The Mask | Page 8

his recent exertions, he sat down on the arm of a chair to rest a little. Full of the coming journey, he had already forgotten his wife's anxiety. The great business schemes he had in mind dwarfed for the time being every other consideration. He could think and talk of nothing but diamonds. Huge crystals, worth untold millions as big as a fist, flashed at him from every corner of the room. Fabulous fortunes had been made in the diamond mines of South Africa. Why should he not be as successful as others? The romance of the Cullinan might be repeated, even surpassed. Well he recalled how he had been thrilled by the sensational story of the discovery of that colossal gem, more than three times the size of the Excelsior, the wonder of the modern world. In imagination, he saw it now. An old-fashioned Boer farm, transformed into a modern mining camp. A moonlight night. A man strolling idly along the rugged, desolate veldt, chances to look down. His eye suddenly catches a gleam in the rough face of the jagged slope. He stoops and picks up what looks like a piece of ice. Quickly he returns to his office and hands it to his chief. The men look at each other in silence. To all parts of the world goes the message that a diamond has been found four times bigger than the largest gem in the world. A stone weighing over 3,000 carats and worth four million dollars. He could already imagine himself far from civilization among the barren mountains of South Africa, prospecting in wide stretches of stone and gravel, picking up the brilliant dazzling stones by the handful.
"Have you any idea," he said, "what the mines have produced?"
She shook her head indifferently.
"No, and I don't want to know. I don't want you to go--that's all."
"Their output in the last ten years is estimated at no less than $400,000,000. Just think of it. Four hundred millions! Well, dear, I and a few others want some of it, and we're going to get it."
"But aren't we rich enough already?" she demanded petulantly. "Why this fever to get richer and richer? We are happy with what we have. Why run the risks to gain what after all will only be a surplus? We can't possibly spend it."
Her husband's eyes flashed. The lines about his mouth tightened as he retorted:
"One never has enough! You women don't understand. As long as you have all the amusement you crave, all the frocks you want, all the jewelry you covet, you think that is all there is to life."
She looked up at him reproachfully and seemed about to protest when he added hurriedly:
"Oh, I don't mean you. I know you are not that kind of woman. You are more serious, more sensible. I mean the average society woman whose only concern in life is dress and show. We men have different aims, higher ambitions. I'm well to do, as the term goes. I have an income of over $100,000 a year, a splendidly appointed town house, a show place in the country. Above all I have the most adorable wife in all the world. Most men would be satisfied. I am not. I want still more. I have the money craze, an uncontrollable lust to pile up millions. My ambition is to wield the power that only the possession of vast wealth confers. The resources of this vast country are practically in the hands of half a dozen men. Merely by holding up a finger, these men could, to suit their own selfish ends, start a universal panic which might bring about a financial cataclysm, involving the whole world in disaster. I do not say they would use this power for evil, but they are in position to do so if it served their purpose. I want to have such power, only if I had it I would not use it for evil. I would use it for good. Conditions in the industrial world are very critical. We are rapidly approaching a crisis. In all countries the forces of labor and the forces of capital are lined up in silent, grim battalions. The poor are getting poorer; the rich are getting richer. The cost of living is going up beyond all reason. Why? Because the men who control the wealth of the world will it so. The system which is responsible for this must one day, sooner or later, give way to another and more humane system, still to be devised, which will enable the man who produces the wealth of the world at least to enjoy some of the fruits of his toil. Now it goes into the hands of the privileged few who use the power their money gives them