THE TRIUMPH OF THE NUT
AND OTHER PARODIES

BY

CHRISTOPHER WARD

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1923

Acknowledgment is gratefully made to The Literary Review of The New York Evening Post for permission to reprint several of these parodies, which appeared in its columns, often under different titles and sometimes in briefer versions.

I

There was a man named Webster, who lived in a town in the State of Wisconsin and he made patent washing machines. He had a wife named Mary and a daughter named Jane and a stenographer named Natalie. And he used to have dreams, which was no great matter until he began to practise what he dreamed.

And so there was this Webster, and then this thing happened to him. He began to feel strange feelings and movements within his head, as though it were a newly wound watch.

He found it hard to sit still in one spot and impossible to sit still in two spots. So he walked rapidly to and fro, in and out of office and factory, and he thought: “Perhaps I am becoming a little insane. But I like myself better this way.” Which, considering what kind of man he had been, was not strange.

2He stopped in front of Natalie and looked hard at her. She looked hard, too, though not at him. She just naturally looked hard because she was a pretty hard case, in her own way.

Suddenly it was clear to John Webster that Natalie was not a woman. She was a house. When she raised her eyes she raised the windows of the house and when she raised her voice she raised the roof. She was short and broad—a bungalow, then, with no upper story at all, nothing above the eaves.

So then Natalie was a house, a new thought. Probably other people were houses too; his own wife, perhaps. He must look to see what kind of a house she was. Was she an eligible family residence, suitable for permanent occupancy, or merely a boarding house, to be left at short notice—if one preferred, let us say, a nice little bungalow?

And so there he was on his way home for lunch and an inspection of his wife.

II

Yes, both of them, wife and daughter, were houses. Then he himself must be a house. Houses should not wear clothes. He went up to his room and took off all his clothes. He stood before a mirror admiring his own naked façade.

3What kind of house was he? A large winged insect flew against the window screen and crawled slowly toward the top. It spoke with a little voice: “Let me in. I belong to your house. Let me in.” That was the answer to his question. “Bughouse! Positive, bug—comparative, parasite—superlative, paresis,” he murmured, and he smiled softly—so softly.

III

When he returned to the office he saw that Natalie was changed. An amazing and lovely thing had happened. Tears came into his eyes and his knees felt as weak as his brain. He crawled across the room on all fours and laid his head in her lap.

“Natalie, an amazing and lovely thing has happened to you. You have had a bath,” he said.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Why, you look so pale, and, besides, I saw the high water mark on the back of your neck,” he said. “Where did you do this amazing and lovely thing?”

“In a common washtub in mother’s shed.”

How lovely it was that she had used a common washtub instead of one of the patent washing machines. They were so commercial, so practical. But a common washtub, you see, 4is nearly related to the old oaken bucket and reminds one of all the creeping, crawling, swimming, jumping things that live in and around wells.

He could see them now, thousands of the little creatures, going swiftly up and down stairs, opening windows, laughing, crying, fighting, and, especially, making love, without any hampering rules, regulations, or restrictions. It was too lovely.

“Natalie,” he said, “I do not love my wife. She is so fat. I will take a thousand dollars and go away with you. Let who will make patent washing machines. Henceforth, I will only make love.”

Now this Natalie, you see, was a notable dumbbell and so she said nothing. All she thought was that a thousand dollars would take a lot of spending and she might as well go along.

IV

As you will remember, John Webster had begun to dislike his clothes. They were, you see, ready-made clothes. Hence one should not be surprised at the strange nightly ceremony begun in his room.

He set up a picture of the Virgin between two yellow candles. Then he undressed and 5walked naked up and down the room for hours at a time, thinking great thoughts.

“I used to be a dull clod. Now I am a shining nut. I am cracked and my shell is off. I am a lovely study in psychopathy.

“Why should I work, making uninteresting washing machines? I will become a writer. Among them I shall not be strange, for there are many nuts among the writers. They write books like this and get away with it. Many people will think this is a deep, philosophical book, that it throws a new and fierce light upon the problems of civilization. Whereas it is simply a medical document, a study of a certain common form of insanity.

“I will write books like this book, but they shall throw a fiercer light on the problems of civilization, for I will make my hero run naked in the streets. All nuts of this particular variety do that when they are fully ripe. My book will be a devastating book and it will have Sherwood Anderson and Krafft-Ebing faded.”

There he was, you see, John Webster, night after night, walking naked up and down his room, thinking great thoughts.

V

One night his wife could no longer restrain her vain and morbid curiosity as to what he was 6doing, walking so up and down in his room. He saw the door to her room open an inch. At the same time his daughter’s door similarly opened. In a moment he had disposed himself for the great scene.

“Come in,” he called. There was a commanding ring in his voice. “Come in, both of you, and sit there on the bed.”

Pale, frightened, cowed, those wretched women, who had never had great thoughts, came in. There was John Webster, naked, seated on the top of a dresser, crosslegged, like an obscene Buddha, a lighted candle in each hand. They made for the bed and fell prostrate, burying their faces in the bed-clothes.

“Jane,” he began, addressing his daughter, “I do not love that woman there, your mother and my wife. When our marriage transpired——”

A muffled groan from Jane stopped him. “Occurred, father,” she moaned. “Occurred, not transpired. Don’t you know the difference in the meaning of the words?”

He ignored the interruption. “She was lovely, tall, straight, and slim. Her hair was golden yellow. Now she is homely, fat, and generally unattractive. Her hair is rather colorless. No free, unrestrained animal would continue to love such a mate. I intend to be like other animals. So I am going to leave this house and live with Natalie.

7“In a short time, doubtless, I shall leave her in turn and find another, and so on until I am overtaken by death or the police.

“I want you to know about this plan of mine. There are too many marriages. There should be many matings, free and frequent. But of marriages, few or none. This is the key to unlock the fetters of civilization. It is Sherwood Anderson’s answer to the riddle of existence, else this book, in which we live, has no meaning.”

For hours he talked, describing to his daughter all the ugly aspects of her mother’s body and mind, all the sordid incidents of their married life that his memory could recall or his imagination furnish. It was a quite lovely experience for both women.

When he dressed, packed his bag, and left the house, his wife took a few ounces of laudanum and ceased to exist.

VI

Through the silent, deserted streets toward the railroad station John Webster walked with his new woman, Natalie, the Beautiful Washing Machine Girl. He walked with one foot on the curb and one in the gutter. Up and down he went, as with alternate step he now rose toward heaven on the higher foot, now sank 8toward earth on the lower. It pleased him to walk thus. It seemed to typify the conflict of life, the struggle between the higher and lower natures. Natalie, carrying both bags, wept unceasingly, but inaudibly.

“That is fine,” thought John Webster. “She weeps with dignity. But she walks with both feet on the sidewalk.”

“Come, woman,” he said. “Walk as I do, with one foot in the gutter. That will do for a starter. Both of them and all the rest of you will be in the gutter, when I am through with you. Better get used to it gradually.”

Natalie, still weeping, audibly now, obeyed. And so there in the darkness of the night, John Webster and his pro tempore soul mate, Natalie, the congenital dumbbell, went on their way, up and down, up and down, one foot in the gutter, one on the curb.

VII

They came to where narrow strips of grass bordered the sidewalk. These gave John Webster a new and glorious thought.

“See the grass strips!” he cried; “the beautiful grass strips! All flesh is grass; therefore, let us strip also.”

He began, unsystematically but vigorously, enthusiastically, to remove his clothing. Natalie’s 9weeping now lost all its dignity. She bellowed enormously. She woke the echoes and a policeman.

And, so you see, there is John Webster in a great house maintained by the State of Wisconsin for all who think such great thoughts. He is free from the worries of women, wives and washing machines; carefree in all respects save one—his straitjacket is obviously a ready-made garment.

I

“We have been married exactly fifty-four minutes,” said Maurice, “and I still love you.”

“I can’t believe it!” answered Eleanor.

As she was thirty-nine and he nineteen, her incredulity was not strange, but, after all, fifty-four minutes lacks a full six minutes of being an hour.

They were islanded in rippling tides of windblown grass, with the warm fragrance of dropping locust blossoms enfolding them and in their ears the endless murmur of the river.

“We must spend our golden wedding here, under this tree,” he said.

She made a mental calculation. She was twice his age. At their golden wedding he would be sixty-nine and she twice that—one hundred and thirty-eight! It seemed hopeless. Would it last forever? Such a little thing might—throw the switches.

11Six minutes had elapsed. “I wish,” said Maurice very low in his mind, “I wish I could die, right now!” Tempus, edax amoris!

II

She had said “No!” six times. Consider her age! Consider that she was a music-teacher and suffered from indigestion! Consider, moreover, that the author of her being had failed to give her any last name and here was her opportunity to fill the gap! This, then, was certainly an heroic defense of an untenable position. At the seventh time of asking, she capitulated—more to be pitied than blamed.

She sang with a voice of serene sweetness. Otherwise she was a creature of alluring silences. They fascinated Maurice. He was sure that behind her white forehead beautiful, mysterious thoughts were evolving. Perhaps that was so. Evolution is a notoriously slow process. On the other hand, behind that white forehead there may have been merely one full portion of the great cosmic void. Judging her by what she verbally disclosed, her rating under the Binet test was D−.

She was not a well woman. Besides indigestion, she was suffering from another chronic illness, detropitis. She did not know it yet. She had not met Maurice’s other half. She was 12his better half, but Edith was his other half—a very different thing.

Edith and Maurice were fashioned for each other. They had been so carefully forged and shaped that they fitted each other like a pair of scissors. Anything that came between them was—de trop and likely to get hurt.

Moreover, she was, unknowingly, now exposing herself to her final, her fatal malady. The place of their fifty-four minute honeymoon had been rashly, inconsiderately chosen. This riverside paradise was unlucky for her. Death was already shaking the bones for the final throw—though its double-sixes did not fall for ten years. All in all, she was not a well woman.

III

Maurice’s Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary took them in until Maurice could get a job. Uncle Henry’s wife counted every cigar he smoked, yet he maintained his cheerfulness. He reminded one somewhat of Mark Tapley, somewhat of Moses, but mostly of William James—the Pragmatic Sanction justified everything to him.

Aunt Mary was of distinguished lineage, descendant of the late Lydia Pinkham and of the late Ralph Waldo Emerson. She inherited 13the Pinkham physique, the Emerson mentality.

Edith, their daughter, was eleven. She and Maurice had a wonderful time playing tag and pussy-in-a-corner, while Eleanor sat on the porch with the other old folks and had a wonderful time being jealous of Edith.

“Maurice! don’t get overheated, darling! Look out! you’ll tear your panties and mamma will have to spank. Maurice! come sit by mamma and she’ll show you how to play cat’s-cradle. Maurice, dear! You mustn’t play with that rough, rude tom-boy. Come, let mamma tell you Bible stories.”

It worried Maurice. Seeking distraction, he developed an interest in poultry. He shingled the chicken-coop and then crawled in and sat among the chickens debating whether Eleanor was an old hen. After observing them for some time, he found that hens never nagged the cockerels. She was not an old hen!

Apparently slight causes have such momentous effects! He had developed an interest in chickens. He little knew whither it was to lead him.

IV

Maurice got a job in a real-estate office and at once became a real force in the business. He devised a new method of making sales. It 14consisted in pointing out to prospective purchasers the defects in the houses he was trying to sell.

If a house had a broken-down heater, an antiquated plumbing system and a leaky roof, Maurice would take the client into his confidence and tell him frankly that there was a broken window-pane in the attic, a creaky board in the dining-room floor and several scratches in the paint of the guest-room door. Such frankness was most beguiling. The client was beguiled into examining, under Maurice’s guidance, the attic window and the guest-room door, and forgot to look at the heater and the roof.

Houses which had been the despair of the office were sold, one after another. They gave him three cheers and the nickname of “G. R. Q. Wallingford.”

V

Their attempt at housekeeping failed. Although Eleanor had hired a very deaf old scrubwoman to do the cooking, somehow the food wasn’t properly prepared. After Maurice had broken a tooth on one of her soft-boiled eggs, they gave it up and went to boarding.

They had a nice third-story room, with a 15black-marble mantelpiece, an antique carpet and steel engravings of Lincoln’s Cabinet and Daniel Webster. It was a dear little lovenest. Every evening Maurice played solitaire on a marble-topped table. She put on an old wrapper, let down her hair, made it all nice and stringy with cologne, lay down on the bed and moaned. They were three years married now. He was twenty-two, she was going on for about sixty-six.

“Star, why do you moan?” he asked gently.

“You’re tired of me, Maurice. You don’t love me,” she moaned. “I’m jealous.”

“Of whom,” he inquired.

“Of Edith, of your Aunt Mary, of your stenographer, of our landlady, of the schoolteacher downstairs, of our late cook, of everybody.”

Moan—moan—moan. “Jealousy isn’t a vice. It’s my favorite indoor sport. I love you—I love you so.” Moan—moan—moan. “Tell me you love me, Maurice.”

“I do—yes, of course, naturally, I love you—devotedly, madly.”

“You don’t love me! You don’t love me!”

He threw the table at her. She screamed.

“Excuse me, dearest, for an hour or two. I forgot something.” He took his hat and went out. All the lights went out....

The switches were thrown....

Lily Dale was a little thing, with exquisite features, a pretty, laughing face and amber eyes. She was a lover of flowers, a neat housekeeper, a good cook. She was honest, cheerful, self-reliant, humorous. In fact, she was a great deal better than she should be, considering what she was. In the entire category of virtues she lacked only two, grammar and—the title rôle.

In her little flat she cooked a steak for Maurice better than any he’d had since he was married—and made a cup of coffee to match it. She put him in a big chair before an open fire, with a hyacinth on the table beside him. She sat on a hassock by him, smoked cigarettes and told him funny stories ... and Maurice discovered why men leave home....

Maurice had a wonderful idea. He and Eleanor would again go to housekeeping and install Lily in the kitchen. Lily would be saved and they’d have a good cook. Then Eleanor could lie on the bed upstairs and moan all the evening, while he and Lily made fudge in the kitchen.

“My wife’s very broad-minded,” he said, “and we need a cook awful bad.”

“Ain’t you the funny little feller!” said Lily. “Here, you run along home to mother. The old lady’ll think you got stole or something....”

17Eleanor awaited him in their room. “Maurice, dear! Where’ve you been?”

“To see a chicken. You know my interest in poultry. (Thank God! that’s no lie)....”

But whenever he wanted a good cup of coffee, he had to go back to the little flat....

VII

Little Jacky Dale was six years old when Eleanor first learned of his existence. She happened not to be lying on the bed at the time, so she fainted first—then went to bed.

There were dumb days when she went about like an automaton. Days when she sat at the window and looked at the bare branches of the trees, the dead stalks of the lilies—the river! Sometimes she was almost able to think. Then a return to normality—blank listlessness. Sometimes she seemed to hear a whisper in her mind—but it was only an echo in the void.

So the days passed and each day she dredged the silences of her cranium for thoughts—none! But at last, after two years of listening to echoes and dredging silences—an idea came to her! It was the first she’d ever had! The shock of it took her breath away, stunned her! But there it was, her first-born idea! A little idiotic, perhaps, but her own!

18She went to the house on Maple Street, where Lily lived.

“Sell me Jacky! I’ll give you six hundred dollars.”

“Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars! I ain’t no cheap trader!”

“It’s all I’ve got.”

“Then you needn’t come around. If that’s all you’ve got, you’d better get.”

She got.

VIII

A failure! Her little first-born idea had flivvered! Would she ever have another? Yes! She had another almost immediately—of the same kind. She must keep Maurice from marrying Edith and to do that it was necessary—not for her to live. No, that would be good for only twenty or twenty-five years or maybe thirty—if she lived to be eighty. Maurice would be only sixty then and Edith fifty and they might still marry.

She must do better than that. He must marry Lily! Lily would live at least fifty years more. By that time Maurice would surely be dead and Edith foiled, forever. She, herself, must die at once so Maurice might marry Lily....

