The Plutonian Fire

by O. Henry

　　

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There are a few editor men with whom I am privi-leged to come in contact. It has not been long sinceit was their habit to come in contact with me. Thereis a difference. They tell me that with a large number of themanuscripts that are submitted to them come advices(in the way of a boost) from the author asseveratingthat the incidents in the story are true. The des-tination of such contributions depends wholly uponthe question of the enclosure of stamps. Some arereturned, the rest are thrown on the floor in a corneron top of a pair of gum shoes, an overturned statu-ette of the Winged Victory, and a pile of old maga-zines containing a picture of the editor in the actof reading the latest copy of Le Petit Journal, rightside up - you can tell by the illustrations. It isonly a legend that there are waste baskets in editors'offices. Thus is truth held in disrepute. But in time truthand science and nature will adapt themselves to art.Things will happen logically, and the villain be dis-comfited instead of being elected to the board ofdirectors. But in the meantime fiction must not onlybe divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and beawarded custody of the press despatches. This preamble is to warn you off the grade cross-ing of a true story. Being that, it shall be told sim-ply, with conjunctions substituted for adjectiveswherever possible, and whatever evidences of stylemay appear in it shall be due to the linotype man.It is a story of the literary life in a great city, andit should be of interest to every author within a 20-mile radius of Gosport, Ind., whose desk holds a MS.story beginning thus: "While the cheers followinghis nomination were still ringing through the oldcourthouse, Harwood broke away from the congrat-ulating handclasps of his henchmen and hurried toJudge Creswell's house to find Ida." Pettit came up out of Alabama to write fiction.The Southern papers had printed eight of his storiesunder an editorial caption identifying the author asthe son of "the gallant Major Pettingill Pettit, ourformer County Attorney and hero of the battle ofLookout Mountain." Pettit was a rugged fellow, with a kind of shame-faced culture, and my good friend. His father kepta general store in a little town called Hosea. Pettithad been raised in the pine-woods and broom-sedgefields adjacent thereto. He had in his gripsack twomanuscript novels of the adventures in Picardy ofone Gaston Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos, inthe year 1329. That's nothing. We all do that.And some day when we make a hit with the littlesketch about a newsy and his lame dog, the editorprints the other one for us -- or "on us," as the say-ing is -- and then -- and then we have to get a bigvalise and peddle those patent air-draft gas burners.At $1.25 everybody should have 'em. I took Pettit to the red-brick house which was toappear in an article entitled "Literary Landmarksof Old New York," some day when we got throughwith it. He engaged a room there, drawing on thegeneral store for his expenses. I showed New Yorkto him, and he did not mention how much narrowerBroadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea. Thisseemed a good sign, so I put the final test. "Suppose you try your band at a descriptive arti-cle," I suggested, "giving your impressions of NewYork as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. The freshpoint of view, the -- " "Don't be a fool," said Pettit. "Let's go havesome beer. On the whole I rather like the city."We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia.Every day and night we repaired to one of thosepalaces of marble and glass and tilework, where goeson a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhallaitself could not be more glorious and sonorous. Theclassic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-whitescrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cupsand bowls the flashing staccato of brandishing cut-lery, the piercing recitative of the white-apronedgrub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; therecurrent lied-motif of the cash-register -- it was agigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, adeafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and em-blematic life. And the beans were only ten cents.We wondered why our fellow-artists cared to dine atsad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restau-rants; and we shuddered lest they should seek out ourresorts and make them conspicuous with their pres-ence. Pettit wrote many stories, which the editors re-turned to him. He wrote love stories, a thing I havealways kept free from, holding the belief that thewell-known and popular sentiment is not properly amatter for publication, but something to be privatelyhandled by the alienists and florists. But the editorshad told him that they wanted love stories, becausethey said the women read them. Now, the editors are wrong about that, of course.Women do not read the love stories in the magazines.They read the poker-game stories and the recipesfor cucumber lotion. The love stories are read byfat cigar drummers and little ten-year-old girls. Iam not criticising the judgment of editors. Theyare mostly very fine men, but a man can be but oneman, with individual opinions and tastes. I knewtwo associate editors of a magazine who were won-derfully alike in almost everything. And yet oneof them was very fond of Flaubert, while the otherpreferred gin. Pettit brought me his returned manuscripts, andwe looked them over together to find out why theywere not accepted. They seemed to me pretty fairstories, written in a good style, and ended, as theyshould, at the bottom of the last page. They were well constructed and the events weremarshalled in orderly and logical sequence. But Ithought I detected a lack of living substance -- itwas much as if I gazed at a symmetrical array ofpresentable clamshells from which the succulent andvital inhabitants had been removed. I intimated thatthe author might do well to get better acquainted withhis theme. "You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "abouta gun fight in an Arizona mining town in which thehero drew his Colt's .45 and shot seven bandits asfast as they came in the door. Now, if a six-shootercould -- " "Oh, well," said