Percival Pollard

“ In the very air and life that prevailed in the office of the Torch there was, as one may suppose, something strange, and at first repugnant to Dick Lancaster. To one of his bringing up, his earnest intentions, his thirst for real things, it seemed that all this was very like a gaudy sham, a bubble of pretense, of surface prattle. He could scarcely believe that the flippancy of these men was serious with them; their talk, their point of view astonished and horrified him. If they were to be believed, life was nothing but a skimming of more or less uneven surfaces ”

“ We step into a hansom, we drive to the club, we have dinner; behind club doors, and in club comfort we are above all the slings and arrows of the elements; we drive to the theatre, and the black-and-white splendor of our men, as well as the fur-decked rosiness of our women, is only enhanced by contrast against the frowny murkings of the sky. I have noticed that the finale, the curtain-fall of any important public event, such as a dinner, a dance, or an opera, is always a more picturesque thing when the carriages have to drive away through the sleet. ”

“ That is what I mean when I say that science fails us at the most important point of all; the soul of my neighbor is as profound a mystery to me as the soul of a man that lived a thousand years ago. I can know your face, Luke, your clothes, your voice, the outward mask you wear; but—can I reach the secrets of your soul? No. And if we cannot know how others feel and think, how can we say we know the world? Bah! The world is a realm of shadows in which all walk blindly. We touch hands every day, but our souls are hidden in a veil that has not been passed since God made the universe. ”

“ I want to hear the crickets, and the deep silence of the nights, and the echoes of detached laughter floating over the meadows. I want to watch the sun-light as it comes through the leaves and plays hide-and-seek on the lawn; I want to watch the hawk circling in the air, the chickens scurrying fearfully at the sight of him. And then again the feverish itch to be in the very middle of this maelstrom, the town, seizes me. I long for the very thick and foremost of the struggle, and the picture of Lincolnville fades away. ”

“ He drew the sheet from the mirror, and revealed another veil of gauze resting upon the glass, as, in some houses, the most prized pictures are sometimes doubly covered. "You see; it is just a mirror, a full-length mirror. But, oh, my dear Vane, the wonderfulness of this mirror! I have only to look into this mirror; to veil it; and then, when next you glance into it, if it be within the hour, my soul, my spirit, my very self, passes from the face of the mirror to you! That is the whole secret, or at least, the manifestation of it! ”

“ And, oh, Dorothy! don't you know I'd rather suffer torments unspeakable than hurt you?" He put out his hand and touched the one hand of hers that swung beside him, over the edge of the hammock. "But yet, dear," he went on, "if I only had a word from you to remember, be it ever so slight, I would fight so much better against the world. For it is the same to-day as it was in the middle ages; we go to our crusades, all of us, and if we have a sweetheart who will give us her love as an armor, we fight the better fight. Our crusades have a different air, to be sure, but the idea is the same. ”

“ At about the time that Wentworth was scrawling his note in Vane's rooms a slender young woman, dressed in a grey that shimmered like the winter-sea in sunlight, wearing a hat that had the air of having lit upon her hair for the moment only,—merely to give the world an instant's glance at the gracious combination that woman's beauty and man's millinery could effect—was coming out from one of those huge bazaars where you can buy almost everything in the world except the things you want. ”

“ Then, I never did anything, or had a fad, or was eccentric, so I don't really belong here; but, as I said before, the house amuses me, and I come. I don't know why I tell you this, but I don't care very much, and besides, I believe you're still genuine. It's so pathetic to be genuine; it reminds me of a baby rabbit—blind eyes and fuzz. I'm not sure, but it's my idea, that if you want to keep Mrs. Stewart's good graces you'll have to do nothing harder than stay genuine. It's so novel. Most of us, today, couldn't be genuine again any more than we could be born again. ”

“ The sun streamed in at the window, kissing the tendrils of her hair and bringing to their copper shimmer a yet brighter blush. The day, with all its perfume, the splendor of its people, the riot of color of its gowns, the pride and pomp of its statues and its fountains, flushed the most secret rills of life.
"It is a marvel of a day," said Jeannette.
"A marvel? It is an impossible day; it is not a day at all—it is merely the hour of hours, the supreme instant, the melody so sweet that it must break or blind our hearts. You are right, dear, it is a marvelous hour. You make me repeat myself. ”

