CHAPTER III

The days were getting very short now, and darkness was already hovering over the town as Dick passed through the portals of the Cosmopolitan. When they came out together, Wooton and he, it seemed to Dick that the town was in one of its most characteristic tempers. It was in the beginning of winter; the air was a little damp, and smoke hung in it so that it begrimed in an incredibly short space of time. The buildings, in the twilight that was half of the day's natural dusk and half the murkiness of the smoke, loomed against the hardly denned sky like some towering, threatening genii. The electric lights were beginning to peer through the gloom. The sidewalks were alive with a never-tiring throng, men and women jostling each other, never stopping to apologize; all intent not so much on the present as on something that was always just a little ahead. This, the onlooker mused, was what it meant to "get ahead," a blind physical rush in the dark, a callous indifference to others, a selfish brutality, a putting into effect the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The streets clanged with the roll of wheels; carriages with monograms on the panels rolled by with clatter of chains and much spattering of mud; huge drays drawn by four, and sometimes six-horse teams, and blazening to the world the name of some mercantile genius whom soap or pork had enriched, thundered heavily over the granite blocks; the roar and underground buzz of the cable mingled with the deafening ringing of the bell that announced the approach of the cable trains; overhead was the thunderous noise of the Elevated. It was all like a huge cauldron of noise and dangers. Dick declared to himself that it was the modern Inferno. And yet, as he passed toward the station of the Elevated with Wooton, Dick began to understand something of the fascination that the place, even in its most noisome aspects, was able to exert. In the very rush and roar, in the ceaseless hum and murmur and groaning, there was epitomized the eager fever of life, its joys and its pains. Here, after all, was life. And it was life that Dick had come to taste.

There was a quick ride on the Elevated, Dick catching various glimpses of unsightly buildings that showed their undress uniform, of dim-lit back rooms where one caught hints of dismal poverty, of roofs that seemed to shudder under the banner of dirty clothes fluttering in the breeze. The town seemed, from this view, like the slattern who is all radiant at night, at the ball, but who, next morning, is an unkempt, untidy hag.

Mrs. Annie McCallum Stewart rose rather languidly as they were announced. Dick noticed that in some mysterious way she managed to give a peculiar grace to almost her every movement; there was something of a tigress in the way she walked. She gave her hand to Wooton--"Delightful of you to come so soon," she murmured.

"One of the things I live for, my dear Mrs. Stewart," said Wooton, "is to surprise people. Knew you didn't expect me, so I came. Brought a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Stewart, Mr. Lancaster. Want you to like him."

"My only prejudice against you, Mr. Lancaster," was Mrs. Stewart's smiling reply, "is that you come under Mr. Wooton's protection. I pretend I'm immensely fond of him, but I'm not; I'm only afraid of him; he's too clever." And, still laughing at Wooton in such a way as to show the exquisite perfection of her teeth, she presented young Lancaster to several of the others who were sitting about the room, chatting and sipping tea. He had a vague idea of several stiff young men bowing to him, of an equal number of splendidly appareled, but unhandsome girls, looking at him with supercilious nods, and of hearing names that faded as easily as they touched him. He found himself, presently, sitting on a low divan, opposite to a girl with dreamy blue eyes behind pince-nez eyeglasses. He hadn't caught her name; he knew no more of her tastes, of the things she was likely to converse about than did the Man in the Moon. But he instinctively opined that it was necessary to seem rather than to be, to skim rather than to dive.

"I've been 'round the circle," he said, trying a smile, "and I'm delivered up to you. I hope you'll treat me well."

The girl with the blue eyes looked at him a moment in silence. Then she said, abruptly: "This is the first time that you've been down here, isn't it? I knew it! Well, these things are not bad--when you get used to them. Now, you're not used to them. Confess, are you?"

Dick shook his head. "I am innocent as a lamb," he said, with mock apology.

The girl went on: "Well, that may do as a novelty. Annie's great on new blood, you know. Shouldn't wonder if she took you up. How are you on theosophy?"

