“Meeting strangers at a musicale is not always a pleasant experience.
If you are musical, the people bore you; if you are sociable, the music
bores you.”
So John Fenton had said to Richard Stoughton, when the latter had
made his first effort to perform a miracle and obtain the former’s
acceptance in advance of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s invitation.
“But you owe me this reparation, Fenton,” Richard had urged. “When you
gave me those books on the single-tax theory to read, did I hold off
and say that if I was indifferent the books would bore me, or, if I
became a convert, I would bore my friends? No; I made no excuses, but
read the books. Now I claim my reward. You have failed, after a fair
trial, to make me an advocate of the immediate establishment of the
millennium. Let me now have an equal chance of persuading you that the
best thing to do is to take the world as we find it, and enjoy the good
the gods provide.”
The two men were spending the hour after dinner in Fenton’s
bachelor-apartments. They had fallen into the way of dining together
whenever they were both free to do so; and their friendship, having
withstood the failure of Fenton’s effort to make the young man an
economic radical, had grown warmer as the weeks went by. In several
ways Fenton had derived considerable benefit from his close intercourse
with Stoughton. It had been remarked in the city room of the _Trumpet_
that Fenton had given up drinking cocktails, and that he had grown
particular about his attire. He no longer allowed his hair and beard to
show signs of neglect; and the reporters for the paper had said to each
other that the assistant editor did not seem to be quite as sarcastic
and testy as he had been in former times. But if any one had told
Fenton that a youth not long out of college, and of a mental make-up
that was dazzling rather than convincing, had been the active cause
in begetting certain reforms in his habits of life, the cynical and
time-scarred journalist would have considered his informant insane. The
strongest men are moulded and remoulded by their friends, but they are
seldom willing to acknowledge the fact.
After Richard’s last argument, Fenton had puffed his cigar in
silence for a time. But he was not thinking of what his companion
had just said. He had grown convinced from several remarks, dropped
inadvertently by his friend, that the young man had become very much
interested in Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. It was not within the possibilities
of their existing friendship for him to question Richard very closely
on this point; but he was extremely anxious to know the exact truth
of the matter. If he went to the musicale, he thought, he could see
for himself just how the affair stood, and would be the better able to
guide his own steps in the premises. It had been his passion, when a
young man, for a certain married woman, that had ruined John Fenton.
He had a well-grounded horror, therefore, of seeing Richard Stoughton
wrecking himself on the same rock that had caused his own downfall.
“You have stated your arguments very cleverly, Richard,” he had said,
after a time. “You sacrificed yourself on the altar of my books. I will
reciprocate by throwing myself under the juggernaut of your musicale.
But, understand me, you will be disappointed in the result. Society has
no allurements for me. I touched it at all points years ago, when I had
much more enthusiasm than I have now; and, I tell you, there is nothing
in it as a permanent amusement for a man of sense. What is a gathering
of people of fashion, at its best? Nothing more than a dress-parade
of more or less well-groomed men and women who revenge themselves for
boring each other in public by destroying each other’s characters in
private.”
“If you ever have time,” suggested Richard, smiling, “you should write
a novel, John. You have a way of scolding the universe with a kind of
epigrammatic fervor that might prove popular.”
“You flatter me, Richard, by the implied conviction that I have not yet
been flippant enough to produce a work of fiction. I don’t want you to
idealize me; so I might as well confess, that, years ago, when I was
about your age, I did write a novel.” Fenton looked at Richard with
an expression on his face that would have fitted the confession of a
crime. Then he stepped to a closet, and, after rumaging around for a
while, brought forth a dust-covered roll of manuscript.
“This,” he said, “is one of the little gravestones in my very large
cemetery of dead hopes and dreams.”
He brushed the dust off of the roll with almost reverent hand.
“I haven’t looked at this thing for years, Richard. I’d almost
forgotten about it, until you made that remark about my writing a
novel. I have a sort of indistinct idea that, in the storehouse of your
ambitions, you have high literary aspirations, more or less concealed
from view. If you have, let this, my boy, be a warning to you not to
waste your time on a novel.”
Richard had been looking through the manuscript with an unaffected show
of interest.
“You call it ‘Ephemeræ,’” he remarked. “It is a taking title.”
