Suddenly he found himself wide awake. He had been lost in sleep,
dreamless and spaceless; and now, without warning, his slumber had left
him abruptly and for no reason that he could guess. Although he strained
his ear he caught the echo of no unusual sound. He listened in vague
doubt whether there might not be someone moving about in the apartment;
but he could hear nothing except the shrill creak of the brakes of a
train on the elevated railroad nearly a block away. Wilson Carpenter
was in the habit of observing his own feelings, and he was surprised
to note that he did not really expect to detect any physical cause for
his unexpected awakening. Sleep had left him as inexplicably as it had
swiftly.
He lay there in bed with no restlessness; he heard the regular breathing
of his wife, who was sleeping at his side; he saw the faint illumination
from the door open into the next room where the baby was also asleep.
He looked toward the window, but no ray of light was yet visible; and
he guessed it to be about four o'clock in the morning, perhaps a little
earlier. In that case he had not been in bed more than two or three
hours at the most. He wondered why he had waked thus unexpectedly, since
he had had a fatiguing day. Perhaps it was the excitement—there was
no doubt that he had had his full share of excitement that evening—and
he thrilled again as he recalled the delicious sensation of dull dread
yielding at last to the certainty of success.
He had played for a heavy stake and he had won. That was just what he
had been doing—gambling with fate, throwing dice with fortune itself.
That was what every dramatic author had to do every time he brought
out a new play. The production of a piece at an important New York
theatre was a venture as aleatory almost as cutting a pack of cards,
and the odds were always against the dramatist. And as the young man
quietly recalled the events of the evening it seemed to him that the
excitement of those who engineer corners in Wall Street must be like
his own anxiety while the future of his drama hung in the balance, only
theirs could not but be less keen than his, less poignant, for he was
playing his game with men and women, while what they touched were but
inanimate stocks. His winning depended upon the actors and actresses who
had bodied forth his conception. A single lapse of memory or a single
slip of the tongue, and the very sceptical audience of the first night
might laugh in the wrong place, and so cut themselves off from sympathy;
and all his labor would go for nothing, and all his hopes would shrivel
before his eyes. Of a truth it is the ordeal by fire that the dramatist
must undergo; and there had been moments that long swift evening when
he had felt as though he were tied to the stake, and awaiting only the
haggard squaw who was to apply the torch.
Now the trial was over and the cause was gained. There had been too
many war-pieces of late, so the croakers urged, and the public would
not stand another drama of the rebellion. But he had not been greatly
discouraged, for in his play the military scenes were but the setting
for a story of everyday heroism, of human conflict, of man's conquest
of himself. It was the simple strength of this story that had caught the
spectators, before the first act was half over, and held them breathless
as situation followed situation. At the adroitly spaced comic scenes
the audience had gladly relaxed, joyously relieving the emotional
strain with welcome laughter. The future of the play was beyond all
question; of that the author felt assured, judging not so much by the
mere applause as by the tensity of the interest aroused, and by the
long-drawn sigh of suspense he had heard so often in the course of the
evening. He did not dread the acrid criticisms he knew he should find
in some of the morning papers, the writers of which would be bitterer
than usual, since the writer of the new play had been a newspaper man
himself.
The author of "A Bold Stroke" knew what its success meant to him. It
meant a fortune. The play would perhaps run the season out in New York,
and this was only the middle of October. With matinées on Wednesday
as well as on Saturday, two hundred performances in the city were not
impossible. Then next season there would be at least two companies on
the road. He ought to make $25,000 by the piece, and perhaps more. The
long struggle just to keep his head above water, just to get his daily
bread, just to make both ends meet—that was over forever. He could move
out of the little Harlem flat to which he had brought his bride two
years before; and he could soon get her the house she was longing for
somewhere in the country, near New York, where the baby could grow up
under the trees.
The success of the play meant more than mere money, so the ambitious
young author was thinking as he lay there sleepless. It meant praise,
too—and praise was pleasant. It meant recognition—and recognition was
better than praise, for it would open other opportunities. The money
he made by the play would give him a home, and also leisure for thought
and for adequate preparation before he began his next piece. He had done
his best in writing the war-drama; he had spared no pains and neglected
no possibility of improvement; it was as good as he could make it.
But there were other plays he had in mind, making a different appeal,
quieter than his military piece, subtler; and these he could now risk
writing, since the managers would believe in him after the triumph of
"A Bold Stroke."
