Chapter 39

by Herman Melville

　　THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS."Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you.""You always have, and with reason. What is it Frank?""Charlie, I am in want--urgent want of money.""That's not well.""But it will be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred dollars. Iwould not ask this of you, only my need is sore, and you and I have solong shared hearts and minds together, however unequally on my side,that nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the sameinequality on my side, to share purses. You will do me the favor won'tyou?""Favor? What do you mean by asking me to do you a favor?""Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so.""Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to talk so.""But won't you loan me the money?""No, Frank.""Why?""Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but never loan it; and ofcourse the man who calls himself my friend is above receiving alms. Thenegotiation of a loan is a business transaction. And I will transact nobusiness with a friend. What a friend is, he is socially andintellectually; and I rate social and intellectual friendship too highto degrade it on either side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be surethere are, and I have, what is called business friends; that is,commercial acquaintances, very convenient persons. But I draw a red-inkline between them and my friends in the true sense--my friends socialand intellectual. In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such unfriendlyaccommodations as are to be had from the soulless corporation of a bank,by giving the regular security and paying the regular discount.""An unfriendly accommodation? Do those words go together handsomely?""Like the poor farmer's team, of an old man and a cow--not handsomely,but to the purpose. Look, Frank, a loan of money on interest is a saleof money on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an accommodation,but where is the friendliness? Few men in their senses, exceptoperators, borrow money on interest, except upon a necessity akin tostarvation. Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting astarving man have, say, the money's worth of a barrel of flour upon thecondition that, on a given day, he shall let me have the money's worthof a barrel and a half of flour; especially if I add this furtherproviso, that if he fail so to do, I shall then, to secure to myselfthe money's worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up atpublic auction, and, as it is cruel to part families, throw in hiswife's and children's?""I understand," with a pathetic shudder; "but even did it come to that,such a step on the creditor's part, let us, for the honor of humannature, hope, were less the intention than the contingency.""But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in the taking beforehandof due securities.""Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a friend's act?""And the auction in the last place an enemy's act. Don't you see? Theenmity lies couched in the friendship, just as the ruin in the relief.""I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really, I can't understandthis. Excuse me, my dear friend, but it strikes me that in going intothe philosophy of the subject, you go somewhat out of your depth.""So said the incautious wader out to the ocean; but the ocean replied:'It is just the other way, my wet friend,' and drowned him.""That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some ofsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and wouldscorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship,and ruin in relief.""I will illustrate, Frank, The needy man is a train slipped off therail. He who loans him money on interest is the one who, by way ofaccommodation, helps get the train back where it belongs; but then, byway of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an agent,thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just there, on his account,a beam across the track. Your needy man's principle-and-interest friendis, I say again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my dearfriend, no interest for me. I scorn interest.""Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me without interest.""That would be alms again.""Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?""Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest.""Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the alms. Seeing that itis you, Charlie, gratefully will I accept the alms of the interest. Nohumiliation between friends.""Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you suffer yourself totalk so, my dear Frank. It pains me. For though I am not of the sourmind of Solomon, that, in the hour of need, a stranger is better than abrother; yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his Essayon Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a terrestrial convenience,not to his friend celestial (or friend social and intellectual) would hego; no: for his terrestrial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (orhumbler business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the reason:Because, for the superior nature, which on no account can ever descendto do good, to be annoyed with requests to do it, when the inferiorone, which by no instruction can ever rise above that capacity, standsalways inclined to it--this is unsuitable.""Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial, but as the other.""It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I'll do it. We arebusiness friends; business is business. You want to negotiate a loan.Very good. On what paper? Will you pay three per cent a month? Where isyour security?""Surely, you will not exact those formalities from your oldschoolmate--him with whom you have so often sauntered down the groves ofAcademe, discoursing of the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is inkindliness--and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our beingfellow-academics, and friends from childhood up, is security.""Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics is the worst ofsecurities; while, our having been friends from childhood up is just nosecurity at all. You forget we are now business friends.""And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your business friend Ican give you no security; my need being so sore that I cannot get anindorser.""No indorser, then, no business loan.""Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other sort of friendyou have defined, can I prevail with you; how if, combining the two, Isue as both?""Are you a centaur?""When all is said then, what good have I of your friendship, regarded inwhat light you will?""The good which is in the philosophy of Mark Winsome, as reduced topractice by a practical disciple.""And why don't you add, much good may the philosophy of Mark Winsome dome? Ah," turning invokingly, "what is friendship, if it be not thehelping hand and the feeling heart, the good Samaritan pouring out atneed the purse as the vial!""Now, my dear Frank, don't be childish. Through tears never did man seehis way in the dark. I should hold you unworthy that sincere friendshipI bear you, could I think that friendship in the ideal is too lofty foryou to conceive. And let me tell you, my dear Frank, that you wouldseriously shake the foundations of our love, if ever again you shouldrepeat the present scene. The philosophy, which is mine in the strongestway, teaches plain-dealing. Let me, then, now, as at the most suitabletime, candidly disclose certain circumstances you seem in ignorance of.Though our friendship began in boyhood, think not that, on my side atleast, it began injudiciously. Boys are little men, it is said. You, Ijuvenilely picked out for my friend, for your favorable points at thetime; not the least of which were your good manners, handsome dress, andyour parents' rank and repute of wealth. In short, like any grown man,boy though I was, I went into the market and chose me my mutton, not forits leanness, but its fatness. In other words, there seemed in you, theschoolboy who always had silver in his pocket, a reasonable probabilitythat you would never stand in lean need of fat succor; and if my earlyimpression has not been verified by the event, it is only because ofthe caprice of fortune producing a fallibility of human expectations,however discreet.'""Oh, that I should listen to this cold-blooded disclosure!""A little cold blood in your ardent veins, my dear Frank, wouldn't doyou any harm, let me tell you. Cold-blooded? You say that, because mydisclosure seems to involve a vile prudence on my side. But not so. Myreason for choosing you in part for the points I have mentioned, wassolely with a view of preserving inviolate the delicacy of theconnection. For--do but think of it--what more distressing to delicatefriendship, formed early, than your friend's eventually, in manhood,dropping in of a rainy night for his little loan of five dollars or so?Can delicate friendship stand that? And, on the other side, woulddelicate friendship, so long as it retained its delicacy, do that? Wouldyou not instinctively say of your dripping friend in the entry, 'I havebeen deceived, fraudulently deceived, in this man; he is no true friendthat, in platonic love to demand love-rites?'""And rites, doubly rights, they are, cruel Charlie!""Take it how you will, heed well how, by too importunately claimingthose rights, as you call them, you shake those foundations I hinted of.For though, as it turns out, I, in my early friendship, built me a fairhouse on a poor site; yet such pains and cost have I lavished on thathouse, that, after all, it is dear to me. No, I would not lose the sweetboon of your friendship, Frank. But beware.""And of what? Of being in need? Oh, Charlie! you talk not to a god, abeing who in himself holds his own estate, but to a man who, being aman, is the sport of fate's wind and wave, and who mounts towards heavenor sinks towards hell, as the billows roll him in trough or on crest.""Tut! Frank. Man is no such poor devil as that comes to--no poordrifting sea-weed of the universe. Man has a soul; which, if he will,puts him beyond fortune's finger and the future's spite. Don't whinelike fortune's whipped dog, Frank, or by the heart of a true friend, Iwill cut ye.""Cut me you have already, cruel Charlie, and to the quick. Call to mindthe days we went nutting, the times we walked in the woods, armswreathed about each other, showing trunks invined like the trees:--oh,Charlie!""Pish! we were boys.""Then lucky the fate of the first-born of Egypt, cold in the grave erematurity struck them with a sharper frost.--Charlie?""Fie! you're a girl.""Help, help, Charlie, I want help!""Help? to say nothing of the friend, there is something wrong about theman who wants help. There is somewhere a defect, a want, in brief, aneed, a crying need, somewhere about that man.""So there is, Charlie.--Help, Help!""How foolish a cry, when to implore help, is itself the proof ofundesert of it.""Oh, this, all along, is not you, Charlie, but some ventriloquist whousurps your larynx. It is Mark Winsome that speaks, not Charlie.""If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is not alien butcongenial to my larynx. If the philosophy of that illustrious teacherfind little response among mankind at large, it is less that they do notpossess teachable tempers, than because they are so unfortunate as notto have natures predisposed to accord with him."Welcome, that compliment to humanity," exclaimed Frank with energy,"the truer because unintended. And long in this respect may humanityremain what you affirm it. And long it will; since humanity, inwardlyfeeling how subject it is to straits, and hence how precious is help,will, for selfishness' sake, if no other, long postpone ratifying aphilosophy that banishes help from the world. But Charlie, Charlie!speak as you used to; tell me you will help me. Were the case reversed,not less freely would I loan you the money than you would ask me to loanit."I ask? I ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under no circumstanceswould I accept a loan, though without asking pressed on me. Theexperience of China Aster might warn me.""And what was that?""Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palaceof moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palacevanished with it. I will tell you about China Aster. I wish I could doso in my own words, but unhappily the original story-teller here has sotyrannized over me, that it is quite impossible for me to repeat hisincidents without sliding into his style. I forewarn you of this, thatyou may not think me so maudlin as, in some parts, the story would seemto make its narrator. It is too bad that any intellect, especially in sosmall a matter, should have such power to impose itself upon another,against its best exerted will, too. However, it is satisfaction to knowthat the main moral, to which all tends, I fully approve. But, tobegin."