Janet's Love and Service Part 61

"And with you, too," she added; "I scarcely can say which she honours most, or on which she most relies for counsel."

"There," said she to herself, as she followed the others down the walk, "I have given him an opening, if he only has the sense to use it. One can see what _he_ wants easily enough, and if he knows what is for his advantage he will get the good word of his countryman, and he ought to thank me for the chance."

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

Why Mrs Grove thought Mr Green might need an opening for anything he had to say to Mr Snow did not appear, as he did not avail himself of it. It was Mr Snow who spoke first, after a short silence.

"Going to give up business and settle down. Eh?"

"I have thought of it. I don't believe I should enjoy life half as well if I did, however."

"How much do you enjoy it now?" inquired Mr Snow.

"Well, not a great deal, that is a fact; but as well as folks generally do, I reckon. But, after all, I do believe to keep hard to work is about as good a way as any to take comfort in the world."

Mr Green took a many-bladed knife from his pocket, and plucking a twig from the root of a young cedar, began fas.h.i.+oning it into an instrument slender and smooth.

"That is about the conclusion I have come to," repeated he; "and I expect I will have to keep to work if I mean to get the good of life."

"There are a good many kinds of work to be done in the world," suggested Mr Snow.

Mr Green gave him a glance curious and inquiring.

"Well, I suppose there are a good many ways of working in the world, but it all comes to the same thing pretty much, I guess. Folks work to get a living, and then to acc.u.mulate property. Some do it in a large way, and some in a small way, but the end is the same."

"Suppose you should go to work to spend your money now?" suggested Mr Snow, again.

"Well, I've done a little in that way, too, and I have about come to the conclusion that that don't pay as well as the making of it, as far as the comfort it gives. I ain't a very rich man, not near so rich as folks think; but I had got a kind of sick of doing the same thing all the time, and so I thought I would try something else a spell. So I rather drew up, though I ain't out of business yet, by a great deal. I thought I would try and see if I could make a home, so I built. But a house ain't a home--not by a great sight. I have got as handsome a place as anybody need wish to have, but I would rather live in a hotel any day than have the bother of it. I don't more than half believe I shall ever live there long at a time."

He paused, and whittled with great earnestness.

"It seems a kind of aggravating, now, don't it, when a man has worked hard half his life and more to make property, that he shouldn't be able to enjoy it when he has got it."

"What do you suppose is the reason?" asked Mr Snow, gravely, but with rather a preoccupied air. He was wondering how it was that Mr Green should have been betrayed into giving his dreary confidences to a comparative stranger.

"Well, I don't know," replied Mr Green, meditatively. "I suppose, for one thing, I have been so long in the mill that I can't get out of the old jog easily. I should have begun sooner, or have taken work and pleasure by turns as I went along. I don't take much comfort in what seems to please most folks."

There was a pause; Mr Snow had nothing to say in reply, however, and in a little Mr Green went on:

"I haven't any very near relations; cousins and cousin's children are the nearest. I have helped them some, and would rather do it than not, and they are willing enough to be helped, but they don't seem very near to me. I enjoy well enough going to see them once in a while, but it don't amount to much all they care about me; and, to tell the truth, it ain't much I care about them. If I had a family of my own, it would be different. Women folks and young folk enjoy spending money, and I suppose I would have enjoyed seeing them do it. But I have about come to the conclusion that I should have seen to that long ago."

Without moving or turning his head, he gave his new friend a look out of the corner of his eyes that it might have surprised him a little to see; but Mr Snow saw nothing at the moment. To wonder as to why this new acquaintance should bestow his confidence on him, was succeeding a feeling of pity for him--a desire to help him--and he was considering the propriety of improving the opportunity given to drop a "word in season" for his benefit. Not that he had much confidence in his own skill at this sort of thing. It is to be feared the deacon looked on this way of witnessing for the truth as a cross to be borne rather than as a privilege to be enjoyed. He was readier with good deeds than with good words, and while he hesitated, Mr Green went on:

"How folks can hang round with nothing particular to do is what I can't understand. I never should get used to it, I know. I've made considerable property, and I expect I have enjoyed the making more than I ever shall enjoy the spending of it."

"I shouldn't wonder if you had," said Mr Snow, gravely.