It was the place of their honeymoon. But 19the river looked wet! Suppose it was? Her skirts would get wet! To keep her coat dry she left it on the bank. Her hat? She’d wear that to keep her hair dry.

Feet in the water, ankle deep! It was wet! Oh, bother! Above her knees now! Still wet—such a nuisance! She fell full length! Wet all over!!! She couldn’t stand that! That was too much of a wetness! No, no, she’d better go home and try something new.

So she tried pneumonia.

IX

“Of course, now that poor Eleanor is gone,” said Maurice, “I’ll have to look out for Jacky and Lily. I think I’ll marry Lily.”

“Of course not,” said Aunt Mary, and Uncle Henry agreed.

“Well, then, I don’t think I’ll marry any one. Although Lily is an excellent cook.”

“You’re all so stupid,” broke in Edith. “You marry me, Maurice.”

“But,” interposed Uncle Henry, “what about Maurice’s relations with——”

“Bother Maurice’s relations,” Edith interrupted. “I’m not marrying them. We’ll adopt Jacky and put Lily in the kitchen.”

I

Lee Clavering’s weary eyes—steel-blue, half closed—roved over the darkened auditorium.

Twelve years ago he had migrated from pre-civil-war Louisiana to Manhattan, the Brains of America—from the ante-bellum to the cerebellum. In that time he had attained the highest position in the gift of the nation. Poets, playwrights, players, painters, pugilists, politicians, prophets, priests, popes, presidents, princes and pullman-car porters cringed before him.

He was L. C., the premier columnist of America, the King Kleagle of the Kolyumist Klan.

His long dark face suggested the cynical, the mysterious, the morose. But his steel-blue eyes were now, as always, searching, with the evergreen hope of finding the consummate 21woman, which proves him really romantic. That he found her in a New York first-night audience proves him a character in fiction.

II

She sat two seats ahead of him. After the first act, she rose to her feet, turned toward him and, with her opera glasses, swept the house.

“European,” Clavering clicked. “All of them are—these sweepers and scrubwomen.”

The columnist spoke. The man took a second look—and saw that Venus rising from the sea had nothing on her (emphasis on her, please!)—the most exquisitely beautiful woman he had ever seen—the only authentic consummate woman, indubitably.

Clavering’s nerves rippled, but the man next to him—old Dinwiddie, swell, suave and sixty—had an apoplectic fit. His eyes bulged. His lips gibbered.

“It’s a ghost—Mary Ogden—belle of New York forty-five years ago, when I was a kid—married Count Zattiany—Hungarian—never been back since——”

“Her daughter, of course,” suggested Clavering.

“Never had any—to speak of—but that’s it—must be—one of the unmentionables—she was 22a gay one—little liaison now and then—relished by the best of men——”

III

Three weeks passed—six more “first-nights”—and “Mary Ogden” was at every one of them, also Lee Clavering. She was “the talk of the town.”

The newspapers were full of the mystery. Who was this enthralling person? Crowds followed her everywhere. She bought a pair of gloves—and seven floor-walkers were hurried to Bellevue in seven separate deliria. She went into the Public Library—and the infatuated populace carried off all the books as souvenirs. She walked around the reservoir—and they drew off the water and sold it for a dollar a bottle.

At the theater they turned the footlights around and threw the spotlights on her. Nobody looked at the stage. The actors forgot their parts, switched from the first act of “The Demi-Vierge” to the second act of “Pollyanna” and no one noticed it, but the author.

On the second Sunday, forty per cent of all the clergymen preached on “Mary has chosen the better part.”

Never had there been such excitement in 23Manhattan since Peter Stuyvesant broke his wooden leg.

IV

After the sixth “first-night,” Lee Clavering followed her home. He found her alone in the great city, on her own doorstep.

“May I?—Am I?—Are you?—Were they?—Was it?—Whoosis?—” he stammered, his temperature rising dangerously.

“Oh,” she said with a faint smile, “I’m locked out——”

“Watch me!” he said.

He tore out the area railing and threw it at a passing taxicab, smashed the area windows, and burst in the door. Entering, he ran rapidly through the house, switched on all the lights, turned on the hot and cold water in every bathroom, upset the furniture and slid down the banisters from the fourth story to the first. Landing in a heap at the bottom, he leaped to his feet and opened the front door.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “Have a drink, Mr. Clavering?”

“You know whom I am, then?” he cyrilled in amazement.

“Certainly. Don’t you?” she answered.

“I—yes—no—” he murmured, his eyes fixed on her, as he poured a drink.

24“That’s the catsup bottle—and do you always drink from a finger bowl?” she asked sweetly.

“Oh, invariably never,” he gasped. “I mean—inevitably always——”

“Won’t you sit down?”

“You make me sit up—and take notice,” he columned feebly, seating himself on the overturned victrola.

“You will pardon my confusion,” he babbled on. “To who—I mean, to wit have I the honor of speaking? How old are you? Have you ever been married? If so, mark a cross within the circle, but not within the triangle—if not, was your husband present when the body was found? If you have any children not in jail, how do you account for it? Who are you, and if not, what is your beautiful name? Answer yes or no.”

“Marie Zattiany,” she answered, with a smile.

“Legitimate or ill—” he paused in midflight, dipped his forefinger into the catsup and dreamily drew a red cross on his shirt-front.

“Pardon me,” he continued, “I was about to ask a personal question. To speak quite impersonally—will you marry me?—if you’re of marriageable age.”

“How old do you think I am? Don’t answer. You’d certainly either flatter me nauseatingly 25or insult me grossly. Come back in three weeks and I will tell you my story.”

She raised her hand for him to kiss, but he ducked and she missed him by an inch.

Outside the house, he remembered the shattered basement-windows. His southern chivalry would not let him leave her unprotected. He lay down on the doorstep and slept soundly until dawn.

V

A column a day keeps the sheriff away and when you’ve got the habit, you keep right on, no matter what your feelings are—or your readers’. It helped L. C. to bear incertitude with fortitude.

The make-up seldom varied. It must open with a poem, preferably an authentic L. C. Horatian ode. His odometer registered three a week. It was his line—“master of the Horatian line,” he had been called. As thus:

THE MAN OF UPRIGHT LIFE
Horace: Book I; Ode 22
Integer vitæ, scelerisque purus—

L’Envoi

27Then the contribs must have a chance. Just now they were busy with Tens. For example, one proposed, as the Ten Most Lovable Old Women in History, a list beginning with (1) Mother Goose and (2) Old Mother Hubbard, and ending with (9) Josephine Daniels and (10) Wilhelmina Jenny Bryan.

Another wrote——

Then the Diary:

“Up betimes, at ten of the clock and to my office, there half an hour pasting contribs’ contribs to make a full column and amazed to find how short my stint, but with no lack of pleasure or content. Having nothing now in my mind of trouble in the world, did sit and think on many things. So to lunch with H. Broun, my fellow scrivener and a very pleasant fellow withal, though me thought me had heard before some of the bright sayings of his little son, wherewith he regaled me. Thence to the game or play of base-ball, as well played as ever I saw in my life. Thence to tea with Mistress Myssa McMynn, with much merriment 28and wit. Thence to dinner with F. Adams, the satyrickal writer, H. Canby, the excellent critick, C. Morley, the literary philosopher, D. Marquis, the poet, and other wits, and much good talk of this and that. Thence to the playhouse where was enacted a masque entitled “The Follies,” to my great content. Thence to supper with W. Rogers, the antick player, and found him very intelligent, whereat I wondered greatly. And so to bed, very low spirited and lay a long time marvelling at my capacity for work and how, poor wretch, I must earn my bread by the sweat of my paste pot.”

VI

Three weeks passed.

“To-night’s the night,” he cried, rushed from his apartment, plunged recklessly between automobiles going in four different directions at once—obviously Fords—sprang upon the roof of a passing taxicab and told the man to drive like hell for Park Avenue.

He charged up the steps, assaulted the door with his fists, leap-frogged over the impassive butler. He found her in the library and forced the fighting from the start.

It seemed to her that her entire body was encircled by flexible hot bars of iron and that her face, her mouth, were being flagellated.

“Break away!” she managed to gurgle. “No biting in the clinches!”

29“Who are you?” he cried. “I don’t want to know! Will you marry me? Don’t answer!”

Again she was submerged. When she was coming up for the third time, he pushed her head under once more. A left hook to the jaw and he collapsed under a table.

When he came to, his voice was weak.

“A typewriter, please!” he gasped. “It’s stuff for the column.” His news sense rarely failed him.

“Tuesday, October 29th—I to M. Zattiany’s, the toast of the town, and a mighty mystery, whether she be in truth Zattiany or a mischievous impostor, and did kiss and clip her mightily, but the baggage handed me a slapp on the mapp, as a trunk had fallen on me. So I to the mat.”

“What next?” he added feebly.

“Have a drink,” she said.

He took three.

“Who are you, woman? Is your real name Zattiany or Firpo?”

“I am Mary Ogden Zattiany,” she answered quietly; “I married Zattiany forty-five years ago. I was twenty-five at the time. Do your own arithmetic.”

“Five from thirty is twenty and carry two—twice two is five divided by forty—double it and subtract the cube root—think of a number, add a dash of bitters—shake well before using”—his 30voice trailed to silence and his jaw dropped.

“I hated Zattiany but his position appealed to my love of power and intrigue—especially the latter. I was besieged by men—and surrendered at discretion.”

He got suddenly to his feet. “Think I’ll take few more drinks.” He did so and then sat down on the floor, a full glass in either hand.

“I had many lovers—many—many—many—” she went on.

“Bow-wow-wow!” he barked a short laugh.

He gazed at her with relaxing features. His steel-blue eyes goggled sardonically.

“Of all my lovers, I loved but one, Prince Haffanauer, the last. But he married and left me flat.”

“Lef’ your flat? Thought you lived in palazzo.”

“That’s so,” she echoed. “I did until the war came.”

“’Scuse me pers’nal queshion, Mis’ Zattiany, but have you sat in any these genelmen’s laps lately?”

“Not since Haffanauer,” she answered pleadingly.

“Tha’s long time—thirty minutes,” he ruminated. “That’s all ri’. Proceed!”

31“I was sixty-five when Haffanauer—elapsed, so to speak.”

“But you’re young woman now. Please ’splain that—simple queshion—how do you did it?”

“Coué!”

“No, I won’ go ’way—not tell you till me—till you tell me.”

“Coué! Coué! Emile Coué!”

“Are you singin’ song or jes’ making funny noises?”

“Oh, you know! Every day in every way—younger and younger.”

“Sure, I know! Every day Coee, Cooay, he chortled in his joy! Alice Swunderland. S’Lewis Carroll—great columnist—my cousin—same ’nitials.”

“I was sixty-eight when I took the cure. Every day I’ve been getting younger and younger—in every way.”

“Better stop, lady!” he said solemnly. “Some kid now, but—much younger—police in’erfere.”

“Well—that is my story. Do you—do you love me still?” she faltered.

“’Scuse me, ’nother pers’nal queshion. D’you make zis hooch?”

“I did.”

“’En I do love your still. Old as you are, your still’s mos’ beautiful thing in N’York. In hooch signo vinces. With all thy faults, I love 32thy still—now an’ forever—one insepar’ble—death us do part!”

And then he slept as quietly as a child.

VII

Three weeks passed—three weeks of constant companionship with Lee Clavering—almost exhausting her capacity for surprise and her cellar. Then, a wireless telegram—“Wife dead must see you immediately on arrival Berengaria Haffanauer.”

The Prince arrived—straight, thin, erect, broke—in his eyes the glance of the Austrian double-eagle, now selling at 99⁴⁴⁄₁₀₀ off for cash.

“Frau Gräfin.” He lifted her hand to his lips with princely courtesy. “Younger than when I first saw you. Couéing, they tell me—and billing, as well—is it not so?”

“Why are you here, Excellenz?”

“Because Austria needs you—I need you. We need you every hour and—every dollar. Will you marry me?”

“But I am engaged to L. C.”

“What of that? Let me state my case. I am about to rehabilitate Austria. My plans are simple but comprehensible by the meanest intelligence—only. I shall annex Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Moldavia, Bolivia, 33Rumania, Pneumonia, the Jugo and Czecho brothers and all the Balking States. I shall create a Barnum, Bailey and Ringling Brothers Austria—bigger and better than ever.

“And you?” he went on, “you shall be—what you will—queen, empress, my m—er—morganatic wife. The Oesterreich shall shed its plumes for your adornment—if only you’ll buy a little preferred with a large bonus of very common.”

“Old stuff!” she exclaimed disdainfully. “I have the same plan. I shall do it myself—with the aid of my husband’s column—I, Marie, Countess Zattiany!”

“But, no,” he answered. “Return to Austria as Mrs. Lee Clavering and you’ll be cut by every true-born Austrich. We recognize no one without sixteen quarterings—and a few hangings and drawings.”

“What?” she stared aghast. “Mrs. Lee—? Shall I have to take my husband’s name? Isn’t the Lucy Stone League too powerful——”

“Not in Austria,” he said blandly. “No League whether of Nations or denominations is recognized.”

“I love him so!” she moaned. “But this changes everything. I will never give up the gräfinship. Moritz! I am yours!”

“Sign on the dotted line,” he said quietly.

She wrote Lee these stanzas:

But he printed it in the column on Saturday and on Monday married the daughter of an eminent bootlegger.

I

“I opine,” began Susy——

“You what?” interrupted Nick.

“Opine,” answered Susy.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Nick.

“Why not?” she asked, amazed.

“Why it isn’t done, my dear. Really it isn’t.”

“It’s a perfectly good word,” pouted Susy. “Prior used it.”

“Prior, yes, but not since,” said he. “It has had priority but not permanency. Obsolete, my dear—archaic. Begin again.”

“All right. How’s this?——”

I

“The moon—their tutelary orb——”

“Tutelary orb! Oh, dear!” groaned Nick. “Why don’t you say ‘chaste goddess of the night!’ ‘sweet regent of the heavens!’ ‘queen 36and huntress, chaste and fair!’ or something new like that? This is modern English prose, my dear Susy. Here, let me have the typewriter. I’ll show you how.”

I

Nick Lansing lived in a three-pair-back bed sitting-room. An industrious young man, he worked day and night. In the daytime he worked, writing part of a popular encyclopedia—V to X, a most depressing section of the alphabet. At night he worked his rich friends for dinners, the opera, drinks and cigars, a more agreeable job.

Susy Branch was also a prominent member of the I. W. W. She worked everybody, day and night, all the time, for everything—clothes, shoes, hats, board, lodging and laundry.

In spite of their industry, both were poor. Nick was poor as he could be—which, considering Nick’s capacity for poverty—is saying something. Susy was poorer than she could be—and be satisfied—which, considering her tastes and appetites, isn’t saying so much. Still, the fact is she hadn’t a red—outside of her vanity-case.

And so they were married. By the Interposition of Authorship they were brought together 37at the almost equally poor Fulmers’ tiny cottage in the wilds of New Hampshire, where Nat Fulmer painted the Italian cook on the veranda, Grace Fulmer played the fiddle in the dining-room and the five Fulmer kids raised hell simultaneously all over the place. The romance of married love in a cottage swept Susy off her feet.

It was Susy’s idea. Nick would never have thought of it.

“Why not us get married?” she asked quite simply.

Nick was frightened, shied, might have run away, but Susy was on the job with a plan—blue-prints, specifications and working-drawings all complete—especially the last. Susy was a fast worker.

In six words, the gist of it was “checks, nothing but checks, for wedding-presents.” The word “checks”—in the plural—rooted Nicky to the spot. “Lead me to them!” cried every fibre in his body.

The whole thing was simple enough. Susy would guarantee the checks. It should be understood of all that it would be bad form to give Nick and Susy anything but checks, drafts or orders for the payment of money—this their spending-money. For the rest, everyone would lend them their spare houses, palazzos, cottages, villas, apartments, servants, food, 38wine, cigars and cigarettes—board and lodging free for a year at least. Susy would guarantee that.

And that’s all they had to look out for—one year. After that, why, either of them might make a better match—both of them probably. One little hand-made divorce would do for both....

