FICTION: Masterson

"Masterson"*

Here is a novel-reader's novel, splashed with color, with consummate skill laid on. It begins in Abyssinia in afternoons hibiscus-red, rose-pink, iris-purple; in twilights of sapphire-matrix, gold lacquer, saffron fire, blood-scarlet; in sepia shadows of moonlight and, far and far away, star-spangled indigo of the lower sky. There, in a barbaric dawn, John Masterson, a normal middle-aged Englishman, ponders the news that he is heir to a fortune. Only a prayer-got sense of duty persuades him to accept it. Returning to London, he finds his fortune times and times bigger than expected. In fact it is millions and millions of pounds.

"Can," the reader breathlessly wonders, "can any author keep up such a gallop?"

Listen. Before Masterson has had time to buy a decent suit of clothes, the Piccadilly crowd jostles him next to the girl with the sauciest lips, the most bewitching eyes in all the world. And within 24 hours a fashionable stockbroker, seeking Masterson's vast account, invites him to dinner with the woman of those lips, those eyes.

But before the reader can quite be sure that this is all a glorious fiction, the exceedingly rich man marries the lady of desirable beauty and through the iridescent veils of their honeymoon they both come painfully to life, stumble ignorantly into knowledge.

Masterson, in his lovable, dutiful way takes on the responsibilities of a great gentleman. From his stables he sends forth winners. He enters politics, not lightly but dauntlessly, to contest a Communist-infested slum district, which he "almost wins. Reverently, always, he rejoices in the angel, his wife.

Meanwhile, Irene—she of the lips, the eyes—glitters in her uncounted jewels, and wiser men than Masterson perceive that the glitter is not all seraphic. Among them is the stockbroker, Masterson's friend, who used to kiss Irene in her maidenhood, a triviality which she has decided to conceal from Masterson. She regrets, however, lightly, the possibility that he might kiss her again.

Comes terrifically the storm on Masterson's yacht. For one brief hour all his self-doubting and humility are forgotten as he drives his yacht through the deadly seas. Power, command, cunning, endurance are his in the thunder and torrent. Proudly, happily weary, when dawn breaks upon conquered seas, he descends to the cabins. He would go to his wife. Outside her door he finds his Abyssinian servant, crouching, knife in hand.

"Whom wouldst thou slay? Thy master's friend, perchance? Thy master's wife?" asks Masterson. "Nay," says the servant.

"Nay. Not now, Ras. Now that thou art safe, that duty is for thee."

Masterson did not slay either her or him. A knife is clean. She, he told her, was filthy. . . . It was fortunate for Masterson that he did not become a murderer, for a few pages ahead there had been prepared for him another, sweeter woman, in whom at last, as they say in these books, his love-quest was to find harbor.