"Before I sailed, I rushed into the /botica/ of old Manuel Iquito, a half-breed Indian druggist.I could not speak, but I pointed to my throat and made a sound like escaping steam.He began to yawn.In an hour, according to the customs of the country, I would have been waited on.I reached across the counter, seized him by the throat, and pointed again to my own.He yawned once more, and thrust into my hand a small bottle containing a black liquid.
"'Take one small spoonful every two hours,' says he.
"I threw him a dollar and skinned for the steamer.
"I steamed into the harbour at Belize thirteen seconds behind the yacht that Anabela and Fergus were on.They started for the shore in a dory just as my skiff was lowered over the side.I tried to order my sailormen to row faster, but the sounds died in my larynx before they came to the light.Then I thought of old Iquito's medicine, and I got out his bottle and took a swallow of it.
"The two boats landed at the same moment.I walked straight up to Anabela and Fergus.Her eyes rested upon me for an instant; then she turned them, full of feeling and confidence, upon Fergus.I knew I could not speak, but I was desperate.In speech lay my only hope.I could not stand beside Fergus and challenge comparison in the way of beauty.Purely involuntarily, my larynx and epiglottis attempted to reproduce the sounds that my mind was calling upon my vocal organs to send forth.
"To my intense surprise and delight the words rolled forth beautifully clear, resonant, exquisitely modulated, full of power, expression, and long-repressed emotion.
"'Senorita Anabela,' says I, 'may I speak with you aside for a moment?'
"You don't want details about that, do you? Thanks.The old eloquence had come back all right.I led her under a cocoanut palm and put my old verbal spell on her again.
"'Judson,' says she, 'when you are talking to me I can hear nothing else--I can see nothing else--there is nothing and nobody else in the world for me.'
"Well, that's about all of the story.Anabela went back to Oratama in the steamer with me.I never heard what became of Fergus.I never saw him any more.Anabela is now Mrs.Judson Tate.Has my story bored you much?"
"No," said I."I am always interested in psychological studies.A
human heart--and especially a woman's--is a wonderful thing to contemplate."
"It is," said Judson Tate."And so are the trachea and bronchial tubes of man.And the larynx too.Did you ever make a study of the windpipe?"
"Never," said I."But I have taken much pleasure in your story.May I ask after Mrs.Tate, and inquire of her present health and whereabouts?"
"Oh, sure," said Judson Tate."We are living in Bergen Avenue, Jersey City.The climate down in Oratama didn't suit Mrs.T.I don't suppose you ever dissected the arytenoid cartilages of the epiglottis, did you?"
"Why, no," said I, "I am no surgeon."
"Pardon me," said Judson Tate, "but every man should know enough of anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health.A sudden cold may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary vesicles, which may result in a serious affection of the vocal organs."
"Perhaps so," said I, with some impatience; "but that is neither here nor there.Speaking of the strange manifestations of the affection of women, I--"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Judson Tate; "they have peculiar ways.But, as I was going to tell you: when I went back to Oratama I found out from Manuel Iquito what was in that mixture he gave me for my lost voice.I told you how quick it cured me.He made that stuff from the /chuchula/
plant.Now, look here."
Judson Tate drew an oblong, white pasteboard box from his pocket.
"For any cough," he said, "or cold, or hoarseness, or bronchial affection whatsoever, I have here the greatest remedy in the world.
You see the formula, printed on the box.Each tablet contains licorice, 2 grains; balsam tolu, 1/10 grain; oil of anise, 1/20 minim;
oil of tar, 1/60 minim; oleo-resin of cubebs, 1/100 minim; fluid extract of /chuchula/, 1/10 minim.
"I am in New York," went on Judson Tate, "for the purpose of organizing a company to market the greatest remedy for throat affections ever discovered.At present I am introducing the lozenges in a small way.I have here a box containing four dozen, which I am selling for the small sum of fifty cents.If you are suffering--"
I got up and went away without a word.I walked slowly up to the little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his conscience.My feelings were lacerated.He had poured gently upon me a story that I might have used.There was a little of the breath of life in it, and some of the synthetic atmosphere that passes, when cunningly tinkered, in the marts.And, at the last it had proven to be a commercial pill, deftly coated with the sugar of fiction.The worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale.Advertising departments and counting-rooms look down upon me.And it would never do for the literary.Therefore I sat upon a bench with other disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.
I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in my favourite magazines.This was to get my mind back to art again.
And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and hopelessly, one by one, upon the floor.Each author, without one exception to bring balm to my heart, wrote liltingly and sprightly a story of some particular make of motor-car that seemed to control the sparking plug of his genius.
And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart.
"If readers can swallow so many proprietary automobiles," I said to myself, "they ought not to strain at one of Tate's Compound Magic Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges."
And so if you see this story in print you will understand that business is business, and that if Art gets very far ahead of Commerce, she will have to get up and hustle.
I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can't buy the /chuchula/ plant in the drug stores.
