The Forged Coupon, and Other Stories-9

“For heaven’s sake, let us stop. I have suffered enough. I have now but

one desire, and that is to put her in such a position that she will be

independent of others, and that she shall have no further need of

communicating with me. Then she can live her own life, and my family and I

need know nothing more about her. That is all I can do.”

“Michael, you say nothing but ‘I’! She, too, is ‘I.’”

“No doubt; but, dear Aline, please let us drop the matter. I feel it too

deeply.”

Alexandra Dmitrievna remained silent for a few moments, shaking her head.

“And Masha, your wife, thinks as you do?”

“Yes, quite.”

Alexandra Dmitrievna made an inarticulate sound.

“Brisons la dessus et bonne nuit,” said he. But she did not go. She stood

silent a moment. Then,—“Peter tells me you intend to leave the money

with the woman where she lives. Have you the address?”

“I have.”

“Don’t leave it with the woman, Michael! Go yourself. Just see how she

lives. If you don’t want to see her, you need not. HE isn’t there; there

is no one there.”

Michael Ivanovich shuddered violently.

“Why do you torture me so? It’s a sin against hospitality!”

Alexandra Dmitrievna rose, and almost in tears, being touched by her own

pleading, said, “She is so miserable, but she is such a dear.”

He got up, and stood waiting for her to finish. She held out her hand.

“Michael, you do wrong,” said she, and left him.

For a long while after she had gone Michael Ivanovich walked to and fro on

the square of carpet. He frowned and shivered, and exclaimed, “Oh, oh!”

And then the sound of his own voice frightened him, and he was silent.

His wounded pride tortured him. His daughter—his—brought up in

the house of her mother, the famous Avdotia Borisovna, whom the Empress

honoured with her visits, and acquaintance with whom was an honour for all

the world! His daughter—; and he had lived his life as a knight of

old, knowing neither fear nor blame. The fact that he had a natural son

born of a Frenchwoman, whom he had settled abroad, did not lower his own

self-esteem. And now this daughter, for whom he had not only done

everything that a father could and should do; this daughter to whom he had

given a splendid education and every opportunity to make a match in the

best Russian society—this daughter to whom he had not only given all

that a girl could desire, but whom he had really LOVED; whom he had

admired, been proud of—this daughter had repaid him with such

disgrace, that he was ashamed and could not face the eyes of men!

He recalled the time when she was not merely his child, and a member of

his family, but his darling, his joy and his pride. He saw her again, a

little thing of eight or nine, bright, intelligent, lively, impetuous,

graceful, with brilliant black eyes and flowing auburn hair. He remembered

how she used to jump up on his knees and hug him, and tickle his neck; and

how she would laugh, regardless of his protests, and continue to tickle

him, and kiss his lips, his eyes, and his cheeks. He was naturally opposed

to all demonstration, but this impetuous love moved him, and he often

submitted to her petting. He remembered also how sweet it was to caress

her. To remember all this, when that sweet child had become what she now

was, a creature of whom he could not think without loathing.

He also recalled the time when she was growing into womanhood, and the

curious feeling of fear and anger that he experienced when he became aware

that men regarded her as a woman. He thought of his jealous love when she

came coquettishly to him dressed for a ball, and knowing that she was

pretty. He dreaded the passionate glances which fell upon her, that she

not only did not understand but rejoiced in. “Yes,” thought he, “that

superstition of woman’s purity! Quite the contrary, they do not know shame—they

lack this sense.” He remembered how, quite inexplicably to him, she had

refused two very good suitors. She had become more and more fascinated by

her own success in the round of gaieties she lived in.

But this success could not last long. A year passed, then two, then three.

She was a familiar figure, beautiful—but her first youth had passed,

and she had become somehow part of the ball-room furniture. Michael

Ivanovich remembered how he had realised that she was on the road to

spinsterhood, and desired but one thing for her. He must get her married

off as quickly as possible, perhaps not quite so well as might have been

arranged earlier, but still a respectable match.

But it seemed to him she had behaved with a pride that bordered on

insolence. Remembering this, his anger rose more and more fiercely against

her. To think of her refusing so many decent men, only to end in this

disgrace. “Oh, oh!” he groaned again.

