"Yes, I saw it in your articles--a certain pessimism and despondency.
You show your feelings plainly, young man. It is an excellent quality--but dangerous. A man ought to make his mind a machine working evenly without regard to his feelings or physical condition. The night my oldest child died--I was editor of a country newspaper--I wrote my leaders as usual. I never had written better. You can be absolute master inside, if you will. You can learn to use your feelings when they"re helpful and to shut them off when they hinder."
"But don"t you think that temperament----"
"Temperament--that"s one of the subtlest forms of self-excuse. However, the place is yours. The salary is a hundred and twenty-five a week--an advance of about twelve hundred a year, I believe, on your average downstairs. Can you begin soon?"
"Immediately," said Howard, "if the City Editor is satisfied."
An office boy showed him to his room--a mere hole-in-the-wall with just s.p.a.ce for a table-desk, a small table, a case of shelves for books of reference, and two chairs. The one window overlooked the lower end of Manhattan Island--the forest of business buildings peaked with the t.i.tan-tenements of financial New York. Their big, white plumes of smoke and steam were waving in the wind and reflecting in pale pink the crimson of the setting sun.
Howard had his first taste of the intoxication of triumph, his first deep inspiration of ambition. He recalled his arrival in New York, his timidity, his dread lest he should be unable to make a living--"Poor boy," they used to say at home, "he will have to be supported. He is too much of a dreamer." He remembered his explorations of those now familiar streets--how acutely conscious he had been that they were paved with stone, walled with stone, roofed with a stony sky, peopled with faces and hearts of stone. How miserably insignificant he had felt!
And all these years he had been almost content to be one of the crowd, like them exerting himself barely enough to provide himself with the essentials of existence. Like them, he had given no real thought to the morrow. And now, with comparatively little labour, he had put himself in the way to become a master, a director of the enormous concentrated energies summed up in the magic word New York.
The key to the situation was--work, incessant, self-improving, self-developing. "And it is the key to happiness also," he thought.
"Work and sleep--the two periods of unconsciousness of self--are the two periods of happiness."
His aloofness freed him from the temptations of distraction. He knew no women. He did not put himself in the way of meeting them. He kept away from theatres. He sunk himself in a routine of labour which, viewed from the outside, seemed dull and monotonous. Viewed from his stand-point of acquisition, of achievement, it was just the reverse.
The mind soon adapts itself to and enjoys any mental routine which exercises it. The only difficulty is in forming the habit of the routine.
Howard was greatly helped by his natural bent toward editorial writing.
The idea of discussing important questions each day with a vast mult.i.tude as an audience stirred his imagination and aroused his instincts for helping on the great world-task of elevating the race.
This enthusiasm pleased and also amused his cynical chief.
"You believe in things?" Malcolm said to him after they had become well acquainted. "Well, it is an admirable quality--but dangerous. You will need careful editing. Your best plan is to give yourself up to your belief while you are writing--then to edit yourself in cold blood.
That is the secret of success, of great success in any line, business, politics, a profession--enthusiasm, carefully revised and edited."
"It is difficult to be cold blooded when one is in earnest."
"True," Malcolm answered, "and there is the danger. My own enthusiasms are confined to the important things--food, clothing and shelter. It seems to me that the rest is largely a matter of taste, training and time of life. But don"t let me discourage you. I only suggest that you may have to guard against believing so intensely that you produce the impression of being an impracticable, a fanatic. Be cautious always; be especially cautious when you are c.o.c.ksure you"re right. Unadulterated truth always arouses suspicion in the unaccustomed public. It has the alarming tastelessness of distilled water."
Howard was acute enough to separate the wisdom from the cynicism of his chief. He saw the lesson of moderation. "You have failed, my very able chief," he said to himself, "because you have never believed intensely enough to move you to act. You have attached too much importance to the adulteration--the folly and the humbug. And here you are, still only a critic, destructive but never constructive."
At first his a.s.sociates were much amused by his intensity. But as he learned to temper and train his enthusiasm they grew to respect both his ability and his character. Before a year had pa.s.sed they were feeling the influence of his force--his trained, informed mind, made vigorous by principles and ideals.
Malcolm had the keen appreciation of a broad mind for this honest, intelligent energy. He used the editorial "blue-pencil" for alteration and condensation with the hand of a master. He cut away Howard"s crudities, toned down and so increased his intensity, and pointed it with the irony and satire necessary to make it carry far and penetrate easily.
Malcolm was at once giving Howard a reputation greater than he deserved and training him to deserve it.
In the office next to Howard"s sat Segur, a bachelor of forty-five who took life as a good-humoured jest and amused his leisure with the New Yorkers who devote a life of idleness to a nervous flight from boredom.
