There is, of necessity, a hiatus here. One cannot write of what one does
not know. I lost all trace of Shelby during the intervening years,
except that I saw spasmodic productions of his in various periodicals,
and guessed that he must be working in those same bachelor quarters
probably still surrounded with the pictures of Miss Davis. There were
rumors, also, that he went frequently to the opera with very grand
people, and dined and supped on Lower as well as Upper Fifth Avenue. It
was whispered in editorial circles that he had come to care more as to
where he could dine next week than how he could write next week. You
see, he was most personable, and he could flatter ladies, and drink like
a gentleman, and wear his evening clothes to perfection--he still had
them made in London--and that sort of unmarried man is always in demand
in New York. Add to these social graces the piquancy of a little
literary reputation, and you have the perfect male butterfly.
Shelby fluttered his way through the corridors and drawing rooms of the
rich, and his later work, if you will notice, always touches upon what
is called smart society. We heard that he never mentioned his newspaper
days--that he was not a little ashamed of having spent so many months
bending over a typewriter in a dingy, cluttered office. Yet it was there
he had learned to write; and had he been true to the best traditions of
those days of exciting assignments, how far he might have gone on the
long literary road!
The war came. Of course Shelby was beyond the draft age--quite far
beyond it; but he had no ties, was in perfect physical condition, and he
might have found in the trenches another contact that would have made a
thorough man of him. Again, he had always loved England and the English
so dearly that it would not have been surprising had he offered his
services in some way to that country when she and her allies so needed
assistance. But the lists of those who offered their lives then may be
searched in vain for Shelby's name.
I heard vaguely that he had gone to Borneo in September, 1914; and there
he remained, "to avoid such a nasty mess as the world had come to." You
see, his was a process of evasion. He loved romance when it was sweet
and beautiful; but he had not the vision to understand that there is
also a hard, stern, iron romance--the romance of men's companionships in
difficult places.
How he did it, I never knew; but he returned from Borneo a year later,
and handed to his publishers a novel called "The Blowing Rose," which
dealt, as its title would indicate, with anything but the War--a
sentimental tale of the old South, full of lattices and siestas through
long, slow afternoons, and whispered words of love, and light
conversations at dusk, and all that sort of rot. And all the while,
outside his door the guns were booming; at the gates of the world a
perilous storm had broken. The earth was on fire; but while Rome burned,
he, like Nero, played a fiddle--and was content.
Then he wrote a comedy of British manners, and nothing would do but that
he must himself journey to London in war-time to see about its
production there.
Stanton and I happened to see him the day before he sailed. We met him
face to face on Fifth Avenue, and he bowed to us. We returned the
salute, little dreaming that never again would we see him.
For Shelby sailed on the _Lusitania_.
There must be a hiatus here, too; for no one saw him die. The story runs
that he must have been in his cabin when the awful moment came--that he
was drowned like a rat in a trap. I wonder. And I wonder if he knew in
that agonizing instant that he was doomed? But was it not better to die
than to emerge again from so great a calamity--so historical an
episode--as he had once before emerged, and find himself again
inarticulate? At least there can be some glory for him now; for one
likes to think that, after all, he might have told us how he felt in so
supreme a moment, and linked it, through his delicate art, with his San
Francisco sensations. Could those have been revived, and put upon paper?
Could Shelby ever have made a fine gesture, know himself as we knew him,
and told the truth.
I doubt it. For, looking over his published works tonight, I find only
one or two epigrams worthy of a brief existence. And one of those I am
sure he filched from an English wit, and redressed it for his purposes.
That was the only time he cared for American tailoring.
But poor Shelby! Vicarious, indeed, were all the experiences, save two,
of his shallow days. But in the face of each, he was speechless. There
is a law of averages, a law of compensation, you know. The balance wheel
turns; the tides change; the sands of occasion shift. Fate gave this man
one overwhelmingly glorious chance to say something. He was mute. The
second time she sealed his lips forever.