“ There was a sort of wistfulness behind the eye-glasses, and a half smile beneath the waving mustache.
"No. I wish you would!"
"Ah, Dick, I can't! I'm not competent. You're in one world, and I'm in another. Too many make the mistake that they can live in the valleys and yet tell the mountaineers how to climb. But, Dick, whatever you do, keep your self-respect! In this complex time of ours, circumstances and comparisons alter nearly everything, and one sometimes wonders whether b-a-d does not, after all, spell good; but self-respect should stand against all confusions! Goodbye, Dick. ”

“ He came to a halt before a photographer's window, the angle of which gave him a view of several blocks behind.
Orson Vane, in the meanwhile, was as if there was but one thing in life for him: a meeting with this radiant creature with the lilies. Once he thought he caught a sidelong glance of hers; a little smile even hovered an instant upon her lips; yet, at that distance, he could not be sure. None of the horrible things occurred to him as possibilities; that she might be an adventuress, or a mere masquerading shop-girl, or an adroit soubrette. No tangible intention came to the young man ”

“ Lancaster felt as if he could have sworn at the man's presuming egoism. But he merely laughed, and said, "Ah, you forget what a fellow-artist of mine once said, apropos of cleanliness. 'Wash,' he said, 'no, we don't wash; we merely scratch and rub, scratch and rub.' I choose, in like manner, only to scratch. If I can scratch an effective creation, why should I dig?"
Wreath shook his head, with a mournful smile. "Ah, you will agree with me—later. In the meantime, I want to talk to you about my next novel. Do you think we could make it worth your while to illustrate it for us?" ”

“ What a terrible power this must be that was in Orson Vane's possession! Moncreith shuddered at the thought. Why, the man might turn himself, in all but externals—and what, after all, was the husk, the shell, the body?—into the finest wit, the most lovable hero of his time; he might fare about the world wrecking now this, now that, happiness; he might win—perhaps he actually had, even now, won Jeannette Vanlief? ”

“ The glitter and glamour of society; the devil-may-care fascinations of Bohemia; they had lured him to such agony as this!
Such agony? What, you ask, had this young man to be in agony about? He was a very nice young man—all the world would have told you that! Ah, but was there never a moment in your lives, my dear fellow-sinners—you men and women of the world—when it came to your conscience like a sword-thrust, that the beautiful bloom of your youth and innocence was gone from you forever and that ever afterward there would be a bitter memory or a bitterer forgetfulness? ”

“ But was he not, after all, to blame for the fact of the curious transfusion of soul that had left one man a mental wreck, and stimulated the other's forces to a course of life out of all character with the strivings of his real soul? If he had not tempted Orson Vane to these experiments, Arthur Wantage would never be drooping in the shadow of collapse, and in danger of losing his proper place in the roll of prosperity. Vanlief shuddered at thought of what an unscrupulous man might not do with this discovery of his; what lives might be ruined, what successes built on fraud and theft? ”

“ Watching the rapid, shifting beauties of the boulevard, Dick burst into a little sigh of admiration. "Ah," he said, "this is good! This is living!"
"Youthful enthusiasm," muttered the other man. "Delightful thing—youthful enthusiasm—to get over."
"Oh, no! I hope I never shall! What is life worth if one is not to show that one enjoys it? How can you look at a day like this—a splendid, champagnelike day—and yet—"
"My dear fellow," interrupted Stanley, with a queer smile, "when a man gets to my time of life there is always something melancholy to him in the picture of a spring day. ”

“ One more or less in your dressing-room will not matter, eh?"
"I have an excellent man," said Vane. "There has not been a broken mirror in my house for years. He looks after them as if they were his own."
"Ah, better and better."
Vane interrupted the Professor's silence with, "It is a mirror, then?"
"Yes," said Vanlief, nodding at the sheeted mirror, "it is a mirror. Have you ever thought of the wonderfulness of mirrors? What wonder, and yet what simplicity! To think that I—I, a simple, plodding old man of science—should be the only one to have come upon the magic of a mirror!" ”