“I should like just for once to have something of my very own, Nicky dear—something that nobody had lent me, like my fancy-dresses, motors, opera cloaks—or given me, like everything else. And the divorce would be my own, wouldn’t it, Nicky? Mine and yours, just our owny own little divorce.”

“Checks!” murmured Nicky, still in a trance. “Checks!”...

II

It rose for them—the moon—their tutelary orb, if you prefer to put it that way, as indeed you may, goodness knows, some do—over Como, Streffy’s villa, marble balustrades, stephanotis, gardenias, nightingales, and Streffy’s cigars....

But now their month was ended. They were packing for the next on their string, Vanderlyn’s palazzo in Venice, equally well found.

“The new tenant’s motor has come,” said 39Susy gaily, “and I’ve bribed the chauffeur to drive us to Milan. It’s so much cheaper than railway fares.”

“Clever of you!” Nicky laughed.

“And I’ve packed all the rest of Streffy’s cigars.”

“Streffy’s cigars?” Lansing stared, aghast. “Streffy’s cigars! Oh, my God! Give me the key, woman!”...

He worked half an hour over the refractory lock, perspired, broke his finger-nails, disinterred them at last. Then he jumped into the motor and they were whirling through the nightingale-thickets to the gates.

“Why did you leave the cigars, dear?” she asked.

“Of course, you don’t understand, darling,” he answered gently. “No woman knows anything about cigars. Streffy never bought those cigars, dear. They were given to him. Thank God! Vanderlyn buys his own cigars....”

III

At the palazzo, a letter from Ellie Vanderlyn awaited Susy, containing four other letters addressed to “Nelson Vanderlyn, Esqre., New York City.” Susy read:

“One good turn deserves another ... you and Nick can stay all summer ... no expense—servants 40have orders ... just post these letters, one a week ... be good to my child....”

It was too plain!... vile!... infamous!... a child left behind ... abominable!... for her to take care of ... outrageous!... She would never do it ... they must leave this place at once....

But she awoke next morning to the sun shining through curtains of old brocade, making a network of golden scales upon the vaulted ceiling—to a luxurious breakfast in bed and a single tea-rose in an old Murano glass—and thought of—the child! How could she leave a lonely child exposed to all the evils of such a pampered infancy? Distasteful as it was to dwell in the palazzo of the ungodly—it was her duty ... and she did. The letters went in due course to N. Vanderlyn, Esqre.

Charlie Strefford arrived wearing a mouldy Panama hat, reminiscent of the Stilton cheese of old England—an eccentricity pardonable in the next-but-two to the Earldom of Altringham—only the present incumbent and his son intervening.

“Good old Streffy!”

“Where’s old Nick?”

“He’s writing, you know. Works all day on 41a philosophic romance—like Marius, you know.”

“Oh, I say!—good one!” laughed Streffy. “Nick’s Marius—you marry me—see? Capital!—Eh, what? Rath-er! Countess of Altringham—what? Altringham and son sure to die soon‘—’bout middle of the book—accident in hunting field or yacht capsizes in the Solent—sure to—always happens—one or other—absolutely. Think it over, old thing....”

IV

Ellie Vanderlyn came back ... but only to be off again to St. Moritz, leaving Nick and Susy undisturbed.

“Good-by, you dear thing,” to Nicky. “I must thank you for helping me to be so happy elsewhere—you and Susy were such bricks about the letters.”

She left him a morocco case, in it a pearl scarf pin. He sought Susy. She hurried to him. She pressed the button of the lamp. Her husband’s face started out of the twilight ... fortunately stopped before it had entirely left him ... then hardened. On her outstretched wrist was a bracelet of emeralds and brilliants.

“Look, dearest—wasn’t it darling of Ellie,” she cried.

“Yes, she gave me this.” He opened the 42morocco case. “But yours cost more. Will you tell me why she values your services higher than mine? Don’t you know that men demand and receive higher wages than women? My position as head of the family ... it’s humiliating ... it’s.... I don’t know what to say.... I’m all het up.... I’ll have to go for a tramp....”

And he left her ... just like that.

V

None was to be found in all Venice, nor in Milan, nor in Genoa, whither his hopeless quest had led him. Lazzaroni a-plenty ... but in all Italy, it seemed, there was not one real, honest-to-God, good old-fashioned American tramp....

... But he did find Coral Hicks....

There, in the harbor, was the huge outline of the Hickses’ yacht, the Ibis ... within the outline was the Ibis itself. Nick knew it well. He had bummed his board and lodging on it for five months once in the good old days before Susy and the checks had mesmerized him.

There was something so restful about the Hickses, so substantial, so solvent. Good old Papa and Mamma Hicks, solid three-dimensional people.... Papa, especially, had a 43wonderful figure—one large digit, backed by six ciphers and a decimal point.

He could see them now, with their entourage—two secretaries, a doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldorada Tooker—though why so called, unless to supply Comic Relief, no one could say—and Coral, sole daughter of their house and heart, that still unmarried child of opulence.

One large digit, backed by six ciphers and a decimal point, contrasted with a small bank balance, backed by Susy’s grandmother’s pearl necklace ... what about that? He knew they would have to cast the pearls before the wolf, if they were to hang together much longer.... Susy would have to choose between her Nicholas and her necklace.... Was it right?... Was it fair to Susy to burden her longer?... The year was almost up.... Why not resign now—while the Ibis was at hand?... tutissimus Ibis!

He picked up the Daily Mail, ran his eye casually down its columns and read:

“Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and his son, Viscount d’Amblay, drowned.”

VI

Coral Hicks was a young lady of compact if not graceful outline, with a downright manner, 44also a little black down right on her upper lip. She shanghaied unresisting Nick and the Ibis sailed away....

Sitting beside him on deck, she suddenly said:

“Your wife hasn’t written you for weeks.”

“No, thank the Lord!” he laughed.

“And you haven’t written her.”

“No.”

“Then you’re free. Will you take a new job? Will you be my—secretary?”

“My dear Coral,” he replied, “this is so sudden. No, I cannot. I do not love you in that way, dearest. It’s too much like work. But I will be a husband to you.”

From the next port he wired his wife:

“Hereby tender resignation my position your husband stop pearls beautiful but Coral more durable stop recommend Streff my successor go to it kid—don’t stop.”

VII

Susy wired Streffy:

“Congratulations old bean nice name Altringham been thinking it over Nick has quit.”

She received an answer:

“Meet me at the fountain Versailles Friday”....

45“So Nicky did a bunk, eh?” Streffy chuckled. “I say, that’s top-hole, what? How about little old me? Countess, you know ... places, no end.... Altringham and the others.... If you don’t like the others, we’ll see about altering ’em.... I say, how’s that? Pretty good, eh? ... better take me on, old thing? What?...”

Casually running their eyes down the columns of the Daily Mail, as was their wont, Nick, Streffy, Susy and Coral read:

“A divorce has been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing.”

VIII

They were at tea on the terrace of the Castle, the Earle and Countess of Altringham (née Branch) and their week-end guests, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing (née Hicks), all merry and bright.

“Nicky, dear, did you read the funny story they’ve written about us?” asked Susy gaily. “Of course not. I’d forgotten you’ve given up books entirely. Well, it’s simply killing. You see, I’m supposed to turn Streffy down and then, of all things, get a job as child’s nurse for—you’d never guess—the five Fulmer kids—remember that awful bunch?—can you imagine me?

46“Then you do the same to Coral—isn’t that the limit?—you turning down Coral! Imagination? Well, I guess yes. And you come bumbling round and it’s all on again—no divorce at all. Think of it!—and we go off with all the Fulmer kids, for a second honeymoon at—this is the top-notch!—at Fontainebleau—cheap hotel—awful restaurants. And, then, I suppose, we live happily ever after—though the Lord knows what we’re supposed to live on. They didn’t know us, did they, old one? I’ll say they didn’t.”

Everybody roared with laughter.

“Oh, well,” said Nicky, “you know, they’re the thing nowadays—unhappy endings—they all do it—call it Realism.”

I

“Give Elizabeth a kiss for me!” Uncle David called after him, as he left the house.

“David,” said Aunt Lucy, “he’ll never marry Elizabeth until the mystery is cleared up.”

“Nonsense!” said Doctor David. “Donaldson’s dead. Maggie will keep quiet for her own sake. She’s as criminally liable as I am. Beverly Carlysle hasn’t been heard of for years. The Thorwald woman will never tell. The whole thing’s dead and buried”....

At dinner, Dick was as cheerful as usual.

“I’ve asked Elizabeth Wheeler to go to the theatre on Wednesday to see Beverly Carlysle in ‘The Valley.’”

Aunt Lucy, fork in air, stared at him. Uncle David stared at his plate.

II

“Walter, who is Dick Livingston?” Mrs. Wheeler asked her husband.

“Son of Henry, Doctor David’s brother.”

48“Walter, Dick’s been living in this town for ten years and everybody knows him and likes him, but suddenly everybody in town has remembered that Henry Livingston wasn’t married. It is most embarrassing for Elizabeth. I think you ought to do something about it.”

“Very well, dear. I’ll go to Wyoming and look into it.”

But he never reached Wyoming alive.

III

Because he never started. He was too busy.

Who was Dick Livingston? Dick did not know. He could remember that little cabin in the Wyoming mountains, the snow-storm, himself recovering from an illness, in the care of Doctor David—nothing back of that. The rest was walled off.

If he could only have a severe shock—a breaking point—get run over by a train or something—and awake surrounded by familiar things to stir his dormant memory—perhaps——?

Beverly Carlysle’s brother, Fred Gregory, saw him in the theatre. Louis Bassett, reporter on the Times-American, saw Gregory see him. What did it mean?

49He hurried back to the office, got out the files of the paper for ten years back, read them through, advertisements and all, then read them through again. It was four o’clock in the morning when his eye fell on this advertisement:

“Wanted—Cook. Protestant preferred, anything taken. Apply L-22 this office.”

He clipped it, put it in his note book, packed his bag and took the midnight train for Wyoming.

Gregory hastened to Beverly Carlysle’s dressing-room.

“Counted the house?” she asked.

“Fourteen hundred and one,” he answered.

“Why so particular about the one?”

“He’s worth more than all the rest put together.”

“Who is he?”

IV

“Jud Clark, rightful heir to the millions of old Elihu Clark,” said Gregory.

“And, incidentally, the murderer of my husband,” said Beverly Carlysle.

“So they say,” said he.

“Isn’t it true?”

“You ought to know.”

50“So ought you for that matter. Better than I.”

“Why talk in riddles?”

“It’s so much more mysterious.”

“Are you sure it was Jud Clark?”

“No, not at all, but who else could it be?”

“You’re going dotty. You’d better see a doctor.”

“Which doctor?” he asked.

“No, certainly not. A brain specialist.”

V

Gregory rang the doctor’s bell. Minnie came to the door.

“Is the doctor in?”

“Which doctor?”

“No, certainly not—I mean—either of them.”

He saw Doctor David.

“Have a chair?” said the doctor.

“Have you a photograph of your nephew?” asked Gregory.

“Here is one taken in Chicago.”

“Was he there at the time?”

“Where did you think he was? Overseas?”

“Well, it looks kind of half-seas-over.”

“Why did you want to see it?”

“Oh, I thought maybe it would add to the confusion.”

Dr. David’s right hand was fumbling in the 51desk-drawer beside him. He found what he sought. Stealthily he drew it forth. Gregory caught the glitter of reflected light——

VI

From the gilded band of the cigar which was offered him.

“Have a chair?” said the doctor.

“You asked me that before.”

“So I did, but that was a week ago, in the last number. Have another for this week.”

“Are you trying to bribe me?”

“Sir, leave this house!” thundered Doctor David. “Leave it at once—right where it is. I like this location.”

“Speaking of that—I’m going to-night.”

“Where?”

“To the next location—Wyoming.”

“Have a chair! I mean—have a care! Have a care!”

“Come along with me.”

VII

“I’m going to Wyoming, dearest Elizabeth.”

“Gone long, Dick?”

“Probably not until the last chapter, dearest. There are bound to be complications. You see, I’m going to find out who I am, if any. I must 52unravel the mystery of my adolescence. It is very annoying not to know whether or not you are whom. As it is now, I may be or I may not be.”

“Who? Whom? Whichever it is.”

“Jud Clark, the murderer of Beverly Carlysle’s husband,” said he.

“How interesting!” she murmured.

The midnight train to Wyoming carried all the principals—all except—those who remained at home.

VIII

Louis Bassett met Dick in the Norada Hotel. Bassett gave him a drink of good new post-war whisky and David immediately passed out.

They were nearly arrested by the prohibition agent, who had the exclusive boot-legging privilege for Norada and surrounding territory.

But Louis carried the unconscious man down the fire-escape, stole two horses and took him through a blinding blizzard to the well-known mountain-cabin, one of the most frequented points of interest in the State—rubber-neck wagons every two hours.

IX

To the seclusion of this mountain fastness, Bassett brought the unconscious Richard, laid 53him in a bunk (bunk! how appropriate!) surrounded him with a Gillette razor, an Ingersoll watch, an Arrow collar, a can of Campbell’s soup, and a Ford car. He watched narrowly.

The sleeping man awoke.

His eyes fell upon the old familiar things.

He started—“I remember”—stopped.

Bassett cranked him again.

“What do you remember?”

“I remember, I remember the house where I was born, the little window where the sun came peeping in at morn.”

“What is your name?” said Louis quietly.

“My name is——”

X

“My name is Norval. On the Grampian Hills——”

He relapsed into coma.

“Some hooch!” exclaimed Bassett.

Two days later he again awoke. “Are you normal now? Or still Norval?” asked Bassett.

“I am Jud Clark,” he answered. “I shot Beverly Carlysle’s husband in the”—he stopped.

“In what?” asked Bassett, regarding him steadily.

54“In the billiard room. He tore the cloth with his cue. It was justifiable homicide. There were no witnesses. I could not possibly be convicted. We must flee at once.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“Yes. I am Dick Livingston. I can remember Papa and Mamma, Uncle David, Aunt Lucy, the cook, Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, the postman and the spot on the parlor rug—everything—everyone, except—one. I cannot remember Elizabeth. I remember how she looked, her voice, her eyes, her hair—but not her name—Elizabeth—I cannot remember that.”

Bassett took Dick on his back and carried him for days and days, miles and miles, up and down the mountains, through the blinding blizzard, without food, drink or sleep.

When he deposited his burden on the station platform at Norada, his hands and feet were worn to ribbons.

He looked cautiously around. A man approached—blue uniform, brass buttons. They must not be taken alive!

He shouldered the conscious man again, drew his revolver, set his back against a door. It yielded. They fell headlong backwards——

Into the waiting room. Bassett shoved the still conscious man under a bench and met the blue-coated officer nonchalantly.

“Looking for any one?”

“Why, yes.”

“Who—whom?”

“Oh, only Jud Clark. They say there’s a reward on his head.”

Just then the still conscious man rolled out from under the bench. The officer sprang forward and snatched the hat from his head.

“Nope!” he said, “not him—nothing there but hair.”

“Who are you?”

“The sheriff of this county.”

“Gosh! I am relieved! I thought you were the prohibition officer.”

Again he lifted the still conscious man on his shoulder.

“Where are we going now?” asked Dick.

“New York,” said Bassett.

XII

Three days later they reached New York—by train.

“We must find Fred Gregory,” said Bassett.

“I thought he told Uncle David he was going to Wyoming.”

56“A bluff. He’ll be right out in front of the Martinique.”

But he was not. They found him in Beverly Carlysle’s house. They entered with drawn revolvers.

“Hands up!”

XIII

Up they went, Beverly’s and Gregory’s.

“You look natural, Jud,” said Beverly, “all dressed up with a gun.”

“Silence, woman!” said Bassett sternly. “I have brought a confession for you two to sign.”

“All right,” said Gregory. “Got a fountain pen?”

