Chapter VI: Introduction (4)

Fernet was too sick to protest. Minetti started the gas-stove and filled the kettle and went into his room for gin. Fernet dragged himself out of his clothes and crawled in between the sheets. Minetti came back. Fernet lay with his eyes half-closed, shivering. Finally the water boiled, and the hunchback brought Fernet a huge tumbler of gin and water with bits of lemon-peel and cloves floating in it. It tasted so good that Fernet forgot his terror for the moment. But when the tumbler was empty he felt helpless; he could scarcely lift his arms; so he lay flat upon his back, staring up at the ceiling. He tried to recall scraps of what he had been reading all afternoon. What was the name of the poison that left one paralyzed? He could not remember. He found his movements becoming more and more difficult; he could scarcely turn in bed. Minetti brewed another toddy. Fernet could not hold the glass! He tried to push the tumbler away from his lips, but his efforts were useless. Minetti hovered above him with a bland, gentle smile, and Fernet felt the warm liquid trickling into his mouth and down his throat. In the midst of all this he lost consciousness.... Once or twice during the night Fernet had a wakeful interlude. Whenever he opened his eyes he saw Minetti sitting before the open window, gazing down at the twisted pepper-tree.

“Yes, they are both alike!” passed dimly through his mind. “They both are at once beautiful and hideous and they have strange secrets! It is no use, I must go away—to-morrow.”

In the morning Minetti was standing by the bed. “I have sent for the doctor,” he said. But his voice sounded far away.

――――

The doctor came shortly after ten o’clock. He was a little wizened, dried-up old man with a profound air.

“He is a fraud!” thought Fernet. “He knows nothing!”

“Ah,” said the doctor, putting a sly finger against his sharp nose, “our friend here has a nervous collapse. He should have a nurse!”

“A nurse!” exclaimed Minetti, with indignation. “And, pray, what do you call me? Do you not think that—”

“Well, we shall see! we shall see!” replied the doctor, rubbing his hands together. “But he will need all sorts of delicacies and—”

Minetti moistened his lips with sleek satisfaction. “You cannot name a dish that I am not able to prepare.”

“How about a custard? To-day he should eat something light.”

“A custard is simplicity itself,” answered the hunchback, and he cracked his fingers.

Minetti went out with the doctor, and came back shortly, carrying eggs and a bottle of vanilla extract and sugar. Fernet lay helpless, watching him bustling about. Finally the delicacy was made and set away in a pan of water to cool. At noon Minetti brought a blue bowl filled with custard to the bedside. It looked inviting, but Fernet shook his head.

“I am not hungry,” he lied.

The hunchback set the bowl down on a chair so that Fernet gazed upon it all day. The hunchback did not leave the room. He sat before the open window, reading from a thick book. Toward nightfall Fernet said to him:

“What do you find so interesting?”

Minetti darted a sardonic glance at his patient. “A book on _poison_. I did not realize that I had grown so rusty on the subject. Why, I remember scarcely enough to poison a field-mouse!”

He rose and crossed over to the bedside. “Do you not feel ready for the custard?”

Fernet cast a longing eye upon the yellow contents of the blue bowl.

“No. To tell the truth, I never eat it.”

Minetti shrugged.

“But I should like a glass of water.”

The hunchback drew water from the faucet. Fernet watched him like a ferret.

“At least,” thought Fernet, “he cannot drop poison in the water secretly. It is well that I can see every move he makes at such a time. I should not like to die of thirst.”

A little later Minetti removed the bowl and threw out its contents. Fernet looked on with half-closed eyes.

“What better proof could I have?” he mused. “If the custard were harmless he would eat it himself. I must get away to-morrow.”

But the next day he felt weaker than ever, and when the doctor came Minetti said, in answer to questions:

“I made a delicious custard yesterday and he ate every bit.... An oyster stew? ... with milk? I shall see that he has it at noon.”

“God help me!” muttered Fernet. “Why does he lie like this? I must get the doctor’s ear and tell him how things stand. I shall eat nothing—nothing! Thank Heaven I can drink water without fear.”

At noon the oyster stew was ready. But Fernet would have none of it. “Oysters make me ill!” he said.

Minetti merely shrugged as he had done the previous day, and set the savory dish upon a chair before the bed. It exuded tantalizing odors, until Fernet thought he would go mad with longing. Toward evening Minetti threw out the stew. And as before, when the doctor called the hunchback said:

“He ate a quart of stew and there were plenty of oysters in it, I can tell you. Do you think that a chicken fried in olive-oil would be too hearty?”

Fernet groaned. “This is horrible—horrible!” he wept to himself. “I shall die like a starving rat with toasted cheese dangling just beyond reach. God help me to rouse myself! Surely the effects of the poison he has given me must soon wear off.... There he is, reading from that big book again. Perhaps he is contriving a way to put poison in my water even though I am able to watch him when he draws me a drink.... Poison—poison everywhere. It can even be administered with the prick of a needle. Why did I read about it? Chicken fried in olive-oil ... what torture!”

