We are continually obtaining new and piercing glimpses into human life
and character. We are now able to assert, without fear of rebuttal,
that even men of unblemished intellect and lofty, serene understanding
have always some particular point of frailty at which morals, virtue,
and integrity collapse in a dark confusion of spiritual wreckage.
Reconsidering the above sentence it seems to need a little
clarification. We shall have to explain what we mean, and can only do
so by referring, with painful verity, to the Leading Editorial Writer.
L. E. W. came into our kennel yesterday morning and saw lying on our
desk a newly published detective novel that a publisher had sent us.
“Oh,” he said, “What’s this?” and began looking it over. We were rather
busy at the moment, and paid no particular heed, but looked up a
minute later to see him slipping out of our hutch with the book under
his arm.
“Here!” we cried, “what are you doing with that book?”
“I’m going to read it,” he said, with bland composure.
“Nothing doing,” we asserted sternly. “We began to read that in the
subway this morning, and we’re just getting interested in it. You’ll
have to wait until we’ve finished it.”
“But you can’t read it in the office,” he said; “you’re too busy.”
“So are you,” we replied; “but we’re going to read it to-night; after
an exhausting day we shall need an innocent diversion of that sort.”
We did not think of it at the time, but we now remember that there was
a curious evasive lustre in his eye. We wish we could make it plain
to you how this person, generally a highly cultivated and responsible
citizen, occasionally exhibits himself as naïvely unscrupulous, in a
way so charming and unashamed that, with lesser men than ourself, he
successfully gets away with it.
A little later in the day, again comes L. E. W. into our nook. He
looks about in an absent-minded way, giving much the appearance of the
_animula vagula blandula_ the Roman emperor told about. He made one or
two random remarks, and seemed to be pretending that he had intended
to say something important but had forgotten what it was. We may say
that we penetrated his game immediately. We kept an eye on him, and as
soon as he had retired we took the detective story and put several
newspapers on top of it.
But after all, one cannot sit around the office all day watching the
book one is saving for evening reading. By and by we had to go out to
lunch, and thought no more of the matter until 5 o’clock. Then, hastily
gathering our effects for the trek uptown, we looked for the novel. It
was gone.
We could not quite believe it, at first. We thought we must have
mislaid it somewhere on top of our desk. We rummaged briskly. No sign
of it. With a sudden vile suspicion we ran to L. E. W.’s room. He was
gone, too.
Well, we had to console ourself on the ride uptown by reading something
else; but you know how it is--when you have set your heart on finishing
a particular story....
This morning L. E. W. has just come into our coop, with his usual
enigmatic smile, and laid the book before us. We assailed him with
bitter reproach and contumely. But we made no impression on him. There
is some mysterious knot of villainy in his bosom that leads him to
believe that any detective story left within his reach.... Of course it
is true that writing Leading Editorials for a number of years may well
undermine a man’s character. But that is what we mean when we say that
even men of unblemished intellect and lofty, serene understanding have
always some particular point of frailty at which morals, virtue, and
integrity collapse in a dark confusion of spiritual wreckage.
We haven’t mentioned the title of the book, because L. E. W. says it
isn’t much good. But we are not certain whether that is not just his
quaint way of trying to minify the gruesomeness of his offence. It is a
perverted form of conscience: he thinks that if he tells us the book is
punk we will not regret that our reading was brutally postponed. But we
are going to tell him that he missed a trick there. It would have been
much more in line with the delightful humour for which he is famous if
he had said: “It’s a great yarn. You ought to read it.”
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