I cannot tell how, but in a few moments we three were engaged in a most ardent conversation. There was an old fire-place in this house with some blazing wood in it, and before this we sat and laughed and chattered, while I explained just what was wanted. Their mother and father did not even remain in the room. I could see that the younger sister was for urging Gunda on to any gayety or flirtation, and was herself eager to share in one. It ended by my suggesting that they both come down to dinner with me some evening—a suggestion which they welcomed with enthusiasm but explained that it would have to be done under the rose. Their father was so old-fashioned that he would not allow them to take up with any one so swiftly, would not even allow them to have any beaux in the house. But they could meet me, and stay in town all night with friends. Gunda laughed, and the younger sister clapped her hands for joy.
I made a most solemn statement of what was wanted to the parents, secured two photographs of Gunda, and departed, having arranged to see them the following Wednesday at seven at one of the prominent corners of the city.
CHAPTER LI
Concerning these two girls and their odd, unsophisticated, daring point of view and love of life, I have always had the most confused feelings. They were crazy and starving for something different from what they knew. What had become of all the staid and dull sobriety of their parents in this queer American atmosphere? The old people had no interest in or patience with any such restlessness. As for their two girls, it would have been as easy to seduce one or both of them, in the happy, seeking mood in which they met me, as to step off a car. Plainly they liked me, both of them. My conquest was so easy that it detracted from the charm. The weaker sex, in youth at least, has to be sought to be worth while. I began to question whether I should proceed in this matter as fast as they seemed to wish.
Now that they had made friends with me, I liked them both. When we met the following Wednesday evening, and I had taken them to a commonplace restaurant, I was a little puzzled to know what to do with them, rarely having a whole evening to myself. Finally I invited them to my room, wondering if they would come. It seemed a great adventure to me, most daring, but I could not quite make up my mind which of the two I preferred. Just the same they came with me, looking on the proceeding as a great and delicious adventure. As we came along Broadway in the dark after dinner they hung on my arms, laughing and jesting at what their parents would think, and when we went up the dimly lighted stair, an old, wide, squeaky flight, they chortled over the fun and mystery of it all. The room was nothing much—the same old books, hangings and other trifles—but it seemed to please them greatly. What pleased them most was the fact that one could go and come without attracting any attention. They browsed about at first, and I, never having been confronted by just this situation before and being still backward, did little or nothing save discuss generalities. The one I had most favored (the heroine) was more retiring than the younger, less feverish but still gay. I could only be with them from seven to ten-thirty, but they intimated that they would come again when they could stay as late as I chose. The suggestion was too obvious and I lost interest. Soon I told them I had to go back to the office and took them to a car. A few days later I took the medal to Gunda at the store, where she received it with much pleasure, asking where I had been and when she was to see me again. I made an appointment for another day, which I never kept. It meant, as I reasoned it out, that I should have to go further with her and her sister, but not being sufficiently impelled or courageous I dropped the whole matter. Then, because Miss W—— now seemed more significant than ever, I returned to her with a fuller devotion than ever before.
Owing to a driving desire to get on, to do something, to be more than I was and have all the pleasures I craved at once, there now set in a period of mental dissatisfaction and unrest which eventually took me out of St. Louis and the West, and resulted in a period of stress and distress. Sometimes I really believe that certain lives are predestined to undergo a given group of experiences, else why the unconscionable urge to move and be away which drives some people like the cuts of a lash? Aside from the question of salary, there was, as I see it now, little reason for the fierce and gnawing pains that assailed me, and toward the last even this question of salary was not a factor; for my employers, learning that I was about to leave, were quick enough to offer me more money as well as definite advancement. By then, however, my self-dissatisfaction had become so great that nothing short of a larger salary and higher position than they could afford to give me would have detained me. Toward the last I seemed to be obsessed by the idea of leaving St. Louis and going East. New York—or, at least other cities east of this one, seemed to call me far more than anything the West had to offer.
