“it won’t do — oh, he let him down as gently as possible; but it appears it simply won’t do.”
doctor bob imparted the ineluctable fact to bernald while the two men, accidentally meeting at their club a few nights later, sat together over the dinner they had immediately agreed to consume in company.
bernald had left portchester the morning after his strange discovery, and he and bob wade had not seen each other since. and now bernald, moved by an irresistible instinct of postponement, had waited for his companion to bring up winterman’s name, and had even executed several conversational diversions in the hope of delaying its mention. for how could one talk of winterman with the thought of pellerin swelling one’s breast?
“yes; the very day howland got back from kenosha i brought the manuscript to town, and got him to read it. and yesterday evening i nailed him, and dragged an answer out of him.”
“then howland hasn’t seen winterman yet?”
“no. he said: ‘before you let him loose on me i’ll go over the stuff, and see if it’s at all worth while.’”
bernald drew a freer breath. “and he found it wasn’t?”
“between ourselves, he found it was of no account at all. queer, isn’t it, when the man . . . but of course literature’s another proposition. howland says it’s one of the cases where an idea might seem original and striking if one didn’t happen to be able to trace its descent. and this is straight out of bosh — by pellerin. . . . yes: pellerin. it seems that everything in the article that isn’t pure nonsense is just pellerinism. howland thinks poor winterman must have been tremendously struck by pellerin’s writings, and have lived too much out of the world to know that they’ve become the text-books of modern thought. otherwise, of course, he’d have taken more trouble to disguise his plagiarisms.”
“i see,” bernald mused. “yet you say there is an original element?”
“yes; but unluckily it’s no good.”
“it’s not — conceivably — in any sense a development of pellerin’s idea: a logical step farther?”
“logical? howland says it’s twaddle at white heat.”
bernald sat silent, divided between the fierce satisfaction of seeing the interpreter rush upon his fate, and the despair of knowing that the state of mind he represented was indestructible. then both emotions were swept away on a wave of pure joy, as he reflected that now, at last, howland wade had given him back john pellerin.
the possession was one he did not mean to part with lightly; and the dread of its being torn from him constrained him to extraordinary precautions.
“you’ve told winterman, i suppose? how did he take it?”
“why, unexpectedly, as he does most things. you can never tell which way he’ll jump. i thought he’d take a high tone, or else laugh it off; but he did neither. he seemed awfully cast down. i wished myself well out of the job when i saw how cut up he was.” bernald thrilled at the words. pellerin had shared his pang, then — the “old woe of the world” at the perpetuity of human dulness!
“but what did he say to the charge of plagiarism — if you made it?”
“oh, i told him straight out what howland said. i thought it fairer. and his answer to that was the rummest part of all.”
“what was it?” bernald questioned, with a tremor.
“he said: ‘that’s queer, for i’ve never read pellerin.’”
bernald drew a deep breath of ecstasy. “well — and i suppose you believed him?”
“i believed him, because i know him. but the public won’t — the critics won’t. and if it’s a pure coincidence it’s just as bad for him as if it were a straight steal — isn’t it?”
bernald sighed his acquiescence.
“it bothers me awfully,” wade continued, knitting his kindly brows, “because i could see what a blow it was to him. he’s got to earn his living, and i don’t suppose he knows how to do anything else. at his age it’s hard to start fresh. i put that to howland — asked him if there wasn’t a chance he might do better if he only had a little encouragement. i can’t help feeling he’s got the essential thing in him. but of course i’m no judge when it comes to books. and howland says it would be cruel to give him any hope.” wade paused, turned his wineglass about under a meditative stare, and then leaned across the table toward bernald. “look here — do you know what i’ve proposed to winterman? that he should come to town with me to-morrow and go in the evening to hear howland lecture to the uplift club. they’re to meet at mrs. beecher bain’s, and howland is to repeat the lecture that he gave the other day before the pellerin society at kenosha. it will give winterman a chance to get some notion of what pellerin was: he’ll get it much straighter from howland than if he tried to plough through pellerin’s books. and then afterward — as if accidentally — i thought i might bring him and howland together. if howland could only see him and hear him talk, there’s no knowing what might come of it. he couldn’t help feeling the man’s force, as we do; and he might give him a pointer — tell him what line to take. anyhow, it would please winterman, and take the edge off his disappointment. i saw that as soon as i proposed it.”
“some one who’s never heard of pellerin?”
mrs. beecher bain, large, smiling, diffuse, reached out parenthetically from the incoming throng on her threshold to waylay bernald with the question as he was about to move past her in the wake of his companion.