I, "that's different. Arizona isa long way from New York. I could have a manstabbed with a lariat or chased by a pair of chap-arreras if I wanted to, and it wouldn't be noticeduntil the usual error-sharp from around McAdamsJunction isolates the erratum and writes in to the pa-pers about it. But you are up against anotherproposition. This thing they call love is as commonaround New York as it is in Sheboygan during theyoung onion season. It may be mixed here with alittle commercialism -- they read Byron, but theylook up Bradstreet's, too, while they're among theB's, and Brigham also if they have time -- but it'spretty much the same old internal disturbance every-where. You can fool an editor with a fake picture ofa cowboy mounting a pony with his left hand on thesaddle horn, but you can't put him up a tree with alove story. So, you've got to fall in love and thenwrite the real thing." Pettit did. I never knew whether he was takingmy advice or whether be fell an accidental victim. There was a girl be had met at one of these studiocontrivances - a glorious, impudent, lucid, open-minded girl with hair the color of Culmbacher, and agood-natured way of despising you. She was a NewYork girl. Well (as the narrative style permits us to say in-frequently), Pettit went to pieces. All those pains,those lover's doubts, those heart-burnings andtremors of which be had written so unconvincinglywere his. Talk about Shylock's pound of flesh!Twenty-five pounds Cupid got from Pettit. Whichis the usurer? One night Pettit came to my room exalted. Paleand haggard but exalted. She had given him ajonquil. "Old Hoss," said he, with a new smile flickeringaround his mouth, "I believe I could write that storyto-night -- the one, you know, that is to win out. "I can feel it. I don't know whether it will come outor not, but I can feel it."I pushed him out of my door. "Go to your roomand write it," I ordered. "Else I can see your fin-ish. I told you this must come first. Write it to-night and put it under my door when it is done. Putit under my door to-night when it is finished --don't keep it until to-morrow." I was reading my bully old pal Montaigne at twoo'clock when I beard the sheets rustle under my door.I gathered them up and read the story. The hissing of geese, the languishing cooing ofdoves, the braying of donkeys, the chatter of irre-sponsible sparrows - these were in my mind's ear asI read. "Suffering Sappho!" I exclaimed to myself."Is this the divine fire that is supposed to ignitegenius and make it practicable and wage-earning?" The story was sentimental drivel, full of whim-pering softheartedness and gushing egoism. Allthe art that Pettit had acquired was gone. A pe-rusal of its buttery phrases would have made a cynicof a sighing chambermaid. In the morning Pettit came to my room. I readhim his doom mercilessly. He laughed idiotically. "All right, Old Hoss," he said, cheerily, "makecigar-lighters of it. What's the difference? I'mgoing to take her to lunch at Claremont to-day." There was about a month of it. And then Pettitcame to me bearing an invisible mitten, with the forti-tude of a dish-rag. He talked of the grave andSouth America and prussic acid; and I lost an after-noon getting him straight. I took him out and sawthat large and curative doses of whiskey were ad-ministered to him. I warned you this was a truestory -- 'ware your white ribbons if only follow thistale. For two weeks I fed him whiskey and Omar,and read to him regularly every evening the columnin the evening paper that reveals the secrets of fe-male beauty. I recommend the treatment. After Pettit was cured be wrote more stories. Herecovered his old-time facility and did work justshort of good enough. Then the curtain rose onthe third act. A little, dark-eyed, silent girl from New Hamp-shire, who was studying applied design, fell deeplyin love with him. She was the intense sort, but ex-ternally glace, such as New England sometimes foolsus with. Pettit liked her mildly, and took her abouta good deal. She worshipped him, and now and thenignored him. There came a climax when she tried to jump outof a window, and he had to save her by some perfunc-tary, unmeant wooing. Even I was shaken by thedepths of the absorbing affection she showed. Home,friends, traditions, creeds went up like thistle-downin the scale against her love. It was really discom-posing. One night again Pettit sauntered in, yawning. Ashe had told me before, he said he felt that he coulddo a great story, and as before I hunted him to hisroom and saw him open his inkstand. At one o'clockthe sheets of paper slid under my door. I read that story, and I jumped up, late as it was,with a whoop of joy. Old Pettit had done it. Justas though it lay there, red and bleeding, a woman'sheart was written into the lines. You couldn't seethe joining, but art, exquisite art, and pulsing na-ture had been combined into a love story that tookyou by the throat like the quinsy. I broke intoPettit's room and beat him on the back and calledhim name -- names high up in the galaxy of the im-mortals that we admired. And Pettit yawned andbegged to be allowed to sleep. On the morrow, I dragged him to an editor. Thegreat man read, and, rising, gave Pettit his hand.That was a decoration, a wreath of bay, and a guar-antee of rent. And then old Pettit smiled slowly. I call him Gen-tleman Pettit now to myself. It's a miserable nameto give a man, but it sounds better than it looks inprint. "I see," said old Pettit, as he took up his storyand began tearing it into small strips. "I see thegame now. You can't write with ink, and you can'twrite with your own heart's blood, but you can writewith the heart's blood of some one else. You haveto be a cad before you can be an artist. Well, I amfor old Alabam and the Major's store. Have yougot a light, Old Hoss?" I went with Pettit to the depot and died hard. "Shakespeare's sonnets?" I blurted, making a laststand. "How about him?" "A cad," said Pettit. "They give it to you, andyou sell it -- love, you know. I'd rather sell ploughsfor father." "But," I protested, " you are reversing the de-cision of the world's greatest -- " "Good-by, Old Hoss," said Pettit. "Critics," I continued. " But -- say -- if theMajor can use a fairly good salesman and book-keeper down there in the store, let me know, willyou?"

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