her immediately with customary pace and passion, telling her all about her generation, the generation which had come to America from Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1914. He spoke of the causes of the departure of this generation from the old world, the problems and tricks of the ocean liner agencies, the prospects of the immigrants, the images of the new world which had inhabited their minds, the shortage of labor which had drawn them, and the effect of their coming upon social and economic tensions in America.
Mrs. Kish listened to Israel Brown amazed as everyone was who heard him for the first time, amazed and overwhelmed by his eloquence, his learning, and his ravenous desire to tell all that he knew. Edmund as he listened was amused by the dumbfounded look upon his mother’s face. She was an intelligent woman who had been a radical in her youth and she was not wholly bound in mind by her middle-class existence.
As soon as Israel Brown departed, Mrs. Kish breathed deeply as if in relief.
“You have just seen a genius,” said Edmund to his mother.
“How much money does he make?” asked Mrs. Kish.
This was the story with which Edmund, excited, came to the Saturday evening at the Bell apartment.
He was not disappointed. The circle responded with enormous joy, and immediately Rudyard started the analysis and augmentation of any news which was a loved practice.
“Your mother’s question,” said Rudyard, in a tone in which gaiety and a pedagogic attitude were present, “is not only brilliant in itself, but it suggests an inexhaustible number of new versions. Your mother has virtually invented a new genre for the epigram. Thus, whenever anyone is praised and whenever anything favorable is said about anyone, let us reply: ‘Never mind that: how much money does he make?’”
“Yes,” said Ferdinand, “there are all kinds of versions. We can say: ‘I am not in the least interested in that. Just tell me one thing: What’s his salary?’ Or if we want to make him look unimportant: ‘What you have just told me leaves me absolutely cold. What I want to know is: What are his wages?’ And then again ‘Precisely how much cash has he in the bank?’”
“‘How much is his yearly compensation?’” shouted Laura from the kitchen, preparing the midnight supper, but never failing to listen to all that was said.
“It is one of the most heart-breaking sentences of our time,” Jacob Cohen declared in a low voice, “and if it brings one to tears, the tears are obviously for Edmund’s mother and not for Israel Brown.”
“I don’t notice anyone refusing any money,” said Laura, bringing coffee, tea, and cocoa to the table, “except for Jacob.” Jacob had refused to accept an allowance from his father and he had refused a job in the family business in which his older brothers prospered exceedingly. He had explained that he was going to be what he wanted to be or he was going to be nothing.
“It is easy enough to do nothing,” said Jacob, seating himself at the dinner table. He did not like to have anyone’s attention fixed upon what, in his being, was most intimate and most important.
“The difficult virtue,” said Rudyard, “is to disregard the possibility of making money, to live such a life that making money will have no influence upon one’s mind, heart and imagination.” As he spoke, he was hardly aware that he was thinking chiefly of himself.
“You can’t write plays for money, you just don’t know how,” said Laura, “so you don’t have any temptation to resist: that’s no virtue.” Laura’s love and admiration of her brother did not prevent her from attempting to overthrow the attitudes in which Rudyard took the most pride. This was the way in which she tried to defend herself from the intensity of her love and the profundity of her acceptance of him.
Rudyard did not answer her. His mind had shifted to his own work, and he took from the shelf the manuscript book in which his last play was written, seated himself upon the studio couch, and studied his own work, a look of smiling seriousness upon his face.
The other boys were seated at the dinner table, slowly eating the midnight supper and rejoicing in Mrs. Kish’s question. Laura pampered each of them in his stubborn idiosyncrasy of taste. Edmund liked his coffee light, Rudyard liked his very strong, Ferdinand would only drink Chinese tea, Edmund insisted on toast, although most of them liked pumpernickel bread best of all. Laura provided what each of them liked best, which did not prevent her from being ironic about their preferences and assuming the appearance of one who begrudges and denies all generous indulgence and attention.
“How beautiful,” said Rudyard loudly without raising his gaze from his manuscript book, “and yet no one likes this play, not even my intimate friends. But in a generation or in fifty years, it will be cheered as the best dramatic work of the century!”
Marcus Gross strode in, his entrances being at once loud and founded on the assumption that he had been present all evening.
“The theatre in which your plays are performed,” he said, “ought to be named, Posterity.”
“Very good,” said Rudyard, “you may think that you are attacking me, but I regard that as one of the finest things ever said about an author!”
It was felt that this was a perfect reply.
Between Rudyard and Marcus an antagonism had long existed, excited for the most part by Rudyard’s open contempt for Marcus, who admired Rudyard very much, but was forced to conceal his admiration.