WHEN FRIENDS PROVE FALSE
COMMONPLACE minds are crushed by defeat; great imaginations rise to
profit. Ten days after Skippy Bedelle had seen the gilded fabric of his
future greatness collapse with the failure of the Foot Regulator to
revolutionize the bathtub industry the spirit of invention had risen
triumphantly from the ashes of first disillusionment. After all, there
were other services to render to humanity, and the mind that at the age
of fifteen could have reasoned so brilliantly in theory must inevitably
express itself with profit to the race and to his own individual bank
account.
At first Skippy's depression had been profound, and as the sensation was
new he enjoyed its sensual charm to the fullest. He discarded the jaunty
cap for a slouch hat which he pulled down over his eyes; he selected the
soberest of neckwear, turned up his collar, sank his fists in his
pockets, and spent solitary afternoons among the ruins of the Carthage
of his imagination, seated on the site of what would never be the John
C. Bedelle Gymnasium. Even the spectacle of Cap Keafer knocking out a
home run in the ninth inning brought him no rapturous exultation. He was
akin to _Ivanhoe_, the disinherited knight, and _Athos_ of the brooding
sorrows. The world had receded from him, and nobody cared or noticed. He
was alone, misunderstood, without a friend in the world. For after what
had happened he could never again feel the same towards that basest of
ingrates, Snorky Green.
* * * * *
The evening after the collapse of the Bedelle Foot Regulator,
Incorporated, there had been a short and exceedingly painful interview.
"Well, Skippy, old top," said Snorky, who was genuinely contrite and
ready to make the advance, "that certainly was hard luck. I feel just as
bad as--" Here he stopped before the sudden majestic indignation which
confronted him.
"Green!" said Skippy, frowning.
"Oh, I say--"
"Green, when you thought I was going to be a rich man," continued Skippy
icily, "there was nothing you wouldn't do for me. You fawned on me. But
when I had to face defeat--at the first test--you deserted me with
sneers and gibes. That is not friendship. Green, you are not capable of
true friendship, and you have proved it. I shall never forget and I
shall never forgive!"
"Oh, shucks, Skippy!" said Snorky. "What's the use of rubbin' it in? I'm
not as bad as all that!"
"Green," said Skippy, working himself into the scene which he had
rehearsed a dozen times as he had long debated whether to address the
offender as Mr. Green, "Green, we will have to go on rooming together
but I wish you to understand that nothing you can ever do or say will
change my feelings now towards you. Nothing! Whatever communication is
necessary from now on between us, will be in _writing_--"
"What's that?"
"In writing," said Skippy firmly.
"Oh, well, if that's the way you're going to take it you can go to
blazes!" said Snorky wrathfully. "But before you climb on your high
horse, suppose you restore my red choker tie, my agate cuff buttons, my
silver-rimmed fountain pen and a few pairs of fancy socks--"
"_This_ is unworthy of even you," said Skippy, who rose and with a
perfect social manner took the articles in question from the bureau on
the south side of the room and gingerly placed them on the bureau in the
western corner. "The socks are in the wash. I prefer to return them as I
received them." After which he disrobed and, somewhat consoled, watched
from the coverlets the indignant and bewildered Snorky Green sitting on
his bedside, halfway out of his trousers, glaring at him in rage.
* * * * *
For a week, a miserable, lonely week, Skippy held to this irreconcilable
attitude. During this time he touched the bottom of depression--he even
doubted himself! Would he ever invent anything again? Had it been just a
flash in the pan? Was it all a false start? What had become of the
imagination which had blazed up so brilliantly? Perhaps after all he was
no different from the rest--just an average mind fit only for such
vulgar things as banking and trade. Then one morning through the gloom
clouds a sudden shaft of sunlight arrived. He had another idea!
He had been lolling deliciously in bed, disdaining to notice the first
harsh summons to rise, and his mind had dwelt enviously on the brilliant
figure of Doc Macnooder. After all, even Doc Macnooder had his failures.
There was the matter of the Folding Toothbrush, which all Macnooder's
eloquence had failed to market with Bill Appleby.
"Jingo! That certainly was a bum idea," he said to himself, somewhat
comforted. "You might do something with a toothbrush, but a folding one
is a joke!"
* * * * *
All at once he sprang out of bed and, reaching the washstand in a bound,
seized the nearest tooth mug. Snorky, who, despite the present
unpleasantness, still trusted his rising instincts, catapulted out of
bed and arrived three seconds later at his side of the washstand, where
through still foggy eyes he beheld Skippy gazing at a toothbrush which
he held reverently before him as a jeweler examines a named stone.
"What the deuce?"
"Dinged if I haven't got Macnooder beat a mile!" exclaimed Skippy, who
in the first exhilaration of discovery had completely forgotten the
correspondence acquaintanceship he had imposed.
"It's about a toothbrush!" said Snorky with great intelligence.
"You bet it's about a toothbrush." But here Skippy suddenly remembered,
and the smile gave place to a frown.
"Oh, I say, Skippy! Let's call it off," said Snorky in a rush of
feeling. "It was dead rotten of me and I'm doggone sorry--honest, I
am--but you've rubbed it in enough."
"Very well, I forgive you and I shall try to forget," said Skippy, who
also had chafed under the long silence.
"What's the great idea?" said Snorky hurriedly.
"The great idea is a _Souvenir_ Toothbrush," said Skippy proudly.
* * * * *
The idea did not reach Snorky immediately, but he was too diplomatic to
show his disappointment, so he said humbly:
"I suppose it's because I'm a dumb-head, but why a souvenir
toothbrush?"
"Why a souvenir pillow-case? Why a souvenir buttonhook or a souvenir
bootjack or a footstool, necktie, lap robe, or anything souvenir?"
