“You seem to have the delusion that every beginner, with a sense of irony and a deliberate style, is an echo of mine,” Oppendorf replied, undisturbed. “You’d treat these people with a flippant impatience, but I’d rather err on the side of encouraging them, unless they’re saturated with platitudes and gush.”
“Yes, you are apt to make such mistakes, especially in the case of some pretty girl,” Helgin said, with a malicious grin.
“Have it your way, Ben,” Oppendorf responded, indifferently.
Blanche listened with a serene confidence in Oppendorf—he never lied about anything connected with writing: somehow she felt sure of that. Literature was too serious a matter to him.
For a moment Margaret looked a little jealously at Blanche, pestered by the suspicion that Oppendorf might have praised Blanche’s work as a first move toward conquering her—a suspicion which Helgin had known would be caused by his words. Then Margaret remembered how he had viciously assailed her own short-stories just after her first meeting with him, when he had known that she would have prostrated herself before him for the least word of praise, and with the remembrance her doubts perished.
“Be on your good behavior to-night,” Helgin said to Oppendorf. “Vanderin didn’t want to invite you, but I convinced him that you had become a chastened and amiable gentleman. I wouldn’t like to see you thrown down the stairway—it gives smaller people a chance to gloat over you.”
“Are you really as wild as all that?” Blanche asked, looking incredulously at Oppendorf’s subdued pallidness.
“The stairway myth is one in a celebrated list,” Oppendorf replied. “You’ll find many of the others in Mr. Helgin’s affectionate tribute to me—his last novel. The list is a superb one. I deceived some social-radical friends by pretending to defy the draft laws during the war. I faked a broken shoulder and sponged on some other friends. I was caught in the act of attempting to ravish a twelve-year-old girl. I leap upon women at parties and manhandle them while they shriek for mercy, in contrast to the other men present, who never do more than audaciously grasp the little fingers of the same ladies. The amusing part of it is that none of my actual crimes and offenses are on the list. I could give my admirers some real ammunition if they would only ask me for it.”
“But why do they tell such hideous lies about you?” Blanche asked naively.
“I’ll tell you why,” Margaret broke in, indignantly. “It’s because they hate him and fear him. He gets beneath their skins and mocks at all their little idols, and squirmings, and compromises. They want to pulverize him, but he hardly ever gives them any real opportunities, so they’re reduced to falling back on their imaginations and insisting that he’s a clownish monster. It’s a beautiful system of exaggerations, all right! If he happens to be drunk at a party, it’s immediately reported that he was pushed down the stairs, and if he’s seen stroking a woman’s arm it’s always said that he hu-urled himself upon her.”