“Well,” he rejoined with solemnity, “there was a heap of it, wasn't there!”
We talked of other things, then, until such time as we found ourselves seated by a small table at the club, old Tom somewhat uneasily regarding a twisted cigar he was smoking and plainly confounded by the “carbonated” syphon, for which, indeed, he had no use in the world. We had been joined by little Fiderson, the youngest member of the club, whose whole nervous person jerkily sparkled “L'Aiglon” enthusiasm.
“Such an evening!” he cried, in his little spiky voice. “Mr. Martin, it does one good to realize that our country towns are sending representatives to us when we have such things; that they wish to get in touch with what is greatest in Art. They should do it often. To think that a journey of only seventy miles brings into your life the magnificence of Rostand's point of view made living fire by the genius of a Bernhardt and a Coquelin!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Martin, with a curious helplessness, after an ensuing pause, which I refused to break, “yes, sir, they seemed to be doing it about as well as they could.”
Fiderson gasped slightly. “It was magnificent! Those two great artists! But over all the play—the play! Romance new-born; poesy marching with victorious banners; a great spirit breathing! Like 'Cyrano'—the birth-mark of immortality on this work!”
There was another pause, after which old Tom turned slowly to me, and said: “Homer Tibbs's opened up a cigar-stand at the deepo. Carries a line of candy, magazines, and fruit, too. Home's a hustler.”
Fiderson passed his hand through his hair.
“That death scene!” he exclaimed at me, giving Martin up as a log accidentally rolled in from the woods. “I thought that after 'Wagram' I could feel nothing more; emotion was exhausted; but then came that magnificent death! It was tragedy made ecstatic; pathos made into music; the grandeur of a gentle spirit, conquered physically but morally unconquerable! Goethe's 'More Light' outshone!”
Old Tom's eyes followed the smoke of his perplexing cigar along its heavy strata in the still air of the room, as he inquired if I remembered Orlando T. Bickner's boy, Mel. I had never heard of him, and said so.
“No, I expect not,” rejoined Martin. “Prob'ly you wouldn't; Bickner was Governor along in my early days, and I reckon he ain't hardly more than jest a name to you two. But we kind of thought he was the biggest man this country had ever seen, or was goin' to see, and he was a big man. He made one president, and could have been it himself, instead, if he'd be'n willing to do a kind of underhand trick, but I expect without it he was about as big a man as anybody'd care to be; Governor, Senator, Secretary of State—and just owned his party! And, my law!—the whole earth bowin' down to him; torchlight processions and sky-rockets when he come home in the night; bands and cannon if his train got in, daytime; home-folks so proud of him they couldn't see; everybody's hat off; and all the most important men in the country following at his heels—a country, too, that'd put up consider'ble of a comparison with everything Napoleon had when he'd licked 'em all, over there.