Turns about Town Part 19

Outside of Washington, as far as I know in the world, any considerable exhibition of wares so reminiscent of the taste of the past can only be found along the water fronts of a city where men of ships shop. And there, along water fronts, you always find that same idea of ornament.

Another thing. Where in Washington are shops where real art is sold--paintings of reputable character and rare specimens of antique furniture? They may be there; I do not swear that they are not, but they are remarkably difficult to find.

Painting reminds me. The Corcoran Gallery is, of course, a justly famous museum of art. But a minor museum, containing no Old Masters, but an excellent collection of American painting, particularly excellent in its representation of the period immediately preceding the present, the period of the men called our impressionist painters. Its best canvas, I should say, is the painting by John H. Twachtman, called (I believe) "The Waterfall." My point is, that visitors there certainly are seeing what they are supposed to be seeing there--art.

What I am coming to (and I do not know why someone does not come to it oftener) is this: That hordes of people who come to Washington will look at with wonder as something fine anything which is shown to them. The numerous beautiful works of architecture--to which is now added the very n.o.ble Lincoln Memorial--they see, and probably derive something from.

But the cultural benefits of their visits to their Mecca of patriotic interest must be weirdly distorted when they are led gaping through the Capitol and are charged twenty-five cents apiece to be told by a guard who knows as much about paintings as an ashman a quant.i.ty of imbecile facts about prodigious canvases atrociously bad almost beyond belief.

The Embarkation of the Pilgrims and Washington Resigning his Commission, and so forth, indisputably are historic moments for the American breast to recall with solemn emotion. And the iniquity of these paintings here to minds uninstructed in works of art is that by reason of their appeal to sentiments of love of country these nightmares of ugliness are put over on the visitor as standards of beauty.

Still speaking (after a fashion) of "art," another aspect of Washington hits the eye. And that is the extremely moral note here. In Los Angeles (that other nation's playground of holiday makers) perhaps even more picture cards are displayed for sale. A very merry lot of pictures, those out there--all of "California bathing girls" and very lightly veiled figures, limbs rythmically flashing in "Greek dances." Such picture cards of gaiety of course may be found in windows here and there on some streets in New York and other cities. But after much window gazing I fancy that anybody bent upon buying such things in Washington would have to get them from a bootlegger or someone like that.

And whereas, as I recall, in other centres of urban life, and especially on the Pacific Coast, the photographers' exhibits run very largely to feminine beauty and fashion, in photographers' windows in Washington, you will note, masculine greatness dominates the scene.

Speaking of photographers and such-like suggests another thing. Let us come at the matter in this way. A good many women of culture and means, I understand, choose to live in Washington; probably in large measure because the city is beautifully laid out, because it is a pleasant size, because there are no factories and subways there, and so on. We know that numerous retired statesmen prefer to remain there. There is society of the emba.s.sies. In consideration of all this, and in consideration further of the comparatively large leisure there for an American city, you would suppose that, behind the transient population, in Washington, a highly civilized life went on. Very well.

True, they have the third greatest reference library in the world and the numerous scholars a.s.sociated with it. But where do the people _buy_ their books? One bookstore of fair size. Another good but quite small. A third dealing mainly in second-hand volumes. Not one shop devoted to sets in fine bindings, first editions, rare items and such things.

Though in Philadelphia, for instance, there is one of the finest (if not the finest) bookshops dealing in rare books anywhere in the world. In San Francisco numerous bookstores. Larger cities? Yes (as to that part of it), of course.

But it does seem queer that not a single newspaper in Washington runs book reviews or prints any degree at all of literary comment.

Alluding to San Francisco, that happy dale of the _bon-vivant_, how does he who likes good living make out in Washington, unless he lives in a club, an emba.s.sy, or at the White House? A grand public market, two first-cla.s.s hotel dining-rooms, and many fine homes. But an earnest seeker after eating as a fine art could find tucked away none of those chop-houses and restaurants to dine in which enlarge the soul of man.

But, of course, perhaps you can't have everything at once. From the visitors' gallery the spectacle of the Senate in active session is a game more national than baseball. "There he goes!" cries one ardent spectator, pointing to a "home player," so to say, moving down the aisle. "That's him! Gettin' along pretty good, ain't he?"

