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THE MANHATTANERS
A Story of the Hour
by
EDWARD S. VAN ZILE
Author of
“A Magnetic Man,” “Last of the Van Slacks,”
etc., etc.
New York
Lovell, Coryell & Company
1895
Copyright, 1895,
By United States Book Company.
THE MANHATTANERS.
CHAPTER I.
“I don’t want to discourage you, my boy, but, as our ‘brevier writers’
are so fond of saying, there is ‘food for reflection’ in that historic
figure.”
It was half an hour after midnight, and two men were standing at the
south-west corner of City Hall park, gazing at the statue of Nathan
Hale. The taller of the two was a man who, having passed the portentous
age of forty, no longer referred to his birthday when he reached it.
He had maintained silence on this subject for several years, and his
friends were not certain whether he was forty-one or forty-five; but
his face seemed to indicate the latter age. It was a strong face,
marked with lines of care, perhaps of dissipation, and about the mouth
lurked an expression of discontent. That he had grown rather weary
of the battle of life was indicated by his dress, which possessed
that indefinable characteristic that may be expressed as careless
shabbiness. His beard was untrimmed, and a slouch hat covered a head
of iron-gray hair that would have been picturesque had it not been
constantly neglected.
His companion was a youth of not more than three-and-twenty, slender,
carefully attired, and with a delicately-moulded face that was
strikingly handsome when he smiled. He was showing his perfect teeth at
this moment, as he glanced first at the statue of the martyred hero,
and then at the sarcastic countenance of his companion.
“Why do you say that, Fenton? Surely there is inspiration in the
sight. Does not the figure prove that the time-worn slur regarding the
ingratitude of republics is false?”
“Hardly that, Richard--_Richard Cœur de Lion_ I shall dub you for
awhile. It simply shows that somebody, at a very late day, had an
attack of spasmodic sentimentality. There are other heroes of the
Revolution, who were as self-sacrificing and patriotic as Nathan
Hale, who are still forgotten by a republic that is grateful only
in spots. Immortality, my dear youngster, is, to a great extent, a
matter of chance. But, to waive that point, don’t you see how this
figure of enthusiastic youth, this doomed martyr--this complete
tie-up on Broadway, as a flippant friend of mine once called the
statue--illustrates the dangers that beset your path?”
“I must acknowledge,” answered Richard Stoughton good-naturedly, as he
placed his arm in Fenton’s and walked westward toward the Sixth Avenue
elevated station at Park Place, “I must acknowledge that I have seen
nothing in the park that tended to dampen my natural enthusiasm, unless
it was the sign, ‘Keep off the grass.’”
“That’s just it,” returned John Fenton in his deep, penetrating voice.
“That statue of Nathan Hale is what might be called an emphasis in
bronze of the warning,--a warning as old as human tyranny,--to keep
off the grass. Hale failed to obey it, and went to an early death.
Take warning, Richard, by the lesson the statue teaches. Don’t let your
dreamy and unpractical enthusiasm carry you into the enemy’s camp.
They’ll hang you if you do.”
“Your words are enigmatical,” commented Stoughton, as the two men
seated themselves in an elevated train bound up-town. “I had looked to
you for comfort and warmth, and you give me a shower-bath.”
“Poor boy!” smiled Fenton, less cynically than was his wont. “When
did the youthful warrior ever gain anything of value by consulting
the battle-scarred and defeated veteran? I have the decayed root of a
conscience somewhere that troubles me now and then. It gave a little
twinge just now, and causes me to doubt the wisdom and justice of my
effort to open your eyes to the truth.”
“But why,” asked the younger man earnestly, “should there be anything
to offend your conscience in telling me the truth?”
“Ah, there, my boy, you ask a question that the wisest men have
failed to answer. There are certain truths that the universe holds in
its secret heart and refuses to divulge. As a microcosm, every man
cherishes in his innermost being some bitter certainty that he must
defend from the gaze of the curious. If he draws the veil, even by a
hair’s-breadth, that exposed nerve known as conscience will throb for
an instant, and close his mouth.”
