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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
largely in her fathers image, with a few
unmistakable lines and touches of color from the image of Mr. Butler. He
listened eagerly, with receptive ears, lying on his back and looking up
and joying in each movement of her lips as she talked. But his brain was
not receptive. There was nothing alluring in the pictures she drew, and
he was aware of a dull pain of disappointment and of a sharper ache of
love for her. In all she said there was no mention of his writing, and
the manuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected on the ground.
At last, in a pause, he glanced at the sun, measured its height above the
horizon, and suggested his manuscripts by picking them up.
"I had forgotten," she said quickly. "And I am so anxious to hear."
He read to her a story, one that he flattered himself was among his very
best. He called it "The Wine of Life," and the wine of it, that had
stolen into his brain when he wrote it, stole into his brain now as he
read it. There was a certain magic in the original conception, and he
had adorned it with more magic of phrase and touch. All the old fire and
passion with which he had written it were reborn in him, and he was
swayed and swept away so that he was blind and deaf to the faults of it.
But it was not so with Ruth. Her trained ear detected the weaknesses and
exaggerations, the overemphasis of the tyro, and she was instantly aware
each time the sentence-rhythm tripped and faltered. She scarcely noted
the rhythm otherwise, except when it became too pompous, at which moments
she was disagreeably impressed with its amateurishness. That was her
final judgment on the story as a whole--amateurish, though she did not
tell him so. Instead, when he had done, she pointed out the minor flaws
and said that she liked the story.
But he was disappointed. Her criticism was just. He acknowledged that,
but he had a feeling that he was not sharing his work with her for the
purpose of schoolroom correction. The details did not matter. They
could take care of themselves. He could mend them, he could learn to
mend them. Out of life he had captured something big and attempted to
imprison it in the story. It was the big thing out of life he had read
to her, not sentence-structure and semicolons. He wanted her to feel
with him this big thing that was his, that he had seen with his own eyes,
grappled with his own brain, and placed there on the page with his own
hands in printed words. Well, he had failed, was his secret decision.
Perhaps the editors were right. He had felt the big thing, but he had
failed to transmute it. He concealed his disappointment, and joined so
easily with her in her criticism that she did not realize that deep down
in him was running a strong undercurrent of disagreement.
"This next thing Ive called The Pot," he said, unfolding the
manuscript. "It has been refused by four or five magazines now, but
still I think it is good. In fact, I dont know what to think of it,
except that Ive caught something there. Maybe it wont affect you as it
does me. Its a short thing--only two thousand words."
"How dreadful!" she cried, when he had finished. "It is horrible,
unutterably horrible!"
He noted her pale face, her eyes wide and tense, and her clenched hands,
with secret satisfaction. He had succeeded. He had communicated the
stuff of fancy and feeling from out of his brain. It had struck home. No
matter whether she liked it or not, it had gripped her and mastered her,
made her sit there and listen and forget details.
"It is life," he said, "and life is not always beautiful. And yet,
perhaps because I am strangely made, I find something beautiful there. It
seems to me that the beauty is tenfold enhanced because it is there--"
"But why couldnt the poor woman--" she broke in disconnectedly. Then
she left the revolt of her thought unexpressed to cry out: "Oh! It is
degrading! It is not nice! It is nasty!"
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