(_Omitted from the final sketch of him._)
True, hardly to-day art thou what formerly thou wast. Thou thyself
sometimes hintest that thy decline has even more than begun. With which
confession for warrant some there be--alas for them! who in private are
not slow to contribute confirmatory words and enlarge thereon.
‘Failing?’ says one. ‘To be sure! And how manifest the signs. In July
you see him parrying the sun with his big white umbrella green-line;
nevertheless, ere the straw hats yet begin to disappear from the
promenade, reassuming his slouched felt sombrero he betakes himself to
the street’s sunny side.’ ‘I have noted that,’ says another; ‘but--will
you believe it?--late I espied him musing on a shaded bench in Madison
Square; in the forenoon it was, too, not far from a seated file of
disreputable nondescripts, non-producers in deplorable attire, plunged
in lugubrious reveries on their doubtless misspent lives. Yes, and
presently he rose, and after looking about him went straight up to a
solitary old vagabond, and standing before him seemed making personal
inquiries of him, and concluded by putting hand in pocket and bestowing
something upon him. Now seems not that an indication of impaired
senses?--deliberately to put a premium on improvidence and
thriftlessness, or worse?’ ‘You go a little too far there,’ observes a
middle-aged merchant and vestryman, the comfortable president of a
charity; ‘the Major was always benevolent, as officially I have reason
to know, always benevolent, but too often, as I hear, unsystematically
so; and this unwisdom may very likely increase with years. But I hardly
thought that he had any way so far decayed in his sense of what is
beseeming in a gentleman whatever his years, as publicly to idle, and in
business hours, and in such vicinity as you mention. Besides, those
Madison Square benches so frequented by the untidy, how can some of them
be otherwise than infected, yes, and with vermin. Dear me,’ in a tone of
real concern, ‘it were almost enough to banish him from respectable
society were it not the esteemed Major and the Dean.’
‘And with a warm deposit at his bank, too; forget not that, my good
sir,’ gravely observed a waggish young berry-brown cynic in yachtsman’s
attire, secretly amused at all this. Whereat the respectable vestryman
with some severity, ‘Sir, that has nothing to do with the matter. This
is America, Christian America, thank God; where, be it what it may,
one’s bank account is of no account whatever in an American’s estimate
of a fellow American.’ Upon which the elders cast a quiet glance toward
the young gentleman, significant of their sense that he had been justly
rebuked; and the rebuked wag, as conscious of the fact, assumed a
contrite demeanour into which, however, he contrived to infuse a twinkle
of irony.
‘I was at Mrs. Jones’s dinner,’ volunteered another sexagenarian in an
arrested stage of development between the ear and the silk purse; ‘I was
at Mrs. Jones’s dinner the other evening--and, by the way, there was
twenty-three million represented by the group, twenty-three million
dollars, think of that, so I computed it--and between certain parties
there was some random talk about Major Gentian, to the effect that he
did well in resigning his place as a leading director of the Dime
Savings Bank, considering that he had generally outlived his
usefulness.’
‘The Major ought to have an attendant,’ says a sunken-cheeked,
heron-legged bachelor of uncertain years, a sort of man the natural
product of the clubs and club-life, so at least the moralising enemies
of clubs would doubtless maintain; ‘he ought to have an attendant, at
any rate it will come to that before long. Tom Dutcher tells me that at
Newport last season, instead of sedately sitting in white waistcoat and
armchair on piazza talking stocks and dividends like most respectable
old worthies of his kind, the Major more than ever before took to
skylarking with those immature little specimens of humanity,
obstreperous enough of themselves, Malthusian superfluities of the
household, the chastisement of intemperate wedlock, and the bane, as we
all have experienced, of many summer resorts. But you know second
childhood has a natural affinity for the first.’
‘To be sure!’ chimes in a young Crœsus of complexion pink and white,
recently returned from a four-in-hand coaching trip in Scotland. ‘To be
sure! And how tediously, too, does he repeat in the smoking-room of the
_Come-and-Goes_, where he occasionally resorts, his musty old romances
of travel, and every version varies from the other. His memory is like
wares at the auction--_going, going_, and anon it will be _gone_.’
‘Yes,’ says yet another, ‘I was talking with him at the ‘Windsor’
yesterday, and his sporadic ideas were like fishing smacks lost in a
Newfoundland fog.’
‘Very much so,’ solemnly remarks a clerical-looking citizen, a
politician high in municipal office; ‘very much so indeed. But have you
observed one little circumstance, gentlemen, and weighed its
significance as a marked symptom--at least some of it--of that
irreparable change that, alas, comes with years? Major Gentian, though a
soldier on the right side in the war, besides being of double
Revolutionary descent--so I am told--nevertheless is far from being that
sanguine New Yorker he used to be, and which in true patriotism we are
all bound to be? What is this, I would like to know, but the natural
optimist doting into the deplorable pessimist.’
Indeed, Dean, but they do cut and come again at thee, yes, even say
these things of thee and more. But never a Burgundian among them, our
Club harbouring none of that kidney. Outsiders they are, the profane;
the seniors, some of them, confirmed tipplers of tea, a decoction that
enlarges the spleen and warpest the brain, or lightly floating the
spirit for a while at last lands it in a dry place. However, I will not
gainsay these young roosters and old hens, since on some points upon
which they click-clock the basis of their talk is true enough. But in
the crooked mouth of the invidious, imparting its own twist to all it
utters, in effect even veracity lies. Fail thou yet mayest, Major, but
never degenerate. Thou mayest _outlive thy usefulness_ (execrable
phrase!) but never thy loving-kindness. To the last thou wilt be Jack
Gentian; not too dignified to be humane; a democrat, though less of the
stump than the heart. And should mortal decline come--which Heaven long
defer--and the Black Brunswicker lay siege to thee in thy bachelor
tower, thy compatriots, those who best know the true temper of thy
genial spirit, would still call thee _Jack_ as in the days of their
youth, and though debility should then tongue-tie thee, thou wouldst
still respond to them out of thy waning eyes.
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