"Overdue" still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Every manuscript that he had had out now lay under the table. Only one manuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden's "Ephemera."
His bicycle and black suit were again in pawn, and the type-writer people were once more worrying about the rent. But such things no longer bothered him. He was seeking a new orientation, and until that was found his life must stand still.
After several weeks, what he had been waiting for happened. He met Ruth on the street. It was true, she was accompanied by her brother, Norman, and it was true that they tried to ignore him and that Norman attempted to wave him aside.
"If you interfere with my sister, I'll call an officer," Norman threatened. "She does not wish to speak with you, and your insistence is insult."
"If you persist, you'll have to call that officer, and then you'll get your name in the papers," Martin answered grimly. "And now, get out of my way and get the officer if you want to. I'm going to talk with Ruth."
"I want to have it from your own lips," he said to her.
She was pale and trembling, but she held up and looked inquiringly.
"The question I asked in my letter," he prompted.
Norman made an impatient movement, but Martin checked him with a swift look.
She shook her head.
"Is all this of your own free will?" he demanded.
"It is." She spoke in a low, firm voice and with deliberation.
"It is of my own free will. You have disgraced me so that I am ashamed to meet my friends. They are all talking about me, I know.
That is all I can tell you. You have made me very unhappy, and I never wish to see you again."
"Friends! Gossip! Newspaper misreports! Surely such things are not stronger than love! I can only believe that you never loved me."
A blush drove the pallor from her face.
"After what has passed?" she said faintly. "Martin, you do not know what you are saying. I am not common."
"You see, she doesn't want to have anything to do with you," Norman blurted out, starting on with her.
Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in his coat pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there.
It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he went up the steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it.
He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed and staring about him like an awakened somnambulist. He noticed "Overdue" lying on the table and drew up his chair and reached for his pen. There was in his nature a logical compulsion toward completeness. Here was something undone. It had been deferred against the completion of something else. Now that something else had been finished, and he would apply himself to this task until it was finished. What he would do next he did not know. All that he did know was that a climacteric in his life had been attained. A period had been reached, and he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion. He was not curious about the future. He would soon enough find out what it held in store for him. Whatever it was, it did not matter.
Nothing seemed to matter.
For five days he toiled on at "Overdue," going nowhere, seeing nobody, and eating meagrely. On the morning of the sixth day the postman brought him a thin letter from the editor of THE PARTHENON.
A glance told him that "Ephemera" was accepted. "We have submitted the poem to Mr. Cartwright Bruce," the editor went on to say, "and he has reported so favorably upon it that we cannot let it go. As an earnest of our pleasure in publishing the poem, let me tell you that we have set it for the August number, our July number being already made up. Kindly extend our pleasure and our thanks to Mr.
Brissenden. Please send by return mail his photograph and biographical data. If our honorarium is unsatisfactory, kindly telegraph us at once and state what you consider a fair price."
Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fifty dollars, Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph. Then, too, there was Brissenden's consent to be gained. Well, he had been right, after all. Here was one magazine editor who knew real poetry when he saw it. And the price was splendid, even though it was for the poem of a century. As for Cartwright Bruce, Martin knew that he was the one critic for whose opinions Brissenden had any respect.
Martin rode down town on an electric car, and as he watched the houses and cross-streets slipping by he was aware of a regret that he was not more elated over his friend's success and over his own signal victory. The one critic in the United States had pronounced favorably on the poem, while his own contention that good stuff could find its way into the magazines had proved correct. But enthusiasm had lost its spring in him, and he found that he was more anxious to see Brissenden than he was to carry the good news.
The acceptance of THE PARTHENON had recalled to him that during his five days' devotion to "Overdue" he had not heard from Brissenden nor even thought about him. For the first time Martin realized the daze he had been in, and he felt shame for having forgotten his friend. But even the shame did not burn very sharply. He was numb to emotions of any sort save the artistic ones concerned in the writing of "Overdue." So far as other affairs were concerned, he had been in a trance. For that matter, he was still in a trance.
All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed remote and unreal, and he would have experienced little interest and less shook if the great stone steeple of the church he passed had suddenly crumbled to mortar-dust upon his head.
At the hotel he hurried up to Brissenden's room, and hurried down again. The room was empty. All luggage was gone.
"Did Mr. Brissenden leave any address?" he asked the clerk, who looked at him curiously for a moment.
"Haven't you heard?" he asked.
Martin shook his head.
"Why, the papers were full of it. He was found dead in bed.
Suicide. Shot himself through the head."
"Is he buried yet?" Martin seemed to hear his voice, like some one else's voice, from a long way off, asking the question.
