The Man With Two Left Feet

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'Solomon couldn't have solved this problem,' he said. 'How would it
be--it seems the only possible way out--if you were to retain a sort of
managerial right in him? Couldn't you sometimes step across and chat
with him--and me, incidentally--over here? I'm very nearly as lonesome
as you are. Chicago is my home. I hardly know a soul in New York.'

Her solitary life in the big city had forced upon Elizabeth the ability
to form instantaneous judgements on the men she met. She flashed a
glance at the young man and decided in his favour.

'It's very kind of you,' she said. 'I should love to. I want to hear
all about your play. I write myself, you know, in a very small way, so
a successful playwright is Someone to me.'

'I wish I were a successful playwright.'

'Well, you are having the first play you have ever written produced on
Broadway. That's pretty wonderful.'

''M--yes,' said the young man. It seemed to Elizabeth that he spoke
doubtfully, and this modesty consolidated the favourable impression she
had formed.

* * * * *

The gods are just. For every ill which they inflict they also supply a
compensation. It seems good to them that individuals in big cities
shall be lonely, but they have so arranged that, if one of these
individuals does at last contrive to seek out and form a friendship
with another, that friendship shall grow more swiftly than the tepid
acquaintanceships of those on whom the icy touch of loneliness has
never fallen. Within a week Elizabeth was feeling that she had known
this James Renshaw Boyd all her life.

And yet there was a tantalizing incompleteness about his personal
reminiscences. Elizabeth was one of those persons who like to begin a
friendship with a full statement of their position, their previous
life, and the causes which led up to their being in this particular
spot at this particular time. At their next meeting, before he had had
time to say much on his own account, she had told him of her life in
the small Canadian town where she had passed the early part of her
life; of the rich and unexpected aunt who had sent her to college for
no particular reason that anyone could ascertain except that she
enjoyed being unexpected; of the legacy from this same aunt, far
smaller than might have been hoped for, but sufficient to send a
grateful Elizabeth to New York, to try her luck there; of editors,
magazines, manuscripts refused or accepted, plots for stories; of life
in general, as lived down where the Arch spans Fifth Avenue and the
lighted cross of the Judson shines by night on Washington Square.

Ceasing eventually, she waited for him to begin; and he did not
begin--not, that is to say, in the sense the word conveyed to
Elizabeth. He spoke briefly of college, still more briefly of
Chicago--which city he appeared to regard with a distaste that made
Lot's attitude towards the Cities of the Plain almost kindly by
comparison. Then, as if he had fulfilled the demands of the most
exacting inquisitor in the matter of personal reminiscence, he began to
speak of the play.

The only facts concerning him to which Elizabeth could really have
sworn with a clear conscience at the end of the second week of their
acquaintance were that he was very poor, and that this play meant
everything to him.

The statement that it meant everything to him insinuated itself so
frequently into his conversation that it weighed on Elizabeth's mind
like a burden, and by degrees she found herself giving the play place
of honour in her thoughts over and above her own little ventures. With
this stupendous thing hanging in the balance, it seemed almost wicked
of her to devote a moment to wondering whether the editor of an evening
paper, who had half promised to give her the entrancing post of Adviser
to the Lovelorn on his journal, would fulfil that half-promise.

At an early stage in their friendship the young man had told her the
plot of the piece; and if he had not unfortunately forgotten several
important episodes and had to leap back to them across a gulf of one or
two acts, and if he had referred to his characters by name instead of
by such descriptions as 'the fellow who's in love with the girl--not
what's-his-name but the other chap'--she would no doubt have got that
mental half-Nelson on it which is such a help towards the proper
understanding of a four-act comedy. As it was, his precis had left her
a little vague; but she said it was perfectly splendid, and he said did
she really think so. And she said yes, she did, and they were both
happy.

Rehearsals seemed to prey on his spirits a good deal. He attended them
with the pathetic regularity of the young dramatist, but they appeared
to bring him little balm. Elizabeth generally found him steeped in
gloom, and then she would postpone the recital, to which she had been
looking forward, of whatever little triumph she might have happened to
win, and devote herself to the task of cheering him up. If women were
wonderful in no other way, they would be wonderful for their genius for
listening to shop instead of talking it.

Elizabeth was feeling more than a little proud of the way in which her
judgement of this young man was being justified. Life in Bohemian New
York had left her decidedly wary of strange young men, not formally
introduced; her faith in human nature had had to undergo much
straining. Wolves in sheep's clothing were common objects of the
wayside in her unprotected life; and perhaps her chief reason for
appreciating this friendship was the feeling of safety which it gave
her.

