Edith Wharton

“ It's we, his disciples, his interpreters, who discovered him and gave him to the world—we, the Chosen People, the Custodians of the Sacred Books, as Howland Wade calls us—it's we who are in perpetual danger of sinking back into the old stagnant ideals, and practising the Seven Deadly Virtues; it's we who need to count our mercies, and realise anew what he's done for us, and what we ought to do for him! ”

“ Bernald groaned, thinking of the thick manuscript condemned to perpetual incarceration in his own desk by the publication of Howland's “definitive” work on the great man. One couldn't, after Howland Wade, expose one's self to the derision of writing about Pellerin: the eagerness with which Wade's book had been devoured proved, not that the public had enough appetite for another, but simply that, for a stomach so undiscriminating, anything better than Wade had given it would be too good. ”

“ I'm pulling myself together. Getting back to work is the slowest part of the business: not on account of my eyes—I can use them now, though not for reading; but some of the links between things are missing. It's a kind of broken spectrum ... here, that boy will look after your bag.”
The walk through the woods remained in Bernald's memory as an enchanted hour. He used the word literally, as descriptive of the way in which Winterman's contact changed the face of things, or perhaps restored them to their primitive meanings. ”

“ I was sure now that my idea would live: the good ones are self-supporting. And meanwhile I had to learn to be so; and I tried my hand at a number of things ... adventurous, menial, commercial... It's not a bad thing for a man to have to live his life—and we nearly all manage to dodge it. Our first round with the Sphinx may strike something out of us—a book or a picture or a symphony; and we're amazed at our feat, and go on letting that first work breed others, as some animal forms reproduce each other without renewed fertilisation. ”

“ Miss Fosdick, who was one of the most advanced exponents of Pellerinism, had large eyes and a plaintive mouth, and Bernald had always fancied that she might have been pretty if she had not been perpetually explaining things.
“Yes, I know—Isabella Bain told me all about him. (He can't hear us, can he?) And I wonder if you realise how remarkably interesting it is that we should have such an opportunity now—I mean the opportunity to see the impression of Pellerinism on a perfectly fresh mind. (You must introduce him as soon as the lecture's over.) ”

“ Well, a good many thousand people die every day on the face of the globe; and I soon discovered that I was simply one of the thousands; and when I made that discovery I really died—and stayed dead a year or two... When I came to life again I was off on the under side of the world, in regions unaware of what we know as 'the public.' Have you any notion how it shifts the point of view to wake under new constellations? I advise any who's been in love with a woman under Cassiopeia to go and think about her under the Southern Cross... It's the only way to tell the pivotal truths from the others... ”

“ Queer, isn't it, when the man ... but of course literature's another proposition. Howland says it's one of the cases where an idea might seem original and striking if one didn't happen to be able to trace its descent. And this is straight out of bosh—by Pellerin... Yes: Pellerin. It seems that everything in the article that isn't pure nonsense is just Pellerinism. Howland thinks poor Winterman must have been tremendously struck by Pellerin's writings, and have lived too much out of the world to know that they've become the text-books of modern thought. ”

“ Bernald murmured. But his amazement at the news struggled with a confused impatience to reach his rooms in time to be there for his friend's arrival. There could be no stranger spectacle beneath the stars than that of John Pellerin carried off by Miss Fosdick, and listening, in the small hours, to her elucidation of his doctrines; but Bernald knew enough of his sex to be aware that such an experiment may appear less humorous to its subject than to the detached observer. Even the Uplift Club and its connotations might benefit by the attraction of the unknown ”

“ He's got to earn his living, and I don't suppose he knows how to do anything but write. At his age it's hard to start fresh. I put that to Howland—asked him if there wasn't a chance he might do better if he only had a little encouragement. I can't help feeling he's got the essential thing in him. But of course I'm no judge when it comes to books. And Howland says it would be cruel to give him any hope.” Wade paused, turned his wineglass about under a meditative stare, and then leaned across the table toward Bernald. “Look here—do you know what I've proposed to Winterman? ”

