EVERY night between the hours of two and four he would wake, and lie sleepless, and all his monetary ghosts would come and visit him. If, for instance, he had just bought a house and paid for it, any doubt he had conceived at any time about its antecedents or its future would suddenly appear, squatting on the foot-rail of his bed, staring in his face. There it would grow, until it seemed to fill the room; and terror would grip his heart. The words: “I shall lose my money,” would leap to his lips; but in the dark it seemed ridiculous to speak them. Presently beside that doubt more doubts would squat. Doubts about his other houses, about his shares; misgivings as to Water Boards; terrors over Yankee Rails. They took, fantastically, the shape of owls, clinging in a line and swaying, while from their wide black gaps of mouth would come the silent chorus: “Money, money, you’ll lose all your money!” His heart would start thumping and fluttering; he would turn his old white head, bury his whisker in the pillow, shut his eyes, and con over such investments as he really could not lose. Then, beside his head half-hidden in the pillow, there would come and perch the spectral bird of some unlikely liability, such as a lawsuit that might drive him into bankruptcy; while, on the other side, touching his silver hair, would squat the yellow fowl of Socialism. Between these two he would lie unmoving, save for that hammering of his heart, till at last would come a drowsiness, and he would fall asleep....
At such times it was always of his money and his children’s and grandchildren’s money that he thought. It was useless to tell himself how few his own wants were, or that it might be better for his children to have to make their way. Such thoughts gave him no relief. His fears went deeper than mere facts; they were religious, as it were, and founded in an innermost belief that, by money only, Nature could be held at bay.
Of this, from the moment when he first made money, his senses had informed him, and slowly, surely, gone on doing so, till his very being was soaked through with the conviction. He might be told on Sundays that money was not everything, but he knew better. Seated in the left-hand aisle, he seemed lost in reverence—a grandchild on either hand, his old knees in quiet trousers, crossed, his white-fringed face a little turned towards the preacher, one neat-gloved hand reposing on his thigh, the other keeping warm a tiny hand thrust into it. But his old brain was far away, busy amongst the Tables of Commandment, telling him how much to spend to get his five per cent. and money back; his old heart was busy with the little hand tucked into his. There was nothing in such sermons, therefore, that could quarrel with his own religion, for he did not hear them; and even had he heard them, they would not have quarrelled, his own creed of money being but the natural modern form of a religion that his fathers had interpreted as the laying-up of treasure in the life to come. He was only able nowadays to say that he believed in any life to come, so that his commercialism had been forced to find another outlet, and advance a step, in accordance with the march of knowledge.
His religious feeling about money did not make him selfish, or niggardly in any way—it merely urged him to preserve himself—not to take risks that he could reasonably avoid, either in his mode of life, his work, or in the propagation of his children. He had not married until he had a position to offer to the latter, sufficiently secure from changes and chances in this mortal life, and even then he had not been too precipitate, confining the number to three boys, and one welcome girl, in accordance with the increase of his income. In the circles where he moved, his course of action was so normal that no one had observed the mathematical connection between increasing income and the production and education of his family. Still less had any one remarked the deep and silent process by which there passed from him to them the simple elements of faith.
His children, subtly, and under cover of the manner of a generation which did not mention money in so many words, had sucked in their father’s firm religious instinct, his quiet knowledge of the value of the individual life, his steady and unconscious worship of the means of keeping it alive. Calmly they had sucked it in, and a thing or two besides. So long as he was there they knew they could afford to make a little free with what must come to them by virtue of his creed. When quite small children, they had listened, rather bored, to his simple statements about money and the things it bought; presently that instinct—shared by the very young with dogs and other animals—for having of the best and consorting with their betters, had helped them to see the real sense of what he said. As time went on, they found gentility insisting more and more that this instinct should be concealed; and they began unconsciously to perfect their father’s creed, draping its formal tenets in the undress of an apparent disregard. For the dogma, “Not worth the money!” they would use the words, “Not good enough!” The teaching, “Business first,” they formulated, “Not more pleasure than your income can afford, your health can stand, or your reputation can assimilate.” There was money waiting for them, and they did not feel it necessary to undertake even those “safe” risks which their father had been obliged to take, to make that money. But they were quite to be depended on. In the choosing of their friends, their sports, their clubs, and occupations, a religious feeling guided them. They knew precisely just how much their income was, and took care neither to spend more nor less. And so devoutly did they act up to their principles, that, whether in the restaurant or country house, whether in the saleroom of a curio shop, whether in their regiments or their offices, they could always feel the presence of the godhead blessing their discreet and comfortable worship. In one respect, indeed, they were more religious than their father, who still preserved the habit of falling on his knees at night, to name with Tibetan regularity a strange god; they did not speak to him about this habit, but they wished he would not do it, being fond of their old father, who continued them into the past. They had gently laughed him out of talking about money, they had gently laughed at him for thinking of it still; but they loved him, and it worried them in secret that he should do this thing, which seemed to them dishonest.
