«I gave up cocktails because you wished it,» said she. «And now I drink sherry.»
He put his fine hand to his brow. «I talk of ideal children,» he moaned, «and you reply with an idiotic irrelevancy about cocktails. Leave me. You jar. I will open my letters alone.»
She obediently withdrew, but soon a bitter cry brought her scurrying back again. «Oh, my dear, what in the world is it?» cried she. «Whatever is the matter?»
«Read that,» said he, handing her a letter. «Don't talk to me about cocktails. Read that.»
«What is this?» she cried. «Your money gone!»
«I tried to double it,» said he. «I thought it would be nice. This comes of being an artist, a dreamer. Spare me your reproaches.»
«We have each other,» said she, allowing a large, booby tear to trickle down her cheek, as women often do when they seek comfort in this particular reflection.
«Yes,» said he. «And may take films of each other in the breadline, and show them to our friends. You may be taken so if you wish. I have my pride.»
«But I have my jewels,» said she. «We can live on them while you write that book you have always been talking of.»
«Always been talking of?» said he. «I hardly know what you mean. Still, a great many fools write books, and sell a hundred thousand copies. What would be the royalty on five hundred thousand? Put a heap of high-grade paper in my study. Tell everyone I am not to be disturbed. If only we had a couple of ideal children, you could keep them quiet while I was at work. You could tell them what their daddy was doing.»
Pretty soon he was in his study, and visitors were impressed. Sometimes he would wander out among them with a fine, vague air. The only trouble was, he was equally vague when he returned to his desk, and not a line appeared on even the first sheet of his high-grade paper; nothing but drawings of profiles. «I am too much of an artist, I suppose,» said he to himself. «I have no appetite for the coarse and crude material of which plots are made. I am all style. There will be no book, we shall become beggars, and Daphne will cease to adore me. I must go out and see life. Perhaps I will find a plot.»
He went out and hung about the bohemian café in Greenwich Village, where he saw writers in plenty, but not enough life to go round, and not a plot among the whole crowd of them.
In the end he fetched up in the cheapest and shabbiest of dives, such as might be frequented by one who could not finish his book, who had no money, whose wife had ceased to adore him, and who consequently had less chance than ever of a couple of ideal children.
It was extremely crowded. Possibly there are many writers in this disagreeable situation. Ambrose had to share a table with a young man who had the appearance of a tom-cat whose ears have been bitten short in a hundred rigorous experiences. He had a bullet head, a broad nose, magnificent teeth, and a ravenous expression. His shirt was ragged, and his chest bore a plentiful growth of absolutely genuine hair.
His hands were somewhat battered. «That thumb,» said he to Ambrose, «a dame shot off. Holding up a candle. One-horse circus show. Never missed ordinary-wise. Jealous. That finger a croc got. Marlinspike that one. Third mate. Mutiny. This thumb got frost-bit hitchhiking across Labrador in a blizzard. Thumbing sledges. Some of them bites is horse-bites, some's wolves', some's dames'.»
«Certainly,» said Ambrose, «you have seen life.»
«Life, birth, death, and passion in the raw,» returned the other. «I'd rather see a hamburger.»
«Look, there is one cooking on the stove over there,» said Ambrose. «Are you by any chance a writer?»
«A second Jack London,» said the other. «But I got the publishing racket against me. I give 'em blood, sweat, lust, murder, everything. And they talk about style.» He pronounced this last word with an air of contempt
«Style,» said Ambrose reprovingly, «is ninety-nine per cent of the whole business. I am a stylist myself. Waiter, bring over that hamburger. This is what you wished to see, is it not?»
«Thank you,» said the young man.
«Yes,» said Ambrose. «You can now look at it closely. I have this ability to gratify my friends — call it power if you will — because I am a fine stylist. I count on my forthcoming book to sell half a million copies. Eat the hamburger. It is nothing to me.»
«O.K.,» said the young man, falling to.
«You seem to like hamburgers,» said Ambrose. «I need a sort of secretary with a good experience of life; a prentice, in short, such as the old masters had, who could rough out plots for me. You seem to have an unlimited supply of material. I have an unlimited supply of hamburgers.»
«Sell out?» cried the young man. «For a hamburger? Not me!»
«There would be large steaks —» said Ambrose.
«But —» said the young man.
«—smothered with mushrooms,» said Ambrose. «Fried chicken. Pie. New clothes. Comfortable quarters. Maybe a dollar a week pocket money.»
«Make it two,» said the young man. «You can't take a dame out on a dollar.»
«Certainly not,» said Ambrose. «No dames. All must go into the plots.»
«That's tough,» said the young man.
«Take it or leave it,» said Ambrose.
The young man, after a struggle, succumbed, and soon was tied up with a long-term contract, and taken home to the little house on Long Island. Ambrose described him as a secretary, in order to conceal the true arrangement from his wife, for he feared it might lessen her adoration.
The young man, whose new clothing became him very well, ate and drank very heartily, and relished all that was set before him, all except the sherry. This he absolutely refused, demanding a cocktail. «Mix him an old-fashioned,» said Ambrose to his wife, for he felt it might help to nourish up a plot full of life in the raw.
His lovely wife opened her eyes very wide, first at her husband, then at his secretary, and finally at the old-fashioned, of which she could not resist taking a surreptitious sip. «How extremely delicious!» she thought. «How delightful life is after all! In comes this young man, and at once I get what I have been sighing for. I wonder if he ever sighs for anything. He seems too vital. He would just ask for it. Or take it. Oh, dear!»
With that she handed the cocktail to the young man, who received it shyly, gratefully, and yet as if it were his due. He drank it in a straightforward, manly fashion, yet with a keen, primitive, simple enjoyment, holding the glass just so, throwing back his head just so — I cannot describe how handsomely this young man disposed of his cocktail.
All went well in the house. Ambrose ceased to worry. His wife ceased to sigh. Soon the plot was ready. It had everything. «You will remain here,» said Ambrose to his secretary, «and we shall go to our little house in Provence, where I shall cast this rough clay into something rather like a Grecian vase. Meanwhile, you can think up another.»
So off they went, Ambrose rubbing his hands. His wife perversely showed some disposition to sigh again when they boarded the liner, but of that he took no notice. He soon, however, had reason to sigh himself, for when he began work in his state-room he found his style was not quite as perfect as he had imagined it to be. In fact, by the end of the voyage his high-grade paper was still as blank as before.
This put Ambrose back into the depths of despair. When they got to Paris, he slunk out of the hotel, and drifted into the dingiest café he could find, where the poorest writers forgathered, who were all destitute of plots, money, adoring wives, ideal children, and everything.