Montague leaned back in the taxicab and, enjoying that sense of
contentment almost invariably engendered by a smooth-running vehicle,
allowed his mind to browse in the meadows of memory.
It was a process which gave him considerable pleasure, for he was a man
who respected his own accomplishments--though given to satirical
comment on those of others. Satisfaction with his past had bred in him
a contentment with the present.... And he never doubted the future; for
was not to-morrow merely to-day carried on?
There were many reasons tending towards his peace of mind. One: that he
was twenty-eight years of age. At such a period in a man's life he
meets older men on a footing of equality, and younger men with
patronage. Women of all ages admire him, and their husbands ask him to
lunch at their clubs. There is no age more gratifying to the vanity.
The man of twenty-eight is an Ambassador of Youth meeting the
Plenipotentiaries of Age as an equal.
Unfortunately for Dennis Montague, he allowed his own excellent opinion
of himself to deepen with the admiration of others until it completely
outstripped all rivals. At twenty-six he had his first great love
affair--with himself. At twenty-eight it had ripened into a sort of
reverence. Occasionally he flirted with women, but such incidents were
mere inconstancies, peccadillos, which never seriously threatened his
own overwhelming _affaire d'amour_.
Born in Ottawa, Dennis was the son of an ambitious mother and a
high-placed Government official. Educated for the law, he had applied a
dexterous intellect to that noble and musty study, and had succeeded in
having himself called to the Bar when he was twenty-three. Up to that
time he had known no other civilization than that found in the capital
of his native land, where a peer of the realm, graciously appointed by
the Imperial Government to act as interpreter between the Mother
Country and the Dominion of Canada, regularly spends his appointed term
at the Government House, thereby stimulating Ottawa's social activities
to fever-heat. It even produces a philosophy of its own among the
capital's tuft-hunters. For, even if _this_ governor-general doesn't
ask us to dinner, there's always a chance that the _next_ one will.
Montague became a noted figure in Ottawa's younger social set, and,
though he expressed contempt for all such things, found a certain
gratification in seeing his name appear constantly in the social
columns of the city's press. It was a soothing sensation to read the
chronicle of his adolescent activities.... Few people can resist a glow
of pleasure on seeing in the morning paper that they were where they
were the previous evening.
Even in the remotest rural districts of America the weekly journal
records that "Hank Wilson went over to Hiram Johnston's farm at Hen's
Creek to see his new barn. Hiram Johnston is one of the most
enterprising farmers that we got."
But--there is something solid about that barn.
After the legal profession had opened its portals to Montague he moved
to Toronto, accepting a junior partnership in a firm of some standing.
To his amazement, he found that in Toronto the _entrée_ into the best
circles--and he could not exist in any other--was more difficult than
in Ottawa. Though both cities had that reverence for wealth which is
universal, Toronto's large population made a sudden and successful
_début_ far from easy. There were so many sets--those who yachted,
danced, and golfed; those who danced and golfed; and those who merely
golfed. Montague decided that the last class was too fatiguing.
Then there were those extraordinary people who practiced the arts in an
amiable way. There is probably no city in the world where there exists
more comfortable talent than in Toronto. For a time music was the
occupation of musicians, but society embraced it, to the benefit of
them both, with the result that musical homes abound.
This worried Montague. The younger set in Ottawa knew no such
phenomena.
Looking farther afield, he next caught a glimpse of the University
family, an after-growth of the larger life of Toronto 'Varsity. But he
avoided that. His mind was dexterous, but needed lesser minds beside it
to give it the sparkle of contrast.
In desperation he turned to the purely _nouveaux riches_, only to
find that they had made entangling alliances with all the other
fraternities.
There was only one well untapped--the Canadian Militia; but his mind
rejected that at once. He had always agreed with Disraeli that
soldiering was fit only for fools in peace-time and for barbarians in
times of war.
He joined the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
His dinner-parties on the verandas of that beautiful place caused him
to be noticed. A friend of his introduced him to one of the society
reporters. He invited her to a dinner, and sent her home in a
limousine.
Toronto wavered. He was certainly good-looking, and had not the "_C'est
entendu_" column of one of the largest dailies recorded that "Mr.
Dennis Montague's dinner-parties at the Yacht Club have a----" followed
by several French words that were most impressive?
With the genius of a great general, he saw that the gates were
unlocked. Now for some stroke to thrust them open! For two months he
cogitated, and then one day it came to him with a flash, as ideas
occasionally present themselves to authors.
He engaged Mr. Sylvester as a valet. Toronto society surrendered
unconditionally.
It was not so much that Sylvester was a valet, but that he had a nice
appreciation of effect. Sometimes, when his master was playing tennis
on the lawns of the Yacht Club, the unobtrusive servant would be seen
patiently waiting outside the wire-screen, with a letter, or a
suit-case, or some verbal question concerning domestic economy.
Montague appeared annoyed and raised his salary.
But triumph is satisfying only if it leads to further victories; and
Dennis began to cast about for some _rôle_ which would distinguish
him from his fellows. The death of his father handed on to him a yearly
income which made his position secure; but he was not satisfied. It was
then that he learned to scoff.
It was an experiment at first, but an immediately successful one. His
brain, always keen and linked to a facile vocabulary, became focused on
the unlovely task of ridiculing life; and as he was ever careful not to
satirize the set with whom he was dining, his popularity became
tremendous. By a process of catalogue culture he was able to talk on a
variety of subjects; his method being that if one heard the waltz from
_La Bohème_, one was entitled to discuss Puccini. One of Brangwyn's
earlier efforts in a friend's house was sufficient basis for him to
pose as a judge of etchings. He read part of one book by a myriad of
writers, then discarding their works, held forth on the authors
themselves.
With young men of observant and creative minds there are two paths
which, early in life's journey, offer puzzling deviation. To follow one
(and to youth it seems the less attractive), a man must bend his
faculties to the discovering and the interpreting of the beauty of
life; the other leads to the annihilation of everything that is genuine
and that can be used as a target for cynicism. Montague chose the
second path, and spared nothing but himself.
Even when the war gripped the city, and one by one the little gods of
puny social life crashed impotently to destruction, he continued his
glittering way unperturbed. The war was young, and the 1st Canadian
Division was merely holding the line somewhere near a place called
Ypres.... The market for superficiality was still brisk.
The taxi came to a stop outside a lovely home in Chestnut Park, and,
paying the driver, Montague mounted the steps and rang the bell.
"I wonder," he mused, "who the deuce I shall have as a dinner partner?"