Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

by Travelers In Time

It was the man I had been drawing, whose portrait lay in my pocket.

  He sat there, huge and elephantine, the sweat pouring from his scalp, which he wiped with a red silk handkerchief. But though the face was the same, the expression was absolutely different.

  He greeted me smiling, as if we were old friends, and shook my hand.

  I apologised for my intrusion.

  "Everything is hot and glary outside," I said. "This seems an oasis in the wilderness."

  "I don't know about the oasis," he replied, "but it certainly is hot, as hot as hell. Take a seat, sir!"

  He pointed to the end of the gravestone on which he was at work, and I sat down.

  "That's a beautiful piece of stone you've got hold of," I said.

  He shook his head. "In a way it is," he answered; "the surface here is as fine as anything you could wish, but there's a big flaw at the back, though I don't expect you'd ever notice it. I could never make really a good job of a bit of marble like that. It would be all right in the summer like this; it wouldn't mind the blasted heat. But wait till the winter comes. There's nothing quite like frost to find out the weak points in stone."

  "Then what's it for?" I asked.

  The man burst out laughing.

  "You'd hardly believe me if I was to tell you it's for an exhibition, but it's the truth. Artists have exhibitions: so do grocers and butchers; we have them too. All the latest little things in headstones, you know."

  He went on to talk of marbles, which sort best withstood wind and rain, and which were easiest to work; then of his garden and a new sort of carnation he had bought. At the end of every other minute he would drop his tools, wipe his shining head, and curse the heat.

  I said little, for I felt uneasy. There was something unnatural, uncanny, in meeting this man.

  I tried at first to persuade myself that I had seen him before, that his face, unknown to me, had found a place in some out-of-the-way corner of my memory, but I knew that I was practising little more than a plausible piece of self-deception.

  Mr. Atkinson finished his work, spat on the ground, and got up with a sigh of relief.

  "There! what do you think of that?" he said, with an air of evident pride.

  The inscription which I read for the first time was this—

  SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

  JAMES CLARENCE WITHENCROFT

  BORN JAN. l8TH, i860 HE PASSED AWAY VERY SUDDENLY ON AUGUST 20TH, 19O—

  "In the midst of life we are in death."

  For some time I sat in silence. Then a cold shudder ran down my spine. I asked him where he had seen the name.

  "Oh, I didn't see it anywhere," replied Mr. Atkinson. "I wanted some name, and I put down the first that came into my head. Why do you want to know?"

  "It's a strange coincidence, but it happens to be mine."

  He gave a long, low whistle.

  "And the dates?"

  "I can only answer for one of them, and that's correct." "It's a rum go!" he said.

  But he knew less than I did. I told him of my morning's work. I took the sketch from my pocket and showed it to him. As he looked, the expression of his face altered until it became more and more like that of the man I had drawn.

  "And it was only the day before yesterday," he said, "that I told Maria there were no such things as ghosts!"

  Neither of us had seen a ghost, but I knew what he meant.

  "You probably heard my name," I said.

  "And you must have seen me somewhere and have forgotten it! Were you at Clacton-on-Sea last July?"

  I had never been to Clacton in my life. We were silent for some time. We were both looking at the same thing, the two dates on the gravestone, and one was right.

  'Come inside and have some supper," said Mr. Atkinson.

  His wife is a cheerful little woman, with the flaky red cheeks of the country-bred. Her husband introduced me as a friend of his who was an artist. The result was unfortunate, for after the sardines and watercress had been removed, she brought out a Doré Bible, and I had to sit and express my admiration for nearly half an hour.

  I went outside, and found Atkinson sitting on the gravestone smoking.

  We resumed the conversation at the point we had left off. "You must excuse my asking," I said, "but do you know of anything you've done for which you could be put on trial?" He shook his head.

  "I'm not a bankrupt, the business is prosperous enough. Three years ago I gave turkeys to some of the guardians at Christmas, but that's all I can think of. And they were small ones, too," he added as an afterthought.