Their relations, she told herself, were so splendidly unsentimental.
There was no need for that silent defensiveness which had come to seem
almost an inevitable accompaniment to dealings with the opposite sex.
James Boyd, she felt, she could trust; and it was wonderful how
soothing the reflexion was.

And that was why, when the thing happened, it so shocked and frightened
her.

It had been one of their quiet evenings. Of late they had fallen into
the habit of sitting for long periods together without speaking. But it
had differed from other quiet evenings through the fact that
Elizabeth's silence hid a slight but well-defined feeling of injury.
Usually she sat happy with her thoughts, but tonight she was ruffled.
She had a grievance.

That afternoon the editor of the evening paper, whose angelic status
not even a bald head and an absence of wings and harp could conceal,
had definitely informed her that the man who had conducted the column
hitherto having resigned, the post of Heloise Milton, official adviser
to readers troubled with affairs of the heart, was hers; and he looked
to her to justify the daring experiment of letting a woman handle so
responsible a job. Imagine how Napoleon felt after Austerlitz, picture
Colonel Goethale contemplating the last spadeful of dirt from the
Panama Canal, try to visualize a suburban householder who sees a flower
emerging from the soil in which he has inserted a packet of guaranteed
seeds, and you will have some faint conception how Elizabeth felt as
those golden words proceeded from that editor's lips. For the moment
Ambition was sated. The years, rolling by, might perchance open out
other vistas; but for the moment she was content.

Into James Boyd's apartment she had walked, stepping on fleecy clouds
of rapture, to tell him the great news.

She told him the great news.

He said, 'Ah!'

There are many ways of saying 'Ah!' You can put joy, amazement, rapture
into it; you can also make it sound as if it were a reply to a remark
on the weather. James Boyd made it sound just like that. His hair was
rumpled, his brow contracted, and his manner absent. The impression he
gave Elizabeth was that he had barely heard her. The next moment he was
deep in a recital of the misdemeanours of the actors now rehearsing for
his four-act comedy. The star had done this, the leading woman that,
the juvenile something else. For the first time Elizabeth listened
unsympathetically.

The time came when speech failed James Boyd, and he sat back in his
chair, brooding. Elizabeth, cross and wounded, sat in hers, nursing
Joseph. And so, in a dim light, time flowed by.

Just how it happened she never knew. One moment, peace; the next chaos.
One moment stillness; the next, Joseph hurtling through the air, all
claws and expletives, and herself caught in a clasp which shook the
breath from her.

One can dimly reconstruct James's train of thought. He is in despair;
things are going badly at the theatre, and life has lost its savour.
His eye, as he sits, is caught by Elizabeth's profile. It is a
pretty--above all, a soothing--profile. An almost painful
sentimentality sweeps over James Boyd. There she sits, his only friend
in this cruel city. If you argue that there is no necessity to spring
at your only friend and nearly choke her, you argue soundly; the point
is well taken. But James Boyd was beyond the reach of sound argument.
Much rehearsing had frayed his nerves to ribbons. One may say that he
was not responsible for his actions.

That is the case for James. Elizabeth, naturally, was not in a position
to take a wide and understanding view of it. All she knew was that James
had played her false, abused her trust in him. For a moment, such was
the shock of the surprise, she was not conscious of indignation--or,
indeed, of any sensation except the purely physical one of
semi-strangulation. Then, flushed, and more bitterly angry than she
could ever have imagined herself capable of being, she began to
struggle. She tore herself away from him. Coming on top of her
grievance, this thing filled her with a sudden, very vivid hatred of
James. At the back of her anger, feeding it, was the humiliating
thought that it was all her own fault, that by her presence there she
had invited this.

She groped her way to the door. Something was writhing and struggling
inside her, blinding her eyes, and robbing her of speech. She was only
conscious of a desire to be alone, to be back and safe in her own home.
She was aware that he was speaking, but the words did not reach her.
She found the door, and pulled it open. She felt a hand on her arm, but
she shook it off. And then she was back behind her own door, alone and
at liberty to contemplate at leisure the ruins of that little temple of
friendship which she had built up so carefully and in which she had
been so happy.

The broad fact that she would never forgive him was for a while her
only coherent thought. To this succeeded the determination that she
would never forgive herself. And having thus placed beyond the pale the
only two friends she had in New York, she was free to devote herself
without hindrance to the task of feeling thoroughly lonely and
wretched.