――――

The chicken fried in olive-oil was a triumph—Fernet knew all this by the wisps of appetizing fragrance which drifted from the sizzling pan. Minetti made a great stir over the preparations. The tender flesh had to be rubbed thoroughly with garlic and well dusted with salt and pepper. And a quarter of a bottle of yellow-green olive-oil was first placed in the pan. When everything was ready and the chicken cooked to a turn, Minetti carried it to Fernet with a great flourish. Fernet gritted his teeth and turned his face away. He did not have the courage to invent an excuse. Minetti laid it on the chair as usual. For two hours Fernet was tortured with the sight of this tempting morsel, but at the sound of the doctor’s step upon the stair the hunchback whisked away the chicken.

“His appetite?” Minetti said, echoing the doctor’s query. “Why, one could not wish for better! Only this morning he despatched a chicken as if it had been no more than a soft-boiled egg. As a matter of fact, he is always hungry.”

“Well, well,” beamed the doctor, “that is the best of signs, and it happens that way very often in nervous cases. You are a capital nurse, my good man, and by the end of the week, if you keep feeding him up in this fashion, he should be as hearty as a school-boy.”

At that moment Minetti was called down-stairs by his landlord. Fernet struggled to lift himself; the doctor bent toward him.

“This hunchback,” Fernet gasped, “he is trying to poison me. Already I have drunk four or five of his concoctions, and that is why I am in this condition ... helpless. And he is lying when he says that I have eaten. I have touched nothing for three days.”

The doctor laid the patient back upon the pillow.

“Poison you, my friend? And for what reason?”

“Because I laughed at him. In God’s name, Doctor, see that you keep a straight face in his presence or else—”

The doctor patted Fernet’s hand and straightened the sliding bedclothes. By this time Minetti had come back. The doctor and the hunchback whispered together in a far corner. Minetti laughed and tapped his head. At the door Fernet heard the doctor say:

“Just keep up the good work and the idea will pass. It happens that way very often in nervous cases. I shall not look in again until the first of next week unless....”

Fernet groaned aloud.

“I must get away to-morrow.... I must get away to-morrow!” he kept on repeating.

――――

By the end of the week the smell of food held no temptations for Fernet. Minetti stopped cooking. And when a glass of water was drawn from the faucet Fernet had difficulty in forcing his vision to answer the strain of a searching gaze.

“When my sight fails me,” Fernet thought, dimly, “I shall either die of thirst or take the consequences.”

When the doctor finally came again Fernet closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“He seems thinner,” remarked the doctor, as if he had made an important discovery.

“Well, to tell the truth,” replied the hunchback, “he has lost his appetite. I have fed him milk and eggs, but—”

“There is nothing to do but be patient,” said the doctor. “Medicine will do him no good. Just rest and food. Even a little starvation will not hurt him. People eat too much, anyway.”

At this Fernet opened his eyes and broke into a laugh that startled even Minetti. The doctor looked offended.

“Well, he is in your hands,” the old fraud said, pompously, to the hunchback. “Just keep up the good work—”

Fernet laughed again.

“He is hysterical,” proclaimed the doctor, with an air of supreme wisdom. “It happens that way very often in nervous cases.”

And he walked out with great solemnity.

“Ah, I have offended him!” thought Fernet. “Well, now they will finish me—_together_!”

――――

There followed days of delicious weakness. Fernet lay for the most part wrapt in the bliss of silver-blue visions. It seemed as if years were passing. He built shining cities, received the homage of kings, surrendered himself to the joys of ripe-lipped beauties. There were lucid intervals shot through with the malignant presence of Minetti and the puttering visits of the doctor. But these were like waking moments between darkness and dawn, filled with the half-conscious joy of a sleeper secure in the knowledge of a prolonged respite. In such moments Fernet would stir feebly and think:

“I must get away to-morrow!”

And there would succeed almost instantly a languid ecstasy at the thought that to-morrow was something remote and intangible that would never come.

At times the hunchback seemed like nothing so much as a heartless gaoler who, if he would, might open the door to some shining adventure. Gradually this idea became fixed and elaborated. Fernet’s sight grew dimmer and dimmer until he followed the presence of Minetti by the sounds he made.

“He is jingling something,” Fernet would repeat, weakly. “Ah, it must be his keys! He is searching for the one that will set me free!... Now he is oiling the lock.... He has shut the door again. I am to be held awhile longer.... I am a caged bird and just beyond is the pepper-tree. It must be glistening now in the sunlight. Well, let him lock the door, for all the good it will do him. Is not the window always open? When the time comes I shall fly out the window and leave him here—alone. Then we shall see who has the best of this bargain.”

And all the silver-blue visions would steal over him again, to be pierced briefly by the arrival of the wizened doctor.

“It is he who keeps me here!” Fernet would say to himself. “If it were not for him I could fly away—forever. Well, presently even he will lose his power.”

One day a strange man stood at his bedside. Minetti was there also, and the old fraud of a doctor. The strange man drew back the covers and put his ear to Fernet’s fluttering heart and went through other tiresome matters.... Finally he smoothed back the covers again, and as he did so he shook his head. He spoke softly, but Fernet heard him distinctly.

“It is too late.... You should have called me sooner. He wishes to die.... There is nothing to be done.”

“Yes, yes—it happens this way very often in nervous cases.”

“I have done my best. I have given him food and drink. I have even starved him. But nothing seemed to do any good.”

