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 realised 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 organisation? 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 labelled 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 the manufacture and sale of carriages, time to realise 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.

分享到：