One morning, while Webb was still one with his little family, he read,
as was usual with him on the long ride down-town, his Harlem edition of
one of the New York dailies. He finished the news, the editorials, the
special articles: nothing was there to upset the equilibrium of his
life. His attention was attracted, as he was about to close the paper,
by a long leaded "story" of a ball given the night before by some people
named Webb. Their superior social importance was made manifest by the
space and type allotted them, by the fact that their function was not
held over for the Sunday issue, and by the imposing rhetoric of the
head-lines.
Andrew read the story with a feeling of personal interest. From that
moment, unsuspected by himself, the readjustment of his mind to other
interests began--the divorce of his inner life from the simple
conditions of his youth.
Thereafter he searched the Society columns for accounts of the doings of
the Webb folk. Thence, by a natural deflection, he became generally
interested in the recreations of the great world: he acquired a habit,
much to his sister's delight, of buying the weekly chronicles of
Society, and all the Sunday issues of the important dailies.
At first the sparkle and splendor, the glamour and mystery of the world
of fashion dazzled and delighted him. It was to him what fairy tales of
prince and princess are to children. For even he, prosaic, phlegmatic,
with nerves of iron and brain of shallows, had in him that germ of the
picturesque which in some natures shoots to high and full-flowered
ideals, in others to lofty or restless ambitions, coupled with a true
love of art; and yet again develops a weed of tenacious root and coarse
enduring fibre which a clever maker of words has named snobbery.
Gradually within Andrew's slow mind grew a dull resentment against Fate
for having played him so sinister a trick as to give him the husk
without the kernel, a title without a story that any one would ever
care to read. Why, when one of those Webb babies was due,--the family
appeared to be a large one,--could not his little wandering ego have
found its way into that ugly but notable mansion on Fifth Avenue instead
of having been spitefully guided to a New Jersey farm? Not that Andrew
expressed himself in this wise. Had he put his thoughts into words, he
would probably have queried in good terse English: "Why in thunder can't
I be Schuyler Churchill Webb instead of a nobody in Harlem? He's just my
age, and I might as well have been he as not."
His twenty-third birthday cake, prepared by loving hands, had scarcely
been eaten when the waves of snobbery first lapped his feet. At
twenty-five they had broken high above his head, and the surge was ever
in his ears. He was not acutely miserable: his health was too perfect,
his appetite too good. But deeper and deeper each week did he bury his
perplexed head in the social folk-lore of New York and Newport. Oftener
and oftener during the city season did he promenade central Fifth Avenue
from half-past four until half-past five in the afternoon of pleasant
days. He lived for the hour which would find him sauntering from
Forty-first Street to the Park and back again. He knew all the
fashionable men and women by sight. There was no one to tell him their
names, but the names themselves were more familiar than the rows of
figures in his books down-town. He fitted them to such presences as
seemed to demand them as their right. He grew into a certain intimacy
with the slender trimly accoutred girls who held themselves so erectly
and wore their hair with such maidenly severity. They were so different
in appearance from all the women he had known or seen, and from the
languishing creatures in his mother's cherished _Book of Beauty_, that
he came to look upon them as a race apart, which they were; as something
not quite human, which was a slander. As they stalked along so briskly
in their tailor-made frocks, their cheeks and eyes brilliant with
health, the average observer would have likened them to healthy
high-bred young race-horses.
On the whole, however, Andrew gave the full measure of his admiration to
the women who took their exercise less violently. When the spring came,
and the Park was green, he would stand in the plaza, surrounded by its
great hotels, the deep rumble of the avenue behind him, forgetting even
the phalanxes of tramping girls, with their accessories of boys and
poodles. Before him were the wide gates of the Park, the green wooded
knolls rolling away--almost to his home in Harlem. Just beyond the gates
was a bend in the driveway, and he never tired of watching the stream of
carriages wind as from a cavern and roll out to the avenue. The vivid
background claimed as its own those superb traps with their dainty
burdens of women who held their heads so haughtily, whose plumage was so
brilliant. The horses glittered and pranced. The parasols fluttered like
butterflies above the flower-faces beneath. Webb would stand entranced,
bitterly thankful that there was such a scene for him to look upon,
choking back a sob that he had no part in it.
When summer came and Society flitted to Newport, that paradise in which
he only half believed, he was more lonely and glum than the loneliest
and glummest and most _blasé_ clubman, who clung to his window because
he hated Newport and could not afford London. Quite accidentally, when
his infatuation was about three years old, he came into a singular
compensation. In the summer, during his ten days' vacation, when he was
tramping through the woods, he fell in with a party of Western people,
who manifested much interest in New York. To Andrew there was only one
New York, and with that his soul was identified. Insensibly, he began
to talk of New York Society as if it were part of his daily experience.
His careful, if restricted, study of its habits had made him
sufficiently familiar with it to enable him to deceive the wholly
ignorant. He described the people, their brilliant "functions," the
individualities of certain of its members. He talked freely of Ward
McAllister, and imitated that gentleman's peculiarities of thought and
speech, so familiar to the newspaper reader. For the time he deceived
himself as well as his hearers; and so fascinating did he find this
delusion, that he remained with the inquisitive and guileless party
until the end of his vacation. After that he made it a point each year
to attach himself to some party of tourists, and to tell them of New
York Society, plus Andrew Webb. He was not a liar in the ordinary sense
of the word. In his home and in the bank where he played his daily game
of give-and-take, his reputation for veracity was enviable. Every mortal
not an idiot has his day-dreams. Webb merely dreamed his aloud to an
audience. And these summers were the oases of his life.
He had one other pleasure equally keen. On the first day of each month
he dined at Delmonico's. In the beginning it meant the forfeit of his
usual stand-up luncheon, but he had decided that the cause was worthy
of the sacrifice. One evening, however, he lingered on upper Fifth
Avenue longer than usual, and entered late. The restaurant was crowded.
He stood at the door, hesitating, knowing that he would not be permitted
to seat himself at a table already occupied by even one person. Suddenly
a small common-looking little man came forward and touched his arm.
"Won't you share my table?" he said, effusively. "My name's Slocum, and
I've seen you here often. You mustn't go away. Come in."
Andrew gratefully accepted, and followed Mr. Slocum over to the little
table on the other side of the room.
"I say," said Slocum, after Webb had ordered his dinner, "I've hit on a
plan. It's been in my head for some time. How often do you come here?"
"Once a month."
"That's my game exactly. I'm a clerk on a small salary; but I must have
one good dinner a month, if I don't have my hair cut. Now, suppose we
dine together. One portion's enough for two, and the same dinner'll only
cost each of us half what it does now. See?"
Andrew did not take kindly to Mr. Slocum: the vulgar young man was so
different from the magnificent creatures about him. But the offer was
not to be ignored, and he closed with it. For the following three years,
until he was twenty-eight, he dined regularly at Delmonico's, and in
that rarefied atmosphere his head gently swam. He forgot the flat in
Harlem,--forgot that he was Andrew, not Schuyler Churchill Webb.