Some days had actually passed before Amber Severn read the “time-study”
on the subject of Platonic Friendship which had been confided to her by
her friend Josephine. She read the quickly written and vaguely worded
treatise with alternate smiles and frowns, and the last words that it
contained called for a very becoming rose mantle of blushes.
“It is so like Joe!” she muttered. “So very like Joe. And it’s all
wrong--all wrong!”
She had thrown herself in her dressing-gown on the sofa in her
dressing-room hoping to have half an hour’s doze before dressing to
go out to dinner; and she had found the document in the pocket of the
luxurious garment of quilted satin and lace which suited her so well
that her maid had often lamented the fact that the _convenances_ of
modern English Society precluded her being seen within its folds by any
one except her mother and her maid.
“It is so like Joe! And it is meant as a commentary upon my friendships.
But it is wrong--wrong!” This was her thought as she lay back upon the
sofa, until the pillows among which she had thrown herself surged up all
about her as though they were billows of the sea.
And then, instead of going asleep, she began to review three or four
of the friendships which she had formed during the past few
years--friendships which might easily have degenerated into quite
another feeling, if they had not been built on a foundation very
different from that which Josephine West had assumed to be the basis of
friendship according to Plato.
There was Arthur Galmyn for instance. He and she had become very
friendly when they had first met the year before. He had been at Oxford
with her brother and had won one of those pernicious prizes which are
offered for the best poem of the year--to be more exact, for the poem
which is most highly approved of by the adjudicating authorities of the
University. She quickly perceived that the effect of winning this
prize was, upon young Mr. Galmyn, most disquieting; for he had actually
settled down as a poet on the strength of winning it.
Instead of saying, “I have written the poem which has met with the
approval of the most highly graduated pedants in the world, therefore
I am no poet,” he assumed that pedant was another word for prophet, and
that their judgment had conferred immortality upon him and perhaps even
upon themselves; for whenever his name came to be spoken in the awful
whisper which people employ in mentioning the name of a poet, the names
of the adjudicators of the prize would also be mentioned.
He hoped to go through life writing poetry--not the poetry which appears
on a Christmas card or imprinted on the little ship which never loses
the curl that is originally gained by being enwound about the almond in
the after dinner cracker--not even the poetry which is sung, when wedded
to melody, by the light of a piano candle,--no; but that form of poetry
which is absolutely an unsalable commodity in the public market--unless
it was of that high quality which appeared over the signature of Alençon
Hope to which Amber had frequently called the inattention of her father.
It was just when he was in this critical position that he came under
the influence of Amber Severn. They had become ostentatiously Platonic
friends. To be sure he had, after their second meeting, addressed to
her a sonnet written in exquisite accordance with the true Petrarchian
model, embodying a fervent hope in the last line of the sextett--the
two quatrains (each ending with a semicolon) had been mainly
descriptive--but she had explained to him that she would take a lenient
view of this action on his part, if he would promise to do his best to
resist in the future the inspiration which had forced him into it.
He had promised her all that she asked; but he gave her to understand
that he did so only through fear of alienation from her.
“I shrink from life from Amber alienate,”
was the last line of the sonnet which he promptly composed after she
had lectured him; and then he had settled down into that graceful
philosophical friendship with her, which had sent him on the Stock
Exchange before three months had elapsed.
It took three months to convince him that she was quite right in her
suggestion that instead of spending the best years of his life writing
poetry, having nothing to look forward to beyond the perpetual
struggle of trying to live within the four hundred pounds a year which
represented all his private means, he should endeavour to make a career
for himself in some direction where his undoubted gifts of imagination
would be appreciated--say the Stock Exchange.
“My dear Arthur,” she had said, “what I fear most for you is the
possibility of your making a mercenary marriage. You know as well as I
do that it would be ridiculous for you to marry on your present income,
and I know your nature sufficiently well to be convinced that you
would never be happy so long as you felt that your wife’s fortune was
supporting you. Don’t you agree with me?”
He thought that she took too narrow a view of the conditions under which
he could be happy; but he thought it better to nod his acquiescence in
the flattering estimate which she had formed of his nature.
“I knew you would agree with me,” she said. “And that’s why I urge upon
you this step.” (The step she urged upon him was the Stock Exchange
Steps.) “You will have to study hard at first, and I believe that you
must begin by trusting nobody--especially avoiding every one who wants
to be your friend; but by this means you will eventually gain not only
a competence--not only complete independence, but such a Fortune as will
make you a Power in the world, and then--well, then you can marry any
one you please.”
