Shandygaff | Page 4

to refined
surroundings all his life. And now he was doomed to plumb the
sub-fuse depths of New Utrecht!
Stockton could not even put him up at a club, as he belonged to none
but the golf club, which had no quarters for the entertainment of
out-of-town guests. Every detail of his home life was of the shabby,
makeshift sort which is so dear to one's self but needs so much
explaining to outsiders. He even thought with a pang of Lorna Doone,
the fat, plebeian little mongrel terrier which had meals with the family
and slept with the children at night. Verne was probably used to
staghounds or Zeppelin hounds or something of the sort, he thought
humorously. English poets wear an iris halo in the eyes of humble
American reviewers. Those godlike creatures have walked on Fleet
Street, have bought books on Paternoster Row, have drunk

half-and-half and eaten pigeon pie at the Salutation and Cat, and have
probably roared with laughter over some alehouse jest of Mr.
Chesterton.
Stockton remembered the photograph Verne had sent him, showing a
lean, bearded face with wistful dark eyes against a background of old
folios. What would that Olympian creature think of the drudge of New
Utrecht, a mere reviewer who sold his editorial copies to pay for shag
tobacco!
Well, thought Stockton, as he crossed the bridge, rejoicing not at all in
the splendid towers of Manhattan, candescent in the April sun, they had
done all they could. He had left his wife telephoning frantically to
grocers, cleaning women, and florists. He himself had stopped at the
poultry market on his way to the trolley to order two plump fowls for
dinner, and had pinched them with his nervous, ink-stained fingers, as
ordered by Mrs. Stockton, to test their tenderness. They would send the
three younger children to their grandmother, to be interned there until
the storm had blown over; and Mrs. Stockton was going to do what she
could to take down the rotogravure pictures from the walls of what the
boys fondly called the Stockton Art Gallery. He knew that Verne had
children of his own: perhaps he would be amused rather than dismayed
by the incongruities of their dismantled guestroom. Presumably, the
poet was aver here for a lecture tour--he would be entertained and fêted
everywhere by the cultured rich, for the appreciation which Stockton
had started by his modest little essay had grown to the dimension of a
fad.
He looked again at the telegram which had shattered the simple routine
of his unassuming life. "On board Celtic dock this afternoon three
o'clock hope see you. Verne." He sneezed sharply, as was his
unconscious habit when nervous. In desperation he stopped at a
veterinary's office on Frankfort Street, and left orders to have the
doctor's assistant call for Lorna Doone and take her away, to be kept
until sent for. Then he called at a wine merchant's and bought three
bottles of claret of a moderate vintage. Verne had said something about
claret in one of his playful letters. Unfortunately, the man's grandfather

was a Frenchman, and undoubtedly he knew all about wines.
Stockton sneezed so loudly and so often at his desk that morning that
all his associates knew something was amiss. The Sunday editor, who
had planned to borrow fifty cents from him at lunch time, refrained
from doing so, in a spirit of pure Christian brotherhood. Even Bob
Bolles, the hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-week conductor of "The Electric
Chair," the paper's humorous column, came in to see what was up.
Bob's "contribs" had been generous that morning, and he was in
unusually good humour for a humourist.
"What's the matter, Stock," he inquired genially, "Got a cold? Or has
George Moore sent in a new novel?"
Stockton looked up sadly from the proofs he was correcting. How
could he confess his paltry problem to this debonair creature who wore
life lightly, like a flower, and played at literature as he played tennis,
with swerve and speed? Bolles was a bachelor, the author of a
successful comedy, and a member of the smart literary club which was
over the reviewer's horizon, although in the great ocean of letters the
humourist was no more than a surf bather. Stockton shook his head. No
one but a married man and an unsuccessful author could understand his
trouble.
"A touch of asthma," he fibbed shyly. "I always have it at this time of
year."
"Come and have some lunch," said the other. "We'll go up to the club
and have some ale. That'll put you on your feet."
"Thanks, ever so much," said Stockton, "but I can't do it to-day. Got to
make up my page. I tell you what, though--"
He hesitated, and flushed a little.
"Say it," said Bolles kindly.