Gossamer

r to avoid drifting into an intimacy with Gorman and me. A millionaire would naturally, so I supposed, be suspicious of the advance of any one who was not a fellow millionaire. I was mistaken.

use. He bore her no ill will whatever, though she deprived him in the end of his inheritance as well as his home. For several years he "messed about"-the phrase is his-with journalism, acting as reporter and leader writer for several Irish provincial papers, a kind of work which requires no education

the class to which I belong without any strong resentment. His treatment of us reminded me of Robbie Burns' address to the devil. The poet recognised that the devil was a bad character and that the world would be in every way a brighter and happier place if there were no such person. But his condemnation was of a kindly sort, not wholly without sympath

ion, know anything about them; but he had got into touch with a group of journalists in London which specialises in abuse

er, which sits in a murky den spinning web

d like this kind of talk i

rs of childhood. He had only found out about financiers when he was a grown man. And no one, not even a convert to a new faith, ever believes anything with real intensity except what he was taught before he w

f them perhaps even socialists, the kind of socialists who travel first class on crack Cunard steamers. He seemed surprised at the question and did not answer me at once. An hour or so after we had passed away from the subject he returned

instance," he said. "The minu

d signif

them?" I

emphasis which was

whom I really like, capital fellows that I'd be gl

with Ascher and me every day

refusing to talk to a man just be

ent. I was at that moment talking to Gorman

rette before he went to bed. Gorman confided to me that millionaires and half-crown cigars had always been associated in his mind before he met Ascher. To me the most surprising thing about the man was the low opinion he had of himself and his own abilities. He was deferential to Gorman and even seemed to think what I said worth listening to. He knew all about Gorman's two novels and his play. He had read many of Gorman's newspaper article

rageous things which Gorman said about financiers

success as a financier except a low kind of c

umber of men who are cunning and the general prevalence of selfishness the number of suc

ed. Progress is stopped. Politics are barren--" He delivered this oration at dinner one night, and when he came to the barrenness of politics he knocked over Ascher's bottle of Perrier

with a sort of

said Gorman, "is to be foun

vative who had been a Cabinet Minister. It may be my stupidity but I cannot see how that union proves that financiers control politics. I am not, and never shall be eit

ul. You know perfectly well that there wouldn't be any politi

what I say,

politics. But there's the greatest difference between paying for a pe

attling good circus going on in New York at pres

ide away in this manner from an arg

ary man won't do it. You can't even get him to vote without hypnotising him first by means of a lot of speeches and newspaper articles and placards which stare at him from hoardings. Even after you've hypnotised him you have t

acteristics is that he bears no mali

merica to get money for the Party. There's a man I have my eye on out in Detroit, a fellow with mi

stments in Canadian railway shares-nothing much, just a f

panies in which I am interested in particular, would be very valuable to me. Gorman was also looking inquiringly at Ascher. I daresay a tip on the state of the stock market would be interesting to him. I do not know

g us all some anxiety. My partner in New York wants to ha

se Mexicans. It's pleasant to hear of we

interest of our customers, the people, some of them quite small people, who went into Mexican railways on our advice. Banking houses

to me as

ssity of putting up money for the support of theatres.

ed. He appealed to me as a member of a cultured class. Neither of us was sympathetic or responsive. Gorman knows that he has never rendered any service to literature at all, that he wrote novels because he wanted money in the days before a gra

hman-has no illusions about himself. I have none abou

the only things of any interest or importance in the world. Then he went to bed. Gorman and I agreed that art, drama, and music are of very little importance and less interesting than anything else. Go

ly is," I said. "It seems a pity not to be able to

no use our having him to dine with us and looking after h

either out of Ascher or out of the man at Detroit of whom he spoke. I am not a member of any political party but I hate that to which Gorman belongs. If I were attached to a party and if Gorman's friends joined it in a body, I should leave it at once. My opinion, so far as I have any opinion, is that what Ireland wants is to be let alone. But if the Ir

lf but for a cause. And Gorman is a politician, a member of a notoriously corrupt and unscrupulous professional class. Ascher was taking a long journey in order to devise some means of rescuing his clients' property from the clutches of a people which had carried the principles of democracy rather further than is usual. And Asche

e of yards, and falling into the bondage of trying to walk a fixed number of miles. Conversation and even coherent thought become impossible when the mind is set on the effort to keep count of the turns made at the end of the deck. I am sure that Ascher did not enjoy hims

ance," he said, "high finance

here is a certain flavour of formal courtesy about them which Englishmen rarely practise, of

only have been bo

just as keen as I am to kno

ery dull. Some day I shall give it u

y art," s

and looked at Gorman wi

t, the soul, the capacity for abandon. But I might find enjoyment, the highes

I wonder if Mecenas was a banker.

I said, "but that's no reason wh

d art just as dull as banking if

scher, "genuine artists

eited swine,"

know. You're an artist yoursel

Ascher, "and I recognised in them

wn to lunch,

stand self-convicted of being a selfish conceited swine. As

doxical your Irish minds are. That pose of abject self depreciation which is in reality not wh

o be an unappreciated Oscar Wilde, one of those geniuses-I am bound to admit that they are mostly Irish-who

scher fawned on Gorman during luncheon. He cert

when you try to exchange it for dollars or francs; a thing which had always puzzled me before. I learned why gold has to be shipped in large quantities from one country to another by bankers, whereas I, a private individual, need only send a cheque to pay m

asickness, but when I got to know her better I found out that she is never anything but pallid, even when she has lived for months on land and has been able to eat all she wants. The first thing she did after we were introduced to her was to put her hands up to her ears and give a low moan, expressive of great a

love-making in any form. Besides he spent most of his time in her company watching her playing Patience. Owen Meredith wrote a poem in which he glorified the game of chess as an aid to quiet conjugal love-making. But so far as I know no one has suggested that Canfield

convinced that he knew a great deal more about music than she did and appreciated it more. But her sudden outbursts of petulance when the band played seemed to Ascher a plain proof that she had the spirit of an artist. He confided in me

f fascinating romance of which I had never before suspected the existence. Some day, perhaps, a poet-he will have to be a great poet-will discover that the system of credit by means of which our civilisation works, deserves an epic. Neither the wanderings of Ulysses nor the discoveries of a traveller through Paradise and Purgatory make so splendid an appeal to the imagination as this vastly complex machine which Ascher and men like him guide. The oceans of the world are covered thick with ships. Long freight trains wi

y shrouded tyrants of the world. This system of credit, which need not be at all or might be quite other than it is, has given them supreme, untempered power, which they use to the injury of men. This is Gorman's view. But is it any