Натаниель Готорн - The Devil in Manuscript and Other Tales of Forbidden Books

But I was not inclined to take my brother’s statements without a pinch of salt. My four years’ experience in college ways—I was then a senior at Columbia University—had made me slightly intolerant of freshman enthusiasm. Besides Paul had already shown a marked tendency toward strong drink and the false friendships that went with it. On more than one occasion he had brought back to our apartment “a good fellow” who needed considerable moral persuasion to depart in the morning without a few valuables. I have even known Paul’s bibulous friends to pocket saltcellars and spoons, so it is no wonder that his laudatory statements about Martin at first did not move me.

“But I tell you he’s an artist,” Paul repeated belligerently.

“What kind of an artist? Does he mix drinks artistically?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Charley. Burgess Martin is the most intelligent chap I ever met. He’s in my class in English literature and he knows more about the subject than Professor Brent himself.”

“So you have discovered a genius in the freshman class,” I said with all the weary tolerance of a senior. “What a strange anomaly! This year I thought they seemed especially unripened.”

“Martin isn’t. He makes what he says alive, somehow. You must really meet him, Charley. I’m going over to his rooms tonight. Why don’t you come along?”

“You say he’s going to Paris next fall to take up painting?”

“Yes, he’ll study under Verone. If you two fellows hit it off, you might room together. Get your hat, Charley.”

I could see that Paul had set his heart on my meeting his new friend and so I could no longer resist. “Now I’m in for a boring evening,” I thought as I followed my brother out of the apartment.

Burgess Martin at that time lived in one of those dilapidated old boarding houses still to be found in the down-town section of New York City. This particular building seemed to be tottering on its foundation. It had a sodden, dissipated air about it—the air, in fact, of a femme de monde who realizes that she is aging. Here was the tomb of dead intrigue, of soiled romance.

We were admitted by a slatternly landlady and mounted two flights of rickety stairs. On the second landing Paul came to a halt and thundered on a door which was peeling like the face of a florid man who has sat too long in the sun. Almost immediately it swung open and I confronted that strange individual whose personality was one day to overshadow both our lives.

Burgess Martin was a tall man, well over six feet. He had one of those faces which seem to challenge time —a face that when young, looks old; and when old, seems young. It was long, lean, ascetic—the lips, colorless and thin; the nose, hooked and warlike; the eyes, small and grey with the piercing quality of gimlets; the forehead, a threatening protuberance which overshadowed the rest and hinted at phenomenal intellectual powers. His body was thin, almost to the point of emaciation; yet, for all that, one sensed a great virility stirring in that skeleton frame.

I was immediately conscious of this virility and of something which perhaps sprang from it. The man exuded an unpleasant atmosphere, an atmosphere very difficult to resist. His personality, like an octopus, wound its many cold arms of reason about one. To struggle against it was useless and yet one struggled automatically. Genius is one of the most irritating traits in others. To acknowledge it, one must bend the stiff neck of self-pride.

Perhaps my nerves were a trifle out of tune at the time. It is the only way I have of accounting for that strange sensation which ran through me as Martin’s thin, cool hand slipped into mine. I felt as though I had a precious secret which must be guarded at all costs and which even now was threatened. The man’s unfeeling grey eyes were fixed intently on me; those eyes which, like magnets, seemed drawing my ego out of my body.

“Have a seat, gentlemen. And help yourselves to those cigarettes.”

Martin turned to Paul and I felt instant relief. Seating myself in one of the rickety chairs the room afforded, I lit a cigarette and passed the box to my host.

“No, thank you,” he said a trifle bruskly. “I don’t smoke. It wastes too much time.”

“Are you so busy as all that?” I asked. “I had no idea the freshman requirements were especially stiff. In my time, one could squeeze through without much work.”

Martin’s thin lips drew up at the corners like a cat’s. It was his nearest approach to a smile. “My dear fellow,” said he, “I hadn’t my college work in mind. Of course, that’s childishly simple. I am trying to perfect myself in one or two of the arts and that requires time when one hasn’t the proper guidance.”

“The proper guidance!” I murmured. “Surely Professor Brent is a competent teacher of English literature. He’s had several books of essays published.”

Again Martin’s lips drew up at the corners. “A small man,” said he “—a small man with a small mind. His work fairly bristles with penny-whistle platitudes. All his sunny little essays are woven out of the worsted mottoes our grandmothers used to frame and hang on the wall: ‘Be good and you’ll be happy’, ‘Virtue is its own reward’, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, why try, try again’. What sickening, sentimental slop! Teach me literature? Why, he can’t even teach himself!”

Martin’s words and the sneering contempt with which they were uttered, made me boil inwardly. My college career had formed me into the usual type of undergraduate to whom the institutions of the university were sacred matters not lightly to be tampered with. Professor Brent had grown grey in service and had even made his voice heard in the outer world; yet here was a green freshman attempting to overthrow him! What consummate conceit! But I would put this young ass in his place.

“Perhaps you can tell me how Professor Brent’s essay on man could be improved upon,” I said coldly. “I happen to have the book with me.”

“Oh, I say, Charley,” Paul broke in, running his hand through his hair, “that’s his very best essay! Of course, there’s nothing much wrong with it.”

But Martin’s grey eyes brightened as he took the small leather volume I offered him “Without doubt the ideas expressed in it are puerile,” said he, opening the book to the essay in question. “Let us examine the style. Ah, just as I thought—stiff, laborious—a very poor flow of words.”

“Could you do as well?” I asked ironically. The man’s insufferable egotism grated on my nerves like sandpaper.

“Much better,” he answered simply. “Come, I’ll prove it. You are familiar with this essay, I presume?”

“I know it by heart.”

“So much the better. Now I’ll read it as it should have been written, transposing as I go along.”

Martin bent his brows over the essay while my brother and I interchanged glances. Although I tapped my forehead with a meaning forefinger, Paul smiled triumphantly. Evidently he had perfect confidence in his new-found acquaintance.

Now our host’s voice broke the silence—a voice, rich, vibrant, which carried one along with it as on a swiftly moving stream. And, strange to say, although the meaning of the essay was in no manner changed, the style was entirely altered. New life seemed to have been infused into every line. The sentences glowed with poetic fire. My artistic sense was stirred by such a perfect phraseology. It seemed well-nigh impossible that any man could read on without hesitation and transpose so remarkably.

“Splendid!” I cried when he had done. “But surely you worked that out before?”

“I never even read it until just now,” he answered, smiling at Paul. “Really, I wouldn’t waste my time over such material. Well, did I improve upon it?”