Your Money or your Life. A story

Chapter I Mutiny

Tom Norrie sat at his desk in the great office, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his eyes lost in space. All about him men were hard at work, trying to clear off the accumulations of the day in the brief hours left before the day should end. The office boys ran to and fro, and the type writer girls were rattling their machines as if on a race for a stake. Through the whole great room sounded the murmurous hum of work — the scratching of pens, the rustling of paper, the low consultations between one clerk and another, the slamming together of the big books on the bookkeepers' desks, the steady reiteration of the stamping-machines putting their hall-marks on the checks and bills and letters of the day. In at the windows, flung wide to ease the oppressive heat, came the reverberant noises of the street, increasing thunderously to drown the lesser murmur of the office as some heavy brewer's dray went pounding by, then lulled to a momentary, low drone, above which could be heard each movement within.

Across the street the brick build ings were blinding in the full sunshine, and men passed in their white shirt-sleeves, puff ing, and mopping their faces. Yet the glare and dust and heat were not those of mid summer ; even in the heart of the city the breeze that now and then fluttered through the windows, making a quick stir over all the desks, and cooling the hot heads of toiling clerks, brought with it the breath of spring, almost an odor of the fields and woods, a moving suggestion of new life and vigor and gladness. Tom Norrie's desk was a confusion of loose papers — the letters of the morning, with their typewritten answers now waiting his approval, bills and orders to be passed upon, a small pile of checks to be signed, plans and specifications for the new factories to be gone through, a hundred matters that pressed for his speedy notice.

His was that MUTINY 3 orderly business habit that tolerated no postponement. One day's work put off un til another kept him awake at night and gave him a feverish impetus wherewith to put twelve hours' work into the next day's nine. Many things had worried him of late, but nothing worried him so much as ragged edges of unfinished business. He made in his thoughts, instinctively, a picture of each day, as it passed, and the pictures of those days when he did not do all that was brought him to do were like untidy rooms, comfortless and dismal, or like a shiftless garden where the peas slopped into the beans, and the beans trailed into the strawberries, and weeds grew everywhere. He took charge himself of the garden at the family country place — a garden concealed by hedges and vine-covered trel lises, and divided into the most exact of rec tangular beds, with the straightest of neat paths between.

Many unfortunate gardeners and gardeners' boys had been parted with because their conceptions of their art placed the welfare of the garden's contents above the perfectness of the garden's form. But to Tom Norrie order had come to be more than the heart of the matter, whether in hor ticulture or business, .and in his grinding at detail he had lost his larger sense of the plan. Yet to-day his desk lay piled with papers, and he sat inert before it, with his hands in his pockets. It was long after three. An office boy brought more papers and laid them before him, and looked at him with round eyes of astonishment. The afternoon mail was placed upon his desk, but appeared to concern him not at all. When the breeze came in he sniffed it absently, and this was the only sign of life he gave. The clerks near by began to look at him, and then at each other furtively, with little smiles.

Their young chief had gone out at eleven, and had not come back until after two ; yet in the hour or more since that he had sat there at his desk, with various important matters delayed till he should give them his notice, he had not lifted a hand to his work. They looked in through the glass walls of the private office, where sat the two senior part ners, and wondered when this curious aber ration would receive its fitting attention from headquarters. Tom Norrie sniffed the breeze, and pres ently, catching an odor foreign to it, he too turned his head — he had not stirred before MUTINY 5 for an hour — and looked into that inner sanctum. His father, a pale, spare man, ner vous, yet silent, was bending busily over his desk with his back towards the office. The other partner was stout, but very tall, with heavy black hair and mustache and a scowling brow — a physical make-up that fully justified the nickname of " Bull," by which he was known to his subordinates.

His name, be sides, was Trumbull, and his function in the partnership was to originate all new schemes, and to increase the already enormous business as much as the cautious conservatism of his partner, the "Bear," would permit. The Bull had just taken off his thin office coat and with his red face in high contrast to his white shirt - sleeves, sat smoking a cigar for the relief of his overheated bulk. Tom Norrie, too, liked a cigar, but it was one of the rules of the office that no smoking should be done outside the glass partition. For four years now he had been a partner, yet still was given no more liberty than when he first entered the office, a boy of twenty one. The Bull and the Bear were both au tocrats in the first degree, their difference being that one was a blustering, progressive autocra., and the other a quiet, retrogressive one.

