get much fun out of it. He brooded most of the time over lovers' duties
to each other and mankind. He had likewise an exalted conception of the
sacred, holy, and lofty character of love itself. This is commendable,
but handicaps a man seriously. Girls do not care for that kind of love
as a steady thing. Far be it from me to insinuate that those quite
angelic creatures ever actually want to be kissed; but if, by any purely
_accidental_ chance, circumstances bring it about that, without their
consent or suspicion, a brute of a man _might_ surprise them
awfully--well, said brute does not gain much by not springing the
surprise. Being adored on a pedestal is nice--in public. So you must see
that Severne's status in ordinary circumstances would be precarious.
Conceive his fearful despair at finding his heart irrevocably committed
to a young lady as serious-minded as himself, equally lacking in humour,
and devoted mind and soul to the romantic or idealistic school of
fiction! They often discussed the point seriously and heatedly. Each
tried conscientiously to convert the other. As usual, the attempt, after
a dozen protracted interviews, ended in the girl's losing her temper.
This made Severne angry. Girls are so unreasonable!
"What do you suppose I care how your foolish imaginary people brush
their teeth and button their suspenders and black their boots? I know
how old man Smith opposite does, and that is more than enough for me!"
she cried.
"The insight into human nature expresses itself thus," he argued,
gloomily.
"Rubbish!" she rejoined. "The idea of a man's wasting the talents heaven
has given him in describing as minutely and accurately as he can all the
nasty, little, petty occurrences of everyday life! It is sordid!"
"The beautiful shines through the dreariness, as it does in the real
life people live," he objected, stubbornly.
"The beautiful is in the imagination," she cried, with some heat; "and
the imagination is God-given; it is the only direct manifestation of the
divine on earth. Without imagination no writing can have life."
As this bordered on sentiment, abhorred of realism, Severne muttered
something that sounded like "fiddlesticks." They discussed the relation
of imagination to literature on this latter basis. At the conclusion of
the discussion, Miss Melville, for that was her name, delivered the
following ultimatum:
"Well, I tell you right now, Robert Severne, that I'll never marry a man
who has not more soul in him than that. I am very much disappointed in
you. I had thought you possessed of more nobility of character!"
"Don't say that, Lucy," he begged, in genuine alarm. Serious-minded
youths never know enough not to believe what a girl says.
"I will say that, and I mean it! I never want to see you again!"
"Does that mean that our engagement is broken?" he stammered, not daring
to believe his ears.
"I should think, sir, that a stronger hint would be unnecessary."
He bowed his head miserably. "Isn't there anything I can do, Lucy? I
don't want to be sent off like this. I _do_ love you!"
She considered. "Yes, there is," she said, after a moment. "You can
write a romantic story and publish it in a magazine. Then, and not until
then, will I forgive you."
She turned coldly, and began to examine a photograph on the mantelpiece.
After an apparently interminable period, receiving no reply, she turned
sharply.
"Well!" she demanded.
Now, in the interval, Severne had been engaged in building a hasty but
interesting mental pose. He had recalled to mind numerous historical and
fictitious instances in which the man has been tempted by the woman to
depart from his heaven-born principles. In some of these instances, when
the woman had tempted successfully, the man had dwelt thenceforth in
misery and died in torment, amid the execrations of mankind. In others,
having resisted the siren, he had glowed with a high and exalted
happiness, and finally had ascended to upper regions between applauding
ranks of angels--which was not realism in the least. Art, said Severne
to himself, is an enduring truth. Human passions are misleading.
Self-sacrifice is noble. He resolved on the spot to become a martyr to
his art.
"I will never do it!" he answered, and stalked majestically from the
room.
Severne took his trouble henceforward in a becomingly serious-minded
manner. For many years he was about to live shrouded in gloom--a gloom
in whose twilight could be dimly discerned the shattered wreck of his
life. After a long period, from the _debris_ of said wreck, he would
build the structure of a great literary work of art, which all mankind
would look upon with awe, but which he, standing apart, would eye with
indifference, all joy being stricken dead by his memories of the past.
But that was in the future. Just now he was in the gloom business. So,
being a wealthy youth, he decided to go far, far away. This was
necessary in order that he might bury his grief.
