The Adventures of a Modest Man

The infatuated pair were oblivious of him. Should he sneeze? No; his own case was too recent; their attitude fascinated him; he sat down softly to see how it was done.

"If – some day – I might be fortunate enough to call you more than Helen – "

"Mr. Jones!"

"I can't help it; I love you so – so undauntedly that I have got to tell you something about it! You don't mind, do you?"

"But I do mind."

"Very much?"

Ellis thought: "Is that the way a man looks when he says things like that?" He shuddered, then a tremor of happiness seized him. Molly Sandys had emerged from the hut.

Passing the fire, she came straight to Ellis. "It's horrid in there. Don't you hear her? It's muffled, I know, because she's taken the swan to bed with her, and it's asleep, too, and acting as though Professor Rawson's head were a nest-egg. I am not sleepy; I – I believe I shall sit up by this delightful fire all night. Make me a nest of blankets."

Jones and Helen were looking across the fire at them in silence; Ellis unrolled some blankets, made a nest at the foot of the pine full in the fire-glow. Swathed to her smooth white throat, Molly sank into them.

"Now," she said, innocently, "we can talk. Helen! Ask Mr. Jones to make some coffee. Oh, thank you, Mr. Jones! Isn't this perfectly delicious! So simple, so primitive, so sincere" – she looked at Ellis – "so jolly. If the simple life is only a state of mind I can understand how easy it is to follow it to sheerest happiness." And in a low voice, to Ellis: "Can you find happiness in it, too?"

Across the fire Helen called softly to them: "Do you want some toasted cheese, too? Mr. Jones knows how to make it."

A little later, Jones, toasting bread and cheese, heard a sweet voice softly begin the Swan-Song. It was Helen. Molly's lovely, velvet voice joined in; Ellis cautiously tried his barytone; Jones wisely remained mute, and the cheese sizzled a discreet tremolo. It was indeed the swan-song of the heart-whole and fancy-free – the swan-song of the unawakened. For the old order of things was passing away – had passed. And with the moon mounting in silvered splendor over the forest, the newer order of life – the simpler, the sweeter – became so plain to them that they secretly wondered, as they ate their toast and cheese, how they could have lived so long, endured so long, the old and dull complexity of a life through the eventless days of which their hearts had never quickened to the oldest, the most primitive, the simplest of appeals.

And so, there, under the burnished moon, soberly sharing their toasted cheese, the muffled swan-song of the incubating maiden thrilling their enraptured ears, began for them that state of mind in the inviolate mystery of which the passion for the simpler life is hatched.

"If we only had a banjo!" sighed Helen.

"I have a jew's-harp," ventured Jones. "I am not very musical, but every creature likes to emit some sort of melody."

Ellis laughed.

"Why not?" asked Helen Gay, quickly; "after all, what simpler instrument can you wish for?" And she laughed at Jones in a way that left him light-headed.

So there, in the moonlight and the shadows of the primeval pines, Jones – simplest of men with simplest of names – produced the simplest of all musical instruments, and, looking once into the beautiful eyes of Helen, quietly began the simplest of all melodies – the Spanish Fandango.

And for these four the simple life began.

I waited for a few moments, but Williams seemed to consider that there was nothing more to add. So I said:

"Did they marry those two girls?"

He glanced at me in a preoccupied manner without apparently understanding.

"Did they marry 'em?" I repeated, impatiently.

"What? Oh, yes, of course."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"I didn't have to say so. Didn't you notice the form in which I ended?"

"What's that got to do with it? You're not telling me a short story, you're telling me what really happened. And what really happens never ends artistically."

"It does when I tell it," he said, with a self-satisfied smile. "Let Fate do its worst; let old man Destiny get in his work; let Chance fix up things to suit herself. I wait until that trio finishes, then I step in and tell the truth in my own way. And, by gad! when I get through, Fate, Chance, and Destiny set up a yell of impotent fury and Truth looks at herself in the mirror in delighted astonishment, amazed to discover in herself attractions which she never suspected."

"In other words," said I, "Fate no longer has the final say-so."

"Not while the short-story writer exists," he grinned. "It's up to him. Fate slaps your face midway in a pretty romance. All right. But when I make a record of the matter I pick, choose, sort, re-assort my box of words, and when things are going too rapidly I wink at Fate with my tongue in my cheek and round up everybody so amiably that nobody knows exactly what did happen – and nobody even stops to think because everybody has already finished the matter in their own minds to their own satisfaction."

CHAPTER XVII

SHOWING HOW IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO MAKE OF HIMSELF A CHUMP

After a while I repeated: "They did marry, didn't they?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm perfectly certain they did."

"Well, then, what more do you want?" he laughed.

"Another of your reminiscences disguised as fiction," I said, tinkling my spoon on the edge of my tumbler to attract the waiter.

"Two more," I said, lighting a caporal cigarette, the penetrating aroma of which drifted lazily through forgotten years, drawing memory with it in its fragrant back-draught.

"Do you remember Seabury's brother?" he asked.

"Beaux Arts? Certainly. Architect, wasn't he?"

"Yes, but he came into a lot of money and started for home to hit a siding."

"Little chump," I said; "I remember him. There was a promising architect spoiled."

"Oh, I don't know. He is doing a lot to his money."

"Good?"

"Of course. Otherwise I should have said that his money is doing a lot to him."

"Cut out these fine shades and go back to galley-proof," I said, sullenly. "What about him, anyway?"

Williams said, slowly: "A thing happened to that man which had no right to happen anywhere except in a musical comedy. But," he shrugged his shoulders, "everybody's lives are really full of equally grotesque episodes. The trouble is that the world is too serious to discover any absurdity in itself. We writers have to do that for it. For example, there was Seabury's brother. Trouble began the moment he saw her."

"Saw who?" I interrupted.

"Saw her! Shut up!"

I did so. He continued: