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"That is the Countess Olenska?a granddaughter of old Mrs
"Whew?a Countess!" whistled Ned Winsett"Well, I didn't know Countesses were so neighbourly
"They would be, if you'd let them
"Ah, well?" It was their old interminable argument as to the obstinate unwillingness of the "clever people" to frequent the fashionable, and both men knew that there was no use in prolonging it
"I wonder," Winsett broke off, "how a Countess happens to live in our slum?"
"Because she doesn't care a hang about where she lives?or about any of our little social sign-posts," said Archer, with a secret pride in his own picture of her
"H'm?been in bigger places, I suppose," the other commented"Well, here's my corner
He slouched off across Broadway, and Archer stood looking after him and musing on his last words
Ned Winsett had those flashes of penetration; they were the most interesting thing about him, and always made Archer wonder why they had allowed him to accept failure so stolidly at an age when most men are still struggling
Archer had known that Winsett had a wife and child, but he had never seen themThe two men always met at the Century, or at some haunt of journalists and theatrical people, such as the restaurant where Winsett had proposed to go for a bockHe had given Archer to understand that his wife was an invalid; which might be true of the poor lady, or might merely mean that she was lacking in social gifts or in cartier tank louis cartier evening clothes, or in bothWinsett himself had a savage abhorrence of social observances: Archer, who dressed in the evening because he thought it cleaner and more comfortable to do so, and who had never stopped to consider that cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in a modest budget, regarded Winsett's attitude as part of the boring "Bohemian" pose that always made fashionable people, who changed their clothes without talking about it, and were not forever harping on the number of servants one kept, seem so much simpler and less self-conscious than the othersNevertheless, he was always stimulated by Winsett, and whenever he caught sight of the journalist's lean bearded face and melancholy eyes he would rout him out of his corner and carry him off for a long talk
Winsett was not a journalist by choiceHe was a pure man of letters, untimely born in a world that had no need of letters; but after publishing one volume of brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of which one hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away, and the balance eventually destroyed by the publishers (as per contract) to make room for more marketable material, he had abandoned his real calling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where fashion-plates and paper patterns alternated with New England love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks
On the subject of "Hearth-fires" (as the paper was called) he was inexhaustibly black and white chanel entertaining; but beneath his fun lurked the sterile bitterness of the still young man who has tried and given upHis conversation always made Archer take the measure of his own life, and feel how little it contained; but Winsett's, after all, contained still less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views usually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism
"The fact is, life isn't much a fit for either of us," Winsett had once said"I'm down and out; nothing to be done about itI've got only one ware to produce, and there's no market for it here, and won't be in my timeBut you're free and you're well-offWhy don't you get into touch? There's only one way to do it: to go into politics
Archer threw his head back and laughedThere one saw at a flash the unbridgeable difference between men like Winsett and the others?Archer's kindEvery one in polite circles knew that, in America, "a gentleman couldn't go into politics But, since he could hardly put it in that way to Winsett, he answered evasively: "Look at the career of the honest man in American politics! They don't want us
"Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they' yourselves?"
Archer's laugh lingered on his lips in a slightly condescending smileIt was useless to prolong the discussion: everybody knew the melancholy fate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen chanel necklace in municipal or state politics in New YorkThe day was past when that sort of thing was possible: the country was in possession of the bosses and the emigrant, and decent people had to fall back on sport or culture
"Culture! Yes?if we had it! But there are just a few little local patches, dying out here and there for lack of?well, hoeing and cross-fertilising: the last remnants of the old European tradition that your forebears brought with themBut you're in a pitiful little minority: you've got no centre, no competition, no audienceYou're like the pictures on the walls of a deserted house: 'The Portrait of a Gentleman' You'll never amount to anything, any of you, till you roll up your sleeves and get right down into the muckGod! If I could emigrate
Archer mentally shrugged his shoulders and turned the conversation back to books, where Winsett, if uncertain, was always interestingEmigrate! As if a gentleman could abandon his own country! One could no more do that than one could roll up one's sleeves and go down into the muckA gentleman simply stayed at home and abstainedBut you couldn't make a man like Winsett see that; and that was why the New York of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake made it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out, in the end, to be a smaller box, with a more monotonous pattern, than the assembled atoms of Fifth Avenue
The next morning Archer scoured the town in vain for more yellow louis vuitton backpacks rosesIn consequence of this search he arrived late at the office, perceived that his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his lifeWhy should he not be, at that moment, on the sands of StAugustine with May Welland? No one was deceived by his pretense of professional activityIn old-fashioned legal firms like that of which MrLetterblair was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the management of large estates and "conservative" investments, there were always two or three young men, fairly well-off, and without professional ambition, who, for a certain number of hours of each day, sat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks, or simply reading the newspapersThough it was supposed to be proper for them to have an occupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as derogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more gentlemanly pursuit than businessBut none of these young men had much hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire to do so; and over many of them the green mould of the perfunctory was already perceptibly spreading
It made Archer shiver to think that it might be spreading over him tooHe had, to be sure, other tastes and interests; he spent his vacations in European travel, cultivated the "clever people" May spoke of, and generally tried to "keep up," as he had somewhat wistfully put it to Madame louis vuitton mahina Olen |