Читать книгу The Pretender - Robert William Service - Страница 6
ОглавлениеGRILLED KIDNEY AND BACON
I was awakened at eight o'clock by the alarm in my watch, and lay a few minutes debating whether or not I should rise. I have always rebelled against the convention that makes us go to bed at night and get up in the morning. How much less primitive to go to bed in the morning and get up at night! But in either case we should abhor crude and violent awakenings. We should awake rhythmically, on pulsing ripples of consciousness. Personally, I should like to be awakened by gentle music, viols and harps playing soft strains of half-forgotten melodies. I should like to be roused by the breath of violets, to open my eyes to a vista of still lake on which float swans whiter than ivory.
What I did open my eyes to was a vista of shivery sunshine, steely blue sky, and snow on the roofs of the neighbouring sky-scrapers. I was indeed comfortable. Outside the heat-zone of my body the sheets were of a delectable coolness, and from head to heel I felt as if I were dissolving in some exquisite oil of ease.
Lying there enjoying that ineffable tranquillity, I subjected myself to my morning diagnosis. My soul is, I consider, a dark continent which it is my life's business to explore. This morning, then, in my capacity of explorer, I started even as Crusoe must have done when he saw the naked footprint in the sand. Extraordinary phenomenon! I had actually awakened of the same mind as that in which I fell asleep.
Propping myself up I lit a cigarette.
"Well, young fellow," I greeted my face in the mirror, "so we're still doubtful of ourself? Want to make fresh start, go to London and starve in garret as per romantic formula? What foolishness! But let's be thankful for folly. Some day we'll be wise, and life will seem so worn and stale and grey. So here's for London."
With that I sprang up and disappeared into the bath-room from which you might have heard a series of grunts and groans as of some one violently dumbbelling; then a series of snorts and splutters as of some one splashing in icy water; then the hissing noise one usually associates with the rubbing down of horses. After all of which, in a pink glow and a Turkish bath-robe, appeared a radiant young man.
Taking down the receiver of my telephone I listened for a moment.
"Yes, it's me, Miss Devereux. Give me the dining-room, please.... Dining-room? ... Yes, it's Mr. Madden speaking. I want to order breakfast.... No, not grape-fruit, I said breakfast—Grilled kidney and bacon, toast and Ceylon tea. That's all, thank you."
In parenthesis I may say I do my best work on kidney and bacon. There is, I find, a remarkable affinity between what I eat and what I write. Before tackling a scene of blood I indulge in a slab of beef-steak, extra rare; for tender sentiment I find there is nothing like a previous debauch on angel cake and orange pekoe; while if I have to kill any one I usually prime myself with coffee and caviare sandwiches. But as far as ordinary narrative is concerned I find kidney and bacon an excellent stimulus.
"How extremely agreeable this life is," I reflected as I resumed dressing. "No care, no responsibility, neither jolt nor jar in the machinery. It's almost too pleasant to be natural. Now, if I had a house, servants, a wife, the trouble would just be beginning at this time. As it is everything conspires to save me from friction. But it'll soon be all over. I never quite realised that. My last day of gilded ease. To-day a young man of fashion in a New York club, to-morrow a skulking tramp in the steerage of an ocean liner. Yes, I'll go in the steerage."
Perhaps it was to heighten the contrast that I dressed with unusual care. From a score of lounging suits I selected a soft one of slatey grey; shirt, tie and socks to match; cuff-links of antique silver, and a scarf-pin of a pearl clutched in a silver claw; a hat of grey velour, and shoes with grey cloth uppers. Thus panoplied I sallied forth, a very symphony in grey.
At this early hour the dining-room was empty, and three girls flew to wait on me. For the first time it struck me as being odd. Surely, I thought, if things were as they should be, woman would not be waiting on man. Here am I, a strong, healthy brute of a male, lolling back like a lord, while these frail females fly like slaves to fulfil my desires. Yet I work three hours a day, they ten. I am rich, they painfully poor. There's something all wrong with the world; but we're so used to looking at wrong we've come to think it right.
A strange spirit of dissatisfaction was stirring in me, of desire to see life from the other side. As I took my breakfast I studied the girls, trying to imagine what they thought, how they lived. Although there were no other members in the dining-room at that moment, each waitress was obliged to remain at her post. How deadly monotonous, standing there at attention! How tired they must be by the end of the day! Then I noticed that one of them, under cover of her apron, was taking surreptitious peeps at a yellow-covered book. At that moment the lynx-eyed lady superintendent entered, caught her in the act, and proceeded to rate her soundly. I hate scenes of any kind, and this particularly pained me, for I saw that the all-too-tempting volume was a cheap edition of The Haunted Taxicab.
Then that moving picture imagination of mine began to flicker. The girl had gone from the room with tears in her eyes. Surely, thought I, she has been dismissed. A blur came between me and my plate and the film unreeled....
Ah! I see her trying to get other employment, failing again and again, sinking deeper into the mire of misery and despair. Then at last the time comes when the brave, proud heart is broken; the proud, sweet eyes flinch at another day of bitterness and failure. They recognise, they accent the end.
It is a freezing night of mid-winter, and I am walking down Broadway. Suddenly I am accosted by a girl with a hard, painted face, a girl who smiles the forced smile of fallen womanhood.
"Silvia!" I gasp.