Dick stared. What sort of a torrent of curiosity was this that was gushing forth from this peculiar creature? "To tell you the truth," he hazarded, "I am not 'on' at all."

She smiled. "Ah, that's bad. However, I dare say there's something else. Now, how are you on art?"

"I know a little something." He smiled to himself, wondering how much of the actual practical knowledge of art there was in all that room, outside of what he himself possessed.

"Ah, a little something. Well, that's all that's needed, nowadays. The great point is to know 'a little something' about everything. To know anything thoroughly is to be a bore. A man of that sort is always didactic on the one subject he is familiar with, and absolutely stupid on all other things. However, what's the use of considering those people? They're quite impossible." She began tapping the carpet with her slipper. "Speaking of impossible people," she went on, "there's Mrs. Tremont. Over there with the grey waist. Intellectually, she's impossible; socially she is the possible in essence. She was a Miss Alexander, of Virginia; then she married Tremont, and lived in Boston long enough to get Boston superciliousness added to the natural haughtiness given to her in her birth. She talks pedigree, and dreams of precedence. She goes everywhere, and I fancy she thinks that when she hands St. Peter her card that personage will bow in deference and announce her name in particularly awestruck tones. The girl who is talking to the tall man with the military mustache is Miss Tremont. She is her mother, plus the world and the devil."

Dick interrupted her, as she paused to sip her tea. "Yes," he said, "and now tell me who you are?"

She, lifted her eyebrows a trifle. "You have audacity," she said, "and I begin to think you are clever. Audacity is successful only when one is clever. When one is stupid, audacity is a crime. Who am I? Well--" she smiled again at the thought of his assurance. "Why not ask my enemies? But you don't know who is my enemy, who is my friend. Well, I am the Philistine in this circle of the elect. I'm a cousin of Mrs. Stewart's, and I come because I am fond of being amused. She herself amuses me most. She seems to be so tremendously in earnest, and she's so unfathomably insincere. She hates me, you know, because I didn't marry John Stewart when he proposed to me. Then, I never did anything, or had a fad, or was eccentric, so I don't really belong here; but, as I said before, the house amuses me, and I come. I don't know why I tell you this, but I don't care very much, and besides, I believe you're still genuine. It's so pathetic to be genuine; it reminds me of a baby rabbit--blind eyes and fuzz. I'm not sure, but it's my idea, that if you want to keep Mrs. Stewart's good graces you'll have to do nothing harder than stay genuine. It's so novel. Most of us, today, couldn't be genuine again any more than we could be born again. Ah, here's my dear cousin approaching. I suppose she comes to rescue you from my clutches. If you want to please her immensely, tell her I bored you to death. She'll have the thought for desert all week."

Mrs. Stewart sailed toward them with a queenly sweep that was decidedly imposing. She had decided to have a chat with young Lancaster. When she had seen him in the office of the _Torch_, and now, when he first entered the room, she had seen at a glance that he was handsome enough not to need cleverness; but she was curious to see whether he would interest her in other than visual ways. "You've been most fortunate," she said to Dick, as she reached them, "with Miss Leigh to interpret us for you. Has she told you, I wonder, that she is my favorite cousin? But now, I want to talk to you about art. If Miss Leigh will surrender you to me--?"

"I've been talking to Mr. Wooton about you," she said as she bore him away in triumph, "and he tells me you've only been in town for a few weeks. You still have vivid impressions, I suppose. When one has lived here for years and years, one's impressionability gets hardened. It takes something very forcible to really rouse us. And even then we prefer to let some one of us experience the sensation; it is so much easier to take another's word for it, and follow in the rut. That is how most of our present day fads come about. Some one gets pierced between the casings of the armour of indifference, and the rest of us take the cue and join in the chorus of ecstasy. We don't go to hear Patti or Paderewski, you know, because, we really feel their art deeply; it is because someone once felt it and it became the fashion." While she talked, she had led him into a window-nook and motioned him to a fauteuil that covered the crescent-shaped niche. As she sat down, the lines of her figure could be traced through the perfect fit of her gown. He noticed what finish, what art there was about the picture she made as she sat there, beside him. Her gown was a delicate shade of gray; the crepe seemed to love her as a vine loves a tree, so closely did it follow and cling to the lines of her hips, her waist, her shoulders. Over her sleeves, immensely wide, as the fashion of the time decreed, fell lapels of silk. She had on low shoes, and above them he could see the neat contour of her ankles, also clad in gray. "However," she went on, "I did not intend to talk of the fashion; I wanted to ask you how the town struck your artistic side. Don't you find as great pictures in a street full of life as in a valley full of shadow? Isn't there more of the history of today in the faces of the people you meet on the Avenue than in a stretch of blue sky, a white sail, and a background of Venice?"

