“Then come into the next room and judge for yourself.”
We passed into the sitting-room. Merivale drew up to a table near the window and taking a pen in his hand said, “Look.”
He tried the pen’s nib upon the nail of his thumb, dipped it into an inkstand, and applied it to a blank sheet of paper. Then his fingers began to work laboriously to and fro, with the result of tracing a scarcely legible scrawl. One could, however, by dint of taxing the imagination, make out these words: “Good friend, to end all doubt about the present matter, learn by this that a penman’s palsy shakes my fist, and furthermore, that I inherit a lamentable tendency to gout in the wrist.”
“Scrivener’s palsy and gout combined,” he added verbally, “and yet I am going to publish a volume of poems in the spring. They’re all down on paper, but no one can decipher them except myself; and if I should be carried off some day unexpectedly, think what the world would lose! My idea is to dictate them to you. We will work from nine till one every day, and devote the rest of our time to relaxation.”
“But you take my handwriting for granted,” I interposed.
“I think I am safe in doing so,” he replied. “But give me a sample.”
“Capital!” was his comment. “Now about the compensation.”
I had to haggle with my generous friend and to beat him down half of his original offer. My stipend settled, “I admit,” said he, “that I am ravenously hungry. Suppose we dine?”
We adjourned to Moretti’s. During the dinner we discussed our future. He said he was constantly writing new matter and therefore our contract would not terminate with the completion of the particular MS. in question. “Ah, what good times we are going to enjoy!” he cried. “We are perfectly companionable! There is nothing so satisfactory, nothing so productive of bien être, as friendship, after all.”
Dinner over, we strolled arm in arm through the streets. For the first time in two years I began to feel that the world was not quite a ruin. At home we talked till late into the night. And when I went to bed it was to lie awake for hours and hours, congratulating myself upon my newly discovered friend.
ON the morrow morning our régime was inaugurated: and thenceforward we kept it up regularly. From nine till one I wrote at his dictation. The task was by no means irksome.
