09 Not George Washington

I laughed. The man was splendid. There was no other word for it.

“And shall I tell you something else that you are?” I said. “You are a low, sneaking liar. You are playing it low down on Eva.”

He laughed this time. It irritated me unspeakably.

“Don’t try to work off the hollow, mirthless laugh dodge on me,” I said, “because it won’t do. You’re a blackguard, and you know it.”

“I tell you I’m done for. I’ve barely a penny in the world.”

“Rot!” I said. “Don’t try that on me. You’ve let Eva down plop, and I’m jolly glad; but all the same you’re a skunk. Nothing can alter that. Why don’t you marry the girl?”

“I can’t,” he said. “It would be too dishonourable.”

“Dishonourable?”

“Yes. I haven’t got enough money. I couldn’t ask her to share my poverty with me. I love her too dearly.”

I was nearly sick. The beast spoke in a sort of hushed, soft-music voice as if he were the self-sacrificing hero in a melodrama. The stained-glass expression on his face made me feel homicidal.

“Oh, drop it,” I said. “Poverty! Good Lord! Isn’t two thousand a year enough to start on?”

“But I haven’t got two thousand a year.”

“Oh, I don’t pretend to give the figures to a shilling.”

“You don’t understand. All I have to live on is my holiday work at the Orb.”

“What!”

“Oh, yes; and I’m doing some lyrics for Briggs for the second edition of The Belle of Wells. That’ll keep me going for a bit, but it’s absolutely out of the question to think of marrying anyone. If I can keep my own head above water till the next vacancy occurs at the Orb I shall be lucky.”

“You’re mad.”

“I’m not, though I dare say I shall be soon, if this sort of thing goes on.”

“I tell you you are mad. Otherwise you’d have called in your work, and saved yourself having to pay those commissions to Hatton and the others. As it is, I believe they’ve somehow done you out of your cheques, and the shock of it has affected your brain.”

“My dear Julian, it’s a good suggestion, that about calling in my work. But it comes a little late. I called it in weeks ago.”

My irritation increased.

“What is the use of lying like that?” I said angrily. “You don’t seem to credit me with any sense at all. Do you think I never read the papers and magazines? You can’t have called in your work. The stuff’s still being printed over the signatures of Sidney Price, Tom Blake, and the Rev. John Hatton.”

I caught sight of a Strawberry Leaf lying on the floor beside his chair. I picked it up.

“Here you are,” I said. “Page 324. Short story. ‘Lady Mary’s Mistake,’ by Sidney Price. How about that?”

“That’s it, Julian,” he said dismally; “that’s just it. Those three devils have pinched my job. They’ve learned the trick of the thing through reading my stuff, and now they’re turning it out for themselves. They’ve cut me out. My market’s gone. The editors and publishers won’t look at me. I have had eleven printed rejection forms this week. One editor wrote and said that he did not want John-Hatton-and-water. That’s why I sent the wire.”

“Let’s see those rejection forms.”

“You can’t. They’re burnt. They got on my nerves, and I burnt them.”

“Oh,” I said, “they’re burnt, are they?”

He got up, and began to pace the room.

“But I shan’t give up, Julian,” he cried, with a sickening return of the melodrama hero manner; “I shan’t give up. I shall still persevere. The fight will be terrible. Often I shall feel on the point of despair. Yet I shall win through. I feel it, Julian. I have the grit in me to do it. And meanwhile”—he lowered his voice, and seemed surprised that the orchestra did not strike up the slow music—”meanwhile, I shall ask Eva to wait.”

To wait! The colossal, the Napoleonic impudence of the man! I have known men who seemed literally to exude gall, but never one so overflowing with it as James Orlebar Cloyster. As I looked at him standing there and uttering that great speech, I admired him. I ceased to wonder at his success in life.

I shook my head.

“I can’t do it,” I said regretfully. “I simply cannot begin to say what I think of you. The English language isn’t equal to it. I cannot, off-hand, coin a new phraseology to meet the situation. All I can say is that you are unique.”

“What do you mean?”

“Absolutely unique. Though I had hoped you would have known me better than to believe that I would swallow the ludicrous yarn you’ve prepared. Don’t you ever stop and ask yourself on these occasions if it’s good enough?”

“You don’t believe me!”

“My dear James!” I protested. “Believe you!”