“Why be pro-anything? Why not dive headfirst into whatever battle seems most interesting? You can be sure of this: the result won’t mean anything. My girl, Sheila, informs me that a judicious use of eugenics, Karl Marx, and tennis would turn us all into a bunch of beneficent Apollos in five generations. God forbid! I have a sneaking suspicion that none of us poor vertebrates want perfection, really! But I mean: You’re one of these kindhearted, dutiful Americans who feels apologetic and inferior the moment he retires, and who’ll spend the rest of his life trying to satisfy everybody he meets: his wife and his mistress—”
“Not yet!”
“Wait!—and his friends. Sam, I’m such an idealist that I’d like to start an Association for the Hanging of All Idealists. For Heaven’s sake decide whether you, your own self, are happier in America or in Europe, and then stick there! Me, I’m glad to have European bankers coming to me begging for loans instead of my going to European cafés and begging waiters for a table in the sun! Sam, this American adventure—Because it is an adventure that we have here—the greatest in the world—and not a certainty of manners in an uncertainty of the future, like all of Europe. And say, do you know, our adventure is going to be the bigger because we do feel that Europe has a lot we need. We’re no longer satisfied with the log cabin and the corn pone. We want everything that Europe has. We’ll take it!”
“Um,” said Sam.
That night he slept childlike, in a breeze from the Sound. He awoke at five, to sit on the edge of his bed, bulky in his rather touseled silk pajamas, meditating while he looked down on the marshlands smoking with morning, and the Sound, like whirls of cobweb over bright steel.
If he were fifty miles farther out on Long Island, perhaps he could see across to the Connecticut shore and New Haven.
He realized that this was grotesquely like a day in spring of his senior year in Yale when from East Rock he had looked across the Sound to Long Island, and in that distant shore beheld romantic harbors. He was separated from the boy who had sat on East Rock only by Long Island Sound, and thirty years, and that boy’s certainty that he would “do something worth while.” Today he could think of things far more interesting to attempt than in those solemn important days when he had been a football star weighed down with the monastic duties of an athlete. It was not, now, ridiculous to consider being a wanderer in Japan, a proponent of Sheila Richards’ socialism or its crusading foe, or, twenty years hence, merely an old man with a pipe, content among apple trees on a hill above the Ohio River. But also it was obvious now that he was chained by people and strengths and weaknesses which he had not recognized in his young hour of vision on East Rock.
He could not return to a completely simple and secure life in America because of Fran’s dislike for it, and without the habitual titillation of Fran’s gaieties and bad temper, life was inconceivable. He could not become an elegantly lounging cosmopolitan because—his thought stumbled and growled—oh, because he was Sam Dodsworth!
He was chained by every friend who had made life agreeable—bound not to shock or lose them. He was chained by every dollar he had made, every automobile he had manufactured—they meant a duty to his caste. He was chained by every hour he had worked—they had left him stiff, spiritually rheumatic.
He still wanted the world … but there was nothing specific in the world that he wanted so much as, thirty years ago, he had wanted to be a Richard Harding Davis hero.
Then it came to him.
He marveled, “No, the trouble is that, aside from keeping in with Fran and the children and a few friends, I don’t want anything enough to fight for it much. I’ve done about all I ever imagined—got position, made money, met interesting folks. I’d be a lot luckier if I were a hobo that hadn’t done any of the things he wanted to. Oh, hang it, I don’t much care. Maybe I didn’t hitch my wagon to a high-enough star! This one don’t look very good!
“Rats! When I get out of this crazy New York district and meet real, simple, hearty fellows back in Zenith—yes, sure, and at my reunion—I’ll get over this grouch.
“But what’s it all about, this business of life?
“I’d give my left leg if I could believe what the preachers say. Immortality. Serving Jehovah. But I can’t. Got to face it alone—
“Oh, for God’s sake, quit pitying yourself! You’re as bad as Fran—
“Fran! She’s never bad. Not really. Did I ever happen to remember to tell you that I adore you, Fran?”
Four hours later, at breakfast, he was an unsentimental Captain of Finance, attentive only to waffles.
He stood at a gate in the Grand Central Station watching his son lope up the inclined cement runway from the New Haven train.
“If there’s anything finer than him at Oxford or in France—” he gloated, and “More Fran’s boy than mine, though; got her good looks and quickness.”
Brent was like a young race horse, his pale face and high thin forehead almost too bred-down, too refined. But there was health and buoyancy in his humorous eyes, his shout of “Hello, Dad! Swell to see you again. Good crossing?”
“Yes. Fair. Nice to see you, boy. How long can you stay?”
“Have to be back in the morning. Catch the milk-train.”
“Too bad. Here, give your bag to a redcap.”
“And pay a quarter? Not a chance—not with corn whisky costing what it does.”
“Um. I wouldn’t drink much of that. But I guess you know that. Where’d you like to dine tonight? Ritz, or some hell-raising place?”
“I’ll show you a real joint with real German beer.”
“Fine. Uh—”
Sam looked shyly down
