CHAPTER XII

THE QUEEREST YARN IN THE WORLD

The way the story leaked out was this: A young Irishman from Sligo, as he blushingly admitted, whose face was a passport of honesty stamped by nature herself, had served two customers over the bar of the old chop-house across the street from the opera-house. To him they were just two throats athirst; nothing more. They ordered drinks, and this first attracted his attention, for they agreed on cognac. Now, brandy after dinner is not an unusual drink, but this pair had asked for a large glass. Old brandy was given them, and such huge swallows followed that the bartender was compelled by his conscience to ring up one dollar for the two drinks. It was paid, and another round commanded, as if the two men were hurried, as indeed they were, for it was during an entr'acte at the opera that they had slipped out for liquid refreshments. Against the bar of the establishment a dozen or more humans were ranged, and the noise was deafening, but not so great as to prevent the Irishman from catching scraps of the conversation dropped by the brandy-drinkers. Their talk went something like this, and, although Michael had little schooling, his memory was excellent, and, being a decent chap, there is no need to impeach the veracity of his report.

The taller man, neither young, neither old, and, like his friend, without a grey hair, burst out laughing after the disappearance of the second cognac. "I say, old pal, who was it wrote that brandy was for heroes? Kipling? What?" The other man, stockily built, foreign-looking, answered in a contemptuous tone ("sneering-like," as my informant put it):

"Where's your memory? Gone to rack and ruin like your ideals, I suppose! Kipling! What do such youngsters know? Doctor Johnson or Walter Savage Landor was the originator of the lying epigram; after them Byron gobbled it up, as he gobbled up most of the good things of his generation, and after him, the deluge of this mediocre century. When I told Byron this, at Milan, I think it was, he vowed me an ass. Now, it was Doctor Johnson."

"Cheer up, it's not so bad. I remember once at Paris, or was it Vienna, you said the same thing about----" and here followed a strange name.

"And, anyhow, you are mixing dates; Landor followed Byron, please, but I suppose he said it first. I told Metternich of your bon-mot, and, egad! he laughed, did that old parchment face. As for Bonaparte, upstart and charlatan, he was too selfish to smile at anybody's wit but his own, and little he had. Do you remember the Congress of Vienna?"

"Do I--1815?"

"Some such year. Or was it in 1750 when we saw Casanova at Venice? Well--" At this point the alarm-signal went off, and the mob went over to the opera. The young bartender's heart was beating so fast that it "leapt up in his bosom," as he described it. Two middle-aged men talking of a century ago as calmly as if they had spoken of yesterday flustered him a bit. He heard the dates. He noticed the perfectly natural manner in which events were mentioned. There was no mystification. For the first time in his life Michael was sorry the between-act pause was so short, and he longed for the next one, though fatigued from the labours of the last. Would these gentlemen return for more cognac? In an hour they came back with the crowd, again drank old five-star brandy, and gossiped about a lot of incomprehensible things that had evidently taken place in the sixteenth or seventeenth century; at least, Michael overheard them disputing dates, and one of them bet the other that the big fire in London occurred in 1666, and referred the question to Mr. Peppers, or Peps--some such name.

"Ah, poor old Pepys," sighed the dark man; "if he had only taken better care of himself he might have been with us to-day instead of mouldering in his grave."

"Oh, well! you can't expect every one to believe in your Struldbrug cure," replied his friend dreamily. "Even Her Majesty, Queen Anne, would not take your advice, though Mrs. Masham and Mr. Harley begged her to."

"Yes, about the only thing they ever agreed upon in their life. Where is Harley to-day?"

"Oh, I suppose in London," carelessly replied the other. "For a young bird of several centuries he's looking as fit as a fiddle; but see here, Swift, old boy, your bogy-tales are worrying our young friend," and with that Michael says they pointed to him, heartily laughed, and went away.