“No,” said the stranger; “it is his mind. He has made up his mind that.... You can do nothing with a man when....”

Fernet closed his eyes.

“A man! They think I am a man. What stupidity! Can they not see that I am a bird?... They have gone out. He is locking the door again.... I can hear the keys jingle.... Well, let him lock the door if it gives him any pleasure. The window is open and to-night....”

The footsteps of the departing visitors died away. A chuckling sound came to André Fernet and the thump of ecstatic fists brought down upon a bare table-top. The voice of Flavio Minetti was quivering triumphantly like the hot whisper of a desert wind through the room:

“Without any weapon save the mind! Ha! ha! ha!”

Fernet turned his face toward the wall. “He is laughing at _me_ now. Well, let him laugh while he may.... Is not the window open? To-morrow I shall be free ... and he?... No, _he_ cannot fly—he has a broken wing.... The window is open, André Fernet!”

BLIND VISION

_By_ MARY MITCHELL FREEDLEY From _The Century Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by The Century Company._ _Copyright, 1919, by Mary Mitchell Freedley._

Four months of pleasant meetings led to the superficial intimacy that war makes possible, so that I regretted the moving of the hospital and the need of a rest which took me to Paris.

It was there, one dreary evening in late November, that Marston’s name was brought to my dim little apartment, with the request that, if possible, I receive him at once. I was about to sit down to a lonely dinner, and the prospect of his company delighted me. Then he came into the room.

I had last seen him with his friend Esmè as they stood together waving me good-by, the rich, heavy summer sunshine all about them, though something more than a trick of golden light flooded their faces. They were both vitally alive in widely different ways; and yet they strangely seemed to be merely parts of each other. Esmè was an erratic dreamer and seer of visions, and lacked always, even in the unimportant aspects of living, any sense of the personal, the concrete; Marston, in curious contrast, was at all times practical, level-headed, full of the luster of life.

The man who stood hesitatingly just inside my door was not Marston, but some stone-sculptured image of the gay, glad boy I had known.

The cry I could not choke broke through his terrible immobility, and he spoke, the words sounding unreal, as though he had memorized them for a lesson and rehearsed their very intonation.

“I had to come. I had to tell some one. Then I will go away. I don’t know where; just away. You knew him, knew I loved him. Will you let me tell you? Then I will go away.”

It flashed across my mind in the second before I found words that I had half wondered why Esmè was not with him. It seemed impossible that even their bodies could be separated.

I tried to lead him to the fire and remove his overcoat, but he pushed me from him.

“No, no; don’t touch me. You don’t know, don’t understand. I’ve hunted two weeks trying to find some one—you, any one who knew us to whom I could tell it.” He hesitated, and I waited. His voice took on a curious quality of childlike appeal as he went on: “You know I loved him, know I’d given my life for his, don’t you?” Such phrasing was utterly unlike Marston, but I had seen their friendship in all the glory of its intensity, and I knew no sacrifice would have been too great. I assured him of this, and, remembering my nursing, insisted that he eat, promising to listen to anything he wanted to tell me.

We sat facing each other across the spread table, but neither of us thought of the food after the first few mouthfuls. Twice in the early part of his story I filled his glass with claret, but I cannot recollect his drinking any.

“You must think this strange of me, but I’m not really mad, not now. You see, I’ve lived with the horror ever since they gave me leave—just afterward, trying to find some one I could talk to, some one who would help me go on and finish the things we’d—

“I want to make it all as clear as possible, but I’ve got to tell it my own way, and that isn’t clear.

“Do you remember Brander? We brought him over once or twice. He was a mighty decent sort of fellow. Somehow, though, I hated his being such friends with Esmè, I’d been his only one for so long, you see. Brander was born in India, and somehow Esmè found it out; from hearing him curse in a dialect, I think. They used to talk some unheard-of jargon to each other and enjoyed it.

“Well, one day Brander got smashed in a fight up the lines, along the British front, and was dying. He kept asking for Esmè, calling his name, and when Esmè got word of it, of course he started at once. He took one of the baby Nieuports; they’re fast, and not much of a target from below. He knew the Germans had a masked battery which he’d have to cross.

“I thought I’d like to see him across the enemy country, so I let him get a good start, and then I went up. I lost sight of him in a cloud-bank, and must have flown beyond him, for when I cleared it, he was behind and below me, and coming toward him a big German fighting-plane.

“Esmè’s wasn’t a fighting-machine, and he should have tried to get away; but he must have seen the German a second after I did and judged it too late. He fired his revolver once, then suddenly seemed to lose control of his machine, and dropped to the level of the other. He must have thought he was done for and made his decision on the instant, counting it better to try to ram the German plane and go down to death together than to take the millionth chance of landing and let the enemy escape. He went head on at the other, and they fell, woven as one machine, just inside the German lines.

“Somehow I got back to our fellows; God knows I wish I hadn’t.

“Every man in our escadrille paid in his own way unconscious tribute to Esmè’s memory. We were awfully and justly proud of him,—it’s something to have died for France,—but for all of us the fun, the excitement, of the work had gone, been snuffed out. No one turned corkscrew somersaults, Esmè’s great stunt; no one did any of his special tricks any more, not even to show off before the new men.

