Yes, I would be a philanthropist; but on whom would I philanthrope?
The answer was easy. Who better deserved my help than my fellow-scribes who had failed, those high and delicate souls who had scorned to commercialise their art, who were true to themselves and fought, for all that was best in literature? Even as there was a home for old actors, so I would found one for old authors, battered, beaten veterans of the pen, who in their declining years would find rest, shelter, sympathy under a generous roof.
Yes, writing popular fiction had become a habit with me, almost a vice. I was afraid I could never give it up. But here would be my extenuation. The money the public gave me for pleasing them I would spend on those others who, because they were artists, failed to please. And in this way at least I would indirectly be of some use to literature.
Then again; what a splendid example it would be to my brother best-seller makers, turning out their three books a year and their half dozen after they are dead. Let them, too, show their zeal for literature by devoting the bulk of their ill-gotten gains to its encouragement.
The club had changed very little. I saw the same members, looking a little more mutinous about the waist line. There was Vane and Quince, qualifying perhaps for my home. I greeted them cordially, aglow with altruism. After all, it was a day of paltry achievement. We were all small men, and none of us weighed on the scale. I felt very humble indeed. Quince had been right. I would never be one of those writers whom all the world admires—and doesn’t read. Truly I was one of the goats.
But that night at dinner in the Knickerbocker I threw back my head and laughed. And Anastasia in a new evening gown looked at me in surprise and demanded what was the matter. I surveyed her over a brimming glass of champagne.
“Extraordinary thing,” I thought; “isn’t it absurd? I’m actually falling in love with my own wife.”
THE END
FOOTNOTE:
[A] This was written in the Spring of 1914.