Clifford D. Simak - Final Gentleman

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Title : Final Gentleman

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1959

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0,

proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : February 5, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

======================================================================

Final Gentleman

Clifford D. Simak

After thirty years and several million words there finally came a day when he couldn't write a line.

There was nothing more to say. He had said it all.

The book, the last of many of them, had been finished weeks ago and would be published soon and

there was an emptiness inside of him, a sense of having been completely drained away.

He sat now at the study window, waiting for the man from the news magazine to come, looking out

across the wilderness of lawn, with its evergreens and birches and the gayness of the tulips. And he

wondered why he cared that he would write no more, for certainly he had said a great deal more than

most men in his trade and most of it more to the point than was usual, and cloaked though it was in

fictional garb, he'd said it with sincerity and, he hoped, convincingly.

His place in literature was secure and solid. And, perhaps, he thought, this was the way it should be -

to stop now at the floodtide of his art rather than to go into his declining years with the sharp tooth of

senility nibbling away the bright valor of his work.

And yet there remained the urge to write, an inborn feeling that to fail to write was treachery,

although to whom it might be traitorous he had no idea. And there was more to it than that: An injured

pride, perhaps, and a sense of panic such as the newly blind must feel.

Although that was foolishness, he told himself. In his thirty years of writing, he had done a lifetime's

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work. And he'd made a _good_ life of it. Not frivolous or exciting, but surely satisfying.

He glanced around the study and thought how a room must bear the imprint of the man who lives

within it - the rows of calf-bound books, the decorous neatness of the massive oaken desk, the mellow

carpet on the floor, the old chairs full of comfort, the sense of everything firmly and properly in place.

A knock came. 'Come in.' said Harrington.

The door opened and old Adams stood there, bent shoulders, snow white hair - the perfect picture of

the old retainer.

'It's the gentleman from _Situation_, sir.'

'Fine,' said Harrington. 'Will you show him in?'

It wasn't fine - he didn't want to see this man from the magazine. But the arrangements had been made

many weeks before and there was nothing now but to go through with it.

The man from the magazine looked more like a businessman than a writer, and Harrington caught

himself wondering how such a man could write the curt, penetrating journalistic prose which had made

_Situation_ famous.

'John Leonard, sir,' said the man, shaking hands with Harrington.

'I'm glad to have you here,' said Harrington, falling into his pat pattern of hospitality. 'Won't you take

this chair? I feel I know you people down there. I've read your magazine for years. I always read the

Harvey column immediately it arrives.'

Leonard laughed a little. 'Harvey,' he said, 'seems to be our best known columnist and greatest

attraction. All the visitors want to have a look at him.'

He sat down in the chair Harrington had pointed out.

'Mr. White,' he said, 'sends you his best wishes.'

'That is considerate of him,' said Harrington. 'You must thank him for me. It's been years since I have

seen him.'

And thinking back upon it, he recalled that he'd met Preston White only once, all of twenty years ago.

The man, he remembered, had made a great impression upon him at the time - a forceful, driving,

opinionated man, an exact reflection of the magazine he published.

'A few weeks ago,' said Leonard. 'I talked with another friend of yours. Senator Johnson Enright.'

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Harrington nodded. 'I've known the senator for years and have admired him greatly. I suppose you

could call it a dissimilar association. The senator and I are not too much alike.'

'He has a deep respect and affection for you.'

'And I for him.' said Harrington. 'But this secretary of state business. I am concerned...'

'Yes?'

'Oh, he's the man for it, all right.' said Harrington. 'or I would suppose he is. He is intellectually honest

and he has a strange, hard streak of stubbornness and a rugged constitution, which is what we need. But

there are considerations...'

Leonard showed surprise. 'Surely you do not...'

Harrington waved a weary hand. 'No, Mr. Leonard, I am looking at it solely from the viewpoint of a

man who has given most of his life to the public service. I know that Johnson must look upon this

possibility with something close to dread. There have been times in the recent past when he's been ready

to retire, when only his sense of duty has kept him at his post.'

'A man,' said Leonard positively, 'does not turn down a chance to head the state department. Besides,

Harvey said last week he would accept the post.'

'Yes, I know,' said Harrington. 'I read it in his column.'