“We got one of those French immortelle wreaths, tied to it his name and the number of the machine he was driving and dropped it inside their lines. The next morning just at sunrise one of their men flew over our hangars and threw down a stone. Painted on it in German was, ‘Your dead sends thanks’! That’s just like them, brutal, and the last word on their side.

“There’s always work to be done in war, each day’s effort to be made, and the mercy of constant doing helped me. I used to try to forget the fighting and the horrors and go back to the old days.

“Esmè never was like other men in certain ways—all the early things that were unconsciously part of him, I suppose. Even as a little shaver at school he couldn’t be made to understand the ‘why’ of a school-boy’s code. He used to rush headlong into anything and everything, and he generally came out on top. He did the most outrageous things calmly, unthinkingly, and we always made excuses, forgave him, because he was Esmè. At college the men were sometimes rather nasty to him, partly because he couldn’t understand their points of view; and he used to stare a minute and then loll away. He never hurried,—perhaps it was his Oriental blood,—but he always got there, and could make his very lolling an insult.

“I used to wonder just what it was that made Esmè a great aviator. He was a phenomenally good pilot, although he himself never seemed to realize his remarkable ability. His losing control of his machine that day was inexplicable. But one can’t tell. That high up the slightest thing uncounted on means death. Those days after—

“A month went by. One morning our anti-aircrafters started, and we rushed to see what was doing, and there, just a blot against the unclouded sky, was a plane turning corkscrew somersaults one after another as it came lower and lower. I went mad for a few minutes; _only_ Esmè could turn corkscrews in such a way. I got the captain, and begged him to give orders for our gunners to stop. I must have made him feel the certainty of the wild thing I believed, for he gave the order. It was one of our own machines, in it Esmè, alone—Esmè in the flesh before us, drawn and haggard and old, but Esmè.

“At first he couldn’t speak. We called it strain; perhaps in any other man we shouldn’t, even in our minds, have given it its real name—emotion. He was like a girl. When I put my arm across his shoulders in the old, familiar way, he began to weep silently.

“The fellows were awfully decent and drifted away out of kindness, leaving him alone with me. We went to our tent, the one we’d shared together, and there, after a little while, he told me how it all happened.

“When the two machines fell together in a tangled heap, by some miraculous chance he was unhurt. The German was dead before they landed, he thought.

“Then began the slow, torturing weeks. They kept at him day and night, night and day. They never left him alone, not just guards, but some one always near him whose only business it was to _watch_ him.

“He was a marked man. The Germans knew him to be our best, perhaps the best aviator in all the Allied armies, and they needed him. They tried every sort of hellish torture on him, things one mustn’t think about, to get him to take up one of their photographers over the French trenches, knowing he could do certain notorious tricks which would prove him our man and so render the taking of the necessary pictures comparatively safe. He stuck it out, growing weaker and weaker, until the order came that he was to take up their man in his own machine (they’d used their diabolical skill to reconstruct it), or— Perhaps if it had been an order to shoot him then and there, his courage would have held out; but the other— He was broken, weakened, driven; he gave in.

“They’d taken photographs for miles along the French and British fronts when Esmè noticed the strap which held the camera man was loosened. The man was busy adjusting the films for a new set. Esmè pulled, the strap gave way; he lurched the machine suddenly, and turned it over,—his famous somersault trick,—and then, without looking back or down, made for our camp.

“Sometimes one forgets to guard one’s expression. I suppose mine showed the horror I couldn’t help feeling. He put his hand out to touch me, but I jumped up and moved away. ‘Marston,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter? Aren’t you glad? There wasn’t any other way but to give in to them. _You_ don’t know what it’s like to feel yourself dying by inches, a little piece more every day, all the time knowing you can’t die _enough_, and then the chance to be free once more, in the air, clean; you only fifty miles away, and one man between us—one man. What was his life among so many? It’s war, Marston; war.’

“I failed him then. I didn’t stop to think of his overwrought condition, mentally and physically. He simply wasn’t responsible. I had a quick vision of the way the other men would take it, of how I’d try and try to explain Esmè’s action because it was Esmè’s, and all the time I’d know the explanations weren’t any good. We have a code all our own; no rules, no mention ever made of its interpretation—just an aviator’s honor.

“Now, looking back, I can’t think why Esmè’s dropping the man out seemed so hideous. It did, though, and I failed him. He wanted to hear me say the words of welcome he’d counted on, and I just stood and looked at him. He was making queer, whimpering little noises, with his mouth wobbling all over his face, and I watched him. He was suffering, and I looked on.

“After a while the whimperings turned into words, and the words started with giggles. ‘A-aren’t you g-glad, Marston? A-aren’t you g-glad? A-aren’t you?’

“I turned on him, all the friendship and the memories of the years behind swept away. I didn’t know what I was saying. I’m not sure now; something about the things one doesn’t do, that it wasn’t war the way we fought it to drop a man thousands of feet who was only doing his duty. It was murder. Over and over I said it—that word murder. He wasn’t my friend; he was a murderer!

“I went out of the tent to escape his staring, pleading eyes—child’s eyes. Even while I was saying the words I knew he didn’t understand. He had done what he thought justifiable, necessary, he wanted to get back to me, and I called him a murderer.

“Once just as I started for the mess to get him something to eat I thought I heard him call my name; but I went on. I needed more time.

