Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches Part 8

TWO GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE

One could see at a glance that they were gentlemen as they strolled leisurely along, side by side, through Madison Square, on Christmas morning.

A certain subtle charm--let us call it a dignified aimlessness--hung about them like an easy garment, labelling them as mild despisers of ambitions, of goals, of destinations, of conventionalities.

The observer who pa.s.sed from casual contemplation of their unkempt locks to a closer scrutiny perceived, even in pa.s.sing them, that their shoes were not mates, while the distinct bagging at the knees of their trousers was somewhat too high in one case, and too low in the other, to encompa.s.s the knees within which were slowly, but surely, gaining tardy secondary recognitions at points more or less remote from the first impressions.

One pair was a trifle short in the legs, while the other--they of the too-low knee-marks--were turned up an inch or two above the shoes: a style which in itself may seem to savor of affectation, and yet, taken with the wearer on this occasion, dispelled suspicion.

It seemed rather a cold day to sit on a bench in Madison Square, and yet our two gentlemen, after making a casual tour of the walks, sat easily down; and, indeed, though pa.s.sers hurried by in heavy top-coats and furs, it seemed quite natural that these gentlemen should be seated.

One or two others, differing more or less as individuals from our friends, but evidently members of the same social caste, broadly speaking, were also sitting in the square, apparently as oblivious to the cold as they.

"The hardest thing to bear," the taller one, he of the short trousers, was saying, as he dropped his shapely wrist over the iron arm of the bench, "the hardest thing for the individual, under the present system, is the arbitrariness of the a.s.signments of life. The chief advantage of the Bellamy scheme seems to me to be in its harmonious adjustments, so to speak. Every man does professionally what he can best do. If you and I had been reared under that system, now--"

"What, think you, would Bellamy the prophet have made of you, Humphrey?"

"Well, sir, his government would have taken pains to discover and develop my tendency, my drift--"

"Ah, I see. I should judge that nature had endowed you with a fine b.u.mp of drift, Humphrey. But has it not been rather well cared for? The trouble with drifting is, so say the preachers, that it necessarily carries one downstream."

"To the sea, the limitless, the boundless, the ultimatum--however, this is irrelevant and frivolous. I am serious--and modest, I a.s.sure you--when I speak of my gifts. I have, as you know, a p.r.o.nounced gift at repartee. Who knows what this might have become under proper development? But it has been systematically snubbed, misunderstood, dubbed impertinence, forsooth."

"If I remember aright, it was your gift of repartee that--wasn't it something of that sort which severed your connection with college?"

"Yes, and here I am. That's where the shoe pinches. Ha! and by way of literal ill.u.s.tration, speaking of the mal-adjustments of life, witness this boot."

The speaker languidly extended his right foot.

"The fellow who first wore it had bunions, blast him, and I come into his bunion-bulge with a short great toe. As a result, here I am in New York in December, instead of absorbing suns.h.i.+ne and the odor of violets in Jackson Square in New Orleans, with picturesqueness and color all about me. No man could start South with such a boot as that.

"I do most cordially hope that the beastly vulgarian who shaped it has gone, as my friend Mantalini would express it, 'to the demnition bow-wows.' You see the beauty of the Bellamy business is that all callings are equally worthy. As a social factor I should have made a record, and would probably have gone into history as a wit."

"Condemn the history! You'd have gone into life, Humphrey. That's enough. You'd have gone into the home--into your own bed at night--into dinner in a dress-coat--into society, your element--into posterity in your brilliant progeny, paterfamilias--"

"Enough, Colonel. There are some things--even from an old comrade like yourself--"

"Beg pardon, Humphrey. No offence meant, I a.s.sure you.

"It's only when life's fires are burning pretty low that we may venture to stir the coals and knock off the ashes a little.

"For myself, I don't mind confessing, Humphrey, that there have been women--Don't start; there isn't even a Yule-log smouldering on my heart's hearth to-day. I can stir the smoking embers safely. I say there have been women--a woman I'll say, even--a nursemaid, whom I have seen in this park--a perfect Juno. She was well-born I'd swear, by her delicate ears, her instep, her curved nostrils--"

"Did you ever approach your G.o.ddess near enough to catch her curved articulation, Colonel? Or doubtless it flowed in angles, Anglo-Saxon pura."

