Perhaps it was because,in Paul's world,the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness,that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty.Perhaps it was because his experience of life elsewhere was so full of Sabbath-school picnics,petty economies,wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life,and the unescapable odors of cooking,that he found this existence so alluring,these smartly-clad men and women so attractive,that he was so moved by these starry apple orchards that bloomed perennially under the limelight.
It would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincingly the stage entrance of that theater was for Paul the actual portal of Romance.Certainly none of the company ever suspected it,least of all Charley Edwards.It was very like the old stories that used to float about London of fabulously rich Jews,who had subterranean halls there,with palms,and fountains,and soft lamps and richly apparelled women who never saw the disenchanting light of London day.So,in the midst of that smoke-palled city,enamored of figures and grimy toil,Paul had his secret temple,his wishing-carpet,his bit of blue-and-white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine.
Several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction;but the truth was,he scarcely ever read at all.The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind,and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him—well,he got what he wanted much more quickly from music;any sort of music,from an orchestra to a barrel organ.He needed only the spark,the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses,and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own.It was equally true that he was not stage-struck—not,at any rate,in the usual acceptation of that expression.He had no desire to become an actor,any more than he had to become a musician.He felt no necessity to do any of these things;what he wanted was to see,to be in the atmosphere,float on the wave of it,to be carried out,blue league after blue league,away from everything.
After a night behind the scenes,Paul found the school-room more than ever repulsive;the bare floors and naked walls;the prosy men who never wore frock coats,or violets in their buttonholes;the women with their dull gowns,shrill voices,and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative.He could not bear to have the other pupils think,for a moment,that he took these people seriously;he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial,and was there only by way of a joke,anyway.He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates,telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people,of his acquaintance with the soloists who came to Carnegie Hall,his suppers with them and the flowers he sent them.When these stories lost their effect,and his audience grew listless,he would bid all the boys good-by,announcing that he was going to travel for a while;going to Naples,to California,to Egypt.Then,next Monday,he would slip back,conscious and nervously smiling;his sister was ill,and he should have to defer his voyage until spring.
Matters went steadily worse with Paul at school.In the itch to let his instructors know how heartily he despised them,and how thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere,he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to fool with theorems;adding—with a twitch of the eyebrows and a touch of that nervous bravado which so perplexed them—that he was helping the people down at the stock company;they were old friends of his.
The upshot of the matter was,that the Principal went to Paul's father,and Paul was taken out of school and put to work.The manager at Carnegie Hall was told to get another usher in his stead;the door-keeper at the theater was warned not to admit him to the house;and Charley Edwards remorsefully promised the boy's father not to see him again.
The members of the stock company were vastly amused when some of Paul's stories reached them—especially the women.They were hard-working women,most of them supporting indolent husbands or brothers,and they laughed rather bitterly at having stirred the boy to such fervid and florid inventions.They agreed with the faculty and with his father,that Paul's was a bad case.
The east-bound train was plowing through a January snowstorm;the dull dawn was beginning to show gray when the engine whistled a mile out of Newark.Paul started up from the seat where he had lain curled in uneasy slumber,rubbed the breath-misted window glass with his hand,and peered out.The snow was whirling in curling eddies above the white bottom lands,and the drifts lay already deep in the fields and along the fences,while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed stalks protruded black above it.Lights shone from the scattered houses,and a gang of laborers who stood beside the track waved their lanterns.
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