Part 43 (2/2)
”Yes, I suppose I've got to.”
”Let's be practical. How are you going to do it?”
”I don't know, Tom. It's so easy to spend and so hard to hold on to your money! If any one had told me a year ago I could get rid of as much money in one year as I have done, I shouldn't have known how I could do it without opening the window and throwing it out.”
”Well, I'm glad you don't deny a bent toward extravagance.”
”I don't deny anything that means I spend a lot of money. I have more sense. The facts are there.”
”You've already broken into your capital, haven't you?”
”Did Hattie tell you that or did you guess? It's true, I have; but--”
she tried to place the harm done in a harmless light--”it isn't so bad but that if I saved for a little while I could make it up again.”
”If! True; but are you going to, Nell? That's the question.”
”Oh, Tom, I never ought to have been given any money if I was to hold on to it!” Aurora almost groaned. ”I didn't know at first. I was pleased as Punch. I lay awake nights just to gloat and feel grand. I tell _you_, I meant to hold on to it! I tell _you_, it wasn't going to get away from me after that good fight we made for it! But--” the effect of a mental groan was repeated--”the whole thing isn't as I thought it would be, not a bit.”
She stopped, and while she tried to coordinate her ideas, Dr. Tom quietly waited for explanation or ill.u.s.tration of her meaning.
”I don't like money, there's the whole of it!” she gave him the sum of her attempt in one cast.
Dr. Tom continued to wait, smoking.
”In fact, I hate it.”
Dr. Tom continued to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth no inkling.
”I hate it, and I love it, both. That's truer, I suppose. But I can't be at rest with it.”
”Never fear, girl,”--his tone was humorous,--”you'll get used to it.
Just from watching you, I should have fancied you were pretty well used to it already.”
”When I was a child it was just the same way with candy,” she went on with her own train of thought, not minding his; ”I loved it--and gobbled it right up. Some of the girls made theirs last and last. I ate mine at once. And it wasn't only because I was a pig with no self-control. I wanted to have done with it and go back to a sensible life. With this money I have the same feeling--and then another feeling that I sort of can't account for, as if I wanted to get rid of it because there was something wrong in me having it.”
”That money? You sure earned it!” he came out vigorously. ”Don't be a goose, Nell.”
”I wasn't thinking of what you think. But I'm afraid I am a goose, Tom, an awful goose, and I'm ashamed of it. I somehow can't feel it right--there!--to have more than the rest. Come right down to it, I feel mean in having something the rest haven't got, and keeping it from them, like a nasty fat boy stuffing pie with a lot of hungry ragam.u.f.fins looking on. I know it isn't good common sense, or how could rich people be so all right and calm in their minds as they are, and have everybody's respect? Rich people are all right, I've always sort of looked up to them, with their advantages and things. I haven't a bit of fault to find. But Tom, I suppose the amount of it is I was born poor and I go on having the feelings of the poor. If any one asks me for anything and appears to need it, I've got to give it or feel too mean to live. Me, Nell, who was poor myself for so long, how would I look hardening my heart against any one who came and wanted to borrow? I'd be ashamed to look them in the eye.”
”With that view of it, of course I can see why your money wouldn't last long.”
”Oh, I'm extravagant besides, I'll own to that; that's the _real_ trouble. I want to buy everything that takes my eye, I want to make everything run smooth, like on greased wheels, and to have all the faces around me look pleased, and everybody liking me. I love the feeling of luxury and festivity, and oh, I just love a grand good time! That's what the money was given to me for, wasn't it, so that I could have a grand good time? But when I've indulged myself, Tom, I wouldn't have the face, if I had the heart, to say no to anybody that came along and wanted me to indulge them, too. Now, I don't want you to go thinking this is generosity, Tom, or a good heart, or that I have any sneaking idea in my own bosom that it's anything of the sort. I'd be a regular--low-down--soggy--sinful sowbug, I'd be too dirt-mean to live, if I pretended it was that. When I was poor I never was generous; I never thought of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same boat exactly as the rest; I was ent.i.tled to the little bit I'd worked for. But now it's different. It's like I'd won the big prize in the lottery. I can't be stingy with it and not blush. I can't sit there like a swollen wood-tick and be rich all by myself.”
”All right, Nell; all right. It's a perfectly understandable way of looking at it, if it is rather far-fetched. But good-by to the hard-earned thousands. You won't have a smitch of them left.”
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