Читать книгу Skippy Bedelle - Owen Johnson - Страница 23

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COMMONPLACE minds are crushed by defeat; great imaginations rise to profit. Ten days after Skippy Bedelle had seen the gilded fabric of his future greatness collapse with the failure of the Foot Regulator to revolutionize the bathtub industry the spirit of invention had risen triumphantly from the ashes of first disillusionment. After all, there were other services to render to humanity, and the mind that at the age of fifteen could have reasoned so brilliantly in theory must inevitably express itself with profit to the race and to his own individual bank account.

At first Skippy's depression had been profound, and as the sensation was new he enjoyed its sensual charm to the fullest. He discarded the jaunty cap for a slouch hat which he pulled down over his eyes; he selected the soberest of neckwear, turned up his collar, sank his fists in his pockets, and spent solitary afternoons among the ruins of the Carthage of his imagination, seated on the site of what would never be the John C. Bedelle Gymnasium. Even the spectacle of Cap Keafer knocking out a home run in the ninth inning brought him no rapturous exultation. He was akin to Ivanhoe, the disinherited knight, and Athos of the brooding sorrows. The world had receded from him, and nobody cared or noticed. He was alone, misunderstood, without a friend in the world. For after what had happened he could never again feel the same towards that basest of ingrates, Snorky Green.

The evening after the collapse of the Bedelle Foot Regulator, Incorporated, there had been a short and exceedingly painful interview.

"Well, Skippy, old top," said Snorky, who was genuinely contrite and ready to make the advance, "that certainly was hard luck. I feel just as bad as—" Here he stopped before the sudden majestic indignation which confronted him.

"Green!" said Skippy, frowning.

"Oh, I say—"

"Green, when you thought I was going to be a rich man," continued Skippy icily, "there was nothing you wouldn't do for me. You fawned on me. But when I had to face defeat—at the first test—you deserted me with sneers and gibes. That is not friendship. Green, you are not capable of true friendship, and you have proved it. I shall never forget and I shall never forgive!"

"Oh, shucks, Skippy!" said Snorky. "What's the use of rubbin' it in? I'm not as bad as all that!"

"Green," said Skippy, working himself into the scene which he had rehearsed a dozen times as he had long debated whether to address the offender as Mr. Green, "Green, we will have to go on rooming together but I wish you to understand that nothing you can ever do or say will change my feelings now towards you. Nothing! Whatever communication is necessary from now on between us, will be in writing—"

"What's that?"

"In writing," said Skippy firmly.

"Oh, well, if that's the way you're going to take it you can go to blazes!" said Snorky wrathfully. "But before you climb on your high horse, suppose you restore my red choker tie, my agate cuff buttons, my silver-rimmed fountain pen and a few pairs of fancy socks—"

"This is unworthy of even you," said Skippy, who rose and with a perfect social manner took the articles in question from the bureau on the south side of the room and gingerly placed them on the bureau in the western corner. "The socks are in the wash. I prefer to return them as I received them." After which he disrobed and, somewhat consoled, watched from the coverlets the indignant and bewildered Snorky Green sitting on his bedside, halfway out of his trousers, glaring at him in rage.

For a week, a miserable, lonely week, Skippy held to this irreconcilable attitude. During this time he touched the bottom of depression—he even doubted himself! Would he ever invent anything again? Had it been just a flash in the pan? Was it all a false start? What had become of the imagination which had blazed up so brilliantly? Perhaps after all he was no different from the rest—just an average mind fit only for such vulgar things as banking and trade. Then one morning through the gloom clouds a sudden shaft of sunlight arrived. He had another idea!

He had been lolling deliciously in bed, disdaining to notice the first harsh summons to rise, and his mind had dwelt enviously on the brilliant figure of Doc Macnooder. After all, even Doc Macnooder had his failures. There was the matter of the Folding Toothbrush, which all Macnooder's eloquence had failed to market with Bill Appleby.

"Jingo! That certainly was a bum idea," he said to himself, somewhat comforted. "You might do something with a toothbrush, but a folding one is a joke!"

All at once he sprang out of bed and, reaching the washstand in a bound, seized the nearest tooth mug. Snorky, who, despite the present unpleasantness, still trusted his rising instincts, catapulted out of bed and arrived three seconds later at his side of the washstand, where through still foggy eyes he beheld Skippy gazing at a toothbrush which he held reverently before him as a jeweler examines a named stone.

"What the deuce?"

"Dinged if I haven't got Macnooder beat a mile!" exclaimed Skippy, who in the first exhilaration of discovery had completely forgotten the correspondence acquaintanceship he had imposed.

"It's about a toothbrush!" said Snorky with great intelligence.

"You bet it's about a toothbrush." But here Skippy suddenly remembered, and the smile gave place to a frown.

"Oh, I say, Skippy! Let's call it off," said Snorky in a rush of feeling. "It was dead rotten of me and I'm doggone sorry—honest, I am—but you've rubbed it in enough."

"Very well, I forgive you and I shall try to forget," said Skippy, who also had chafed under the long silence.

"What's the great idea?" said Snorky hurriedly.

"The great idea is a Souvenir Toothbrush," said Skippy proudly.

The idea did not reach Snorky immediately, but he was too diplomatic to show his disappointment, so he said humbly:

"I suppose it's because I'm a dumb-head, but why a souvenir toothbrush?"

"Why a souvenir pillow-case? Why a souvenir buttonhook or a souvenir bootjack or a footstool, necktie, lap robe, or anything souvenir?"