With their wives and husband—in course of time they had all married—they very often came to see him, bringing their children. To the old man these little visitors were worth more than all hydropathy; to help in playing with the toys that he himself had given them, to stroke his grandsons’ yellow heads, and ride them on his knee; to press his silver whiskers to their ruddy cheeks, pinching their little legs to feel how much there was of them, and loving them the more, the more there was to love—this made his heart feel warm. The dearest moments, he knew now, the consolation of his age, were those he spent reflecting how—of the young things he loved, who seemed to love him too a little—not one would have secured to him or her less than twelve or thirteen hundred pounds a year; more, if he could manage to hold on a little longer. For fifty years at least the flesh and blood he left behind would be secure. His eye and mind, quick to notice things like that, had soon perceived the difference of the younger generation’s standards from his own; his children had perhaps a deeper veneration for the means of living while they were alive, but certainly less faith in keeping up their incomes after they were in their graves. And so, unconsciously, his speculation passed them by, and travelled to his grandchildren, telling itself that these small creatures who nestled up against him, and sometimes took him walks, would, when they came to be grown men and women, have his simpler faith, and save the money that he left them, for their own grandchildren. Thus, and thus only, would he live, not fifty years, but a hundred, after he was dead. But he was rendered very anxious by the law, which refused to let him tie his money up in perpetuity.
Firm in his determination to secure himself against the future, he opposed this strenuous piety to those temptations which beset the individual, refusing numberless appeals, often much against his instincts of compassion; opposing with his vote and all his influence movements to increase the rates or income-tax for such purposes as the raising of funds to enable aged people without means to die more slowly. He himself, who laid up yearly more and more for the greater safety of his family, felt, no doubt—though cynicism shocked him—that these old persons were only an encumbrance to their families, and should be urged to dwindle gently out. In such private cases as he came across, feeling how hard it was, he prayed for strength to keep his hand out of his pocket, and strength was often given him. So with many other invitations to depart from virtue. He fixed a certain sum a year—a hundred pounds—with half-a-crown in the velvet bag on Sundays—to be offered as libations to all strange gods, so that they might leave him undisturbed to worship the true god of money. This was effectual; the strange gods, finding him a man of strong religious principle, yet no crank—his name appeared in twenty charitable lists, five pounds apiece—soon let him be, for fear of wasting postage stamps and the under parts of boots.
After his wife’s death, which came about when he was seventy, he continued to reside alone in the house that he had lived in since his marriage, though it was now too large for him. Every autumn he resolved to make a change next spring; but when spring came, he could not bring himself to tear his old roots up, and put it off till the spring following, with the hope, perhaps, that he might then feel more inclined.
All through the years that he was living there alone, he suffered more and more from those nightly visitations, of monetary doubts. They seemed, indeed, to grow more concrete and insistent with every thousand pounds he put between himself and their reality. They became more owl-like, more numerous, with each fresh investment; they stayed longer at a time. And he grew thinner, frailer, every year; pouches came beneath his eyes.
When he was eighty, his daughter, with her husband and children, came to live with him. This seemed to give him a fresh lease of life. He never missed, if he could help it, a visit to the nursery at five o’clock. There, surrounded by toy bricks, he would remain an hour or more, building—banks or houses, ships or churches, sometimes police-stations, sometimes cemeteries, but generally banks. And when the edifice approached completion, in the glory of its long white bricks, he waited with a sort of secret ecstasy to feel a small warm body climb his back, and hear a small voice say in his ear: “What shall we put in the bank to-day, Granddy?”
The first time this was asked, he had hesitated long before he answered. During the thirty years that had elapsed since he built banks for his own children, he had learned that one did not talk of money now, especially before the young. One used a euphemism for it. The proper euphemism had been slow to spring into his mind, but it had sprung at last; and they had placed it in the bank. It was a very little china dog. They placed it in the entrance hall.
The small voice said: “What is it guarding?”
He had answered: “The bank, my darling.”
The small voice murmured: “But nobody could steal the bank.”