The unlikeness of their methods was followed by perfect likeness in results — neither was ever disobeyed. The clerks in the employ of Norrie, Trumbull & Co., one or two of them now men of fifty and sixty, lived a life of terror and suppression, and were treated like insubordinate boys in a boarding-school. They all derived some comfort from the fact that Thomas Norris, Jr. , was no better off than they, and looked on with discreet pleasure when now and then he fell foul of the authorities and met at their hands his merited chastisement. But to-day, when the young man had sniffed for a moment the pleasing odor of the Bull's excellent cigar, he drew one from his own pocket and calmly lit it. As he smoked he resumed his contemplations, and the office, thrilled with excitement by his foolhardy act, was obliged to keep at work when that act was followed only by calm.

Yet those whose desks were nearest the private room soon became aware of signs of un easiness within, and this significant fact was quickly transmitted from one to another by meaning flashes of the eye. The Bull was roused at last. He saw Tom's cigar, he saw his heaped-up desk, he saw the young man's MUTINY 7 hands in his pockets. The atmosphere of the office became, as it were, charged with ner vous anticipation of the upheaval to follow, but Tom smoked on, all unconscious, apparently, of these electric omens in the air. Presently the Bull rose and stalking forth from his fastness stopped at Tom's desk. Tom, tilted back in his chair, did not change his position nor remove his hands from his pockets, but regarded Mr. Trumbull's frown ing face with perfect serenity. " Are you going to have time this after noon to see the Slosson Company about their orders?

" growled the elder man. " No, I don't think I am," replied Tom, sweetly. He looked straight in the Bull's face with a pleasant smile. " It's the most serious affair you've got on hand. While you're twirling your thumbs Roberts will get in ahead and get the or ders." "I'm in no hurry," said Tom. "I'm willing Roberts should get the orders if he wants them — I've something more important to do," he added after a moment. "You'd better be about it then." The Bull's voice had an ominous sound. " I'm going to when I've finished my cigar," returned Tom, tranquilly. "Hot day, isn't it? Good day to get into the country." The Bull said nothing. He merely glared at Tom with an expression that suggested biting his head off. Then he went across the room, by rows of trembling clerks, who bent busily over their desks as he passed, and blew up the head bookkeeper, until the whole office turned pale and the smoke of warfare was almost visible.

As he returned, his face redder than ever, he looked again at Tom's desk. " Merriam," he called out to a man near the back of the room, " come over here and do Mr. Nome's work for him. He has some thing more important to do." " Oh, thanks," said Tom, urbanely, while Merriam rose and stood hesitating. " That's very kind, Mr. Trumbull. It would be a convenience to have Merriam do my work this afternoon. I've got to go out in a minute." Merriam came and stood by his desk. " Just wait a minute," said Tom, and with the Bull still glaring at him from the door of the private office, he pushed the papers before him aside, leaned forward, and wrote a brief MUTINY 9 note. He rose as he finished it, put it in his pocket, and flung away his cigar. "You'll find plenty to do there, Merriam," he said to the old confidential clerk, who stood pale and patient, looking down at the cluttered papers.

" You'd better have Atchison leave his estimates and help you, or it'll take you all night." The young man took his hat from the rack and went into the private office. The Bull stood by his desk, his face like a thunder cloud, but Tom had the air of not seeing him. "Just tell the girls not to expect me to-night, will you, father ? " he said. " I'm not going home." His father, who had been too busy to take in the events of the previous ten minutes, looked up in surprise. " Where are you bound for at this time of day?" he inquired, pertinently. The Bull pricked up his ears for the answer. "I'm going for a Turkish bath," said Tom, in a clear and tranquil voice. " Beastly hot day." His father gasped for speech. So did the Bull. The whole office had heard through the open door, and shivered and thrilled with emotion.

"I wouldn't stay and work too long," said Tom, in the same clear voice, to the Bull and Bear. " It's too hot to work. Better give the office a holiday." With that he left them, stopped a moment at his desk to speak again to Merriam and give him his keys, then walked to the door. " Tom ! " called his father, weak with as tonishment, but Tom did not look round. "Norrie!" thundered the Bull in his deepest tones, starting after him. But Tom walked on into the street, as if he heard nothing, and the Bull halted mid way to the door, then turned back hastily and ignominiously to his sanctum, while a suppressed smile of joy and triumph lit the face of every clerk in the room. Tom passed by the windows, whistling lightly a popular song. He did not look in, but they all looked out at him — even the Bull and Bear — and as he was not visible again for many weary work days to the firm of Norrie, Trumbull & Co., they none of them forgot how boyish and nonchalant and gay he looked as he went along the street that hot afternoon of early spring — "the hottest April day in twenty-five years," as they all learned later from their evening papers.

