“You don’t think I’ll win out?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Nobody has faith in me, Gertrude, except myself.” His voice was
passionately rebellious. “I’ve done good work already, plenty of
it, and sooner or later it will sell.”
“How do you know it is good?”
“Because – ” He faltered as the whole vast field of literature and
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the history of literature stirred in his brain and pointed the
futility of his attempting to convey to her the reasons for his
faith. “Well, because it’s better than ninety-nine per cent of
what is published in the magazines.”
“I wish’t you’d listen to reason,” she answered feebly, but with
unwavering belief in the correctness of her diagnosis of what was
ailing him. “I wish’t you’d listen to reason,” she repeated, “an’
come to dinner to-morrow.”
After Martin had helped her on the car, he hurried to the post-
office and invested three of the five dollars in stamps; and when,
later in the day, on the way to the Morse home, he stopped in at
the post-office to weigh a large number of long, bulky envelopes,
he affixed to them all the stamps save three of the two-cent
denomination.
It proved a momentous night for Martin, for after dinner he met
Russ Brissenden. How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was
or what acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he
the curiosity to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden
struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly
dismissed from his mind. An hour later he decided that Brissenden
was a boor as well, what of the way he prowled about from one room
to another, staring at the pictures or poking his nose into books
and magazines he picked up from the table or drew from the shelves.
Though a stranger in the house he finally isolated himself in the
midst of the company, huddling into a capacious Morris chair and
reading steadily from a thin volume he had drawn from his pocket.
As he read, he abstractedly ran his fingers, with a caressing
movement, through his hair. Martin noticed him no more that
evening, except once when he observed him chaffing with great
apparent success with several of the young women.
It chanced that when Martin was leaving, he overtook Brissenden
already half down the walk to the street.
“Hello, is that you?” Martin said.
The other replied with an ungracious grunt, but swung alongside.
Martin made no further attempt at conversation, and for several
blocks unbroken silence lay upon them.
“Pompous old ass!”
The suddenness and the virulence of the exclamation startled
Martin. He felt amused, and at the same time was aware of a
growing dislike for the other.
“What do you go to such a place for?” was abruptly flung at him
after another block of silence.
“Why do you?” Martin countered.
“Bless me, I don’t know,” came back. “At least this is my first
indiscretion. There are twenty-four hours in each day, and I must
spend them somehow. Come and have a drink.”
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“All right,” Martin answered.
The next moment he was nonplussed by the readiness of his
acceptance. At home was several hours’ hack-work waiting for him
before he went to bed, and after he went to bed there was a volume
of Weismann waiting for him, to say nothing of Herbert Spencer’s
Autobiography, which was as replete for him with romance as any
thrilling novel. Why should he waste any time with this man he did
not like? was his thought. And yet, it was not so much the man nor
the drink as was it what was associated with the drink – the bright
lights, the mirrors and dazzling array of glasses, the warm and
glowing faces and the resonant hum of the voices of men. That was
it, it was the voices of men, optimistic men, men who breathed
success and spent their money for drinks like men. He was lonely,
that was what was the matter with him; that was why he had snapped
at the invitation as a bonita strikes at a white rag on a hook.
Not since with Joe, at Shelly Hot Springs, with the one exception
of the wine he took with the Portuguese grocer, had Martin had a
drink at a public bar. Mental exhaustion did not produce a craving
for liquor such as physical exhaustion did, and he had felt no need
for it. But just now he felt desire for the drink, or, rather, for
the atmosphere wherein drinks were dispensed and disposed of. Such
a place was the Grotto, where Brissenden and he lounged in
capacious leather chairs and drank Scotch and soda.
They talked. They talked about many things, and now Brissenden and
now Martin took turn in ordering Scotch and soda. Martin, who was
extremely strong-headed, marvelled at the other’s capacity for
liquor, and ever and anon broke off to marvel at the other’s
conversation. He was not long in assuming that Brissenden knew
everything, and in deciding that here was the second intellectual
man he had met. But he noted that Brissenden had what Professor
Caldwell lacked – namely, fire, the flashing insight and
perception, the flaming uncontrol of genius. Living language
flowed from him. His thin lips, like the dies of a machine,
stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing
caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin
lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and
glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and
inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a
bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife,
phrases that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry
spaces, that epitomized the final word of science and yet said
something more – the poet’s word, the transcendental truth, elusive
and without words which could express, and which none the less
found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable connotations
of common words. He, by some wonder of vision, saw beyond the
farthest outpost of empiricism, where was no language for
narration, and yet, by some golden miracle of speech, investing
known words with unknown significances, he conveyed to Martin’s
consciousness messages that were incommunicable to ordinary souls.
Martin forgot his first impression of dislike. Here was the best
the books had to offer coming true. Here was an intelligence, a
living man for him to look up to. “I am down in the dirt at your
feet,” Martin repeated to himself again and again.
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“You’ve studied biology,” he said aloud, in significant allusion.
To his surprise Brissenden shook his head.
“But you are stating truths that are substantiated only by
biology,” Martin insisted, and was rewarded by a blank stare.
“Your conclusions are in line with the books which you must have
read.”
“I am glad to hear it,” was the answer. “That my smattering of
knowledge should enable me to short-cut my way to truth is most
reassuring. As for myself, I never bother to find out if I am
right or not. It is all valueless anyway. Man can never know the
ultimate verities.”
“You are a disciple of Spencer!” Martin cried triumphantly.
“I haven’t read him since adolescence, and all I read then was his
‘Education.'”
“I wish I could gather knowledge as carelessly,” Martin broke out
half an hour later. He had been closely analyzing Brissenden’s
mental equipment. “You are a sheer dogmatist, and that’s what
makes it so marvellous. You state dogmatically the latest facts
which science has been able to establish only by E POSTERIORI
reasoning. You jump at correct conclusions. You certainly short-
cut with a vengeance. You feel your way with the speed of light,
by some hyperrational process, to truth.”
“Yes, that was what used to bother Father Joseph, and Brother
Dutton,” Brissenden replied. “Oh, no,” he added; “I am not
anything. It was a lucky trick of fate that sent me to a Catholic
college for my education. Where did you pick up what you know?”
And while Martin told him, he was busy studying Brissenden, ranging
from a long, lean, aristocratic face and drooping shoulders to the
overcoat on a neighboring chair, its pockets sagged and bulged by
the freightage of many books. Brissenden’s face and long, slender
hands were browned by the sun – excessively browned, Martin
thought. This sunburn bothered Martin. It was patent that
Brissenden was no outdoor man. Then how had he been ravaged by the
sun? Something morbid and significant attached to that sunburn,
was Martin’s thought as he returned to a study of the face, narrow,
with high cheek-bones and cavernous hollows, and graced with as
delicate and fine an aquiline nose as Martin had ever seen. There
was nothing remarkable about the size of the eyes. They were
neither large nor small, while their color was a nondescript brown;