Tales of Men and Ghosts

THE fire crumbled, sending up a flash which threw into relief the narrator’s gnarled red face under its grey-black stubble.  Pressed into the hollow of the dark leather armchair, it stood out an instant like an intaglio of yellowish red-veined stone, with spots of enamel for the eyes; then the fire sank and in the shaded lamp-light it became once more a dim Rembrandtish blur.

Phil Frenham, sitting in a low chair on the opposite side of the hearth, one long arm propped on the table behind him, one hand supporting his thrown-back head, and his eyes steadily fixed on his old friend’s face, had not moved since the tale began.  He continued to maintain his silent immobility after Culwin had ceased to speak, and it was I who, with a vague sense of disappointment at the sudden drop of the story, finally asked:  “But how long did you keep on seeing them?”

Culwin, so sunk into his chair that he seemed like a heap of his own empty clothes, stirred a little, as if in surprise at my question.  He appeared to have half-forgotten what he had been telling us.

“How long?  Oh, off and on all that winter.  It was infernal.  I never got used to them.  I grew really ill.”

Frenham shifted his attitude silently, and as he did so his elbow struck against a small mirror in a bronze frame standing on the table behind him.  He turned and changed its angle slightly; then he resumed his former attitude, his dark head thrown back on his lifted palm, his eyes intent on Culwin’s face.  Something in his stare embarrassed me, and as if to divert attention from it I pressed on with another question: 

“And you never tried sacrificing Noyes?”

“Oh, no.  The fact is I didn’t have to.  He did it for me, poor infatuated boy!”

“Did it for you?  How do you mean?”

“He wore me out—­wore everybody out.  He kept on pouring out his lamentable twaddle, and hawking it up and down the place till he became a thing of terror.  I tried to wean him from writing—­oh, ever so gently, you understand, by throwing him with agreeable people, giving him a chance to make himself felt, to come to a sense of what he really had to give.  I’d foreseen this solution from the beginning—­felt sure that, once the first ardour of authorship was quenched, he’d drop into his place as a charming parasitic thing, the kind of chronic Cherubino for whom, in old societies, there’s always a seat at table, and a shelter behind the ladies’ skirts.  I saw him take his place as ‘the poet’:  the poet who doesn’t write.  One knows the type in every drawing-room.  Living in that way doesn’t cost much—­I’d worked it all out in my mind, and felt sure that, with a little help, he could manage it for the next few years; and meanwhile he’d be sure to marry.  I saw him married to a widow, rather older, with a good cook and a well-run house.  And I actually had my eye on the widow …  Meanwhile I did everything to facilitate the transition—­lent him money to ease his conscience, introduced him to pretty women to make him forget his vows.  But nothing would do him:  he had but one idea in his beautiful obstinate head.  He wanted the laurel and not the rose, and he kept on repeating Gautier’s axiom, and battering and filing at his limp prose till he’d spread it out over Lord knows how many thousand sloppy pages.  Now and then he would send a pailful to a publisher, and of course it would always come back.

“At first it didn’t matter—­he thought he was ‘misunderstood.’  He took the attitudes of genius, and whenever an opus came home he wrote another to keep it company.  Then he had a reaction of despair, and accused me of deceiving him, and Lord knows what.  I got angry at that, and told him it was he who had deceived himself.  He’d come to me determined to write, and I’d done my best to help him.  That was the extent of my offence, and I’d done it for his cousin’s sake, not his.

“That seemed to strike home, and he didn’t answer for a minute.  Then he said:  ’My time’s up and my money’s up.  What do you think I’d better do?’

“‘I think you’d better not be an ass,’ I said.

“He turned red, and asked:  ‘What do you mean by being an ass?’

“I took a letter from my desk and held it out to him.

“’I mean refusing this offer of Mrs. Ellinger’s:  to be her secretary at a salary of five thousand dollars.  There may be a lot more in it than that.’

“He flung out his hand with a violence that struck the letter from mine.  ‘Oh, I know well enough what’s in it!’ he said, scarlet to the roots of his hair.

“‘And what’s your answer, if you know?’ I asked.

“He made none at the minute, but turned away slowly to the door.  There, with his hand on the threshold, he stopped to ask, almost under his breath:  ‘Then you really think my stuff’s no good?’

“I was tired and exasperated, and I laughed.  I don’t defend my laugh—­it was in wretched taste.  But I must plead in extenuation that the boy was a fool, and that I’d done my best for him—­I really had.

“He went out of the room, shutting the door quietly after him.  That afternoon I left for Frascati, where I’d promised to spend the Sunday with some friends.  I was glad to escape from Gilbert, and by the same token, as I learned that night, I had also escaped from the eyes.  I dropped into the same lethargic sleep that had come to me before when their visitations ceased; and when I woke the next morning, in my peaceful painted room above the ilexes, I felt the utter weariness and deep relief that always followed on that repairing slumber.  I put in two blessed nights at Frascati, and when I got back to my rooms in Rome I found that Gilbert had gone …  Oh, nothing tragic had happened—­the episode never rose to that.  He’d simply packed his manuscripts and left for America—­for his family and the Wall Street desk.  He left a decent little note to tell me of his decision, and behaved altogether, in the circumstances, as little like a fool as it’s possible for a fool to behave ...”