This was the confession:

“We, being of sound mind and in fear of death, do voluntarily make, sign, seal, publish and declare this our last confession:

Dick Livingston is not Jud Clark. He is Fred Gregory. Howard Lucas, Beverly Carlysle’s husband, was not killed by Jud Clark. She was not married to the man Jud Clark killed. It was Fred Gregory.

Howard Lucas did not gouge Jud Clark’s billiard table. It was a pool table. Fred Gregory gouged it, practicing putting.

Jud Clark was not killed by Howard Lucas. It was Fred Gregory. He was shot by Howard Lucas—or 57else Howard Clark was shot by Fred Lucas—one or the other.

Beverly Carlysle saw the man shot in the billiard room. She was in her own room when the trigger was pulled and hurried down in time to see the fatal bullet hit Fred Clark or Howard Gregory—whichever it was.

Fred Gregory’s real name is Fred Gregory. He was the son of Henry Livingston on his mother’s side. The children were twins. So was Howard Lucas.

There is something wrong somewhere. The whole thing was a mistake.

We do further confess that Dick Livingston is not the son of Elihu Clark but of Fred Gregory—unless he decides to claim the Clark millions—in which case, he is.

We do further confess that Fred Gregory gave the drink to Dick Livingston in Norada. It was not Louis Bassett, who violated the Volstead Act.

God have mercy on our souls!”

XIV

Dick was back in Haverly. Aunt Lucy met him at the door.

“Elizabeth is engaged to Wallie Sayre,” she said.

“Who’s Elizabeth?” asked Dick.

Aunt Lucy remained unconscious for three days, but finally recovered.

58It was weeks later when the door-bell rang and Minnie admitted Elizabeth to the doctor’s office.

“Name, please,” said Dick.

“Elizabeth Wheeler,” she replied.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Marry me,” said Elizabeth.

“There now,” he said. “I knew I’d forgotten something. Please excuse me. I’ve been so busy.”

Louis Bassett, in the Times Republican office, stared at the notice in the paper.

“Married—on the 17th at St. Barnabas’s Church, Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wheeler, to Dr. Richard Livingston.”

“Gosh!” he said. “I wonder who she married.”

It was night in Zenith, the night of the grand testimonial banquet tendered to George F. Babbitt, by the Boosters Club, in honor of the publication of the well-known novel entitled “Babbitt.” Mr. Babbitt spoke on “American Literature,” in part as follows:

“Fellow Boosters: In rising to address you on this auspicious occasion, I want to say first and foremost that I am glad and proud that when it came to the turn of the City of Zenith and yours truly to of had their old, old story told, so to speak, it was by an up-to-date modern successful writer, who, I am told on good authority, sells his books by their thousands and their tens of thousands, amounting in all, I am led to believe, to somewhere in the neighborhood of upward of approximately about 400,000 volumes of a single book, an output, my friends, which compares favorably with the production of cans of condensed milk and pasteboard cartons produced in our great city, and puts literature firmly upon the basis of quantity production of a standardized output.

60“I am glad and proud, I may say, that it was him, this modern, up-to-date literary writer, full of pep and punch, who sees things as they are and not as others see us, that it has fallen to his lot to depict this book.

“Now, my friends, let us come with me and cast a glance backward upon American literature in the old days of yore, as the poet says, and see how different it used to be, and I will not detain you long. Let us see how different was the lot of such writers as James J. Whittier and Edwin A. Poe and William Wordsworth Longfellow, when they were in their prime. Did they sell their books by their thousands and their tens of thousands and have a snug bank-account and a nice little bungalow, maybe, and a good little bus standing ready in his own garage, so he could climb in, step on the gas and shoot out into God’s good out-o’-doors for a little airing and exercise after the day’s work? No, sir, my friends, I say it without fear of contradiction; they did not.

“Literature in those bygone days of yore was something else again, as one of our greatest writers puts it in his well-known tales of Potash and Perlmutter, depicting the better side of our Hebrew friends, with all their love of home and family. They were lucky if they sold one of their poems or fiction-writings for a mere 61song to some publisher, who maybe paid them enough to eke out a miserable pittance in some garret or some place like that.

“And, why, my friends, was this the case? Simply and solely because, my friends, they didn’t write about the things that Zenith City wants to read. What do we want to read, if I may put the question? Why, we want to read about the things we know about and understand—about the things of home and business—about business, first and foremost.

“The kind of romance we want is not the romance of two knights in tin armor trying to punch holes in each other’s stomachs, if you will excuse the word, with spears or something or maybe making illicit love—I speak plainly for we must not blink these evils—to some countess, who was maybe already the wife of some lord or duke, as in the bygone days of chivalry, when knighthood was in flower, as the poet says.

“That’s not the kind of romance we want. Believe me or not, my friends, when two keen-witted American realtors, maybe, of my own profession, sit down to make a deal, maybe about a piece of real estate, matching our keen wits against each other in the struggles and triumphs of modern business—there, my friends, is the romance of to-day.

“Us real he-American men and our wives and kiddies want to read about our city, Zenith, 62God bless it! and our homes properly equipped with a bathroom with sanitary plumbing, which I say without disrespect and I challenge any man to deny it, is the hall mark of civilization in this twentieth century of ours, and not like the filthy habits and customs of the effete nations of Europe to whom the use of soap—God save the mark!—is practically unknown. We like to read about our autos, our hot-water heating and kitchen cabinets and vacuum-cleaners and those sort of things.

“It is facts we want and not imagination, and I am glad to say that the successful literary writers of to-day, with their ears to the ground, their eyes to the keyhole and their nose to the grindstone, are hearing the stern voice of the people—yea! and heeding it. Imagination has had its day, my friends. It was all very well in those bygone days of yore for an author to depend on his imagination, but it’s different now.

“Let us contrast for a moment and I will not detain you long, two well-known writers. Take Washington Irwin, for instance, what did he write about? Why it is well known of all men that he wrote about many things that never had actually happened in this broad land of ours nor anywhere else. Take Rip Van Winkle, for instance, all about a disgraceful old bum, who 63soused himself into such a state that he beat his wife—a thing, I am sure, with all due respect, no man here in this audience would be guilty of in public. Then he got chased by a headless horseman—a headless horseman, mind you, my friends, an utter impossibility—and then to crown the climax he slept for twenty or thirty years, a perfect absurdity and one which, I am sure, no citizen of Zenith would place in the hands of a growing boy as an example to imitate.

“Now take another writer of the same name—zippy, peppy, up-to-date—a man who can sell his stuff to the Saturday Evening Post, than which there is no higher standard in our day and generation. Why, gentlemen, if Washington Irwin should turn over in his grave, I say without fear of contradiction, he would be absolutely and teetotally unable to recognize his own son, Will.

“And, gentlemen, consider for a moment, where this here imagination leads. If you depend on it for your raw material, you can’t go in and out among the people, notebook in hand and jot down what you actually see with your own eyes. No, sir, you got to work your old imagination for what you write about, and what does this lead to? Why, gentlemen, you all know that Edwin A. Poe, for instance, when 64he wanted to write about some raven or a skeleton in armor or something had to drink himself into a state of insensibility or worse before he could put pen to paper. That’s what they had to do.

“Think of those debased minds like James J. Whittier or William Wordsworth Longfellow or George Cullen Bryant, maybe, hiding in their wretched garrets or some place, taking shot after shot of hop, smoking opium, maybe, or worse, to keep their imaginations going to supply even the feeble demand for their hand-made output.

“That was bad enough, my friends, but things got going from bad to worse before they got better, and who made them better? Why, you, my friends, and me, the American business man. It was this way. The wide-awake business man of America began to employ the best writers, to write his ads. These writers dealt with facts, gentleman, facts, in their own inimical style, if I may say so, and the advertising sections of our great American magazines shortly rivaled in interest the stories and other fictional matter, so that it was the common custom of our business men to tear out the advertising section and keep that to read and throw the rest away.

“The editors and publishers of our great magazines found themselves paying good money 65for stories and for good white paper to print them on and it being torn out and thrown away, which wasn’t good business. This, gentlemen, was the lowest depths to which literature at last got, the apothesis of our literature, if you will pardon the use of a high-brow term.

“Then a smart, keen-witted American business man who happened to be editor of one of the magazines saved the situation, so to speak. He saw that literature had got anæmic. It was short on red blood corpuscles. It needed a transfusion of blood.

“So he put the patient face to face and shoulder to shoulder with the real force in American life, the advertisements—made a page ad face a page of so-called literature—cut the stories into strips and put a column ad next to a column of fictional writing.

“The name of this literary genius, I am creditably informed, was Cyrus H. K. Bok, and, believe me, the greatest surgeon of modern times, who saved American literature from taking the count in a fight to a finish was this same old Doc Bok.

“The result was not only that you couldn’t tear out the stories and throw them away without simultaneously and at the same time destroying the thing you wanted to read, and after you had read all the ads two or three times you simply had to give the stories the once over.

66“And, moreover and likewise, the fictitious writers couldn’t keep on writing their imaginative bunk and get away with it. They couldn’t stack up some guff about a raven or a skeleton in armor against the real thing, like the Ginko Cigar or the Jimmy Pipe. If they tried to pull any Rip Van Winkle stuff alongside a smart talk about Hartenheimer’s Morestyle Clothing, the picture of the clean-faced young man—bright-eyed, square-jawed and everything—simply made old Rip look like three mutilated dimes.

“So they got wise and changed their act and begun writing the kind of real stuff about which I’ve been talking to you about. It got to be so good, so full of real American life and everything, that some of it gets printed every week on the page facing the highest priced full page ad in the Saturday Evening Post, and that’s the proudest position in American literature to which any man can aspire to. It used to be that the preferred position, as the ad-men say, for an ad was next to reading-matter. Now look at the columns of the greatest American magazine with its millions of readers. Are the ads next to reading-matter? No, sir, not on your life. The reading-matter is next to the ads—and that’s saying something, believe you me.

67“Now, gentlemen, let me say a few words about the book about which we are gathered here to-night, and I will not detain you long.

“It’s a good book, a great book, and yet, my friends, it has its faults, as whom of us has not?

“Friend author, for all he calls himself a realist and pretends he don’t shy at nothing in calling a spade a spade, don’t do it. No, sir, he don’t. Take that chapter in this book, now, about me getting up and getting dressed. What’s he say there? Why he talks about ‘the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm clocks.’ Now, anybody here knows he means a Big Bob, and why not say it right out, just like that? Why, he just as well say ‘he removed the superfluous growth of hair from his countenance by means of an instrument designed for that purpose,’ when he means ’he shaved his face with a razor.’

“But these realistic fictitious writers will come to it, and just to help them I’ll tell you how that chapter ought to be wrote.

“The Big Bob alarm clock gave him a jolt that knocked all the sleep out of him. He drug his legs, in Matchless Pajamas, out from under the Downiwool Blanket and sat on the edge of the Ostermarsh Mattress, supported by the Neversag Spring. While he paddled 68around with his feet to find his Comfy Slippers, he looked out at his new Flimsibilt Sectional Garage, which looked good to him.

“Then he beat it to the good old warm bathroom, all tiled with Shiniwhite Glazed Tiles. The bathroom was fitted with a Staykleen Bath Tub, a Porcellow Washstand and other sanitary fixtures all complete, including a Nasco All-Steel Medicine Cabinet.

“He cleaned his teeth with a Rubwell toothbrush and a squeeze of Lillidol to get the fuzzy taste out of his mouth.

“Then he rubbed a gob of Whiskerine on his face to soften his beard and lathered her good with Shavo Cream on his Bristletite Shaving Brush. The good old Neverkeen Safety Razor did the rest.

“A D. V. undershirt and knee-length drawers started the job of dressing, followed by a Bronx Shirt, onto which he buttoned a Spear Collar with a Kalisch One-Piece Collar Button. Then he put on his Hartenheimer Suit and a pair of Walkstrate Shoes.

“Then he put in his pockets a Walgin Watch with a Wearever Gold Chain, a Leakwell Fountain Pen and a Neverpoint Pencil.

“For breakfast he had a Moonshine Orange, a plate of Mothers’ Wild Oats, a slice of Mawruss Ham and two ordinary unadvertised eggs, Digesto Bread, spread with Prunella Butter 69and a cup of Moko-Boko Coffee, and, when he had lighted a good old Ginko Cigar, George F. Babbitt was ready for the fray.

“There, my friends, I don’t pretend to be a literary gink, but you give me my good old fountain pen and the advertising pages of the Saturday Evening Post and I’ll show you how to marry literature and life together. That’s what we want, gentlemen. That’s real, true blue United States one hundred per cent realism.”

He had never before heard of Cuba, but a chance mention of its name, Cuba, dominated Joseph completely. The Spaniards were shooting Cubans down there. Boys, younger than himself. And they were shot with muskets, guns. That was so much more horrible than if they were shot with candlesticks or white mice.

Instantly he knew that he must liberate Cuba. He must shoot the beastly Spanish Captain-General in his gold-laced abdomen, tummy; himself be shot in return or elsewhere, and die heroically, while a competent brass-band played “Annie Laurie.” So should Cuba be free.

He quickly settled every visible, every audible detail save one, his last dying words. “Don’t give up the ship!” seemed inappropriate. “I owe a cock to Æsculapius; see that it is paid,” was too long. “Kiss me, Hardy!” was short, but heaven knew what utter stranger might accept the invitation. At last he fixed upon “Sic semper tyrannis!” to be said as he fired, and “Et tu, brute!” as he was shot; “brute” 71with a small “b” seemed so nicely to combine defiance and grim humor.

Providing a costume for the event was a puzzling matter. It should be of the period, but what was the present year of grace? It was in the fall, exactly forty years before the return of the Americans from the Great War in 1919. Was this then 1879? Impossible, since Grant was President, and Fish, Secretary of State, and that would make it not later than 1876.

He gave it up, threw chronology to the winds, bought a plum-colored cape, vintage of the Regency, and a lot of very high stocks, period of Daniel Webster. Perhaps, in this he was misled by reading in a newspaper that stocks were very high.

His armament was one small pearl-handled derringer, date 1849. He wore it suspended by a string inside of one leg of a trouser, a pant, and could always verify its presence by sitting down. It had been given him by his father and was not really a dangerous weapon, since it was necessary to turn down all its grease-cups daily, else it would not go off, shoot.

On the deck of the Morro Castle, whence all but he had fled, stood a solitary figure, little 72Joe, the Boy Liberator. The tallest of stocks seemed to proclaim the Duke of Wellington; the plum-coloredest of capes, Beau Brummell. Like Napoleon, he depended greatly on his heavy artillery, which, in turn, depended inside a nicely-cut trouser.

Andrés Escobar called on him at the Hotel Inglaterra.

“Is this your first visit to Cuba?” he asked. “What do you think of our Cuban women?”

“It is. I do not,” laconic Joseph replied.

“I mean I don’t think about them at all,” he continued. “My mind has been singularly purified. I have a sensation of remoteness from my flesh.”

“Ah,” said Andrés, “I see. Something like un esqueleto, a skeleton. Very nice for the hot weather.”

“Not exactly,” said Joseph doubtfully. “Still, come to think of it, there is something in what you say. But lissen, friend, amigo! I came here to shoot, tirar, el Capitan-General in his gold-laced tummy and to get shot in the fracas or somewhere else. Thus Cuba shall be freed.

“I have been here twenty-four hours. We are both still alive and Cuba is not yet free. My fiery nature will not brook such delays. Can 73you not lead me to el Capitan-General, so that I may fulfil muh destiny?”

Andrés clasped his hand. “Maravilloso!” he cried. “We Cubans are not so precipitado. We bide our tiempo. Let me tell you our watchword, college-yell, secretissimo! ‘Wait, wait for ’98!’ Ah, then, Cuba shall be libre. Meanwhile we conspire, oh! so discreetly.”

At Escobar’s house, the entire family sat in a silent circle, upon gilt chairs. A crystal chandelier cast upon them an icy flood of light, bathed them in a vitreous fluid, preserving them in a hard pallor forever—think of that! The Escobars had been much besought by ambitious undertakers desiring to use this really effective embalming process.

Andrés and Joseph came in. Andrés, silent, faultless, sat down immobile. But Joseph and Narcissa, the daughter, withdrew to the balcony.

It was night. Narcissa was decidedly fetching. But, fetch her darnedest, she could not fetch Joseph.

“I love you,” said she.

Joseph put his arm, one arm, around her shoulders, not her waist, and kissed her cheek, not her lips—once.

“Lissen,” said he, “love is not for me. You 74know my name. Have you grasped its significance? Read your bible! Moreover,” he continued, “I am devoted to one purpose. I must shoot el Capitan-General in his gold-laced—well—that is—in his gold-laced uniform—yes. And get shot myself in—well—that is a detail, a mere detail. Anyhow, thus shall Cuba be libre.”

“Now lissen you to me,” said Narcissa. “I’m in trouble. I’m engaged to marry a fat planter of fifty. I loathe him. I shall kill him or myself. Get me out of this. Get me on a steamer, so I can go to my aunt in New York. Help me!”

“Oh, really, you know, I couldn’t,” replied dauntless Joseph. “I might get arrested or spanked or something—and sent home to mother before I get properly shot. Oh! it wouldn’t do at all.”

No, it wouldn’t do. It would free only a single Cuban, Narcissa. He must free the whole Cuban people, caboodle, and perish in the attempt.

He was at the theatre, teatro, when he first saw the Shawl—that orange, blue, emerald, scarlet, magenta, vermilion, crimson atrocity. Incidentally, there was a woman inside it, La Clavel, the dancer. Joseph thought it was the 75woman who thrilled him until he could support it no longer—it made him so ashamed of himself! But it wasn’t. It was the Shawl, for he was—Joseph.

He went to her room, sat there, day after day. They talked, conversed, interminably—and that was all. Once she kissed him and was severely frost-bitten. He was annoyed, seriously, and told her he didn’t know what she would think of him for letting her do a thing like that.

She gave him messages for his friends, the Fabians, cunctators, who conspired so sweetly to pass the time until 1898. Joseph felt that he was just the cutest little plotter in all Cuba. Oh! it was grand!

He was in her room when Santaclaus entered, Capitan Santaclaus, one of the rudest of the rude Spaniards.

“You are conspiring against the King, el Rey,” said Santaclaus. “You and your young devotee, little Josie here. You will both be killed. It will be very enjoyable.”

The time had come! Santaclaus, while not the Capitan-General, was notably well equipped for the proper reception of the sacred bullet. Joseph hoisted out the artillery, leveled it, pulled the trigger. Click! Nothing more. 76Joseph stared dully at the faithless weapon. “Oh, sugar! You’re a mean old thing!” was all he said.

“Ah! ha!” sneered Santaclaus. “You forgot to turn down the grease-cups this morning.”

It was sneerly his last sneer. Although he knew it not, he was sneering his end. La Clavel had not yet begun to fight. When she did there certainly was one turrible old battle. Joseph stood bravely by, a chair raised above his head, almost resolved to give Santaclaus a hard knock.

One round was all. Santaclaus, prostrate, prone, defunct, dead, took the count. Joseph carefully replaced the chair.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said he. “Now, remember, you killed him. I didn’t do a thing to him. Don’t tell on me—please! I came down here to get killed, nice and clean, with one bullet. I certainly don’t want to get all mussed up by a firing-squad. Mother wouldn’t like me to.”

La Clavel was arrested—tortured, shot, hung, drawn and quartered, for all Joseph knew. But she sent him the Shawl. So it was his lucky day, after all.

Pilar de Lima was a lovely little Chink. She tried it on with Joseph, but Joseph continued 77to be—Joseph. Andrés took her up.

“Lend me the Shawl, viejo cimo, old top!” said he. “Pilar wants it to wear at the danzon, dance.”

“No,” Joseph responded, answered.

“Mio caro compañero, my dear fellow,” protested Andrés, “please remember that The Bright Shawl is the principal character in this piece, the title rôle. It must have stage-center and the spotlight all the time. The whole show is built around it. And this is to be the climax of the third act.”

“True,” said Joseph, “true. If it wasn’t for The Bright Shawl, where would all of us be?—Still in the inkwell.”

Pilar wore it at the danzon in the teatro. Joseph sat in a box and Arco de Vaca told him that Andrés was about to be killed. He loved Andrés with his whole soul, such as it was, so he watched the last scene with interest from a safe place. To free Cuba and be shot while the band played was one thing. To mix up in the murder of his best friend and maybe get arrested—that was something else again.

But his iron nerve failed him. He took his hat and fled blindly—right into the midst of the fracas, where Pilar was stabbing Andrés and ink flowed like blood. Some kind friend batted 78Joseph over the head and he passed out. Curtain.

That was about all—except that the S. P. C. C. shipped the little dare-devil back to his mother, unpunctured.

He thought the matter over for forty years and was finally inclined to the belief that the blow on his head....

Well, maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. Who can tell?

CHAPTER XI

“Tea?” asked Marion.

Through the long casement window, which lazily unfolded its unaustere yet deliberate length in a benediction of sunlight, not more interminable than the crepitant genuflection of the waveless ocean, came the tall dark cry of the curlew, as it lashed its angry though querulous tail in intermittent certitude. Perhaps that was why the shiny, untarnished mud flats, blue veined with the tortuous eternal channels of the running tides, interspersed with the nostalgic counterparts of antiquity, and the gray green marshes, where the red shanks choired in uninterrupted but not unvexed prolixity, despite their propinquity, had always seemed to her as remote from the perpetual 80imbroglio with spiritual things that makes man the most ridiculous of animals, though just emerged from a brave dive in some pool of vitality, whose whereabouts are the secret that makes the mouth vigilant.

“Yes, please,” answered Ellen, smiling.

Perhaps that was why the chair, on which she sat, so dully gleaming in its polished adroitness that not even in her childhood, when the saffron-tinted memories of yesterday were mellowed in glorious achievement, could she withstand the monotonous testimony of its faultlessness, seemed now to her to concentrate and reveal what either simple necessity or pain-flawed consanguinity had crowded back into the stuffed closets of perpetual oblivion, darkling upon the wimpled surface of an efflorescent yet intangible conviction. She could not but recall to mind another night, more than thirty years before, when she stood in the barnyard where it was brown and oozy underfoot and there was nothing neat about it all, yet the mellow cry of well-fed cattle lambently surged through the windows of the tumbledown sheds, with their thatched eaves like thick brows over eyes ever gazing at the strange fluctuations of the wine-like light, as if they were consciously preserving the cattle from the magic of any enchantment, and the round red moon hung on the breast of a flawless night, whose 81feet were hidden in an amethystine haze, and held in her arms two little Berkshire pigs.

“Sugar?”

It was because of this sterility of outlook that Richard’s father’s tomb, standing whitely in its futile magnificence, abruptly, almost innately, yet clandestinely intricate in its classic contour, could never have called to her with the high ecstatic voice with which the Pentlands, so remote, but not untutored nor conflicting with the harmonious interposition of all that was sagely beneficial, challenged Ellen. No one, not even he, had ever engendered a skepticism of the value of all activities, rose-tinted but not blue, shining vaguely like a great cloud galleon, whose shrill cry drilled a tiny hole in the ensphering silence. Richard had never done that.

“Two lumps, please,” she replied.

Her voice trailed away from her mouth in a long ambiguous spiral of malachite-green silk, shot through with golden gleams like porphyry, so that the other, knowing nothing of its source could not have supposed that, with the conscious artistry of the unprecedented, yet not unembarrassed by all the implications of a too great inattention, there could be other than the most delicate intimation of flattery in its rich effulgency, tempered by the knowledge of interminable philanthropy, that so often masquerades as the unseen offspring of a nature, noble in its 82essential attributes, yet not unhampered by the apparent inelasticity of its unchangeable, though not immutable, because finely tempered, intimations of immortality. Never had there been any doubt of this.

“Lemon?”

It was not so easy to forgive Aunt Alphonsine, for her voice had been as sharp as the shears click-clacking with never-ceasing vigilance through the exiguous fleeces of the lanate lambs now, in alliterative honesty, so palely, so profitably become shorn sheep, and yet not angry, though with an acerbating asperity evident in every tone of its fluctuating timbre, running indefatigably up the switch-backs and circling in the merry-go-rounds, capriciously perambulating on which the voices of French-women, from the lucent symbolism of the errant wife of Charles Martel, bathed in the ineffable luxury of mediæval intricacy, to the misguided, yet pitiable, complacency of a Parisian midinette, travel eternally, since that French thrift, which made her clean her shoes at home and thereby maim herself into something new and strange, seared by the hot vapors of the exploding benzine, that desired to assassinate love, sacred and profane, whenever she saw it, made her terribly exercised at the potency of starvation to dull the edge of appetite into the semblance of inarticulate inevitability, the 83crucifixion of honest hunger. Richard himself was aware of that.

“No, thank you.”

In all of this there had been nothing to distract her attention, which so often divagated intermittently, as with the pulsing beat of the tides, now lapsing into desuetude, in the purple-bathed intricacies of interminable monotony, from a candid valuation of the dress of the other so blue, so deeply blue, that, from depths unsounded, whence ghostly memories of her childhood emerging, appeared and beat upon her nether eyelids, there was now extruded none of those waves of intelligent vacuity, whose infrequency alone gave her pleasant physical sensations as of creeping gooseflesh at the roots of her hair and the desire to erase from the pages of her memory the pictures of the Christmas number of the Graphic, though all their colors seemed to refuse to travel from her eyes to her nerves and back again, as with rhythmic diastole, pendulously they swung in their predestined arc, such as she usually experienced when the turbid instancy of old rose impinged in somnolent ecstasy upon the complicated convolutions of her brain. Richard was right after all.

I

I awoke very sore from the gruelling adventures of the previous day. Being more hungry than was my wont, I quickly despatched the hunch of crusty bread and bit of cheese, which the highwayman had left me, and fared forth upon my journeying. My way lay adown a leafy lane, lined with hedgerows, gemmed with myriad sparkling dew drops, wherein birds sang a jubilant pæan. So faring forth, I crossed a small rustic bridge spanning a murmurous brook and so into a dense wood, whose twisted, writhen branches and myriad leaves made a dim twilight, wherein a wind dank and chill moaned fitfully, very dismal to hear.

I sought to flee these gloomy shades, but tripped and fell headlong into a leafy glade, where sat a small, fierce, quick, keen-eyed tinker a-tinkering.

“Oh!” said I, “pray pardon my intrusion.”

“’Old ’ard!” quoth he in mighty voice, 85“that’s a good word. I’m a poet myself. Wot d’ye think o’ this?

“Oh!” cried I, “you say that is original?”

“Aye, it is,” he answered.

“Strange how much you resemble your father,” quoth I, and left him.

II

I had scarce advanced an hundred paces ere I espied a murmurous brook and at the same time was aware of snapping of twigs and sounds of one, who burst through all obstacles in desperate flight. I gazed wildly about and espied a gypsy girl, who came bounding adown the steep. At sight of me she checked and stood at gaze.

There she stood, a young dryad of the woods, gray eyes adream, passionate with life yet boldly virginal.

86“Who the hell are you?” she murmured softly. Then she seized me by the hand. “Come, let’s run,” she quoth; “they’re after me.”

“Oh,” I gasped, “who?”

“Shadrach, Meschech and Abednego,” she stated briefly, “The Rommany Three. Count them!” and so saying, she fled, I perforce following.

Ensued wild scramble through dismal wood, where mournful wind stirred, trees dankly dripped, wet leaves brushed faces, rain-sodden underbrush clung about wearied limbs. Came we at last out upon a broad highway, between grassy banks, topped by hedgerows and trees, whose wide-flung rustling leafage cast a pleasant shade, while, high in air, a lark caroled, faint and sweet against the blue.

III

Then looked I again upon my companion so vivid with life, so boldly virginal, and, catching my breath, which had hitherto eluded me,

“Some runner!” I quoth. “Haven’t I met you somewhere before?”

“I dessay,” she lightly answered. “You see, George Borrow was my father and I played Isopel Berners to his Lavengro. You’ll meet a lot of those old troupers before you’re through 87this book. There’s the Tinker now, and old Mrs. Herne. She plays Azor in this piece. Oh! them was the days!” she sighed, “when we was playin’ in the legit, before we come down to this movie stuff.”

“Oh,” quoth I, “then I suppose I ought to teach you grammar. It seems to me——”

“Cut it out!” she responded wearily. “Don’t! Lavengro done that once and for all. You can’t improve on him.”

IV

After a space were we ware of a wayside inn, the yard whereof was a-throng with gigs, carts, currycombs and other vehicles. One was a handsome closed traveling carriage, with blood horses stamping impatient hoofs and tossing proud heads. Standing by it was a man, tall, slim, superlatively dark, clad in garments of quiet elegance. His handsome pale face was paler by contrast with locks of raven hue. When we drew anear, he espied Diana.

“Come, my goddess, let us fly,” said he, and, seizing her by the waist, half lifted, half tossed her into the carriage, leapt lightly after. In an instant the carriage, rocking and reeling with its swift motion, disappeared in a cloud of dust. Dazed, I looked about me, but Diana was nowhere to be seen.

Not a moment was to be lost. Seizing the nearest horse, a jet black creature with blood-red nostrils, I leapt lightly into the saddle and was after them. Hedges, gemmed with dewdrops, trees, with wide-flung leafage, spun by as my gallant steed fell into his racing stride. Onward we flew, mile after mile, horse after carriage, me after her. Ever I gained upon the pursued. At last drew level with whiffle-trees, stooped over, with one stroke of knife cut the traces. I was at the door of the carriage as it lurched to a full stop.

“Come, Diana,” I said, “this is no place for you. I do not think this is a very nice man. And as for you, sir, I shall spare you now because, methinks, you will get yours in the last chapter but one.” With that we left him.

VI

And now our way lay adown a leafy lane lined with grassy banks, topped by hedgerows and trees, whose wide-flung rustling leafage cast a pleasant shade, while, high in air, a lark caroled faint and sweet against the blue. Crossing by a rustic bridge, a murmurous brook, I was ware of a rough-clad, villainous-looking man, who stood opposed to us, powerful 89legs apart, hairy fist grasping a short heavy stick or bludgeon, as the case may be. Evil face outthrust, he leered upon Diana’s loveliness.

“Oh,” said I, “what do you want?”

“Not you!” he snarled and, snarling, leapt at me. With his bludgeon he struck full force a crashing blow upon my hat. Staggering back, I reeled for a moment’s space, but as he made to smite again, I leapt lightly aside. “Strike one!” I cried, the joy of battle welling within me. Then my right flashed and smote him full on his bristly chin. His great body shrank horribly upon itself, rolled a limp and twisted lump upon the ground and lay still. I turned to look for Diana, but she was nowhere to be seen.

VII

So I went my way, sorrowing for my lost love adown leafy lanes lined with hedgerows, gemmed with myriad sparkling dew drops, wherein birds sang a jubilant pæan, till I came to a broad highway lined with grassy banks, topped by trees, whose wide-flung rustling leafage cast a pleasant shade, while, high in air, a lark caroled faint and sweet against the blue. Full many a weary mile I trod before I was ware of strange sounds from a dingle hard by. Crashing into the dingle, I came at last to 90behold Diana struggling in the arms of a man and him none other than he from which I had so lately rescued her. Then, as I stood at gaze, ere yet I leapt lightly to her succor, a hand gripped me.

VIII

I turned and saw a little man, his slender figure erect, one hand in the bosom of his coat.

“Devereux!” he called, with a terrible loud voice.

The villain started, loosed Diana and turned upon the speaker of the evening.

“Meaning me, withal?” he sneered; “that’s not my name.”

“Quite unimportant,” said the little man. “Devereux, Haredale, Marmaduke, Chester, Steerforth—name’s unimportant. I’ve met you a hundred times in a hundred books and plays and whatever the name, you’re always the same.”

The stranger’s lips curled from gnashing teeth, as he seized his heavy riding whip. A blinding flash, a deafening report, the oncoming figure stopped, right arm dangling helplessly, then lurched and stumbled out of sight, as the little man restored his little silver-mounted pocket-pistol to his pocket.