Leonard got down to business. 'I won't impose too much upon your time,' he said. 'I've already done

the basic research on you.'

'It's quite all right,' said Harrington. 'Take all the time you want. I haven't a single thing to do until this

evening, when I have dinner with my mother.'

Leonard's eyebrows raised a bit. 'Your mother is still living?'

'Very spry.' said Harrington, 'for all she's eighty-three. A sort of Whistler's mother. Serene and

beautiful.'

'You're lucky. My mother died when I was still quite young.'

'I'm sorry to hear of it,' said Harrington. 'My mother is a gentlewoman to her fingertips. You don't find

many like her now. I am positive I owe a great deal of what I am to her. Perhaps the thing I'm proudest

of is what your book editor, Cedric Madison, wrote about me quite some years ago. I sent a note to thank

him at the time and I fully meant to look him up someday, although I never did. I'd like to meet the man.'

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'What was it that he said?'

'He said, if I recall correctly, that I was the last surviving gentleman.'

'That's a good line.' Leonard said. 'I'll have to look it up. I think you might like Cedric. He may seem

slightly strange at times, but he's a devoted man, like you. He lives in his office, almost day and night.'

Leonard reached into his briefcase and brought out a sheaf of notes, rustling through them until he

found the page he wanted.

'We'll do a full-length profile on you,' he told Harrington. 'A cover and an inside spread with pictures.

I know a great deal about you, but there still are some questions, a few inconsistencies.'

'I'm not sure I follow you.'

'You know how we operate,' said Leonard. 'We do exhaustive checking to be sure we have the

background facts, then we go out and get the human facts. We talk with our subject's boyhood chums,

his teachers, all the people who might have something to contribute to a better understanding of the man

himself. We visit the places he has lived, pick up the human story, the little anecdotes. It's a demanding

job, but we pride ourselves on the way we do it.'

'And rightly so, young man.'

'I went to Wyalusing in Wisconsin,' said the man from the magazine. 'That's where the data said that

you were born.'

'A charming place as I remember it,' said Harrington. 'A little town, sandwiched between the river and

the hills.'

'Mr. Harrington.'

'Yes?'

'You weren't born there.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'There's no birth record at the county seat. No one remembers you.'

'Some mistake,' said Harrington. 'Or perhaps you're joking.'

'You went to Harvard, Mr. Harrington. Class of 27.'

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'That is right. I did.'

'You never married, sir.'

'There was a girl. She died.'

'Her name,' said Leonard, 'was Cornelia Storm.'

'That was her name. The fact's not widely known.'

'We are thorough, Mr. Harrington, in our background work.'

'I don't mind,' said Harrington. 'It's not a thing to hide. It's just not a fact to flaunt.'

'Mr. Harrington.'

'Yes?'

'It's not Wyalusing only. It's all the rest of it. There is no record that you went to Harvard. There never

was a girl named Cornelia Storm.'

Harrington came straight out of his chair.

'That is ridiculous!' he shouted. 'What can you mean by it?'

'I'm sorry,' Leonard said. 'Perhaps I could have found a better way of telling you than blurting it all

out. Is there anything -'

'Yes, there is,' said Harrington. 'I think you'd better leave.'

'Is there nothing I can do? Anything at all?'

'You've done quite enough,' said Harrington. 'Quite enough, indeed.'

He sat down in the chair again, gripping its arms with his shaking hands, listening to the man go out.

When he heard the front door close, he called to Adams to come in.

'Is there something I can do for you?' asked Adams.

'Yes. You can tell me who I am.'

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'Why, sir,' said Adams, plainly puzzled, 'you're Mr. Hollis Harrington.'

'Thank you, Adams,' said Harrington. 'That's who I thought I was!'

Dusk had fallen when he wheeled the car along the familiar street and drew up to the curb in front of

the old, white-pillared house set well back from the front of wide, tree-shaded grounds.

He cut the engine and got out, standing for a moment to let the sense of the street soak into him - the

correct and orderly, the aristocratic street, a refuge in this age of materialism. Even the cars that moved

along it, he told himself, seemed to be aware of the quality of the street, for they went more slowly and

more silently than they did on other streets and there was about them a sense of decorum one did not

often find in a mechanical contraption.

