Percival Pollard

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man's life was a man's life, and what was the use of cavilling at facts! The only thing to do was to take life lightly and to let nothing matter. Also, one must amuse oneself! If the manner of the amusement was distasteful or hurtful to others, why—so much the worse for the others!
So musing, Laurence Stanley passed into a light slumber, and dreamed of impossible virtues.
But Dick Lancaster, who, from the sofa beyond the curtains, had heard all of this conversation, did not dream of pleasant things that night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Andrews, and Lancaster's love of incognito was not disturbed. Sometimes the artist would disappear for days; a fishing-boat would be his hope for the time, and he would drink in the free winds of the sea, and the passing joy of that toilsome life of the fishermen. The winds and the freshness of the life were like a tonic to him, but he knew that it would presently pall and he would give way to the fever for the metropolitan whirlpool.
Occasionally Miss Leigh preferred to remain in her apartments, leaving Mrs. Stewart to stroll along the links alone with the young artist. ”

“ It reminds him of his own youth: all tears and sunshine. Today there are neither tears or sunshine; it is all just contemplation. I don't seem to belong to the play at ail, any more, myself; I'm merely a spectator. To the spectator there is always something pathetic about joy."
"Your lunch was indigestable, that's all that is the matter with you," laughed Dick. "It's a dogma of mine that pessimism is merely another word for indigestion."
"Dogma!" sighed Stanley, "Don't you know that all dogmas are obsolete? ”

“ Happiness, indeed, lies nearer to man in one of these small, serene villages, than anywhere else in the world, save in solitude; but it is rarely that man sees the sleeping beauty that he has sought all his life long. Dick, as he walked along toward the Ware house that splendid afternoon, caught something of the warm, comfortable languor that was in the air, and looked about him with a note of regret in his regard. ”

“ He liked the comfort, the remoteness from the mere vagaries of the weather, that this town life afforded. Here was a night such as in the country would be dismal unspeakably; yet nothing but brilliance and enjoyment was evident in his present surroundings.
He threw his shoulders back with something of proud pleasure in his own well-being, as he handed his cape and opera-hat to the caretaker. Yes, life was good! It tasted well, and he was young, and there would yet be many long, delicious draughts of it!
Mrs. Stewart was in her box. ”

“ Men liked her at first invariably; there was something refreshing and stimulating in the nonchalance with which she tabooed no subject from her conversation; they said to themselves that this was a person, thank goodness, whom one did not eternally have to consider in the light of a sex, but rather of a sexless cleverness. But, somehow or other, her cleverness wearied presently; she palled as all surfaces must inevitably pall. Wooton, however, turned to her because she was of his own special calibre—all cleverness, and no apparent sharply defined system of conduct. ”

“ Vanstruther turned to Dick and said to him, with a smile at Mrs. Stewart, "You may find eccentric people here, Lancaster, but you will never find unpleasant ones."
"That's where Mrs. Stewart makes the inevitable mistake," drawled Wooton. "There should be one or two unpleasant ones, merely for the sake of the others. If it were not for the unpleasant people in the world, it would hardly be worth while being the other kind."
"You're as unpleasant as need be," was Mrs. Stewart's reply.
"Delighted!" murmured Wooton. "To have done a duty is always a delight. ”

“ The world is a magnet that draws all the men of courage; it sucks their talents and their virtues and spews them forth, as often as not into the waters of oblivion. To swim ashore needs wonderful strength! Here in the calmer waters we are but tame fellows; we miss most of the prizes, but, we also miss the dangers. Perhaps, some day, Dick, you'll come back to us again? ”

“ Dick, wouldn't it be great if you could go along?"
"It would, for a fact," he assented, "but it's too good to be true. Besides I'm going to have some fun of my own!"
"Your work, you mean?"
"Yes. Isn't it fun to succeed? And I'm going to succeed! The fighting for success will be fun, and the victory will be fun!" His eyes flashed with a fierce battle-light. Today this fire of ambition is the only thing that at all takes the place of the blood fervor that spurred on the knights of the olden times. "Dorothy," he said, presently, with a sudden softness in his voice, "will you wish me luck?" ”

