Fancies and Goodnights Part 24

COLLABORATION.

There was a certain Ambrose, who was proud of his superior profile and his superior taste. His wife was supposed to be a testimony to both. She was a honey blonde with a wide mouth and a bewitching eye, better than a bowl of strawberries and cream, but she was too simple to be fit for any but an adoring role, and this was what he a.s.signed to her. He managed, however, to teach her to demand sherry, and sneer at c.o.c.ktails, and sometimes she wondered if she was sighing for a Manhattan.

They had a little house on Long Island, and another in the South of France. On one occasion he was opening his letters: "All is well," said he. "We shall set off for Provence next month. We shall see our dear house, our terrace, our garden, all in perfect taste, all designed by me. I shall take you with our little Movie-ola, and you," said he, throwing back his wavy hair, "will take me."

"Yes, my dear," said she.

"If only," said he, "we had a couple of ideal children, the image of their father. They could be taken running to meet me. We could take them here on Long Island and show them to our friends in Provence, and we could take them in Provence, and show them to our friends on Long Island. I can't understand why you don't have a couple of ideal children. You know I wish it."

"I gave up c.o.c.ktails because you wished it," said she. "And now I drink sherry."

He put his fine hand to his brow. "I talk of ideal children," he moaned, "and you reply with an idiotic irrelevancy about c.o.c.ktails. Leave me. You jar. I will open my letters alone."

She obediently withdrew, but soon a bitter cry brought her scurrying back again. "Oh, my dear, what in the world is it?" cried she. "Whatever is the matter?"

"Read that," said he, handing her a letter. "Don't talk to me about c.o.c.ktails. Read that."

"What is this?" she cried. "Your money gone!"

"I tried to double it," said he. "I thought it would be nice. This comes of being an artist, a dreamer. Spare me your reproaches."

"We have each other," said she, allowing a large, b.o.o.by tear to trickle down her cheek, as women often do when they seek comfort in this particular reflection.

"Yes," said he. "And may take films of each other in the breadline, and show them to our friends. You may be taken so if you wish. I have my pride."

"But I have my jewels," said she. "We can live on them while you write that book you have always been talking of."

"Always been talking of?" said he. "I hardly know what you mean. Still, a great many fools write books, and sell a hundred thousand copies. What would be the royalty on five hundred thousand? Put a heap of high-grade paper in my study. Tell everyone I am not to be disturbed. If only we had a couple of ideal children, you could keep them quiet while I was at work. You could tell them what their daddy was doing."

Pretty soon he was in his study, and visitors were impressed. Sometimes he would wander out among them with a fine, vague air. The only trouble was, he was equally vague when he returned to his desk, and not a line appeared on even the first sheet of his high-grade paper; nothing but drawings of profiles. "I am too much of an artist, I suppose," said he to himself. "I have no appet.i.te for the coa.r.s.e and crude material of which plots are made. I am all style. There will be no book, we shall become beggars, and Daphne will cease to adore me. I must go out and see life. Perhaps I will find a plot."

He went out and hung about the bohemian cafe in Greenwich Village, where he saw writers in plenty, but not enough life to go round, and not a plot among the whole crowd of them.

In the end he fetched up in the cheapest and shabbiest of dives, such as might be frequented by one who could not finish his book, who had no money, whose wife had ceased to adore him, and who consequently had less chance than ever of a couple of ideal children.

It was extremely crowded. Possibly there are many writers in this disagreeable situation. Ambrose had to share a table with a young man who had the appearance of a tom-cat whose ears have been bitten short in a hundred rigorous experiences. He had a bullet head, a broad nose, magnificent teeth, and a ravenous expression. His shirt was ragged, and his chest bore a plentiful growth of absolutely genuine hair.

His hands were somewhat battered. "That thumb," said he to Ambrose, "a dame shot off. Holding up a candle. One-horse circus show. Never missed ordinary-wise. Jealous. That finger a croc got. Marlinspike that one. Third mate. Mutiny. This thumb got frost-bit hitchhiking across Labrador in a blizzard. Thumbing sledges. Some of them bites is horse-bites, some's wolves', some's dames'."

"Certainly," said Ambrose, "you have seen life."

"Life, birth, death, and pa.s.sion in the raw," returned the other. "I'd rather see a hamburger."

"Look, there is one cooking on the stove over there," said Ambrose. "Are you by any chance a writer?"

"A second Jack London," said the other. "But I got the publishing racket against me. I give 'em blood, sweat, l.u.s.t, murder, everything. And they talk about style." He p.r.o.nounced this last word with an air of contempt "Style," said Ambrose reprovingly, "is ninety-nine per cent of the whole business. I am a stylist myself. Waiter, bring over that hamburger. This is what you wished to see, is it not?"

"Thank you," said the young man.

"Yes," said Ambrose. "You can now look at it closely. I have this ability to gratify my friends - call it power if you will - because I am a fine stylist. I count on my forthcoming book to sell half a million copies. Eat the hamburger. It is nothing to me."

"O.K.," said the young man, falling to.

"You seem to like hamburgers," said Ambrose. "I need a sort of secretary with a good experience of life; a prentice, in short, such as the old masters had, who could rough out plots for me. You seem to have an unlimited supply of material. I have an unlimited supply of hamburgers."