"I see you're something of a realist?"

"Don't! Please don't! That word gets on my nerves. I suppose my amiable cousin, Miss Leigh, told you we were all blue-stockings, and dilettantes. I assure you we've got beyond the Realism _versus_ Romance stage of disputation. Really, you don't know how you disappointed me with that question. Mr. Wooton told me you were original!"

Dick flushed a little. "He also told me," he retorted, "that you were extraordinary. I begin to believe him." His tone had a suspicion of pique in it. But Mrs. Stewart beamed.

"Ah," she said, "I like you when you look like that. That's--h'm, now what is that?--anger, I suppose? It's really so long since I had a real emotion that I don't know how it's done. Do you know, I think you and I are going to be great friends! Yes, I feel I'm going to like you immensely. Won't you try to like me?" She leaned over toward him, and his shy young eyes caught the faint flutter of lace on her breast with something of dim bewilderment. Her lips were parted, and her teeth shone like twin rows of pearls. She went on, before he had time to do more than begin a stammer of embarassment, "Yes, just as long as you stay real, and genuine, I want you to come and see me very often; as often as you possibly can. I imagine that talking to you is going to be like dipping in the fountain of youth. Tell me, you people out there in the country, how do you keep so young?"

"Ask me that, Mrs. Stewart, when I have found out how it is that you in town lose your youth so soon."

"True. You will be the better judge. But you never told me how it strikes the artist in you, this town of ours."

"I haven't had time to think yet how it strikes me. I'm busy finding out all about it. Just at present it's all like the genius that came from the fisherman's vessel in the Arabian Nights: it is a huge coil of smoke that stifles me with its might and its thickness. I know there are wonderful color-effects all about me, but my nerves are still so eager for the mere taste of it all that I can't digest anything. Besides--" he stopped and sighed a little--"I must not begin to think of paint for years. I'm a mere apprentice. I just scratch and rub, and scratch and rub, as a brother artist puts it."

"But one sees some very pretty effects in black-and-white. Look at _Life_, for instance--"

"No, Mrs. Stewart, if you would be loyal to me, don't look at the aforesaid 'loathsome contemporary,' as they say out West." It was Wooton who had approached, and interrupted Mrs. Stewart with an easy nonchalance that, in almost any other man, would have been an unpardonable rudeness. He threw himself on a chair and continued: "Mrs. Stewart, you have wounded me sorely. I bring you a disciple and what do you do? You buttonhole him, as it were, and preach treason to him. For, you must confess, that to tell people to look at _Life_ when they might be looking at--h'm--another periodical, whose name I reverence too highly to mention before a traitoress, is High Treason."

For reply, Mrs. Stewart tapped Wooton lightly on the lips with a large ivory paper-cutter that she had been toying with. "As I was saying, when rudely interrupted, look at--"

"My dear Mrs. Stewart, why this feverish desire to look at life? I ask you both, is life pretty? Remember M. Zola and Mr. Howells. They are supposed to give us life, are they not? Well, the one flushes a sewer, and the other hands us weak tea. I prefer not to contemplate life. I am obliged to read the morning papers because it is become necessary to know today the unpleasantness that happened yesterday. But otherwise I assure you that life--"

This time, Mrs. Stewart tapped him quite smartly with the paper-cutter.

"You know very well that puns have been out of fashion for more years than you have been of age. We were talking about art, and incidentally about a paper that encourages art, and you begin a dissertation on life! What do you mean?"