It would be possible for him hereafter to do what he wanted to do and
what he believed himself best fitted to do. It had always seemed to
him that New York opened an infinity of vistas to the dramatist. He
intended to seize some of this opulent material and to set on the stage
the life of the great city as he had seen it during his five years of
journalism. He knew that it did a man good to be a reporter for a little
while, if he had the courage to cut himself loose before it was too
late, before journalism had corroded its stigma. His reporting had taken
him into strange places now and again; but it had also taken him into
the homes of the plain people who make New York what it is. Society,
as Society was described in the Sunday papers, he knew little about,
and he cared less; he was not a snob, if he knew himself. But humanity
was unfailingly interesting and unendingly instructive; and it was more
interesting, and more instructive in the factories and in the tenements
than it was in the immense mansions on Lenox Hill.
His work as a reporter had not only sharpened his eyes and broadened his
sympathies; it had led him to see things that made him think. He had
not inherited his New England conscience for nothing; and his college
studies in sociology, that seemed so bare to him as an undergraduate,
had taken on a new aspect since he had seen for himself the actual
working of the inexorable laws of life. To sneer at the reformers
who were endeavoring to make the world better had not been easy for
him, even he was straining to achieve the false brilliance of the
star-reporter; and now that he was free to say what he thought, he was
going to seize the first opportunity to help along the good cause, to
show those rich enough to sit in the good seats in the theatre that the
boy perched up in the gallery in his shirt-sleeves was also a man and
a brother.
The young playwright held that a play ought to be amusing, of course,
but he held also that it might give the spectators something to think
about after they got home. He was going to utilize his opportunity to
show how many failures there are, and how many there must be, if the
fittest is to survive, and how hard it is to fail, how bitter, how
pitiful! With an effort he refrained from saying out loud enough to
waken his wife the quotation that floated back to his memory:
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
His own success, now it had come, found him wondering at it. He was a
modest young fellow at bottom, and he really did not know why he had
attained the prize so many were striving to grasp. Probably it was due
to the sturdiness of the stock he came from; and he was glad that his
ancestors had lived cleanly and had left him a healthy body and a sober
mind. His father and his mother had survived long enough to see him
through college and started in newspaper work in New York. They had been
old-fashioned in their ways, and he was aware that they might not have
approved altogether of his choice of a profession, since it would have
seemed very strange to them that a son of theirs should earn his living
by writing plays. Yet he grieved that they had gone before he was able
to repay any of the sacrifices they had made for him; it was the one
blot on his good fortune that he could not share it with them in the
future.
The future! Yes, the future was in his power at last. As he lay there in
the darkness he said to himself that all his ambitions were now almost
within his grasp. He was young and well educated; he had proved ability
and true courage; he had friends; he had a wife whom he loved and who
loved him; his first-born was a son, already almost able to walk. Never
before had his prospects appeared so smiling, and never before had he
foreseen how his hopes might be fulfilled. And yet, now as he thought
of the future, for the first time his pulse did not beat faster. When it
was plain to him that he might soon have the most of the things he cared
for, he found himself asking whether, after all, he really did care for
them so much. He was happy, but just then his happiness was passive.
The future might be left to take care of itself all in good time. He
was wide awake, yet he had almost the languor of slumber; it surprised
him to find himself thus unenergetic and not wanting to be roused to
battle, even if the enemy were in sight. He thought of the Nirvana that
the oriental philosophers sought to gain as the final good; and he asked
himself if perhaps the West had not still something to learn from the
East.
Afar, in the silence of the night, he heard the faint clang of an
ambulance-bell, and he began to think of the huge city now sunk in
slumber all around him. He had nearly four million fellow-citizens; and
in an hour or two or three they would awaken and go forth to labor. They
would fill the day with struggle, vying one with another, each trying to
make his footing secure; and now and again one of them would fall and be
crushed to the ground. They would go to bed again at night, wearied out,
and they would sleep again, and waken again, and begin the battle again.
Most of them would take part in the combat all in vain, since only a few
of them could hope to escape from the fight unvanquished. Most of them
would fall by the wayside or be trampled under foot on the high road.
Most of them would be beaten in the battle and would drop out of the
fight, wounded unto death. And for the first time all this ceaseless
turmoil and unending warfare seemed to him futile and purposeless.
What was victory but a chance to engage again in the combat? To win
to-day was but to have a right to enter the fray again to-morrow. His
triumph that evening in the theatre only opened the door for him; and if
he was to hold his own he must make ready to wrestle again and again.