"Sell out?" cried the young man. "For a hamburger? Not me!"

"There would be large steaks -" said Ambrose.

"But -" said the young man.

"-smothered with mushrooms," said Ambrose. "Fried chicken. Pie. New clothes. Comfortable quarters. Maybe a dollar a week pocket money."

"Make it two," said the young man. "You can't take a dame out on a dollar."

"Certainly not," said Ambrose. "No dames. All must go into the plots."

"That's tough," said the young man.

"Take it or leave it," said Ambrose.

The young man, after a struggle, succ.u.mbed, and soon was tied up with a long-term contract, and taken home to the little house on Long Island. Ambrose described him as a secretary, in order to conceal the true arrangement from his wife, for he feared it might lessen her adoration.

The young man, whose new clothing became him very well, ate and drank very heartily, and relished all that was set before him, all except the sherry. This he absolutely refused, demanding a c.o.c.ktail. "Mix him an old-fashioned," said Ambrose to his wife, for he felt it might help to nourish up a plot full of life in the raw.

His lovely wife opened her eyes very wide, first at her husband, then at his secretary, and finally at the old-fashioned, of which she could not resist taking a surrept.i.tious sip. "How extremely delicious!" she thought. "How delightful life is after all! In comes this young man, and at once I get what I have been sighing for. I wonder if he ever sighs for anything. He seems too vital. He would just ask for it. Or take it. Oh, dear!"

With that she handed the c.o.c.ktail to the young man, who received it shyly, gratefully, and yet as if it were his due. He drank it in a straightforward, manly fashion, yet with a keen, primitive, simple enjoyment, holding the gla.s.s just so, throwing back his head just so - I cannot describe how handsomely this young man disposed of his c.o.c.ktail.

All went well in the house. Ambrose ceased to worry. His wife ceased to sigh. Soon the plot was ready. It had everything. "You will remain here," said Ambrose to his secretary, "and we shall go to our little house in Provence, where I shall cast this rough clay into something rather like a Grecian vase. Meanwhile, you can think up another."

So off they went, Ambrose rubbing his hands. His wife perversely showed some disposition to sigh again when they boarded the liner, but of that he took no notice. He soon, however, had reason to sigh himself, for when he began work in his state-room he found his style was not quite as perfect as he had imagined it to be. In fact, by the end of the voyage his high-grade paper was still as blank as before.

This put Ambrose back into the depths of despair. When they got to Paris, he slunk out of the hotel, and drifted into the dingiest cafe he could find, where the poorest writers forgathered, who were all dest.i.tute of plots, money, adoring wives, ideal children, and everything.

Such cafes abound in every back street of Paris, and enjoy a numerous and cosmopolitan custom. Ambrose found himself sitting beside a young Englishman whose features were sensitive to a degree, and almost transparent by reason of their extreme emaciation. Ambrose observed that this young man's eyes were full of tears. "Why," said he, "are your eyes full of tears?"

"I am a writer," said the young man, "and as the barbarous publishers pay no heed to style, but insist upon plots about beastly men and women, you may understand that I have to live very simply. I was making my frugal dinner on the smell of a superb dish of tripes a la mode, which that fat fellow is eating, when in came an abominable newspaper man, who sat down in our neighbourhood and poured out such a flood of journalese that I was obliged to move away. And I am so hungry!"

"Too bad!" said Ambrose. "I'll tell you what. I'll order a portion for myself, and you shall sniff as heartily as you wish."

"I am eternally grateful," said the other. "I don't know why you should benefit a stranger in this way."

"That's nothing," said Ambrose. "Have you ever tasted a piece of bread dipped in the gravy?"

"Yes, indeed!" cried the other. "I did so last Christmas. It lent a special richness to my style all through the first half of this year."

"How admirably you would write," said Ambrose, "if someone fed you buf en daube!"

"I could write an Iliad on it," cried the other.

"And on bouillabaisse?"

"An Odyssey."

"I need someone," said Ambrose, "to put a few little finishing touches to some more modern but equally magnificent conceptions of my own. I have a little house in Provence, with an excellent kitchen-"

In a word, he soon had this unfortunate in his hands, and tied up with options and loans as securely as any white slave in Buenos Aires.

The young man first lived in a rapture of sniffing, then grew quite used to bread dipped in the gravy, and finally ate all that was going, to the utmost benefit to his physique and style. He would not, however, drink any of Ambrose's sherry. "Let me have a c.o.c.ktail," said he. "It will impart a modern and realistic smack to my prose, which is particularly desirable for the scenes laid in America."

"Not only that," thought Ambrose, "but it will provide a link, a rapport, between him and the other." Accordingly he called in his wife, at whose appearance the young man inhaled deeply. "Mix him an old-fashioned," said Ambrose.

His wife, as before, opened her bewitching eyes wide, on husband, secretary, and c.o.c.ktail, of which, as before, she took a secret sip. She experienced the same delicious sensation. "Perhaps I was wrong to begin sighing again," she thought. "Perhaps there is very seldom any real reason to sigh. This young man looks as if he sighed a good deal, which is a pity in anyone so graceful and delicate. I wonder if he knows the cure for it."