The shadows deepened. Across the street a sort of bubbling explosion,
followed by a jerky glare that shot athwart the room, announced the
lighting of the big arc-lamp on the opposite side-walk. She resented
it, being in the mood for undiluted gloom; but she had not the energy
to pull down the shade and shut it out. She sat where she was, thinking
thoughts that hurt.

The door of the apartment opposite opened. There was a single ring at
her bell. She did not answer it. There came another. She sat where she
was, motionless. The door closed again.

* * * * *

The days dragged by. Elizabeth lost count of time. Each day had its
duties, which ended when you went to bed; that was all she knew--except
that life had become very grey and very lonely, far lonelier even than
in the time when James Boyd was nothing to her but an occasional sound
of footsteps.

Of James she saw nothing. It is not difficult to avoid anyone in New
York, even when you live just across the way.

* * * * *

It was Elizabeth's first act each morning, immediately on awaking, to
open her front door and gather in whatever lay outside it. Sometimes
there would be mail; and always, unless Francis, as he sometimes did,
got mixed and absent-minded, the morning milk and the morning paper.

One morning, some two weeks after that evening of which she tried not
to think, Elizabeth, opening the door, found immediately outside it a
folded scrap of paper. She unfolded it.

_I am just off to the theatre. Won't you wish me luck? I feel sure
it is going to be a hit. Joseph is purring like a dynamo._--J.R.B.

In the early morning the brain works sluggishly. For an instant
Elizabeth stood looking at the words uncomprehendingly; then, with a
leaping of the heart, their meaning came home to her. He must have left
this at her door on the previous night. The play had been produced! And
somewhere in the folded interior of the morning paper at her feet must
be the opinion of 'One in Authority' concerning it!

Dramatic criticisms have this peculiarity, that if you are looking for
them, they burrow and hide like rabbits. They dodge behind murders;
they duck behind baseball scores; they lie up snugly behind the Wall
Street news. It was a full minute before Elizabeth found what she
sought, and the first words she read smote her like a blow.

In that vein of delightful facetiousness which so endears him to all
followers and perpetrators of the drama, the 'One in Authority' rent
and tore James Boyd's play. He knocked James Boyd's play down, and
kicked it; he jumped on it with large feet; he poured cold water on it,
and chopped it into little bits. He merrily disembowelled James Boyd's
play.

Elizabeth quivered from head to foot. She caught at the door-post to
steady herself. In a flash all her resentment had gone, wiped away and
annihilated like a mist before the sun. She loved him, and she knew now
that she had always loved him.

It took her two seconds to realize that the 'One in Authority' was a
miserable incompetent, incapable of recognizing merit when it was
displayed before him. It took her five minutes to dress. It took her a
minute to run downstairs and out to the news-stand on the corner of the
street. Here, with a lavishness which charmed and exhilarated the
proprietor, she bought all the other papers which he could supply.

Moments of tragedy are best described briefly. Each of the papers
noticed the play, and each of them damned it with uncompromising
heartiness. The criticisms varied only in tone. One cursed with relish
and gusto; another with a certain pity; a third with a kind of wounded
superiority, as of one compelled against his will to speak of something
unspeakable; but the meaning of all was the same. James Boyd's play was
a hideous failure.

Back to the house sped Elizabeth, leaving the organs of a free people
to be gathered up, smoothed, and replaced on the stand by the now more
than ever charmed proprietor. Up the stairs she sped, and arriving
breathlessly at James's door rang the bell.

Heavy footsteps came down the passage; crushed, disheartened footsteps;
footsteps that sent a chill to Elizabeth's heart. The door opened.
James Boyd stood before her, heavy-eyed and haggard. In his eyes was
despair, and on his chin the blue growth of beard of the man from whom
the mailed fist of Fate has smitten the energy to perform his morning
shave.

Behind him, littering the floor, were the morning papers; and at the
sight of them Elizabeth broke down.

'Oh, Jimmy, darling!' she cried; and the next moment she was in his
arms, and for a space time stood still.

How long afterwards it was she never knew; but eventually James Boyd
spoke.

'If you'll marry me,' he said hoarsely, 'I don't care a hang.'

'Jimmy, darling!' said Elizabeth, 'of course I will.'

Past them, as they stood there, a black streak shot silently, and
disappeared out of the door. Joseph was leaving the sinking ship.

'Let him go, the fraud,' said Elizabeth bitterly. 'I shall never
believe in black cats again.'

But James was not of this opinion.