“But,” persisted the younger man, whose clear-cut face looked, in
contrast with his companion’s, like a delicate cameo beside a mediæval
gargoyle, “I had placed so much value on your advice and sympathy.”
“My sympathy you certainly have,” said Fenton rather harshly; “but
giving you my advice would be--to take a liberty with a time-honored
illustration--like casting swine among pearls. Is it not some
word-juggler, who uses epigrams to conceal the truth, who says that the
only vice that does not cling to youth is advice?”
Richard Stoughton’s face flushed, and his dark gray eyes glanced
questioningly at his companion.
“I sometimes think,” he said rather sadly, “that you are all brains and
no heart, John Fenton.”
“You are mistaken, my boy,” answered Fenton quickly. “In that case I
would have been a millionnaire long ago. I was afflicted with just
enough heart to hamper my brain. The result is that I’m an assistant
city editor in the prime of life, with a very short hill to roll down
to the grave. But never mind what I am, or what I might have been. You
are the only interesting personage present. You have come, like Nathan
Hale, out of the ‘Down East,’ so to speak, to New York, to offer your
youthful enthusiasm to a world that has too little of that sort of
thing; so little, in fact, that it immortalizes Hale’s sacrifice, and
forgets his mission.”
Fenton was silent for a moment.
“Just what do you mean by that last remark?” asked Richard gently.
“I mean that this great metropolitan community is suffering from a
tyranny greater than that against which Hale and his contemporaries
protested. I mean that we erect statues to-day to lovers of liberty,
to martyrs in the cause of freedom, while we blindly and submissively
bow our heads to a yoke more tyrannical than that which the House of
Hanover held over our forefathers. I mean that Nathan Hale died in
vain, unless his example shall inspire a generation yet to come to rise
against an oppression more unjust, more pervasive, and more impregnable
than any the world has ever seen.”
Richard Stoughton looked at his companion in amazement. Fenton’s face
was flushed, a baleful light gleamed in his large, heavy eyes, and he
seemed to be talking more to himself than to his companion. As they
left the train at Twenty-third Street and strolled eastward, the elder
of the two continued in a calmer tone,--
“You haven’t seen much of life, Stoughton. You will find it necessary
to repair, as rapidly as possible, the intellectual ravages of a
college education. The tendency of Yale life is to convince you at
graduation that you know everything. The experience of a few years in
metropolitan newspaper life will convince you that you know nothing.”
“And the last state of this man is happier than the first?”
interrogated Richard lightly.
“Alas, my boy, I fear not. But perhaps that may be a local issue,
a personal equation. I was more contented when I measured the
circumference of knowledge by the diameter of my own experience than
I am at present when I realize that what I know is so insignificant
that it has no mathematical value at all. But my experience has no
significance in connection with yours. The chances are that your career
will be very different from mine. I certainly hope that it will be. At
all events, you have the game to play, and the stakes are on the board.
I drew to good cards, but somebody else won the pot. But what of it?
There would be no fun in the game if everybody won and nobody lost.”
Fenton smiled as he stopped in front of a brilliantly lighted saloon,
and held out his hand to Richard Stoughton.
“Good-night, my boy, and good luck. I’ll do what I can for you on the
paper--and let me give you a word of advice, don’t believe all I say.
Somehow--and of course I’m sorry for it--I’ve got just a little romance
left in my composition, the ruins of a magnificent air-castle I once
built. It is sufficient for me to take an interest in the structure
you’re going to build on the firm foundation of youth, education,
enthusiasm, and natural cleverness. I’ll do what I can to add a stone
now and then to your castle, my boy. And so, good-night.”
The two men shook hands cordially, and Richard turned to hurry up-town
to his rooms in Twenty-eighth Street, when Fenton called him back.
“You understand, _Richard Cœur de Lion_, that it was not rudeness that
prevented my asking you to join me in a drink. I was thinking of your
castle, my boy. It’ll tumble about your head if you put alcohol in the
cellar. Good-night, old fellow. I must have some whiskey. Good-night.”