Then stopping, he lit a cigarette, and tried to think of other things. He

would send her money, without ever letting her see him. But memories came

again. He remembered—it was not so very long ago, for she was more

than twenty then—her beginning a flirtation with a boy of fourteen,

a cadet of the Corps of Pages who had been staying with them in the

country. She had driven the boy half crazy; he had wept in his

distraction. Then how she had rebuked her father severely, coldly, and

even rudely, when, to put an end to this stupid affair, he had sent the

boy away. She seemed somehow to consider herself insulted. Since then

father and daughter had drifted into undisguised hostility.

“I was right,” he said to himself. “She is a wicked and shameless woman.”

And then, as a last ghastly memory, there was the letter from Moscow, in

which she wrote that she could not return home; that she was a miserable,

abandoned woman, asking only to be forgiven and forgotten. Then the horrid

recollection of the scene with his wife came to him; their surmises and

their suspicions, which became a certainty. The calamity had happened in

Finland, where they had let her visit her aunt; and the culprit was an

insignificant Swede, a student, an empty-headed, worthless creature—and

married.

All this came back to him now as he paced backwards and forwards on the

bedroom carpet, recollecting his former love for her, his pride in her. He

recoiled with terror before the incomprehensible fact of her downfall, and

he hated her for the agony she was causing him. He remembered the

conversation with his sister-in-law, and tried to imagine how he might

forgive her. But as soon as the thought of “him” arose, there surged up in

his heart horror, disgust, and wounded pride. He groaned aloud, and tried

to think of something else.

“No, it is impossible; I will hand over the money to Peter to give her

monthly. And as for me, I have no longer a daughter.”

And again a curious feeling overpowered him: a mixture of self-pity at the

recollection of his love for her, and of fury against her for causing him

this anguish.

II

DURING the last year Lisa had without doubt lived through more than in all

the preceding twenty-five. Suddenly she had realised the emptiness of her

whole life. It rose before her, base and sordid—this life at home

and among the rich set in St. Petersburg—this animal existence that

never sounded the depths, but only touched the shallows of life.

It was well enough for a year or two, or perhaps even three. But when it

went on for seven or eight years, with its parties, balls, concerts, and

suppers; with its costumes and coiffures to display the charms of the

body; with its adorers old and young, all alike seemingly possessed of

some unaccountable right to have everything, to laugh at everything; and

with its summer months spent in the same way, everything yielding but a

superficial pleasure, even music and reading merely touching upon life’s

problems, but never solving them—all this holding out no promise of

change, and losing its charm more and more—she began to despair. She

had desperate moods when she longed to die.

Her friends directed her thoughts to charity. On the one hand, she saw

poverty which was real and repulsive, and a sham poverty even more

repulsive and pitiable; on the other, she saw the terrible indifference of

the lady patronesses who came in carriages and gowns worth thousands. Life

became to her more and more unbearable. She yearned for something real,

for life itself—not this playing at living, not this skimming life

of its cream. Of real life there was none. The best of her memories was

her love for the little cadet Koko. That had been a good, honest,

straight-forward impulse, and now there was nothing like it. There could

not be. She grew more and more depressed, and in this gloomy mood she went

to visit an aunt in Finland. The fresh scenery and surroundings, the

people strangely different to her own, appealed to her at any rate as a

new experience.

How and when it all began she could not clearly remember. Her aunt had

another guest, a Swede. He talked of his work, his people, the latest

Swedish novel. Somehow, she herself did not know how that terrible

fascination of glances and smiles began, the meaning of which cannot be

put into words.

These smiles and glances seemed to reveal to each, not only the soul of

the other, but some vital and universal mystery. Every word they spoke was

invested by these smiles with a profound and wonderful significance.

Music, too, when they were listening together, or when they sang duets,

became full of the same deep meaning. So, also, the words in the books

they read aloud. Sometimes they would argue, but the moment their eyes

met, or a smile flashed between them, the discussion remained far behind.

They soared beyond it to some higher plane consecrated to themselves.

How it had come about, how and when the devil, who had seized hold of them

both, first appeared behind these smiles and glances, she could not say.

But, when terror first seized her, the invisible threads that bound them

were already so interwoven that she had no power to tear herself free. She

could only count on him and on his honour. She hoped that he would not

make use of his power; yet all the while she vaguely desired it.