She shrinks from me. "You!" she cries. "The author of my ruin; you, whose book I was dismissed for reading, unable to resist peering into the pages you had invested with such fatally fascinating charm...."
As the scene came up before me tears filled my eyes, and fearful that they might drop on my kidney and bacon I averted my head. At the same moment the waitress came back with a saucy giggle and resumed her post. I was somewhat dashed, nevertheless I decided it would do for a short story, and taking out my idea book I noted it down.
"Now," I said, "let's see the morning paper.... How lucky! The Garguantuan sails to-morrow. I'll just catch her. Splendid!"
That histrionic temperament of mine began to thrill. Had not my whole life been dominated by my dramatic conception of myself? Student, actor, cowboy, I had played half a dozen parts, and into each I had put my whole heart. Here, then, was a new one: let me realise it quickly. So taken was I with the idea that I, who had never in my life known what it was to want a hundred dollars, retired to the reading-room, and, inspired by the kidney and bacon, took out a little gold pencil, and with it dinted in my idea book the following sonnet:
TO LITERATURE
"I, a poor, passion-goaded garreteer,
A pensive enervate of book and pen,
Who, in the bannered triumph-march of men
Lag like a sorry starveling in the rear—
Shall I not curse thee, mistress mine? I peer
Up from life's saturnalia, and then
Shrink back a-shudder to my garret den,
Seeing no prospect of a glass of beer.
"What have I suffered, Siren, for thy sake!
What scorn endured, what happiness foregone!
What weariness and woe! What cruel ache
Of failure 'mid a thousand vigils wan!
Yet do I shrine thee as each day I wake,
Wishing I had another shirt to pawn."
I smoked two large cigars over my sonnet before I finally got it straight. This in spite of the fact that I had a hundred and one other things to do. If the house had been burning I believe the firemen would have dragged me out muttering and puzzling over my sonnet. My rhymes bucked on me; and, though I had rounded up a likely bunch of words, I just couldn't get them into the corral. Finally, with more of perspiration than inspiration, the thing was done.
"Hullo, Madden!" said some one as I wrote the last line, and looking up I saw young Hadsley, a breezy cotillion leader, who had recently been admitted into his father's law firm.
"Rotten nuisance, this early snow," went on Hadsley. "Mucks things up so. 'Fraid it'll spoil the game on Saturday."
"I hope not," I replied fervently. The game was the Yale-Princeton football match, and I was terribly eager to see my old college win.
"By the way," suggested Hadsley, "if you care to go I'll run you down on my car."
"Of course, I'd like it," I exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'll be simply delighted." Then like a flash I remembered.
"Oh, no! After all, I'm sorry, I can't. I expect to be in mid-ocean by Saturday."
"Ah, indeed! That sounds interesting. Going to Europe! Wish I was. When do you start?"
"To-morrow on the Garguantuan."
"You don't say! Why, the Chumley Graces are going on her. Of course, you remember the three girls—awfully jolly, play golf divinely, used to be called the Three Graces? They're so peeved they're missing the game, but the old man won't stay for it. They're taking their car and going to tour Europe. How nice for you! You'll have no end of a good time going over."
Malediction! Could I never out-pace prosperity? Could I never throw off the yoke of fortune?
"Oh, well, it's not settled yet," I went on quickly. "I may not be able to make it for to-morrow. I may have to take a later boat. So don't say anything about it, there's a good fellow."
"Oh, all right. The surprise will be all the jollier when they see you. Well, good-bye, old man, and good luck. You'll get the news of the game by wireless. Gee! I wish I was in your shoes."
Hadsley was off, leaving me gnawing at an imaginary moustache. "The Chumley Graces going on the Garguantuan. That means I can never go steerage, and I have set my heart on going steerage. Let's see the paper again. Hurrah! There's an Italian steamer sailing to-morrow morning. Well, that'll do."
I was now in a whirlwind of energy, packing and making final arrangements. At the steamship office, when I asked for a ticket, the clerk beamed on me.
"Yes, sir, we can give you a nice suite on the main deck, the best we have on the boat. Lucky it's not taken."
My moral courage almost failed me. "No, no!" I said hastily. "It's not for me. It's for one of my servants whose way I'm paying back to Italy. Give me a steerage ticket."
"Coward! Coward!" hissed Conscience in my ear. "You're making a bad beginning."
Just before lunch I remembered my business with Quince, and, jumping into a taxi, whisked down to the Bank. The manager received me effusively. The note was prepared—only wanted a satisfactory endorser. I scratched my name on the back of it, then, speaking into the telephone on the manager's desk, I got Quince on the line.
"Hullo! This is Madden speaking. I say, Quince, I have fixed up that note for you."
(A confused murmur that might be construed as thanks.)
"And about that article, never mind. I find I won't need it."
(Another confused murmur that might be construed as relief.)
"No, I've come to the conclusion you're right. The book's not the right stuff. If you praised it you'd probably have a hard time getting square with your conscience. So we'll let it go at that. Good-bye."
Then I slammed the receiver on the hook, feeling that I had gained more than I had lost.
By three o'clock everything had been done that could be done. I was on the point of giving a sigh of relief, when all at once I remembered two farewell calls I really ought to make.
"I'd almost forgotten them," I said. "I must say good-bye to Mrs. Fitz and Miss Tevandale."