Although the poem which he considered the best that he had ever written
was one in praise of a young woman who had remained true to her love for
a poet without a penny, in the face of the opposition of her parents who
wished her to wed a very rich person in a good paying business, he said
he was sure that she was right, and he would give her his promise to buy
a twenty-five shilling silk hat the very next day: that being, as he
was informed, the first step necessary to be taken by any one with
aspirations after financial success.
He had an idea that, after all, he had underrated the practical outlook
of the modern young woman. Could it be possible, he asked himself, that
after all the penniless poet who wrote on the Petrarchian model, was a
less attractive figure in the eyes of a girl--even of a girl who
could not be seen by any one without suggesting the thoughts of a
flower--perhaps a lily--than the man with a million invested in various
excellent securities?
He feared that it was impossible for him to arrive at any other
conclusion than this one which was forced upon him; and the worst of the
matter was that he found that all his sympathies were on the side of the
modern young woman, although he would have died sooner than withdraw a
single line of the poem which he had written holding up to admiration
the young woman who refused to leave her penniless poet for the man of
millions.
He bought a fine silk hat the next day, and forthwith wrote a series
of rondeaux bidding farewell to the Muse. He felt that such an act of
renunciation on his part demanded celebration on the analogy of the
Lenten Carnival. But when his days of riotous indulgence in all the
exotic forms of French verse had come to an end, he gave himself up to
a consideration of his bank book and found to his amazement that his
accumulations including a legacy of two thousand pounds which he had
received from the executors of his godmother, amounted to close upon
four thousand pounds.
For over two years his account had been increasing, the trustees of the
estate of his father (deceased) having been in the habit of lodging the
quarterly payments of his income (less expenses) to his credit, and yet
he was receiving no penny of interest on all this money.
He was innocent enough to ask the young man at the bank how it was that
no circular had been sent to him letting him know that his account was
overgrown. If it had been overdrawn he would have been informed of the
fact.
The young man had only smiled and said that he was sure the matter
had been overlooked; for there was nothing that the bank found so
embarrassing as large balances bearing no interest.
In the course of a few weeks he would have blushed to ask such a
question as he had put to the clerk. He began to study the methods of
finance for the first time and had almost mastered the art embodied in a
gold mine prospectus--it is the Petrarchian Sonnet of the money
market--before he had been a month at the work. By a rigid attention to
Amber’s precept of placing the most implicit distrust in every one
connected with finance, he had made a very good start for himself.
His principle was an excellent one. He made several friends among those
disinterested financiers who give advice gratis as to what stocks to buy
and he had never failed to act contrary to the tips which they had given
him; so that when a few days later, they came to him with assumed long
faces and frank admissions of fallibility in the past but of promises
of certainty for the future, he had shown them that he was made of the
stuff that goes to the composition of a real financier by being in no
way put out; and disdaining to level a single reproach at them.
“Distrust your best friend,” was the motto which he placed in a
conspicuous place on his mantelpiece, and by observing it he had made
some hundreds of pounds in the course of a few weeks.
And then he made a stroke; for on hearing from a great authority on the
Stock Exchange that there was going to be no war in the Transvaal, and
that those rumours regarding strained relations between that State
and Great Britain were simply due to the fact that some members of the
Cabinet had given orders to their brokers to buy up for them all South
African Stock the moment that it fell to a certain figure--on hearing
this on so excellent an authority, Mr. Galmyn had felt so sure that
war was imminent that he did not hesitate for a moment in joining a
syndicate for the purchase of the full cinematograph rights in the
campaign.
When the war became inevitable he sold out his shares at a profit of two
hundred per cent., and the next week he learned that the War Office had
prohibited all cinematographers from joining the troops ordered to South
Africa.
He rubbed his hands and felt that he was a born financier.
For some months after, he had been content, Amber knew, with very small
earnings, consequently his losses had been proportionately small; and
yet now, as she lay back upon her sofa she recalled with pride (she
fancied) that he had never written to her a single sonnet. He had never
once given expression to a sentiment that would bear to be construed
into a departure from the lines of that friendship which was the ideal
of Plato.
And yet Josephine could write that “time-study” suggesting that such an
ideal was impracticable if not absolutely unattainable!
She lost all patience with her friend.