CHAPTER IV.

"THE DEAR, DEAR WITCHERY OF SONG"

The two friends sat late over their breakfast.

"If anything happens to me before night, will you see that I am decently buried?" said O'Rourke.

"I don't see what more is to happen to you--except bankruptcy," retorted Hemming.

"Oh, I intend getting down to work again right away," O'Rourke hastened to say. "That is part of my trouble," he added. "You know that Mr. Hudson, for all his good points, has some jolly queer notions in his head. He had not known me more than a week before he asked me to let scribbling alone and give business a chance. I told him that scribbling was good enough for me. He said prose was bad, but to see a bushy chap, six feet high, writing poetry, simply made him sick. I was mad, but--well, I was also afraid. I know him better now. He made me promise not to mention the conversation to Helen, and tried to fire my soul with the desire for banking. He even offered me a job. Well, to oblige him I determined to try to give up writing, and I've been struggling along now for nearly three weeks. Gad, I'm sick of it. Helen does not know, of course, what the matter is, and thinks I'm out of condition, or that her company is not inspiring; and all the time the finest things are swinging about in my head, and my fingers are itching for a good corky penholder. Last night I realized that both my money and peace of mind were leaving me, so I turned out early this morning and wrote seven verses to Helen, and sketched out two stories, and an article on the Jamaica fruit trade, and now I'm going to tell old Hudson that he can go--I mean that I will not consider his proposition a moment longer."

"And what about the lady?" asked Hemming.

"Who--Helen? Oh, she'll make it warm for her father when she hears about it, I can tell you," answered O'Rourke.

While Hemming interviewed Smith on household topics, O'Rourke scribbled a quatrain on his cuff, and then invented conversation between himself and Mr. Hudson. This form of amusement is exciting--better even than writing dialogue. One cannot help figuring as the hero. The best time for it is when you are walking alone, late at night, perhaps in a rainstorm. The ideas swing along with your stride, and the words patter with the rain. But O'Rourke, in his mood, found nine o'clock in the morning good enough, and, by the time Hemming was ready to go out, had made sixteen different wrecks of poor Hudson's ideas on the subject of authorship as a profession. His courage returned to its normal elevation, and as they walked along he entertained Hemming with his brave dreams of the future.

The friends parted company at the door of Hemming's publishers; O'Rourke took a car for an up-town resident quarter. He might have seen Mr. Hudson at his office, which was on Broadway, but he wanted to see Helen first, and assure himself of her support.

Helen was pleased, though surprised, at seeing him so early. She received him in the morning-room, which was delightfully informal. He asked her to ride with him at four o'clock, and spoke as if this was his reason for calling. But she thought not. Presently she caught sight of the neat lettering on the otherwise spotless cuff, and without so much as "by your leave" took hold of his wrist, pushed back his coat-sleeve, and read the quatrain.

"My dear boy," she said, "it is fine. And I was just beginning to fear that this old town had made you stupid, or--or that my companionship makes you dull. I wondered if, after all, I was not inspiring."

"You not inspiring!" exclaimed O'Rourke. "Why, I have had to smother more inspirations during the last few weeks than I ever had before in all my life. There's more inspiration in one of your eyelashes than in all the hair on all the heads of all the other people in the world."

"Silly," she said.

O'Rourke did not retort in words.

"But why did you smother the inspirations, you boy?" she asked, presently.

"I can't tell you now," he replied. "But at four o'clock I'll confess all. You want the red mare, I suppose. I'm off now to see your pater. Wish me luck, little girl."

Helen smiled.

"I hope you don't let all your cats out of their bags as easily as that," she said. "But it will save you the trouble of making confession later. Yes, the red mare, please. And, dear boy, I'll have a little talk with father at lunch, and he will never make you smother your dear inspirations again. There, that will do. Now run away and beard the lion. Really, you behave as if you were afraid of never finding me again."

"Oh, I've made sure of you this time," he said. Then he remembered the seven verses, and, pulling them from his pocket, read them aloud. The fire in the morning-room was wonderfully cheerful. The clock clicked softly, and chimed once or twice, unheeded. They talked a great deal, and made plans for the future, and O'Rourke smoked a cigarette. When Mr. Hudson came home to his lunch, he found them still engaged in conversation beside the morning-room fire. They looked guiltily at the clock. O'Rourke bowed to Mr. Hudson, and extended his hand.

"I have decided, sir, to stick to scribbling," said he.

[Illustration: "'I HAVE DECIDED, SIR, TO STICK TO SCRIBBLING'"]

"Did you ever think of not sticking to it?" she asked. O'Rourke gazed straight ahead, and had the grace to blush. A truthful woman can always--well, act--with more ease than a truthful man.

"I am not fit for anything else," he said.

"Dear me, dear me," said Hudson, glancing nervously at his daughter. "I haven't a doubt that you are right, Bertram. A man should be the best judge himself of what he is good for."

"And now," said the lady, "you may stay to lunch. But you must hurry away right afterward for the horses."

So O'Rourke remained to lunch, and was vastly entertaining, and Mr. Hudson thawed again, having decided, during the soup, to accept the inevitable.