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Brissenden panted and gasped painfully for a moment, then began to chuckle. "You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out the flame," he said. "My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days," Martin apologized. "Hope I didn't hurt you. Here, let me mix a fresh toddy." "Ah, you young Greek!" Brissenden went on. "I wonder if you take just pride in that body of yours.
Agnes Brissenden, he felt sure, would marry him whenever he chose to ask her and would make one of the best wives conceivable. But of Rhoda Nunn he expected and demanded more than this. She must rise far above the level of ordinary intelligent women. She must manifest an absolute confidence in him that was the true significance of his present motives.
It proved a momentous night for Martin, for after dinner he met Russ Brissenden. How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was or what acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know. Nor had he the curiosity to inquire about him of Ruth. In short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind.
I'll wager anything you want that 'Ephemera' is accepted either on the first or second offering." "There's just one thing that prevents me from taking you." Brissenden waited a moment. "The thing is big the biggest I've ever done. I know that. It's my swan song. I am almighty proud of it. I worship it. It's better than whiskey.
"I'll make you sweat for this. You'll see." "The pretty thing," Martin remarked. "He doesn't realize that he has entered upon the downward path. It is not honest, it is not square, it is not manly, to tell lies about one's fellow-creatures the way he has done, and he doesn't know it." "He has to come to us to be told," Brissenden filled in a pause. "Yes, to me whom he has maligned and injured.
Food had not passed his lips in thirty-six hours, but he did not think about it. He lay on his back, with closed eyes, and did not think at all, while the daze or stupor slowly welled up, saturating his consciousness. Half in delirium, he began muttering aloud the lines of an anonymous poem Brissenden had been fond of quoting to him.
My grocery will undoubtedly refuse me credit now. The worst of it is that the poor boy will keep on this way until he deteriorates into a first-class newspaper man and also a first-class scoundrel." "But there is yet time," quoth Brissenden. "Who knows but what you may prove the humble instrument to save him. Why didn't you let me swat him just once? I'd like to have had a hand in it."
That I am hungry and you are aware of it are only ordinary phenomena, and there's no disgrace. You see, I laugh at the conventional little moralities of the herd; then you drift by, say a sharp, true word, and immediately I am the slave of the same little moralities." "You were insulted," Brissenden affirmed. "I certainly was, a moment ago. The prejudice of early youth, you know.
If only Brissenden were here to see! He was turning the pages of the magazine, when suddenly he stopped. "Ephemera" had been featured, with gorgeous head-piece and Beardsley-like margin decorations. On one side of the head-piece was Brissenden's photograph, on the other side was the photograph of Sir John Value, the British Ambassador.
His blood was too congealed to accelerate to the swift tidal flow of indignation. After all, what did it matter? It was on a par with all the rest that Brissenden had condemned in bourgeois society. "Poor Briss," Martin communed; "he would never have forgiven me." Rousing himself with an effort, he possessed himself of a box which had once contained type-writer paper.
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