He crossed himself, and for a moment the electric lights burned dim, so it seemed to the superstitious laddie-buck. But he had had a good chance to study the odd pair. They were not, as he repeated, old men, neither were they youthful. Say thirty-five or forty years, and he noticed this time the freshness of their complexions, the brilliancy of their eyes. They were just gentlemen in evening clothes and had run across Broadway without overcoats, a reprehensible act even for a young man. But they were healthy, self-contained, and hard-headed--they took, according to the statistician behind the bar, about a quart of brandy between them, and were as fresh as daisies after the fiery stuff. Who were they? "Blagueurs," said I, after I had carefully deciphered the runic inscriptions in Michael's mind. (This was a week later.) Two fellows out on a lark, bent on scaring a poor Irish boy. But what was Swift, or Queen Anne, or Metternich, or Mr. Harley to him? Just words. Bonaparte he might be expected to remember. It was curious all the same that he could reel off the unusual names of Mrs. Masham and Casanova. The deuce! was there something in the horrid tale? Two immortals stalking the globe when their very bones should have been dissolved into everlasting dust! Two wraiths revisiting the glimpses of the moon--hold on! Struldbrug! Who was Struldbrug? What his cure? I tried to summon from the vasty deep all the worthies of the eighteenth century. Struldbrug. Swift. Struldbrug. Sir William Temple. Struldbrug--ah! by the great horn spoon! The Struldbrugs of the Island of Laputa! Gulliver's hideous immortals--and then the horror of the story enveloped me, but, despite my aversion to meeting the dead, I determined to live in the chop-house till I saw face to face these ghosts from a vanished past. My curiosity was soon gratified, as the sequel will show.

Just one week after the appearance of this pair I stood talking to the Irish barman, when I saw him start and pale. Ha! I thought, here are my men. I was not mistaken. Two well-built and well-groomed gentlemen asked for brandy, and swallowed it in silence. They were polite enough to avoid my rather rude stare. No wonder I stared. They recalled familiar faces, yet I couldn't at once place the owners. Presently they went over to a table and seated themselves. Loudly calling for a mug of musty ale, I boldly put myself at an adjacent spot, and continued my spying tactics. The friends were soon in hot dispute. It concerned the literary reputation of Balzac. I sat with my mouth wide open.

The elder of the pair, the one called Swift, snapped at his friend: "Zounds, sir! you and your Balzac. Hogwash and roosters in rut--that's about his capacity. Of course, when your own dull stuff appeared he praised you for the sake of the paradox. You moderns! Balzac the father of French fiction! You the father, or is it grandfather, of psychology--a nice crew! That boy Maupassant had more stuff in him than a wilderness of Zolas, Goncourts, and the rest. He is almost as amusing as Paul de Kock--" The other, the little man, bristled with rage.

"Because you wrote a popular boy's book, full of filth and pessimism, you think you know all literature. And didn't you copy Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyagers, and Defoe? You satirise every one except God, whom you spare because you don't know him. I don't care much for Balzac, though I'm free to confess he did treat me handsomely in praising my Chartreuse----"

"Good God!" I groaned, "it's Stendhal, otherwise Henry Beyle, laying down the law to the tremendous author of Gulliver's Travels." And yet neither man looked the accepted portrait of himself. Above all, no Struldbrug moles were in view. I forgot my former fear, being interested in the dispute of these two giant writers who are more akin artistically than ever taken cognisance of by criticism. Dead? What did I care! They were surely alive now, and I was not dreaming. I didn't need to pinch myself, for my eyes and ears reported the occurrence. A miracle? Why not. Miracles are daily, if we but knew it. Living is the most wonderful of all miracles. The discussion proceeded. Swift spoke tersely, just as he wrote:

"Enough, friend Beyle. You are a charlatan. Your knowledge of the human heart is on a par with your taste in literature. You abominate Flaubert because his prose is more rhythmic than yours."

"I vow I protest," interrupted Stendhal.

"No matter. I'm right. Mérimée, your pupil, is your master at every point."

I could no longer contain myself, and, bursting with curiosity, I cried:

"Pardon me, dear masters, for interrupting such a luminous altercation, but, notwithstanding the queerness of the situation, may I not say that I meet in the flesh, Jonathan Swift and Henry Beyle-Stendhal?"

"Discovered, by the eternal Jehovah!" roared Swift, adding an obscene phrase, which I discreetly omit. Stendhal took the incident coolly.

"As I am rediscovered about every decade by ambitious young critics anxious to achieve reputations, I am not disturbed by our young friend here. Your apology, monsieur, is accepted. Pray, join us in a fresh drink and conversation." But I was only thirsty for more talk, oceans of talk. I eagerly asked Stendhal, who regarded me with cynical eyes, all the while fingering his little whisker: "Did you ever hear Chopin play?"

"Who," he solemnly asked in turn, "is Chopin?"

