Читать книгу The Manhattaners - Edward S. Van Zile - Страница 5

Table of Contents

“Yes, Richard,” remarked Fenton, as the two strangely-assorted newspaper men turned into a down-town side-street to take a table d’hôte dinner at a restaurant well known to the semi-Bohemians of the city,—real Bohemians we have none, though another generation will beget them,—“yes, my boy, this is the most interesting metropolis in the world.”

He hesitated a moment, and taking Richard by the arm, stood still and looked about him at the passing throng.

“Within a radius of half a mile, Richard, not only every nation, but nearly every tribe, religion, sect, family, and name that the world has ever known has its representation. See, there’s an Italian barber-shop across the street kept by a man named Cæsar. We are to dine at a French restaurant whose proprietor bears the historic family-name of Valois. I remember a few lines of an after-dinner poem one of the men in the office read last year at a journalistic banquet. It began:—

“‘Did you say there was no romance

In a town that deftly blends,

In a picturesque mosaic,

All the Old World’s odds and ends?

In a city where the scapegoats

Of the older countries meet,

’Tis a crazy-quilt of nations

That is seen upon the street.’”

“It is, in a certain sense, the fact you have just touched upon that brought me here,” said Richard, as they seated themselves at a small table in a dining-room curiously decorated in black and white. Around them, seated in small groups, were men whose faces bore the European stamp. Here and there a young woman could be seen, smiling over her claret at her vis-à-vis, her white teeth making her dark eyes more striking by contrast. There was nothing distinctly American in the scene, excepting a small, active, little newsboy, who rushed from table to table selling the evening edition of the Trumpet, and requesting patronage in a voice that indicated an ancestral brogue. Fenton, however, soon added one more native feature to the picture by ordering a Manhattan cocktail from a waiter who looked as though he might be a pretender to the throne of France, and sipping it slowly as he waited for Stoughton to explain himself.

“You see,” went on the younger man, whose handsome face had already begun to attract the burning glances of several impressionable young women at the surrounding tables, “you see, I had my choice of going into the bank at Norwich, and depending upon my father’s influence to push me forward in a line of life I detest, or coming to New York to follow my natural bent, and to broaden my views by contact with all kinds of people. Of course my father hoped that I would choose the former course. But how could I? How good this soup is, Fenton.”

“Yes,” answered the elderly journalist, who was much better groomed than the first time we met him; “the dinner they serve here is generally quite eatable—especially good, you know, if the proprietor realizes that you are a newspaper man. The next thing to being a millionnaire in New York, my boy, is to be a city editor.” Fenton smiled in his usual sarcastic way.

“Then I go up a peg to-morrow night,” remarked Richard playfully. “I dine with a city editor to-night, and with a millionnaire to-morrow night.”

“Indeed.” Fenton looked at his companion with an expression of interest on his face.

“Yes; I had a note a few days ago from a distant relative of my father’s, Percy-Bartlett, who asked me to call on him at his office. He owns real estate, I think; but to judge from the number of his clerks, I don’t think he can be overworked himself. At all events, he was quite cordial, in his touch-me-not kind of way, and I promised to dine with him and his wife to-morrow evening. I think he was astonished to find that I was no longer a reporter, for his cordiality increased when I told him about my promotion.”

Fenton smiled rather coldly, and filled his glass with red wine.

“No wonder he was astonished, my boy,” he said, as he set down his goblet; “I have been in active newspaper service for nearly fifteen years, and your elevation from the ranks is the most surprising occurrence in my recollection.”

“I suppose it is remarkable,” commented Richard, as the waiter served them with game that had been strong enough to break the law. “I haven’t quite fathomed it myself.”

“In one sense it is simple enough,” continued Fenton. “‘To him that hath shall be given,’ you know, ‘and to him that hath not,’ etc. If you had been seeking a place as brevier writer or editorial paragrapher you could not have obtained it, but, presto, it comes to you unsought.”

“Tell me all you know about it, Fenton,” suggested the young man as he sipped his coffee.