He rather fancied battle-fields and carnage, but there were no wars. It
would add to the picture if he could return bronzed and battle-scarred,
but as that was impossible, he resolved to return bronzed, at any rate.
So he bought a ticket to a small town in Wyoming. There he and his
steamer-trunk boarded Thompson's stage, and journeyed to Placer Creek,
where the two of them, he and the trunk, took up their quarters in a
little board-ceiled room in the Prairie Dog Hotel.
The place was admirably adapted for glooming. It was a ramshackle affair
of four streets and sixteen saloons. Some of the houses, and all of the
saloons, had once been painted. In front were hitching-rails. To the
hitching-rails, at all times of the day, were tied ponies patiently
turning their tails to the Wyoming breezes. Wyoming breezes are always
going somewhere at the rate of from thirty to sixty miles an hour.
Beyond the town, in one direction, were some low mountains, well
supplied with dark gorges, narrow canons, murmuring water-falls, dashing
brooks, and precipitous descents. Beyond the town, in the other
direction, lay a broad, rolling country, on which cattle and cowboys
dwelt amid profanity and dust. Severne arose in a cold room, washed his
face in hard water, and descended to breakfast. The breakfast could not
have been better adapted to beginning a day of gloom. It started out
with sticky oatmeal, and ended with clammy cakes, between which was
much horror. After breakfast, he wandered in the dark gorges, narrow
canons, _et cetera_, and contemplated with melancholy but approving
interest his noble sacrifice and the wreck of his life. Thence he
returned to town.
In town, various incomprehensible individuals with a misguided sense of
humour did things to him, the reason of which he could not understand in
the least, mainly because he had himself no sense of humour, misguided
or otherwise. The things they did frightened and bewildered him. But he
examined them gravely through his shortsighted spectacles, noting just
how they were done, just how their perpetrators looked and acted, and
just how he felt.
After some days his literary instincts perforce awoke. In spite of his
gloom, he caught himself sifting and assorting and placing things in
their relative values. In fine, he began to conceive a Western story.
Shortly after, he cleaned his fountain pen, by inserting a thin card
between the gold and the rubber feeder, and sat down to write. As he
wrote he grew more and more pleased with the result. The sentences
became crisper and crisper. The adjectives fairly sizzled. Poetic
connotation faded as a mountain mist. And he remembered and described
just how Alkali Ike spit through his mustache--which was disgusting,
but real. It was his masterpiece. He wrote on excitedly. Never was such
a short story!
But then there came a pause. He had successfully mounted his hero, and
started him in full flight down the dark gorge or narrow canon--I forget
which--pursued by the avenging band. There interposed here a frightful
difficulty. He did not know how a man felt when pursued by an avenging
band. He had never been pursued by an avenging band himself. What was he
to do? To be sure, he could imagine with tolerable distinctness the
sensations to be experienced in such a crisis. He could have put them on
paper with every appearance of realism. But he had no touchstone by
which to test their truth. He might be unconsciously false to his art,
to which he had vowed allegiance at such cost! It would never do.
So, naturally, he did the obvious thing--that is to say, the obvious
thing to a serious-minded writer with no sense of humour. He went forth
and sought an acquaintance named Colorado Jim, and made to him a
proposition. It took Severne just two hours and six drinks to persuade
Colorado Jim. At the end of that time Colorado Jim, in his turn, went
forth, shaking his head doubtfully, and emitting from time to time
cavernous chuckles which bubbled up from his interior after the
well-known manner of the "Old Faithful" geyser. He hunted out six
partners of his own--"pards," he called them--to whom he spoke at
length. The six pards stared at Colorado Jim in gasping silence for some
time. Then the seven went into a committee of the whole. The decision of
the committee was that the tenderfoot was undoubtedly crazy, harmless,
and to be humoured--at a price. Besides, the humouring would be fun.
After a number of drinks, Colorado Jim and the pards concluded that it
would be _lots_ of fun!
Early the next morning, they rode out of town in the direction of the
hills. At the entrance to the dark gorge--or deep canon--they met
Severne, also mounted. After greetings, the latter distributed certain
small articles.
"Now," said he, most gravely, "I will ride ahead about as far as that
rock there, and when I get ready to start, I will wave my hand. You're
to chase me just as you'd chase a real horse-thief, and I'll try to keep
ahead of you. You keep shooting with the blank cartridges as fast as you
can. Understand?"
