Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/71

sick fears. I couldn't stand her raging. I'd simply reached the end of my endurance. I told her to hush or I'd find some means of compelling her to, and went on with my work, ignoring her outburst. Maddened by my stubbornly maintained silence, she began to taunt me with my inability to attract the attention of a publisher. I set my teeth and refused to answer. She came to the table and rested her hands on the edge of it, leaning down and sneering into my face.

"Determined to steer clear of any violent outburst on my own part, I still ignored her, rose from the table and stepped over to the wall to get my Keats from my own personal shelf. That shelf was the topmost one, and the ladder I used for reaching it none too sturdy. I had climbed the ladder and was standing on the top rung reaching for the book when I heard the rustle of hastily gathered papers and the sound of Minna's voice in a chuckle of malice. I turned quickly.

"The devil in her had seen its chance. She knew I was helpless. She had seized that entire heap of manuscript and thrown it into the blazing grate! I almost fell in my haste to get down the ladder and rush toward her. But even before I reached her side I knew it was too late. There she stood punching the papers madly with the heavy poker, screaming insanely at me, and I stopped dead. Every word I had ever written had been licked up by the roaring flames.

"Perhaps you can't see why that was such a cataclysmic thing to me. But you must understand that my poems come to me out of the air, so to speak. After I've once set them down I can't rewrite them. They're like birds of passage, beautiful Birds of Paradise that light on me for a moment, and if I don't capture them immediately they vanish forever. Ten minutes after I've written one, I couldn't rewrite it to save my life. And she had destroyed the long labor, the delight and treasure of all my years. I had forgotten that one publisher had my poems—had held them for six months.

"As I said, I stopped dead. I went cold. Cold as a Cape Horn fog. The unearthly chill crept down slowly from my forehead till it reached my feet. I was a numb statue, incapable of moving, thinking or feeling. I only knew that all the love and beauty of my life and skitered up the flue of that fireplace.

"She wheeled on me, demoniacal satisfaction in her face. 'Now, Mr. Poet,' she shrieked crazily, 'maybe you can get your head out of the clouds! Maybe you can spend a little time on something besides those worthless jingles! Go out into the grove and get some mushrooms for dinner.' She flounced angrily from the room, but for a long time I did not move. I—I—what would you have done, Mr. Blondin?"

He put it to me, just like that. I told him flatly—I'd have killed her.

He caught his breath, then went on softly: "Well—do you know what I did? I went out into the grove and got some mushrooms for dinner. . . . The grove was a full five acres of first-stand pine and fir. In spring and fall the moss was lavishly sprinked with all kinds of mushrooms. I returned from that grove with a pail full of beautiful fungi. which she cleaned, cooked and placed on the table for dinner.

"She knew mushrooms were my hobby, that my scientific knowledge of them precluded any danger. That I never made a mistake. I myself didn't eat any. I couldn't have choked down a mouthful—my throat was tight. I sat watching her in bitter silence as she hungrily devoured the mushroom-smothered steak. She ate her meal with a fiendish relish.