Her weakness was the greater, because she had nothing to support her in

the struggle. She was weary of society life and she had no affection for

her mother. Her father, so she thought, had cast her away from him, and

she longed passionately to live and to have done with play. Love, the

perfect love of a woman for a man, held the promise of life for her. Her

strong, passionate nature, too, was dragging her thither. In the tall,

strong figure of this man, with his fair hair and light upturned

moustache, under which shone a smile attractive and compelling, she saw

the promise of that life for which she longed. And then the smiles and

glances, the hope of something so incredibly beautiful, led, as they were

bound to lead, to that which she feared but unconsciously awaited.

Suddenly all that was beautiful, joyous, spiritual, and full of promise

for the future, became animal and sordid, sad and despairing.

She looked into his eyes and tried to smile, pretending that she feared

nothing, that everything was as it should be; but deep down in her soul

she knew it was all over. She understood that she had not found in him

what she had sought; that which she had once known in herself and in Koko.

She told him that he must write to her father asking her hand in marriage.

This he promised to do; but when she met him next he said it was

impossible for him to write just then. She saw something vague and furtive

in his eyes, and her distrust of him grew. The following day he wrote to

her, telling her that he was already married, though his wife had left him

long since; that he knew she would despise him for the wrong he had done

her, and implored her forgiveness. She made him come to see her. She said

she loved him; that she felt herself bound to him for ever whether he was

married or not, and would never leave him. The next time they met he told

her that he and his parents were so poor that he could only offer her the

meanest existence. She answered that she needed nothing, and was ready to

go with him at once wherever he wished. He endeavoured to dissuade her,

advising her to wait; and so she waited. But to live on with this secret,

with occasional meetings, and merely corresponding with him, all hidden

from her family, was agonising, and she insisted again that he must take

her away. At first, when she returned to St. Petersburg, he wrote

promising to come, and then letters ceased and she knew no more of him.

She tried to lead her old life, but it was impossible. She fell ill, and

the efforts of the doctors were unavailing; in her hopelessness she

resolved to kill herself. But how was she to do this, so that her death

might seem natural? She really desired to take her life, and imagined that

she had irrevocably decided on the step. So, obtaining some poison, she

poured it into a glass, and in another instant would have drunk it, had

not her sister’s little son of five at that very moment run in to show her

a toy his grandmother had given him. She caressed the child, and, suddenly

stopping short, burst into tears.

The thought overpowered her that she, too, might have been a mother had he

not been married, and this vision of motherhood made her look into her own

soul for the first time. She began to think not of what others would say

of her, but of her own life. To kill oneself because of what the world

might say was easy; but the moment she saw her own life dissociated from

the world, to take that life was out of the question. She threw away the

poison, and ceased to think of suicide.

Then her life within began. It was real life, and despite the torture of

it, had the possibility been given her, she would not have turned back

from it. She began to pray, but there was no comfort in prayer; and her

suffering was less for herself than for her father, whose grief she

foresaw and understood.

Thus months dragged along, and then something happened which entirely

transformed her life. One day, when she was at work upon a quilt, she

suddenly experienced a strange sensation. No—it seemed impossible.

Motionless she sat with her work in hand. Was it possible that this was

IT. Forgetting everything, his baseness and deceit, her mother’s

querulousness, and her father’s sorrow, she smiled. She shuddered at the

recollection that she was on the point of killing it, together with

herself.

She now directed all her thoughts to getting away—somewhere where

she could bear her child—and become a miserable, pitiful mother, but

a mother withal. Somehow she planned and arranged it all, leaving her home

and settling in a distant provincial town, where no one could find her,

and where she thought she would be far from her people. But,

unfortunately, her father’s brother received an appointment there, a thing

she could not possibly foresee. For four months she had been living in the

house of a midwife—one Maria Ivanovna; and, on learning that her

uncle had come to the town, she was preparing to fly to a still remoter

hiding-place.

III

MICHAEL IVANOVICH awoke early next morning. He entered his brother’s

study, and handed him the cheque, filled in for a sum which he asked him

to pay in monthly instalments to his daughter. He inquired when the

express left for St. Petersburg. The train left at seven in the evening,

giving him time for an early dinner before leaving. He breakfasted with

his sister-in-law, who refrained from mentioning the subject which was so

painful to him, but only looked at him timidly; and after breakfast he

went out for his regular morning walk.

