Читать книгу The Pretender - Robert William Service - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE HAPPIEST YOUNG MAN IN MANHATTAN
To have omnibus tastes and an automobile income—how ironic?
With this reflexion I let myself collapse into a padded chair of transcendent comfort, lit a cigarette and inspected once more the amazing bank-book. Since I had seen it last several credit entries had been made—over twenty thousand dollars; and in the meantime, dawdling and dreaming in the woods of Maine, all I had managed to squander was a paltry thousand. Being a man of imagination I sought for a simile. As I sat there by the favourite window of my favourite club I could see great snowflakes falling in the quiet square, and at that moment it seemed to me that I too was standing under a snowfall, a snowfall of dollars steadily banking me about.
For a moment I revelled in the charming vision, then like a flash it changed. Now I could see two figures locked in Homeric combat. Like a serene over-soul I watched them, I, philosopher, life-critic; for was not one of them James H. Madden, a man of affairs, the other, J. Horace Madden, dilettante and dreamer.... Look! from that clutter of stale snow a form springs triumphant. Hurrah! It is the near-poet, the man on the side of the angels.—And so rejoiced was I at this issue that I regarded the little bank-book almost resentfully.
"Figures, figures," I sighed, "what do you mean to me? Crabbed symbols on a smudgy page! can you buy for me that fresh Spring-morning feeling in the brain, that rapture of a fine thing finely done? Ah no! the luxury you spell means care and worry. In comfort is contentment. And am I not content? Nay! in all Manhattan is there man more happy? Young, famous, free—could life possibly be more charming? And so in my tower of tranquillity let me work and dream; and every now and then, little book, your totals will grow absurd, and I will look at you and say: 'Figures, figures, what do you mean to me?'"
"But, after all," I went on to reflect, "money is not so utterly a nuisance. Pleasant indeed to think that when most are pondering over the problem of the permanent meal-ticket, you are yourself well settled on the sunny side of Easy Street. Poets have piped of Arcady, have chorused of Bohemia, have expressed their enthusiasm for Elysian fields, but who has come to chant the praise of Easy Street? Yet surely it is the kindliest of all? Behind its smiling windows are no maddening constraints, no irking servitudes, no tyranny of time. Just sunshine, laughter, mockery of masters—Oh, a thousand times blessed, golden, glorious Easy Street!"
Here I lighted a fresh cigarette and settled more snugly in that chair of kingly comfort.
"Behold in me," I continued lazily, "a being specially favoured of the gods. Born if not with a silver spoon in my mouth at least with one of a genteel quality of nickel, blest with a boyhood notably cheering and serene, granted while still in my teens success that others fight for to the grave's edge, untouched by a single sorrow, unthwarted by a solitary defeat—does it not seem as if my path in life had been ever preceded by an Olympian steam roller macadamising the way?
"True, as to appearance, the gods have failed to flatter me. If you, gentle reader, who are as perfect as the Apollo Belvedere, gaze at your chiselled features in the silver side of your morning tea-pot, you will get a good idea of mine. But there—I refer you to a copy of Wisdom for Women, the well-known feminist Weekly. It contains an illustrated interview, one of that celebrated series, Lions in their Dens. Harken unto this:
"A tall, tight-lipped young man, eager, yet abstracted; eyes quizzical, mouth a straight line, brow of a dreamer, chin of a flirtatious stockbroker. His gleaming glasses suggest the journalist, his prominent nose the tank-town tragedian. Add to that that he has a complexion unæsthetically sanguine, and that his flaxen hair, receding from his forehead, gives him a fictitious look of intellectuality, and you have a combination easier to describe than to imagine...."
"What a blessing it is we cannot see ourselves as others see us! How it would fill life with intolerable veracities! Dear lady who wrote the above, I can forgive you for the Roman nose, for the flirtatious chin, nay, even for the fictitious intellectuality of my noble brow, but for one thing I can never think of you with joy. You wrote of me that I was 'a mould of fashion and a glass of form.' Since then, alas! I have been compelled to live up to your description. Bohemian to the backbone, lover of the flannel suit of freedom and the silken shirt of ease, how I have suffered in such clutch of comme-il-faut no tongue can tell. Yet thanks to a Fifth Avenue tailor even a little sartorial success has fallen to my lot."
Success! some men seem to have a magic power of attracting it, and I think I must be one. Sitting there in the window of the club, as I watched the shadows steal into the square, and the snow thicken to a fluttering curtain I positively purred with satisfaction. Behind me the silent library was lit only by a fire of glowing coals. The jocund light gleamed on the carved oak of the book-cases, and each diamond pane winked jovially. Yet cheerful though it was my thoughts were far more rosy.
But now my reverie was being broken. Two men were approaching, and by their voices I knew them to be Quince the critic and Vaine the poet. The first was a representative of the School of Suds, the second an exponent of the School of Sediment; but as neither were included in the number of my more intimate enemies I did not turn to greet them.
Goring Quince is a stall-fed man with a purple face, cotton-coloured hair and supercilious eyebrows. He is an incubator of epigrams. His articles are riots of rhetoric, and it is marvellous how completely he can drown a poor little idea in a vat of verbiage.
