Come to think of it, it was little Jimmie’s future—and the good prospect of a business partnership with little Jimmie—that kept James Falcontent the decent, kindly, upright fellow that he was. And not an uncommon sort of thing, either! Falcontent looked forward. Hope was his; also faith.
“Anyhow,” he determined, “little Jimmie has got to take his chance. I took mine.”
Having so determined, Falcontent’s muse merged into a grinning reminiscence of New England days—long-ago times of top-boots and mufflers and chapped hands and drowsy sermons. Had Falcontent’s next neighbor on the right peered over his spectacles and all at once demanded, “What is the chief end of man?” Falcontent would promptly have replied, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever!” and would have chuckled the most hearty enjoyment of his own cleverness. And had the dainty old lady opposite inquired, “What is sanctification?” Falcontent would have been impelled to make an awkward attempt to answer the appalling old question—stumbling, of course, over the very words upon which he had always stubbed the toes of his memory. And had the prim and pretty young person to the left smilingly requested a complete statement of the Fifth Commandment, Falcontent would surely have gained her approval by reciting the Fifth Commandment with twinkling precision. Well, well, those days were long past! And since then Falcontent’s attention had not been unduly aggravated in the direction of God. Falcontent had been busy making good. Queer, though, how the old doctrines would persist in a man’s memory!
Falcontent had made good. He was city salesman for Groot & McCarthy—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—earning with conspicuous merit and spending with conspicuous generosity ten thousand a year.
“It’s Sunday-school for little Jimmie!” he concluded, with a smile, as he jumped off the bus and stepped jauntily to the pavement. “I went.”
Subsequently Falcontent’s attention was frequently aggravated—and with persistent assiduity—in the direction of those religious mysteries whose very existence he had forgotten in the business of getting on in the world. And Falcontent was delighted to discover that he could enlighten Jimmie—with the same enlightenment that he himself had long ago enjoyed. Almighty queer how those old doctrines just would continue in a man’s memory!...
Some six months after his amazing experience on Fifth Avenue, Falcontent sat, a broken man, in the street arbor of an obscure French hotel in Cairo. He was alone: he was lonely. Jimmie was dead. Good God, how lonely it was without him—without the faith in his future!... And Cairo was an outlandish place. It was the real thing, too: here was no Coney Island plaster and paint. By George, how much like Coney Island the East was! But a man could not here catch the B. R. T. for New York and get there before bedtime. Falcontent was astonished and deeply disgruntled to find himself in a corner of the world so detestably foreign and far away and absurd. It was horribly outlandish. Everything was outlandish: the shuffle of the street, soft, suspicious; and the mutter of the street, not honest, hearty, but guttural, villainously low-pitched, incomprehensible; and the laughter of the street, gurgling with ridicule; and the veiled women in the carriages, and the painted, plumed women who drove with outriders, and the skirted natives, twirling flirtatious little canes or daintily fingering strings of glass beads, and the beggars, and the dark faces, the uniforms of the military, the incredible arrogance of the niggers, the ear-rings, camels, cocked red fezzes.... And the Continental women, going in and out—swishing, chattering, smeared little creatures! And the Continental men; hairy, smirking, gabbing, posturing, stage-clad caricatures—oh, ow! what waists! what mustaches! what hats! Surely one might fairly expect some comfort from the mere caravansary contact with Europeans! But—these!... It was hot weather, too. Whew! Falcontent was in a summer’s-day sweat in the open—and here it was night and coming on late in November!... There were none of the shipmates of Falcontent’s crossing about. They had begun to avoid Falcontent long before the landing at Alexandria; and Falcontent had taken care to avoid them since the landing. Glimpses of the familiar in the Cairo confusion only annoyed Falcontent the more by creating in his wretched spirit a mirage of that which was altogether familiar—Home.... And Falcontent determined that he must have another beastly brandy-and-soda....
Big Jim Falcontent was a broken man. Dragged from a decent seclusion, stated in clear, straightaway, brief, bald terms, which anybody can understand, Falcontent’s trouble was this: he was now fully aware that he had no God. And that was all that was normally the matter with Falcontent. Queer enough, perhaps, but true. No material happening of Falcontent’s life could excuse or account for the ghastly collapse of his spirit. Falcontent was an infidel: Falcontent was an atheist. He had so declared himself. It was his best boast. Falcontent had said in his heart, “There is no God.” But there are no longer any infidels: the infidels of other times now denounce the social system. Nobody denounces faith. A decent man, being extraordinarily troubled, says to himself: “Oh, well, that’s all right! I don’t know anything about it, anyhow. I’ll just have to take my chances with the rest of the boys.” The talkative Falcontent found himself without listeners: he was distasteful to his company. Bartenders would not humor his argument; baseball patrons fled his neighborhood—and his approach instantly dispersed every circle of his club-mates.