Alexandra Dmitrievna followed him into the hall.

“Go into the public gardens, Michael—it is very charming there, and

quite near to Everything,” said she, meeting his sombre looks with a

pathetic glance.

Michael Ivanovich followed her advice and went to the public gardens,

which were so near to Everything, and meditated with annoyance on the

stupidity, the obstinacy, and heartlessness of women.

“She is not in the very least sorry for me,” he thought of his

sister-in-law. “She cannot even understand my sorrow. And what of her?” He

was thinking of his daughter. “She knows what all this means to me—the

torture. What a blow in one’s old age! My days will be shortened by it!

But I’d rather have it over than endure this agony. And all that ‘pour les

beaux yeux d’un chenapan’—oh!” he moaned; and a wave of hatred and

fury arose in him as he thought of what would be said in the town when

every one knew. (And no doubt every one knew already.) Such a feeling of

rage possessed him that he would have liked to beat it into her head, and

make her understand what she had done. These women never understand. “It

is quite near Everything,” suddenly came to his mind, and getting out his

notebook, he found her address. Vera Ivanovna Silvestrova, Kukonskaya

Street, Abromov’s house. She was living under this name. He left the

gardens and called a cab.

“Whom do you wish to see, sir?” asked the midwife, Maria Ivanovna, when he

stepped on the narrow landing of the steep, stuffy staircase.

“Does Madame Silvestrova live here?”

“Vera Ivanovna? Yes; please come in. She has gone out; she’s gone to the

shop round the corner. But she’ll be back in a minute.”

Michael Ivanovich followed the stout figure of Maria Ivanovna into a tiny

parlour, and from the next room came the screams of a baby, sounding cross

and peevish, which filled him with disgust. They cut him like a knife.

Maria Ivanovna apologised, and went into the room, and he could hear her

soothing the child. The child became quiet, and she returned.

“That is her baby; she’ll be back in a minute. You are a friend of hers, I

suppose?”

“Yes—a friend—but I think I had better come back later on,”

said Michael Ivanovich, preparing to go. It was too unbearable, this

preparation to meet her, and any explanation seemed impossible.

He had just turned to leave, when he heard quick, light steps on the

stairs, and he recognised Lisa’s voice.

“Maria Ivanovna—has he been crying while I’ve been gone—I was—”

Then she saw her father. The parcel she was carrying fell from her hands.

“Father!” she cried, and stopped in the doorway, white and trembling.

He remained motionless, staring at her. She had grown so thin. Her eyes

were larger, her nose sharper, her hands worn and bony. He neither knew

what to do, nor what to say. He forgot all his grief about his dishonour.

He only felt sorrow, infinite sorrow for her; sorrow for her thinness, and

for her miserable rough clothing; and most of all, for her pitiful face

and imploring eyes.

“Father—forgive,” she said, moving towards him.

“Forgive—forgive me,” he murmured; and he began to sob like a child,

kissing her face and hands, and wetting them with his tears.

In his pity for her he understood himself. And when he saw himself as he

was, he realised how he had wronged her, how guilty he had been in his

pride, in his coldness, even in his anger towards her. He was glad that it

was he who was guilty, and that he had nothing to forgive, but that he

himself needed forgiveness. She took him to her tiny room, and told him

how she lived; but she did not show him the child, nor did she mention the

past, knowing how painful it would be to him.

He told her that she must live differently.

“Yes; if I could only live in the country,” said she.

“We will talk it over,” he said. Suddenly the child began to wail and to

scream. She opened her eyes very wide; and, not taking them from her

father’s face, remained hesitating and motionless.

“Well—I suppose you must feed him,” said Michael Ivanovich, and

frowned with the obvious effort.

She got up, and suddenly the wild idea seized her to show him whom she

loved so deeply the thing she now loved best of all in the world. But

first she looked at her father’s face. Would he be angry or not? His face

revealed no anger, only suffering.

“Yes, go, go,” said he; “God bless you. Yes. I’ll come again to-morrow,

and we will decide. Good-bye, my darling—good-bye.” Again he found

it hard to swallow the lump in his throat.

When Michael Ivanovich returned to his brother’s house, Alexandra

Dmitrievna immediately rushed to him.

“Well?”

“Well? Nothing.”

“Have you seen?” she asked, guessing from his expression that something

had happened.

