Gods Men (21 page)

In his quiet way he reflected further upon the Cameron family. His brotherly relation to Jeremy he could easily develop. Quite honestly, he liked Jeremy. Candace he would consider as time passed. He was too nearly an intellectual to be in haste for marriage. Mrs. Cameron he understood and did not fear. His thoughts, flying like tentative gray hawks, now lit warily near the image of Mr. Cameron. This man was the central figure, the most important man, the one whom he must approach with real finesse. Mr. Cameron knew secrets. Pondering upon that vague and unimpressive person, William perceived that behind the nondescript face, the long and narrow mouth, there was something immense, a power strong and profoundly restrained. He guessed by some intuition of like mind that Mr. Cameron never told his true thoughts to his family, certainly at least not to women, and probably not to his delicate and oversensitive son. Into that loneliness William determined to go, not with deceit but with honesty.

“Mr. Cameron,” he said on Easter Sunday, “I would like to ask your advice about something.”

“Why not?” Mr. Cameron replied. Sunday was a day on which he drowsed. It was now afternoon, however, and late enough for him to have recovered from the immensities of dinner. He had slept, had waked, had walked in the garden with his wife and daughter to see the promise of some thousands of daffodils, and had come in again to reread the newspaper in the small sitting room off the drawing room, which was his favorite resting place. There William had come, after waiting patiently in his own room, from which he could see the prowling among the daffodils. Jeremy and Candace had gone with their mother to see their grandparents.

He sat down at a respectable distance from Mr. Cameron and upon a straight-back chair. His childhood in Peking had taught him deference to elders, and he would not have been comfortable had he chosen one of the deep chairs upholstered in brown leather.

“I would like to talk about my future, sir,” he said.

“What about it?” Mr. Cameron asked. His eyes roved to the newspaper at his feet. The financial section was uppermost and he was disgusted to see that the profits of a rival company had risen slightly above those of his own.

“I want to get rich,” William said simply.

Mr. Cameron's gray eyebrows, bunched above his eyes, quivered like antennae. “What do you want to get rich for?” he demanded. He stared at William with something more than his usual careless interest.

“I see that here in America a man cannot get any of the things he wants unless he is rich,” William replied.

Mr. Cameron smiled and agreed suddenly. “You're damn right!” He kicked the newspaper from his feet, sat back, and felt in his pocket for a cigar. It was a short thick one, and he lit it and puffed out a cloud of blue and fragrant smoke. The vague barrier that stood always between himself and his son's friends fell away. He felt he could talk to William. He had always wished that he could talk to young men and tell them the things he knew. If an older man had talked to him when he was young he would have got along faster.

“I'll tell you.” He shifted his cigar to the corner of his mouth. “If you want to get rich, William, you'll have to quit thinking about anything else. You'll have to concentrate. You have to put your mind to it.”

“Yes, sir.” William sat at attention, his hands folded upon his crossed knees. They were small hands, as Mr. Cameron remembered his wife had said they were, and they were already covered with surprisingly heavy black hair. William's hair on his head was black, too, in contrast to his light gray-green eyes. An odd-looking boy, Mr. Cameron reflected, though so handsome.

“Have you thought of any special line?” Mr. Cameron asked.

William hesitated. “Did you, sir, at my age?”

“Yes, I did,” Mr. Cameron replied. “That's the trick of it. You have to think of something that people want—not a few rich people, mind you, but all the ones who don't have much money. You have to think of something that they must buy and yet that won't cost too much. That's how I thought of the Stores. I was clerk in a general store.”

William knew the Cameron Stores very well. There was one in almost every city. He had wandered about them more than once, looking at the piles of cheap underwear and kitchen utensils and groceries and dishes and baby carriages and linoleum, everything that an ordinary family might want and nothing that Mrs. Cameron would have had in her own house. It was repellent stuff.

“I've thought of a newspaper,” William said.

Mr. Cameron looked blank. “What about a newspaper?”

“A cheap newspaper,” William said distinctly. “With lots of pictures so that people will first look and then read.”

“I never thought of such a thing,” Mr. Cameron said. He stared at William, digesting the new and remarkable idea. “There are already plenty of newspapers.”

“Not the kind I mean,” William said.

“What kind do you mean?” Mr. Cameron asked. “I thought I knew about every kind there was.”

“I suppose you do, sir,” William said. “What I am thinking of, though, is new for America. I got the idea from England—and a little bit, perhaps, from the
New York World,
and then the
Journal.
But I didn't think of doing anything myself until I began to hear about Alfred Harmsworth in England. Have you seen his papers, sir?”

“No,” Mr. Cameron said. “When I'm in London I always read the
Times
—maybe look at the
Illustrated Times
on the side.”

“My paper,” William said, as if it already existed, “is what's called tabloid size and it is to have everything in it that can interest the masses. It won't be for people like you, Mr. Cameron. It will have plenty of pictures. I've noticed even in college that most of the men don't really read much but they will always look at pictures.”

“I hope you don't mean yellow journalism,” Mr. Cameron said severely.

“No, I don't,” William said. “I hope I can do something more subtle than that.” He paused and then went on thoughtfully, his eyes on the patterned carpet. “I thought, if you approved, I would talk with Jeremy about it and some day we might go in on it together.”

Mr. Cameron was pleased. It might be the very thing for Jeremy, easy work, sitting behind a desk. He had often wondered what to do with his fragile son, but he was too prudent to show approval. “Well, it would depend on what Jeremy wants. Newspapers cost a lot of money to start.”

William was calm. “That's why I want to get rich.” He was too wise to repeat what his mother had often told him, even before he went to Chefoo. His mother had sown in him early the seeds of common sense. “You can't have but so many friends,” she had said. “And each friend ought to count for something.” He had seen the folly of useless friends in the English school; his speaking acquaintance there with the British Ambassador's son had served him more usefully than the horde of missionaries' children.