“But it didn’t take the publishers,” returned Fenton, whose face had
grown unusually animated by the unexpected revival of long-buried
emotions. He had put a good deal of the energy, enthusiasm, and vigor
of early manhood into the rejected novel, and it had received the
minute polish that his life of leisure at that time had enabled him
to give it. How bitterly disappointed he had been at its refusal by a
leading publishing house he had long forgotten; but the present moment
had brought back to him a multitude of conflicting emotions, changed by
time into a general feeling of regret and self-pity.
“My writing is rather blind,” he remarked, taking the manuscript from
his friend. “Let me read you the prologue; not for publication, but as
an evidence of good faith.”
For the first time in their acquaintanceship, Fenton’s unsymmetrical
face appeared actually handsome in Richard’s eyes. The spirit of the
past that lurks in the relics of by-gone years had gently spoken from
the dust-stained manuscript, and had bidden John Fenton’s lost youth to
gleam again in his eyes, and to add a note of enthusiasm to his voice.
“It was a strangely pessimistic piece of work for a man as young as I
was at that time to write,” he said musingly. “But, as I can say now,
after years have strengthened my judgment, this novel is strong and
artistic. At the time when it was sent to the publishers, there was
little chance for the acceptance of anything written by an American
that was not strictly moral and what the good old fossils of that day
were so fond of calling ‘wholesome.’ This is the prologue, Richard. It
gives the keynote to the story.”
Fenton leaned back in his chair, and read aloud the opening words of
his novel:--
“It was not a pretty fly, but it loved the sun. It rejoiced in the
power of its wings, the length of its antennæ, the pulsing health
of its little body. It was summer, and the fly flitted about in the
warm and caressing atmosphere, as though God smiled for its especial
pleasure.
“Oh, the glory of the day! No shadow saw the fly, for it soared so high
that nought but the golden glory of a smiling universe met its gaze.
“But when the day was done, the little fly was dead.
“It never knew, the joyous trifler, that it was only one of a group of
neuropterous insects, belonging to the genus Ephemeræ, that live in
the adult or winged state for a single day, and die when the darkness
falls.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Richard said:--
“I feel sure, John, that if I had picked up a novel containing that
prologue my curiosity would have been piqued; that I would have been
anxious to read on to see how the author had made his story harmonize
with his melancholy text.”
“I remember,” said Fenton, lighting a fresh cigar, and rambling on
musingly, “that when I conceived the story I was actuated by the
feeling that men take themselves and their affairs too seriously.
There seemed to me to be something grimly ludicrous about the vast
majority of men, who fuss around for a few years on an insignificant
planet in an out-of-the-way corner of space, as if they had been placed
here for eternity, and were individually of tremendous significance
to the universe at large. I worked out the story on lines intended to
show, in a comparatively small compass, that we are as powerless and
unimportant in the infinite realm of existence as the foolish little
flies that buzz so loud on a summer’s day. If I should rewrite the
story to-day, I am not quite sure that I should take so hopeless a view
of the significance of human life. As I have grown older, I have become
more inclined to think that no man has a right to consider himself of
no importance in the _tout ensemble_ of the universe; not, at least,
until it is proved conclusively that there is no such thing as a soul
possessing eternal life. At all events, if we are _ephemeræ_, I am
sure that one fly has as much right as another to the sunshine of the
noonday. And so I make of an economic theory a religion,--for want of a
better.” Fenton’s sarcastic smile played across his mouth again as he
ceased speaking.
Richard had put on his overcoat, and was holding out his hand for the
manuscript of Fenton’s novel.
“Let me take the story with me, John,” he said. “I want to read it. I
am rather inclined to think, from what I know of the present literary
market, that now is the appointed time for you to win fame in the realm
of letters.”
Fenton, after a moment’s hesitancy, handed the scroll to his friend.
“I am not ambitious in that line,” he said firmly; “but it will do no
harm to have you read the book.”
“And you will go to Mrs. Percy-Bartlett’s with me?” Richard exclaimed
smilingly. “I am very glad, John, I assure you. I’m sure that our
hostess will feel that you have paid her a great compliment.”
Fenton smiled, almost bitterly; and, as if memory had sharpened his
tongue, he said, as he held Richard’s hand a moment,--
“I gave that up long ago, my boy. Paying a compliment to a woman is
like giving sugar-plums to a child. It establishes a precedent, and
begets an appetite. Never tell a woman a thing you don’t mean, Richard;
especially a married woman.”