THE COST OF BEING RICH
Chapter One
I think it will be best to start at the
beginning. My name is Caledon Nathaniel Hockley. I was born on the first of
December in 1882 in the midst of high-strung, first-class society. From the
start, I learned that three things in this world were weak and intolerable: 1.
expressing great emotion 2. lower classes and 3. females.
I was robbed of my childhood, as all boys
were at that time. By eight, I was forced to accompany my father to the mill. I
remember riding in the carriage beside him through a less reputable part of
town and seeing two boys about two years younger than I was. They had their
whole lives as a playground, and they had never felt the burden put on me. I
envied them at that moment. And I guess I’ve always envied lower classes from
that moment on. But in coordination with weakness #1, I never showed it.
The next jealousy I had was for the weaker
sex. My sisters did not have the burdens that lay before me, the firstborn son.
They would grow up, marry, and have their husbands take care of them for the
rest of their lives. I, however, would be the one doing the caring once I grew
up.
My energy may have been stifled, but there
had always been a little, tiny fire burning inside of me that just refused to
be extinguished. It flamed strong for ten years, and then it was stomped out
and the ashes scattered.
My youngest sister was Fredericka Hockley,
and she was my one happiness in life. She loved life to more than a child’s
extent of glee. Everything she did, she did for either her own happiness or
someone else’s. When she was just three years old, she came down with a terrible
sickness. My father’s world revolved around her, and the best doctors of the
time were called in. But they couldn’t help her. They said she was the fiercest
fighter they had ever witnessed in their lives, but it got to the point that
she could hold on no longer. On Christmas day, 1892, my motivation died.
I was still considered a boy, and my parents
expected me to just forget about her as time wore on. I knew this, and for them
I pretended that I had forgotten. But there was no way that I could ever forget
that angelic face, my joy and happiness.
It got to the point when I would have given
anything to see that face once again. She came to me in my dreams, begging
through the fever that had enveloped her to save her. But there was no way for
me to do so. It wasn’t until I was twenty-six and a master businessman that I
would ever see a face even more beautiful than Fredericka’s. And it belonged to
a young woman named Rose DeWitt Bukater.