At college he had selected from among Jeremy's friends three whom he was transferring to himself, Blayne Parker, Seth James, and Martin Rosvaine. Blayne William still doubted because he was a poet, and Jeremy supplied to him something that William knew was not in himself. Seth and Martin he was resolved to keep. Yet there was no reason why the five of them, Jeremy included, should not stay together after college. Seth's father alone could, if he would, supply the capital they would need. Meanwhile he was getting into their clubs.

“Got it all figured out, eh?” Mr. Cameron said. A look of admiration came over his face, mingled with reluctance. If Jeremy had been this sort of a fellow, he would have got him into the Stores. Invitation was on the tip of his tongue. “How would you like—” He swallowed the words. William would be too smart, maybe, ten years from now when he himself was getting to be an old man. He might not be able to cope with that new young smartness in case it opposed him. It was all right to give young men a chance, but not the whole chance. On the other hand, William might be the making of the Stores, at the time when he needed somebody. If the boy married Candy, for example, it would be almost as good as though he were born into the family. This would take time to think out. He leaned back and crossed his hands on the small paunch that hung incongruously on his lean frame. “When the time comes,” he said dreamily, “I might be able to do something myself, William. Only might, that is. I can't tell from year to year, government being what it is in this country.”

William rose. “I wouldn't think of such a thing, Mr. Cameron,” he said in a firm and resonant voice. “I'm sure I can stand on my own feet.” It was entirely the proper answer, although he felt that the time would come when he would need Mr. Cameron. Far better to owe money to Mr. Cameron than to the father of Seth James.

Before Mr. Cameron could reply, the door opened and Candace came in looking, her father thought fondly, like the morning star. She was all in rose and silver and wrapped in soft spring furs of white fox. Her cheeks were pink with the wind, for she had insisted on having the carriage windows open, and her yellow hair was curled about her ears and feathered over her forehead.

“Why have you two hidden yourselves away here?” she demanded. “Mother says please come out at once and be public. We have callers.”

“We've been talking business,” Mr. Cameron said. It was his instinctive reply to any demands from women.

“Nonsense,” Candace said. “William hasn't any business.”

“He has an interesting idea,” Mr. Cameron said, fitting the tips of his fingers together. “A very interesting idea.”

Then he got an idea himself. He rose and made haste with his slow step toward the door. “I'll go, just to please your mother. William doesn't have to be bothered with our friends unless he wants to. I'll bet it's the Cordies, anyway.”

“It is,” Candace said, with dimples.

“Don't you come, William,” Mr. Cameron said. “They won't remember you next time they see you, anyway.”

Thus he left these two young members of his society together, and went his way inwardly pleased. Candace could be trusted. She wouldn't let even her own husband do the family any damage. He was long used to eating his cake and having it too. The secret of such maneuvering had laid the foundation of his fortune—that and the resolute ignoring of the misfortunes of others. Maybe when the time came he would help William. He had a lot of loose cash he didn't know what to do with.

Left alone with Candace, William said nothing and she sat down in the chair where her father had been sitting, threw off her fur jacket, and lifted her small flowered hat from her head.

“What have you two been talking about?” she asked.

“Your father asked me what I wanted to do after I finished college and I said start a newspaper,” William replied.

Her very clear blue eyes were sweetly upon him. “And why a newspaper?”

William shrugged his handsome shoulders. “Why does one do anything except because it is what one wants to do?”

“No, William, don't run around the corner. Why do you feel so inferior to everybody?”

She had thrust a point into his heart. His blood rushed into his face and he was careful not to look at her.

“Do I feel inferior?” His usually careful voice was dangerously careless.

“Don't you?” she demanded.

“I really don't know myself.”

She refused the responsibility of special knowledge. “Anybody can see that you never come straight out with answers. You always think what to say.”

“I suppose that is because I have never lived much in America,” he replied. Though he despised his China, he often found it convenient to take refuge there. It gave him a reason, faintly romantic, for his difference from ordinary people.

“You mean the Chinese don't answer honestly?” she asked.

“I think they prefer to answer correctly,” he said.

“But honesty is always right.”

“Is it?” he asked with wisdom gentle and superior.

“Isn't it?”

“I don't know,” he said again.

“But you must think,” she cried with soft impatience.

“I don't always know what to think,” he replied. “I guess my way a good deal of the time. I meet people every day whom I cannot understand. I have no experience that would help me.”

She considered this for a brief instant. “Are the Chinese so different from us or are you only pretending?”

“Pretending what?”

“That you are different.”

“I hope I am not too different from you, Candy.”

This was a bold step and she retreated.

“I don't know if you are or not. I can't make you out, William.”

He felt he had gone far enough. “Nor I you, sometimes, except today you look lovely. We don't have to make each other out as you call it—not yet, anyway. Let's not hurry, eh, Candy? I want you to know me, as I really think I don't know myself. That means time, plenty of time.” He said all this with his cultivated English accent which he had not yet rejected.

She fended him off.

“Why do you keep talking about time?”

He laughed silently. “Because I don't want someone else to come dashing up on a steed of some sort and carry you off!”

This was very plain indeed, and she dropped her eyes to the pink rose she had fastened upon her white fur muff, and considered. When she spoke it was with mild malice upon her tongue.

“Yet I am sure that you always reach out to take what you want—as soon as you are sure you want it.”

William met this with astuteness. “Ah, but you see, this time you might not want what I want. And I confess to being Chinese again to this extent: I don't like to be refused, even indirectly. I prefer not to be put in that position.”

“That's your sense of inferiority again.”

“Call it just being sensible.”