manuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden’s “Ephemera.”
His bicycle and black suit were again in pawn, and the type-writer
people were once more worrying about the rent. But such things no
longer bothered him. He was seeking a new orientation, and until
that was found his life must stand still.
After several weeks, what he had been waiting for happened. He met
Ruth on the street. It was true, she was accompanied by her
brother, Norman, and it was true that they tried to ignore him and
that Norman attempted to wave him aside.
“If you interfere with my sister, I’ll call an officer,” Norman
threatened. “She does not wish to speak with you, and your
insistence is insult.”
“If you persist, you’ll have to call that officer, and then you’ll
get your name in the papers,” Martin answered grimly. “And now,
get out of my way and get the officer if you want to. I’m going to
talk with Ruth.”
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“I want to have it from your own lips,” he said to her.
She was pale and trembling, but she held up and looked inquiringly.
“The question I asked in my letter,” he prompted.
Norman made an impatient movement, but Martin checked him with a
swift look.
She shook her head.
“Is all this of your own free will?” he demanded.
“It is.” She spoke in a low, firm voice and with deliberation.
“It is of my own free will. You have disgraced me so that I am
ashamed to meet my friends. They are all talking about me, I know.
That is all I can tell you. You have made me very unhappy, and I
never wish to see you again.”
“Friends! Gossip! Newspaper misreports! Surely such things are
not stronger than love! I can only believe that you never loved
me.”
A blush drove the pallor from her face.
“After what has passed?” she said faintly. “Martin, you do not
know what you are saying. I am not common.”
“You see, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you,” Norman
blurted out, starting on with her.
Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in his
coat pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there.
It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he went
up the steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it.
He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed and staring about
him like an awakened somnambulist. He noticed “Overdue” lying on
the table and drew up his chair and reached for his pen. There was
in his nature a logical compulsion toward completeness. Here was
something undone. It had been deferred against the completion of
something else. Now that something else had been finished, and he
would apply himself to this task until it was finished. What he
would do next he did not know. All that he did know was that a
climacteric in his life had been attained. A period had been
reached, and he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion. He
was not curious about the future. He would soon enough find out
what it held in store for him. Whatever it was, it did not matter.
Nothing seemed to matter.
For five days he toiled on at “Overdue,” going nowhere, seeing
nobody, and eating meagrely. On the morning of the sixth day the
postman brought him a thin letter from the editor of THE PARTHENON.
A glance told him that “Ephemera” was accepted. “We have submitted
the poem to Mr. Cartwright Bruce,” the editor went on to say, “and
he has reported so favorably upon it that we cannot let it go. As
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an earnest of our pleasure in publishing the poem, let me tell you
that we have set it for the August number, our July number being
already made up. Kindly extend our pleasure and our thanks to Mr.
Brissenden. Please send by return mail his photograph and
biographical data. If our honorarium is unsatisfactory, kindly
telegraph us at once and state what you consider a fair price.”
Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fifty
dollars, Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph. Then,
too, there was Brissenden’s consent to be gained. Well, he had
been right, after all. Here was one magazine editor who knew real
poetry when he saw it. And the price was splendid, even though it
was for the poem of a century. As for Cartwright Bruce, Martin
knew that he was the one critic for whose opinions Brissenden had
any respect.
Martin rode down town on an electric car, and as he watched the
houses and cross-streets slipping by he was aware of a regret that
he was not more elated over his friend’s success and over his own
signal victory. The one critic in the United States had pronounced
favorably on the poem, while his own contention that good stuff
could find its way into the magazines had proved correct. But
enthusiasm had lost its spring in him, and he found that he was
more anxious to see Brissenden than he was to carry the good news.
The acceptance of THE PARTHENON had recalled to him that during his
five days’ devotion to “Overdue” he had not heard from Brissenden
nor even thought about him. For the first time Martin realized the
daze he had been in, and he felt shame for having forgotten his
friend. But even the shame did not burn very sharply. He was numb
to emotions of any sort save the artistic ones concerned in the
writing of “Overdue.” So far as other affairs were concerned, he
had been in a trance. For that matter, he was still in a trance.
All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed remote
and unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and less
shook if the great stone steeple of the church he passed had
suddenly crumbled to mortar-dust upon his head.
At the hotel he hurried up to Brissenden’s room, and hurried down
again. The room was empty. All luggage was gone.
“Did Mr. Brissenden leave any address?” he asked the clerk, who
looked at him curiously for a moment.
“Haven’t you heard?” he asked.
Martin shook his head.
“Why, the papers were full of it. He was found dead in bed.
Suicide. Shot himself through the head.”
“Is he buried yet?” Martin seemed to hear his voice, like some one
else’s voice, from a long way off, asking the question.
“No. The body was shipped East after the inquest. Lawyers engaged
by his people saw to the arrangements.”
“They were quick about it, I must say,” Martin commented.
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“Oh, I don’t know. It happened five days ago.”
“Five days ago?”
“Yes, five days ago.”
“Oh,” Martin said as he turned and went out.
At the corner he stepped into the Western Union and sent a telegram
to THE PARTHENON, advising them to proceed with the publication of
the poem. He had in his pocket but five cents with which to pay
his carfare home, so he sent the message collect.
Once in his room, he resumed his writing. The days and nights came
and went, and he sat at his table and wrote on. He went nowhere,
save to the pawnbroker, took no exercise, and ate methodically when
he was hungry and had something to cook, and just as methodically
went without when he had nothing to cook. Composed as the story
was, in advance, chapter by chapter, he nevertheless saw and
developed an opening that increased the power of it, though it
necessitated twenty thousand additional words. It was not that
there was any vital need that the thing should be well done, but
that his artistic canons compelled him to do it well. He worked on
in the daze, strangely detached from the world around him, feeling
like a familiar ghost among these literary trappings of his former
life. He remembered that some one had said that a ghost was the
spirit of a man who was dead and who did not have sense enough to
know it; and he paused for the moment to wonder if he were really
dead did unaware of it.
Came the day when “Overdue” was finished. The agent of the type-
writer firm had come for the machine, and he sat on the bed while
Martin, on the one chair, typed the last pages of the final
chapter. “Finis,” he wrote, in capitals, at the end, and to him it
was indeed finis. He watched the type-writer carried out the door
with a feeling of relief, then went over and lay down on the bed.
He was faint from hunger. Food had not passed his lips in thirty-
six hours, but he did not think about it. He lay on his back, with