III
Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that they dine—as they frequently did—at one of the little Italian table d'hote places in Greenwich Village.
“You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble,” Tommy was saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden drink.
They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was—but why tell persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed, and why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it well?
“Tommy,” said his friend, “don't, if you love me, hand out any more of your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change the record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in a meal so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have adopted lately.”
“Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack,” went on Tommy, altogether unperturbed. “But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things. I like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look at the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a blood clot in his brain for years—a little trivial thing the size of a pin point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into the wrong channel, and—pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million people are affected by it—by that one little clot of blood no bigger than a pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet balanced on an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!”
“Have some soup,” said his friend.
“Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!” continued Tommy. “Some day, Jack, I'm going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an empire.”
“No, you're not,” said Jack. “You're just going to talk about it and think you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know, and then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write it. You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you.”
“Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play.”
“Well, Tommy,” said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room, “this is a hell of a place to do it in!”
“Meaning, of course,” said Tommy serenely, “that it takes more than a butterfly to write a play about a butterfly.”
“You get me,” said his friend. And then after a pause he went on with sincerity in his manner: “You know I think you could write the play, Tommy. But unless you get to work on some of your ideas pretty soon, and buckle down to them in earnest, other people will continue to write your plays—and you will continue to josh them and yourself, and your friends will continue to think that you could write better plays if you would only do it. People aren't going to take you seriously, Tommy, till you begin to take yourself a little seriously. Why, you poor, futile, silly, misguided, dear old mutt, you! You don't even have sense enough—you don't have the moral continuity, if you follow me—to stay sore at a man that does you dirt! Now, do you?”
“Oh, I don't know about that,” said Tommy a little more seriously.
“Well now, do you?” persisted his friend. “I don't say it's good Christian doctrine not to forgive people. It isn't. But I've seen people put things across on you, Tommy, and seen you laugh it off and let 'em be friends with you again inside of six weeks. I couldn't do it, and nine-tenths of the fellows we know couldn't do it; and in the way you do it it shouldn't be done. You should at least remember, even if you do forgive; remember well enough not to get bit by the same dog again. With you, old kid, it's all a part of your being a butterfly and a bubble. It's no particular virtue in you. I wouldn't talk to you like a Dutch uncle if I didn't think you had it in you to make good. But you've got to be prodded.”
“There's one fellow that did me dirt,” said Tommy musingly, “that I've never taken to my bosom again.”
“What did you do to him?” asked his friend. “Beat him to death with a butterfly's wing, Tommy, or blow him out of existence with a soap bubble?”
“I've never done anything to him,” said Tommy soberly. “And I don't think I ever would do anything to him. I just remember, that's all. If he ever gets his come-uppance, as they say in the rural districts, it won't be through any act of mine. Let life take revenge for me. I never will.”
“I suppose you're right,” said Dobson. “But who was this guy? And what did he do to you?”