There was not the least hope in the world for him to proceed toward his
goal this night. He realized this clearly, now that he was face to face
with actualities. It required more than the chaotic impulses that had
brought him back from the jungles of the Orient. He must reason out a plan
that should be like a straight line, the shortest distance between two
given points. How then should he pass the night, since none of his schemes
could possibly be put into operation? Return to his hotel and smoke
himself headachy? Try to become interested in a novel? Go to bed, to turn
and roll till dawn? A wild desire seized him to make a night of
it,--Maxim's, the cabarets; riot and wine. Who cared? But the desire burnt
itself out between two puffs of his cigar. Ten years ago, perhaps, this
particular brand of amusement might have urged him successfully. But not
now; he was done with tomfool nights. Indeed, his dissipations had been
whimsical rather than banal; and retrospection never aroused a furtive
sense of shame.
He was young, but not so young as an idle glance might conjecture in
passing. To such casual reckoning he appeared to be in the early twenties;
but scrutiny, more or less infallible, noting a line here or an angle
there, was disposed to add ten years to the score. There was in the nose
and chin a certain decisiveness which in true youth is rarely developed.
This characteristic arrives only with manhood, manhood that has been tried
and perhaps buffeted and perchance a little disillusioned. To state that
one is young does not necessarily imply youth; for youth is something that
is truly green and tender, not rounded out, aimless, light-hearted and
desultory, charming and inconsequent. If man regrets his youth it is not
for the passing of these pleasing, though tangled attributes, but rather
because there exists between the two periods of progression a series of
irremediable mistakes. And the subject of this brief commentary could look
back on many a grievous one brought about by pride or carelessness rather
than by intent.
But what was one to do who had both money and leisure linked to an
irresistible desire to leave behind one place or thing in pursuit of
another, indeterminately? At one time he wanted to be an artist, but his
evenly balanced self-criticism had forced him to fling his daubs into the
ash-heap. They were good daubs in a way, but were laid on without fire;
such work as any respectable schoolmarm might have equaled if not
surpassed. Then he had gone in for engineering; but precise and intricate
mathematics required patience of a quality not at his command.