Herrick Vaine is a puffy, pimply person, with a mincing manner and an emasculated voice. He might have been a poet of note but for two things: while reading his work you always have a feeling that you have seen something oddly like it before; and after you have read it all you retain is a certain dark-brown taste on the mental palate. Otherwise he is all right.
And now, having described the principals, let me record the little dialogue to which I was the unseen listener.
Vaine (with elaborate carelessness): By the way, you haven't read my latest book, I suppose?
Quince (cooingly): Why yes, my boy. I lost no time in reading it. I positively wallowed—I mean revelled in it. Reminds me of Baudelaire in spots. Without you and a chosen few what would literature be?
Vaine (enraptured): How lovely of you to say so. You know I value your opinion more than any in the world.
Quince (waving his gold-rimmed eyeglasses): Not at all. Merely my duty as a watchdog of letters. Yes, I thought your Songs Saturnalian in a class by itself; but now I can say without being accused of a lapse of literary judgment that your Poems Plutonian marks a distinct epoch in modern poetry. There is an undefinable something in your work, a je ne sais quoi ... you know.
Vaine: Yes; thank you, thank you.
Quince: Is it selling, by the way?
Vaine: Thank heaven, no! How banal! Popular success would imply artistic failure. To the public true art must always be inaccessible. If ever I find my work becoming bourgeois, it will be because I have committed artistic suicide. On my bended knees I pray to be delivered from popularity.
Quince: I see. You prefer the award of posterity to the reward of prosperity. Well, no doubt time will bring you your meed of recognition. In the meantime give me a copy of the poems, and I will review it in next week's Compass.
Vaine: Will you indeed. That honour alone will repay me for writing it. By the way, I imagine I saw a copy in the library. Let me look.
(As Vaine had put it there himself his doubt seemed a little superfluous. He switched on a light, and from the ranked preciosity of a certain shelf he selected a slim, gilt volume.)
Vaine: Poems Plutonian.
Quince (taking it in his fat, soft hands): How utterly exquisite! What charming generosity of margin!
Vaine: Yes; you know the great fault of books, to my mind, is that they contain printed matter. Some day I dream of writing a book that shall be nearly all margin, a book from which the crudely obvious shall be eliminated, a book of exquisite intrusion, of supreme suggestion, where magic words like rosaries of pearls shall glimmer down the pages. I really think that books are the curse of literature. If every writer were compelled to grave his works on brass and copper from how much that is vain and vapid would we not be delivered?
Quince: Ah, yes! Still books have their advantages. Here, for example, am I going to burn the incense of a cigar before the putrescent—I mean the iridescent altar of art. Now if Poems Plutonian were inscribed on brass or stone I confess I should hesitate. What are those things?
(He pointed to a separate shelf, on which stood nine volumes with somewhat aggressive covers.)
Vaine: Well may you ask. Brazen strumpets who have stumbled into the temple of Apollo. These, my dear sir, are the so-called novels of Norman Dane. You see, as a member of the club, he is supposed to give the library a copy of his books. We all hoped he wouldn't, but he came egregiously forward. Of course we couldn't refuse the monstrous things.
Quince: No, I understand. What's this? The Yellow Streak: Two hundred thousand! The Dipsomaniac: Sixth Edition!! Rattlesnake Ranch: Tenth Impression!!! Why, what a disgusting lot of money the man must be making!
Vaine: Yes, the Indiana Idol, the Boy Bestseller-monger. A perfect bounder as regards Art. But he knows how to truckle to the mob. His books sell by the ton. They're so bad, they're almost good.
Quince (with surprising feeling): There! I don't agree with you. He doesn't even know how to please the public. It takes a clever man to do that, and Norman Dane is only a dry-goods clerk spoiled. No, the point is—he is the public, the apotheosis of the vulgar intelligence. Don't think for a moment he is writing down to the level of the mob. He charms the great half-educated because he himself belongs to them. He can't help it.
Vaine: Yes, but there are so many plebeian novelists. How do you account for Dane's spectacular success?
Quince: A fool's luck! He happened to hit the psychological moment. When he leaped into the lists with The Haunted Taxicab taxis had just come out, and at the same moment there was a mania for mystery stories. Take two popular motifs, mix recklessly, spice with sentiment and sauce with sensation—there you have the recipe of a bestseller. His book fluked into favour. His publishers put their weight behind it. In a month he found himself famous from Maine to Mexico. But he couldn't do it again; no, not in a thousand years. What has he done since? Live on his name. Step cunningly in his tracks. Bah! I tell you Norman Dane's an upstart, a faker; to the very heart of him a shallow, ignorant pretender....
Whatever else the poor chap might be was lost in the distance as the two men moved away. For a long time after they had gone I did not stir. The fluttering snow-butterflies seemed to have become great moths, that hovered in the radiance of the nearest arc-light and dashed to a watery doom. Pensively I gazed into that greenish glamour, pulling at a burnt-out cigarette.
At last I rose, and going to the book-case regarded the nine volumes of flamboyant isolation.
"An upstart," I sighed softly; "a faker, a pretender ..."
And to tell the truth I was sorely taken aback; for you see in my hours of industry I am a maker of books and my pen name is Norman Dane.
