Keyes got thinner in flesh, more distressed in spirit, and poorer in this world's goods as time went on. Sometimes he felt like an imposter and was ashamed to face his wife; then he reread his press notices and a fever to do something shook him. But a man cannot support himself and his wife on a fever to do something. Benjamin Cecil Keyes could not understand the thing: if he had literary genius why couldn't he write? If he had not, how then had he written? To sit in full view of one's wife day after day pretending to be interested in a book when the bill-collector calls; and to be tormented all the time by a desire to do something and not to be able to do it, or know when, if ever, one will be able; and to be ashamed and afraid to tell one's wife this; but to be compelled to be there, or to run away, or to hang one's self—this is a situation more than uncomfortable.
A thousand times Keyes decided to roll up his sleeves and do something else—engage in any profitable employment; and a thousand times he decided not to—just yet. A man often exists in this way until he gets quite to the end of the string where the wolf is.
"That was an accident, Louise," said Keyes sadly one day. "I find I can't write."
Keyes was mistaken again. No fine thing ever was made by accident. Keyes managed to write that story because its theme was the most interesting incident in his life; because it appealed to him more strongly than anything else had in his whole experience; because he was thoroughly familiar with the life and the people he featured in his story; because he was absolutely sincere in his sympathies, appreciation, and emotions here; he had no ideals set way beyond his power, no aping tendencies after an effective style, no attention distracted by an ill-digested knowledge of mechanical construction. The structure, and the style simply came, probably because—and finally he managed to write that story because—he was keyed up to it.
A domestic woman often has a wretchedly unworshipful view of art and fame. Keyes's confession did not kill Louise. I suppose he expected her to go back to her parents in high dudgeon as one who had been grossly swindled.
"Do you care if you can't write?" she said, after a moment's silence. "Just think how nice you are—how much nicer you were before you tried to write! And how it has worried you!"
Keyes got a job as a collector for a mercantile house. "My health demands outdoor employment," he told his acquaintances.
* * * * * * *
Sometimes, alone with his lamp after the day's confounded drudgery, Keyes got out the old magazine and reread his forgotten story.
THE END.