Wooton mockingly stifled an effort to yawn. "As if I ever, by the vaguest chance, meant anything! I hate to be asked what I mean. If I knew, I would probably not tell, and if I do not know why should I lie? The safest course in this world is never to mean anything and to say everything. If I had my life to live over again--"

Mrs. Stewart looked at him with a shudder, lifting her shoulders, while her mouth showed a smile. "Why speak of anything so unpleasant?"

"Ah, had you there, Wooton, eh!" It was Vanstruther, who had strolled over to pay his respects to Mrs. Stewart. She held out a hand; he pressed it lightly. He nodded to Lancaster, and then looked through the half-drawn portiers to where in the black-and-gold drawing-room the others were sitting and standing in colorful groups. Someone was at the piano playing a mazurka of Chopin's. There was a faint click of cups touching saucers; the high notes of the women and the low drawl of the men. Vanstruther looked at them all slowly, and then turned to Mrs. Stewart again. "All in?" he inquired.

Mrs. Stewart nodded and smiled.

"I've not been at your house for so long," Vanstruther continued, "that I'm a little out of the running. Several people here that are new to me. Now, that girl in black?"

"Talking to young Hexam? That's Madge Winters. You remember young Winters who was runner-up in the tennis tournament last season?--sister of his. She's just back from Japan. Has some idea of doing a sort of Edmund Russell gospel of the beautiful _a la_ Japan course of readings. Her brother amused me once and I'm going to do what I can for her. Now, who else is there? Let me see: I don't think you ever met Miss Farcreigh before--she's talking to the man at the piano. Delightful girl--her father's the big Standard Oil man, you know--and collects china. Sings a little, too. But chiefly I like her because she's pretty and a great catch. There's a German prince madly in love with her, but her father objects to him because his majesty never did a stroke of work in his life. I believe you know all the others."

"Thank you, yes." Vanstruther turned to Dick and said to him, with a smile at Mrs. Stewart, "You may find eccentric people here, Lancaster, but you will never find unpleasant ones."

"That's where Mrs. Stewart makes the inevitable mistake," drawled Wooton. "There should be one or two unpleasant ones, merely for the sake of the others. If it were not for the unpleasant people in the world, it would hardly be worth while being the other kind."

"You're as unpleasant as need be," was Mrs. Stewart's reply.

"Delighted!" murmured Wooton. "To have done a duty is always a delight. I have done several. I have brought you a new disciple, I have leavened your heaven with intrusion of myself, and now--now I must really go. My virtues are still like incense in my nostrils. Allow me to waft myself gently away before they grow rank and stale."

Dick rose at the same moment. "Oh," Wooton said to him, "you're not obliged to go yet. Stay and let Mrs. Stewart enchant you with the nectar of proximity! I've got to be down at the Midwinter dance tonight, so I must be off now."

But Dick, in spite of the other's protestations, insisted that he must really go also. He assured Mrs. Stewart that lie had enjoyed himself immensely, promised to come soon and often, and was presently whirling down-town again with Wooton. The latter had bought an evening paper and was carefully perusing the sporting columns. Dick closed his eyes, trying to recall the picture he had just left: the dim-lit drawing-room, with its well-dressed, graceful people; Mrs. Stewart's fascinating voice and figure; the flippant frivolity of all their discourse; the useless sham of all their isms and fads; the clever ease with which everything seemed to be taken for granted, and nothing was ever truly analyzed--how like a phantasmagoria of repellant things it all was, and yet how fascinating! Everyone appeared to know everything; no surprise was ever expressed; no emotion was ever visible. It was fully expected that everyone was possessed of no real aim in life save the riding of a hobby; it was agreed that to appear ignorant of anything was to be vulgar. And yet, in that circle, Dick was hailed as "so delightfully genuine," and was told that he would stand high at court as long as he remained so! Surely these were strange days, and stranger ways! That phrase of Mrs. Stewart's about young Winters grated harshly, too--"He amused me once!"

Was life merely an effort at being forever amused?

Almost, it seemed so.