“——Make a fool of yourself, like Vane.”
“I am not so sure that is fair to Vane,” said John; “no one can go through what he did, and keep perfectly sound.”
“I’ll leave it to the crowd,” said the Major; “what say you, boys?”
All were unanimous. There was no excuse for a crime like Vane’s. Evidently they all knew Vane. He was damned without one dissenting voice.
“Who was Vane?” said I, “and what did he do? Which commandment did he break? He must have made merry with them all—or, rather, have kept them all to get such a judgment in this club.”
A babel of voices arose. All these men were intimate friends; and they were sitting in one of the small smoking-rooms of the Columbian Club in New York. John had just engaged himself to be married, and we had given him a dinner; or, as Pel Schuyler put it, we were “recording his mortgage.” Schuyler was a real-estate broker.
“Now, look here,” said John, “how many of you fellows know Vane personally?”
No one, apparently. There was a moment’s silence. Then the Major spoke up. “Bah!” said he, “I have heard the story these ten years.” “So have I!” chimed in several others. “My brother knew Vane in Paris,” said Pel. “I had it from Mrs. Malgam herself,” simpered Daisy Blake, fatuously.
“Well, at least, I know nothing of it,” I said; “tell it for my benefit, John.”
“Yes, yes,” cried they, “let’s hear the correct and only version according to John.”
It was that critical moment in a dinner, when the fireworks of champagne have sputtered out, and the burgundy invites to somnolence. All had lit their cigars, and felt more like listening than talking. John did not smoke.
“I will,” said he. “At that time, I was his best—I may say, his only friend.”
“And I say, still,” said the Major, “he acted like a fool and criminally. There can be no excuse for such conduct.”
John shrugged his shoulders and began. Of course, I do not mean that he told the whole story just as I have written it. He related the bare facts, with little comment and without conversations. Whether you condemned the man or excused him, John thought, his story might be understood, even if his folly were not forgiven. The crowd at the club did neither; and, perhaps, their judgment is the judgment of the world; and the world is probably right. But we may learn from folly; it is sometimes more suggestive than common sense. There is the ordinary success and there is the exceptional failure; that is pleasanter, but this is more instructive. Extreme cases fix the law.
The world is probably right; and, to those of us who are healthily adapted to our environment, the world is enough. Blessed are they who are fitted, for they shall survive. The world is enough; but the poet sang, love is enough. Shall we say, love is surplusage? The world is always right; and how virtuously the healthy world reproves what is morbid! How all the world unites in condemning him who is not fully content with itself! For such an one it cannot even spare its pity. There is a kind of personal animus in its contempt.
Let us hasten to join our little voices to swell the universal song. So John told the story—plainly and coldly, the more adversely for the lingering doubt; so we tell the story, and the doubt lessens as we state the facts, and quite vanishes as we reach the end. It is the story of a common crime, and the criminal is no friend of ours, as he was of John’s. Moreover, Schuyler called the criminal a fool.