The writer nodded, and sipped his whiskey.
"Not for some years, though," he confessed, as he drifted into
reminiscence, which to Samson was like water to a parched throat.
When they left the café, the boy felt as though he were taking leave of
an old and tried friend. By homely methods, this unerring diagnostician
of the human soul had been reading him, liking him, and making him feel
a heart-warming sympathy. The man who shrunk from lion-hunters, and who
could return the churl's answer to the advances of sycophant and
flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all
the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a
vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient
requirement for the mellowing and perfecting of good Madeira, that it
shall "voyage twice around the world's circumference," and it was a
thing reserved for his friends.
"It's funny," commented the boy, when he and Lescott were alone, "that
he's been to Stagbone."
"My dear Samson," Lescott assured him, "if you had spoken of Tucson,
Arizona, or Caracas or Saskatchewan, it would have been the same. He
knows them all."
It was not until much later that Samson realized how these two really
great men had adopted him as their "little brother," that he might have
their shoulder-touch to march by. And it was without his realization,
too, that they laid upon him the imprint of their own characters and
philosophy. One night at Tonelli's table-d'hôte place, the latest
diners were beginning to drift out into Tenth Street. The faded
soprano, who had in better days sung before a King, was wearying as she
reeled out ragtime with a strong Neapolitan accent. Samson had been
talking to the short-story writer about his ambitions and his hatreds.
He feared he was drifting away from his destiny--and that he would in
the end become too softened. The writer leaned across the table, and
smiled.
"Fighting is all right," he said; "but a man should not be just the
fighter." He mused a moment in silence, then quoted a scrap of verse: "'Test of the man, if his worth be,
"'In accord with the ultimate plan,
"'That he be not, to his marring,
"'Always and utterly man;
"'That he bring out of the battle
"'Fitter and undefiled,
"'To woman the heart of a woman,
"'To children the heart of a child.'"
Samson South offered no criticism. He had known life from the stoic's
view-point. He had heard the seductive call of artistic yearnings. Now,
it dawned on him in an intensely personal fashion, as it had begun
already to dawn in theory, that the warrior and the artist may meet on
common and compatible ground, where the fighting spirit is touched and
knighted with the gentleness of chivalry. He seemed to be looking from
a new and higher plane, from which he could see a mellow softness on
angles that had hitherto been only stern and unrelieved.