Twelve Men by Theodore Dreiser
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Theodore Dreiser >> Twelve Men
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"Not this first time. I'll only be down there three weeks."
"I'll see you then."
"Supposing we make it certain," he said. "What do you say to dining
together this coming Sunday three weeks?"
I went away, wishing him a fine trip and feeling that his dreams must
now soon begin to come true. He was growing in reputation. Some war
pictures, such as he could do, would set people talking. Then he would
paint his prize pictures, finish his wreck scheme, become a baron, and
be a great man.
Three weeks later I knocked at his studio door. It was a fine springlike
day, though it was in February. I expected confidently to hear his quick
aggressive step inside. Not a sound in reply. I knocked harder, but
still received no answer. Then I went to the other doors about. He might
be with his friends, but they were not in. I went away thinking that his
war duties had interfered, that he had not returned.
Nevertheless there was something depressing about that portion of the
building in which his studio was located. I felt as if it should not be,
and decided to call again. Monday it was the same, and Tuesday.
That same evening I was sitting in the library of the Salmagundi Club,
when a well-known artist addressed me.
"You knew S----, didn't you?" he said.
"Yes; what of it?"
"You knew he was dead, didn't you?"
"What!" I said.
"Yes, he died of fever, this morning."
I looked at him without speaking for a moment.
"Too bad," he said. "A clever boy, Louis. Awfully clever. I feel sorry
for his father."
It did not take long to verify his statement. His name was in the
perfunctory death lists of the papers the next morning. No other notice
of any sort. Only a half-dozen seemed to know that he had ever lived.
And yet it seemed _to me_ that a great tragedy had happened--he was so
ambitious, so full of plans. His dreams were so near fulfillment.
I saw the little grave afterward and the empty studio. His desks
revealed several inventions and many plans of useful things, but these
came to nothing. There was no one to continue the work.
My feeling at the time was as if I had been looking at a beautiful lamp,
lighted, warm and irradiating a charming scene, and then suddenly that
it had been puffed out before my eyes, as if a hundred bubbles of
iridescent hues had been shattered by a breath. We toil so much, we
dream so richly, we hasten so fast, and, lo! the green door is opened.
We are through it, and its grassy surface has sealed us forever from all
which apparently we so much crave--even as, breathlessly, we are still
running.
[Transcriber's Note: Typos have been corrected in this document, but
spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been retained.]
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