He went out and hung about the bohemian caf in Greenwich Village, where he saw writers in plenty, but not enough life to go round, and not a plot among the whole crowd of them.
In the end he fetched up in the cheapest and shabbiest of dives, such as might be frequented by one who could not finish his book, who had no money, whose wife had ceased to adore him, and who consequently had less chance than ever of a couple of ideal children.
It was extremely crowded. Possibly there are many writers in this disagreeable situation. Ambrose had to share a table with a young man who had the appearance of a tom-cat whose ears have been bitten short in a hundred rigorous experiences. He had a bullet head, a broad nose, magnificent teeth, and a ravenous expression. His shirt was ragged, and his chest bore a plentiful growth of absolutely genuine hair.
His hands were somewhat battered. 'That thumb," said he to Ambrose, "a dame shot off. Holding up a candle. One-horse circus show. Never missed ordinary-wise. Jealous. That finger a croc got. Marlinspike that one. Third mate. Mutiny. This thumb got frost-bit hitchhiking across Labrador in a blizzard. Thumbing sledges. Some of them bites is horse-bites, some's wolves', some's dames'."
"Certainly," said Ambrose, "you have seen life."
"Life, birth, death, and passion in the raw," returned the other. "I'd rather see a hamburger."
"Look, there is one cooking on the stove over there," said Ambrose. "Are you by any chance a writer?"
"A second Jack London," said the other. "But I got the publishing racket against me. I give 'em blood, sweat, lust, murder, everything. And they talk about style." He pronounced this last word with an air of contempt
"Style," said Ambrose reprovingly, "is ninety-nine per cent of the whole business. I am a stylist myself. Waiter, bring over that hamburger. This is what you wished to see, is it not?"
"Thank you," said the young man.
"Yes," said Ambrose. "You can now look at it closely. I have this ability to gratify my friends call it power if you will because I am a fine stylist. I count on my forthcoming book to sell half a million copies. Eat the hamburger. It is nothing to me."
"O.K.," said the young man, falling to.
"You seem to like hamburgers," said Ambrose. "I need a sort of secretary with a good experience of life; a prentice, in short, such as the old masters had, who could rough out plots for me. You seem to have an unlimited supply of material. I have an unlimited supply of hamburgers."
"Sell out?" cried the young man. "For a hamburger? Not me!"
"There would be large steaks " said Ambrose.
"But " said the young man.
"smothered with mushrooms," said Ambrose. "Fried chicken. Pie. New clothes. Comfortable quarters. Maybe a dollar a week pocket money."
"Make it two," said the young man. "You can't take a dame out on a dollar."
"Certainly not," said Ambrose. "No dames. All must go into the plots."
"That's tough," said the young man.
"Take it or leave it," said Ambrose.
The young man, after a struggle, succumbed, and soon was tied up with a long-term contract, and taken home to the little house on Long Island. Ambrose described him as a secretary, in order to conceal the true arrangement from his wife, for he feared it might lessen her adoration.
The young man, whose new clothing became him very well, ate and drank very heartily, and relished all that was set before him, all except the sherry. This he absolutely refused, demanding a cocktail. "Mix him an old-fashioned," said Ambrose to his wife, for he felt it might help to nourish up a plot full of life in the raw.
His lovely wife opened her eyes very wide, first at her husband, then at his secretary, and finally at the old-fashioned, of which she could not resist taking a surreptitious sip. "How extremely delicious!" she thought. "How delightful life is after all! In comes this young man, and at once I get what I have been sighing for. I wonder if he ever sighs for anything. He seems too vital. He would just ask for it. Or take it. Oh, dear!"
With that she handed the cocktail to the young man, who received it shyly, gratefully, and yet as if it were his due. He drank it in a straightforward, manly fashion, yet with a keen, primitive, simple enjoyment, holding the glass just so, throwing back his head just so I cannot describe how handsomely this young man disposed of his cocktail.
All went well in the house. Ambrose ceased to worry. His wife ceased to sigh. Soon the plot was ready. It had everything. "You will remain here," said Ambrose to his secretary, "and we shall go to our little house in Provence, where I shall cast this rough clay into something rather like a Grecian vase. Meanwhile, you can think up another."
So off they went, Ambrose rubbing his hands. His wife perversely showed some disposition to sigh again when they boarded the liner, but of that he took no notice. He soon, however, had reason to sigh himself, for when he began work in his state-room he found his style was not quite as perfect as he had imagined it to be. In fact, by the end of the voyage his high-grade paper was still as blank as before.
This put Ambrose back into the depths of despair. When they got to Paris, he slunk out of the hotel, and drifted into the dingiest caf he could find, where the poorest writers forgathered, who were all destitute of plots, money, adoring wives, ideal children, and everything.
Such cafs abound in every back street of Paris, and enjoy a numerous and cosmopolitan custom. Ambrose found himself sitting beside a young Englishman whose features were sensitive to a degree, and almost transparent by reason of their extreme emaciation. Ambrose observed that this young man's eyes were full of tears. "Why," said he, "are your eyes full of tears?"
"I am a writer," said the young man, "and as the barbarous publishers pay no heed to style, but insist upon plots about beastly men and women, you may understand that I have to live very simply. I was making my frugal dinner on the smell of a superb dish of tripes a la mode, which that fat fellow is eating, when in came an abominable newspaper man, who sat down in our neighbourhood and poured out such a flood of journalese that I was obliged to move away. And I am so hungry!"
"Too bad!" said Ambrose. "I'll tell you what. I'll order a portion for myself, and you shall sniff as heartily as you wish."
"I am eternally grateful," said the other. "I don't know why you should benefit a stranger in this way."
"That's nothing," said Ambrose. "Have you ever tasted a piece of bread dipped in the gravy?"
"Yes, indeed!" cried the other. "I did so last Christmas. It lent a special richness to my style all through the first half of this year."
"How admirably you would write," said Ambrose, "if someone fed you buf en daube!"
"I could write an Iliad on it," cried the other.
"And on bouillabaisse?"
"An Odyssey."
"I need someone," said Ambrose, "to put a few little finishing touches to some more modern but equally magnificent conceptions of my own. I have a little house in Provence, with an excellent kitchen"
In a word, he soon had this unfortunate in his hands, and tied up with options and loans as securely as any white slave in Buenos Aires.
The young man first lived in a rapture of sniffing, then grew quite used to bread dipped in the gravy, and finally ate all that was going, to the utmost benefit to his physique and style. He would not, however, drink any of Ambrose's sherry. "Let me have a cocktail," said he. "It will impart a modern and realistic smack to my prose, which is particularly desirable for the scenes laid in America."
"Not only that," thought Ambrose, "but it will provide a link, a rapport, between him and the other." Accordingly he called in his wife, at whose appearance the young man inhaled deeply. "Mix him an old-fashioned," said Ambrose.