“Willing you should go?” rumbled Nicholas, as they scampered upstairs, “Great Snakes!”
X
Gordon’s! … Gordon’s—the colourful! … Gordon’s—the exotic! … Gordon’s at two-thirty in the morning! … Brilliantly lighted, packed to suffocation, strangling in the smoke, sticky with sweat; shrill with gin, begotten of dirty messes in mouldy cellars and proudly carried in monogrammed silver flasks; clamorous with the new music but lately imported, duty free, from the head waters of the Congo and brought to triumphant perfection by the highest paid orchestra in the States—fresh from New York where its engagement had been abruptly terminated by a padlock … Gordon’s Gardens!
Fiddles squeaked, saxophones squealed, oboes giggled, clarinets wailed, tubas yawped, triangles clanged … “Lament of the Damned,” perhaps? … Not at all! … “I’m Lonesome and Blue for You.”
Bobby Merrick, waiting in the rococo lobby for his coat check, listened with the ear of a man from Mars and drew a crooked smile.
His coming had been quite on impulse. Long before the train had reached Detroit, he had made up his mind not to go out to Gordon’s. The announcement of his decision had, he observed, eased the constraint that had fallen upon their talk. Tom had brightened, visibly, though making gallant pretence of disappointment.
“I’ve a book that interests me,” explained Bobby. “I’d rather go to the club and read it than mill around with a lot of high school sheiks.”
“And then there’s your rheumatism, Uncle Dudley!” sniffed Masterson. “You ought to be careful at your age … Aw—why don’t you snap out of it?”
“No—I’ve graduated from all that stuff. It’s the bunk! It’s too depressing, Tommy … Everybody pretending! … Little chap at the next table poking his fork occasionally into a cold dinner that costs him seventeen dollars for the two of them—half his week’s wages … Hopping up with his mouth full to push Mazie around again through the wriggling pack, wishing he had the courage to ask her to marry him, and wondering where he’d dig up three hundred for a sparkler … Mazie wouldn’t wear one that cost a nickel less … And that sad wail they dance to; though—God knows—one can’t blame Clarence for liking sad music. He’s a sad young man. His credit’s bad with his papa, and he’s been drinking too much Dago mash.”
“Have you ever thought of joining the W.C.T.U.?”
“Don’t get peevish, Tommy. You run out to Gordon’s and give ’em what you got for your last story, and I’ll go read my book.”
“That must be a damned fine book. What’s its name?”
“Oh—it’s a treatise by a medical man. You couldn’t read it.”
“Taking yourself rather seriously, aren’t you?”
“Asclepius is as jealous as Jehovah, my son.”
By consent, they had stopped ragging each other, and Bobby was asking interestedly about various members of the set from which his attention had lately been deflected.
On mention of Joyce’s name, he inquired casually, “Seeing much of her, these days, Tommy?”
Masterson nodded.
“Serious?”
“I wish it might be thought so.”
“Upstage with you, is she?”
“Quite! … And you damned well know why!”
“Nonsense! I haven’t seen her for a whole year!”
“Well, it isn’t nonsense … not with her. You’re very much on her mind, doc.”
Bobby repudiated the idea with a gesture.
“Fine girl! … Wish you luck, Tommy!”
“Thanks! Go bump yourself off, and maybe I’ll have it.”
“By the way, Tommy, do you see something of the young Mrs. Hudson occasionally?”
“Of course … Gorgeous … Irreproachable and unapproachable! … Goes nowhere … In mourning, you know … Southern old school notions about weeds—and all that … She’ll come out of it one of these days and stir up a sensation! … Lovely? … Gad! … Don’t know her, do you? Well, then you’ve never been anywhere and hain’t seen nothin’!”
“Bad as that? I’ll call sometime and give myself a treat.”
“You’d better not … You’ve hard work to do, and shouldn’t be distracted.”
The train groaned and ground into the ugliest station between Bombay and the Aurora Borealis, and they parted to hail taxis, promising each other an early meeting.
Cordially welcomed and comfortably established at the Columbia Club, Bobby slipped out of his clothes and into a dressing-gown to resume his work on the Hudson Journal. It was the beginning of a new chapter which took the reader into the author’s confidence more intimately than before, as if, having met the latter halfway by the very act of proceeding with the translation, the legatee of the book was now on new terms of comradeship.
It is important that you should know how serious are the conditions to be met by any man who hopes to increase his own power by way of the technique I pursued under instructions from Randolph.
I must mention them, at this juncture, because it is quite possible these words may be read by some impulsive enthusiast who, eager to avail himself of the large rewards promised, may attempt experiments from which he will receive neither pleasure nor benefit; and, dismayed by failure, find himself worse off in mind than he was before.
Indeed, this was my own experience at first, Randolph having neglected to warn me that certain conditions were imperative to success. I learned them by trial and error.
It must be borne in mind, at the outset, that no amount of altruistic endeavour—no matter how costly—can possibly benefit the donor, if he has in any manner neglected the natural and normal obligations to which he is expected to be sensitive. Not only must he be just before attempting to be generous; he must figure this particular investment of himself as a higher altruism, quite other than mere generosity.
Every conceivable responsibility must have had full attention before one goes in search of opportunity to perform secret services to be used for the express purpose of expanding one’s personality that it may become receptive of that inexplicable energy which guarantees personal power.
My own life had been set in narrow ways. I had had but small chance to injure or defraud, even had I been of a scheming disposition. There had been a minimum of buying and selling in my programme. I had lived mostly under