“ It was impossible, in the confused pattern of the century's intellectual life, to fit the stranger in anywhere, save in the big gap which, some five and twenty years earlier, had been left by Pellerin's unaccountable disappearance; and conversely, such a man as the Wades' visitor couldn't have lived for sixty years without filling, somewhere in space, a nearly equivalent void. ”

“ Bernald murmured, disappointed.
“Decayed? Not much!” cried the doctor with his accustomed literalness. “I only mentioned that side of Winterman—his name's Winterman—because it was the side my mother noticed first. I suppose women generally do. But it's only a part—a small part. The man's the big thing.” ”

“ Wade always mentioned her younger son with a reverential drop of the voice. She viewed literature much as she did Providence, as an inscrutably mystery; and she spoke of Howland as a dedicated being, set apart to perform secret rites within the veil of the sanctuary.
“I shouldn't say he had a quick mind,” she continued, reverting apologetically to Winterman. “Sometimes he hardly seems to follow what we're saying. But he's got such sound ideas—when he does speak he's never silly. And clever people sometimes are, don't you think so?” Bernald sighed an unqualified assent. “And he's so capable. ”

“ But the scene was playing such a lively tune on Bernald's own sensibilities that for the moment he could not adjust himself to the probable effect it produced on his companion. The young man, of late, had made but rare appearances in the group of which Mrs. Beecher Bain was one of the most indefatigable hostesses, and the Uplift Club the chief medium of expression. To a critic, obliged by his trade to cultivate convictions, it was the essence of luxury to leave them at home in his hours of ease ”

“ Winterman, at the same moment, brought his palm down with a sudden crash on the pile of manuscript covering the desk.
“What's the matter?” Bernald gasped.
“My match wasn't out. In another minute the destruction of the library of Alexandria would have been a trifle compared to what you'd have seen.” Winterman, with his large deep laugh, shook out the smouldering sheets. “And I should have been a pensioner on Doctor Bob the Lord knows how much longer!”
Bernald pulled himself together. “You've really got going again? The thing's actually getting into shape?” ”

“ When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to go, and not a dollar in his pocket, and I sent him down to our place at Portchester to re-build.”
The opening roused his hearer's attention. Bob Wade had an instinctive sense of values that Bernald had learned to trust.
“What sort of chap? Young or old?”
“Oh, every age—full of years, and yet with a lot left. He called himself sixty on the books.”
“Sixty's a good age for some kinds of living. And age is of course purely subjective. How has he used his sixty years?” ”

“ Winterman? (Yes, I know who you are, of course!) Oh, well, I don't really mind if you did. I was talking about you—about you and Pellerin. I was explaining to Mr. Bernald that what we need at this very minute is a Pellerin revival; and we need some one like you—to whom his message comes as a wonderful new interpretation of life—to lead the revival, and rouse us out of our apathy...
“You see,” she went on winningly, “it's not only the big public that needs it (of course their Pellerin isn't ours!) ”

“ Bernald had left Portchester the morning after his strange discovery, and he and Bob Wade had not seen each other since. And now Bernald, moved by an irresistible instinct of postponement, had waited for his companion to bring up Winterman's name, and had even executed several conversational diversions in the hope of delaying its mention. For how could one talk of Winterman with the thought of Pellerin swelling one's breast?
“Yes; the very day Howland got back from Kenosha I brought the manuscript to town, and got him to read it. ”

“ Beecher Bain's, and Howland is to repeat the lecture that he gave the other day before the Pellerin Society at Kenosha. It will give Winterman a chance to get some notion of what Pellerin was: he'll get it much straighter from Howland than if he tried to plough through Pellerin's books. And then afterward—as if accidentally—I thought I might bring him and Howland together. If Howland could only see him and hear him talk, there's no knowing what might come of it. He couldn't help feeling the man's force, as we do ”

“ And it would be such a god-send to the poor man to have some one to advise him about his work. I'm going to make a desperate effort to get Howland here next Sunday.”
It was then that Bernald vowed to himself that he would return the next Sunday at all costs. He hardly knew whether he was prompted by the impulse to shield Winterman from Howland Wade's ineptitude, or by the desire to see the latter abandon himself to the full shamelessness of its display ”