Chapter II The Cost Of Money

Upon leaving behind him the plate-glass windows of the great money-getting prison where he had spent in drudgery eight of the best years of his life, Tom Norrie's first con cern was to call up a messenger -boy. This red-cheeked young rascal he despatched upon his errand with a great particularity of ver bal instructions to supplement the note he had written. Then with his mind clear of care, he walked on to the main thorough fare of the busy city, and leisurely followed that somewhat shabby street until he came to the Turkish and Russian baths. After some two hours he emerged, took the hansom which waited in response to his telephone call, and was driven to his club. Here, as he alighted from the cab, an ancient negro serving-man awaited him upon the pavement " Well, Thaddeus, you got my message ?

" said Tom. " Yessir, an' I done les you t'ings to de station, Mr. Tom," replied Thaddeus, his bald head of polished bronze bared to the warm breezes. "You're sure you got everything I shall want?" "Yessir; I berry partic' lar, Mr. Tom." "And you kept your mouth shut ? " " You knows I don' do no talkin', Mr. Tom," said Thaddeus, with dignity;— " 'specially to dem white ladies." "Well, I'm glad you've a proper scorn for their color, Thaddeus," said Tom with a laugh, " though I wasn't aware that white ladies of the kitchen were any more given to conversation than black ones." "If you don' want you' folks to know what I been about, Mr. Tom, I better be a-gettin' back, afore you' fader comes home to his supper. ' ' "All right, Thaddeus, and here's a re tainer for your discretion. Mind, whatever happens, you don't know anything about me!

" "I habn't seen or heard nuffin ob you since I done gib you you' breakfus dis morn in', Mr. Tom," declared Thaddeus, gravely shaking his head. The fringe of short white wool circling its bronze knob gave him a venerable aspect, and in the gravity and age of his countenance there was an expression of great benevolence — an expression possibly heightened by the shining yellow disk that lay in the copper -colored palm of his hand, and which he regarded covertly, as if in fear that it might not be all that its color and size seemed to indicate. "That's right," said Tom, laughing, as he went up the club steps. But Thaddeus did not yet go. " Mr. Tom," he said at the foot of the steps. Tom turned. "Well?" " I — I hope, Mr. Tom, you be careful ob youse' f. ' ' " Why, yes, Thaddeus. Why should you think I wouldn't?

" said Tom, amused. " You — you's a fine young man, Mr. Tom, dough I say it as shouldn't, since I mos'ly brought you up myse'f. You don' want to begin now and do anyting you be sorry for. I notice dese last week or two dat sumfin's up — you ain't been youse' f, Mr. Tom." " Oh, well, Thaddeus, I'm all right ; you needn't worry," said Tom, kindly. He was touched at the old man's perception, and laughed a little bitterly at the thought that Thaddeus was, without doubt, the only person who had observed the phenomena of his emotions. He diverted his mind, how ever, from this rather melancholy reflection by an intimate consultation with his favorite waiter at the club as to what he should have for his dinner. "At seven o'clock sharp," he said, when this matter was settled to his satisfaction, and he left the cafe.

" Mr. Nome's a very fine epicure," said Ambrose, admiringly, to Philippe, as they watched Tom down the steps. "Yes," said Philippe, in the same tone, to Ambrose. "And they say he's the member that puts all the five dollar gold pieces in the Christmas-box. Cooky ought to look out for him." " Cooky always does," returned Ambrose as he went off to consult with that important functionary. Tom strolled up the wide street, in the pleasant cool of the spring evening, until he came to the railway station. He bought a ticket for Chicago, took a drawing-room section on the night train, and arranged about the luggage which Thaddeus had left for him. Then he strolled back as he had come to the club, seeing no one, but lost in his contemplations as he had been through out the whole day. The evening papers had no interest for him, and his friends were un observed or barely nodded to.