CHAPTER XXVIII

FAME: A STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

$10,000!

IN PRIZES FOR SHORT STORIES!

_You_ have a story. We want to read it. Every human life has one great story in it. Every man, every woman, has at least one story to tell.

THIS MEANS YOU!

From your experience, from your own heart history, you can draw a tale. You may not know that you can write. But you never know what you can do until you try. We believe there are thousands of unwritten little masterpieces, waiting only for the right encouragement to be produced. Here is our offer----

BENJAMIN KEYESER drew a long breath. "This means you"--there was no doubt about that. These printed words had read his heart. He felt that deep was answering unto deep.

A brief resume of his life pa.s.sed through Keyes's mind. And he was touched, as never before, by the romance of destiny. He had not contrived to be called up to public charges or employments of dignity or power in the world. When Ol' Necessity had tapped him on the shoulder he had cut his scholastic pursuits short of college, and a family friend, Dr. Nevens, had got him a fifth-rate job in a third-rate business concern. Here it seemed extremely probable that he would spend a good many of his days. By the continued exercise of steadiness of character, diligence, and application, he might hope, as Dr. Nevens by way of encouragement occasionally pointed out, to advance at the rate of a couple of dollars or so every couple of years. Clerkdom hedged him about as divinity doth a king.

The city directory rated him, "B. C. Keyes, Clerk." Should he be killed in a railway accident, chosen as a juror, or arrested for homicide, the newspapers would report that B. C. Keyes, a clerk, of 1120 Meredith Street,--etc. There was, he felt when he looked at it fairly, no way out. In the "Americans of Today" magazine articles, men rise from bootblacks to multi-millionaires, but these legends, Keyes felt numbly, had about as much relation to his own life as the hero tales of ancient Greece. His lot was cast in the bottom of a well.

And yet,--Keyes had been considered a bright youngster at school; he regarded himself as a rather bright young man now; and sometimes even yet, in wayward, impractical moments, he saw in his mind a picture of himself breaking away from the field (so to say) and coming rounding into the home stretch to bear down on a grandstand wild with applause.

He bore about within him a subconscious premonition, as it were, which apparently would not die, that something remarkable was to happen to him sooner or later. An unpleasant circ.u.mstance was that it was getting later now all the time. Still the estimate of his worth returned to him by life did not rid him of the belief that he had been originally intended by his Maker for higher things than he had found.

When, occasionally, the gloomy contrast of his life as it was with his career as he conceived it had been meant to be depressed him too untowardly, a young lady whom Keyes called Louise would administer spiritual stimulants.

Louise was a very clever person, and she knew a superior young man when she saw one. She did not care for your common men at all. She was intellectual. She read everything, her friends said. She often told Keyes that he ought to write. She knew, she declared, that he could write better than most of the people who did write.

This idea of writing had, now and then, occurred to Keyes himself. He was rather fond, in his odd hours, of reading periodical fiction, which he liked to discuss with serious people like Louise. Sometimes with the exhilaration occasioned by the reading of a particularly good story, a romantic impulse to express himself welled up in him, and then evaporated. Generally in these instances he wanted to write a kind of story he had just read. He felt the glamour of the life of adventurous tales. He thrilled in response to the note struck in that sort of romance best exemplified, perhaps, in one of his favorites, "The Man Who Would Be King." Or he longed to be like O. Henry, wise with the wisdom of the Town. But there was one sort of story which always ignited in his mind the thought that he really did know a story of his own. This he sometimes positively yearned to tell. This the advertis.e.m.e.nt had put its finger upon. "Every human life has one great story in it." It was even so. "From your own heart history ..."--Benjamin Keyes felt that emotion which is the conception of a work of art.

