Skippy Bedelle Part 7

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN FRIENDS PROVE FALSE

COMMONPLACE minds are crushed by defeat; great imaginations rise to profit. Ten days after Skippy Bedelle had seen the gilded fabric of his future greatness collapse with the failure of the Foot Regulator to revolutionize the bathtub industry the spirit of invention had risen triumphantly from the ashes of first disillusionment. After all, there were other services to render to humanity, and the mind that at the age of fifteen could have reasoned so brilliantly in theory must inevitably express itself with profit to the race and to his own individual bank account.

At first Skippy's depression had been profound, and as the sensation was new he enjoyed its sensual charm to the fullest. He discarded the jaunty cap for a slouch hat which he pulled down over his eyes; he selected the soberest of neckwear, turned up his collar, sank his fists in his pockets, and spent solitary afternoons among the ruins of the Carthage of his imagination, seated on the site of what would never be the John C. Bedelle Gymnasium. Even the spectacle of Cap Keafer knocking out a home run in the ninth inning brought him no rapturous exultation. He was akin to _Ivanhoe_, the disinherited knight, and _Athos_ of the brooding sorrows. The world had receded from him, and n.o.body cared or noticed. He was alone, misunderstood, without a friend in the world. For after what had happened he could never again feel the same towards that basest of ingrates, Snorky Green.

The evening after the collapse of the Bedelle Foot Regulator, Incorporated, there had been a short and exceedingly painful interview.

"Well, Skippy, old top," said Snorky, who was genuinely contrite and ready to make the advance, "that certainly was hard luck. I feel just as bad as--" Here he stopped before the sudden majestic indignation which confronted him.

"Green!" said Skippy, frowning.

"Oh, I say--"

"Green, when you thought I was going to be a rich man," continued Skippy icily, "there was nothing you wouldn't do for me. You fawned on me. But when I had to face defeat--at the first test--you deserted me with sneers and gibes. That is not friendship. Green, you are not capable of true friendship, and you have proved it. I shall never forget and I shall never forgive!"

"Oh, shucks, Skippy!" said Snorky. "What's the use of rubbin' it in? I'm not as bad as all that!"

"Green," said Skippy, working himself into the scene which he had rehea.r.s.ed a dozen times as he had long debated whether to address the offender as Mr. Green, "Green, we will have to go on rooming together but I wish you to understand that nothing you can ever do or say will change my feelings now towards you. Nothing! Whatever communication is necessary from now on between us, will be in _writing_--"

"What's that?"

"In writing," said Skippy firmly.

"Oh, well, if that's the way you're going to take it you can go to blazes!" said Snorky wrathfully. "But before you climb on your high horse, suppose you restore my red choker tie, my agate cuff b.u.t.tons, my silver-rimmed fountain pen and a few pairs of fancy socks--"

"_This_ is unworthy of even you," said Skippy, who rose and with a perfect social manner took the articles in question from the bureau on the south side of the room and gingerly placed them on the bureau in the western corner. "The socks are in the wash. I prefer to return them as I received them." After which he disrobed and, somewhat consoled, watched from the coverlets the indignant and bewildered Snorky Green sitting on his bedside, halfway out of his trousers, glaring at him in rage.

For a week, a miserable, lonely week, Skippy held to this irreconcilable att.i.tude. During this time he touched the bottom of depression--he even doubted himself! Would he ever invent anything again? Had it been just a flash in the pan? Was it all a false start? What had become of the imagination which had blazed up so brilliantly? Perhaps after all he was no different from the rest--just an average mind fit only for such vulgar things as banking and trade. Then one morning through the gloom clouds a sudden shaft of sunlight arrived. He had another idea!

He had been lolling deliciously in bed, disdaining to notice the first harsh summons to rise, and his mind had dwelt enviously on the brilliant figure of Doc Macnooder. After all, even Doc Macnooder had his failures.

There was the matter of the Folding Toothbrush, which all Macnooder's eloquence had failed to market with Bill Appleby.

"Jingo! That certainly was a b.u.m idea," he said to himself, somewhat comforted. "You might do something with a toothbrush, but a folding one is a joke!"

All at once he sprang out of bed and, reaching the washstand in a bound, seized the nearest tooth mug. Snorky, who, despite the present unpleasantness, still trusted his rising instincts, catapulted out of bed and arrived three seconds later at his side of the washstand, where through still foggy eyes he beheld Skippy gazing at a toothbrush which he held reverently before him as a jeweler examines a named stone.

"What the deuce?"

"Dinged if I haven't got Macnooder beat a mile!" exclaimed Skippy, who in the first exhilaration of discovery had completely forgotten the correspondence acquaintanceship he had imposed.

"It's about a toothbrush!" said Snorky with great intelligence.

"You bet it's about a toothbrush." But here Skippy suddenly remembered, and the smile gave place to a frown.

"Oh, I say, Skippy! Let's call it off," said Snorky in a rush of feeling. "It was dead rotten of me and I'm doggone sorry--honest, I am--but you've rubbed it in enough."

"Very well, I forgive you and I shall try to forget," said Skippy, who also had chafed under the long silence.

"What's the great idea?" said Snorky hurriedly.

"The great idea is a _Souvenir_ Toothbrush," said Skippy proudly.

The idea did not reach Snorky immediately, but he was too diplomatic to show his disappointment, so he said humbly:

"I suppose it's because I'm a dumb-head, but why a souvenir toothbrush?"

"Why a souvenir pillow-case? Why a souvenir b.u.t.tonhook or a souvenir bootjack or a footstool, necktie, lap robe, or anything souvenir?"

"All right, why?" said Snorky, who felt hurt at this a.s.sumption of intellectual superiority.

"The bootjack doesn't make the souvenir; it's the souvenir makes the bootjack, doesn't it?" said Skippy, who was thinking deeply.

Snorky had never heard of the Socratian method, but he was impressed; so not understanding, he nodded and answered:

"Aha, I see!"

"It's the thing you souvenir that's important. If you want to remember you can't remember too often."

"No-o."

"And how can you remember better than the first crack out of bed--"

"I get all that," said Snorky, acknowledging the brilliancy of the argument. "But how the d.i.c.kens can you make a souvenir out of a toothbrush?"

"My boy--my boy!" said Skippy with crushing contempt. "Have you no imagination? A souvenir toothbrush! Why, easy! Make the handle in the shape of a baseball bat and put the Lawrenceville-Andover score on the back--red and black."

"Well, I'll be jiggswiggered!"

"You can make 'em in the form of a riding crop for racing sports, masts for yachtsmen, sword-blades for the army. Why, it's a cinch! You can have Lawrenceville shields on the back, Princeton colors, Yale colors.

You can do anything, anything with the idea--you can have your best girl's initials, or you can have her photograph stenciled on!"

"Sure thing! Why not Mother or Auntie--'when this you see remember to use me!'" said Snorky, who feared where another flight of the imagination might transport his roommate.

"Green!" said Skippy, flaring up at this destructive levity; but before he could deliver his broadside the breakfast gong began to rock the house and simultaneously each head ducked into a waiting basin.