The Noise of the World by Adriana Spadoni

It was a few weeks after the Mitchell dinner that Roger came back to the office one afternoon to find Hilary Wainwright pacing up and down in a frank perplexity that he did not often permit himself to show; although, as the months had passed, Roger had come to feel very keenly that Hilary Wainwright, who never doubted his own point of view on a business matter, was growing more and more uncertain of his former enthusiasm for carrying out what he always called "the responsibilities of wealth."

Hilary Wainwright had been born to wealth, in a generation that had begun to question the right of such inheritance. Roger had always felt that Hilary was glad of this generation, which permitted him to enjoy his wealth, and, at the same time, by discussing his right to it, admitted him to the inner circle of intellectuals who doubt and lead civilization. He owned vast shipping interests, many sugar plantations in Hawaii and was often called upon by other capitalists to arbitrate their difficulties with labor. He went to strike meetings in a limousine.

He lived in a great, old-fashioned, inherited mansion far out on Pacific Avenue near the Presidio, surrounded by lawns and clipped hedges and conservatories. He lived alone, except for the servants, and entertained in down-town hotels. Long ago mothers had ceased managing their daughters in his direction, but the upper social crust was dotted with matrons, mothers of grown girls, who still had, in the depths of their hearts, a soft spot for this "idealist. " If they had married him, they were sure he would have understood them so much better than did their husbands. These women contributed largely to the charities and civic betterment schemes in which Hilary was interested, and never refused committee work.

These schemes for the just treatment of labor and the improvement of living conditions among Wainwright's workmen, were Roger's special province, and he now saw them as a pond upon the surface of which he was paid to swim. Coming from an investigation into the justice of some strike, or from tense discussion with the leader of some industry, Roger felt like a diver bringing back strange fauna and flora, after which he had not been sent. Hilary always listened attentively, but sometimes he tapped his desk in a gesture that recalled John Lowell. He had a habit of saying "Yes. Yes," in an emphatic way, as if his mind were a hammer tapping each nail. But when Roger had finished, no completed structure ever rose from Hilary's agreement.

"Of course, Barton, I, personally, agree with you. There is a lot to be said for the other side. But, after all, present society is founded on wealth, and one can't disturb the foundations without jeopardizing every one -- every one," Hilary would repeat, unconsciously warning Roger that he himself might go down in the welter, if every Wainwright suddenly put his principles into operation.

The first time he had explained this kindly to Roger, but, as the weeks slipped by, and Roger had continued to make the same suggestions for the adjustment of conditions which Hilary pretended were disturbing him, Hilary had gradually allowed his impatience to appear.

"What's the good, Barton, of talking like that? " he had demanded almost angrily one day, about a week before the Mitchell dinner. "It's the way the man who has never had wealth talks, as if it were an excrescence, something that can be cut away from the possessor without injury to any one else. Wealth is an essential plank in the social structure of our day, the keystone in the arch. Redistribute wealth suddenly and the whole thing will fall."

It had been a tiring day full of very clear deductions on Roger's part that something was fundamentally wrong with the whole economic system. He shrugged impatiently. "I don't know but what it might not be a good thing if it did -- only the wrong people would probably be underneath."

Sitting in the well-appointed office of his employer the man's manicured nails, his ostentatiously unconventional soft shirt and tie were as offensive as the smug personal safety of his theories.

For a moment Wainwright had not answered. Then, with marked repression and annoying calm, as if Roger were a fractious child to be excused because of his usually good behavior:

"That's rather wild talk, Barton. You can't knock out the essential plank of a structure and not make things worse for every one."

"And you can't expect Tom and Pete and Jim to get all worked up over the luxuries Mr. Vanderbilt might have to go without under a new order."

"Because the average workingman doesn't think clearly. His mind is untrained. He doesn't see beyond the food and clothes of the day."

"No. The average man doesn't think -- yet."

"I'm afraid it will take many years. " Hilary had reminded Roger of one perfunctorily mourning the death of a hated relative whose passing was to his financial advantage.

"I'm not so sure," Roger had said shortly.

"Ah -- let us hope you're right."

In the pause that followed, a feeling that Roger had always had from the very first interview suddenly crystallized. The man was spiritually smug, soaked through and through in unconscious insincerity.

Why had he ever consented to work for Hilary Wainwright? Instantly Roger had pushed the question from him and never again had he allowed it to rise clearly before him.

But now, as he came into the office and for a moment unobserved, watched Wainwright pacing slowly the length of the thick, rich rug, the well-kept hands clasped behind his back, frowning so seriously, Roger felt a positive repulsion of the man's smugness touch him, an almost physical inability to go over to his own desk and seriously begin consideration of one of Hilary's futile little problems.