Fancies and Goodnights
Page 23
«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, succumbed, 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 cocktail. «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 surreptitious 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 cocktail 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 glass just so, throwing back his head just so — I cannot describe how handsomely this young man disposed of his cocktail.
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 café he could find, where the poorest writers forgathered, who were all destitute of plots, money, adoring wives, ideal children, and everything.
Such cafés 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 bœuf 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 cocktail,» 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 cocktail, 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 classic 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 fêted 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 sturdy 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.»
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«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 muffler, which was a dark one, dotted with polka dots of a seemly size, and he scrutinized this muffler 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 buttons, 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 stitch 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 —»
«If there's one thing,» said her husband, «that I hate more than a slop in my saucer — Do you see this mess?»
«Really, dear,» said she, «you asked so brusquely for your coffee —»
«Father spilled the coffee,» piped up little Patrick. «His hand jerked — liked that.»
Mr. Spiers turned his eye upon his younger son, and his younger son was silent.
«I was saying,» said Mr. Spiers, «that if I detest anything more than a filthy mess in my saucer, it is the sort of fool who blathers out a dream at the breakfast table.»
«Oh, my dream!» said Mrs. Spiers with the utmost good humor. «All right, my dear, if you don't want to hear it. It was about you, that's all.» With that, she resumed her breakfast.
«Either tell your dream, or don't tell it,» said Mr. Spiers.
«You said you didn't want to hear it,» replied Mrs. Spiers, not unreasonably.
«There is no more disgusting or offensive sort of idiot,» said Mr. Spiers, «than the woman who hatches up a mystery, and then —»
«There is no mystery,» said Mrs. Spiers. «You said you didn't want —»
«Will you,» said Mr. Spiers, «kindly put an end to this, and tell me, very briefly, whatever nonsense it was that you dreamed, and let us have done with it? Imagine you are dictating a telegram.»
«Mr. T. Spiers, Normandene, Radclyffe Avenue, Wrexton Garden Suburb,» said his wife. «I dreamed you were hung.»
«Hanged, Mother,» said little Daphne.
«Hullo, Mums,» said her big sister, entering at that moment. «Hullo, Dads. Sorry I'm late. Good morning, children. What's the matter, Daddy? You look as if you'd heard from the Income Tax.»
«Because of a murder,» continued Mrs. Spiers, «in the middle of the night. It was so vivid, my dear! I was quite glad when you said you were back by half-past one.»
«Half-past one, nothing,» said the elder daughter.
«Mildred,» said her mother, «that's film talk.»
«Daddy's an old rip,» said Mildred, tapping her egg. «Freddy and I got back from the dance at half-past two, and his hat and coat wasn't there then.»
«Weren't there,» said little Daphne.
«If that child corrects her elder sister, or you, in front of my face once again —» said Mr. Spiers.
«Be quiet, Daphne,» said her mother. «Well, that was it, my dear. I dreamed you committed a murder, and you were hanged.»
«Daddy hanged?» cried Mildred in the highest glee. «Oh, Mummy, who did he murder? Tell us all the grisly details.»
«Well, it really was grisly,» said her mother. «I woke up feeling quite depressed. It was poor Mr. Benskin.»
«What?» said her husband.
«Yes, you murdered poor Mr. Benskin,» said Mrs. Spiers. «Though why you should murder your own partner, I don't know.»
«Because he insisted on looking at the books,» said Mildred. «They always do, and get murdered. I knew it would be one or the other for Daddy — murdered or hung.»
«Hanged,»said little Daphne. «And whom did he murder.»
«Be quiet!» said her father. «These children will drive me mad.»
«Well, my dear,» said his wife, «there you were, with Mr. Benskin, late at night, and he was running you home in his car, and you were chatting about business — you know how people can dream the most difficult talk, about things they don't know anything about, and it sounds all right, and of course it's all nonsense. It's the same with jokes. You dream you made the best joke you ever heard, and when you wake up —»
«Go on,» Mr. Spiers said firmly.
«Well, my dear, you were chatting, and you drove right into his garage, and it was so narrow that the doors of the car would only open on one side, and so you got out first, and you said to him, 'Wait a minute,' and you tilted up the front seat of that little Chevrolet of his, and you got in at the back where your coats and hats were. Did I say you were driving along without your overcoats on, because it was one of these mild nights we're having?»
«Go on, »said Mr. Spiers.
«Well, there were your coats and hats on the back seat, and Mr. Benskin still sat at the wheel, and there was that dark overcoat he always wears, and your light cheviot you wore yesterday, and your silk mufflers, and your hats and everything, and you picked up one of the mufflers — they both had white polka dots on them — I think he was wearing one like yours last time he came to lunch on Sunday. Only his was dark blue. Well, you picked up the mufflers, and you were talking to him, and you tied a knot in it, and all of sudden you put it round his neck and strangled him.»
«Because he'd asked to look at the books,» said Mildred.
«Really it's — it's too much,» said Mr. Spiers.
«It was nearly too much for me,» said his spouse. «I was so upset, in my dream. You got a piece of rope, and tied it to the end of the scarf, and then to the bar across the top of the garage, so it looked as if he'd hanged himself.»
«Good heavens!» said Mr. Spiers.
«It was so vivid, I can't tell you,» said his wife. «And then it all got mixed up, as dreams do, and I kept on seeing you with that muffler on, and it kept on twisting about your neck. And then you were being tried, and they brought in — the muffler. Only, seeing it by daylight, it was Mr. Benskin's, because it was dark blue. Only by the artificial light it looked black.»
Mr. Spiers crumbled his bread. «Very extraordinary,» he said.
«It's silly, of course,» said his wife. «Only you would have me tell you.»
«I wonder if it is so silly,» said her husband. «As a matter of fact, I did ride home with Benskin last night. We had a very serious talk. Not to go into details, it happened I'd hit on something very odd at the office. Well, I had it out with him. We sat talking a long time. Maybe it was later than I thought when I got home. When I left him, do you know, I had the most horrible premonition. I thought, 'That fellow's going to make away with himself.' That's what I thought. I very nearly turned back. I felt like a — well, I felt responsible. It's a serious business. I spoke to him very forcefully.»