Chapter XXIV

About a decade later, Fidu came running up to Gud. For a moment he was too excited to speak and could only bark, but when he again found his articulation the Underdog said: "Oh master, come quick, for there is a poor beggar sitting over there on the steps of the almshouse and holding out his hat for alms; but few give to him and he is weak and starving."

Gud followed Fidu and came to the beggar who was poor and wretched indeed. And Gud said to him: "I will not reveal my lack of intelligence by dropping coins into your hat, for I know as well as you do that indiscriminate charity does not alleviate poverty. So throw your coppers into the gutter and put your hat on your head, while we discuss the cause of your impecunity."

The beggar discarded his few coins and placed his hat on his head.

"Now," began Gud, "let us consider your situation intelligently. There is usually some relation between cause and effect. The effect in your case is poverty complicated by charity. I could destroy the effect by a miracle and make you rich, but I have tried tampering with the law of cause and effect, and I find it dangerous business. It is best to change the cause and let the law change the effect.

"Quite right you are, kind sir," agreed the beggar.

"What was the cause of your poverty?" asked Gud. "Was it indolence, or drink, or--"

"No, no," interrupted the beggar, "none of those common things. My poverty was caused by the ruin of my profession."

"What was your profession?" demanded Gud.

The beggar straightened up as proudly as he could and said: "I was a novelist!"

"Yes," said Gud, "Go on."

"And my profession has been blasted and ruined utterly."

"And how did that happen?"

"I do not know how it happened," replied the beggar, a baffled look coming into his eyes; "worse yet not even the critics know--but it happened--it happened--the impossible happened."

"Come, come," called Gud, shaking him by the shoulder, "you are babbling, speak up, what happened?"

The beggar looked up at Gud, a glint of horror in his eyes, and murmured slowly: "Someone destroyed the eternal triangle.... There can never be any more novels, ... nor plays ... nor movies ... nor realism ... nor romance ... nor royalties ... nor dinners at the Alhambra with Gwendolyn ... nor.... Please sir, just a copper, I am old and lame."

"Cheer up," encouraged Gud, "I feel it my duty to help you. Was this triangle that seemed to have been the life of your business equilateral or isosceles?"

"Neither," replied the beggar, now with the bearing of a true novelist, "it was the eternal triangle which is a plot of a certain very literary relation of the sexes, in which three individuals form the angles."

"Why just three?" asked Gud.

"It seems that three sell best," said the novelist. "Two do not interest the reader, and four, five or more tire him; three characters sell best, which is why such a triangle is called eternal."

"I understand that three elements make the best triangle--and one shouldn't fool too much with mathematics. But what about these sexes?"

"It makes no difference," replied the beggar, "how the sexes are arranged, just so both sexes are represented on the triangle."

"Both sexes," repeated Gud--"then you only have two sexes?"

"Certainly, three characters of two sexes form the eternal triangle, any way you arrange them; isn't that perfectly simple?"

"It is simple, more simple than perfect. Now, pick up the coins you cast into the gutter and buy yourself a pencil and a pad and start to work. You will find eternal triangles have become as plentiful as lies, and what is more important, perfectly moral."

"You speak," replied the novelist, "with authority, and my understanding will come, no doubt, with inspiration. I thank you sir, especially for your hopeful words about the possibilities of fiction becoming moral. You can not realize how the necessity of dealing with immorality wears on the conscience of a novelist; nor how those hypocritical critics revile us by insinuating that we write of immorality because we live it. We write of it, sir, because the editors and the public demand it, and for no other reason. If immorality in fiction were not profitable we would not write at all. Again I thank you sir, and good day to you."