"You are flippant, Humphrey. I say if this woman had had educational advantages and--and if my affairs had looked up a little, well--there's no telling! And yet, to tell you this to-day does not even warm my heart."

"Nor rattle a skeleton within its closet?"

"Not a rattle about me, sir, excepting the rattle of these beastly newspapers on my chest. Have a smoke, Humphrey?"

The Colonel presented a handful of half-burned cigar-stubs.

"No choice. They're all twenty-five-centers, a.s.sorted from a Waldorf lot."

"Thanks."

Humphrey took three. The Colonel, reserving one for his own use, dropped the rest into his outer pocket.

And now eleven men pa.s.sed, smoking, eleven unapproachables, before one dropped a burning stump.

As Humphrey rose and strode indolently forward to secure the fragment, there was a certain courtliness about the man that even a pair of short trousers could not disguise. It was the same which constrains us to write him down Sir Humphrey.

"I never appropriate the warmth of another man's lips," said he, as, having first presented the light to his friend, he lit a fragment for himself. Then, pressing out the fire of the last acquisition, he laid it beside him to cool before adding it to his store.

"Nor I," responded the Colonel--"at least, I never did but once. I happened to be walking behind General Grant, and he dropped a smoking stub--"

"Which you took for Granted--"

"If you will, yes. It was a bit sentimental, I know, but I rather enjoyed placing it warm from his lips to mine. It was to me a sort of calumet, a pipe of peace, for rebel that I was, and am, I always respected Grant. Then, too, I fancied that I might deceive the fragment into surrendering its choicest aroma to me, since I surprised it in the att.i.tude of surrender, and I believe it did."

"Sentimental dog that you are!" said Sir Humphrey, smiling, as he inserted the remaining bit of his cigar into an amber tip and returned it to his lips.

"You have never disclosed to me, Humphrey, where you procured that piece of bric-a-brac?"

"Haven't I? That is because of my Bostonian reticence. No secret, I a.s.sure you. I found it, sir, in the lining of this coat. The fair donor of this s.p.a.cious garment on one occasion, at least, gave a _tip_ to a beggar unawares."

"Exceptional woman. Seems to me the exceptional beggar would have returned the article."

"Exceptional case. Didn't find the tip for a month. I was in Mobile at the time. I should have written my benefactress had stationery been available and had I known her name. When I returned to New York in the spring there was a placard on the house. Otherwise I should have restored the tip, and trusted to her courtesy for the reward of virtue."

"You have forgotten that that commodity is its own reward?"

"Yes, and the only reward it ever gets, as a New Orleans wit once remarked. Hence, here we are. However, returning to my fair benefactress, I haven't much opinion of her. Any woman who would mend her husband's coat-sleeve with glue--look at this! First moist spell, away it went. Worst of it was I happened to have no garment under it at the time. However, the incident secured me quite a handsome acquisition of linen. Happened to run against a clever little tub-shaped woman whose ample bosom, I take it, was ordered especially for the accommodation of a.s.sorted sympathies. She, perceiving my azure-veined elbow, invited me to the dispensing-room of the I. O. U. Society, of which she was a member, and presented me with a roll of garments, and--would you believe it?--there wasn't a tract or leaflet in the bundle--and as to my soul, she never mentioned the abstraction to me. Now, that is what I call Christianity. However, I may come across a motto somewhere, yet. Of course, at my first opportunity, I put on those s.h.i.+rts--one to wear, and the other three to carry. So I've given them only a cursory examination thus far."

"Which one do you consider yourself wearing, Humphrey, and which do you carry?"

"I wear the _outside_ one, of course--and carry the others."

"Do you, indeed? Well, now, if I were in the situation, I should feel that I was wearing the one next my body--and carrying the other three."

"That's because you are an egotist and can't project yourself. I have the power the giftie gi'e me, and see myself as others see me. How's that for quick adaptation?"

"Quite like you. If the Scotch poet had not been at your elbow with his offering, no doubt you'd have originated something quite as good. So you may be at this moment absorbing condensed theology, _nolens volens_."