“oh, keep straight on, mr. winterman!” she interrupted herself to call after the latter. “into the back drawing-room, please! and remember, you’re to sit next to me — in the corner on the left, close under the platform.”
she renewed her interrogative clutch on bernald’s sleeve. “most curious! doctor wade has been telling me all about him — how remarkable you all think him. and it’s actually true that he’s never heard of pellerin? of course as soon as doctor wade told me that, i said ‘bring him!’ it will be so extraordinarily interesting to watch the first impression. — yes, do follow him, dear mr. bernald, and be sure that you and he secure the seats next to me. of course alice fosdick insists on being with us. she was wild with excitement when i told her she was to meet some one who’d never heard of pellerin!”
on the indulgent lips of mrs. beecher bain conjecture speedily passed into affirmation; and as bernald’s companion, broad and shaggy in his visibly new evening clothes, moved down the length of the crowded rooms, he was already, to the ladies drawing aside their skirts to let him pass, the interesting huron of the fable.
how far he was aware of the character ascribed to him it was impossible for bernald to discover. he was as unconscious as a tree or a cloud, and his observer had never known any one so alive to human contacts and yet so secure from them. but the scene was playing such a lively tune on bernald’s own sensibilities that for the moment he could not adjust himself to the probable effect it produced on his companion. the young man, of late, had made but rare appearances in the group of which mrs. beecher bain was one of the most indefatigable hostesses, and the uplift club the chief medium of expression. to a critic, obliged by his trade to cultivate convictions, it was the essence of luxury to leave them at home in his hours of ease; and bernald gave his preference to circles in which less finality of judgment prevailed, and it was consequently less embarrassing to be caught without an opinion.
but in his fresher days he had known the spell of the uplift club and the thrill of moving among the emancipated; and he felt an odd sense of rejuvenation as he looked at the rows of faces packed about the embowered platform from which howland wade was presently to hand down the eternal verities. many of these countenances belonged to the old days, when the gospel of pellerin was unknown, and it required considerable intellectual courage to avow one’s acceptance of the very doctrines he had since demolished. the latter moral revolution seemed to have been accepted as submissively as a change in hair-dressing; and it even struck bernald that, in the case of many of the assembled ladies, their convictions were rather newer than their clothes.
one of the most interesting examples of this facility of adaptation was actually, in the person of miss alice fosdick, brushing his elbow with exotic amulets, and enveloping him in arabian odours, as she leaned forward to murmur her sympathetic sense of the situation. miss fosdick, who was one of the most advanced exponents of pellerinism, had large eyes and a plaintive mouth, and bernald had always fancied that she might have been pretty if she had not been perpetually explaining things.
“yes, i know — isabella bain told me all about him. (he can’t hear us, can he?) and i wonder if you realize how remarkably interesting it is that we should have such an opportunity now — i mean the opportunity to see the impression of pellerinism on a perfectly fresh mind. (you must introduce him as soon as the lecture’s over.) i explained that to isabella as soon as she showed me doctor wade’s note. of course you see why, don’t you?” bernald made a faint motion of acquiescence, which she instantly swept aside. “at least i think i can make you see why. (if you’re sure he can’t hear?) why, it’s just this — pellerinism is in danger of becoming a truism. oh, it’s an awful thing to say! but then i’m not afraid of saying awful things! i rather believe it’s my mission. what i mean is, that we’re getting into the way of taking pellerin for granted — as we do the air we breathe. we don’t sufficiently lead our conscious life in him — we’re gradually letting him become subliminal.” she swayed closer to the young man, and he saw that she was making a graceful attempt to throw her explanatory net over his companion, who, evading mrs. bain’s hospitable signal, had cautiously wedged himself into a seat between bernald and the wall.
“did you hear what i was saying, mr. winterman? (yes, i know who you are, of course!) oh, well, i don’t really mind if you did. i was talking about you — about you and pellerin. i was explaining to mr. bernald that what we need at this very minute is a pellerin revival; and we need some one like you — to whom his message comes as a wonderful new interpretation of life — to lead the revival, and rouse us out of our apathy. . . .
“you see,” she went on winningly, “it’s not only the big public that needs it (of course their pellerin isn’t ours!) it’s we, his disciples, his interpreters, who discovered him and gave him to the world — we, the chosen people, the custodians of the sacred books, as howland wade calls us — it’s we, who are in perpetual danger of sinking back into the old stagnant ideals, and practising the seven deadly virtues; it’s we who need to count our mercies, and realize anew what he’s done for us, and what we ought to do for him! and it’s for that reason that i urged mr. wade to speak here, in the very inner sanctuary of pellerinism, exactly as he would speak to the uninitiated — to repeat, simply, his kenosha lecture, ‘what pellerinism means’; and we ought all, i think, to listen to him with the hearts of little children — just as you will, mr. winterman — as if he were telling us new things, and we — ”
“alice, dear — ” mrs. bain murmured with a deprecating gesture; and howland wade, emerging between the palms, took the centre of the platform.
a pang of commiseration shot through bernald as he saw him there, so innocent and so exposed. his plump pulpy body, which made his evening dress fall into intimate and wrapper-like folds, was like a wide surface spread to the shafts of irony; and the mild ripples of his voice seemed to enlarge the vulnerable area as he leaned forward, poised on confidential finger-tips, to say persuasively: “let me try to tell you what pellerinism means.”
bernald moved restlessly in his seat. he had the obscure sense of being a party to something not wholly honourable. he ought not to have come; he ought not to have let his companion come. yet how could he have done otherwise? john pellerin’s secret was his own. as long as he chose to remain john winterman it was no one’s business to gainsay him; and bernald’s scruples were really justifiable only in respect of his own presence on the scene. but even in this connection he ceased to feel them as soon as howland wade began to speak.
