THE IMITATOR

A NOVEL

By

PERCIVAL POLLARD

SAINT LOUIS

WILLIAM MARION REEDY

1901

Contents

CHAPTER I.

"The thing is already on the wane," said young Orson Vane, making a wry face over the entree, and sniffing at his glass, "and, if you ask me, I think the general digestion of society will be the better for it."

"Yes, there is nothing, after all, so tedious as the sham variety of a table d'hote. Though it certainly wasn't the fare one came to this hole for."

Luke Moncreith turned his eyes, as he said that, over the place they sat in, smiling at it with somewhat melancholy contempt. Its sanded floor, its boisterously exposed wine-barrels, the meaningless vivacity of its Hungarian orchestra, evidently stirred him no more.

"No; that was the last detail. It was the notion of dining below stairs, as the servants do. It had, for a time, the charm of an imitation. Nothing is so delightful as to imitate others; yet to be mistaken for them is always dreadful. Of course, nobody would mistake us here for servants."

The company, motley as it was, could not logically have come under any such suspicion. Though it was dining in a cellar, on a sanded floor, amid externals that were illegitimate offsprings of a Studenten Kneipe and a crew of Christy minstrels, it still had, in the main, the air of being recruited from the smart world. At every other table there were people whom not to know was to argue oneself unknown. These persons obviously treated the place, and their being there, as an elaborate effort at gaiety; the others, the people who were plainly there for the first time, took it with the bewildered manner of those whom each new experience leaves mentally exhausted. The touch of rusticity, here and there, did not suffice to spoil the sartorial sparkle of the smart majority. The champagne that the sophisticated were wise enough to oppose to the Magyar vintages sparkled into veins that ran beautifully blue under skin that held curves the most aristocratic, tints the most shell-like. Tinkling laughter, vocative of insincerity, rang between the restless passion of the violins.

"When it is not below stairs," continued Vane, "it is up on the roof. One might think we were a society without houses of our own. It is, I suppose, the human craving for opposites. When we have stored our sideboards with the finest glass you can get in Vienna or Carlsbad, we turn our backs on it and go to drinking from pewter in a cellar. We pay abominable wages to have servants who shall be noiseless, and then go to places where the service is as guttural as a wilderness of monkeys. Fortunately, these fancies do not last. Presently, I dare say, it will be the fashion to dine at home. That will make us feel quite like the original Puritans." He laughed, and took his glass of wine at a gulp. "The fact of the matter is that variety has become the vice of life. We have not, as a society, any inner steadfastness of soul; we depend upon externals, and the externals pall with fearful speed. Think of seeing in the mirror the face of the same butler for more than thirty days!" He shuddered and shook his head.

"We are a restless lot," sighed the other, "but why discompose yourself about it? Thank your stars you have nothing more important to worry over!"

"My dear Luke, there is nothing more important than the attitude of society at large. It is the only thing one should allow oneself to discuss. To consider one's individual life is to be guilty of as bad form as to wear anything that is conspicuous. Society admires us chiefly only as we sink ourselves in it. If we let the note of personality rise, our social position is sure to suffer. Imitation is the keynote of smartness. The rank and file imitate the leaders consciously, and the leaders unconsciously imitate the average. We frequent cellars, and roofs, and such places, because in doing so we imagine we are imitating the days of the Hanging Gardens and the Catacombs. We abhor the bohemian taint, but we are willing to give a champagne and chicken imitation of it. We do not really care for music and musicians, but we give excellent imitations of doing so. At present we are giving the most lifelike imitation of being passionately fond of outdoor life; I suppose England feels flattered. I am afraid I have forgotten whose the first fashionable divorce in our world was; it is far easier to remember the names of the people who have never been divorced; at any rate those pioneers ought to feel proud of the hugeness of their following. We have adopted a vulgarity from Chicago and made it a fashionable institution; divorce used to be a shuttlecock for the comic papers, and now it makes the bulk of the social register."

Moncreith tapped his friend on the arm. "Drop it, Orson, drop it!" he said. "I know this is a beastly bad dinner, but you shouldn't let it make you maudlin. You know you don't really believe half you're saying. Drop it, I say. These infernal poses make me ill." He attacked the morsel of game on his plate with a zest that was beautiful to behold. "If you go on in that biliously philosophic strain of yours, I shall crunch this bird until I hear nothing but the grinding of bones. It is really not a bad bit of quail. It is so small, and the casserole so large, that you need an English setter to mark it, but once you've got it,"—he wiped his lips with a flip of his napkin, "it's really worth the search. Try it, and cheer up. The woman in rose, over there, under the pseudo-palm, looks at you every time she sips her champagne; I have no doubt she is calculating how untrue you could be to her. I suppose your gloom strikes her as poetic; it strikes me as very absurd. You really haven't a care in the world, and you sit here spouting insincerity at a wasteful rate. If there's anything really and truly the matter—tell me!"

Orson Vane dropped, as if it had been a mask, the ironical smile his lips had worn. "You want sincerity," he said, "well, then I shall be sincere. Sincerity makes wrinkles, but it is the privilege of our friends to make us old before our time. Sincerely, then, Luke, I am very, very tired."

"A fashionable imitation," mocked Moncreith.

"No; a personal aversion, to myself, to the world I live in. I wish the dear old governor hadn't been such a fine fellow; if he had been of the newer generation of fathers I suppose I wouldn't have had an ideal to bless myself with."

Moncreith interrupted.

"Good Lord, Luke, did you say ideals? I swear I never knew it was as bad as that." He beckoned to the waiter and ordered a Dominican. "It is so ideal a liquor that when you have tasted it you crave only for brutalities. Poor Orson! Ideals!" He sighed elaborately.

"If you imitate my manner of a while ago, I shall not say what I was going to say. If I am to be sincere, so must you." He took the scarlet drink the man set before him, and let it gurgle gently down his throat. "It smacks of sin and I scent lies in it. I wish I had not taken it. It is hard to be sincere after a drink that stirs the imagination. But I shall try. And you are not to interrupt any more than you can help. If we both shed the outer skin we wear for society, I believe we are neither of us such bad sorts. That is just what I am getting at: I am not quite bad enough to be blind to my own futility. Here I am, Luke, young, decently looking, with money, position, and bodily health, and yet I am cursed with thought of my own futility. When people have said who I am, they have said it all; I have done nothing: I merely am. I know others would sell their souls to be what I am; but it does not content me. I have spent years considering my way. The arts have called to me, but they have not