Such cafés 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 bœuf 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.
His wife, as before, opened her bewitching eyes wide, on husband, secretary, and cocktail, of which, as before, she took a secret sip. She experienced the same delicious sensation. «Perhaps I was wrong to begin sighing again,» she thought. «Perhaps there is very seldom any real reason to sigh. This young man looks as if he sighed a good deal, which is a pity in anyone so graceful and delicate. I wonder if he knows the cure for it.»
Life, however, is not all play; the book progressed rapidly, and soon took shape as the four-star classic of all time, thrilling enough for the most hardened low-brow, and so perfectly written as to compel the homage of the connoisseurs.
It sold like hot cakes, and Ambrose was fêted everywhere. His cellar was full of the most superlative sherries. His wife no longer sighed, not even when they left Long Island for Provence, or Provence for Long Island. «It makes a change,» said she to the interviewers.
It was not very long before she crowned his happiness by presenting him with a sturdy son. «Soon,» said Ambrose, «he will be able to run to meet me, and you shall take us on the Movie-ola. He is not quite as like me as he ought to be; it must be your cruder nature coming out in him. But perhaps he will improve, or perhaps you will do better next time.»
Sure enough there was a next time, and Ambrose rejoiced in two ideal children. «This one,» said he, «is still a little short of the ideal. He has your rather effeminate look. However, they average out very like their father indeed, and that is as much as could be hoped for.»
So time went by, and no man was more pleased with himself than Ambrose. «What a happy man I am,» said he to himself, «with my fame, my riches, my beautiful wife who adores me, my forceful plots, my exquisite style, my houses, my two secretaries, and my two ideal children!» He had just called for the Movie-ola to have them taken running to meet him, when a visitor was announced, a literary pilgrim who had come to do him homage.
Such were always very welcome to the great man. «Yes,» said he. «Here I am. This is my study. Those are my books. There, in the hammock, is my wife. And down there, in the garden, are my two ideal little children. I will take you to see them. You shall watch them run to meet their papa.»
«Tell me,» said the visitor, «do they reflect the genius of their father?»
«Probably,» said Ambrose. «In a small way, of course.»
«Then,» said the visitor, «let us approach them quietly. Let us overhear their prattle. Suppose they are telling stories to each other. I should like to tell the world, sir, that they have inherited their father's genius.»
Ambrose was indulgent, and they tiptoed to the edge of the sandpit, where the two youngsters, squatting in the dirt, were busy gabbling their heads off. Sure enough, they were telling a story.
«An' the ole dragon,» said the elder, «sprung out on him like mad, spittin' out flames —»
«And the monster,» said the younger, «rushed forth upon him, breathing fire —»
«He hopped out of the way, and stuck his sword in its belly —»
«He leapt nimbly aside, and thrust his gleaming blade into its black heart —»
«And over it went —»
«And it fell —»
«Done in.»
«Dead.»
MIDNIGHT BLUE
Mr. Spiers came in extremely late. He shut the door very quietly, switched on the electric light, and stood for quite a long time on the door-mat. Mr. Spiers was a prosperous accountant with a long, lean face, naturally pale; a cold eye, and a close mouth. Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the movement of gills in a fish.
He now took off his bowler hat, looked at it inside and out, and hung it upon the usual peg. He pulled off his muffler, which was a dark one, dotted with polka dots of a seemly size, and he scrutinized this muffler very carefully and hung it on another peg. His overcoat, examined even more scrupulously, was next hung up, and Mr. Spiers went quickly upstairs.
In the bathroom he spent a very long time at the mirror. He turned his face this way and that, tilted it sideways to expose his jaw and neck. He noted the set of his collar, saw that his tiepin was straight, looked at his cuff links, his buttons, and finally proceeded to undress. Again he examined each garment very closely; it was as well Mrs. Spiers did not see him at this moment, or she might have thought he was looking for a long hair, or traces of powder. However, Mrs. Spiers had been asleep for a couple of hours. After her husband had examined every stitch of his clothing, he crept to his dressing room for a clothes-brush, which he used even upon his shoes. Finally he looked at his hands and his nails, and scrubbed them both very thoroughly.
He then sat down on the edge of the bath, put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and gave himself up to a very profound train of thought. Now and then he marked the checking-off of some point or other by lifting a finger and bringing it back again onto his cheek, or even onto the spot behind his jawbone where there was that little movement, so like the movement of the gills of a fish.