And now, curiously, various things seemed to combine to drive or lure me forth, things as clear in retrospect as they were indistinguishable and meaningless then. One of these forces, aside from that of being worthy of my new love and lifting her to some high estate which then possessed me, was John Maxwell who had done me such an inestimable service in Chicago when I was trying to break into the newspaper business, and who had now arrived on the scene with the hope of connecting with St. Louis journalism. Fat, cynical, Cyclopean John! Was ever a more Nietzschean mind in a more amiable body! His doctrine of ruthless progress, as I now clearly saw, was so tall and strident, whereas his personal modus operandi was so compellingly genial, human, sympathetic. He was forever talking about burning, slaying, shoving people out of one’s path, doing the best thing by oneself and the like, while at the same time actually extending a helping hand to almost everybody and doing as little to advantage himself personally as any man I ever knew. It was all theory, plus an inherent desire to expound. His literary admirations were of a turgidly sentimental or romantic character, as, for instance, Jean Valjean of Les Misérables, and the good bishop; Père Goriot, Camille, poor Smike in Nicholas Nickleby; and, of all things, and yet quite like him in judgment, the various novels of Hall Caine (The Bondman, The Christian, The Deemster).
“My boy!” he used to say to me, with a fat and yet wholly impressive vehemence that I could not help admiring whether I agreed with him or not, “that character of Jean Valjean is one of the greatest in the world—a masterpiece—and I’ll tell you why—” and he would then begin to enlarge upon the moral beauty of Valjean carrying the wounded Marius through the sewer, his taking up and caring for the poor degraded mother, abandoned by the students of Paris, his gentle and forgiving attitude toward all poverty and crime.
The amusing thing about all this was, of course, that in the next breath he would reiterate that all men were dogs and thieves, that in all cases one had to press one’s advantage to the limit and trust nobody, that one must burn, cut, slay, if one wished to succeed. Once I said to him, still under the delusion that the world might well be full of tenderness, charity, honesty and the like: “John, you don’t really believe all that. You’re not as hard as you say.”
“The hell I’m not! The trouble with you is that you don’t know me. You’re just a cub yet, Theodore,” and his face wore that adorable, fat, cynical smirk, “full of college notions of virtue and charity, and all that guff. You think that because I helped you a little in Chicago all men are honest, kind, and true. Well, you’ll have to stow that pretty soon. You’re getting along now, and whatever you think other people ought to do you’ll find it won’t be very convenient to do it yourself—see?” And he smirked angelically once more. To me, in spite of what he said, he seemed anything but hard or mean.
Being in hard lines, he had come to St. Louis, not at my suggestion but at that of Dunlap and Brady, both of whom no doubt assured him that I could secure him a position instanter. I began to think what if anything I could do to help him, but so overawed was I still by his personality that I felt that nothing would do for him less than a place as copy-reader or assistant city editor—and that was a very difficult matter indeed, really beyond my local influence. I was too young and too inexperienced to recommend anybody for such a place, although my Chicago friends had come to imagine that I could do anything here. I had the foolish notion that John would speak to me about it, but so sensitive was he, I presume, on the subject of what was due from me to him that he thought (I am merely guessing) that I should bestir myself without any direct word. He had been here for days, I later learned, without even coming near me. He had gone to a hotel, and in a few days sent word by Dunlap, with whom he was now on the most intimate terms, that he was in town and looking for a place. I assume now that it was but the part of decency for me to have hurried to call on him, but so different was my position now and so hurried was I with a number of things that I never even thought of doing it at once. I fancied that he would come to the office with Dunlap, or that a day or two would make no difference. At the end of the second day after Dunlap spoke to me of his being here the latter said: “Don’t you want to come along with me and see John?”
I was delighted at the invitation and that same evening followed Dunlap to John’s hotel room. It was a curious meeting, full of an odd diffidence on my part and I know not what on his. From others he had gathered the idea that I was successful here and therefore in a position to be uppish, whereas I was really in a most humble and affectionate frame of mind toward him. He met me with a most cynical, leering expression, which by no means put me at case. He seemed at once reproachful, antagonistic and contemptuous.
“Well,” he began at once, “I hear you’re making a big hit down here, Theodore. Everything’s coming your way now, eh?”
“Oh, not so good as that, John,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve done so wonderfully well. I hear you want to stay here; have you found anything yet?”