"He was at his best in the forties, and as you didn't die till----"

"Pardon me, monsieur. I never died. Your Chopin may have died, but I am immortal."

"You venerable Struldbrug," giggled Swift. I was disagreeably impressed, yet held my ground:

"You must have met him. He was a friend of Balzac--his music was then in vogue at Paris--" I stumbled in my speech.

"He probably means that little Polish piano-player who dangled at the petticoats of George Sand," interpolated Swift.

"I knew Cimarosa, Rossini I saw, but I never heard of Chopin. As for the Sand woman, that cow who chewed and rechewed her literary cud--don't mention her name to me, please. She is the village pump of fiction; water, wet water. Balzac was bad enough." My heart sank. Chopin not even remembered by a contemporary! This then is fame. But the immortality of Stendhal, of Swift--what of that? Its reality was patent to me. Perhaps Balzac, Sand, Flaubert were still alive. I propounded the question. Swift answered it.

* * * * *

"Yes, they are alive. My Struldbrugs are meant to symbolise the immortality of genius. Only stupid people die. Sand is a barmaid in London. Balzac is on the road selling knit-goods, and a mighty good drummer he is sure to be; but poor Flaubert has had hard luck. He was the reader to a publishing house, and forced to pass judgment on the novels of the day--favourable judgment, mind you, on the popular stuff. He nearly burst a blood-vessel when they gave him a Marie Corelli manuscript to correct--to correct the style, mind you, he, Flaubert! The gods are certainly capricious. Now the old chap--he has aged since 1880--is in New York reading proof at a daily newspaper office. He sits at the same desk with Ben de Casseres, and every time he mutters over the rhythm of a sentence Ben raps him on the knuckles, and says:

"'You are an old-fashioned bourgeois, Pop Flaubert! Some night I'll take you over to Jack's and recite my Sermon on Suicide, to teach you what brilliance and Bovarysme really mean.'" I was shocked at this blasphemy, and said so. Stendhal calmly bade me to keep my temper.

"But isn't Mr. Swift joking?"

"Mr. Swift is always joking," was the far from reassuring reply. To fill in the interval I called for the waiter. The ghosts again demanded cognac. Stendhal looked like the caricature by Félicien Rops, in which his little pot-bellied figure, broad face, snub nose, and protuberant eyes are shown dominating some strange Cosmopolis of 1932. In life--or death--he seemed supremely self-satisfied. He glowered at the name of Flaubert, rejoicing in the sad existence of the mighty prose master, but he smiled superciliously when I reproached him with not knowing Chopin. Heine's poetic fantasy of the gods of Greece, alive, and still in hiding, was not precisely convincing in the present reincarnation. A feeling of repulsion ensued, and finally I arose and said good night to my very new and very old friends. Swift's picture of the Struldbrugs was realised, and it was an unpleasant one. Men of genius should never be seen; in their works alone they live. Swift, with his nasty, sly, constipated humour; Stendhal, with his overwhelming air of arrogance and superiority, did not win my sympathy. They evidently noted my dismay.

"You're disappointed. So sorry!" said Swift ironically. "At first I was vastly intrigued at the opportunity of talking with one of you modern persons, but I see I'm mistaken--ha! Beyle, what d'ye say?"

Stendhal pondered. "Cimarosa, Rossini, and Haydn I knew. Correggio I admire, but who was Chopin?"

Stung to anger, I retorted: "Yours is the loss, not Chopin's." Whereat Michael, the bartender, merrily laughed, and the company joined him. I was the sacrificial goat. My head was on the chopping-block, and Stendhal was the executioner. Forgetting the respect due to such illustrious shades, I shook my finger under Stendhal's upturned nostrils: "You may be a couple of impostors for all I know, but even if you are not, I wish to tell you how heartily I dislike your petty carping criticisms. Better oblivion than immortality for your lean and sinister souls." Again hysterical laughter. As I left I overheard Swift say in reproachful accents, as if his vanity had been wounded:

"This saucy Yahoo reads our books and believes in them, but when we talk he doubts us. As Sam Johnson used to say, 'The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.'"

Stendhal boomed out: "He is dead himself but doesn't know it yet. All critics are stillborn. But _we_ live on for ever. Garçon! some more brandy."

Out on crowded, expressive Broadway I stood, dazed and irritated. After all the palaver of authors, it is the critic who has the last word, like a woman. Rejoicing over the originality of the idea, I went my wooden way.