“I was gone perhaps ten minutes. When I reëntered the tent it was empty. Esmè was nowhere about, but I didn’t think of looking for him then, for I thought he’d probably joined one of the other men. Later I got worried, and we started a search. He wasn’t in our camp. No one had seen him.

“We waited and wondered. I prayed. Then I found a little scribbled note knocking about among my things.

“We never found any trace even of him or the smallest clue, just the note; that’s all I have left of Esmè. Here it is:

‘You’ve tried to tell me your opinion of the trick I played on
an enemy. In any other arm of the service what I did would have
gone, been all right, been smart. Isn’t that what you meant,
Marston? But with our boys, because we’ve chosen to have a
different, a higher standard, because we fight cleanly, what I
did was—dirty. Well, I understand. You and the other men _are_
different; I’m not, but I can pay. I’m going back. Don’t try to
stop me before I reach their lines. You can’t. I go to render
unto Cæsar. A life for a life. To give them at least my death,
since I can no longer offer even that proudly to France.’

“There has been bravery and heroism in the war, but Esmè went back; he knew to what—yet he went.

“God grant he is dead! I tried to make words express an inexpressible thing. All my life to live out—remembering, knowing I killed my friend!”

Perhaps Marston went on speaking; I don’t know. I only remember the broken stem of his glass, the stain that was spreading slowly over the white cloth, and the dripping, dripping red of his hands.

IMAGINATION

_By_ GORDON HALL GEROULD From _Scribner’s Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by Charles Scribner’s Sons._ _Copyright, 1919, by Gordon Hall Gerould._

As I gave my coat and hat to the boy, I caught sight of Orrington, waddling into the farther reaches of the club just ahead of me. “Here’s luck!” I thought to myself, and with a few hasty strides overtook him.

It is always good luck to run upon Harvey Orrington during the hour when he is loafing before dinner. In motion he resembles a hippopotamus, and in repose he produces the impression that the day is very hot, even in midwinter. But one forgets his red and raw corpulency when he has settled at ease in a big chair and begun to talk. Then the qualities that make him the valuable man he is, as the literary adviser of the Speedwell Company, come to the surface, and with them those perhaps finer attributes that have given him his reputation as a critic. Possibly the contrast between his Falstaffian body and his nicely discriminating mind gives savor to his comment on art and life; but in any case his talk is as good in its way as his essays are in theirs. Read his “Retrospective Impressions” if you wish to know what I mean—only don’t think that his colloquial diction is like the fine-spun phrasing of his essays. He inclines to be slangy in conversation.

I overtook Orrington, as I say, before he had reached his accustomed corner, and I greeted him with a becoming deference. He is fifteen years my senior, after all.

“Hello,” he said, turning his rather dull eyes full upon me. “Chasing will-o’-the-wisps this afternoon?”

“I’ve been pursuing you. If you call that—”

“Precision forbids! It can’t have been will-o’-the-wisps.” Orrington shook his head with utter solemnity. “I don’t know just what their figure is, but I’m sure it’s not like mine. Come along and save my life, won’t you?”

“With pleasure. I hoped you might be free.”

“Free as the air of a department-store elevator—yes. I’ve got to meet Reynolds here. He’s waiting for me yonder. You know Reynolds?”

“Yes, I know him.”

Every one knows Reynolds, I need hardly say—every one who can compass it. The rest of the world knows his books. Reynolds makes books with divine unconcern and profuseness: almost as a steel magnate makes steel. He makes them in every kind, and puts them out with a fine flourish, so that he is generally regarded as master of all the literary arts. People buy his output, too, which is lucky for Reynolds but perhaps less fortunate for literature; they buy his output—that is the only word to use—by the boxful, apparently. An edition in his sight is but as the twinkling of an eye before it is sold out. One can’t wonder that Reynolds is a little spoiled by all this, though he must have been a good fellow to begin with. He’s really a kind-hearted and brave man now, but he takes himself too seriously. He is sometimes a bore. Only that he would never recognize the portrait I am making of him, I should hardly dare to say what I am saying. Physically, he is undistinguished: he looks like a successful lawyer of a dark athletic type who has kept himself fit with much golf and who has got the habit of wearing his golfing-clothes to town. It is his manner that sets him apart from his fellows.

“I’m glad you know him.” Orrington chuckled as we drew near the corner where Reynolds was already seated. “I’d hate to be the innocent cause of your introduction.”

Reynolds rose and extended gracious hands to the two of us. “You add to my pleasure by bringing our friend,” he said to Orrington.

I fear that I acknowledged the compliment by looking foolish. It was Orrington’s corner that we were invading, if it was any one’s, and, in any case, Reynolds doesn’t own the club.

“I need tea to support my anæmia,” said Orrington gruffly. “If the rest of you wish strong drink, however, I’m not unwilling to order it. They’ve got a new lot of extremely old Bourbon, I am informed, that had to be smuggled out of Kentucky at dead of night for fear of a popular uprising. I should like to watch the effect of it on one or both of you.”

“I’m willing to be the subject of the experiment,” I said. “What about you, Reynolds?”

Reynolds cocked his head slightly to one side. “Though I dislike to deprive our good friend of any æsthetic pleasure, I think I will stick to my own special Scotch. I do not crave the dizzy heights of inebriety.”