  He got up, fetched a can from the porch, and began to water the flowers. "Twice a day regular in the hot weather," he said, "and then the heat sometimes gets the better of the delicate ones. And ferns, good Lord! They could never stand it. Where do you live?"

  I told him my address. It would take an hour's quick walk to get back home.

  "It's like this," he said. "We'll look at the matter straight. If you go back home to-night, you take your chance of accidents. A cart may run over you, and there's always banana skins and orange peel, to say nothing of fallen ladders."

  He spoke of the improbable with an intense seriousness that would have been laughable six hours before. But I did not laugh.

  "The best thing we can do," he continued, "is for you to stay here till twelve o'clock. We'll go upstairs and smoke; it may be cooler inside."

  To my surprise I agreed.

  We are sitting now in a long, low room beneath the eaves. Atkinson has sent his wife to bed. He himself is busy sharpening some tools at a little oilstone, smoking one of my cigars the while.

  The air seems charged with thunder. I am writing this at a shaky table before the open window. The leg is cracked, and Atkinson, who seems a handy man with his tools, is going to mend it as soon as he has finished putting an edge on his chisel.

  It is after eleven now. I shall be gone in less than an hour.

  But the heat is stifling.

  It is enough to send a man mad.

  From The Grinder's Wheel, reprinted by permission of the executors of the Estate of Morley Roberts and A. P. Watt & Son.

  The Anticipator

  By MORLEY ROBERTS

  "OF COURSE, I ADMIT IT ISN'T PLAGIARISM," SAID CARTER ESPLAN,

  savagely; "it's fate, it's the devil, but is it the less irritating on that account? No, no!"

  And he ran his hand through his hair till it stood on end. He shook with febrile excitement, a red spot burned on either cheek, and his bitten lip quivered.

  "Confound Burford and his parents and his ancestors! The tools to him that can handle them," he added after a pause, during which his friend Vincent curiously considered him.

  "It's your own fault, my dear wild man," said he; "you are too lazy. Besides, remember these things—these notions, motives—are in the air. Originality is only the art of catching early worms. Why don't you do the things as soon as you invent them?"

  "Now you talk like a bourgeois, like a commercial traveller," re-

  turned Esplan, angrily. "Why doesn't an apple-tree yield apples when

  the blossoms are fertilized? Why wait for summer, and the influences

  of wind and sky? Why don't live chickens burst new-laid eggs? Shall

  parturition tread sudden on conception? Didn't the mountain labour

  to bring forth a mouse? And shall--- "

  "Your works of genius not require a portion of the eternity to which they are destined?"

  "Stuff!" snarled Esplan; "but you know my method. I catch the suggestion, the floating thistledown of thought, the title, maybe; and then I leave it, perhaps without a note, to the brain, to the subliminal consciousness, the sub-conscious self. The story grows in the dark of the inner, perpetual, sleepless soul. It may be rejected by the artistic tribunal sitting there; it may be bidden to stand aside. I, the outer I, the husk-case of heredities, know nothing of it, but one day I take the pen and the hand writes it. This is the automatism of art, and I—I am
nothing, the last only of the concealed individualities within me. Perhaps a dumb ancestor attains speech, and yet the Complex Ego Esplan must be anticipated in this way!"

  He rose and paced the lonely club-smoking-room with irregular steps. His nerves were evidently quivering, his brain was wild. But Vincent, who was a physician, saw deeper. For Esplan's speech was jerky, at times he missed the right word; the speech centres were not under control.

  "What of morphine?" he thought. "I wonder if he's at it again, and is to-day without his quantum." But Esplan burst out once more.

  "I should not care so much if Burford did them well, but he doesn't know how to write a story. Look at this last thing of mine—of his. I saw it leaping and alive; it rang and sang, a very Maenad; it had red blood. With him it wasn't even bom dead; it squeaks puppetry, and leaks sawdust, and moves like a lay figure, and smells of most manifest manufacture. But I can't do it now. He has spoilt it for ever. It's the third time. Curse him, and my luck! I work when I must."

  "Your calling is very serious to you," said Vincent, lazily. "After all, what does it matter? What are stories? Are they not opiates for cowards' lives? I would rather invent some little instrument, or build a plank bridge across a muddy stream, than write the best of them."

