Part 9 (2/2)
”Would you like Zulus?”
”What are you talking about?” you reply; ”I don't know what you mean.”
”Would you like Zulus--Zulus at seventy-three and a half?”
”I wouldn't have 'em at six a penny. What are you talking about?”
”Hong Kongs--we can't get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute” (the half-a-minute pa.s.ses). ”Are you there?”
”Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man.”
”We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights.”
”Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the wrong man. I've told you once.”
”Once what?”
”Why, that I am the wrong man--I mean that you are talking to the wrong man.”
”Who are you?”
”Eight-one-nine, Jones.”
”Oh, aren't you one-nine-eight?”
”No.”
”Oh, good-bye.”
”Good-bye.”
How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument, which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches; and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the accidental sight of the word ”telephone,” into the writing of matter which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of the New Humour into whose hands, for their sins, this book may come. Let me forget my transgression and return to my sermon, or rather to the sermon of my millionaire acquaintance.
It was one day after dinner, we sat together in his magnificently furnished dining-room. We had lighted our cigars at the silver lamp. The butler had withdrawn.
”These cigars we are smoking,” my friend suddenly remarked, a propos apparently of nothing, ”they cost me five s.h.i.+llings apiece, taking them by the thousand.”
”I can quite believe it,” I answered; ”they are worth it.”
”Yes, to you,” he replied, almost savagely. ”What do you usually pay for your cigars?”
We had known each other years ago. When I first met him his offices consisted of a back room up three flights of stairs in a dingy by-street off the Strand, which has since disappeared. We occasionally dined together, in those days, at a restaurant in Great Portland Street, for one and nine. Our acquaintances.h.i.+p was of sufficient standing to allow of such a question.
”Threepence,” I answered. ”They work out at about twopence three-farthings by the box.”
”Just so,” he growled; ”and your twopenny-three-farthing weed gives you precisely the same amount of satisfaction that this five s.h.i.+lling cigar affords me. That means four and ninepence farthing wasted every time I smoke. I pay my cook two hundred a year. I don't enjoy my dinner as much as when it cost me four s.h.i.+llings, including a quarter flask of Chianti.
What is the difference, personally, to me whether I drive to my office in a carriage and pair, or in an omnibus? I often do ride in a bus: it saves trouble. It is absurd wasting time looking for one's coachman, when the conductor of an omnibus that pa.s.ses one's door is hailing one a few yards off. Before I could afford even buses--when I used to walk every morning to the office from Hammersmith--I was healthier. It irritates me to think how hard I work for no earthly benefit to myself.
My money pleases a lot of people I don't care two straws about, and who are only my friends in the hope of making something out of me. If I could eat a hundred-guinea dinner myself every night, and enjoy it four hundred times as much as I used to enjoy a five-s.h.i.+lling dinner, there would be some sense in it. Why do I do it?”
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