Proof of the Pudding
Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the _MinervaMagazine_, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in hisfavorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his officewhen his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Whichis by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street,safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, andmeandered along the walks of budding Madison Square.
The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed apastoral; the color motif was green--the presiding shade at the creationof man and vegetation.
The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, apoisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that hadbreathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting treebuds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among thegarnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky abovewas of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with "true"and "Sue" and "coo." The one natural and frank color visible was theostensible green of the newly painted benches--a shade between the colorof a pickled cucumber and that of a last year's fast-black cravenetteraincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscapeappeared a masterpiece.
And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentleconcourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion ofthe editor's mind.
Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene. The April number ofthe _Minerva_ had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of themonth--a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fiftycopies more if he had 'em. The owners of the magazine had raised his(the editor's) salary; he had just installed in his home a jewel of arecently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and the morningpapers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers'banquet. Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of asplendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before heleft his up-town apartment that morning. She was taking enthusiasticinterest in her music of late, practising early and diligently. Whenhe had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairlyhugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonicmedicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wardsof the convalescent city.
While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park benches(already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood)he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to bepanhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that hiscaptor was--Dawe--Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteelscarcely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby.
While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlightbiography of Dawe is offered.
He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances.At one time they might have called each other old friends. Dawe hadsome money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house nearWestbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinnerstogether. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became "dearest" friends.Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself,ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the Gramercy Parkneighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one'strunk under eight-branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marblemantels and watch the mice play upon the floor. Dawe thought to liveby writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted manyto Westbrook. The _Minerva_ printed one or two of them; the rest werereturned. Westbrook sent a careful and conscientious personal letterwith each rejected manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasonsfor considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clearconception of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe wasmainly concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of foodthat she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had been spouting toher about the excellencies of certain French writers. At dinner they satdown to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp.Dawe commented.
"It's Maupassant hash," said Mrs. Dawe. "It may not be art, but I dowish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an EllaWheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry."
As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked EditorWestbrook's sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editorhad seen Dawe in several months.
"Why, Shack, is this you?" said Westbrook, somewhat awkwardly, for theform of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance.
"Sit down for a minute," said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. "This is myoffice. I can't come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down--you won'tbe disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will takeyou for a swell porch-climber. They won't know you are only an editor."
"Smoke, Shack?" said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon thevirulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield.
Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girlpecks at a chocolate cream.
"I have just--" began the editor.
"Oh, I know; don't finish," said Dawe. "Give me a match. You have justten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy andinvade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog thatcouldn't read the 'Keep off the Grass' signs."
"How goes the writing?" asked the editor.
"Look at me," said Dawe, "for your answer. Now don't put on thatembarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a jobas a wine agent or a cab driver. I'm in the fight to a finish. I know Ican write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'llmake you change the spelling of 'regrets' to 'c-h-e-q-u-e' before I'mdone with you."
Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetlysorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression--thecopyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the unavailablecontributor.
"Have you read the last story I sent you--'The Alarum of the Soul'?"asked Dawe.
"Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It hadsome good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when itgoes back to you. I regret--"
"Never mind the regrets," said Dawe, grimly. "There's neither salve norsting in 'em any more. What I want to know is _why_. Come now; out withthe good points first."
"The story," said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, "iswritten around an almost original plot. Characterization--the best youhave done. Construction--almost as good, except for a few weak jointswhich might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a goodstory, except--"
"I can write English, can't I?" interrupted Dawe.
"I have always told you," said the editor, "that you had a style."
"Then the trouble is--"
"Same old thing," said Editor Westbrook. "You work up to your climaxlike an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don'tknow what form of obstinate madness possesses you, but that is what youdo with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparisonwith the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of itsimpossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth.But you spoil every dénouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokesof your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise tothe literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in thehigh colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky,self-addressed envelopes at your door."
"Oh, fiddles and footlights!" cried Dawe, derisively. "You've got thatold sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the blackmustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the motherkneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: 'May high heavenwitness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartlessvillain that has stolen me child feels the weight of another'svengeance!'"
Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.
"I think," said he, "that in real life the woman would express herselfin those words or in very similar ones."
"Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage," said Dawehotly. "I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say: 'What!Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's one trouble afteranother! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station.Why wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know? For God's sake,get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat--the brown onewith the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she's usually shy ofstrangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I'm upset!'
"That's the way she'd talk," continued Dawe. "People in real life don'tfly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can'tdo it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the samevocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideasa little more, that's all."
"Shack," said Editor Westbrook impressively, "did you ever pick up themangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a streetcar, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distractedmother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief anddespair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?"
"I never did," said Dawe. "Did you?"
"Well, no," said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. "But I can wellimagine what she would say."
"So can I," said Dawe.
And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play theoracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for anunarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes andheroines of the _Minerva Magazine_, contrary to the theories of theeditor thereof.