During the hour that he waited for his dinner, he sat by a window, in a luxurious low chair, gazing up into the mellow tones of the twilight sky ; and his silent but epicurean feast con sumed, he returned to this chair, and sat there with his cigar throughout the evening, until it came time to go to the train, only be stirring himself when one cigar was finished and it became necessary to light another. Tom Norrie had come that day to a mo mentous decision, and now, in the light of it, was reviewing his past life, considering life in general, what its meaning was, and what might make it worth while, and look ing forward into his future — first the im mediate future, then all that lay beyond, the years of his life yet to be lived. He had been graduated from college at twenty-one, had spent that summer abroad, and had come home in September to plunge at once into "the business" — his father's business and his grandfather's business, the business of his two uncles now retired, and of a crop of cousins, both younger and older than himself.

The young men of the family were drawn into it one by one as they grew up ; they had to leave pleasure and self-improvement and all else behind, to give their lives into the greedy maw of this insatiable creature. Tom could think of it in no other way but as a great devouring beast, thirsting for human lives, sucking all the sweetness and value out of them, taking their youth, and strength and vigor, jeal ously exacting every whit — and giving what in exchange? — money — miserable money, bought with life-blood, paid for at usury, and at a rate so high that nothing was left with which to enjoy it. He had given so much for his dollars that he despised them. He had a thousand of them in his pocket now, and lie liked to throw them away, and show himself how little they were worth — how lightly he estimated what he had given his manhood for.

Yes, his manhood — no less. He had been a brave and happy boy, ready for everything, afraid of nothing, full of inter ests, eager for the tussle with life. He had had his tussle and been broken. At twentynine he was nervous and dyspeptic — tired out. He could not sleep at night, things worried him. He was cautious, unwilling to take risks, afraid of responsibility — yes, as Janet had told him, in so many words, he, Tom Norrie, was a coward. He had not seen it before she told him, nor would he admit it to her; but now, to himself, he admitted it all. He was fussy, fidgety, methodical, a very old granny in all his habits and ways. He had not been like that eight years ago — it was the business that had done it, the great relentless creature that had ground him down to its uses and ruined his life.

He thought of his college days, his gay life with his comrades, his pleasures in the college sports, his love of boating and riding and all else that one could do in the great out-of-doors. He was not an athlete, but he was wiry, quick and dexterous, and had a natural knack at handling himself and his tool of the moment — the boat, the horse, the racket, or cricket-bat. Then, besides, he en joyed his books — he was no scholar, but neither was he a dunce, and he liked read ing and had great plans of what he would do in that way when college was over and he had more time. He meant to travel, too, and see life, and know the world. His trip to Europe was in his mind but a fore taste of future excursions in which he should explore one country after another, and get to know them intimately. He had the true traveller's instinct — an unflagging interest in things new and strange, a quick eye for pict uresque differences of costume or manner, a delight in people in themselves, their indi vidualities and eccentricities, a fine capacity for not being at all annoyed by things that at home would annoy him beyond measure, and a capacity still greater for never being bored.

He had, too, in those days, an ad venturous spirit — he liked a sense of risk in the undertaking, and the danger which brought all his blood to his heart never shook his nerve. Now — well, he was an old man before his time. The great relentless machine that had taken all this from him, crushed out the sap of the tree, and left a lifeless pulp, had paid him in worthless dol lars — dollars that could not buy back a tithe of what he had lost. He could never forget the first process of this change, the nightmare of his first year in the business. Two days after his arrival home from Europe his father sent him down to the office, telling him he had played long enough, that now he was a man, and life and work must begin for him. He was at once set to making out bills. He reached the office at eight o'clock, and made out bills until half-past twelve.

He had then an hour for his dinner, and came back and made out bills again until six. Then he went home to supper, and was so fagged with the unwonted confinement, nine hours sitting at a desk, that he often went igno miniously to bed at half-past eight, or even earlier. " I shall soon get used to it," he thought, hopefully. " Then I can read in my even ings, and get on with the things I want to do." But it was not so easy, after all, to get used to it. When two or three months were gone he was still as sleepy and jaded after each day's drudgery as he had been at the start. His reading was uphill work, and ended in yawns ; then he would throw down the dry volume of history, and take a novel, and lose himself in this if he could. If he were only able to forget everything for a few hours he did not mind how much sleep he lost, or how bad a headache he had the next day.

He longed for work with in terest in it, something he could think about, put mind and energy into, and thus get from it some enjoyment. To make out bills all day, every day, grew more and more ter rible. It became perfectly mechanical, mere hand and eye work, that left him nine blank hours in which to think. It was from his thoughts that he longed to get away. " Is this to be the end of all my am bitions ? " he asked himself. " Is all my life to be like this ? Must I work away at busi ness, business, the sordid details of money getting, till I am an old man ? Shall I grow middle-aged and elderly doing this sort of drudgery? Shall I still be doing it, like my father, when I am sixty? Is that what life means? Is that what I was born for, educated for ? What is the good ? What makes it worth while?