They said they did. They did not. But it was fun.
Severne rode to the bowlder in the dark gorge--I am sure it was the dark
gorge--and turned. The pards were lined up in eagerness for the start.
They had made side bets as to who would get there first. He waved his
hand, and struck spurs to his horse. The pursuit began.
The horse on which Severne was mounted was a good one. The way he
climbed up through that dark gorge was a caution to thoroughbreds.
Behind whooped the joyous seven, and the cracking of pistols was a
delight to the ear. The outfit swept up the gulch like a whirlwind.
Severne became quite excited. The swift motion was exhilarating. He
mentally noted at least a hundred and ten most realistic minor details.
He felt that his money had not been wasted. And then he noticed that he
was gradually drawing ahead of his pursuit. Better and better! He would
not only experience pursuit, but he would achieve in his own person a
genuine escape, for he knew that, whatever the mythical character of the
bullets, the Westerners had a real enough intention of racing each other
and him to the top of the ridge. He plied his quirt, and looked back.
The pursuers were actually dropping behind. Even to his inexperienced
eye their animals showed signs of distress.
At this place the narrow gulch divided. Severne turned to the left, as
being more nearly level. Down from the right-hand bisection came the
boys of the Triangle X outfit.
To the boys of the Triangle X outfit but one course was open. Here were
Colorado Jim and the pards on foundered horses, pursuing a rapid
individual who was escaping only too easily. Never desert a comrade. The
Triangle X boys uttered whoops, and joined the game at speed. Not
gaining as rapidly as they wished, they produced long revolvers--and
began to shoot. It is a little difficult to hit anything from a running
horse. Severne heard the reports, and congratulated himself on the
realistic qualities of his little drama. Then suddenly his hat went
spinning from his head. At the same instant a bullet ploughed through
the leather on his pommel. Zip! zip! went other bullets past his ears.
The boys of Triangle X outfit were beginning to get the range.
He looked back. To his horror he discovered that Colorado Jim and the
pards had disappeared, and that their places had been taken by a number
of maniacs on jumping little ponies. The maniacs were yelling "Yip!
Yip! Yip!" and shooting at him. He could not understand it in the least;
but the bullets were mighty convincing. He used his quirt and spurs.
If Severne really wished to experience the feelings of a man pursued, he
attained his desire. It is not pleasant to be shot at. Severne
entertained sensations of varied coherence, but one and all of a
vividness which was of the greatest literary value. Only he was not in a
mood to appreciate literary values. He attended strictly to business,
which was to lift the excellent animal on which he was mounted as
rapidly as possible over the ground. In this he attained a moderate
success. Venturing a backward glance, after a few moments, he noted with
pleasure that the distance between himself and the maniacs had sensibly
increased. Then one of those zipping bullets passed between his body and
his arm, cut off three heavy locks of the horse's mane, and entered the
base of the poor animal's skull. Severne suddenly found himself in the
road. The maniacs swept up at speed, reining in suddenly at the distance
of three feet, in such a manner as to scatter much gravel over him.
Severne sat up.
The maniacs, with commendable promptness, jerked Severne to his feet.
Several more bent over his horse.
"Jess's I thought!" shouted one of these. "Jess's I thought! He's stole
this cayuse. This is Hank Smith's bronc. I'd know him any-whar!"
"That's right! Bar O brand!" cried several.
Then men who held him yanked Severne here and there. "End of yore rope
this trip! Steal hosses, will ye!" said they.
"I didn't steal the horse!" cried poor Severne; "I hired him from
Smith."
A roar of laughter greeted this statement.
"Hired Colorado and the boys to chase you, too, didn't ye!" suggested
one, with heavy sarcasm.
"Yes, I did," answered Severne, sincerely.
They laughed again. "Nerve!" said they.
Near the fallen horse several began discussing the affair. "I tell you I
_know_ I done it!" argued one. "I ketched him between the sights, jest's
fair as could be."
"G'wan, he flummuxed jest's _I_ cut loose!"
"Well, boys," called the leader, impatiently, "get along!"
A man came forward, and silently threw a loop about Severne's neck. In
Wyoming they hang horse-thieves. Severne realised this, and told them
all about everything. They listened to him, and laughed delightedly.
