WHILE I rejoiced in the thought that I might now, and so easily, become
a successful comic opera librettist, and a poet besides, still I found
myself for the most part in a very gloomy frame of mind. One of the
things that grieved me intensely, as I have said, was the sight of
bitter poverty and failure, and the fact that I personally was not one
of those solid commercial figures of which St. Louis was full at this
time. They filled the great hotels, the clubs, the mansions, the social
positions of importance. They were free, as I foolishly thought, to
indulge in all those luxuries and pleasures which, as I so sadly saw,
the poor were not privileged to enjoy, myself included. Just about that
time there was something about a commercial institution—its exterior
simplicity and bareness, the thrash of its inward life, its suggestion
of energy, force, compulsion and need—which invariably held me
spellbound. Despite my literary and artistic ambitions, I still
continued to think it essential, to me, and to all men for that matter
if they were to have any force and dignity in this world, that each and
every one should be in control of something of this kind, something
commercially and financially successful. And what was I—a pale sprout of
a newspaper man, possibly an editor or author in the future, but what
more?
At times this state of mind tended to make me irritable and even savage
instead of sad. I thought that my very generous benefactor, the great
McCullagh, ought to see what an important man I was and give me at once
the dramatic editorship free and clear of any other work, or at least
combine it with something better than mere reporting. I ought to be
allowed to do editorials or special work. Again, my mind, although
largely freed of Catholic and religious dogma generally and the belief
in the workability of the Christian ideals as laid down in the Sermon on
the Mount, was still swashing around among the idealistic maxims of
Christ and the religionists and moralists generally, contrasting them
hourly, as it were, with the selfish materialism of the day as I saw it.
Look at the strong men at the top, I was constantly saying to myself, so
comfortable, so indifferent, so cruelly dull. How I liked to flail them
with maxims excerpted from Christ! Those large districts south of the
business heart, along the river and elsewhere, which nightly or weekly
Wood, McCord and myself were investigating and which were crowded with
the unfit, the unsuccessful, the unhappy—how they haunted me and how I
attempted (in my mind, of course) to indict society and comfort them
with the poetic if helpless words of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on
the Mount: “Blessed are the poor,” etc. Betimes, interviewing one
important citizen and another, I gained the impression that they truly
despised any one who was poor, that they did not give him or his fate a
second thought; and betimes I was right—other times wrong. But having
been reared on maxims relative to Christian duty I thought they should
devote their all to the poor. This failure on their part seemed terrible
to me, for having been taught to believe in the Sermon on the Mount I
thought they—not myself, for instance—were the ones to make it work out.
Mr. McCullagh had begun sending me out of town on various news stories,
which was in itself the equivalent of a traveling correspondentship and
might readily have led to my being officially recognized as such if I
had remained there long enough. Trials of murder cases in St. Joseph and
Hannibal, threatened floods in lower Illinois, and train robberies
(common occurrences in this region, either between St. Louis and Kansas
City, or St. Louis and Louisville) made it necessary for me to make
arrangements with Hazard or Wood to carry on my dramatic work while I
went about these tasks; a necessity which I partly relished and partly
disliked, being uncertain as to which was the more important task to me.
However, I was far from satisfied. I was too restless and dissatisfied.
Life, life, life, its contrasts, disappointments, lacks, enticements,
was always prodding me. The sun might shine brightly, the winds of
fortune blow favorably. Nevertheless, though I might enjoy both, there
was always this undertone of something that was not happiness. I was not
placed right. I was not this, I was not that. Life was slipping away
fast (and I was twenty-one!). I could see the tiny sands of my little
life’s hourglass sifting down, and what was I achieving? Soon the
strength time, the love time, the gay time, of color and romance, would
be gone, and if I had not spent it fully, joyously, richly what would
there be left for me then? The joys of a mythical heaven or hereafter
played no part in my calculations. When one was dead one was dead for
all time. Hence the reason for the heartbreak over failure here and now;
the awful tragedy of a love lost, a youth never properly enjoyed. Think
of living and yet not living in so thrashing a world as this, the best
of one’s hours passing unused or not properly used. Think of seeing this
tinkling phantasmagoria of pain and pleasure, beauty and all its sweets,
go by, and yet being compelled to be a bystander, a mere onlooker,
enhungered but never satisfied! In this mood I worked on, doing
sometimes good work because I was temporarily fascinated and
entertained, at other times grumbling and dawdling and moaning over what
seemed to me the horrible humdrum of it all.
One day, in just such a mood as this, I received the following final
letter from Alice, from whom I had not heard now in months:
“Dear Theo,
“Tomorrow is my wedding-day. Tomorrow at twelve. This may strike
you as strange. Well, I have waited—I don’t know how long—it has
seemed like years to me—for some word, but I knew it was not to
be. Your last letter showed me that. I knew that you did not
intend to return, and so I went back to Mr. ——. I had to. What
else have I to look forward to? You know how unhappy I am here
with my family, now that you are gone, in spite of how much they
care for me.
“Oh, Theo, you must think me foolish for writing this. I am
ashamed of myself. Still, I wanted to let you know, and to say
good-bye, for although you have been indifferent I cannot bear
any hard feelings toward you. I will make Mr. —— a good wife. He
understands I do not love him, but that I appreciate him.
Tomorrow I will marry him, unless—unless something happens. You
ought not to have told me that you loved me, Theo, unless you
could have stayed with me. You have caused me so much pain.
“But I must say good-bye. This is the last letter I shall ever
write you. Don’t send my letters now—tear them up. It is too
late. Oh, if you only knew how hard it has been to bring myself
to this!
“ALICE.”
I sat and stared at the floor after reading this. The pain I had caused
was a heavy weight. The implication that if I would come to Chicago
before noon of this day, or telegraph for her to delay, was too much.
What if I should go to Chicago and get her—then what? To her it would be
a beautiful thing, the height of romance, saving her from a cruel or
dreary fate; but what of me? Should I be happy? Was my profession or my
present restless and uncertain state of mind anything to base a marriage
on? I knew it was not.... I also knew that Alice, in spite of my great
sadness and affection for her, was really nothing more to me than a
passing bit of beauty, charming in itself but of no great import to me.
I was sad for her and for myself, saddest because of that chief
characteristic of mine and of life which will not let anything endure
permanently: love, wealth, fame. I was too restless, too changeful.
There rose before me a picture of my finances as compared with what they
ought to be, and of any future in marriage based on it. Actually, as I
looked at it then, it was more the fault of life than mine.
These thoughts, balancing with the wish I had for greater advancement,
caused me as usual to hesitate. But I was in no danger of doing anything
impulsive: there was no great impelling passion in this. It was mere
sentiment, growing more and more roseate and less and less operative. I
groaned inwardly, but night came and the next day, and I had not
answered. At noon Alice had been married, as she afterward told me—years
afterward, when the fire was all gone and this romance was ended
forever.
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