Each time the effort would be harder than the last. And at the end,
what? He would be richer in money, perhaps, but just then money seemed
to have no absolute value. He would do good perhaps; but perhaps also
he might do harm, for he knew himself not to be infallible. He would
not be more contented, he feared, for he had discovered already that
although success is less bitter than failure, it rarely brings complete
satisfaction. If it were contentment that he really was seeking, why
not be satisfied now with what he had won? Why not quit? Why not step
out of the ranks and throw down his musket and get out of the way and
leave the fighting to those who had a stomach for it?
As he asked himself these questions a gray shroud of melancholy was
wrapped about him and all the brightness of youth was quenched in him.
Probably this was the inevitable reaction after the strain of his long
effort. But none the less it left him looking forward to the end of his
life and he saw himself withered and racked with pain; he saw his young
wife worn and ugly, perhaps dead—and the ghastly vision of the grave
glimpsed before him; he saw his boy dead also, dead in youth; and he
saw himself left alone and lonely in his old age, and still struggling,
struggling, struggling in vain and forever.
Then he became more morbid even and he felt he was truly alone now, as
every one of us must be always. He loved his wife and she loved him,
and there was sympathy and understanding between them; but he doubted if
he really knew her, for he felt sure she did not really know him. There
were thoughts in his heart sometimes that he was glad she did not guess;
and no doubt she had emotions and sentiments she did not reveal to him.
After all, every human being must be a self-contained and repellent
entity; and no two of them can ever feel alike or think alike. He and
his wife came of different stocks, with a different training, with a
different experience of life, with different ideals; and although they
were united in love, they could not but be separate and distinct to all
eternity. And as his wife was of another sex from his, so his boy was
of another generation, certain to grow up with other tastes and other
aspirations.
Wilson Carpenter's marriage had been happy and his boy was all he could
wish,—and yet—and yet—Is this all that life can give a man? A little joy
for the few who are fortunate, a little pleasure, and then—and then—For
the first time he understood how it was that a happy man sometimes
commits suicide. And he smiled as he thought that if he wished to choose
death at the instant of life when the outsider would suppose his future
to be brightest, now was the moment. He knew that there ought to be a
revolver in the upper drawer of the table at the side of the bed. He
turned gently; and then he lay back again, smiling bitterly at his own
foolishness.
A heavy wagon rumbled along down the next street, and he heard also the
whistle of a train on the river-front. These signs of returning day did
not interest him at that moment when—so it seemed to him, although he
was aware this was perfectly unreasonable—when he was at a crisis in
his life.
Then there came to him another quatrain of Omar's, a quatrain he had
often quoted with joy in its stern vigor and its lofty resolve:
So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff—you shall not shrink.
And youth came to his rescue again, and hope rose within him once more;
and his interest in the eternal conflict of humanity sprang up as keen
as ever.
The mood of craven surrender passed from him as abruptly as it had come,
leaving him older, and with a vague impression as though he had had a
strange and unnatural experience. He knew again that life is infinitely
various, and that it is worth while for its own sake; and he wondered
how it was that he had ever doubted it. Even if struggle is the rule
of our existence in this world, the fight is its own reward; it brings
its own guerdon; it gives a zest to life; and sometimes it even takes
the sting from defeat. The ardor of the combat is bracing; and fate is
a foeman worthy of every man's steel.
So long as a man does his best always, his pay is secure; and the
ultimate success or failure matters little after all, for though he be
the sport of circumstance, he is the master of himself. To be alone
even—in youth or in age—is not the worst thing that can befall, if a
man is not ashamed of the companionship of his own soul. If his spirit
is unafraid and ready to brave the bludgeon of chance, then has man a
stanch friend in himself, and he can boldly front whatever the future
has in store for him. Only a thin-blooded weakling casts down his
weapons for nothing and flees around the arena; the least that a man of
even ordinary courage can do is to stand to his arms and to fight for
his life to the end.
Wilson Carpenter had no idea how long it was that he had been lying
awake motionless, staring at the ceiling. There were signs of dawn now,
and he heard a cart rattle briskly up to the house next door.
Perhaps his wife heard this also, for she turned and put out one arm
caressingly, smiling at him in her sleep. He took her hand in his,
gently, and held it. Peace descended upon him and his brain ceased to
torment itself with the future or with the present, or with the past.
He was conscious of no effort not to think, nor indeed of any
unfulfilled desire on his part. It seemed to him that he was floating
lazily on a summer sea, not becalmed but bound for no destination. And
before he knew it, he was again asleep.