Jennie Gerhardt

 
 
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CHAPTER XLIV 
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 realized 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 organization? 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 labeled 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. 
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He would first give the trade, the people who were identified with v he 
manufacture and sale of carriages, time to realize 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. 
The spring after his father died, he put his plan into execution. He had 
wound up the work of the warerooms and with a pleasant deliberation had 
studied out a tour. He made Jennie his confidante, and now, having 
gathered together their traveling comforts they took a steamer from New 
York to Liverpool. After a few weeks in the British Isles they went to Egypt. 
From there they came back, through Greece and Italy, into Austria and 
Switzerland, and then later, through France and Paris, to Germany and 
Berlin. Lester was diverted by the novelty of the experience and yet he had 
an uncomfortable feeling that he was wasting his time. Great business 
enterprises were not built by travelers, and he was not looking for health. 
Jennie, on the other hand, was transported by what she saw, and enjoyed 
the new life to the full. Before Luxor and Karnak—places which Jennie had 
never dreamed existed—she learned of an older civilization, powerful, 
complex, complete. Millions of people had lived and died here, believing in 
other gods, other forms of government, other conditions of existence. For the 
first time in her life Jennie gained a clear idea of how vast the world is. Now 
from this point of view—of decayed Greece, of fallen Rome, of forgotten 
Egypt, she saw how pointless are our minor difficulties, our minor beliefs. 
Her father's Lutheranism—it did not seem so significant any more; and the 
social economy of Columbus, Ohio—rather pointless, perhaps. Her mother 
had worried so of what people—her neighbors—thought, but here were dead 
worlds of people, some bad, some good. Lester explained that their 
differences in standards of morals were due sometimes to climate, 
sometimes to religious beliefs, and sometimes to the rise of peculiar 
personalities like Mohammed. Lester liked to point out how small 
conventions bulked in this, the larger world, and vaguely she began to see. 
Admitting that she had been bad—locally it was important, perhaps, but in 
the sum of civilization, in the sum of big forces, what did it all amount to? 
They would be dead after a little while, she and Lester and all these people. 
Did anything matter except goodness—goodness of heart? What else was 
there that was real?