“There is very little to tell,” answered his companion as he lighted a cigar and gazed contentedly at the animated face before him. “A newspaper is an insatiable beast. Its maw is never satisfied. It swallows brains, talent, culture, industry, youth, maturity, wit, wisdom, with an appetite that grows with what it feeds upon. It is the hungriest monster the ages have produced, and its food is human lives.”

“What an awful picture!” cried Richard cheerfully. “But what I am after is not the status of a newspaper in the cannibalistic realm, but the reason for my being given a desk in the editorial rooms.”

“That’s what I was coming to, Mr. Impatience. But you must let me get at it in my own way. Let me warn you against impetuosity, boy, and that awful affliction, vulgarly called ‘the big head.’ You have gone up like a rocket. You’ll come down like a stick if you’re not careful. And now, as to the cause of your rise. Know then, my young friend, that in the newspaper field men who can make epigrams are rare. Putting a column of fact into half an inch of fireworks requires a peculiar cast of mind. It may be said of paragraphers, as of poets, that they are born, not made. Now, without knowing it, you gave evidence in several of your news stories that you are the seventh son of a forty-second cousin, and can sound the well of truth with the plummet of a paradox. Mr. Robinson, who is an argus-eyed managing editor, if such a creature ever existed, was attracted by your sparkling generalizations, and made inquiries about you. He sent for me, and I told him that what his editorial page needed, above everything else, was a boy-paragrapher. And there you are.”

Richard laughed. “I am exceedingly obliged to you, Fenton. I have noticed that calling a young man a boy is one of the favorite occupations of men of uncertain age.”

“Well hit, Richard,” cried the elder man, pushing one hand through his iron-gray locks, and motioning with the other to the waiter to refill his liqueur glass; “I like your—your ‘spunk.’ Isn’t that what they call it ‘Down East’? Another thing. You have given me a very conclusive proof that I am fond of you. My age, you know, is my sensitive spot. Isn’t it curious that a man who prides himself on his devotion to pure reason, who glories in the fact that two and two make four, and whose life is spent in the classification of facts, and the presentation of truth for the edification of the public, should hesitate to acknowledge that he was born on a certain date? Well, never mind! Even the greatest men have flaws in their make-up, Richard—and I have mine.”

As they left the restaurant, strolling leisurely toward Broadway, they found the streets less crowded than they had been an hour before.

“It is the time,” said Fenton, “when the city rests for a moment from labor, and pauses to catch its breath before it begins to dissipate—the interlude between its work for earthly taskmasters and its work for Satan.”

“What a cynic you are, Fenton!” exclaimed Richard almost deprecatingly.

“Not at all, my boy. I will tell you what I am some day. I am far from being a cynic; but it makes me sad to think that this whole fabric of society must undergo heroic treatment before any real progress in civilization can be made.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t time to explain just now. I will give you a few books to read, and your eyes may be opened to certain truths that will change your whole theory of life. It is seldom that I try to make a convert to my views, but I have observed surface indications on your part that you have brains. If you have, the time has come for you to learn that you live and move and have your being at a most critical time in the world’s history. We are on the verge of great events, my boy, of great upheavals and vast changes. You will probably live to see them. I may or I may not. But whether I do or don’t will make little difference to me, or to the world. But enough of this. I must get down to the office. And you, lucky man, have the evening to yourself. What will you do with it?”

“Go to hear the De Reszkes and Melba in ‘Faust,’ I think.”

“Great scheme! It will do you good. It is much pleasanter watching Mephistopheles on the stage than fighting him in real life. I envy you, my boy. And to-morrow night you dine with a millionnaire. Be careful, Richard; remember Nathan Hale.”

“I don’t see the point,” remarked the youth thoughtfully.

“I didn’t think you would,” answered Fenton; “but don’t forget to come to me to-morrow for those books. I’ll tell you at the same time what I know about the Percy-Bartletts, if you wish. Good-night.”

Fenton boarded a cable-car going down town, and Richard Stoughton strolled moodily up Broadway.

“Fenton’s a curious mixture,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what he was driving at.”