Looking at the little euphemism, he had frowned. It lacked completeness as a symbol. For a moment he had a wild desire to put a sixpence down, and end the matter. Two small knees wriggled against his back, arms tightened round his neck, a chin rubbed itself impatiently against his whisker. He muttered hastily:
“But they could steal the papers.”
“What papers?”
“The wills, and deeds, and—and cheques.”
“Where are they?”
“In the bank.”
“I don’t see them.”
“They’re in a cupboard.”
“What are they for?”
“For—for grown-up people.”
“Are they to play with?”
“NO!”
“Why is he guarding them?”
“So that—so that everybody can always have enough to eat.”
“Everybody?”
“Me, too?”
“Yes, my darling; you, of course.”
Locked in each other’s arms they looked down sidelong at the little euphemism. The small voice said:
“Now that he’s there, they’re safe, aren’t they?”
“Quite safe.”
He had given up attending to his business, but almost every morning, at nearly the same hour, he would walk down to his club, not looking very much at things about the streets, partly because his thoughts were otherwise engaged, partly because he had found it from the first a deleterious habit, tending to the overcultivation of the social instincts. Arriving, he would take the Times and the Financial News, and go to his pet armchair; here he would stay till lunch-time, reading all that bore in any way on his affairs, and taking a grave view of every situation. But at lunch a longing to express himself would come, and he would tell his neighbours tales of his little grandsons, of the extraordinary things they did, and of the future he was laying up for them. In the pleasant warmth of mid-day, over his light but satisfying lunch, surrounded by familiar faces, he would recount these tales in cheerful tones, and his old grey eyes would twinkle; between him and his struggle with those nightly apparitions, there were many hours of daylight, there was his visit to the nursery. But, suddenly, looking up fixedly with strained eyes, he would put a question such as this: “Do you ever wake up in the night?” If the answer were affirmative, he would say: “Do you ever find things worry you then out of—out of all proportion?” And, if they did, he would clearly be relieved to hear it. On one occasion, when he had elicited an emphatic statement of the discomfort of such waking hours, he blurted out: “You don’t ever see a lot of great owls sitting on your bed, I suppose?” Then, seemingly ashamed of what he had just asked, he rose, and left his lunch unfinished.
His fellow-members, though nearly all much younger than himself, had no unkindly feeling for him. He seemed to them, perhaps, to overrate their interest in his grandsons and the state of his investments; but they knew he could not help preoccupation with these subjects; and when he left them, usually at three o’clock, saying almost tremulously: “I must be off; my grandsons will be looking out for me!” they would exchange looks as though remarking: “The old chap thinks of nothing but his grandchildren.” And they would sit down to “bridge,” taking care to play within the means their fathers had endowed them with.
But the “old chap” would step into a hansom, and his spirit, looking through his eyes beneath the brim of his tall hat, would travel home before him. Yet, for all his hurry, he would find the time to stop and buy a toy or something on the way.
One morning, at the end of a cold March, they found him dead in bed, propped on his pillows, with his eyes wide open. Doctors, hastily called in, decided that he had died from failure of heart action, and fixed the hour of death at anything from two to four; by the appearance of his staring pupils they judged that something must have frightened him. No one had heard a noise, no one could find a sign of anything alarming; so no one could explain why he, who seemed so well preserved, should thus have suddenly collapsed. To his own family he had never told the fact, that every night he woke between the hours of two and four, to meet a row of owls squatting on the foot-rail of his bed—he was, no doubt, ashamed of it. He had revealed much of his religious feeling, but not the real depth of it; not the way his deity of money had seized on his imagination; not his nightly struggles with the terrors of his spirit, nor the hours of anguish spent, when vitality was low, trying to escape the company of doubts. No one had heard the fluttering of his heart, which, beginning many years ago, just as a sort of pleasant habit to occupy his wakeful minutes in the dark, had grown to be like the beating of a hammer on soft flesh. No one had guessed, he least of all, the stroke of irony that Nature had prepared to avenge the desecration of her law of balance. She had watched his worship from afar, and quietly arranged that by his worship he should be destroyed; careless, indeed, what god he served, knowing only that he served too much.
They brought the eldest of his little grandsons in. He stood a long time looking, then asked if he might touch the cheek. Being permitted, he kissed his little finger-tip and laid it on the old man’s whisker. When he was led away and the door closed, he asked if “Granddy” were “quite safe”; and twice again that evening he asked this question.
In the early light next morning, before the house was up, the under-housemaid saw a white thing on the mat before the old man’s door. She went, and stooping down, examined it. It was the little china dog.