IS friends were in the habit of saying that Bill Emmons had always had everything he had tried for, and there was enough truth in the assertion to save it from fatuity. Achievement had marked every stage of his career.
He had gone to a college whose democracy and whose millionaires are usually mentioned in the same breath, and here he had been so democratic that old graduates, who feared that the millionaires were too much in the ascendant, pointed him out as the best example of the true ideals of the university. The millionaires, meanwhile, walked humbly and appreciatively before Bill, as behooved those who did not represent true ideals.
Now Bill was not only extremely popular with all sets and ages (and that, without the artificial fascination of being on the crew, or the eleven, for he had never gone in for athletics), but, as if to show his originality, he actually studied: and, not content with this, he even went so far as to take honors and prizes. The faculty distinguished him, not because he was the "strongest" man in the class, but because, from their own point of view, he was the most prominent.
It need scarce be said that Bill liked all this. His spirits were high, and he said openly that this was the happiest time of a man's life, to which people often replied: "Ah, well, we don't all do it like you, you know," an answer which did not lessen Bill's appreciation of his own blessings.
There was, indeed, only one little ripple upon the sea of his content, and this was a man nominally his friend, at least, all their friends were mutual, and they themselves found enough interest in each other's company to be often in the other's room, discussing the questions of the minute. Dale Fenton belonged to about the same organizations that Bill did, only his membership was more of a matter of course and less of a triumph for pure democracy. This was precisely the fact that sometimes annoyed and sometimes flattered Bill. Fenton had no other spheres of activity at college. He did not feel the obligations of putting the millionaires in their proper place; of being a true ideal.
But it was not Dale's success that irritated Bill. His own was on a larger scale. It was rather the knowledge that Fenton did not value his. Bill was anything but analytical, and he had never been able to explain to himself the disquieting effect of Fenton's presence. If he had asked Fenton, he could have found out. Dale knew that the key-note of Bill's success was not irrepressible natural ability, no triumphant expression of character. The demon that drove him on was the spirit of emulation—a sort of unselective, ubiquitous ambition that never let him rest. He could not see anyone excelling in anything, without being compelled to outdo him. Ambition is generally supposed to be a hard master. But this was something worse. His widespread susceptibility to rivalry worked him like a slave-driver. On this susceptibility Fenton continually touched in a way too subtle for Bill to grasp. He only knew that he never left Fenton without wondering whether he really had got so very far, without feeling the necessity of again asserting himself; of achieving some new pre-eminence—a pre-eminence which, it always subsequently appeared, Fenton did not so particularly respect.
After they left college, though they both came to New York, they saw but little of each other. Bill went into business, taking his place in the broking-house of which his father had been a member. One native capacity he undoubtedly had—the power of work-and this he began to display to a degree positively dazzling to men who had settled down into complaisant routine. Yet he still found opportunity in leisure moments for activity that manifested itself in an occasional article in the magazines on the political aspects of business.
The rest of the time he spent in maintaining the old college spirit which, he had heard graduates lament, was never kept up after a year. He went about in an overcoat ostentatiously old, with the collar turned up, and smoked many pipes, with his feet on the mantel-pieces of former classmates. All such conduct was very distressing to his mother.
She was a pretty capable little woman, from whom, it took no great imagination to discover, Bill had inherited some of his characteristics. Her success, however, was more in details, was more complete, but of smaller scope. With no very large share of either brains or money, she had managed to arrange her life exactly to suit her. She was no sooner left a widow than she set about this task. She wanted, happily, nothing more than to go about among the people she selected, wearing clothes which were admired.