He turned from the street and went up the walk, smelling in the dusk the awakening life of gardens in

the springtime, and he wished that it were light for Henry, his mother's gardener, was quite famous for

his tulips.

As he walked along the path, with the garden scent, he felt the strange sense of urgency and of panic

drop away from him, for the street and house were in themselves assurances that everything was exactly

as it should be.

He mounted the brick steps and went across the porch and reached out his hand for the knocker on the

door.

There was a light in the sitting room and he knew his mother would be there, waiting for him to

arrive, but that it would be Tilda, hurrying from the kitchen, who would answer to his knock, for his

mother did not move about as briskly as she had.

He knocked and waited and as he waited he remembered the happy days he'd spent in this house

before he'd gone to Harvard, when his father still was living. Some of the old families still lived here,

but he'd not seen them for years, for on his visits lately he'd scarcely stirred outdoors, but sat for hours

talking with his mother.

The door opened, and it was not Tilda in her rustling skirts and her white starched collar, but an utter

stranger.

'Good evening,' he said. 'You must be a neighbor.'

'I live here.' said the woman.

'I can't be mistaken,' said Harrington. 'This is the residence of Mrs. Jennings Harrington.'

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'I'm sorry,' said the woman. 'I do not know the name. What was the address you were looking for?'

'2034 Summit Drive.'

'That's the number,' said the woman, 'but Harrington - I know of no Harringtons. We've lived here

fifteen years and there's never been a Harrington in the neighborhood.'

'Madam,' Harrington said, sharply, 'this is most serious -'

The woman closed the door.

He stood on the porch for long moments after she had closed the door, once reaching out his hand to

clang the knocker again, then withdrawing it. Finally he went back to the street.

He stood beside the car, looking at the house, trying to catch in it some unfamiliarity - but it was

familiar. It was the house to which he'd come for years to see his mother; it was the house in which he'd

spent his youth.

He opened the car door and slid beneath the wheel. He had trouble getting the key out of his pocket

and his hand was shaking so that it took a long time for him to insert it in the ignition lock.

He twisted the key and the engine started. He did not, however, drive off immediately, but sat

gripping the wheel. He kept staring at the house and his mind hurled back the fact again and yet again

that strangers had lived behind its walls for more than fifteen years.

Where, then, were his mother and her faithful Tilda? Where, then, was Henry, who was a hand at

tulips? Where the many evenings he had spent in that very house? Where the conversations in the sitting

room, with the birch and maple burning in the fireplace and the cat asleep upon the hearth?

There was a pattern, he was reminded - a deadly pattern - in all that had ever happened to him; in the

way that he had lived, in the books that he had written, in the attachments he had had and, perhaps, more

important, the ones he had not had. There was a haunting quality that had lurked behind the scenes, just

out of sight, for years, and there had been many times he'd been aware of it and wondered at it and tried

to lay his fingers on it - but never a time when he'd ever been quite so acutely aware of it as this very

moment.

It was, he knew, this haunted factor in his life which kept him steady now, which kept him from

storming up the walk again to hammer at the door and demand to see his mother.

He saw that he had stopped shaking, and he closed the window and put the car in gear.

He turned left at the next corner and began to climb, street after street.

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He reached the cemetery in ten minutes' time and parked the car. He found the topcoat in the rear seat

and put it on. For a moment, he stood beside the car and looked down across the town, to where the river

flowed between the hills.

This, he told himself, at least is real, the river and the town. This no one could take away from him, or

the books upon the shelf.

He let himself into the cemetery by the postern gate and followed the path unerringly in the uncertain

light of a sickle moon.

The stone was there and the shape of it unchanged; it was a shape, he told himself, that was burned

into his heart. He knelt before it and put out his hands and laid them on it and felt the moss and lichens

that had grown there and they were familiar, too!

'Cornelia,' he said. 'You are still here, Cornelia.'

He fumbled in his pocket for a pack of matches and lit three of them before the fourth blazed up in a

steady flame. He cupped the blaze between his hands and held it close against the stone.

A name was graven there.

It was not Cornelia Storm.

Senator Johnson Enright reached out and lifted the decanter.

'No thanks,' said Harrington. 'This one is all I wish. I just dropped by to say hello. I'll be going in a

minute.'