  Esplan turned on him.

  "Well, well," he almost shouted; "the man who invented chloroform was great, and the makers of it are useful. Call stories chloral, morphia, bromides, if you will, but we give ease."

  "When it might be better to use blisters."

  "Rot!" answered Esplan, rudely. "In any case, your talk is idle. I am I, writers are writers—small, if you will, but a result and a force. Give me a rest. Don't talk ideal poppycock!"

  He ordered liqueur brandy. After drinking it his aspect changed a little, and he smiled.

  ROBERTS: THE ANTICIPATOR

  "Perhaps it won't occur again. If it does, I shall feel that Burford

  is very much in my way. I shall have to--- "

  "Remove him?" asked Vincent.

  "No, but work quicker. I have something to write soon. It would just suit him to spoil."

  The talk changed, and soon afterwards the friends parted. Esplan went to his chambers in Bloomsbury. He paced his sitting-room idly for a few minutes, but after a while he began to feel the impulse in his brain; his fingers itched, the semi-automatic mood came on. He sat down and wrote, at first slowly, then quicker, and at last furiously.

  It was three in the afternoon when he commenced work. At ten o'clock he was still at his desk, and the big table on which it stood was strewn with tobacco-ashes and many pipes. His hair again stood on end, for at intervals he ran his damp hands through it. His eyes altered like opals; at times they sparkled and almost blazed, and then grew dim. He changed at each sentence; he mouthed his written talk audibly; each thought was reflected in his pale mobile face. He laughed and then groaned; at the crisis, tears ran down and blurred the already undecipherable script. But at eleven he rose, stiff in every limb, and staggering. With difficulty he picked the unpaged leaves from the floor, and sorted them in due order. He fell into his chair.

  "It's good, it's good!" he said, chuckling; "what a queer devil I ami My dumb ancestors pipe oddly in me. It's strange, devilish strange; man's but a mouthpiece, and crazy at that. How long has this last thing been hatching? The story is old, yet new. Gibbon shall have it. It will just suit him. Little beast, little horror, little hog, with a divine gold ring of appreciation in his grubbing snout."

  He drank half a tumbler of whisky, and tumbled into bed. His mind ran riot.

  "My ego's a bit fissured," he said. "I ought to be careful."

  And ere he fell asleep he talked conscious nonsense. Incongruous ideas linked themselves together; he sneered at his brain's folly, and yet he was afraid. He used morphine at last in such a big dose that it touched the optic centre and subjective lightnings flashed in his dark room. He dreamed of an "At Home," where he met big, brutal Burford wearing a great diamond in his shirt-front.

  "Bought by my conveyed thoughts," he said. But looking down he perceived that he had yet a greater jewel of his own, and soon his soul melted in the contemplation of its rays, till his consciousness was dissipated by a divine absorption into the very Nirvana of Light.

  When he woke the next day, it was already late in the afternoon. He was overcome by yesterday's labour, and, though much less irritable, he walked feebly. The trouble of posting his story to Gibbon seemed almost too much for him; but he sent it, and took a cab to his club, where he sat almost comatose for many hours.

  Two days afterwards he received a note from the editor, returning

  his story. It was good, but-----

  "Burford sent me a tale with the same motive weeks ago, and I accepted it."

  Esplan smashed his thin white hand on his mantelpiece, and made it bleed. That night he got drunk on champagne, and the brilliant wine seemed to nip and bite and twist every nerve and brain cell. His irritability grew so extreme that he lay in wait for subtle, unconceived insults, and meditated morbidly on the aspect of innocent strangers. He gave the waiter double what was necessary, not because it was particularly deserved, but because he felt that the slightest sign of discontent on the man's part might lead to an uncontrollable outburst of anger on his own.

  Next day, he met Burford in Piccadilly, and cut him dead with a bitter sneer.

  "I daren't speak to him—I daren't!" he muttered.