“Yes,” he answered shortly, and began to cry. “I’m getting old and

stupid,” said he, mastering his emotion.

“No; you are growing wise—very wise.”

THERE ARE NO GUILTY PEOPLE

I

MINE is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a

single wretched beggar suffering under the luxury and oppression of the

rich who feels anything like as keenly as I do either the injustice, the

cruelty, and the horror of their oppression of and contempt for the poor;

or the grinding humiliation and misery which befall the great majority of

the workers, the real producers of all that makes life possible. I have

felt this for a long time, and as the years have passed by the feeling has

grown and grown, until recently it reached its climax. Although I feel all

this so vividly, I still live on amid the depravity and sins of rich

society; and I cannot leave it, because I have neither the knowledge nor

the strength to do so. I cannot. I do not know how to change my life so

that my physical needs—food, sleep, clothing, my going to and fro—may

be satisfied without a sense of shame and wrongdoing in the position which

I fill.

There was a time when I tried to change my position, which was not in

harmony with my conscience; but the conditions created by the past, by my

family and its claims upon me, were so complicated that they would not let

me out of their grasp, or rather, I did not know how to free myself. I had

not the strength. Now that I am over eighty and have become feeble, I have

given up trying to free myself; and, strange to say, as my feebleness

increases I realise more and more strongly the wrongfulness of my

position, and it grows more and more intolerable to me.

It has occurred to me that I do not occupy this position for nothing: that

Providence intended that I should lay bare the truth of my feelings, so

that I might atone for all that causes my suffering, and might perhaps

open the eyes of those—or at least of some of those—who are

still blind to what I see so clearly, and thus might lighten the burden of

that vast majority who, under existing conditions, are subjected to bodily

and spiritual suffering by those who deceive them and also deceive

themselves. Indeed, it may be that the position which I occupy gives me

special facilities for revealing the artificial and criminal relations

which exist between men—for telling the whole truth in regard to

that position without confusing the issue by attempting to vindicate

myself, and without rousing the envy of the rich and feelings of

oppression in the hearts of the poor and downtrodden. I am so placed that

I not only have no desire to vindicate myself; but, on the contrary, I

find it necessary to make an effort lest I should exaggerate the

wickedness of the great among whom I live, of whose society I am ashamed,

whose attitude towards their fellow-men I detest with my whole soul,

though I find it impossible to separate my lot from theirs. But I must

also avoid the error of those democrats and others who, in defending the

oppressed and the enslaved, do not see their failings and mistakes, and

who do not make sufficient allowance for the difficulties created, the

mistakes inherited from the past, which in a degree lessens the

responsibility of the upper classes.

Free from desire for self-vindication, free from fear of an emancipated

people, free from that envy and hatred which the oppressed feel for their

oppressors, I am in the best possible position to see the truth and to

tell it. Perhaps that is why Providence placed me in such a position. I

will do my best to turn it to account.

II

Alexander Ivanovich Volgin, a bachelor and a clerk in a Moscow bank at a

salary of eight thousand roubles a year, a man much respected in his own

set, was staying in a country-house. His host was a wealthy landowner,

owning some twenty-five hundred acres, and had married his guest’s cousin.

Volgin, tired after an evening spent in playing vint* for small stakes

with [* A game of cards similar to auction bridge.] members of the family,

went to his room and placed his watch, silver cigarette-case, pocket-book,

big leather purse, and pocket-brush and comb on a small table covered with

a white cloth, and then, taking off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers,

and underclothes, his silk socks and English boots, put on his nightshirt

and dressing-gown. His watch pointed to midnight. Volgin smoked a

cigarette, lay on his face for about five minutes reviewing the day’s

impressions; then, blowing out his candle, he turned over on his side and

fell asleep about one o’clock, in spite of a good deal of restlessness.

Awaking next morning at eight he put on his slippers and dressing-gown,

and rang the bell.