“ Vehicles are unhitched; there are some moments of wild shouting and maneuvering, and then the stream of humanity and horses pours out into the dusty road, and in a little while the fair grounds are merely a place for the ghosts of the things that were.
When it was all over, when he had said goodbye to Miss Ware and her mother, a sense of loneliness came over Dick, and he sank into one of those moody states that nowadays invariably meant torment. ”

“ A trifle tired with her walk, Miss Ware hailed the sight of this spot with unfeigned gladness. Wooton spread his top-coat for her. Sitting there, in the silence made voiceful by the rustling of the pines, Wooton felt his heart beat faster than it had in years. She was pretty, this girl; her voice was so caressing, and her presence and manner such a charm! Young enough, too, to be taught many things. ”

“ Carriages were arriving every moment; the bystanders and ticket scalpers caught glimpses of light hose and dainty opera shoes and skirts that were lifted for an instant. Men in black capes were hurrying about busily. The cable cars emptied load after load of well-dressed men and women. All the world and his wife was going to the opera.
Dick Lancaster, as he got out of his hansom, looked appreciatively at the picture that all this hurrying throng made, and shaking some of the rain drops off his coat, entered the opera house. ”

“ We, who sit here, are all men who know the world we live in; we will treat Belden himself as we have always done. We will even argue, in that exaggerated spirit of broadness that might better be called laxness, typical of our time, that the man has done a braver thing than ourselves had courage for had the temptation come to us. We will acknowledge that his motive was a good one. He honestly believes that he will educate the girl into the higher life. He thinks the past can be sunk into the pit of forgetfulness; but there is no pit deep enough to hide the past. ”

“ I know how vile a man may be; be a woman only half as weak, or half as 'new,' and she is a thing for loathing."
"Hush! What a conventional man it is, after all. Always the same old tune, one thing for the man, another for the woman! Listen: I know Dorothy Ware, better, perhaps, than you do; I know her later self, you only know her as a child. There are great points of similarity between you two. She has much of your absurd sensitiveness; self-torment is one of her vices. She is very much given to making mountains out of molehills. ”

“ The only difference between a woman with a past and a man of the same sort is that the man still has a future before him. And a man with a future is as pathetic as a little boy chasing a butterfly: even if he wins the game, there is nothing but a corpse, and some dust on his fingers."
Belden, turning the pages of the Murger, said, deprecatingly, "Don't get Stanley started on moral reflections: in the first place, they are not moral; in the second place they reflect nothing but his own perverted soul. ”

“ The universal solution of the difficulty is the practice of superficiality. Skim! Be light! Never penetrate below the surfaces! Never search the deep! Make love as if it were a tourney of jests; die as if it were a riddle well guessed! Be scintillantly versatile, rather than thorough; hide your ignorance with bland blasédom; treat tragedy as an intruder, comedy as a chum, and as a reward you will be called 'up-to-date.' Nay, more: your fashionable friends may even mispronounce French in your behalf and dub you fin de siècle! ”

“ But to neither of these two spectators did the events of the program seem the most interesting of the displays. It was the country people themselves that had the most of quaint charms. Miss Dorothy Ware was become so saturated with the polish of cosmopolitan views, and the manners caught from extensive travel, that these scenes, once so familiar and natural, now struck her as very strange and extraordinary. In Dick the air of the metropolis had so keyed him up to the quick, unwholesome pleasures of the urban mob that this breath of country holiday filled him with a pleasant sense of rest. ”

“ I find that it conserves one's pessimism to enjoy the company of one's fellow-creatures. Will you excuse me, I see that man Wreath coming over here. I really can't stand him. He always remarks to me, sorrowfully, 'Ah, Mr. Stanley, I'm very much afraid you're not in earnest!' Why, the man himself's an eternal warning against being in earnest. There's nothing that spoils the look of a person's mouth so much as earnestness."
In truth, at that moment, just after Stanley had deftly slipped away, Mr. Wreath had solemnly greeted the artist. "You have shown great talent, Mr. Lancaster, great talent. ”