“First time I ever knew you to be afraid of soaring, Reynolds,” commented Orrington. “I trust you won’t let caution affect your literary labors. It is one of the biggest things about you, you know, that you aren’t afraid to tackle any job you please. Most of us wait about, wondering whether we could ever learn to manage the Pegasus biplane, but you fly in whatever machine is handy.”

“Perhaps you think I adventure rashly.” It was neither question nor positive statement on the part of Reynolds, but a little compounded of both. He seemed hurt.

“Not at all.” Orrington’s tone was heartily reassuring. “You get away with it, and the rest of us get nowhere in comparison.”

“I have always believed,” said Reynolds, “that a proper self-confidence is a prime requisite for literary success. In all seriousness, I am sure both of you will agree with me that none of us could have reached his present position in the world without some degree of boldness. We have seized the main chance.”

“Then it got away from me,” I felt impelled to say. I could see no reason for accepting the flattery that Reynolds intended.

“You may believe it or not, as you please, Reynolds, but I’m incapable of seizing anything.” Orrington paused to direct the waiter, but went on after a moment, with a teacup in his fat hand. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never collared anything in my life except a few good manuscripts. Some mighty bad ones, too.” He chuckled.

“Ah! You know the difference between the good and the bad better than any one else in the country, I fancy. I always feel diffident when I send copy to you.” Reynolds somehow conveyed the impression, rather by his manner than by his words, of insufferable conceit. He made you certain that he was ready to challenge the assembly of the Immortals in behalf of anything he wrote.

“Oh, you’re in a position to dictate. It’s not for us to criticise,” Orrington answered very quietly. “By the way, I ventured to suggest our meeting here partly because I wished to know when your new book would be ready. Speedwell’s been worrying, and I told him I’d see you. Thought it would bother you less than a letter or coming round to the office.”

“My book!” Reynolds struck an attitude and wrinkled his forehead. “My dear fellow, I wish I knew.”

Orrington set down his cup and looked at Reynolds quizzically. “You must know better than anybody else.”

“It’s a question of the possibilities only.” Reynolds lifted his head proudly. “I will not fail you, Orrington. I have never yet left any one in the lurch, but I have been exceedingly busy of late. You can’t realize the pressure I am under from every side. So many calls—my time, my presence, my words! I must have a fortnight’s clear space to get my copy ready for you. Within the month, I feel sure, you shall have it.”

“That’ll do perfectly well. We don’t wish to bother you,” said Orrington briefly, “but you know as well as I do that the public cries for you. Speedwell gets restive if he can’t administer a dose once in so often.”

“What is the book to be?” I ventured to ask.

Reynolds bridled coquettishly. It was too absurd of a fellow with his physique and general appearance: I had difficulty in maintaining a decent gravity. “My book!” he said again. “It isn’t precisely a novel, and it isn’t precisely anything else. It is a simple story with perhaps a cosmic significance.”

“I see.” I didn’t, of course, but I couldn’t well say less. I knew, besides, pretty well what the book would be like. I had read two or three of Reynolds’s things. The mark of the beast was on them all, though variously imprinted.

“By the way of nothing,” said Orrington suddenly, “I had an odd experience to-day.”

“Ah! do tell us,” urged Reynolds. “Your experiences are always worth hearing. I suppose it is because your impressions are more vivid than those of most men.”

Orrington pursed his mouth deprecatingly and lighted a cigarette. “There’s no stuff for you fellows in this. You couldn’t make a story out of it if you tried. But it gave me a twinge and brought back something that happened twenty years ago.”

“What happened to-day?” I asked, to get the story properly begun.

“Oh, nothing much, in one way. I’ve been talking with a young chap who has sent us a manuscript lately. The book’s no good, commercially—a pretty crude performance—but it has some striking descriptive passages about the effects of hunger on the human body and the human mind. They interested me because I thought they showed some traces of imagination. There isn’t much real imagination lying round loose, you know: nothing but the derived and Burbankized variety. So I sent for the fellow. He came running, of course. Hope in his eye, and all that sort of thing. I felt like a brute beast to have to tell him we couldn’t take his book, though I coated the pill as sweetly as I could.

“He took it like a Trojan, though I could see that he was holding himself in to keep from crying. He was a mere boy, mind you, and a very shabby and lean one. I noticed that while I talked encouragingly to him, and I finally asked what set him going at such a rate about starvation. I might have known, of course! The kid has been up against it and has been living on quarter rations for I don’t know how many months. There wasn’t an ounce of imagination in his tale, after all: he had been describing his own sensations with decent accuracy—nothing more than that.”

“Poor fellow!” I interrupted. “We ought to find him some sort of job. Do you think he’d make good if he had a chance?”

Orrington shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I don’t know, I’m sure. I talked to him like a father and uncle and all his elderly relations, and I asked more questions than was polite. He’s in earnest at the moment, anyhow.”

“But if he’s actually starving—” I began.

Orrington looked at me in his sleepy way. “Oh, he’s had a good feed by this time. You must take me for a cross between a devil-fish and a blood-sucking bat. I could at least afford the luxury of seeing that he shouldn’t try to do the Chatterton act.”

