The Undiscovered Country. William Dean HowellsЧитать онлайн книгу.

      II.

      MR. PHILLIPS'S father had been in business on that obscure line which divides the wholesale merchant's social acceptability from the lost condition of the retail dealer.

      When he died, however, his son emerged forever from the social twilight in which the father had been content to remain. He took account of his means, and found that he had enough to live handsomely upon, not only without anything like shop-keeping, but without business of any sort, and he courageously resolved to be a man of leisure. He had certain tastes which qualified him for this life; he had read much, and he had travelled abroad. He joined a club convenient to the lodging which he kept in his paternal home, letting out the rest of the house to a thrifty woman whose interest it was that he should have nothing to complain of. Every morning, at nine precisely, he breakfasted at the club, beside one of the pleasantest windows; the sun came in there in the afternoon, and except in the winter months he dined at another table. His breakfast and his dinner were the chief events of a day which he had the wisdom to keep as like every other day as he could, unless for some very good reason. When he had finished either meal, he turned over the newspapers and magazines, largely English, in the reading-room; after dinner he often dozed a few minutes in his chair. For the rest, he paid visits and went about to the picture stores and to the studios. Now and then he bought a painting, which in his hands turned out a good investment; but his passion was bric-a-brac, and he liked the excitement of the auction-room, where he picked up from time to time a rug, a queer vase, a colonial clock, a claw-footed table or chest of drawers, and added them to his stores.

      He kept up with the current literature, and distilled from it a polite essence, with which he knew how to perfume his conversation in the measure agreeable to ladies willing to learn what it was distinguished to read. With many he was an authority in such matters, and with nearly all he was acceptable for a certain freshness of the susceptibilities, which he studiously preserved, growing them under glass, as it were, when it was past their natural seasons to flourish in the open air. Now and then one revolted against this artificial bloom, and declared that Mr. Phillips's emotions smelt of the watering-pot; but commonly they were well liked by the sex with which, even if he had not preferred, he would have been forced mainly to associate. There is no society but that of women for an idler in our country; the other men are busy and tired, with little patience and little sympathy for men who are not busy and tired.

      Such men as Phillips consorted with were of the feminine temperament, like artists and musicians (he had a pretty taste in music); or else they were of the intensely masculine sort, like Ford, to whom he had attached himself. He liked to have their queer intimacy noted, and to talk of it with the ladies of his circle, finding it as much of a mystery as he could. At these times he treated his friend as a bit of vertu, telling, at what length his lovely listener would, of how he had happened to pick Ford up. He bore much from him in the way of contemptuous sarcasm; it illustrated the strange fascination which such a man as Ford had for such a man as Phillips. He lay in wait for his friend's characteristics, and when he had surprised this trait or that in him he was fond of exhibiting his capture.

      The tie that bound Ford, on his part, to Phillips was not tangible; it was hardly more than force of habit, or like an indifferent yielding to the advances made by the latter. Doubtless the absence of any other intimacy had much to do with this apparent intimacy. They had as little in common in matters of taste as in temperament. Ford openly scorned bric-a-brac; he rarely went into society; for the ladies in whose company Phillips liked to bask he cared as slightly as for stamped leather or Saracenic tiles. He was not of Bostonian origin, and had come to the city a much younger man than we find him. He was known to a few persons of like tastes for his scientific studies, which he pursued somewhat fitfully, as his poverty, and that dark industry known as writing for the press, by which he eked out his poverty, permitted. He wrote a caustic style; and this, together with his brooding look and his taciturn and evasive habits, gave rise to conjecture that his past life concealed a disappointment in love, "Or perhaps," suggested a fair analyst, "in literature."

      Several mornings after the seance at Mrs. Le Roy's, he sat on one of the many benches which the time found vacant in the Public Garden. It was yet far too early for the nurse-maids and their charges and suitors; the marble Venus of the fountain was surprised without her shower on; Mr. Ball's equestrian Washington drew his sword in solitude unbroken by a policeman upon Dr. Rimmer's Hamilton in Commonwealth Avenue; the whole precinct rested in patrician insensibility to the plebeian hour of seven; and Ford, if he had cared, would have been safe from the polite amaze of that neighborhood at finding one even of its remote acquaintance in those pleasure-grounds at that period of the day. He sat in a place which was habitual with him; for he lodged in one of the boarding-houses on a street nearby, and he made the Public Garden the resort of such leisure as each day afforded him, seeking always the same seat under the same Kilmarnock willow, and suffering a sense of invasion when he found it taken. Commonly his leisure fell much later in the day; and he had now the aspect of a sleep-broken man, rather than the early riser who takes the air on principle or from choice. He sat and gazed absently over at the pond, where the swans lay still on the still water, with their white reflections under them as distinct and substantial to the eye as their own bulk.

      A few stragglers, looking as jaded as himself for the most part, lounged on the seats along the walks, or hung listless on the parapet of the bridge. The spiteful English sparrows scattered their sharp, irritating notes through the air, and quarreled about over the grass, or made love like the nagging lovers out of a lady's novel.

      When Ford at last withdrew his absent eyes from the swans and looked up, he was aware of a large and flabby presence, which towered, in the sense that a lofty mold of jelly may be said to tower, on the path directly before him. In this he gradually recognized an acquaintance of the spiritual seance, and finally knew the mottled face of Mr. Eccles; the morning was unseasonably close and warm; his hat was off, and the breeze played with the hair that crept thinly over his crown; his shirt and collar were clean, but affected the spectator differently.

      "A-r-r-h—good-morning!" he said, with a slow, hard smoothness, staring intently at Ford, with a set smile and shut teeth.

      "How d' ye do!" answered Ford, without interest.

      "Nice morning," said Mr. Eccles, turning half about, and describing it with a wave of his limp-rimmed silk hat.

      "Very pleasant," assented Ford, making no motion to rise, and neither inviting nor forbidding further conversation.

      "A habitual early riser?" suggested Mr. Eccles.

      " No, I merely happen to be up."

      "I rise early myself," said Mr. Eccles.

      "It is my digestion. I sleep badly." He looked, as he spoke, like a man who had never slept well. "Your friend, I presume, is not troubled in his digestion?"

      "If you mean Mr. Phillips," replied Ford, with a cold ray of amusement, "I believe not. He makes it a matter of conscience to digest well."

      "It isn't that, sir," said Mr. Eccles. "I have experimented in the matter a great deal. I have tried to digest well on principle, but that does not reach the root of the trouble. It may be alleviated by the proper influences; but this sourness "—he struck his stomach softly—"seems to be the material response to some spiritual ferment which we are at present powerless to escape.

      I am satisfied