1
HE had decided to write—what, he did not know yet: and it did not matter: something, anything, a play, a poem, a story—whatever came into his head, good or bad. It would occupy his time.
He spent a happy evening buying the materials of writing at a stationery store. He bought a dozen penholders, a quantity of his favourite stub pens, two bottles of a thick black indelible ink, half a ream of good thin bond paper, a great blotting-pad and a whole stack of small blotters. That afternoon he had bought a copy of Roget’s “Thesaurus,” without which the literary life is mere vexation; and a good, fat, reliable little dictionary with “derivations.” Going to his room, he lighted the gas, arranged these materials on his little table, gazed at them with pleasure—and realized that he had forgotten to buy an eyeshade. He went back to the stationery store, and returned with a half-dozen eyeshades of the best pattern, the kind that do not saw the ears or get tangled in the hair. It appeared to him also that the gas-light really would not do; he must get a kerosene student’s lamp; it would be a nuisance to keep it filled and trimmed, and the chimney clean—but the literary life has its inevitable penalties.... He would get a student’s lamp and a gallon can of kerosene tomorrow.
He sat down again at the little table, fitted a stub pen into his penholder, lighted a match, and held the steel point in the blaze, to burn off the oil and take out the temper, making it soft and flexible and easy to write with. He uncorked the ink, wiped out the neck of the bottle with a blotter, and dipped his pen in. Yes, the pen held a full sentence’s-worth of ink, as it should. There was nothing the matter with the pen. He took a sheaf of paper from the great pile on the back of the desk, laid it at the proper angle, adjusted his chair, dipped the pen again, poised it above the virgin paper—and remembered that he had only two cigarettes left in the box. One cannot do a good night’s writing without plenty of cigarettes. He went down to the cigar store and returned with five boxes.
Once more he dipped his pen, lifted it ...
An hour later he roused himself from the vague waking dream in which his mind had been immersed. The sheet of paper was covered with lines and circles, stars, geometrical figures, childish pictures of houses with smoke coming out of the chimneys, illegible words, his own initials, and crude attempts to draw the outline of a girl’s arm; and amidst all this, carefully obliterated, so that he could hardly recognize it himself, the name—Rose-Ann, Rose-Ann, Rose-Ann....
He tore the sheet into tiny fragments, brushed them to the floor, and then got down on his hands and knees and carefully picked them up. He must remember to buy a wastebasket for his room tomorrow. He looked at his watch. It was twelve o’clock. He would go in and see Roger and Don; if they were staying up late, they might offer him some coffee.
Roger was lying on the couch reading Flaubert’s “La Tentation de la Saint Antoine,” and Don was sitting in an easy chair reading Flaubert’s “Bouvard et Pecuchet.” They looked up, bade him come in, and went on calmly with their reading. Felix took down a book from the shelf—one of the later works of Henry James—and yawned over it.... Perhaps he had better go to bed after all.
At that moment there was a stumbling up the stairs, and a loud banging at the door.
“That’s Eddie Silver,” said Roger, in a resigned tone.
Felix jumped up and opened the door, and Eddie Silver entered, shouting, “Hello!”—at the same time playfully thrusting against Felix’s stomach an automatic revolver made of tin. But Felix did not know that it was a toy.
He stepped back hastily, with a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“The fool’s got a revolver!” said Roger.
“Here, give me that,” said Don, going over and trying to snatch it.
“Let him alone——he’s drunk,” said Roger.
“No——not drunk!” protested Eddie Silver. “Don’t say I’m drunk!” He tearfully extended his hands in pleading, with the revolver dangling from a finger. “But—” and he beamed at them suddenly——“going to get drunk! Going——” He noticed the revolver, put it carefully in one overcoat pocket, and took out of the other a quart bottle. “Get some glasses, Rojjie!” And taking off his overcoat, with the revolver still in its pocket, he bundled it up and tossed it over into the corner of the room.
There was a moment in which everybody—except Eddie—held himself tense in expectation of a bullet. Then Don started across the room toward the overcoat.
“No, Don—no!——You le’ tha’ o’co’ ’lone. ’S my bes’ o’co’!” And then, very clearly enunciated, “Hurry up with those glasses!”
