The Manhattaners: A Story of the Hour

by Edward S. Van Zile

An amused smile played over Fenton’s pale face.

“And what course of action do you advise, young hot-head?”

“There is only one thing for you to do, John. Go to Gertrude Van Vleck, and tell her that you love her. If she accepts you, that settles the problem before us. If she rejects you, we will go to London.”

Fenton arose, and resumed his impatient march up and down the room.

“How impetuous youth is!” he remarked after a time. Then he halted; and, standing in front of Richard, looked down at the young man solemnly. “You know little of true love, Richard. It is based on unselfishness and is only true to itself when it remains worthy of its foundation. Listen, boy, and learn. If I propose to Gertrude Van Vleck, and she rejects me, I have subjected to a painful experience the woman I love. If she accepts me, the same result, emphasized, is reached; for I am not worthy of her, Richard. I could not make her happy. No, no; do not answer me. No man can tell another what is the right course in such an affair as this. I have confessed to you more than I ever expected to reveal to any one. I have fought my fight and won my victory.”

Fenton turned, and seated himself wearily. “It has not been easy for me, Richard,” he continued after a long silence. “But let that pass. If you really care for me,—and I feel that you do,—you will never refer to the matter again. I have dreamed my dream, and the awakening has come. I see clearly that there is only one way for me to be true to myself and just to others. I shall take that way. And now, Richard, let us talk of our plans. You have never been in London?”

Richard Stoughton’s heart was heavy as he talked with Fenton about their future. He could not but admire the strength and nobility of his friend’s character; but there seemed to be something left unsaid, some argument not yet advanced, that might throw a different light on the problem Fenton had weighed and solved for himself. But Richard had learned in the last few months that there was a stubbornness and pride in his companion’s nature that rendered opposition impossible after a certain point had been reached.

Furthermore, he could not disguise from himself that he was pleased at Fenton’s decision in so far as it affected himself. Stoughton was a thorough modern in his ways of looking at most subjects, and a few years of experience and travel might easily make his impressionable nature very broad in its tendencies. But there was an ancestral strain of Puritanism in his make-up that still had a strong influence on his ideas of life. Just what his feelings toward Mrs. Percy-Bartlett were he hardly knew; but he realized that if he continued to meet her on the footing that had existed between them of late, he would in the end lose sight of certain principles to which he still fondly clung. He was old-fashioned enough, as yet, to respect, in his cooler moments, the musty teachings that still prevail in certain parts of New England regarding the sacredness of another man’s wife. He had not yet grasped the comparatively modern discovery that to a bachelor all things are pure.

Then, again, with his fondness for Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was mingled an admiration for a vein of self-restraint that he felt certain existed in the foundation of her character. He knew intuitively that if, by word or action, he overstepped certain well-defined boundaries, his intercourse with her would come to an abrupt and unpleasant end.

That Mrs. Percy-Bartlett was not especially fond of her husband he felt convinced, not by any word of hers, but from the indefinable but overwhelming testimony of airy nothings. That she had grown to care for him, Richard Stoughton, a youth who had brought something into her life the lack of which she had long felt, he could well imagine—without, perhaps, a too excessive egotism. But from whatever point of view he considered the matter, the more it seemed to him best that the ocean should roll between them for a time. Richard Stoughton, as the reader has long since observed, was a youth extremely sensitive to his surroundings. The decision he had come to might never have been reached in the Percy-Bartletts’ music-room. In Fenton’s parlor, and in the presence of a man who had made, in Richard’s sight, a great renunciation, it was not so hard to live up to his highest ideals.