Howard interested Segur who resolved to try to draw him out of his seclusion.
"I"m having some people to dinner at the Waldorf on Thursday," he said, looking in at the door. "Won"t you join us?"
"I"d be glad to," replied Howard, casting about for an excuse for declining. "But I"m afraid I"d ruin your dinner. I haven"t been out for years. I"ve been too busy to make friends or, rather, acquaintances."
"A great mistake. You ought to see more of people."
"Why? Can they tell me anything that I can"t learn from newspapers or books more accurately and without wasting so much time? I"d like to know the interesting people and to see them in their interesting moments. But I can"t afford to hunt for them through the wilderness of nonent.i.ties and wait for them to become interesting."
"But you get amus.e.m.e.nt, relaxation. Then too, it"s first-hand study of life."
"I"m not sure of that. Yawning is not a very attractive kind of relaxation, is it? And as for study of life, eight years of reporting gave me more of that than I could a.s.similate. And it was study of realities, not of pretenses. As I remember them, "respectable" people are all about the same, whether in their vices or in their virtues. They are cut from a few familiar, "old reliable" patterns. No, I don"t think there is much to be learned from respectability on dress parade."
"You"ll be amused on Thursday. You must come. I"m counting on you."
Howard accepted--cordially as he could not refuse decently. Yet he had a presentiment or a shyness or an impatience at the interruption of his routine which reproached him for accepting with insistence and persistence.
X.
THE ETERNAL MASCULINE.
It was the first week in November, and in those days "everybody" did not stay in the country so late as now. There were many New Yorkers in the crowd of out-of-town people at the Waldorf. Howard was attracted, fascinated by the scene--carefully-groomed men and women, the air of gaiety and ease, the flowers, the music, the lights, the perfumes. At a glance it seemed a dream of life with evil and sorrow and pain banished.
"No place for a working man," thought he, "at least not for my kind of a working man. It appeals too sharply to the instincts for laziness and luxury."
He was late and stood in the entrance to the palm-garden, looking about for Segur. Soon he saw him waving from a table near the wall under the music-alcove.
"The oysters are just coming," said Segur. "Sit over there between Mrs.
Carnarvon and Miss Trevor. They are cousins, Howard, so be cautious what you say to one about the other. Oh, here is Mr. Berersford."
The others knew each other well; Howard knew them only as he had seen their names in the "fashionable intelligence" columns of the newspapers.
Mrs. Carnarvon was a small thin woman in a black velvet gown which made her thinness obtrusive and attractive or the reverse according as one"s taste is toward or away from attenuation. Her eyes were a dull, greenish grey, her skin brown and smooth and tough from much exposure in the hunting field. Her cheeks were beginning to hang slightly, so that one said: "She is pretty, but she will soon not be." Her mouth proclaimed strong appet.i.tes--not unpleasantly since she was good-looking.
Miss Trevor was perhaps ten years younger than her cousin, not far from twenty-four. She had a critical, almost amused yet not unpleasant way of looking out of unusually clear blue-green eyes. Her hair was of an ordinary shade of dark brown, but fine and thick and admirably arranged to set off her long, sensitive, high bred features. Her chin and mouth expressed decision and strong emotions.
There was a vacant chair between Segur and Berersford and it was presently filled by a fat, middle-aged woman, neither blonde nor brunette, with a large, serene face. Upon it was written a frank confession that she had never in her life had an original thought capable of creating a ripple of interest. She was Mrs. Sidney, rich, of an "old" family--in the New York meaning of the word "old"--both by marriage and by birth, much courted because of her position and because she entertained a great deal both in town and at a large and hospitable country house.
The conversation was lively and amused, or seemed to amuse, all. It was purely personal--about Kittie and Nellie and Jim and Peggie and Amy and Bob; about the sayings and doings of a few dozen people who const.i.tuted the intimates of these five persons.
Mrs. Carnarvon turned to the silent Howard at last and began about the weather.
"Horrible in the city, isn"t it?"
"Well, perhaps it is," replied Howard. "But I fancied it delightful. You see I have not lived anywhere but New York for so long that I am hardly capable to judge."
"Why everybody says we have the worst climate in the world."
"Far be it from me to contradict everybody. But for me New York has the ideal climate. Isn"t it the best of any great city in the world? You see, we have the air of the sea in our streets. And when the sun shines, which it does more days in the year than in any other great city, the effect is like champagne--or rather, like the effect champagne looks as if it ought to have."
"I hate champagne," said Mrs. Carnarvon. "Marian, you must not drink it; you know you mustn"t." This to Miss Trevor who was lifting the gla.s.s to her lips. She drank a little of the champagne, then set the gla.s.s down slowly.