Felix followed Roger over behind the screen which masked their simple culinary arrangements. “We’ve got to get him drunk enough to get that gun away from him,” whispered Roger.
It took another bottle of whiskey, procured by Don and paid for by Felix, and four hours of time, to kill Eddie Silver’s jealous watchfulness of that overcoat in the corner. Eddie, with a maudlin efficiency, divided his attention between the overcoat and the whiskey. His conversation for the last three of the four hours consisted of a promise to tell them something. “Wo’n’ tell ’nybo’ ’n worl’ ’cep’ you,” he kept saying.
It appeared to have to do with himself and some girl——but whether it was in the nature of a crime or a joke they could not tell, because sometimes he laughed and again he cried about it. But as often as he started to tell what it was, he became diverted, and told instead about somebody else and somebody else’s girl. He confessed many follies that night, but not his own.
At three o’clock, just when he seemed to be really on the point of making that long-delayed confession, he suddenly commenced to laugh. “’Minds me Cli’ Bangs!” he said. “Know Cli’ Bangs?” And becoming articulate again he went on, “I’ll tell you a funny story about him. He’s got a—(come on, everybody have another little drink!)—house out in the country. I te’ you ’bou’ tha’ h-house!”
And with vague relapses into the muffled speech of drunkenness, and startling recoveries of clearness, but always with a thread of coherence, he told the story of Clive Bangs’ house. At times Roger, watchfully listening, had to serve as official interpreter; Roger understood the locutions of drunken speech as if they were a foreign language in which he was versed. And Felix, half-ashamed to listen, but curious, heard it to the end.
It seemed that Clive had built—or rebuilt—that house in Woods Point for a girl he was in love with at the time, years ago, five or six or seven years ago. But, said Eddie Silver, he had neglected to tell the girl that he was in love with her. And so, about the time the house was finished, she married somebody else. Or at least, became engaged to some one else, whom she eventually did marry. The point of this story—to Eddie it was an exquisitely funny story—was that Clive Bangs had kept the house a secret from her, because he wanted it to be a surprise. And it was this secrecy of his which had convinced her that he had another sweetheart; so that, in pique, she became engaged to the other man.
“Cli’s li’l’ secret!” said Eddie Silver, infinitely amused. “Do’ pay to have se-secrets. Tha’s why I go’ tell my li’l’ secret.”
But again he wandered from the point, much to Don’s and Roger’s disappointment.
This painful story about his friend stirred Felix deeply. He felt that it was true—true in essence, however fabricated in detail; it seemed to him indecent to have this stolen glimpse into the secret of Clive Bangs’ heart—and yet he was glad he had heard the story. Yes, it must be true. Rose-Ann had put it in a phrase: “Some girl has hurt him.” And this—this ridiculous and pathetic incident, too ridiculous ever to confess, a secret that must be buried deep and forgotten—was the reason for Clive’s being what he was.... And suddenly Felix understood why that story had moved him so:—for had he not been as ridiculously, as pathetically hurt, in his own episode of moon-calf-love back in Port Royal? And was that incident, too, to affect his whole life, remaining untold, unconfessed, poisoning his courage and his faith?
He jumped up, went to his room, altogether wide awake, and commenced to write—the story of his folly in Port Royal. He commenced it as a letter to Rose-Ann. He did not consider whether he would ever dare to send it to her. He only knew that it must be written so.
An hour later he paused, tired out—and remembered Eddie Silver’s revolver. After all, that was perhaps a life-and-death matter, and this wasn’t. He went back to Don’s and Roger’s room.... Eddie Silver’s confession was again on the point of becoming definite.
“Tell you all about it,” said Eddie. “Lis’n!”
They leaned forward to hear, but Eddie’s head dropped on his arms, and he was asleep.
“Damn!” whispered Roger.
Felix slipped quietly over to the woolly heap in the corner and reached into one pocket and then the other. He found something strangely light to the touch. He pulled it out and gazed at it angrily. A tin revolver!
“F’lix!”
Eddie suddenly awake, was calling to him.
“Go ge’ ’no’er bo’l’ Swinburne!”
Felix looked at his watch. If he went to sleep now, he would never wake up in the morning in time to go to the office. He might as well keep awake the rest of the night. “Make some coffee,” he said to Roger, “and I’ll get some more whiskey for this crazy loon.”