The Pretender: A Story of the Latin Quarter

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.