“My child,” said he, “yonder comes my man 91with the tea equipage. He always comes when he hears me shoot any one. Let us have tea. I am the Earl of Wyvelstoke.”

So we had tea but lingered not long, as yet there was much to be done ere the rising of the orbed moon gave us surcease of action.

IX

And so we fared forth many a weary mile along the broad highway, lined with grassy banks, topped by——

“Hist!” remarked Diana.

“Oh,” said I, “my dear! You must not interrupt my description of the scenery. Pray, why hist?”

“Shadrach, Meschech and Abednego!” she averred, pointing to where three evil faces peered through three gaps in the hedgerow.

Ensued a scrambling rush of three dark figures, with upraised heavy sticks or bludgeons. One, snarling as was his wont, strode me-wards. I leapt lightly aside only to meet both the other weapons, which simultaneously descended upon my head. Instant blackness overwhelmed me, interspersed, however, with luminaries of dazzling hue. When I recovered consciousness, Diana was nowhere to be seen.

So I went my way, sorrowing for my lost love. It was growing dusk when I reached a ruined and desolate barn. A solitary place and dismal, remote from the world, a very sinister place forsooth, such indeed as might be the haunt of grisly specters and angry moo-cows. Breath in check, with eyes of horror stared I at that dreadful barn, whence emanated the sound of hollow knocks. Instantly I was transformed into a cool, dispassionate, relentless creature, intent upon one desperate purpose, though as yet I wot not what that purpose was.

“Be damned to ye, Shadrach!” panted a hoarse voice. “’Eave, man! ’Eave! Her’s a sittin’ on th’ trap door.”

I crept toward the ladder whereon they stood, leapt and smote with all my might. Ensued a battle grim and great. Ensued thereupon a silence, an emptiness, a stillness and from afar I heard lugubrious voices growing fainter and fainter.

“Oh,” cried I, “Diana! Ah there, Diana!”

“Well, what’s wanted?” queried she.

“Will you marry me, Diana?”

“Don’t be foolish, kid. You’ve mixed your cues. That line belongs in the last chapter. You’d better go to bed now. You’ve had a busy day.”

93So, knowing that the morrow would bring further adventure, I lay down and fell into a dreamless sleep, but when I awoke in the morning, Diana was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER I

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes, just as he had done often before. The dreary monotony of his day thus monotonously began. He turned on one elbow and gazed at his shirt hanging on the chair beside his bed. It was the same shirt which he had worn yesterday, would wear to-morrow. But it was not the monotony of the shirt that deluged him with self-pity. It was the fact that he had only one collar-button. Other people, the Erlich boys in Lincoln, his own father, had two. Claude had but one, which fastened his shirt in front. When he wore a collar he had to fasten it at the back with an old piece of string, which Mahailey had given him.

Claude would have liked to buy another collar-button. He had more than enough money; and his father was a rich farmer. He tried to excuse his cowardice to himself, but in his heart he knew that it was too difficult for him to do this simple thing.

95He arose wearily and dressed. He crept down a flight of stairs to the second floor, thence he descended to the first floor by a rude ladder. There had been a staircase where the ladder stood but, in an access of humility, Claude had slid down the banisters two weeks before. Mistaking his self-effacement for hilarity, his father, laughing heartily, had removed the stairs with an ax. Nat Wheeler was a large easygoing affable man with a strong sense of humor.

It made little difference with the habits of the household. The men used the ladder freely. Mahailey slept in the cellar on a hanging shelf, which Claude had built for her, so that the rats could not get at her. She used to put herself to sleep by swinging the shelf to and fro, while she sang “And they laid Jesse James in his grave.” It was one of her quaint customs, a survival of her early arboreal life in Virginia. It added much to the gloom which overspread the household.

Mrs. Wheeler suspected that this removal of the stairs was a joke. She had learned that her husband’s humor might wear any guise. But she was old fashioned. She thought it improper either to descend or ascend a ladder, if there were any men below, and as the men always arose before she did and stayed up after her bed-time, she was practically confined to the second floor.

96Claude could hear her now, walking up and down the passage above. He could hear her wandering, uncertain footsteps. He knew that she had both hands pressed tightly to her breast, that she was lost in religious meditation. He feared that, in her absence of mind, she might descend by the ladder and then be unable to overcome her scruples against ascending. There would be no place for her to sleep, except with Mahailey in the cellar. He had not made the shelf wide enough for two. His mother might die for want of sleep. He felt bitterly about that. He heard her voice calling him. She was blinking down at him over the banisters.

“It is circus day, Claude, and I’m so worried about your collar-button. I have a piece of an old can-opener here. Do you think you could make that do?”

“Don’t bother about it, mother. I’ll use a shingle nail.”

“Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!” she said softly and resumed her wanderings.

He went out into the kitchen to wash. Other people had used the bathroom before him and he was very exclusive. In Mahailey’s old broken mirror, he looked at himself. He was a handsome boy with a red face, pink eyebrows and a square head upon which his red hair stood up like a cock’s comb. He hated his head, however, 97because he always had to wear a soft hat. A stiff derby abraded the sharp corners.

Mahailey came with a low, padding step, her apron thrown over her face, as usual. She always wore it this way. In the Wheeler family, no one but Claude had ever seen her face. Sometimes she shyly removed her apron, when no one was about, and gave him one look. It was enough. Claude knew why she kept the apron over it.

When Claude saw her coming, he ran out of doors, down the hillside toward the barn. Molly, the faithful old three-legged cow, was mournfully chewing her cud. She had lost her other leg in the Civil War. He put his arms around her neck and kissed her. She stopped chewing and kissed him in return. He remained there a long time and thought about the life of a farmer.

A farmer raised good corn and wheat and sold them. In return he got clothes that wore out in two or three years, a house that would not stand more than a century, an automobile good for less than fifty thousand miles, furniture that broke down in two generations, food that lasted hardly a day.

The life of a farmer was useless, vain, empty, unsatisfying, monotonous, depressing, dreary. He was a farmer and he had but one collar-button.

98A terrible joy clutched at the boy’s heart. He knew that he was playing the part to perfection. If he could keep it up through four hundred and fifty-nine pages the book would be a success. The Young Hamlet of the Prairies would make a hit.

CHAPTER XIX

Claude and his men, B Company, were holding the Boar’s Head trench. He knew that the German attack might be expected about dawn. The smoke and darkness had begun to take on the livid color that announced the coming of daybreak, when a corporal hurried to him, saluted and announced that the linemen had completed the connection and that Claude was called on the telephone.

He went to the dug-out, took down the receiver.

“Lieutenant Wheeler, in command B Company in H-2, speaking.”

____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____

“What? Miss Willa? For the land’s sake, what’re you doing way out here?”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Course you are, Miss Willa. I know that, but you hadn’t ought to come out in such a dangerous place, just to look out for me. 99Really, ma’am, I’m getting along all right. You don’t have to tell me every little thing.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“You want me to what?”

____ ____ ____ ____

“On the parapet when the attack comes? You don’t mean really do it, Miss Willa!”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Why, good Lord, Miss Willa, I wouldn’t do that for a farm. They’ll be shootin’ honest-to-God lead bullets!”

____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____

“I got to do it? How’s that? I don’t see why.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Yes’m, I know that. I know you are. I read it in a piece in a magazine. Said you were one of America’s serious novelists. Yes’m, called you a serious artist of high purpose, the piece did.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“But, say, you know that’s awful dangerous. I might easy get killed.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“You expect me to? Look here, lady, I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Oh, yes, o’ course, I know that. I know I got to do what you say after I signed up with you.”

100____ ____ ____ ____

“No’m, I might not be. I know that. I might be in the draft at a trainin’ camp or somewhere back there or prob’ly I’d got exempted on account of bein’ the only one on the farm—if it wasn’t for you.”

____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____

“Well, if you was right out in this trench now I don’t think you’d think there was any special thanks due for your gettin’ me here.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“No, ma’am! I don’t! I ain’t hungry for just that kind o’ glory. You bet not. I’ll be satisfied to go home alive.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Oh, Lord, yes! I got plenty to do when I get home.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“How’s that? Spoiled? Oh, no, Miss Willa, my life ain’t spoiled yet, but I’ve got a hunch it would be if I got up on that parapet. Oh, no, I’ve got a lot o’ plans. Don’t you worry about that. Ain’t many young fellows gets their life spoiled at twenty-three.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“My wife? Sure, she’s left me, all right. An’, Miss Willa, I hope you won’t get mad if I say I think that was really your fault. I’m pretty sure Enid wouldn’t of gone to China ’f you hadn’t kind of mesmerized her and made 101her go. I think ’f you’d a let her alone, she’d be on the farm now.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Yes’m, she did. She went, all right, and I’m not sure she’s comin’ back, but if she don’t, why—I don’t know as I’d die of grief. You see, she was a kind of cold proposition. Her and I never—oh, well, there’s plenty more. Gladys, f’r instance. An’ that’s another thing I kind of got against you, Miss Willa. If you’d left the three of us alone, I think me and Gladys might of——”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Oh, yes, course I know that—there wouldn’t of been much of a book ’f you hadn’t mixed in some. Still, ’f I get home I think I can straighten things out. After I get a good rest on the farm, I’m thinkin’ some of goin’ into the movies. Put a pair of goggles on me an’ you couldn’t tell me from Harold Lloyd.”

____ ____ ____

“No’m, I ain’t tryin’ to get off the point.”

____ ____ ____

“Go out on that parapet when the attack begins an’ get killed? No, ma’am, I most certainly an’ absolutely will not.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Yes’m, I know it. I told you I know you’re a serious novelist an’ I suppose you got to do those kind o’ things to make it tragic and important 102an’ all that, so’s not to have a happy endin’.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“No’m, I don’t think it is natural, if that’s what you want. There ain’t only about six killed in action out of a thousand Americans in this war, an’ I don’t see why you pick on me. How’d I get elected?”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Yes, ma’am, I said three times already I know you’re serious. Good lan’! Miss Willa, I ought to know. Why, I ain’t had a real good laugh, hardly once since I begun working for you. But you don’t seem to understand I’m serious, too, an’ this whole business you’re proposin’ is more serious to me than it’s got any chance of bein’ to you. I’ve got a lot of things to do in the next fifty years.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“No, lady, I will not.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Well, first place, that’s no place for an officer in command. Officers are supposed to take care of theirselves an’ not expose theirselves unnecessarily. They got to look out for their men, not try to be heroes or anything.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Well, I s’pose it will. But, see here, if I’ve got to choose between spoilin’ the book an’ gettin’ spoiled myself—forever, it’s only natural, 103ain’t it?—Say, listen! D’you ever go to the movies?”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Oh, excuse me. I thought maybe you might of once or twice.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Oh, nothin’. Never mind. But, say, have I really got to get shot on the parapet? Won’t anything else do?”

____ ____ ____ ____

“A-a-ll right, then. I s’pose I got to. I’ll manage it somehow. You leave it to me. Don’t you worry.”

____ ____ ____ ____

“Don’t mention it. That’s all right. Anything to oblige a serious lady novelist. Good-by, Miss Willa.”

Claude was very busy for the next fifteen minutes. Just as he again took his position on the firing-step, the Hun advance began.

There they were, coming on the run. His men were on their feet again. The rifles began firing. Then something extraordinary happened. There was their commanding officer on the parapet, outlined against the Eastern sky! Stiffly erect he stood, one arm upraised, facing the oncoming foe. They heard his voice, “Steady, men! Steady! It’s up to you!”

They were amazed, astounded, but they responded. 104A withering fire swept the Hun lines, men were stumbling and falling. Then the solitary figure on the parapet was discovered by the enemy. A bullet rattled on the tin hat, one struck it in the shoulder. It swayed, lost its balance, plunged, face down, outside the parapet. Hicks caught a projecting foot, pulled—and it came off in his hand.

At the same moment the Missourians ran yelling up the communication trench, threw their machine-guns up on the sand-bags and went into action.

Hicks stood petrified, staring at the foot in his hand, when Claude, clad in his Jaegers only, appeared, reached out and dragged the limp figure in by both legs.

“Here, Sergeant, help me with this to the dug-out, so I can get my clothes on before it gets too public.”

“My God, Lieutenant, I thought you was killed. What’s this for? To fool the Heinies?”

“No—that was for the home-folks that read serious novels.”

This story was written between 10 P. M. and 3 A. M. of one night while I was playing bridge. The Swift Set paid me enough for it to recoup what I lost at bridge and leave me the price of a diamond tiara and two theatre tickets. The movie rights brought me $60,000. It is probably the worst story I ever wrote—though, for that distinction, it has many rivals.

Grandpa and Papa

Anthony Blaine’s grandfather had all the money in the known world and lived in Tarrytown—a remarkable coincidence. Entirely surrounded by cold cash, he had acquired an austere frigidity of manner and was commonly called “Old Chill Blaine.” This relationship made Anthony constantly conscious of social security, since an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular—whatever that means.

106His father, an ineffectual æsthete of that prehistoric period known as the Nineties, had died before he was born, apparently thus reversing the customarily usual process of nature—a phenomenon explicable only on the hypothesis that language sometimes obscures the thought it is supposed to elucidate. The fact is that Anthony was a posthumorous child—a kind of practical joke on his surprised mother.

Anthony inherited from his father nothing but his last name, his taper fingers and a million dollars—a miserable heritage.

Mother Dear

But his mother, Beatrice Blaine! She was a woman!—by curious chance. Born in Boston of the old Puritan family of O’Hara, she was educated in Rome—also in Watertown and Ogdensburg, having been fired from three schools successively. She went abroad and was polished in Poland and finished in Finland.

She learned to smoke Camels in the Desert of Sahara and, at the Hague, to drink the national beverage, double strength. All in all, she absorbed a sort of education and an amount of liquor that it will be impossible ever again to find in this country.

In an absent-minded moment, she married Stephen Blaine, because she was a little bit 107weary, a little bit sad and more than a little bit pie-eyed. He tried to keep step with her, but in less than a year cheerfully died. So Anthony was born fatherless.

Little Child, Who Made You?

His childhood and youth were spent in the midst of privations—private cars, private yachts and private tutors.

At the age of seven he bit bell-boys, at eight smoked cigarettes, at nine played poker, at ten read Rabelais, at eleven imbibed intoxicants, at twelve kissed chorus-girls, and at thirteen his mother died of delirium tremens. He was sent to school at St. Ritz’s.

Tom Brown at Rugby

St. Ritz’s isn’t Eton but it is pretty strong on drinkin’. Anthony’s private stock was recruited from all parts of the world.

“What’s ’is pink stuff, Anthony?” asked a fellow dipsomaniac of the fourth form, in the intimacy of intoxication.

“’At’s ole genevieve from Geneva. ‘At green’s grenadine from Grenada, an’ ‘at yellow’s yataghan from Yap. Make a fairish cocktail, if you lace it with l’il ole wood-alcohol. Keeps a fella fit, ’is stuff does.”

He drank liquors of incomparable strength 108and iridescent beauty, in whose mysterious depths all the lost lures of Mont Marter and of 42nd and Broadway shivered and shimmied languorously in resplendent redundancy. Also he took a shot of hop now and then.

He read enormously. In his first term he accomplished Rousseau’s Confessions, “The Newgate Calendar,” Boswell’s Life of Johnston, “Frank in the Mountains,” Kant’s Critique, The Arabian Nights in fourteen volumes, “Ten Nights in a Bar-room,” “The Dutch Twins,” the Memoirs of Cazanova, Petronius, Suetonius, Vitruvius, Vesuvius, Plato, Cato, Keats, Yeats and all the Elsie books.

Incident of the Impudent Headmaster

Clad in an opalescent dressing-gown, the color of peacock’s eyes and emu’s fins, Anthony was lying on a luxurious lounge of mauve satin stuffed with eiderdown and aigrettes, reading Ghunga Dhin and drinking Ghordon Ghin. A timid knock on the door preceded the entrance of the headmaster. He stood in the doorway sheepishly, hat in hand, pulling an obsequious forelock.