"I _have_ thought of going right slap into political life. I might have got into the Legislature, time and again; and I don't doubt but I might find my way to Congress by spending something handsome. That might be as good a way to let off the steam as any. When a man gets into politics, he don't seem to mind much else. He has got to drive right through. I don't know how well it pays."

"In the way of comfort, I'm afraid it _don't_ pay," said Mr Snow.

"I expect not. I don't more than half think it would pay _me_.

Politics have got to be considerably mixed up in our country. I don't believe I should ever get to see my way clear to go all lengths; and I don't believe it would amount to anything if I could. Besides, if a man expects to get very far along in _that_ road, he has got to take a fair start in good season. I learnt to read and cypher in the old log school-house at home, and my mother taught me the catechism on Sunday afternoons, and that is about all the book-learning I ever got. I shouldn't hardly have an even chance with some of those college-bred chaps, though there are _some_ things I know as well as the best of them, I reckon. Have you ever been out West?"

"I was there once a good many years ago. I had a great notion of going to settle there when I was a young man. I am glad I didn't, though."

"Money ain't to be made there anything like as fast as it used to be,"

said Mr Green. "But there is chance enough, if a man has a head for it. I have seen some cool business done there at one time and another."

The chances in favour of Mr Snow's "word in season" were becoming fewer, he saw plainly, as Mr Green wandered off from his dissatisfaction to the varied remembrances of his business-life; so, with a great effort, he said:

"Ain't it just possible that your property and the spending of it don't satisfy you because it is not in the nature of such things to give satisfaction?"

Mr Green turned and looked earnestly at him.

"Well, I have heard so, but I never believed it any more for hearing it said. The folks that say it oftenest don't act as if they believed it themselves. They try as hard for it as any one else, if they are to be judged by their actions. It is all right to say they believe it, I suppose, because it is in the Bible, or something like it is."

"And you believe it, not because it is in the Bible, but because you are learning, by your own experience, every day you live."

Mr Green whistled.

"Come, now; ain't that going it a little too strong? I never said I didn't expect to enjoy my property. I enjoy it now, after a fas.h.i.+on.

If a man ain't going to enjoy his property, what is he to enjoy?"

"All that some people enjoy is the making of it. You have done that, you say. There is less pleasure to be got from wealth, even in the most favourable circ.u.mstances, than those who haven't got it believe. They who have it find that out, as you are doing.

"But I can fancy myself getting all the pleasure I want out of my property, if only some things were different--if I had something else to go with it. Other folks seem to take the comfort out of theirs as they go along."

"They seem to; but how can you be sure as to the enjoyment they really have? How many of your friends, do you suppose, suspect that you don't get all the satisfaction out of yours that you seem to? Do you suppose the lady who was saying so much in praise of your fine place just now, has any idea that it is only a weariness to you?"

"I was telling her so as we came along. She says the reason I don't enjoy it is because there is something else that I haven't got, that ought to go along with it and I agreed with her there."

Again a furtive glance was sent towards Mr Snow's thoughtful face. He smiled and shook his head.

"Yes, it is something else you want. It is always something else, and ever will be till the end comes. That something else, if it is ever yours, will bring disappointment with it. It will come as you don't expect it or want it, or it will come too late. There is no good talking. There is nothing in the world that it will do to make a portion of."

Mr Green looked up at him with some curiosity and surprise. This sounded very much like what he used to hear in conference meeting long ago, but he had an idea that such remarks were inappropriate out of meeting, and he wondered a little what could be Mr Snow's motive for speaking in that way just then.

"As to making a portion of it, I don't know about that; but I do know that there is considerable to be got out of money. What can't it get?

Or rather, I should say, what can be got without it? I don't say that they who have the most of it are always best off, because other things come in to worry them, maybe; but the chances are in favour of the man that has all he wants to spend. You'll never deny that."

"That ain't just the way I would put it," said Mr Snow. "I would say that the man who expects his property to make him happy, will be disappointed. The amount he has got don't matter. It ain't in it to give happiness. I know, partly because I have tried, and it has failed me, and partly because I am told that 'a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.'

"Well, now, if that is so, will you tell me why there ain't one man in ten thousand who believes it, or at least who acts as if he believed it?

Why is all the world chasing after wealth, as if it were the one thing for body and soul? If money ain't worth having, why hasn't somebody found it out, and set the world right about it before now?"