“ He remembered with what passionate eagerness, after the final shaking off of all the old consciences—all those moral skins that he had shed, and left to rot, over there, in America—he had come to the realization of the varied facets of that bewildering jewel, the town.
He shut his eyes to escape the glare of the noon-day, and evolve, behind his closed lids, the aspect of the town after lamps are lit. The constant current of humanity, of the swishing of the women's gowns as they walked, the rattle of the cabs over the stones,—it all filled him with a passion of pleasure. ”

“ It is much simpler. I should not wonder but that the ancients knew it. But human life is so much more complex now; the experiences you will gain will be larger than they could ever have been in other ages. Do you realize what I am about to give you? The power to take upon you the soul of another, just as an actor puts on the outer mask of another! And I ask for no reward. Simply the joy of seeing my process active; and afterwards, perhaps, to give my secret to the world. But you are to enjoy it alone, first. Of course—there may be risks. Do you take them?"
"I do," said Vane. ”

“ You really haven't a care in the world, and you sit here spouting insincerity at a wasteful rate. If there's anything really and truly the matter—tell me!"
Orson Vane dropped, as if it had been a mask, the ironical smile his lips had worn. "You want sincerity," he said, "well, then I shall be sincere. Sincerity makes wrinkles, but it is the privilege of our friends to make us old before our time. Sincerely, then, Luke, I am very, very tired."
"A fashionable imitation," mocked Moncreith. ”

“ In the lives of most people, I hear on all sides of me, the tragedy only begins after marriage. Well, perhaps so. But I hope, for my part, that for Dick Lancaster and his wife there is not to be much more of battling against the buffets of the world. For them there had been so much of tragedy—the tragedy that is almost intangible, the tragedy that underlies the surface flippancy of our modern life—before Fate chose to let them come together, that it would seem just that thereafter their life be but a pleasant pastoral. ”

“ If I am considered the one, I cannot possibly be the other. There is, to be sure, a polite imitation; but it is quite an art to imitate the thing with just sufficient indolence. But I really wish you would think the thing over, Mrs. Sclatersby. I know nobody who would do the thing better than I. Our men are mostly too fond of fashion, and too afraid of fancy. One must not be ashamed of being called foolish. Whistler uses butterflies; somebody else used sunflowers and green carnations; I should use—lilies, I think, lilies-of-the-valley. Emblematic of the pure folly of my pose, you know. ”

“ Down beyond the turn into the stretch was the bunch of restless horses, the vari-colored jackets, the starter's carriage, and the assistant starter's flag. There was the sky-blue jacket that showed where the favorite, The Ghost, was pirouetting on his hind legs; the black and yellow bars of Ætna's jockey, and many others. But Dick's eyes were focused on Dr. Rice; the horse's jockey was in all-black.
"Ah—h!" The vast crowd roars and cheers as a start is made. All together, like a herd of cattle, they sweep on toward the grand-stand. It is not racing yet. ”

“ The touch of rusticity, here and there, did not suffice to spoil the sartorial sparkle of the smart majority. The champagne that the sophisticated were wise enough to oppose to the Magyar vintages sparkled into veins that ran beautifully blue under skin that held curves the most aristocratic, tints the most shell-like. Tinkling laughter, vocative of insincerity, rang between the restless passion of the violins.
"When it is not below stairs," continued Vane, "it is up on the roof. One might think we were a society without houses of our own. It is, I suppose, the human craving for opposites. ”

“ Dick declared to himself that it was the modern Inferno. And yet, as he passed toward the station of the Elevated with Wooton, Dick began to understand something of the fascination that the place, even in its most noisome aspects, was able to exert. In the very rush and roar, in the ceaseless hum and murmur and groaning, there was epitomized the eager fever of life, its joys and its pains. Here, after all, was life. And it was life that Dick had come to taste. ”