"My dear Shack," said he, "if I know anything of life I know that everysudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth anapposite, concordant, conformable and proportionate expression offeeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression andfeeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence ofart, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of thelioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far aboveher customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterancesof Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also truethat all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramaticsense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion--asense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that promptsthem to express those emotions in language befitting their importanceand histrionic value."
"And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius,where did the stage and literature get the stunt?" asked Dawe.
"From life," answered the editor, triumphantly.
The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently butdumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately hisdissent.
On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived thathis moral support was due a downtrodden brother.
"Punch him one, Jack," he called hoarsely to Dawe. "W'at's he comemakin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen that comes inthe square to set and think?"
Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure.
"Tell me," asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, "what especial faults in'The Alarum of the Soul' caused you to throw it down?"
"When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrook, "goes to his telephone and istold that his fiancée has been shot by a burglar, he says--I do notrecall the exact words, but--"
"I do," said Dawe. "He says: 'Damn Central; she always cuts me off.'(And then to his friend) 'Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make abig hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it? Could you get me a drinkfrom the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side.'"
"And again," continued the editor, without pausing for argument, "whenBerenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he hasfled with the manicure girl, her words are--let me see--"
"She says," interposed the author: "'Well, what do you think of that!'"
"Absurdly inappropriate words," said Westbrook, "presenting ananti-climax--plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; theymirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialismswhen confronted by sudden tragedy."
"Wrong," said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. "I say no manor woman ever spouts 'high-falutin' talk when they go up against a realclimax. They talk naturally and a little worse."
The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and insideinformation.
"Say, Westbrook," said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, "would you haveaccepted 'The Alarum of the Soul' if you had believed that the actionsand words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the storythat we discussed?"
"It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way," said theeditor. "But I have explained to you that I do not."
"If I could prove to you that I am right?"
"I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any furtherjust now."
"I don't want to argue," said Dawe. "I want to demonstrate to you fromlife itself that my view is the correct one."
"How could you do that?" asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone.
"Listen," said the writer, seriously. "I have thought of a way. It isimportant to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized ascorrect by the magazines. I've fought for it for three years, and I'mdown to my last dollar, with two months' rent due."
"I have applied the opposite of your theory," said the editor, "inselecting the fiction for the _Minerva Magazine_. The circulation hasgone up from ninety thousand to--"
"Four hundred thousand," said Dawe. "Whereas it should have been boostedto a million."
"You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory."
"I will. If you'll give me about half an hour of your time I'll prove toyou that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise."
"Your wife!" exclaimed Westbrook. "How?"
"Well, not exactly by her, but _with_ her," said Dawe. "Now, you knowhow devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the onlygenuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor's signature.She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I've been cast forthe neglected genius part."
"Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion," agreed theeditor. "I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook oncewere. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bringMrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those informalchafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much."
"Later," said Dawe. "When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you myscheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast--if you can calltea and oatmeal breakfast--Louise told me she was going to visit heraunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return at three o'clock.She is always on time to a minute. It is now--"
Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket.
"Twenty-seven minutes to three," said Westbrook, scanning histime-piece.
"We have just enough time," said Dawe. "We will go to my flat at once. Iwill write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table where shewill see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining-roomconcealed by the portières. In that note I'll say that I have fled fromher forever with an affinity who understands the needs of my artisticsoul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions andhear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one--yoursor mine."
"Oh, never!" exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. "That would beinexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelingsplayed upon in such a manner."
"Brace up," said the writer. "I guess I think as much of her as you do.It's for her benefit as well as mine. I've got to get a market for mystories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's healthy and sound. Herheart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It'll last for only aminute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You really owe it tome to give me the chance, Westbrook."
Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And inthe half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in allof us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place.Pity 'tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to goaround.
The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward andthen to the south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood.Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coatof vernal green, and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outsidethe railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygonegentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of thevanished quality. _Sic transit gloria urbis_.
A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor againeastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrowflathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated façade. To the fifthstory they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the doorof one of the front flats.
When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, howmeanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished.
"Get a chair, if you can find one," said Dawe, "while I hunt up pen andink. Hello, what's this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have leftit there when she went out this morning."
He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open.He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once havingbegun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the wordsthat Editor Westbrook heard:
"Dear Shackleford:
"By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away andstill a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the OccidentalOpera Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o'clock. Ididn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my ownliving. I'm not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. Shesaid she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, icebergand dictionary, and she's not coming back, either. We've beenpractising the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hopeyou will be successful, and get along all right! Good-bye.
"Louise."
Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, andcried out in a deep, vibrating voice:
_"My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false,then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jestingby-words of traitors and fiends!"_
Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one handfumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips:
_"Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you offyour perch, Shack? Ain't it hell, now, Shack--ain't it?"_
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