"All right, why?" said Snorky, who felt hurt at this assumption of intellectual superiority.

"The bootjack doesn't make the souvenir; it's the souvenir makes the bootjack, doesn't it?" said Skippy, who was thinking deeply.

Snorky had never heard of the Socratian method, but he was impressed; so not understanding, he nodded and answered:

"Aha, I see!"

"It's the thing you souvenir that's important. If you want to remember you can't remember too often."

"No-o."

"And how can you remember better than the first crack out of bed—"

"I get all that," said Snorky, acknowledging the brilliancy of the argument. "But how the dickens can you make a souvenir out of a toothbrush?"

"My boy—my boy!" said Skippy with crushing contempt. "Have you no imagination? A souvenir toothbrush! Why, easy! Make the handle in the shape of a baseball bat and put the Lawrenceville-Andover score on the back—red and black."

"Well, I'll be jiggswiggered!"

"You can make 'em in the form of a riding crop for racing sports, masts for yachtsmen, sword-blades for the army. Why, it's a cinch! You can have Lawrenceville shields on the back, Princeton colors, Yale colors. You can do anything, anything with the idea—you can have your best girl's initials, or you can have her photograph stenciled on!"

"Sure thing! Why not Mother or Auntie—'when this you see remember to use me!'" said Snorky, who feared where another flight of the imagination might transport his roommate.

"Green!" said Skippy, flaring up at this destructive levity; but before he could deliver his broadside the breakfast gong began to rock the house and simultaneously each head ducked into a waiting basin.

When Skippy during the relaxation of the morning recitations considered the Souvenir Toothbrush he was not so favorably impressed. Snorky's suggestion somehow threw a touch of ridicule over the whole proposition and Skippy, like all true imaginations, shrank from ridicule. Undoubtedly if the Souvenir Toothbrush became a fact, mothers and governesses would abuse its opportunities. Think of a parental eye gazing admonishingly at you from the back of a toothbrush every morning! Why, the name of Bedelle might become an execration! He saw himself pilloried among the oppressors of boykind, as unpopular as the compiler of a Latin grammar or the accursed Euclid! No, the idea was unthinkable! Skippy did not reject the Souvenir Toothbrush in toto. He bought a blank book on which he inscribed:

INVENTIONS

John C. Bedelle

1896

On the first page under the day of the month he wrote a full description, adding:

FIELD LIMITED

Suggestion—Hold until later date and patent anonymously.

Skippy then reluctantly admitted the destructive force of Snorky Green's criticism of the Souvenir Toothbrush; he admitted it, but he could not forgive him for being right. There are certain things which one does not forgive a brother, a sister, or the chum of chums.

After all, was Snorky Green worthy of that privileged and exalted position? A disturbing doubt began to creep into Skippy's imagination. He passed over the treachery in the matter of the now defunct Bedelle Foot Regulator; that might conceivably have been the fault of an inferior temperament. It was the spirit of negative criticism, the settled habit of turning into raillery the fragile first impulses of his inventive imagination, that was alarming.

"Gee! If every time I get a big idea, he's going to knock it in the head, what's the use of having an imagination?" he said gloomily.

After all, could a creative temperament yoke itself to a destructive criticism without self-immolation? Immersed in these brooding forebodings, he came heavily up the Dickinson stairs to the communal room. Suddenly he stopped, amazed.

"What the deuce!"

On his bureau a flaming bit of color greeted him from the somber mass of his pendent neckties. He advanced and recognized Snorky Green's red choker tie, which was particularly dear to his young sartorial fancy. On the pin cushion lay the agate cuff buttons and the silver-rimmed fountain pen. He opened the top drawer and beheld three pair of open-work socks, red, orange and glowing green.

"Gee, how crude!" he said indignantly.

At another moment and in another mood his heart might have softened at this evident peace-offering; but this afternoon, with the new child of his imagination slain by Snorky Green's brutal wit, the whole proceeding was undeniably crude, a bribe too openly offered. He would have to return them; that was inevitable and that was of course the last thing he wished to do. He sat down at his desk, scowling horribly, and then, moved by a fitting inspiration, he seized his pen and dashed off the most frigid and properly insulting of notes.

To Arthur E. Green. Goods Returned.

1 Fountain Pen.

1 Pair of Agate Cuff Buttons.

1 Choker Tie (red).

3 Pair of Socks.

Kindly acknowledge receipt,

Bedelle.

The last he considered such a master stroke that, his good humor restored by the anticipation of the infuriating effect on his beloved friend, he began to whistle a triumphant strain. He made a neat package, pinned the ultimatum on it, and proceeded to the opposite bureau.

"Well, I'll be teetotally jiggswiggered," he said, astounded.

In the oval of the glass, a new photograph had appeared in the company of the three other smiling feminine beauties which Snorky Green, as a man of the world, displayed by implied right of conquest. Skippy set down his package and craned forward for a closer examination.

"Huh! Old enough to be his grandmother," he said contemptuously, staring at the new victim of Snorky Green's charms.

But at this moment, hearing a familiar step in the hall, he bounded back in time to assume a nonchalant, bored attitude as Snorky came joyfully in, exclaiming:

"Hello, old sporting life! What do you know to-day?"

"Green," said Skippy, drawing himself up and extending an elocutionary finger towards the bureau, "you will find something to interest you there."

He waited a moment outside in the hall until Snorky's bursting imprecation brought the needed consolation, and then tripped down the steps, seeking a calming jigger.