'Joseph has brought me all the luck I need.'

'But the play meant everything to you.'

'It did then.'

Elizabeth hesitated.

'Jimmy, dear, it's all right, you know. I know you will make a fortune
out of your next play, and I've heaps for us both to live on till you
make good. We can manage splendidly on my salary from the _Evening
Chronicle_.'

'What! Have you got a job on a New York paper?'

'Yes, I told you about it. I am doing Heloise Milton. Why, what's the
matter?'

He groaned hollowly.

'And I was thinking that you would come back to Chicago with me!'

'But I will. Of course I will. What did you think I meant to do?'

'What! Give up a real job in New York!' He blinked. 'This isn't really
happening. I'm dreaming.'

'But, Jimmy, are you sure you can get work in Chicago? Wouldn't it be
better to stay on here, where all the managers are, and--'

He shook his head.

'I think it's time I told you about myself,' he said. 'Am I sure I can
get work in Chicago? I am, worse luck. Darling, have you in your more
material moments ever toyed with a Boyd's Premier Breakfast-Sausage or
kept body and soul together with a slice off a Boyd's Excelsior
Home-Cured Ham? My father makes them, and the tragedy of my life is
that he wants me to help him at it. This was my position. I loathed the
family business as much as dad loved it. I had a notion--a fool notion,
as it has turned out--that I could make good in the literary line. I've
scribbled in a sort of way ever since I was in college. When the time
came for me to join the firm, I put it to dad straight. I said, "Give
me a chance, one good, square chance, to see if the divine fire is
really there, or if somebody has just turned on the alarm as a
practical joke." And we made a bargain. I had written this play, and we
made it a test-case. We fixed it up that dad should put up the money to
give it a Broadway production. If it succeeded, all right; I'm the
young Gus Thomas, and may go ahead in the literary game. If it's a
fizzle, off goes my coat, and I abandon pipe-dreams of literary
triumphs and start in as the guy who put the Co. in Boyd & Co. Well,
events have proved that I _am_ the guy, and now I'm going to keep
my part of the bargain just as squarely as dad kept his. I know quite
well that if I refused to play fair and chose to stick on here in New
York and try again, dad would go on staking me. That's the sort of man
he is. But I wouldn't do it for a million Broadway successes. I've had
my chance, and I've foozled; and now I'm going back to make him happy
by being a real live member of the firm. And the queer thing about it
is that last night I hated the idea, and this morning, now that I've
got you, I almost look forward to it.'

He gave a little shiver.

'And yet--I don't know. There's something rather gruesome still to my
near-artist soul in living in luxury on murdered piggies. Have you ever
seen them persuading a pig to play the stellar role in a Boyd Premier
Breakfast-Sausage? It's pretty ghastly. They string them up by their
hind legs, and--b-r-r-r-r!'

'Never mind,' said Elizabeth soothingly. 'Perhaps they don't mind it
really.'

'Well, I don't know,' said James Boyd, doubtfully. 'I've watched them
at it, and I'm bound to say they didn't seem any too well pleased.'

'Try not to think of it.'

'Very well,' said James dutifully.

There came a sudden shout from the floor above, and on the heels of it
a shock-haired youth in pyjamas burst into the apartment.

'Now what?' said James. 'By the way, Miss Herrold, my fiancee; Mr
Briggs--Paul Axworthy Briggs, sometimes known as the Boy Novelist.
What's troubling you, Paul?'

Mr Briggs was stammering with excitement.

'Jimmy,' cried the Boy Novelist, 'what do you think has happened! A
black cat has just come into my apartment. I heard him mewing outside
the door, and opened it, and he streaked in. And I started my new novel
last night! Say, you _do_ believe this thing of black cats
bringing luck, don't you?'

'Luck! My lad, grapple that cat to your soul with hoops of steel. He's
the greatest little luck-bringer in New York. He was boarding with me
till this morning.'

'Then--by Jove! I nearly forgot to ask--your play was a hit? I haven't
seen the papers yet'

'Well, when you see them, don't read the notices. It was the worst
frost Broadway has seen since Columbus's time.'

'But--I don't understand.'

'Don't worry. You don't have to. Go back and fill that cat with fish,
or she'll be leaving you. I suppose you left the door open?'

'My God!' said the Boy Novelist, paling, and dashed for the door.

'Do you think Joseph _will_ bring him luck?' said Elizabeth,
thoughtfully.

