CHAPTER XIII.
It was a bright moonlight night as John Fenton strode hurriedly away from the Van Vleck mansion, and bent his steps toward Richard Stoughton’s apartments. Just why, at such an hour, he had determined to call on his youthful friend, he could hardly say. He was discontented with himself and the world. He had had, in a certain sense, an enjoyable evening; but a man of Fenton’s age and mental tendencies does not make a radical change in his habits without a protest that finds expression in his actions. A broken piston-rod may not ruin an Atlantic liner, but it causes many eccentric variations in the vessel’s course.
For ten years past John Fenton had been a man of somewhat questionable habits, and of distinctly iconoclastic convictions. He had discovered, of a sudden, that a change had crept over the details of his daily life, and that his iconoclasm was no longer followed by an exclamation point, but by an interrogation mark. What influence had been brought to bear to beget these changes, he was not sure. He realized that his intercourse with Richard Stoughton had had some effect upon his mode of life and cast of thought, but he had never acknowledged to himself that he had taken the young man au sérieux. That a rather superficial boy, not long out of college, could throw a man of Fenton’s age and character entirely out of time-worn grooves seemed to be an absurdity. But as Fenton strode down the avenue, so deep in self-communion that he noted not the beauty of the night, he realized that influences he could not trace, and whose force he could not measure, had been at work to disturb the even tenor of his life, and to throw him back into that state of unrest and questioning that had agitated his existence before he had abandoned, as he fondly thought forever, the ambitions that the average man cherishes.
Modern life has one characteristic that must be taken into consideration as we follow the outward manifestations in our fellow-men of the inward impetus that dominates them; namely, its complexity. An individual, in this age of the world, is powerless in any effort to shape his life in opposition to the currents that influence the world at large. Isolation is practically impossible. Our butler remarks that coffee and tea have become expensive luxuries. We realize that a revolution in Brazil, or a war in the far East, has had its effect in swelling the expenses of our cuisine.
Society is closely knit together. Jenkins, the millionnaire, gets drunk at dinner. The butler tells the cook, the cook tells his sweetheart, his sweetheart tells her brother, her brother tells a bartender, the bartender tells a loafer, the loafer tells a tramp. Does not all this illustrate the perfect brotherhood of man?
John Fenton had made a close study of modern social problems; and he was thoroughly conversant with the fact that the interdependence of individuals has been vastly increased by the characteristic features of contemporary life. Nevertheless, there was a certain stubbornness in his make-up that made him revolt against the very tendencies that had seemed to him, in his more optimistic moods, to insure the final salvation of society. He was a man who objected to the idea that he had yielded to an influence that he could not follow to its source, and had drifted away from his former moorings. Accepting the complexity of society as a stimulating, and perhaps encouraging, fact, he objected to its personal application. He had tried hard to be a rebel in manner as well as in theory. That he had sent up a flag of truce was a conviction that filled him with both self-distrust and discontent.
As he turned into the side street leading to Stoughton’s lodgings, he stopped before a brilliantly lighted saloon. For fully a month Fenton had abstained almost entirely from alcoholic stimulants; but at this moment he craved the revivifying influence of a cocktail. He turned back into the avenue, and retraced his steps for half a block. He was astonished at his hesitation,—his seemingly childish lack of determination. He tried to analyze his mood. He realized that he had no objections to offer to one harmless little cocktail at ten o’clock at night. What, then, was it that caused him to repass the saloon without entering it? “Perhaps,” he said to himself, “perhaps I am growing snobbish again since I returned to the inner circle. If I want a cocktail hereafter I shall be obliged to rejoin one or more of my old clubs.”
Fenton found Richard Stoughton still seated before the dying embers of the fire, and thoughtfully puffing cigar-smoke into the heavy atmosphere.
“Come, come, Richard,” cried Fenton, throwing up one of the windows. “You might as well go the pace in gay company as to ruin your constitution in solitude in a room actually choking with nicotine. I was not sure that I should find you; but I took the chance.”
Richard gazed at his friend searchingly as he handed him a cigar.
“Well, John, I’m glad to see you, of course, although I had not looked forward to your reappearance to-night. And now tell me, old man, are you with us or against us?”
“I don’t quite understand your question, Richard,” exclaimed Fenton, regretting for a moment that he had not taken a cocktail to restore his nervous energy.
“Well, John, forgive me then, if I take a liberty and put my question in different words. Did you enjoy your call on Miss Van Vleck?”
“Those are, indeed, very different words, Richard. The two questions seem to have no very close relationship.”
“Perhaps not, John. That’s for me to judge. But answer one or the other of them; whichever one you choose.”
“Well, my boy, I can say honestly,” remarked Fenton guardedly, “that I have had a very pleasant evening.”
“But it was not wholly satisfactory, or you wouldn’t be here,” commented Richard in a tone of conviction. “Come, old man, free your mind. You need a father-confessor. I’ll try to fill the rôle if you will bear with my youth and inexperience.”
Fenton puffed at his cigar in silence for a time, and gazed moodily into the gleaming coals in the grate.
“I acknowledge, Richard,” he said at length, “that I am in a disturbed state of mind. But if I can’t help myself, nobody else can give me the aid I need.”
“Proud and stubborn heart,” cried Richard. “Let me diagnose your case. You believe in certain novel theories, and have become a convert to various economic teachings that embrace more in their ultimate effects than a mere question of taxation. You are suddenly confronted by the fact that it is possible for even political economy to demand martyrs on the altars it has raised. Naturally, you object to being a martyr.”
“Your way of putting it, Richard,” said Fenton slowly, “may have a basis of truth. I admit that I seem to have come to a turning-point imperatively demanding a decision on my part that will have a radical effect on my life.”
“It is,” suggested Richard, “a question of hearts versus theories.”
“Not yet, perhaps,” answered Fenton; “but it may become so if I don’t call a halt at once in my present methods.”
“No man can serve two masters to-day, John, any more than our remote ancestors could when the proposition was first put into words. Of course you know, without any explanation on my part, how my sympathy lies in the struggle that is worrying you. In the first place, although I may be forced to admit the strength of the premises upon which the writer you call master bases his conclusions, I refuse to accept the conclusions. Chasing a rainbow seems to me to be a useless occupation, no matter how much we admire the rainbow. Furthermore, the personal element enters largely into my way of looking at this matter. I have grown very fond of you, John,” and Richard’s voice grew almost caressing in its tone, “and I should like to see you take the path to happiness that chance has thrown open to you.”
“We are talking in the air, my boy,” said Fenton earnestly, with a note of sadness in his intonation. “It is only excessive egotism on my part that could lead me to believe that the path to happiness of which you speak has really opened up before me.”
“But if,” persisted Richard, “you felt sure that by sacrificing what I take the liberty of calling your chimerical efforts to put salt on the tail of the millennium, you could win the joy that has suddenly met your gaze, would you not abandon your philanthropic but hopeless dreams for the alluring reality within your grasp?”
“Frankly, Richard,” answered Fenton, after a moment’s silence, “I cannot answer the question to-night. It takes a man in middle life a long time to overturn the results of ten years of reading and thinking and endeavor. But I am glad that you have put the problem in concrete form. I can look at it more calmly now that I have heard you put it into words. But it is late and I must go. I have been very selfish, Richard, I fear. Tell me, my boy, why have you wasted an entire evening looking at a bed of coals, and blowing smoke into the air?”
Richard smiled as he took Fenton’s outstretched hand.
“I have been trying to come to a decision, John.”
“And have you reached it?”
“I fear not, old man. Decisions are hard to arrive at, John, are they not?”
“They are, indeed,” assented Fenton sadly, as he said good-night.