“Not a thing,” he smiled. “I haven’t been trying very hard, I guess.”
I told him what I knew of St. Louis, how things went generally, and offered to give him letters or personal introductions to McCullagh, a managing editor on the Chronicle, to Wandell, and several others. He thanked me, and then I invited him to come and live in my room, which he declined at the time, taking instead a room next door to mine on the same floor—largely because it was inexpensive and central and not, I am sure, because it was near me. Here he stayed nearly a month, during which time he doubtless made efforts to find something to do, which I also did. Suddenly he was gone, and a little later, and much to my astonishment, Dunlap informed me that he had concluded that I had been instrumental in keeping him from obtaining work here! This he had deduced not so much from anything he knew or had heard, but by some amazing process of reversal; since I was much beholden to him and in a position to assist him, I, by some perversion of nature, would resent his coming and would do everything in my power to keep him out!
No event in my life ever gave me a queerer sense of being misunderstood and defeated. Of all the people I knew, I would rather have aided Maxwell than any one else. Because I felt so sure that I could not recommend him for anything good enough for him, I felt ashamed to try. I did the little I could, but after a while he left without bidding me good-by.
But before he went there were many gatherings in his room or mine, and always he assumed the same condescending and bantering tone toward me that he had used in Chicago, which made me feel as though he thought my present standing a little too good for me. And yet at times, in his more cheerful moods, he seemed the same old John, tender, ranting, filled with a sincere desire for the welfare of any untutored beginner, and only so restless and irritable now because he was meshed in financial difficulties.
At that, he attempted to do me one more service, which, although I did not resent it very much, I completely misunderstood. This was in regard to Miss W——, whose photograph he now saw and whose relation to me he gathered to be serious, although what he said related more to my whole future than to her. One day he walked into my room and saw the picture of my love hanging on the wall. He paused first to examine it.
“Who’s this?” he inquired curiously.
I can see him yet, without coat or waistcoat, suspenders down, his fat stomach pulled in tightly by the waistband of his trousers, his fat face pink with health, his hair tousled on his fine round head.
“That’s the girl I’m engaged to,” I announced proudly. “I’m going to marry her one of these days when I get on my feet.” Then, lover-like, I began to expatiate on her charms, while he continued to study the photograph.
“Have you any idea how old she is?” he queried, looking up with that queer, cynical, unbelieving look of his.
“Oh, about my age.”
“Oh hell!” he said roughly. “She’s older than that. She’s five or six years older than you. What do you want to get married for anyhow? You’re just a kid yet. Everything’s before you. You’re only now getting a start. Now you want to go and tie yourself up so you can’t move!”
He ambled over to the window and stared out. Then he sank comfortably into one of my chairs, while I uttered some fine romantic bosh about love, a home, not wanting to wander around the world all my days alone. As I talked he contemplated me with one of those audacious smirky leers of his, as irritating and disconcerting an expression as I have seen on any face.
“Oh hell, Theodore!” he remarked finally, as if to sweep away all I had said. Then after a time he added, as if addressing the world in general: “If there’s a bigger damn fool than a young newspaper man in or out of love, let me know. Here you are, just twenty-one, just starting out. You come down here from Chicago and get a little start, and the first thing you want to do is to load yourself up with a wife, and in a year or so two or three kids. Now I know damned well,” he went on, no doubt noting the look of easy toleration on my part, “that what I’m going to say won’t make you like me any better, but I’m going to say it anyhow. You’re like all these young newspaper scouts: the moment you get a start you think you know it all. Well, Theodore, you’ve got a long time to live and a lot of things to learn. I had something to do with getting you into this game, and that’s the only reason I’m talking to you now. I’d like to see you go on and not make a mistake. In the first place you’re too young to get married, and in the second, as I said before, that girl is five years older than you if she’s a day. I think she’s older,” and he went over and re-examined the picture, while I spluttered, insisting that he was crazy, that she was no more than two years older if so much. “Along with this,” he went on, completely ignoring my remarks, “she’s one of these middle-West girls, all right for life out here but no good for the newspaper game or you. I’ve been through all that myself. Just remember, my boy, that I’m ten years older than you. She belongs to some church, I suppose?”
