“Not Benjamin Brainard the author!” the other exclaimed. “Why, I read two of your books and enjoyed them immensely. But I certainly never would have guessed you were such a young man; your novels show such a wide knowledge of life.”
“I guess I’ve lived!” said Brainard with a bitter smile.
“My name,” said his new companion, “is Fred Lemp. I’m just a plain business man, with very little business,” he added good-naturedly.
“Where are you bound for?” Brainard inquired.
“Paris,” said Lemp. “Paris and Château-Thierry. And you?”
Brainard’s face wore a queer expression. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know!”
“I only know that it’s a long way off,” said Brainard.
“Oh, I suppose you are just wandering around, in search of material for a new book.”
“I have written my last book.”
“You mustn’t say that! A man your age and with your talent! You owe it to the world to keep on writing.”
“Thank you, but I am sure I don’t owe the world anything.”
They had had four drinks and Brainard was now ordering another.
“I don’t know whether I’d better or not,” said Lemp hesitantly. “I hardly ever drink more than three, because after three I get talky and bore everybody to death.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if you get talky,” said Brainard, and added to himself: “I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Well, it’s on your own head,” said Lemp, and ordered his fifth highball.
“Mr. Lemp,” Brainard said, “what would you do—Never mind. I guess I’m getting too talky myself.”
“Not at all,” said Lemp. “I’d like to hear what you were going to ask me.”
“Well, I was going to ask what you would do if you were an artist in a certain line and nobody appreciated your work—”
“I’d keep at it anyway if I knew it was good work.”
“I wasn’t through. What would you do if you suddenly realized you were an unappreciated artist, and then, on top of that, a Girl broke your heart?”
“Is this autobiographical?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, I’d try my best to forget her and I’d go ahead and do such masterful work that she would be very sorry for what she had done to me.”
“Forget her!” Brainard’s tone was bitter in the extreme.
They were awaiting a sixth drink.
“You said you were going to Château-Thierry. I was in the fight there. I wish I’d been killed!”
“My boy was,” said Lemp.
“Are you going to visit the grave?”
“Yes, and also to visit a little Frenchwoman who ought to have been his wife. Every year I pay her a call, to see if there is anything I can do for her and her child. Every year I try to coax her back to America with me, but she won’t leave France. I wish she would. I’m all alone now and the youngster—he’s nine years old—he’s a mighty cute kid and would be company for me. A man gets lonesome sometimes. And my wife is worse than dead. She has lost her mind and has to be kept in a private sanitarium.”
“Are you allowed to see her?”
“I do see her twice a year, on her birthday and on our anniversary. But I might as well stay away. She has no idea who I am. Poor Margaret! She is almost as beautiful as the day I met her.”
“What type?”
“I suppose you would call her an Irish type—black hair and blue eyes. Just the type my first wife was; in fact, I believe it was her resemblance to Edith that made me fall in love with her.”
“How old was your first wife when she died?”
“She didn’t die. Poor Edith! I guess it was mostly my fault. She was too young to marry, too young to know her own mind. When we had lived together a little over a year, she fell desperately in love with a man I used to invite frequently to the house, a business acquaintance.”
“Did she run away with him?”
“Yes. He had more money than I. I don’t mean to say that Edith was money-mad, but she did like good times and our marriage came just at a period when I was in desperate financial straits; rather, just before that period, for naturally, if I had known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have married her.”
“What did happen?” asked Brainard, sipping his eighth drink.
“You are an inquisitive young man.”
“Oh, if you’d rather not tell me—”
“I might as well. I warned you I’d get talky. Well, my youngest brother went wrong. He was cashier in a small bank, out on Long Island, and he embezzled to the extent of twenty thousand dollars. He had gambled it all away at the racetracks and in order to keep him out of jail, I liquidated all my assets and borrowed three thousand from a friend to make up the amount. I did it more for my mother’s sake than for his; I knew that if she heard that he had stolen, it would kill her.” Lemp brushed a hand across his eyes. “She found out about it anyway, and it did kill her.”
“Horrible!”
“I worked like the devil to get back on my feet, and I did it. But it was too late. Edith had gone.”
“What do you say if we have a drink?”
“I say yes.”
“And how long after that did you get married the second time?”
“Four years, and the same thing nearly happened again. My other brother, older than I, fell in love with a woman in Garden City, another man’s wife. The husband found it out and there was a fight in which my brother shot the husband dead. There was no chance in the world of my brother’s getting off, but I felt it my duty to give him the best counsel obtainable. He had no money himself. I paid two lawyers forty thousand and my brother went to the chair. Well, I learned afterwards that on the very same day my brother committed murder, Margaret, my second wife, became friendly with a piano tuner. Of course he