He was pregnant with his idea. He rose from his bed betimes. He breathed a strangely fragrant air. He looked at the beautiful world. He wrote. He mentioned his little employment to no one: he felt rather ashamed of it, in fact; but it infatuated him. He encountered some awful tough spots, and at times he almost despaired--but he could not give up. Something within him, which he himself was conscious he did not understand, tortured him to go on. All day long, while at his business, his meals, his shaving, his story turned and twisted and talked in the back of his head. Despair alternated with exultation. At hours there came a gusto to his work; words that he had heard or read, forgotten and never used, came back to him from heaven knows where, and sprang to his pen at the felicitous instance. He felt that his mind was more alert than he remembered it to have ever been; he felt that his eyes were brighter; his hands, his whole right arm, felt strong. He knew as he worked that this was character, and this was sentiment, and this was humor. He was shaken by the respiration of a heady drama. He felt that this--was almost genius! And he was aghast that he had lived such a dull life hitherto when this capacity had been in him.

He possessed little theoretic knowledge of writing; his story grew naturally, like a tree: he was intelligent, and he had a story to tell which must be told. In the matter of technical construction he followed in a general way, intuitively, unconsciously for the most part, without elaborate examination, the form of a short story as he was acquainted with it through his reading of stories. He wandered alone at night, oblivious of anything else, thinking, thinking his story over; and he felt good in his brain and in his heart and in his stomach. He felt virile, elated, full of power, and strangely happy. The joy of creating a thing of art was upon him. Thrills ran down his spine and into his legs; he would grin to himself in the dark streets; and sometimes he laughed aloud. Everything else he neglected. He could not even read the newspapers; he stayed at home two days from business; he worked early and late, and walked up and down, throbbing, meantimes.

The story was almost finished. The story _was finished_. What would Louise say? Would she think that he ought not to have written, ought not to make public, so intimate a history? Then in the story he had carried things further than they were in fact: the artistic instinct had formally plighted the lovers' troth. He thought of submitting his ma.n.u.script without showing it to Louise. Would it not be fine for her to discover the story in print! But Keyes had to read that story to someone or blow up.

His evening with Louise began awkwardly. The pleasant interchange of being did not, as usually so happily it did with Louise, flow naturally along. Keyes was accustomed to feel that with Louise he talked better than before anyone else. He now and then wished that certain other people, upon whom he felt he had not made so favorable an impression as he deserved, could overhear him sometime with Louise. Now, curiously, with her he felt as he had with them: he could not somehow get his real machinery started. Three or four times he determined to embark upon the subject in his mind, and as many times the rising fulness in his chest and the sudden quivering of his heart daunted him. As he looked now at Louise, sitting there before him, the dignity of her as a young woman struck him, and it occurred to him as extraordinary that he could have been so intimate with her. He about concluded to put off his story until another time, at which immediately he felt much relieved.

His gaze wandered about among the familiar objects of the little parlor--the ordinary articles of the family furniture, the photographs on the mantel, the hand-painted plate on the wall,--then rested upon the framed Maxfield Parrish, which Keyes knew, with a glow of pride, to express the superior refinement of Louise's own taste. Keyes shared Louise's interest in art; he knew, and very much admired, the work of Dulac, James Montgomery Flagg, N. C. Wyeth, Arthur Keller, and many others; this was one of the fascinating bonds which united them, in division from a frivolous, material, and unsympathetic world. He glanced again now at the sumptuous Rackham book on the table, which it had been such a delight to him to give her at Christmas; and the revived discussion of aesthetics led him fairly comfortably into the subject of his own entrance into work in that field. His ma.n.u.script came out of his pocket; and, straightening up on the edge of his chair, a little nervous again in the still pause that ensued, he cleared his throat, and, in a rather diffident voice, began to read. As he proceeded and knew that his effort found favor, his want of confidence left him. He fell into the swing and color of his work; and the heart of it he tasted like fine wine as he read. In the more moving pa.s.sages his voice shook a trifle, and tears very nearly came into his eyes; it was all, he felt, so beautiful. When he had concluded there was in Louise's eyes--as he looked up, and saw her sitting, leaning forward with her chin on the back of her hand, her elbow on her knee,--a strange light. It occurred to Keyes that he did not remember ever to have seen a woman's face look exactly that way before. Probably not. This was a light some men never find on land or sea. It does not shine for any man more than once or twice. They sat awhile, these two in the little parlor, and happiness roared through their veins. Louise told Keyes that she had always known that he "had it in him."

