“It’s a sad state of affairs, I admit.”
“Well, then, admit that my books fill the bill. They’re good yarns, they’re exciting, they’re healthy. Surely they don’t deserve wholesale condemnation. So go home, my dear Quince, and begin a little screed like this:
“In the past we have frequently found occasion to deal severely with the novels of Norman Dane, and to regret that he refuses to use those high gifts he undoubtedly possesses; but on opening his latest novel, The House of a Hundred Scandals, we are agreeably surprised to note a decided awakening of artistic conscience. And so on. No one knows how to do it better than you. Bring to the bank to-morrow a proof of the article, and I’ll put my name on the back of your note.”
“I—I don’t know. I’ll think it over. Perhaps I’ve been a little too dogmatic. Let me see—Literary Criticism and the Point of View—yes, I’ll see what I can do.”
As I left him ruefully brooding over the idea I felt suddenly ashamed of myself.
“Poor old chap!” I thought; “I’ve certainly taken a mean advantage of him. Perhaps, after all, he may be right and I wrong. I begin to wonder: Have I earned success, or only achieved it? It seems to me this literary camp is divided into two bands, the sheep and the goats, and, sooner or later, a man must ask himself which he belongs to. Am I a sheep or am I a goat?”
But I quickly steeled myself. Why should I have compunction? Was I not in a land where money was the standard of success? Here then was the virtue of my bloated bank-book—Power. Let them sneer at me, these æsthetic apes, these flabby degenerates. There by the door was a group of them, and I ventured to bet that they were all in debt to their tailors. Yet they regarded me as an outsider, a barbarian. Looking around for some object to soothe my ruffled feelings, I espied the red, beefsteak-and-beer face of Porkinson, the broker. Here was a philistine, an unabashed disciple of the money god. I hailed him.
Over our second whiskey I told Porkinson of the affair in the library. He laughed a ruddy, rolling laugh.
“What do you care?” he roared raucously. “You put the stuff over and grab the coin—that’s the game, isn’t it? Let those highbrow freaks knock you all they want—you’ve got away with the goods. And, anyway, they’ve got the wrong dope. Why, I guess I’m just as level-headed as the next man, and I wouldn’t give a cent for the piffle they turn out. When I’m running to catch a train I grab one of your books every time. I know if there’s none of the boys on board to have a card game with I’ve got something to keep me from being tired between drinks. What I like about your yarns, old man, is that they keep me guessing all the time, and the fellow never gets the girl till the last page. I always skip a whole lot, I get so darned interested. I once read a book of yours clean through between breakfast and lunch.”
Thanking Porkinson for his enthusiasm, which somehow failed to elate me, I took the elevator up to my apartment on the tenth story of the club. Travers, the artist, had a studio adjoining me, and, seeing a light under his door, I knocked.