  And Burford, who could not quite understand, felt outraged. He himself hated Esplan with the hatred of an outpaced, outsailed rival. He knew his own work lacked the diabolical certainty of Esplan's—it wanted the fine phrase, the right red word of colour, the rush and onward march to due finality, the bitter, exact conviction, the knowledge of humanity that lies in inheritance, the exalted experience that proves received intuitions. He was, he knew, a successful failure, and his ambition was greater even than Esplan's. For he was greedy, grasping, esurient, and his hollowness was obvious even before Esplan proved it with his ringing touch.

  "He takes what I have done, and does it better. It's malice, malice," he urged to himself.

  And when Esplan placed his last story, and the world remembered, only to forget in its white-hot brilliance, the cold paste of Burford's

  Paris jewel, he felt hell surge within him. But he beat his thoughts down for a while, and went on his little, laboured way.

  The success of the story and Burford's bitter eclipse helped Esplan greatly, and he might have got saner if other influences working for misery in his life had not hurt him. For a certain woman died, one whom none knew to be his friend, and he clung to morphine, which, in its increase, helped to throw him later.

  And at last the crash did come, for Burford had two stories, better far than his usual work, in a magazine that Esplan looked on as his own. They were on Esplan's very motives; he had them almost ready to write. The sting of this last bitter blow drove him off his tottering balance; he conceived murder, and plotted it brutally, and then subtly, and became dominated by it, till his life was the flower of the insane motive. It altered nothing that a reviewer pointed out the close resemblance between the two men's work, and, exalting Esplan's genius, placed one writer beyond all cavil, the other below all place.

  But that drove Burford crazy. It was so bitterly true. He ground his teeth, and hating his own work, hated worse the man who destroyed his own conceit. He wanted to do harm. How should he do it?

  Esplan had long since gone under. He was a homicidal maniac, with one man before him. He conceived and wrote schemes. His stories ran to murder. He read and imagined means. At times he was in danger of believing he had already done the deed. One wild day he almost gave himself up for this proleptic death. Thus his imagination burnt and flamed before his conceived path.

  "I'll do it, I'll do it," he muttered; and at tire club the men talked about him.

  "To-morrow," he said, and then he put it off. He must consider the art of it. He left it to bourgeon in
his fertile brain. And at last, just as he wrote, action, lighted up by strange circumstances, began to loom big before him. Such a murder would wake a vivid world, and be an epoch in crime. If the red earth were convulsed in war, even then would it stay to hear that incredible, true story, and, soliciting deeper knowledge, seek out the method and growth of means and motive. He chuckled audibly in the street, and laughed thin laughter in his room of fleeting visions. At night he walked the lonely streets near at hand, considering eagerly the rush of his own divided thoughts, and leaning against the railings of the leafy gardens, he saw ghosts in the moon shadows and beckoned them to converse. He became a night-bird and was rarely seen.

  "To-morrow," he said at last. To-morrow he would really take the first step. He rubbed his hands and laughed as he pondered near home, in his own lonely square, the finer last details which his imagination multiplied.

  "Stay, enough, enough!" he cried to his separate mad mind; "it is already done."

  And the shadows were very dark about him. He turned to go home.

  Then came immortality to him in strange shape. For it seemed as though his ardent and confined soul burst out of his narrow brain and sparkled marvellously. Lights showered about him, and from a rose sky lightnings flashed, and he heard awful thunder. The heavens opened in a white blaze, and he saw unimaginable things. He reeled, put his hand to his stricken head, and fell heavily in a pool of his own blood.

  And the Anticipator, horribly afraid, ran down a by-street.

  Reprinted by special permission of the author and Christy & Moore, Ltd.

  Tke Old Man

  By HOLLOWAY HORN

  MARTIN THOMPSON WAS NOT A DESIRABLE CHARACTER, HE POSSESSED a clever, plausible tongue, and for years past had lived, with no little success, on his wits. He had promoted doubtful boxing competitions and still more doubtful sweepstakes. He had been a professional backer, in which capacity he had defrauded the bookies; again, a bookmaker who had swindled his "clients." There was more cunning than imagination in his outlook, but, within his limits, he possessed a certain distorted ability.