A young man who had just landed in New York from one of the big,
adventurous transatlantic liners hailed a taxicab and was quickly
drawn away into the glitter and gayety of a bright winter morning. He
sat forward eagerly, looking at everything with the air of a lad on a
holiday. He was a young man, but he was not in his first youth, and
under a heavy sunburn he was pale and a trifle worn, but there was
about him a look of being hard and very much alive. Under a broad brow
there were hawk eyes of greenish gray, a delicate beak, a mouth and
chin of cleverness. It was an interesting face and looked as though it
had seen interesting things. In fact, Prosper Gael had just returned
from his three months of ambulance service in France, and it was the
extraordinary success of his play, "The Leopardess," that had chiefly
brought him back.
"Dear Luck," his manager had written, using the college title which
Prosper's name and unvarying good fortune suggested, "you'd better
come back and gather up some of these laurels that are smothering us
all. The time is very favorable for the disappearance of your
anonymity. I, for one, find it more and more difficult to keep the
secret. So far, not even your star knows it. She calls you 'Mr. Luck'
... to that extent I have been indiscreet...."
Prosper had another letter in his pocket, a letter that he had re-read
many times, always with an uneasy conflict of emotions. He was in a
sort of hot-cold humor over it, in a fever-fit that had a way of
turning into lassitude. He postponed analysis indefinitely. Meanwhile
his eyes searched the bright, cold city, its crowds, its traffics, its
windows--most of all, its placards, and, not far to seek, there were
the posters of "The Leopardess." He leaned out to study one of them; a
tall, wild-eyed woman crouched to spring upon a man who stared at her
in fear. Prosper dropped back with a gleaming smile of amused
excitement. "They've made it look like cheap melodrama," he said to
himself; "and yet it's a good thing, the best thing I've ever done.
Yet they will vulgarize the whole idea with their infernal notions of
'what the public wants.' Morena is as bad as the rest of them!" He
expressed disgust, but underneath he was aglow with pride and
interest. "There's a performance to-night. I'll dine with Jasper. I'll
have to see Betty first...." His thoughts trailed off and he fell into
that hot-cold confusion, that uncomfortable scorching fog of mood. The
cab turned into Fifth Avenue and became a scale in the creeping
serpent of vehicles that glided, paused, and glided again past the
thronged pavements. Prosper contrasted everything with the grim
courage and high-pitched tragedy of France. He could not but wonder at
the detached frivolity of these money-spenders, these spinners in the
sun. How soon would the shadow fall upon them too and with what change
of countenance would they look up! To him the joyousness seemed almost
childish and yet he bathed his fagged spirit in it. How high the white
clouds sailed, how blue was the midwinter sky! How the buildings
towered, how quickly the people stepped! Here were the pretty painted
faces, the absurd silk stockings, the tripping, exquisitely booted
feet, the swinging walk, the tall, up-springing bodies of the women he
remembered. He regarded them with impersonal delight, untinged by any
of his usual cynicism.