“Blaine—er—er—Mister Blaine,” he said.

“Well, Margotson? What is it?”

“I called—er—to ask you, sir, if—er—er—you wouldn’t kindly attend a recitation—er—now 109and then—er—just as a matter of form, you know?”

“Go to hell!” said Anthony coldly, turning again to his liquor.

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

The headmaster faded through the doorway and, doubtless, went as he had been directed.

“Damn his impudence!” muttered Anthony.

Incidental Diversions

He was leading man in all the school plays, editor of the St. Ritz Bartenders’ Guide, quarterback on the eleven, first base on the nine, second bass on the glee club, forward on the hockey team and backward in his studies. He carried off first honors in the hundred-yards, the mile, the hurdles, the hammer-throw, the standing long drink, the debating society and the bacchanalian orgies.

Thus Anthony at eighteen, six feet tall and narrow in proportion, green eyes that shone through a tangled mass of tawny eyelashes, scornful of the bourgeoisie and of the proletariat, entered Princeton.

Spires and Gurgles

From the first he loved Princeton, the pleasantest country club in America. He loved the 110tall, towering tapestries of trees, infinitely transient, transiently infinite, yearning infinitely with infinite melancholy—the dreamy double chocolate jiggers pleasing the palate, drenching the innards with a joy akin to pleasure—the early moon, mistily mysterious, more mysterious than mystery itself—the deep insidious devotion of the dreaming peaks, in their lofty aspiration toward the empyrean—through it all the melancholy voices, singing “Old Nassau,” blent in a pæan of pain. While over all the two great dreaming towers towered toward the sky, like a gigantic pair of white flannel trousers, reversed.

The Sub-Deb

The time is in the evening of any day in any month in any year. The place is the front room of an apartment in 52nd Street, New York, the library of a house in 68th Street, the ball-room of the Ritz-Royce, a limousine outside the Country Club in Louisville, the Princeton campus, anywhere else you choose.

Enter Rosalind—kissable mouth, other details unnecessary. Enter to her Anthony Blaine.

He: Will you kiss me?

She: Sure!

(They kiss—definitely and thoroughly—in a most workmanlike manner.)

111He: Did you ever kiss anyone before?

She: (Dreamily) Dozens, hundreds, thousands of boys.

He: Kiss me again.

(They kiss.)

She: How old are you?

He: Nineteen-past.

She: I’m sixteen-just.

He: Kiss me again.

(They kiss.)

She: You’re some kisser yourself.

He: Of course—Princeton, you know.

She: I knew it. Now, Yale men——

He: Don’t mention the brutes!

She: But Harvard men——

He: Sissies! Kiss me again.

(They kiss.)

She: When I was in——

He: You’re so loquacious.

(They kiss.)

She: By the way, who are you?

He: Anthony Blaine.

She: I’ve heard——

He: Don’t talk.

(They kiss.)

She: I’m——

He: What difference does it make who you are? Let’s get married.

She: Can’t. I’m engaged.

He: Whom to?

112She: What?

He: To who—who to?

She: Oh. Why, to Dawson Ryder and Skeets McCormick and Amory Patch and—to a boy named Wilson—don’t remember his first name and—to a Yale boy I met in the dark and don’t know any of his names or what he looks like and to—oh, lots of others.

He: You love me, don’t you?

(They kiss.)

She: I love you! I love you! I’m mad about you. I can’t do without you.

(They kiss.)

He: My God! You’re spoiling both our lives.

She: My God! Am I?

He: Here! we’re losing time.

(They kiss—kiss—kiss.)

She: You’ve broken my heart.

He: My God!

She: My God!

He: Time’s up. I have a date with Cecelia Connage.

She: She’s my sister. She’s not very good at it.

He: Good-by! You’ve broken my heart and mussed me all up.

(They kiss. He stumbles toward the exit—a broken man—then—throws back his head with that proud Princeton gesture—and goes out.)

113She: Oh, God! I want to die!

(She looks about her—misty-eyed—with a deep aching sadness—that will pass—that will pass in time—say, three minutes.—She looks for her vanity-bag—powders her nose—renews the carmine on those tired lips——)

She: Well? Are they going to keep me waiting all night? Next boy, please!

More Gurgles

Collars and Ties

Anthony Blaine paused in the process of adjusting the universe to himself and looked about him—an apartment in a house of murky material, windows that loomed gloomily down upon Fifty-second Street, voluminous chairs, a fireplace of murky black, a flamboyant exotic rug of crimson velvet, an orange-colored lamp—everything suggested the solidarity of wealth, an entré into the best society.

He yawned and sauntered to his bathroom, an enormous room, where he spent most of his time. He usually took five baths a day; on Sundays, seven.

Emerging from his bath, he polished himself with fine sandpaper, finishing with chamois-skin, until his smooth skin shone like satin. From the closets bursting with clothes—underwear for an army, silk shirts for a city, collars and ties for a multitude—he selected his attire.

He taxied to Brooks’s, to buy him some ties and collars, then to the grill-room of the Jazza.

The grill-room of the Jazza. Anthony seated. Enter Richard Caramel. In person short, in pocket shorter. His figure is round—he is always round where Anthony is buying drinks.

Anthony: Hello, Caramel, old sweet!

Dick: Thanks, I will.

Anthony: Waiter! Two double Dacharis in tea cups and four more to follow.

Dick: Sounds to me!

Anthony: Pour it down, beardless boy! How many can you hold?

Dick: Don’t know—never had enough.

Anthony: Waiter! two dozen quadruple Dacharis in bath-tubs. Who’s the luscious débutante across the room?

Dick: My cousin, Gloria Goodle, the Speed Girl from Kansas City.

Anthony: No!

Dick: Yes! These short lines are lifesavers, aren’t they?

Anthony: Indeed. Also this dialogue stuff—so snappy. What were we talking about?

Dick: Gloria Goodle.

Anthony: Oh, yes——

Dick: The Speed Girl from Kansas City.

Anthony: Aren’t we nearly at the bottom of the page?

Dick: Yes, turn over.

116Anthony: Your cousin?

Dick: Want to meet her?

Anthony: Gloria who?

Dick: Goodle.

Anthony: Funny name.

Dick: Funny girl.

Anthony: What’s her line?

Dick: Legs.

Anthony: Whose?

Dick: Her own.

Anthony: My God! lead me to her!

Dick: Come on.

Anthony: Wait a minute. I’ve got something on my mind.

Dick: Get it off before you meet Gloria.

Anthony: Suppose I were an Athenian—too proud to be enigmatic, too supple to eventuate, too incongruous to ratify, too courageous to adorn—

Dick: Cut it! Suppose you were an author too young to be wise, too self-sufficient to learn, too impatient to wait, too successful to stop—that’s the kind of bunk you’d write.

Glorious Gloria

She was dazzling—alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance—hair full of heavenly glamour—mouth full of gum drops.

117“Where are you from?” inquired Anthony.

“K. C., Mo. Got any gum drops?”

“Gum drops! My God!”

The clock on the mantel struck five with a querulous fashionable beauty. Then, as if a brutish sensibility in him was reminded by those thin, tinny beats that the petals were falling from the flowered afternoon, Anthony pulled her to him and held her helpless without breath, with scarcely room to masticate the gum drops, in a kiss like a chloroformed sponge.

The clock struck six.

Passion vs. Gum Drops

Anthony: Will you marry me, Gloria?

Gloria: Are you rich?

Anthony: Haven’t a cent.

Gloria: Thought you were a millionaire.

Anthony: Absolutely stony. Spent it all on neckties and collars.

Gloria: I must have gum drops.

Anthony: Impossible.

Gloria: My God! how I love you!—but I must have gum drops.

Anthony: My God! You’ve broken my heart!

Gloria: My God! have I? Try a gum drop.

118Anthony: My God! woman, you’re heartless.

Gloria: I’m Gloria Goodle—the Speed Girl, Coast to Coast Gloria.

Anthony: Coast to coast!—ashes to ashes! dust to dust! My love is dead.

(Then a thick impenetrable darkness descended on his mind—though you’d hardly notice the difference.)

The Dawning of a Brighter Day

At seven-thirty of the same evening, Anthony was sitting on the floor of the front room of his apartment, with three books before him—a child again playing with his stamp-albums—when Gloria and Dick came in.

“Anthony!” she cried, “your grandfather has died and left you a hundred million bucks.”

“Go ’way,” he answered with petulant gentleness, “I’ve got a five-pistache stamp of Jugo-Rumania and there isn’t any place for it in the damned old book.”

“Jugo-Rumania!” gasped Dick. “Ain’t that the truth? The poor gink’s got ’em. He always was a wet one.”

“Never mind,” said glorious Gloria gently. “I’ll marry him and take him to Arabia where the gum comes from and you can get a decent drink. His trouble ain’t so much the humidity as the hooch.”

I

“Why is it, mother?” asked Olivia, “that we have never associated with the county families? Why has the Squire never invited us to dinner? Why is informal tea at the vicarage the summit of our social attainment? Tell me, mother, tell me!”

Had Mrs. Gale lived the normal life of women—not only speaking, but being spoken to—she might have gone to her grave with her secret unrevealed. But infinite sorrow had weakened her and, in this, the last poignant intimacy of her deathbed, she disclosed it to her daughter.

“My dear,” she said, “I am a Bagshawe—with the final e—of that proud old Anglo-Indian family. My father was Bagshawe of the Indian Guides—not to be confounded with Bradshaw of the Railway Guides. Your father, my dear, was an excellent man in his way, whom I loved as fondly as was consistent with the 120difference in our positions. But they were different, dearest Olivia. As Mrs. Bagshawe—with the final e—I associated with Generals, Colonels and Sirs—and with their wives, of course. As Mrs. Gale, only with trades-people, linen-drapers and haberdashers, tallow-chandlers and ironmongers, with an occasional fishmonger or drysalter, by way of variety.”

“But, why, mother? Why?” cried Olivia. “What did my father do to condemn us to such ignominy?”

“Your father, my dear,” faltered the dying woman, “your father dealt in—pigs.”

That was the skeleton in the cupboard. Stephen Gale had been a fine chap, but as someone—whose modest anonymity shall be respected—has so finely phrased it, pigs is pigs.”

II

After her mother’s death, Olivia rented the dear old place, the home of her ancestors for nearly twenty-five years, filled with the priceless possessions purchased from the proceeds of the preposterously profitable porcine proclivities of her papa, but haunted by the family ghosts of Berkshire and Chester White. She fled to London to escape her heritage of shame.

There she met Alexis Triona, the famous author of Rushing Through Russia. With 121his clean-shaven face, broad forehead, gray eyes, humorous mouth, he looked the hero that he wasn’t. He had faked his book from a stolen diary which he always carried about with him so that, at the proper moment, he might be found out.

He was a chauffeur, the son of a laborer, therefore his diction was faultless. “Diction” is the word. He employed it in ordinary conversation unsparingly—diction and contradiction—for he was a wonderful liar. Lacking all the advantages of birth and education, he had, nevertheless, achieved a mendacity of majestic grandeur and ravishing art.

III

It was not until after their marriage that Olivia discovered Triona’s essential greatness—and his essential and fatal defect.

He had taken two drinks of whisky and lay in a drunken slumber. Olivia found on the floor beside him the original notes of the stolen story, preserved for this dénouement. For the first time, she knew him for what he was—no mere recorder of his own experiences and observations, no mere note-book-and-camera author, but an imaginative artist of the first rank.

She was almost stunned by the greatness of 122her discovery, the realization that he, her husband, was worthy to be placed on a pedestal beside the greatest writers of fictitious travels—Homer, Dante, Milton, Munchausen, Dr. Cook.

Then she made the second, the fatal discovery—that his real name was—John Briggs.

IV

The ugly monosyllables struck her like a blow between the eyes. Alexis Triona!—John Briggs! Briggs! How had she labored, erecting her scaling ladders against the wall of exclusion, to enter the fortified city of the upper-classes, the county families! With what daring had she climbed the heights, bearing the banner with a strange device, “Triona”! And now—flat on her back outside the pale, she lay—her cartes de visite scattered confusedly on the ground, each inscribed “Mrs. John Briggs.”

The sound of the word, its assonance, its consonance, its dissonance, rang in her ears. What had she fled from? The supreme horror crashed in upon her consciousness. Briggs!—pigs! Now forever inescapable, her tragic heritage! No one would ever forget it—no one would ever try to forget it.

“Mrs. John Briggs’s father sold pigs!” She could hear the war cry of the aristocracy.

123“Briggs—Briggs—pigs, pigs, pigs,” the drumbeat of her conquering enemies.

the chant of embattled dowagers.

“One little pig went to market—so two little Briggs stay home!” the warning, the command of the elect, the desired.

It was impossible. It was unthinkable. It was unendurable. All night she sat and kept a ghastly vigil, to confront him in his first awakening with proofs of his Briggishness.

V

Alexis took a ticket for Poland, fleeing the fury of a woman Briggsed. But at Victoria station, his talent for invention revived. He would pretend to be a traffic policeman. Up went his arms, semaphoring the traffic. A cold, incredulous motor lorry refused to believe him. He awoke in a hospital.

VI

Olivia returned to her old home. Blaise Olifant, her tenant there, welcomed her, properly chaperoned by his sister, gave her a home. He was a one-armed man with a long, long nose. 124He had loved Olivia long. He longed for Olivia’s love. But he was a model of honorable circumspection, and for some time nothing happened to disturb the platonic calm of their relations.

Then the passion of Blaise Olifant suddenly flamed forth. (One is careful in the choice of a verb to describe the conflagration.) He flung his arms about her and kissed her passionately. She half-surrendered. She tried to respond to his kiss—but couldn’t. His long, long nose intervened.

How he managed to kiss her, she never knew. But there it was. His long, long nose. Impossible to love a man like that. Taper fingers, yes! Tapir nose, no. Olifant!—Elephant!—could he be? But, whether he was or not, she could not kiss him, try as she might. The obstacle was insurmountable, inevitable. So she gave it up and decided to be true to Alexis.

VII

Myra Stebbings, Olivia’s maid, was, as her name implies, long, lean, angular and withered—had been so from the beginning of time.

She had been married but before the honeymoon was over she found her husband wasn’t in his right mind. His mother exonerated Myra, saying:

125“’Tain’t your fault. I knowed he was crazy when he said he were goin’ to marry you.”

One day a woman called at the hospital to see John Briggs. They brought him the name:

“Miss Myra Stebbings.”

“Oh, my God!” said he, and fainted.

Myra had that effect upon sensitive natures.

VIII

When he had recovered from the effects of the motor lorry’s skepticism, and Myra’s visit, he got a job as chauffeur. Therefore he met his wife, walking along the road. So he ran right off a precipice. It was the only thing to do to keep up the interest.

But he could not escape her. She came down the precipice after him.

“What are you doing in that absurd livery?”

“Chauffeuring.”

He told her the simple truth. The shock was too great. She left him.

“Go to blazes!” he called after her.

“Blaise’s? It’s not,” she answered. “It’s my own home. I only rented it to him.”

IX

But she thought it all over later. She was Mrs. Alexis Triona, spoken to, invited to many 126of the homes of the gentry. Here was John Briggs, her husband, a chauffeur, likely to be arrested at any time for trespassing on private precipices. Then the truth might come out! What would the county families say to that? Something must be done.

She went out into the sweet-scented June night, to the highly perfumed garage, where he slept.

X

“Alexis!” she cried.

“Name of John Briggs,” he answered candidly.

“Never again!” she said. “Alexis Triona, when you try on a new name and it suits, wear it.”

She was so bright that her brilliance would have dimmed the Celestial Hierarchy or Broadway at midnight.

She clutched him tight. “Oh, my God, if you had only been killed!”

“Omit the ‘only’ and it goes,” said he.

So they talked through the sweet-scented June night into the equally deliciously odoriferous June dawn. And, of course, she, inadvertently, let slip—the pigs. Magna est lingua feminae et praevalebit. What to do, then? “Briggs” could be buried but the paternal pigs pursued her. Alexis rose to the occasion.