Never had they hanged such a funny horse-thief. They appreciated his
efforts to amuse them, and assured him often that he was a peach. When
he paused, they encouraged him to say some more. At every new disclosure
they chuckled with admiration, as though at a tremendous but splendid
lie. Severne was getting more realistic experience in ten minutes than
he had had in all his previous life; but realistic experience does not
do one much good at the end of a rope on top of a Wyoming mountain.
Then, after a little, they deftly threw the coil of rope over the limb
of a tree, and hung him up, and left him. They did not shoot him full of
holes, as is the usual custom. He had been a funny horse-thief, so in
return they were lenient. Severne kicked. "Dancin' good," they observed,
as they turned the corner.
Around the corner they met the frantic James. They cut Severne down, and
worked over him for some time. Then they carried him down to Placer
Creek, and worked over him a lot more. The Triangle X boys were
distinctly aggrieved. They had applauded those splendid lies, and now
they turned out not to be lies at all, but merely an extremely crazy
sort of truth. They relieved their feelings by getting very drunk and
shooting out the lights.
It took Severne a week to get over it. Ten days after that he returned
East. He had finished a masterpiece. The flight down the canon was
pictured so vividly that you could almost hear the crack of the pistols,
and the hero's sentiments were so well described that in reading about
them you became excited yourself. Severne read it three times, and he
thought it as good the third time as the first. Then he copied it all
out on the typewriter. This is the severest test a writer can give his
work. The most sparkling tale loses its freshness when run through the
machine, especially if the unfortunate author cannot make the thing go
very fast. It seemed as good even after this ordeal.
"Behold," said he, congratulating himself, "this is the best story I
ever wrote! Blamed if it isn't one of the best stories I ever _read_!
Your romanticists claim that the realistic story has no charm, nor
excitement, nor psychical thrill. This'll show them!"
So he hurried to deliver it to Brown. Then he posed industriously to
himself, and tried hard to do some more glooming, but it was difficult
work. Someway he felt his cause not hopeless. This masterpiece would go
far to convince her that he was right after all.
Three days later he received a note from Brown asking him to call. He
did so. The editor handed him back his story, more in sorrow than in
anger, and spoke reprovingly about deserting one's principles. Brown was
conscientious. He believed that the past counted nothing in face of the
present. Severne pressed for an explanation. Then said Brown:
"Severne, I have used much of your stuff, and I have liked it. The
sentences have been crisp. The adjectives have been served hot. You have
eschewed poetic connotation. And, above all, you have shown men and life
as they are. I am sorry to see that you have departed from that noble
ideal."
"But," cried Severne, in expostulation, "do not these qualities appear
in my story?"
"At first they do," responded Brown, "but later--ah!" He sighed.
"What do you mean?"
"The ride down the canon," he explained. "The sentences are crisp and
the adjectives hot. But, alas! there is much poetic connotation, and, so
far from representing real life, it seems to me only the perperoid
lucubrations of a disordered imagination."
"Why, that part is the most realistic in the whole thing!" cried the
unhappy author, in distress.
"No," replied the editor, firmly, "it is not. It is not realism at all.
Even if there were nothing objectionable about the incident, the man's
feelings are frightfully overdrawn. No man ever was such an everlasting
coward as you make out your hero! I should be glad to see something else
of yours--but that, no!"
Somewhat damped, Severne took his manuscript home with him. There he
re-read it. All his old enthusiasm returned. It was exactly true.
Realism could have had no more accurate exposition of its principles. He
cursed Brown, and inclosed stamps to the _Decade_. After a time he
received a check and a flattering letter. Realism stood vindicated!
In due course the story appeared. During the interim Severne had found
that his glooming was becoming altogether too realistic for his peace of
mind. As time went on and he saw nothing of Lucy Melville, he began to
realise that perhaps, after all, he was making a mistake somewhere. At
certain recklessly immoral moments he even thought a very little of
proving false to art. To such depths can the human soul descend!
The evening after the appearance of his story in the _Decade_, he was
sitting in front of his open fire in very much that mood. The lamps had
not been lighted. To him came Mortimer, his man. "A leddy to see you,
sir; no name," he announced, solemnly.
Severne arose in some surprise. "Light the lamp, and show her up," he
commanded, wondering who she could be.
