The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 18

"Oh, nothing much, in one way. I've been talking with a young chap who has sent us a ma.n.u.script lately. The book's no good, commercially-a pretty crude performance-but it has some striking descriptive pa.s.sages 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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce-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 d.a.m.ned 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 gla.s.s 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 _denouement_ 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 a.s.sure 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 G.o.d 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, suns.h.i.+ny 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 _pate 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 d.a.m.nable 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."

Orrington laughed contentedly. "No. That's the missing conclusion, but I'm not sorry to have given him a show. Besides, what I did wasn't such a n.o.ble sacrifice, after all. Having basked in your admiration for a moment, I can afford to tell you. I'm not an accomplished hypocrite, and I'd hate to begin at my age. Let me tell you what happened."