He looked around the room in which they sat and now he was sure of it - sure of the thing that he had

come to find. The study was not the same as he had remembered it. Some of the bright was gone, some

of the glory vanished. It was faded at the edges and it seemed slightly out of focus and the moose head

above the mantle was somehow just a little shabby, instead of grand and notable.

'You come too seldom,' said the senator, 'even when you know that you are always welcome.

Especially tonight. The family are all out and I'm a troubled man.'

'This business of the state department?'

Enright nodded. 'That is it exactly. I told the President, yes, I would take it if he could find no one

else. I almost pleaded with him to find another man.'

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'You could not tell him no?'

'I tried to,' said the senator. 'I did my best to tell him. I, who never in my life have been at a loss for

words. And I couldn't do it. Because I was too proud. Because through the years I have built up in me a

certain pride of service that I cannot turn my back upon.'

The senator sat sprawling in his chair and Harrington saw that there was no change in him, as there

had been in the room within which they sat. He was the same as ever - the iron-gray unruly mop of hair,

the woodchopper face, the snaggly teeth, the hunched shoulders of a grizzly.

'You realize, of course,' said Enright, 'that I have been one of your most faithful readers.'

'I know,' said Harrington. 'I am proud of it.'

'You have a fiendish ability,' said the senator, 'to string words together with fishhooks hidden in them.

They fasten into you and they won't let loose and you go around remembering them for days.'

He lifted up his glass and drank.

'I've never told you this before,' he said. 'I don't know if I should, but I suppose I'd better. In one of

your books you said that the hallmark of destiny might rest upon one man. If that man failed, you said,

the world might well be lost.'

'I think I did say that. I have a feeling...'

'You're sure,' asked the senator, reaching for the brandy, 'that you won't have more of this?'

'No, thanks,' said Harrington.

And suddenly he was thinking of another time and place where he'd once gone drinking and there had

been a shadow in the corner that had talked with him - and it was the first time he'd ever thought of that.

It was something, it seemed, that had never happened, that could not remotely have happened to Hollis

Harrington. It was a happening that he would not - could not - accept, and yet there it lay cold and naked

in his brain.

'I was going to tell you,' said the senator, 'about that line on destiny. A most peculiar circumstance, I

think you will agree. You know, of course, that one time I had decided to retire.'

'I remember it,' said Harrington. 'I recall I told you that you should.'

'It was at that time,' said the senator, 'that I read that paragraph of yours. I had written out a statement

announcing my retirement at the completion of my term and intended in the morning to give it to the

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press. Then I read that line and asked myself what if I were that very man you were writing of. Not, of

course, that I actually thought I was.'

Harrington stirred uneasily. 'I don't know what to say. You place too great a responsibility upon me.'

'I did not retire,' said the senator. 'I tore up the statement.'

They sat quietly for a moment, staring at the fire flaming on the hearth.

'And now,' said Enright, 'there is this other thing.'

'I wish that I could help,' said Harrington, almost desperately. 'I wish that I could find the proper

words to say. But I can't, because I'm at the end myself. I am written out. There's nothing left inside me.'

And that was not, he knew, what he had wished to say. _I came here to tell you that someone else has

been living in my mother's house for more than fifteen years, that the name on Cornelia's headstone is

not Cornelia's name. I came here to see if this room had changed and it has changed. It has lost some of

its old baronial magic..._

But he could not say it. There was no way to say it. Even to so close a friend as the senator it was

impossible.

'Hollis, I am sorry,' said the senator.

It was all insane, thought Harrington. He was Hollis Harrington. He had been born in Wisconsin. He

was a graduate of Harvard and - what was it Cedric Madison had called him - the last surviving

gentleman.

His life had been correct to the last detail, his house correct, his writing most artistically correct - the

result of good breeding to the fingertips.

Perhaps just slightly too correct. Too correct for this world of 1962, which had sloughed off the final

vestige of the old punctilio.

He was Hollis Harrington, last surviving gentleman, famous writer, romantic figure in the literary

world - and written out, wrung dry of all emotion, empty of anything to say since he had finally said all

that he was capable of saying.

He rose slowly from his chair.

'I must be going, Johnson. I've stayed longer than I should.'

'There is something else,' said the senator. 'Something I've always meant to ask you. Nothing to do

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