a comic author of deserved repute was lodging at the beginning of this month in a house with broken windows, in a court off the gray’s inn road.
he had undertaken to produce a piece of humorous fiction to the length of 75,000 words.
the comic author, a man of experience (for this was his forty-seventh book), had sat down to begin his task. he calculated how long it would last him. he was good for 1500 words a day, if they were short words, and even when doom or accident compelled him to the use of long ones he could manage from 1163 to 1247.
the specification was lucid and simple. there was to be nothing in the work that could offend the tenderness of the patriot nor the ease of good manners, let alone the canons of decency and right living. a powerful love interest which he was compelled under clause vii of his contract to introduce immediately after each of the wittiest passages had been deftly woven into the fabric, and (as was clearly laid down in clause ix) no matter already published might appear in those virgin pages. if any did so, be sure it was so veiled by the tranposition of phrases and[114] other slight changes of manner as to escape the publisher’s eye.
so far so good. but upon the 13th of august, a day of great beauty, but of excessive heat, the comic author, sitting at his desk, was struck by apollo, the god and patron of literary men.
it was the custom of the comic author, who was a teetotaler and a vegetarian, to wear a soft shirt entirely made of wool and devoid of a collar, which ornament, he was assured by members of the faculty, exercised a prejudicial effect upon the health. it was equally his custom to compose his famous periods with his back turned to the light. this habit he had also adopted at the dictation of the faculty, who had proved to him beyond possibility of refutation that the human eye is damaged by nothing more than by reading or writing with one’s face towards the window. with his back, therefore, to the window in his room (it was unbroken), it was the comic artist’s wont to sit at a plain and dirty small deal table and express his mind upon paper, his head reposing upon his left hand, his fountain pen grasped firmly in his right, and his lips and tongue following the movement of his nib as it slowly crawled over the page before him.
the comic author (again under the impulse of the faculty) kept his hair cut short at the back; to cut it short all over was more than his profession would allow. you have, then, the comic author sitting at his desk with his back to the unbroken[115] window, his neck exposed from the shortness of hair and the absence of collar, under the brilliant light of the 13th of august.
a fourth condition must now be considered: by some physical action never properly explained, glass, though it may act as a screen to radiant heat, will also store and intensify the action of sunlight. so that anything placed immediately beneath it upon a bright day will (it is notorious) suffer or enjoy an effect of heat far greater than that discoverable upon its outer side. the common greenhouse is a proof of this. the comic author was therefore in a situation to receive the full power of apollo. it took the form of a sunstroke, and with his story uncompleted, nay, in the midst of an unfinished phrase, he fell helpless.
his landlady, summoning a neighbour to her aid (for the charwoman never stayed after ten o’clock, and it was already noon), dragged him to his room and sent for the parish doctor, who, after a brief examination of the patient, declared him to be in some danger; but the poor fellow was not so far gone as to forget his obligations, and he murmured a few words which, after some difficulty, they understood to be the address of the publisher whom he would not for worlds have disappointed. imagining this address to be in some way connected with a pecuniary advantage to herself, the landlady sent to it immediate word of his accident, and within half an hour a motor-car of surpassing brilliance and immense power was purring at the door. from this[116] vehicle descended in a gentlemanly but commanding manner one who seemed far too great for the humble lodging which he entered. and the doctor, leaving his patient for a moment, was pleased to receive the visitor in a lower room, while the landlady, who was also interested in the event, listened with due courtesy in the passage without.
the publisher (for it was he) learned with increasing concern the desperate position of the comic author, and while he was naturally chiefly concerned with the financial loss the little accident might involve, it should be remembered to his credit that he made inquiries as to the state of the patient and even asked whether he suffered physical pain. upon hearing that the comic author, though fuddled by cerebral congestion, did undoubtedly suffer the visitor’s brow perceptibly darkened; he pointed out to the doctor that if this accident had but happened ten days later it would have had consequences much less serious to himself.
the doctor was eager to point out that the fault was none of his. he had come the moment he had heard of the case, and, moreover, sunstroke was a disease which betrayed itself by no premonitory symptoms. he assured the publisher that if the comic author’s survival could in any way be of service to the firm he would do everything in his power to save his life.
the publisher replied, a little testily, that the value of the comic author’s survival would entirely[117] depend upon the talent remaining to him after his recovery, and pointed out what the doctor had overlooked, that a sensational death, if it received due recognition from the press, often caused the works of the deceased to sell for a week or more with exceptional rapidity.
he next asked whether the comic author had not left manuscripts, and the landlady was pleased to bring him not only all that lay upon the deal table, but much more beside, and all his private correspondence as well, which she found where she had often perused it, in various receptacles of her lodger’s room.
the publisher upon receiving these seemed to feel his position less acutely, and sending the sheets out at once to his secretary in the car (with instructions that those stories or sketches hitherto unpublished should be carefully noted) he resumed his conversation with the medical man. he was first careful to ask how long cases of this sort when they proved fatal commonly endured, and expressed some relief at hearing that certain benignant exceptions had lingered for several days. he was further assured that lucid intervals might be counted on, and in general he discovered that the lines upon which the story had been intended to proceed might be recovered from the lips of the dying man before he should exchange the warm and active existence of this world for the unknown beyond.
he re-entered his motor-car, therefore, with a[118] much lighter heart, promising to send an expert stenographer who should take down the last and necessary instructions from the lips of genius. the motor-car then left that court off the gray’s inn road where the tragedy was in progress, and swept westward to the larger atmosphere of st. james’s.
at this point again, when the activity and decision of one master brain seemed to have saved all, fate intervened. the expert stenographer, having lacked regular employment for nearly eighteen weeks, was so overjoyed at learning the news and the price attached to his immediate services, that he could not resist cheerful refreshment and conversation with friends in celebration of the occasion. he reached the gray’s inn road, therefore, somewhat late in the day; he was further delayed by a difficulty in discovering the house with broken windows which had been indicated to him, and when he entered it was to receive the unwelcome news that the comic author was dead.
the doctor, whose duties had already for some hours called him to other scenes where it was his blessed mission to alleviate human suffering, was not present to confirm the sad event, and the expert stenographer, who could not believe that he had been baulked of so unexpected a piece of fortune, insisted upon proof which the landlady was unable to afford. he even sat for some few moments by the side of the poor lifeless clay in the vain hope that some further indication as to the general trend[119] of the book might fall from the now nescient lips. but they were dumb.
how many consequent misfortunes depended upon this untoward accident the reader may easily guess. the landlady, to whom the comic author had owed thirty shillings for a month’s rent and service, was in a very natural anxiety for some days, an anxiety which was increased by the discovery that her former lodger had no friends, while his few relatives seemed each to have, in their own small way, claims against him of a pecuniary nature.
his dress clothes, upon which she had confidently counted, turned out to belong to a costumier of the neighbourhood, who loudly complained that he had had no notice of this intempestive demise, and was at least a sovereign out of pocket by so awkward a conjunction; nor was he appreciably relieved when it was pointed out to him that the suit would at least carry no contagious disease.
the stenographer, as i have already indicated, lost the remuneration dependent upon his expert services, and was further at the charge of the refreshment which he had foolishly consumed in anticipation of that gain.
the doctor, indeed, was not disappointed, for he had expected nothing, but by far the worst case was that of the generous and wealthy man who had been at all the risk of advertising, partly printing, and already ordering the binding of the work which he now found himself at a loss to produce.
[120]there is no moral to this simple story: it is one of the many tragedies which daily occur in this great city, and from what i know of the comic author’s character, he would have been the last to have inflicted so much discomfort had it in any way depended upon his own volition; but these things are beyond human ordinance.