'It depends what sort of luck you mean. Joseph seems to work in devious
ways. If I know Joseph's methods, Briggs's new novel will be rejected
by every publisher in the city; and then, when he is sitting in his
apartment, wondering which of his razors to end himself with, there
will be a ring at the bell, and in will come the most beautiful girl in
the world, and then--well, then, take it from me, he will be all
right.'

'He won't mind about the novel?'

'Not in the least.'

'Not even if it means that he will have to go away and kill pigs and
things.'

'About the pig business, dear. I've noticed a slight tendency in you to
let yourself get rather morbid about it. I know they string them up by
the hind-legs, and all that sort of thing; but you must remember that a
pig looks at these things from a different standpoint. My belief is
that the pigs like it. Try not to think of it.'

'Very well,' said Elizabeth, dutifully.

THE ROMANCE OF AN UGLY POLICEMAN

Crossing the Thames by Chelsea Bridge, the wanderer through London
finds himself in pleasant Battersea. Rounding the Park, where the
female of the species wanders with its young by the ornamental water
where the wild-fowl are, he comes upon a vast road. One side of this is
given up to Nature, the other to Intellect. On the right, green trees
stretch into the middle distance; on the left, endless blocks of
residential flats. It is Battersea Park Road, the home of the
cliff-dwellers.

Police-constable Plimmer's beat embraced the first quarter of a mile of
the cliffs. It was his duty to pace in the measured fashion of the
London policeman along the front of them, turn to the right, turn to
the left, and come back along the road which ran behind them. In this
way he was enabled to keep the king's peace over no fewer than four
blocks of mansions.

It did not require a deal of keeping. Battersea may have its tough
citizens, but they do not live in Battersea Park Road. Battersea Park
Road's speciality is Brain, not Crime. Authors, musicians, newspaper
men, actors, and artists are the inhabitants of these mansions. A child
could control them. They assault and batter nothing but pianos; they
steal nothing but ideas; they murder nobody except Chopin and
Beethoven. Not through these shall an ambitious young constable achieve
promotion.

At this conclusion Edward Plimmer arrived within forty-eight hours of
his installation. He recognized the flats for what they were--just so
many layers of big-brained blamelessness. And there was not even the
chance of a burglary. No burglar wastes his time burgling authors.
Constable Plimmer reconciled his mind to the fact that his term in
Battersea must be looked on as something in the nature of a vacation.

He was not altogether sorry. At first, indeed, he found the new
atmosphere soothing. His last beat had been in the heart of tempestuous
Whitechapel, where his arms had ached from the incessant hauling of
wiry inebriates to the station, and his shins had revolted at the kicks
showered upon them by haughty spirits impatient of restraint. Also, one
Saturday night, three friends of a gentleman whom he was trying to
induce not to murder his wife had so wrought upon him that, when he
came out of hospital, his already homely appearance was further marred
by a nose which resembled the gnarled root of a tree. All these things
had taken from the charm of Whitechapel, and the cloistral peace of
Battersea Park Road was grateful and comforting.

And just when the unbroken calm had begun to lose its attraction and
dreams of action were once more troubling him, a new interest entered
his life; and with its coming he ceased to wish to be removed from
Battersea. He fell in love.

It happened at the back of York Mansions. Anything that ever happened,
happened there; for it is at the back of these blocks of flats that the
real life is. At the front you never see anything, except an occasional
tousle-headed young man smoking a pipe; but at the back, where the
cooks come out to parley with the tradesmen, there is at certain hours
of the day quite a respectable activity. Pointed dialogues about
yesterday's eggs and the toughness of Saturday's meat are conducted
_fortissimo_ between cheerful youths in the road and satirical
young women in print dresses, who come out of their kitchen doors on to
little balconies. The whole thing has a pleasing Romeo and Juliet
touch. Romeo rattles up in his cart. 'Sixty-four!' he cries.
'Sixty-fower, sixty-fower, sixty-fow--' The kitchen door opens, and
Juliet emerges. She eyes Romeo without any great show of affection.
'Are you Perkins and Blissett?' she inquires coldly. Romeo admits it.
'Two of them yesterday's eggs was bad.' Romeo protests. He defends his
eggs. They were fresh from the hen; he stood over her while she laid
them. Juliet listens frigidly. 'I _don't_ think,' she says. 'Well,
half of sugar, one marmalade, and two of breakfast bacon,' she adds,
and ends the argument. There is a rattling as of a steamer weighing
anchor; the goods go up in the tradesman's lift; Juliet collects them,
and exits, banging the door. The little drama is over.

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