[IMAGINATION]
By GORDON HALL GEROULD
From Scribner’s Magazine
Copyright, 1918, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Copyright, 1919, by Gordon Hall Gerould.
As I gave my coat and hat to the boy, I caught sight of Orrington, waddling into the farther reaches of the club just ahead of me. “Here’s luck!” I thought to myself, and with a few hasty strides overtook him.
It is always good luck to run upon Harvey Orrington during the hour when he is loafing before dinner. In motion he resembles a hippopotamus, and in repose he produces the impression that the day is very hot, even in midwinter. But one forgets his red and raw corpulency when he has settled at ease in a big chair and begun to talk. Then the qualities that make him the valuable man he is, as the literary adviser of the Speedwell Company, come to the surface, and with them those perhaps finer attributes that have given him his reputation as a critic. Possibly the contrast between his Falstaffian body and his nicely discriminating mind gives savor to his comment on art and life; but in any case his talk is as good in its way as his essays are in theirs. Read his “Retrospective Impressions” if you wish to know what I mean—only don’t think that his colloquial diction is like the fine-spun phrasing of his essays. He inclines to be slangy in conversation.
I overtook Orrington, as I say, before he had reached his accustomed corner, and I greeted him with a becoming deference. He is fifteen years my senior, after all.
“Hello,” he said, turning his rather dull eyes full upon me. “Chasing will-o’-the-wisps this afternoon?”
“I’ve been pursuing you. If you call that—”