FullReads

I reached home, went up to my rooms, and had a supper. It was to console myself; I am obliged to console myself scientifically once in a while. I was walking up and down afterward, smoking and feeling somewhat better, when my eye fell upon the pasteboard box. I took it up; on the cover was written an address which showed that my visitor must have walked a long distance in order to see me: “A. Crief.”–“A Grief,” I thought; “and so she is. I positively believe she has brought all this trouble upon me: she has the evil eye.” I took out the manuscript and looked at it. It was in the form of a little volume, and clearly written; on the cover was the word “Armor” in German text, and, underneath, a pen-and-ink sketch of a helmet, breastplate, and shield.

“Grief certainly needs armor,” I said to myself, sitting down by the table and turning over the pages. “I may as well look over the thing now; I could not be in a worse mood.” And then I began to read.

Early the next morning Simpson took a note from me to the given address, returning with the following reply: “No; I prefer to come to you; at four; A. CRIEF.” These words, with their three semicolons, were written in pencil upon a piece of coarse printing-paper, but the handwriting was as clear and delicate as that of the manuscript in ink.

“What sort of a place was it, Simpson?”

“Very poor, sir, but I did not go all the way up. The elder person came down, sir, took the note, and requested me to wait where I was.”

“You had no chance, then, to make inquiries?” I said, knowing full well that he had emptied the entire neighborhood of any information it might possess concerning these two lodgers.

“Well, sir, you know how these foreigners will talk, whether one wants to hear or not. But it seems that these two persons have been there but a few weeks; they live alone, and are uncommonly silent and reserved. The people round there call them something that signifies ‘the Madames American, thin and dumb.'”

At four the “Madames American” arrived; it was raining again, and they came on foot under their old umbrella. The maid waited in the anteroom, and Miss Grief was ushered into my bachelor’s parlor. I had thought that I should meet her with great deference; but she looked so forlorn that my deference changed to pity. It was the woman that impressed me then, more than the writer–the fragile, nerveless body more than the inspired mind. For it was inspired: I had sat up half the night over her drama, and had felt thrilled through and through more than once by its earnestness, passion, and power.

No one could have been more surprised than I was to find myself thus enthusiastic. I thought I had outgrown that sort of thing. And one would have supposed, too (I myself should have supposed so the day before), that the faults of the drama, which were many and prominent, would have chilled any liking I might have felt, I being a writer myself, and therefore critical; for writers are as apt to make much of the “how,” rather than the “what,” as painters, who, it is well known, prefer an exquisitely rendered representation of a commonplace theme to an imperfectly executed picture of even the most striking subject. But in this case, on the contrary, the scattered rays of splendor in Miss Grief’s drama had made me forget the dark spots, which were numerous and disfiguring; or, rather, the splendor had made me anxious to have the spots removed. And this also was a philanthropic state very unusual with me. Regarding unsuccessful writers, my motto had been “Vae victis!”

My visitor took a seat and folded her hands; I could see, in spite of her quiet manner, that she was in breathless suspense. It seemed so pitiful that she should be trembling there before me–a woman so much older than I was, a woman who possessed the divine spark of genius, which I was by no means sure (in spite of my success) had been granted to me–that I felt as if I ought to go down on my knees before her, and entreat her to take her proper place of supremacy at once. But there! one does not go down on one’s knees, combustively, as it were, before a woman over fifty, plain in feature, thin, dejected, and ill-dressed. I contented myself with taking her hands (in their miserable old gloves) in mine, while I said cordially, “Miss Crief, your drama seems to me full of original power. It has roused my enthusiasm: I sat up half the night reading it.”