Reynolds took a sip of whiskey, then held up his glass to command attention. “Dear, dear!” he said slowly, with the air of settling the case. “It’s a very great pity that young men without resources and settled employment try to make their way by writing. They ought not to be encouraged to do so. Most of them would be better off in business or on their fathers’ farms, no doubt; and the sooner they find their place, the better.”

“Still, if nobody made the venture,” I objected, “the craft wouldn’t flourish, would it? I think the question is whether something can’t be done to give this particular young man a show.”

“I’ve sent him to Dawbarn,” said Orrington almost sullenly. “He wants a space-filler and general utility man, he happened to tell me yesterday. It’s a rotten job, but it will seem princely to my young acquaintance. I shall watch him. He might make good and pay back my loan, you know.”

“It does credit to your heart, my dear Orrington—grub-staking him and getting him a job at once.” Reynolds frowned judicially. “I doubt the wisdom of it, however. A young man ought to succeed by his own efforts or not at all. Of course I know nothing of this particular case except what you’ve just told us, but I can’t see from your account of him that he has much chance to lift himself out of the ranks of unsuccessful hack writers. You admit that he shows little imagination.”

“Not yet; but he doesn’t write badly.”

“Ah! there are so many who don’t write badly, but who never go beyond that.”

Orrington laughed, shaking even his heavy chair with his heavier mirth. “Excuse me,” he murmured. “You’re very severe on us, Reynolds. You mustn’t forget that most of us aren’t Shakespeares. Indeed, to be strictly impersonal, I don’t know any member of this club—and we’re rather long on eminent pen-pushers—who is. It won’t do any harm to give my young friend his chance. To tell the truth, I think it’s a damned sight better for him than the end of a pier and the morgue.”

I wondered how the mighty Reynolds would take the snub, and I feared a scene. But I knew him less well than Orrington. He merely nursed his glass in silence and looked sulky. After all, Orrington’s argument was unanswerable.

To break the tension, I turned to Orrington with a question. “What happened twenty years ago?” I asked. “You said you were reminded of it.”

Orrington was silent for a minute as if deliberating. He seemed to be reviewing whatever it was he had in mind. “Yes, yes,” he said at last, “that’s more of a story, only it hasn’t any conclusion. It’s as devoid of a _dénouement_ as the life-history of the youth whom Reynolds wishes to starve for his soul’s good.”

“You are very unjust to me,” Reynolds protested. “You speak as if I had a grudge against the young man, whereas I was merely making a general observation. It is no real kindness to encourage a youth to his ultimate hurt.”

Orrington looked at him doubtfully. “I suppose not,” he said after a moment’s pause. “I’ve often wondered what happened in this other case I have in mind.”

“What was it?” asked Reynolds.

“It was a small matter,” Orrington began apologetically; “at least I suppose it would seem so to any outsider. But it was a big thing to me and presumably to the other fellow involved. I never knew anything about him, directly.”

“I thought you said you had dealings with the other man,” I interjected.

“I did,” said Orrington, “but I never met him. It was this way. I was editing a cheap magazine at the time, the kind of thing that intends to be popular and isn’t. The man who published it was on his uppers, the wretched magazine was at death’s door, and I was getting about half of my regular stipend when I got anything at all—something like forty cents a week, if I remember correctly. I was young, of course, so all that didn’t so much matter. I was rather proud of being a real editor, even of a cheap and nasty thing like—but never mind the name. It died many years ago and was forgotten even before the funeral. I suspect now that the publisher took advantage of my youth and inexperience, but I bear him no grudge. I managed to keep afloat, and I liked it.

“Of course I had to live a double life in order to get enough to eat—a blameless double life that meant all work and no play. A fellow can do that in his twenties. After office hours I got jobs of hack writing, and occasionally I sold some little thing to one of the reputable magazines. It was hard sledding, though—a fact I emphasize not because my biography is interesting, but because it has its bearing on the incident in question.

“Well, one fine day I got hold of a job that was the best I’d ever landed. I suspect I apostrophized it, in the language of that era, as a ‘peach.’ It was hack work, of course, but hack work of a superior and exalted kind—the special article sort of thing. I went higher than a kite when I found the chance was coming my way. I dreamed dreams of opulence. Good Lord! I even looked forward to getting put up for this ill-run club which we are now honoring by our gracious presences.”

Orrington stopped and shook with silent laughter till he had to wipe his eyes. The joke seemed less good to me than to him, for I had been only six months a member of the club and had not yet acquired the proper Olympian disdain of it. Reynolds smiled. I fancy that he still regards the club as of importance. In spite of his vast renown, he is never quite easy in his dignity.

“One has no business to laugh at the enthusiasms of youth,” Orrington went on presently. “I suppose it’s bad manners to laugh even at one’s own, for we’re not the same creatures we were back there. It’s a temptation sometimes, all the same. And I was absurdly set up, I assure you, by my chance to do something of no conceivable importance at a quite decent figure. But I never did the job, after all.”

He nodded his head slowly, as if he had been some fat god of the Orient suddenly come to torpid life.

“You don’t mean that you came near starving?” I asked incredulously. The pattern of the story seemed to be getting confused.

