JACK GENTIAN
True, hardly to-day art thou what formerly thou wast. Thou thyself sometimes hintest that thy decline has even more than begun. With which confession for warrant some there be—alas for them! who in private are not slow to contribute confirmatory words and enlarge thereon.
‘Failing?’ says one. ‘To be sure! And how manifest the signs. In July you see him parrying the sun with his big white umbrella green-line; nevertheless, ere the straw hats yet begin to disappear from the promenade, reassuming his slouched felt sombrero he betakes himself to the street’s sunny side.’ ‘I have noted that,’ says another; ‘but—will you believe it?—late I espied him musing on a shaded bench in Madison Square; in the forenoon it was, too, not far from a seated file of disreputable nondescripts, non-producers in deplorable attire, plunged in lugubrious reveries on their doubtless misspent lives. Yes, and presently he rose, and after looking about him went straight up to a solitary old vagabond, and standing before him seemed making personal inquiries of him, and concluded by putting hand in pocket and bestowing something upon him. Now seems not that an indication of impaired senses?—deliberately to put a premium on improvidence and thriftlessness, or worse?’ ‘You go a little too far there,’ observes a middle-aged merchant and vestryman, the comfortable president of a charity; ‘the Major was always benevolent, as officially I have reason to know, always benevolent, but too often, as I hear, unsystematically so; and this unwisdom may very likely increase with years. But I hardly thought that he had any way so far decayed in his sense of what is beseeming in a gentleman whatever his years, as publicly to idle, and in business hours, and in such vicinity as you mention. Besides, those Madison Square benches so frequented by the untidy, how can some of them be otherwise than infected, yes, and with vermin. Dear me,’ in a tone of real concern, ‘it were almost enough to banish him from respectable society were it not the esteemed Major and the Dean.’
‘And with a warm deposit at his bank, too; forget not that, my good sir,’ gravely observed a waggish young berry-brown cynic in yachtsman’s attire, secretly amused at all this. Whereat the respectable vestryman with some severity, ‘Sir, that has nothing to do with the matter. This is America, Christian America, thank God; where, be it what it may, one’s bank account is of no account whatever in an American’s estimate of a fellow American.’ Upon which the elders cast a quiet glance toward the young gentleman, significant of their sense that he had been justly rebuked; and the rebuked wag, as conscious of the fact, assumed a contrite demeanour into which, however, he contrived to infuse a twinkle of irony.
‘I was at Mrs. Jones’s dinner,’ volunteered another sexagenarian in an arrested stage of development between the ear and the silk purse; ‘I was at Mrs. Jones’s dinner the other evening—and, by the way, there was twenty-three million represented by the group, twenty-three million dollars, think of that, so I computed it—and between certain parties there was some random talk about Major Gentian, to the effect that he did well in resigning his place as a leading director of the Dime Savings Bank, considering that he had generally outlived his usefulness.’
‘The Major ought to have an attendant,’ says a sunken-cheeked, heron-legged bachelor of uncertain years, a sort of man the natural product of the clubs and club-life, so at least the moralising enemies of clubs would doubtless maintain; ‘he ought to have an attendant, at any rate it will come to that before long. Tom Dutcher tells me that at Newport last season, instead of sedately sitting in white waistcoat and armchair on piazza talking stocks and dividends like most respectable old worthies of his kind, the Major more than ever before took to skylarking with those immature little specimens of humanity, obstreperous enough of themselves, Malthusian superfluities of the household, the chastisement of intemperate wedlock, and the bane, as we all have experienced, of many summer resorts. But you know second childhood has a natural affinity for the first.’
‘To be sure!’ chimes in a young Crœsus of complexion pink and white, recently returned from a four-in-hand coaching trip in Scotland. ‘To be sure! And how tediously, too, does he repeat in the smoking-room of the Come-and-Goes, where he occasionally resorts, his musty old romances of travel, and every version varies from the other. His memory is like wares at the auction—going, going, and anon it will be gone.’
‘Yes,’ says yet another, ‘I was talking with him at the ‘Windsor’ yesterday, and his sporadic ideas were like fishing smacks lost in a Newfoundland fog.’
‘Very much so,’ solemnly remarks a clerical-looking citizen, a politician high in municipal office; ‘very much so indeed. But have you observed one little circumstance, gentlemen, and weighed its significance as a marked symptom—at least some of it—of that irreparable change that, alas, comes with years? Major Gentian, though a soldier on the right side in the war, besides being of double Revolutionary descent—so I am told—nevertheless is far from being that sanguine New Yorker he used to be, and which in true patriotism we are all bound to be? What is this, I would like to know, but the natural optimist doting into the deplorable pessimist.’
Indeed, Dean, but they do cut and come again at thee, yes, even say these things of thee and more. But never a Burgundian among them, our Club harbouring none of that kidney. Outsiders they are, the profane; the seniors, some of them, confirmed tipplers of tea, a decoction that enlarges the spleen and warpest the brain, or lightly floating the spirit for a while at last lands it in a dry place. However, I will not gainsay these young roosters and old hens, since on some points upon which they click-clock the basis of their talk is true enough. But in the crooked mouth of the invidious, imparting its own twist to all it utters, in effect even veracity lies. Fail thou yet mayest, Major, but never degenerate. Thou mayest outlive thy usefulness (execrable phrase!) but never thy loving-kindness. To the last thou wilt be Jack Gentian; not too dignified to be humane; a democrat, though less of the stump than the heart. And should mortal decline come—which Heaven long defer—and the Black Brunswicker lay siege to thee in thy bachelor tower, thy compatriots, those who best know the true temper of thy genial spirit, would still call thee Jack as in the days of their youth, and though debility should then tongue-tie thee, thou wouldst still respond to them out of thy waning eyes.