At the sound of his voice, the visitor pushed into the room past
Mortimer.
"Never mind the lamp," cried Lucy Melville. The faithful Mortimer left
the room, and--officially--heard no more.
"Why, Lucy!" cried Severne.
In the dim light he could see that her cheeks were glowing with
excitement. She crossed the room swiftly, and put her hands on his
shoulders. "Bob," she said, gravely, with tears in her eyes, "I know I
ought not to be here, but I just couldn't help it! After you were so
noble! And it won't matter, for I'm going in just a minute."
Severne cast his mind back in review of his noble acts. "What is it,
Lucy?" he inquired.
"As if you could ask!" she cried. "I never knew of a man's doing so
tactful and graceful and _beautiful_ a thing in my life! And I don't
care a bit, and I believe you were right, after all."
"Right about what?" he begged, getting more and more bewildered.
"About the realism, of course."
She looked up at him again, pointing out her chin in the most adorable
fashion. Even serious-minded men have moments of lucidity. Severne had
one now.
"Oh, no, you mustn't, Bob--dear!" she cried, blushing.
"But really, Bob," she went on, after a moment, "even if realism is all
right, you must admit that your last story is the best thing you ever
wrote."
"Why, yes, I do think so," he agreed, wondering what that had to do with
it.
"I'm so glad you do. Do you know, Bob," she continued, happily, "I read
it all through before I noticed whose it was. And I kept saying to
myself, 'I _do_ wish Bob could see this story. I'm sure it would
convince him that imagination is better than realism'; for really, Bob,"
she cried, with enthusiasm, "it is the best imaginative story I ever
read. And when I got to the end, and saw the signature, and realised
that you had deserted your literary principles just for my sake, and
had actually gone to work and written such a _splendid_ imaginative
story after all you had said; and then, too, when I realised what a
delicate way you had taken to let me know--because, of course, I never
read that magazine of Brown's--oh, Bob!" she concluded, quite out of
breath.
Severne hesitated for almost a minute. He saw his duty plainly; he was
serious-minded; he had no sense of humour. Then she looked up at him as
before, pointing her chin out in the most adorable fashion.
"Oh, Bob! Again! I really don't think you ought to!"
And Art; oh, where was it?
VI
THE PROSPECTOR
In the old mining days out West the law of the survival of the fittest
held good, and he who survived had to be very fit indeed. There were a
number of ways of not surviving. One of them was to die. And there were
a number of ways of being very fit; such as holding an accurate gun or
an even temper, being blessed with industry or a vital-tearing ambition,
knowing the game thoroughly or understanding the great American
expedient of bluff. In any case the man who survived must see his end
clearly through that end's means. Whether it were gold, poker, or life,
he must cling to his purpose with a bulldog tenacity that no amount of
distraction could loosen. Otherwise, as has been said, he died, or
begged, or robbed, or became a tramp, or committed the suicide of
horse-stealing, or just plain drifted back East broken--a shameful
thing.
Why Peter lived on was patent enough to anyone. He was harmless,
good-natured, and, in the estimation of hard-hewn men, just "queer"
enough to be a little pathetic. Anyone who had once caught a fair look
at his narrow, hatchet face with the surprised blue eyes and the
loose-falling, sparse light hair; or had enjoyed his sweet, rare smile
as he deprecatingly answered a remark before effacing himself; or had
chanced on the fortune of asking him for some trifling favour to meet
his eager and pleased rendering of it: none of these hypothetical
individuals, and that meant about everyone who came in contact with
Peter at all, could have imagined anybody, let alone themselves, harming
a hair of his head. But how he continued to be a prospector remained a
puzzle. The life is hard, full of privations, sown with difficulties,
clamant for technical knowledge, exacting of physical strength,
dependent on shrewdness and knowledge of the world. Peter had none of
these, not even in the smallest degree. There was also, of course, the
instinct. This Peter did possess. He could follow his leads of crumbling
brown rock with that marvellous intuitive knowledge which is so
important an element in the equipment of your true prospector. But it is
only an element. By all the rules of the game Peter should have failed
long since, should have "cashed in and quit" some five years back; and
still he grubbed away cheerfully at divers mountains and many ranges. He
had not succeeded; still, he had not failed.