Life, however, is not all play; the book progressed rapidly, and soon took shape as the four-star cla.s.sic of all time, thrilling enough for the most hardened low-brow, and so perfectly written as to compel the homage of the connoisseurs.

It sold like hot cakes, and Ambrose was feted everywhere. His cellar was full of the most superlative sherries. His wife no longer sighed, not even when they left Long Island for Provence, or Provence for Long Island. "It makes a change," said she to the interviewers.

It was not very long before she crowned his happiness by presenting him with a st.u.r.dy son. "Soon," said Ambrose, "he will be able to run to meet me, and you shall take us on the Movie-ola. He is not quite as like me as he ought to be; it must be your cruder nature coming out in him. But perhaps he will improve, or perhaps you will do better next time."

Sure enough there was a next time, and Ambrose rejoiced in two ideal children. "This one," said he, "is still a little short of the ideal. He has your rather effeminate look. However, they average out very like their father indeed, and that is as much as could be hoped for."

So time went by, and no man was more pleased with himself than Ambrose. "What a happy man I am," said he to himself, "with my fame, my riches, my beautiful wife who adores me, my forceful plots, my exquisite style, my houses, my two secretaries, and my two ideal children!" He had just called for the Movie-ola to have them taken running to meet him, when a visitor was announced, a literary pilgrim who had come to do him homage.

Such were always very welcome to the great man. "Yes," said he. "Here I am. This is my study. Those are my books. There, in the hammock, is my wife. And down there, in the garden, are my two ideal little children. I will take you to see them. You shall watch them run to meet their papa."

"Tell me," said the visitor, "do they reflect the genius of their father?"

"Probably," said Ambrose. "In a small way, of course."

"Then," said the visitor, "let us approach them quietly. Let us overhear their prattle. Suppose they are telling stories to each other. I should like to tell the world, sir, that they have inherited their father's genius."

Ambrose was indulgent, and they tiptoed to the edge of the sandpit, where the two youngsters, squatting in the dirt, were busy gabbling their heads off. Sure enough, they were telling a story.

"An' the ole dragon," said the elder, "sprung out on him like mad, spittin' out flames -"

"And the monster," said the younger, "rushed forth upon him, breathing fire -"

"He hopped out of the way, and stuck his sword in its belly -"

"He leapt nimbly aside, and thrust his gleaming blade into its black heart -"

"And over it went -"

"And it fell -"

"Done in."

"Dead."

MIDNIGHT BLUE.

Mr. Spiers came in extremely late. He shut the door very quietly, switched on the electric light, and stood for quite a long time on the door-mat. Mr. Spiers was a prosperous accountant with a long, lean face, naturally pale; a cold eye, and a close mouth. Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the movement of gills in a fish.

He now took off his bowler hat, looked at it inside and out, and hung it upon the usual peg. He pulled off his m.u.f.fler, which was a dark one, dotted with polka dots of a seemly size, and he scrutinized this m.u.f.fler very carefully and hung it on another peg. His overcoat, examined even more scrupulously, was next hung up, and Mr. Spiers went quickly upstairs.

In the bathroom he spent a very long time at the mirror. He turned his face this way and that, tilted it sideways to expose his jaw and neck. He noted the set of his collar, saw that his tiepin was straight, looked at his cuff links, his b.u.t.tons, and finally proceeded to undress. Again he examined each garment very closely; it was as well Mrs. Spiers did not see him at this moment, or she might have thought he was looking for a long hair, or traces of powder. However, Mrs. Spiers had been asleep for a couple of hours. After her husband had examined every st.i.tch of his clothing, he crept to his dressing room for a clothes-brush, which he used even upon his shoes. Finally he looked at his hands and his nails, and scrubbed them both very thoroughly.

He then sat down on the edge of the bath, put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and gave himself up to a very profound train of thought. Now and then he marked the checking-off of some point or other by lifting a finger and bringing it back again onto his cheek, or even onto the spot behind his jawbone where there was that little movement, so like the movement of the gills of a fish.

At last Mr. Spiers seemed satisfied, and he turned out the light and repaired to the conjugal bedroom, which was decorated in cream, rose, and old gold.

In the morning, Mr. Spiers arose at his usual hour and descended, with his usual expression, to the breakfast room.

His wife, who was his opposite in all respects, as some say a wife should be, was already busy behind the coffee service. She was as plump, as blonde, as good-humored, and as scatterbrained as any woman should be at a breakfast table, perhaps even more so. The two younger children were there; the two older ones were late.

"So here you are!" said Mrs. Spiers to her husband, in a sprightly tone. "You were late home last night."

"About one," said he, taking up the newspaper.

"It must have been later than that," said she. "I heard one o'clock strike."

"It might have been half past," said he.

"Did Mr. Benskin give you a lift?"

"No."

"All right, my dear, I only asked."

"Give me my coffee," said he.

"A dinner's all right," said she. "A man ought to have an evening with his friends. But you ought to get your rest, Harry. Not that I had much rest last night. Oh, I had such a terrible dream! I dreamed that -"