Bab Bab 45 · For a man of Lester's years--he was now forty-six--to be

tossed out in the world without a definite connection, even though he

did have a present income (including this new ten thousand) of fifteen

thousand a year, was a disturbing and discouraging thing. He realized

now that, unless he made some very fortunate and profitable

arrangements in the near future, his career was virtually at an end.

Of course he could marry Jennie. That would give him the ten thousand

for the rest of his life, but it would also end his chance of getting

his legitimate share of the Kane estate. Again, he might sell out the

seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of moderate interest-bearing

stocks, which now yielded him about five thousand, and try a practical

investment of some kind--say a rival carriage company. But did he

want to jump in, at this stage of the game, and begin a running fight

on his father's old organization? Moreover, it would be a hard row to

hoe. There was the keenest rivalry for business as it was, with the

Kane Company very much in the lead. Lester's only available capital

was his seventy-five thousand dollars. Did he want to begin in a

picayune, obscure way? It took money to get a foothold in the carriage

business as things were now.

The trouble with Lester was that, while blessed with a fine

imagination and considerable insight, he lacked the ruthless,

narrow-minded insistence on his individual superiority which is a

necessary element in almost every great business success. To be a

forceful figure in the business world means, as a rule, that you must

be an individual of one idea, and that idea the God-given one that

life has destined you for a tremendous future in the particular field

you have chosen. It means that one thing, a cake of soap, a new

can-opener, a safety razor, or speed-accelerator, must seize on your

imagination with tremendous force, burn as a raging flame, and make

itself the be-all and end-all of your existence. As a rule, a man

needs poverty to help him to this enthusiasm, and youth. The thing he

has discovered, and with which he is going to busy himself, must be

the door to a thousand opportunities and a thousand joys. Happiness

must be beyond or the fire will not burn as brightly as it

might--the urge will not be great enough to make a great

success.

Lester did not possess this indispensable quality of enthusiasm.

Life had already shown him the greater part of its so-called joys. He

saw through the illusions that are so often and so noisily labeled

pleasure. Money, of course, was essential, and he had already had

money--enough to keep him comfortably. Did he want to risk it? He

looked about him thoughtfully. Perhaps he did. Certainly he could not

comfortably contemplate the thought of sitting by and watching other

people work for the rest of his days.

In the end he decided that he would bestir himself and look into

things. He was, as he said to himself, in no hurry; he was not going

to make a mistake. He would first give the trade, the people who were

identified with v he manufacture and sale of carriages, time to

realize that he was out of the Kane Company, for the time being,

anyhow, and open to other connections. So he announced that he was

leaving the Kane Company and going to Europe, ostensibly for a rest.

He had never been abroad, and Jennie, too, would enjoy it. Vesta could

be left at home with Gerhardt and a maid, and he and Jennie would

travel around a bit, seeing what Europe had to show. He wanted to

visit Venice and Baden-Baden, and the great watering-places that had

been recommended to him. Cairo and Luxor and the Parthenon had always

appealed to his imagination. After he had had his outing he could come

back and seriously gather up the threads of his intentions.

The spring after his father died, he put his plan into execution.

He had wound up the work of the warerooms and with a pleasant

deliberation had studied out a tour. He made Jennie his confidante,

and now, having gathered together their traveling comforts they took a

steamer from New York to Liverpool. After a few weeks in the British

Isles they went to Egypt. From there they came back, through Greece

and Italy, into Austria and Switzerland, and then later, through

France and Paris, to Germany and Berlin. Lester was diverted by the

novelty of the experience and yet he had an uncomfortable feeling that

he was wasting his time. Great business enterprises were not built by

travelers, and he was not looking for health.

Jennie, on the other hand, was transported by what she saw, and

enjoyed the new life to the full. Before Luxor and Karnak--places

which Jennie had never dreamed existed--she learned of an older

civilization, powerful, complex, complete. Millions of people had

lived and died here, believing in other gods, other forms of

government, other conditions of existence. For the first time in her

life Jennie gained a clear idea of how vast the world is. Now from

this point of view--of decayed Greece, of fallen Rome, of

forgotten Egypt, she saw how pointless are our minor difficulties, our

minor beliefs. Her father's Lutheranism--it did not seem so

significant any more; and the social economy of Columbus,

Ohio--rather pointless, perhaps. Her mother had worried so of

what people--her neighbors--thought, but here were dead

worlds of people, some bad, some good. Lester explained that their

differences in standards of morals were due sometimes to climate,

sometimes to religious beliefs, and sometimes to the rise of peculiar

personalities like Mohammed. Lester liked to point out how small

conventions bulked in this, the larger world, and vaguely she began to

see. Admitting that she had been bad--locally it was important,

perhaps, but in the sum of civilization, in the sum of big forces,

what did it all amount to? They would be dead after a little while,

she and Lester and all these people. Did anything matter except

goodness--goodness of heart? What else was there that was

real?