"All right, why?" said Snorky, who felt hurt at this assumption of
intellectual superiority.
"The bootjack doesn't make the souvenir; it's the souvenir makes the
bootjack, doesn't it?" said Skippy, who was thinking deeply.
* * * * *
Snorky had never heard of the Socratian method, but he was impressed; so
not understanding, he nodded and answered:
"Aha, I see!"
"It's the thing you souvenir that's important. If you want to remember
you can't remember too often."
"No-o."
"And how can you remember better than the first crack out of bed--"
"I get all that," said Snorky, acknowledging the brilliancy of the
argument. "But how the dickens can you make a souvenir out of a
toothbrush?"
"My boy--my boy!" said Skippy with crushing contempt. "Have you no
imagination? A souvenir toothbrush! Why, easy! Make the handle in the
shape of a baseball bat and put the Lawrenceville-Andover score on the
back--red and black."
"Well, I'll be jiggswiggered!"
"You can make 'em in the form of a riding crop for racing sports, masts
for yachtsmen, sword-blades for the army. Why, it's a cinch! You can
have Lawrenceville shields on the back, Princeton colors, Yale colors.
You can do anything, anything with the idea--you can have your best
girl's initials, or you can have her photograph stenciled on!"
"Sure thing! Why not Mother or Auntie--'when this you see remember to
use me!'" said Snorky, who feared where another flight of the
imagination might transport his roommate.
"Green!" said Skippy, flaring up at this destructive levity; but before
he could deliver his broadside the breakfast gong began to rock the
house and simultaneously each head ducked into a waiting basin.
* * * * *
When Skippy during the relaxation of the morning recitations considered
the Souvenir Toothbrush he was not so favorably impressed. Snorky's
suggestion somehow threw a touch of ridicule over the whole proposition
and Skippy, like all true imaginations, shrank from ridicule.
Undoubtedly if the Souvenir Toothbrush became a fact, mothers and
governesses _would_ abuse its opportunities. Think of a parental eye
gazing admonishingly at you from the back of a toothbrush every morning!
Why, the name of Bedelle might become an execration! He saw himself
pilloried among the oppressors of boykind, as unpopular as the compiler
of a Latin grammar or the accursed Euclid! No, the idea was unthinkable!
Skippy did not reject the Souvenir Toothbrush _in toto_. He bought a
blank book on which he inscribed:
INVENTIONS
JOHN C. BEDELLE
1896
On the first page under the day of the month he wrote a full
description, adding:
FIELD LIMITED
_Suggestion--Hold until later date and patent
anonymously._
Skippy then reluctantly admitted the destructive force of Snorky Green's
criticism of the Souvenir Toothbrush; he admitted it, but he could not
forgive him for being right. There are certain things which one does not
forgive a brother, a sister, or the chum of chums.
After all, was Snorky Green worthy of that privileged and exalted
position? A disturbing doubt began to creep into Skippy's imagination.
He passed over the treachery in the matter of the now defunct Bedelle
Foot Regulator; that might conceivably have been the fault of an
inferior temperament. It was the spirit of negative criticism, the
settled habit of turning into raillery the fragile first impulses of his
inventive imagination, that was alarming.
"Gee! If every time I get a big idea, he's going to knock it in the
head, what's the use of having an imagination?" he said gloomily.
After all, could a creative temperament yoke itself to a destructive
criticism without self-immolation? Immersed in these brooding
forebodings, he came heavily up the Dickinson stairs to the communal
room. Suddenly he stopped, amazed.
"What the deuce!"
On his bureau a flaming bit of color greeted him from the somber mass of
his pendent neckties. He advanced and recognized Snorky Green's red
choker tie, which was particularly dear to his young sartorial fancy. On
the pin cushion lay the agate cuff buttons and the silver-rimmed
fountain pen. He opened the top drawer and beheld three pair of
open-work socks, red, orange and glowing green.
"Gee, how crude!" he said indignantly.
At another moment and in another mood his heart might have softened at
this evident peace-offering; but this afternoon, with the new child of
his imagination slain by Snorky Green's brutal wit, the whole proceeding
was undeniably crude, a bribe too openly offered. He would have to
return them; that was inevitable and that was of course the last thing
he wished to do. He sat down at his desk, scowling horribly, and then,
moved by a fitting inspiration, he seized his pen and dashed off the
most frigid and properly insulting of notes.
To Arthur E. Green. Goods Returned.
1 Fountain Pen.
1 Pair of Agate Cuff Buttons.
1 Choker Tie (red).
3 Pair of Socks.
Kindly acknowledge receipt,
Bedelle.
The last he considered such a master stroke that, his good humor
restored by the anticipation of the infuriating effect on his beloved
friend, he began to whistle a triumphant strain. He made a neat package,
pinned the ultimatum on it, and proceeded to the opposite bureau.
"Well, I'll be teetotally jiggswiggered," he said, astounded.
In the oval of the glass, a new photograph had appeared in the company
of the three other smiling feminine beauties which Snorky Green, as a
man of the world, displayed by implied right of conquest. Skippy set
down his package and craned forward for a closer examination.
"Huh! Old enough to be his grandmother," he said contemptuously, staring
at the new victim of Snorky Green's charms.
But at this moment, hearing a familiar step in the hall, he bounded back
in time to assume a nonchalant, bored attitude as Snorky came joyfully
in, exclaiming:
"Hello, old sporting life! What do you know to-day?"
"Green," said Skippy, drawing himself up and extending an elocutionary
finger towards the bureau, "you will find something to interest you
there."
He waited a moment outside in the hall until Snorky's bursting
imprecation brought the needed consolation, and then tripped down the
steps, seeking a calming jigger.