“No, no. I wasn’t so poor as that, even though I gave up the rich job I’m telling you about. The point is that I was chronically hard up and needed the money. I couldn’t afford to do without it, but I had to. It was like this, you see. On the very day the plum dropped into my mouth, a story came into the office that bowled me over completely. I hadn’t much experience then; but I felt somehow sure that this thing wasn’t fiction at all, though it had a thin cloak of unreality flung about it. It was a cheerful little tale, the whole point of which was that the impossible hero killed himself rather than starve to death. It was very badly done in every respect, as far as I remember, but it gave me the unpleasant impression that the man who wrote it knew more about going without his dinner than about writing short stories. Of course I couldn’t accept the thing for my magazine, though I could take most kinds of drivel. Our readers didn’t exist, to be sure, but we thought they demanded bright, sunshiny rubbish. I used to fill up our numbers with saccharine mush, and I shouldn’t have dared print a gloomy story even if it had been good.

“This wasn’t good. It was punk. But it bothered me—just as the youngster’s book has been bothering me lately. I suppose I’m too undiscriminating and sentimental for the jobs I’ve had in life.”

“You!” Reynolds objected. “Every one’s afraid of you. Haven’t I said that I tremble, even now, when I send copy to you? It makes no difference that I have the contract signed and every business arrangement concluded.”

Orrington’s mouth twisted into a little grimace. “That’s merely my pose, Reynolds, as you know perfectly well. I’m the terror of the press because I have to be to hold my job. Inside I’m a welter of adipose sentiment. My physical exterior doesn’t belie me. While dining, I quite prefer to think of all the world as well fed; and, in spite of many years’ training, I can’t see anything delightful in the spectacle of a fellow going without his dinner because he’s ambitious. As a rule, I prefer to discourage authors who are millionaires. That’s a pleasant game in itself, but not very good hunting. All of which is beside the point.

“I did hate, as a matter of fact, to turn down the little story I speak of; and while I was writing a gentle note that tried to explain, but didn’t, I had a brilliant idea. I suppose I was the victim of what is known as a generous impulse. I’ve had so little to do with that sort of thing that I can’t be sure of naming it correctly, but I dare say it could be described in that way. I said to myself: ‘That son of a gun could do those special articles just as well as I can, and it’s dollars to doughnuts he’ll go under if he doesn’t get something to do before long.’

“If you’ve ever had anything to do with generous impulses, you know that they’re easier to come by than to put into practice. When I began to think what I should lose by turning over my job to the other fellow, I balked like an overloaded mule. After all, how could I be sure that the man wasn’t fooling me? He might have imagined everything he had written, after eating too much _pâté de foie gras_. I should be a fool to give a leg up to somebody who was already astride his beast. I couldn’t afford to do it. You know how one’s mind would work.”

“I regret to say,” I put in, “that I can see perfectly how my mind would have worked. It would have persuaded me that I had a duty to myself.”

Orrington laughed quietly. “Don’t you believe it. Your conscience or your softness—whatever you choose to call it—would have played the deuce with your peace of mind. Mine did. I tore up my note and went out for a walk. Naturally I saw nothing but beggars and poverty: misery stalked me from street to street. I wriggled and squirmed for half a day or more, but I couldn’t get away from the damnable necessities of the story-writer.

“In the end I wrote him, of course—the flattering note I had intended, and something more. I told him about my fat job and said I was recommending him for it. By the same mail I wrote to the people who’d offered me the chance, refusing it. I said I regretted that I couldn’t undertake the commission as I had expected, but that I found my other engagements made it impossible. I thought I might as well do the thing in grand style and chuck a bluff while I was about it. I added that I was sending a friend to them who would do the articles better than I could hope to. I didn’t give the fellow’s name, but I told them he’d turn up shortly.”

“What happened then?” I asked, for Orrington lighted another cigarette and seemed inclined to rest on his oars.

He turned his dull eyes on me and smiled a little sadly. “What happened? Why, nothing much, as far as I know. I suppose the other fellow got my job and saved his body alive. I never inquired. I somehow expected that he’d write to me or come to see me—he had my address, you know—but he never did. I was a little annoyed, I remember, at his not doing so after I’d cut off my nose for him, which is probably why I never tried to follow him up. I never even looked up the articles when they were published. But I’ve often wished I might meet the man and learn how he got on.”

“You’ve never seen his name?” I inquired. “He can’t have done much, or you’d have spotted him.”

“I suspect,” said Orrington, “that he sent in that story of his under a pseudonym and that he may have done very well for himself since. What do you think, Reynolds? I suppose you consider me a fool for my pains, on the theory that no man ought to be helped out.”

Reynolds had been silent for some time. As I looked at him now I could see that he was a good deal impressed by Orrington’s narrative. I wasn’t surprised, for I knew him to be a generous fellow in spite of his foibles.

“Yes, how about it, Reynolds?” I said.

“It is a very affecting story,” he answered. “You acted most generously, Orrington, though you make light of it. I can’t believe that the young man realized the sacrifice you made for him; otherwise his failure to thank you, bad enough in any case, would be unspeakable. He can’t have known.”

“But you insist that I’d better have let him alone,” persisted Orrington, clearly with the intention of teasing our magnificent acquaintance.

“That depends altogether on how it turned out, doesn’t it? You can’t tell us whether the young man was worth saving or not.”