Final Gentleman
Clifford D. Simak
After thirty years and several million words there finally came a day when he couldn’t write a line.
There was nothing more to say. He had said it all.
The book, the last of many of them, had been finished weeks ago and would be published soon and there was an emptiness inside of him, a sense of having been completely drained away.
He sat now at the study window, waiting for the man from the news magazine to come, looking out across the wilderness of lawn, with its evergreens and birches and the gayness of the tulips. And he wondered why he cared that he would write no more, for certainly he had said a great deal more than most men in his trade and most of it more to the point than was usual, and cloaked though it was in fictional garb, he’d said it with sincerity and, he hoped, convincingly.
His place in literature was secure and solid. And, perhaps, he thought, this was the way it should be – to stop now at the floodtide of his art rather than to go into his declining years with the sharp tooth of senility nibbling away the bright valor of his work.
And yet there remained the urge to write, an inborn feeling that to fail to write was treachery, although to whom it might be traitorous he had no idea. And there was more to it than that: An injured pride, perhaps, and a sense of panic such as the newly blind must feel.
Although that was foolishness, he told himself. In his thirty years of writing, he had done a lifetime’s work. And he’d made a _good_ life of it. Not frivolous or exciting, but surely satisfying.
He glanced around the study and thought how a room must bear the imprint of the man who lives within it – the rows of calf-bound books, the decorous neatness of the massive oaken desk, the mellow carpet on the floor, the old chairs full of comfort, the sense of everything firmly and properly in place.
A knock came. ‘Come in.’ said Harrington.
The door opened and old Adams stood there, bent shoulders, snow white hair – the perfect picture of the old retainer.
‘It’s the gentleman from _Situation_, sir.’
‘Fine,’ said Harrington. ‘Will you show him in?’
It wasn’t fine – he didn’t want to see this man from the magazine. But the arrangements had been made many weeks before and there was nothing now but to go through with it.
The man from the magazine looked more like a businessman than a writer, and Harrington caught himself wondering how such a man could write the curt, penetrating journalistic prose which had made _Situation_ famous.
‘John Leonard, sir,’ said the man, shaking hands with Harrington.
‘I’m glad to have you here,’ said Harrington, falling into his pat pattern of hospitality. ‘Won’t you take this chair? I feel I know you people down there. I’ve read your magazine for years. I always read the Harvey column immediately it arrives.’
Leonard laughed a little. ‘Harvey,’ he said, ‘seems to be our best known columnist and greatest attraction. All the visitors want to have a look at him.’
He sat down in the chair Harrington had pointed out.
‘Mr. White,’ he said, ‘sends you his best wishes.’
‘That is considerate of him,’ said Harrington. ‘You must thank him for me. It’s been years since I have seen him.’
And thinking back upon it, he recalled that he’d met Preston White only once, all of twenty years ago. The man, he remembered, had made a great impression upon him at the time – a forceful, driving, opinionated man, an exact reflection of the magazine he published.
‘A few weeks ago,’ said Leonard. ‘I talked with another friend of yours. Senator Johnson Enright.’
Harrington nodded. ‘I’ve known the senator for years and have admired him greatly. I suppose you could call it a dissimilar association. The senator and I are not too much alike.’
‘He has a deep respect and affection for you.’
‘And I for him.’ said Harrington. ‘But this secretary of state business. I am concerned…’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, he’s the man for it, all right.’ said Harrington. ‘or I would suppose he is. He is intellectually honest and he has a strange, hard streak of stubbornness and a rugged constitution, which is what we need. But there are considerations…’
Leonard showed surprise. ‘Surely you do not…’
Harrington waved a weary hand. ‘No, Mr. Leonard, I am looking at it solely from the viewpoint of a man who has given most of his life to the public service. I know that Johnson must look upon this possibility with something close to dread. There have been times in the recent past when he’s been ready to retire, when only his sense of duty has kept him at his post.’
‘A man,’ said Leonard positively, ‘does not turn down a chance to head the state department. Besides, Harvey said last week he would accept the post.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Harrington. ‘I read it in his column.’
Leonard got down to business. ‘I won’t impose too much upon your time,’ he said. ‘I’ve already done the basic research on you.’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Harrington. ‘Take all the time you want. I haven’t a single thing to do until this evening, when I have dinner with my mother.’
Leonard’s eyebrows raised a bit. ‘Your mother is still living?’
‘Very spry.’ said Harrington, ‘for all she’s eighty-three. A sort of Whistler’s mother. Serene and beautiful.’
‘You’re lucky. My mother died when I was still quite young.’
‘I’m sorry to hear of it,’ said Harrington. ‘My mother is a gentlewoman to her fingertips. You don’t find many like her now. I am positive I owe a great deal of what I am to her. Perhaps the thing I’m proudest of is what your book editor, Cedric Madison, wrote about me quite some years ago. I sent a note to thank him at the time and I fully meant to look him up someday, although I never did. I’d like to meet the man.’
‘What was it that he said?’
‘He said, if I recall correctly, that I was the last surviving gentleman.’
‘That’s a good line.’ Leonard said. ‘I’ll have to look it up. I think you might like Cedric. He may seem slightly strange at times, but he’s a devoted man, like you. He lives in his office, almost day and night.’
Leonard reached into his briefcase and brought out a sheaf of notes, rustling through them until he found the page he wanted.
‘We’ll do a full-length profile on you,’ he told Harrington. ‘A cover and an inside spread with pictures. I know a great deal about you, but there still are some questions, a few inconsistencies.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you.’
‘You know how we operate,’ said Leonard. ‘We do exhaustive checking to be sure we have the background facts, then we go out and get the human facts. We talk with our subject’s boyhood chums, his teachers, all the people who might have something to contribute to a better understanding of the man himself. We visit the places he has lived, pick up the human story, the little anecdotes. It’s a demanding job, but we pride ourselves on the way we do it.’
‘And rightly so, young man.’
‘I went to Wyalusing in Wisconsin,’ said the man from the magazine. ‘That’s where the data said that you were born.’
‘A charming place as I remember it,’ said Harrington. ‘A little town, sandwiched between the river and the hills.’
‘Mr. Harrington.’
‘Yes?’
‘You weren’t born there.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘There’s no birth record at the county seat. No one remembers you.’
‘Some mistake,’ said Harrington. ‘Or perhaps you’re joking.’
‘You went to Harvard, Mr. Harrington. Class of 27.’
‘That is right. I did.’
‘You never married, sir.’
‘There was a girl. She died.’
‘Her name,’ said Leonard, ‘was Cornelia Storm.’
‘That was her name. The fact’s not widely known.’
‘We are thorough, Mr. Harrington, in our background work.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Harrington. ‘It’s not a thing to hide. It’s just not a fact to flaunt.’
‘Mr. Harrington.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s not Wyalusing only. It’s all the rest of it. There is no record that you went to Harvard. There never was a girl named Cornelia Storm.’
Harrington came straight out of his chair.
‘That is ridiculous!’ he shouted. ‘What can you mean by it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Leonard said. ‘Perhaps I could have found a better way of telling you than blurting it all out. Is there anything -‘
‘Yes, there is,’ said Harrington. ‘I think you’d better leave.’
‘Is there nothing I can do? Anything at all?’
‘You’ve done quite enough,’ said Harrington. ‘Quite enough, indeed.’
He sat down in the chair again, gripping its arms with his shaking hands, listening to the man go out.