Then they arose, and they were near to each other, and their hearts were filled, and beneath the chandelier he moved his arms about her. His lips clasped hers. It was thus as it was in the story.

Keyes emerged from the brightly lighted doorway with Louise beaming tenderly after him. In his blissful abstraction of mind he neglected, on the dark porchway, to turn the corner of the house to the steps; but walked instead, straight ahead, until the world gave way beneath him, and he collapsed with a crash among the young vines.

The next week Louise, who held a position in the "Nickel's Weekly"

Circulation Branch office in the Middle West, neatly typed the ma.n.u.script on one of the firm's machines. One evening they went together to post the story.... The ancient, imperturbable moon observed this momentous deed.

When Keyes put that ma.n.u.script into the mail box, he _knew_ that it would be accepted. He felt this in his bones. He felt it in the soles of his feet and in the hair on his head.

For several days succeeding, a sensuous complacency pervaded young Keyes. In a rich haze he saw himself acclaimed, famous, adored. His nature was ardent, and he had always craved the warmth of approbation; but he had not had it, except from Louise. Now there were moments when, in a picture in his mind, he saw an attractive figure, which he recognized as himself somewhat altered, come jauntily along, amiably smiling, swinging a cane. He had always secretly desired very much to carry a cane, but he had felt uncomfortably that the humbleness of his position in life would make this ridiculous. In his moments of ambition he had hoped, sometimes, that walking-sticks would not go out (to put it so) before he came in. In the background of his mental picture Keyes recognized among the doting mult.i.tude the faces of about all of his acquaintances, some brought for the occasion from rather remote places.

Keyes felt a slight wrench of conscience in winking at this poetic liberty taken with realistic probability. When a name occurred to him the physiognomy of whose person was absent, Keyes's sense of probity was smothered, with a slight twinge of pain, by the ardor of his imagination; and place in the press was found for this person, very kindly well up in front, where a good view could be had by him of the celebrity--at this point the celebrity in the delectable vision was observed gaily to light a cigarette. Discernible in the throng, too, were some few whose mean and envious natures writhed, the psychologist in Keyes perceived, at this handsome recognition of the worth of a young man it had once been their wont to snub.

In this balmy temper of mind Keyes got down to business one morning a little late. The humdrum of a business life had begun to be somewhat more irksome than hitherto to Keyes's swelling spirit. He ruminated this morning, as he stood before his tall stool at his ledger, on the curious ill-adjustment of a universe so arranged that one of his capacity for finer things could remain so unsuspected of the world about him, and the rich value of his life to some unmeaning task-work be allowed to give. A sudden electric buzzing beneath his high desk signalled him that his presence was desired by his chief. "What now?" he thought, a little tremulously and a little irritably, as he went: he had been caught up on several slips lately. He paused respectfully in the private office doorway. Mr. Winder, from his swivel-chair, flashed up his white moustache very straight at Keyes. "Sit down," he directed. The suavity which was his habit was quite absent. Keyes felt the presence in the air of a good deal of masculine firmness.

"This," said Mr. Winder, his eye steadily on Keyes, "is a place of business. It is not a gentleman's club. Now, I want you to take a brace.

That will do."

As Keyes took up his pen again and began to write, "By merchandise," his breast was full with resentment: a sense of the real integrity of his nature welled up in him. His mind rapidly generated the divers manly replies he wished, with an intensity amounting to pain, he had thought of a moment before. He saw himself, now exasperatingly too late, saying with frank honesty to Mr. Winder:

"I realize that I have of late been a little delinquent. But (with some eloquence) it has always been my intention to be, and I believe in the main I have been, a faithful and conscientious employee. I shall not be found wanting again."

But here he was a rebuked culprit. He felt the degradation of servitude.

He experienced sharply that violent yearning so familiar to all that are employed everywhere, to be able to go in and tell Mr. Winder to go to the devil. And though he felt at bottom the legitimacy, in the business ethic, of Mr. Winder's att.i.tude, he also felt forlornly the coldness of the business relation, the brutal authority of worldly power, and its conception of his insignificance. And he was stung at the moral criminality, as he felt it to be, of a situation which placed such a man as Mr. Winder over such a nature as his own; Mr. Winder he did not suppose had read a book within the last ten years.