The old butler, Stephen, the father of a family and the grandfather of six

grandchildren, who had served in that house for thirty years, entered the

room hurriedly, with bent legs, carrying in the newly blackened boots

which Volgin had taken off the night before, a well-brushed suit, and a

clean shirt. The guest thanked him, and then asked what the weather was

like (the blinds were drawn so that the sun should not prevent any one

from sleeping till eleven o’clock if he were so inclined), and whether his

hosts had slept well. He glanced at his watch—it was still early—and

began to wash and dress. His water was ready, and everything on the

washing-stand and dressing-table was ready for use and properly laid out—his

soap, his tooth and hair brushes, his nail scissors and files. He washed

his hands and face in a leisurely fashion, cleaned and manicured his

nails, pushed back the skin with the towel, and sponged his stout white

body from head to foot. Then he began to brush his hair. Standing in front

of the mirror, he first brushed his curly beard, which was beginning to

turn grey, with two English brushes, parting it down the middle. Then he

combed his hair, which was already showing signs of getting thin, with a

large tortoise-shell comb. Putting on his underlinen, his socks, his

boots, his trousers—which were held up by elegant braces—and

his waistcoat, he sat down coatless in an easy chair to rest after

dressing, lit a cigarette, and began to think where he should go for a

walk that morning—to the park or to Littleports (what a funny name

for a wood!). He thought he would go to Littleports. Then he must answer

Simon Nicholaevich’s letter; but there was time enough for that. Getting

up with an air of resolution, he took out his watch. It was already five

minutes to nine. He put his watch into his waistcoat pocket, and his purse—with

all that was left of the hundred and eighty roubles he had taken for his

journey, and for the incidental expenses of his fortnight’s stay with his

cousin—and then he placed into his trouser pocket his cigarette-case

and electric cigarette-lighter, and two clean handkerchiefs into his coat

pockets, and went out of the room, leaving as usual the mess and confusion

which he had made to be cleared up by Stephen, an old man of over fifty.

Stephen expected Volgin to “remunerate” him, as he said, being so

accustomed to the work that he did not feel the slightest repugnance for

it. Glancing at a mirror, and feeling satisfied with his appearance,

Volgin went into the dining-room.

There, thanks to the efforts of the housekeeper, the footman, and

under-butler—the latter had risen at dawn in order to run home to

sharpen his son’s scythe—breakfast was ready. On a spotless white

cloth stood a boiling, shiny, silver samovar (at least it looked like

silver), a coffee-pot, hot milk, cream, butter, and all sorts of fancy

white bread and biscuits. The only persons at table were the second son of

the house, his tutor (a student), and the secretary. The host, who was an

active member of the Zemstvo and a great farmer, had already left the

house, having gone at eight o’clock to attend to his work. Volgin, while

drinking his coffee, talked to the student and the secretary about the

weather, and yesterday’s vint, and discussed Theodorite’s peculiar

behaviour the night before, as he had been very rude to his father without

the slightest cause. Theodorite was the grown-up son of the house, and a

ne’er-do-well. His name was Theodore, but some one had once called him

Theodorite either as a joke or to tease him; and, as it seemed funny, the

name stuck to him, although his doings were no longer in the least

amusing. So it was now. He had been to the university, but left it in his

second year, and joined a regiment of horse guards; but he gave that up

also, and was now living in the country, doing nothing, finding fault, and

feeling discontented with everything. Theodorite was still in bed: so were

the other members of the household—Anna Mikhailovna, its mistress;

her sister, the widow of a general; and a landscape painter who lived with

the family.

Volgin took his panama hat from the hall table (it had cost twenty

roubles) and his cane with its carved ivory handle, and went out. Crossing

the veranda, gay with flowers, he walked through the flower garden, in the

centre of which was a raised round bed, with rings of red, white, and blue

flowers, and the initials of the mistress of the house done in carpet

bedding in the centre. Leaving the flower garden Volgin entered the avenue

of lime trees, hundreds of years old, which peasant girls were tidying and

sweeping with spades and brooms. The gardener was busy measuring, and a

boy was bringing something in a cart. Passing these Volgin went into the

park of at least a hundred and twenty-five acres, filled with fine old

trees, and intersected by a network of well-kept walks. Smoking as he

strolled Volgin took his favourite path past the summer-house into the

fields beyond. It was pleasant in the park, but it was still nicer in the

fields. On the right some women who were digging potatoes formed a mass of

bright red and white colour; on the left were wheat fields, meadows, and

grazing cattle; and in the foreground, slightly to the right, were the

dark, dark oaks of Littleports. Volgin took a deep breath, and felt glad

that he was alive, especially here in his cousin’s home, where he was so

thoroughly enjoying the rest from his work at the bank.