Why isn't it better to die than be such a slave ? " His depression was terrible, and wholly mastered him. He was unable to force him self out of the dull silence of a fixed gloom. His family thought he was sobering down very quickly, but, busy with other things, took little notice of Iris mood, and never understood the nightmare his life was to him — the intense loathing he had for his work and all related to it. He was surrounded by the commercial atmosphere. ' ' Business ' ' was so much a matter of course to every one about him that he knew he could hope for no sympathy, and so kept his blue devils to himself. Had not the family in all its branches been made by business ? Was not all they had due to it ? Did they not owe to it not alone their life and breath, their food and drink, but also their pleasure, their position, everything ?

Was not the very city in which they lived redolent of business, flavored as it were with the essential extract of trade, commercial to its marrow ? How he hated it — the narrow, ugly streets, the flatness, the miles of brick houses, all alike, all hideous, stretching into hideous suburbs, where the brick boxes gave place to architectural horrors in party-colored stone — a city of Philistinism, of vulgarity, rich and poor confounded in one garment of sor did mediocrity. It seemed to him there could be no charm or beauty in life amid such surroundings, amid such a people. He let himself hate the people together with the town they lived in. His real friends were his old college mates, scattered now about the world, and none near him. He made no new intimates here. His cousins, whom he saw daily, were objects of a fascinated contemplation with him.

What could they find in the dull rou tine of their lives to make it possible to live, and apparently be happy ? They seemed to think of nothing but dollars, bargains, shrewd transactions of one sort or another. They had no ideas, and not seeling the lack of them never even read books to assimilate those of others. Their political and relig ious opinions were to Tom bigoted anachro nisms, impossible even of peaceable discus sion. Their very wives, absorbed and worried with housekeeping cares, and their children, noisy, pert and forever underfoot, struck this morbid youth as too vulgar and odious to be endured. It seemed to him almost a crime to perpetuate so much that was unlove ly in large families of robust infants, who would grow up to lead the same lives and hand on the same dismal inheritance to suc cessive generations.

But this year of misery and morbidness passed at last. Tom received three hundred dollars for his work ; and had, in July, two weeks of vacation. How he looked forward to that vacation ! What hopes he had of ease and pleasure, of freshening his mind, taking a new start, getting up his courage for another year. He would rest a little first, somewhere in grassy woods, far away from the city, and all the city noise and turmoil. Then, after a day or two lying on his back under the trees and looking up through the leaves at the clear sky, he would map out his year before him, resolve to do certain work, begin upon it then and there, and carry it out in spite of all the sluggish weariness that might beset him. He would not throw his life away — become a mere machine for doing figures — he would save a little of his force for his own use, rescue his waning in terests, and keep some life of his own beyond the clutches of the greedy, jealous creature that wanted all he had.

So he planned, looking forward to that fortnight with an almost painful eagerness, as to the only fountain in an arid desert — his only chance for life. It came at last, and then in a mere instant it was gone, and somehow he had done nothing. He could never understand it. Was the reaction too great after so many weeks of work ? Was his mind as flabby as he found his arm when he tried to play at tennis ? It seemed to him afterwards that those two weeks had gone in a dream, mere dead lethargy, out of which he could not lift himself. He had dropped to the ground with a great sigh of relief, and when he was able at last to rouse himself the precious days were gone, the oasis was behind him, the cruel desert before him, and another long, dreary journey, for which he had no heart. This disappointment left him more dis couraged than ever, and even the great relief of a change in his work could not hearten him.

He no longer made bills all day every day, yet the work he did do was as dead and meaningless. Nine hours of it left him phy sically too tired for anything but the light est distraction in the evening, and hence the seeking of such distraction became with him a pursuit. If he could only forget what he had expected life to be he might be able to endure what it was ! Thus he became gradually a club man, a society man — anything to occupy his time and deaden his thoughts. The atmosphere of do mesticity about his cousins, their too obvious flavor of bread and butter, the suburban sordidness of their matrimonial joys, drove him into revolt. By way of uttering his protest against their provincial manners, he attired himself nightly in evening costume and as sumed so far as he might the habits of a more cosmopolitan world.