127“Come, let’s go,” said he, “let us leave this snob-ridden island, populated by porcophobes. Let us go where pigs mean Ancestry, Honors, Family Portraits, High Society and Money in the Bank.”

“Where, oh, where is that delectable place?” she cried.

“Chicago,” he said simply.

CHAPTER IXL

This swiftly executed manœuvre laid the Saucy Arabella board-and-board the great Spanish galleon. A dozen grapnels fell and tore and shivered the timbers of the huge San Salvador Contra Bonos Mores. A wild, yelling swarm of boarders swept over the rail—thirty men against six hundred.

On the quarter-deck, Don Dago de Matador y Mantilla, Lord Admiral of Castille y Sapolio and grandee of Spain, livid of face, short of breath, dumb with despair, frantically raged, as all Spaniards do. Speechless, he shouted conflicting contradictory commands to his craven crew. The Spaniards, though outnumbering the attacking party twenty to one, were demoralized by the knowledge that these were Englishmen, entitled to win by all the rules of the writing game.

129Wolverstone, a one-eyed giant with a most kindly disposition, led the buccaneers. He was ably seconded by Hagthorpe, a soberly dressed gentleman, with a clear cut, attractive countenance, and by a golden-haired, sunny-faced Somersetshire lad, Jeremy Pitt. Up and down the waist from the keelson to the plimsoll-mark, raged these three, treating the Spaniards very rough, though no blood was shed by either party.

Above them on the quarter-deck, upon which none of these rough, common sailors thought of intruding, stood a straight-up-and-down-slip-of-a-girl, clad in shivering gray silk. Her oval face, upon which the tropic sun had made no impression, so permanent was her complexion, was shaded by the broad brim of a gray hat garnished with a scarlet austridge ploom. Her clear hazel eyes sparkled with onwee as she witnessed the furious onslaught of the invaders upon the crowded crew.

Yet for a space, as one might say, the battle hung uncertain. Push the Spaniards to and fro as they might, they were so many that the gallant little band of wild, hairy, half-naked English pirates could not keep them in order. It seemed almost impossible that they could quell the riot without calling out the mounted police.

“One moment, please!” A crisp, metallic 130voice, speaking the purest Castilian, cut across the tumult like a Toledo blade, beautifully damascened with golden scarabesques. At the sound of its master’s voice, the uproar ceased as suddenly and as completely as it had begun.

Arabella, for the young lady on the quarter-deck was indeed our heroine, gazing with childish wonder and hazel eyes, saw coming toward her, picking his way daintily through that ghastly shambles, a man, tall, lean, graceful, spruce, modish, etcetera.

Peter, for it was none other than he, was unscrupulously attired in a singularly elegant costume of crimson satin, trimmed, as it were, with gold lace. A broad brimmed hat, adorned with a scarlet feather secured by a brooch, set with a single great quadroon, which gleamed dully like a lambent flame, was set above beautifully marcelled and freshly oiled ringlets of deepest black, which with a broad linen collar of finest point, framed a swarthy, tawny, sardonic, keen, intrepid face and a pair of light blue eyes, like pale sapphires set in copper.

Around his neck like a stole—which it probably was—he wore a madigral of scarlet silk, from each end of which hung a silver-mounted pistol. A gold hilted sword dangled at his side from a gold embroidered garibaldi. In his left hand he carried daintily a tall ebony cane. His stockings were of silk. He wore fine 131Spinach leather shoes—on his feet. His suspenders were delicately hand-embroidered and his undies, though invisible, were doubtless of equal elegance. He was a very nifty dresser.

Moving with easy nonchalance, he came on until he fronted Don Dago. The light blue eyes played over the speechless Spaniard like points of steel. The level black eyebrows went up. A faint smile curled the lips of the long mouth and, with a crisp, authoritative, faintly disdainful manner, blended of suavity, impressiveness and mockery—not to mention ansooseyance and savore fare—let alone savore veev and sang froyd—he spoke in fluent Castilian, whereof he was master, and with grave courtesy.

“Admiral, darlint, an’ is it all day yer dirthy gang o’ cutthroat Spaniards’ll be kapin’ up this riot? Bedad, we have met again, Don Dago, and, without offense, I may remark, how small the world is! Meseems that no one other than yourself and your brother, Don Miggle, sails the Spanish Main, so called, for never, forsooth, do I board a ship without finding eyether one of you in command, be jabers. Meself ut is will be askin’ ye to get yer dirthy carcass an’ yer blaggard crew off me ship befoore somebody gets hurted.”

The level black eyebrows, having come down again in the same place whence they had went up, came together above the vivid blue eyes.

132Speechless, livid with rage, his mouth distorted all kind of crooked with anger, the haughty hidalgo gazed calmly upon the intruder.

“Off your ship?” he gasped inarticulately.

Again in purest Castilian, the elegantly dressed man spoke.

“Sure Mike! Is ut ye doan’t know ivry ship’s my ship when me gang’s wid me? Is it possible that you are fatuously harboring the delusion that, with only thirty men against six hundred, I would be at a loss for a ready expedient wherewith to bring to fruition my hopes of possessing this noble vessel? Ah, Admiral, you have forgotten your Horace—‘Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.’ Those ancient Greeks were very wise, were they not? Look there, ye dirty scut! Ye miserable blaggard, look forninst ye!”

He waved one hand with elegant languor toward his gallant crew, which meantime had gathered in a compact group in the waist just abaft the rudder. At the signal they drew aside and disclosed their secret to the astonished eyes of the affrighted Admiral and his cowardly minions.

Agreeably to a plan concerted beforehand, these hardy, hairy buccaneers had availed themselves of the diversion, caused by the entrance of their leader, to collect all the ship’s ordnance, its bow-chasers, broadsides and stern-chasers, 133and arrange them in a line across the deck, loaded to their frowning muzzles and trained full upon the dense mass of Spaniards. There in an appalling row—behind each gun a gallant English pirate with lighted penstock in hand—were ranged nine sackbuts, seven culverts, four spontoons and two great cuspadores.

The glittering dark eyes of Don Dago fell, as did all the rest of him, upon the deck. With a fearful groan he expired.

The victor turned to the mere-slip-of-a-girl and spoke in purest Palmolive, whereof he was master.

“Be not alarmed, Miss Bishop. My intentions are strictly honorable. Object, matrimony. Not a hair of these men shall touch your little finger.”

Her clear hazel eyes regarded him wistfully and contemptuously and in a steady level voice she stated “Thief and pirate.”

Thief and pirate! The cruel phrase filled his brain, reëchoing and reverberating in its vast empty spaces. Thief and pirate! Not those! My God, not those!

“Pirate I may be, madam,” he replied stiffly with admirable candor, “but not thief. For, know you, that naught have I taken from any man save in the regular course of piracy. And more I have to say. Have you observed this fight? Saw you aught of bloodshed? Did any 134one of these Spanish dogs receive more severe punishment than a rough push or a sharp slap mayhap? No, madam, I embarked upon this career on high moral grounds and have conducted my piracy along strictly Y. M. C. A. lines and in the most sanitary manner. You see before you the only original moral pirate. No drop of blood stains my name. In all the Spanish main, I am known and feared as Captain Bloodless.”

She came slowly to him and held out her hand.

“I’m ... I’m glad,” she said and strove to smile (or was it not to smile? Who can tell?). Won’t you ... won’t you say ... good-by?”

“Good-by? Shure an’ why should I when it’s good girl I’d rather be sayin’? Arrah, ye love me, doan’t ye? Ye’ll marry me, woan’t ye?”

She sank into his arms.

“There never, never was a pirate like you, Peter,” was all she said.

CHAPTER I

Rosalie’s first impression was that her father owned the world. Extraordinary father! Wonderful father! Wonderful, wonderful father! There he is bounding across a field before a bull. Wonderful bull! There is father. There is the bull. Two theres. One after the other. The bull there after father there. Wonderful theres! Entrancing theres!

Did her mother ever bound before a bull? Never. Her father was the only bounder in the family—except her two brothers. All men were bounders. Wonderful, mysterious, entrancing men! Wonderful, wonderful men!

Mother—how different! Taught all the children until each child was eight, at her knee. “The Child’s Bible,” expurgated, hymns—“I kneed thee every hour.” Various methods of knee-teaching. For “Child’s Bible,” on the knee, her arm around you. For hymns, at the knee, your hands behind you. For deportment, across the knee, her hand upraised.

School. Head-mistress, Mrs. Impact—ominous name! Second in command, Miss Ouch—natural sequence! Then Miss Keggs—also eponymous, as we shall see.

So she grew up—twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. In just that order. No twelve, fourteen, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, sixteen irregularity. A precise arithmetical sequence—forecast of mathematical abilities almost unfeminine.

She is eight years older than when she was nine. Eight added to nine makes—ninety-eight?—No, seventeen. Surely, seventeen. There can be no doubt about it, especially in the case of a young girl like Rosalie. Absurd to doubt it. Seventeen. Be sure of that.

CHAPTER III

She’s left school! She’s looking for a job! She’s got a job—Simcox boss! She’s still got the job! She hasn’t lost it yet! Simcox dies. Simcox is buried! She’s got another—Sturgiss boss! She’s met a man! She’s kissed the man! She’s married the man! She has one child! She has two children! She has three children! She has no more children! She’s lost them all! Careless! Careless!

137What jumps! What leaps! What bounds! How annoying! She’s busted right through the book.

One clutches. Tries to stop her. Can’t. It’s no use. She’s a deluge. She’s a maelstrom. She’s an earthquake. She’s an avalanche. She’s several other things, including a boiling pot. What a life! What a life! Gosh!

CHAPTER IV

One starts again. Simcox—funny little man—walks in jerks—talks in jerks—like one’s style. Le style c’est l’homme. There you are! Simcoxical! One writes Simcociously.

Simcox then—or Simcox now—the phrases are interchangeable—man of letters, very well posted, one may say. Busy all day writing letters to himself, skipping out to put them in the pillar-box, skipping home to receive them from the postman. Whimsical idea. Oh, very! One quite chuckles at having conceived it.

Then Simcox dies—cacoëthes scribendi, complicated with writer’s cramp.

CHAPTER V

Simcox gone, Sturgiss arrives. “Come with us!” “No!” Coy Rosalie bluffs. “Head clerk—manager—partner—sole owner—Chairman 138of Bank of England—Chancellor of Exchequer—anything. Only come with us.”

“Very well, then—manager to start with.”

Her life now, her stage. A chair! A desk—mahogany—huge! Ink-well! Penholders! Paper! Typewriter! Waste-basket! Paste pot! Scissors! Everything and more besides—including glass partitions—think of that! Lombard Street! Trafalgar Square! Pall Mall! Piccadilly! Bond Street! Regent Street! Hyde Park! Kensington Gardens and points west and north!

That’s her stage. Can you beat it?

The War comes. It had her permission. It goes on. She let it. It stops. She was tired of it.

And yet ... one must write one’s story in one’s own way, in spite of one’s habit of prematurely spilling one’s beans. One must tell it all over in detail—but not here—not here—thank God! Not here!

CHAPTER VI

Miss Keggs again—mysteriously, unaccountably called Keggo. Why? We shall see. Rosalie met her. Keggo smiling fixedly. Had evidently been smiling for some time. In a drab street, sad drab. Forlorn drab drabs, like sad drab ghosts drably flickered in and 139out, itinerant drabs in drab cerements. All drab, except Keggo, who was brilliantly lit up.

CHAPTER VII

Harry Occleve, now. She knew him slightly. She despised him. Tame cat! She hated him. Beast! But he smelt nice. Yes, he did. Of peat and soap and tobacco and whisky and tweed—always so—of tweed, even when in evening dress. Odd!

She met him in her uncle’s house. Poor calf! How she despised him—sick fool! She had to pass him. Hateful! She trembled. Her knees shook. She hated him so. Then—that smell! Peat, soap, tobacco, whisky and—tweed. He in evening dress.

She caught her breath. He caught her in his arms. Her face upturned—the thing’s too poignant for the words one has! Really. But one does one’s best. Start over, then——

She was caught in his arms, terribly enfolding her—around and around and around he wrapped those long, long strong arms—Phew! One gets so excited writing it.

She was incredibly swooning through incredible spaces, in incredible seas, through incredible blackness, in incredible tweedy smells——

Then they went in to dinner.

She loved him so! Perfect he was. Simply perfect. Perfectly simple. In every way. A paragon.

He never even swore. Hanging a picture, he caught his thumb a proper crack with a hammer, that is to say, he hit it. “Mice and mumps!” cried Harry. She loved him so.

Oh, rare saying! It epitomized Harry to her—his only swear word. So perfect he was! “Mice and mumps!” Never anything stronger. Never “Rats and rickets!” Never “Snakes and scarlet-fever.” Never “Terrapins and tuberculosis!” No. Only “Mice and mumps.” She loved him so! Oh, rapturous affinity!

CHAPTER IX

So they were married. There were children. She, not cognizant of nature’s dower to her sex, was surprised. No one had ever told her. Simcox had never mentioned it. Sturgiss said nothing about it. How was she to know? One cannot know everything, and she was so busy at the office.

Three children, happy Huggo, happy Doda, happy Benji—happy Rosalie—everybody happy, except Harry. He gloomed sometimes, 141glowered sometimes. Brooded now. Spoke——

“Did you ever notice anything queer about the children?”

Ha! What now? Sets the wind in that quarter? Her defenses bristle.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever thought that they are not quite like other children?”

Oh, this was dangerous! Where would this lead? Oh, dangerous.

“Particularize, Harry, particularize!”

“Have you ever noticed that Huggo is crosseyed? Or that Doda has two left feet? and I think—I think that Benji’s face is on upside down.”

Stand by! Stand by! She has the drift of this.

“Oh, let that go. I have a reply to that!” A mirage on her face.

“What reply?”

“I am a woman!”

Unanswerable. He put his arm around her. “It’s over. It’s over. Let’s forget it, Rosalie.”

CHAPTER X

“I don’t believe the whale swallowed Jonah!” Huggo speaking.

142She sat upright. She stared. She called out dreadfully. Her face was all miraged up.

“Huggo!”

“Well, mother, you never taught me to believe it.”

She drew her hand to her heart. She was deathly sick. It was very embarrassing. Huggo! The whale! Jonah!

She worked with her fingers at the key ring, removing her office key.

“I’m coming home, Harry.”

“Coming home?”—puzzled Harry.

“Coming home!”

“Why, my dear, my dear, steady on! You’re home already. Mice and mumps! Why, you came home two hours ago! Why, you—” bewildered Harry.

They carried her up to bed, feet first. She had an almost fatal mirage.

CHAPTER XI

So she gave up her job. Spent all her time with her children. Read them the dear old things, the kind that mother used to teach, “Line upon Line,” “Step by Step,” “Mother Goose,” the Rollo books.

“Mice and mumps!” cried Harry, adding “Mice and mumps!” He was so happy. But the children? “Dull,” they cried, “deadly dull. 143Old stuff! Mid-Victorian! Ab-so-lootly ob-so-lete! Cut it out, mother dear! Dispense with it!”

She gave it up. Went back to the office.

“After all, I am a woman.” She spoke a mouthful.

CHAPTER XII

A quick finish now. The Toboggan for everybody. They’re off!

Harry came in. His face iron hard.

“What is it, Harry?”

“It’s Huggo.”

“Huggo?”

“Huggo!”

“Hug-go?”

“Huggo!!”

“Not Huggo?”

“Yes, Huggo!!!”

“Well, what?”

“In jail for highway robbery.”

She went to the bell. “Will you have your tea now?”

“Tea! Mice and—I mean tea? Why didn’t you teach that boy that the whale swallowed Jonah?” His voice like axes thudding. “That’s the cause of this! How could he know that highway robbery was wrong, if he didn’t know the Jonah swal—the whale swallowed Jonah? 144Why didn’t you tell him that well-known fact?”

She looked at him, miragically, as usual. “I’ll tell you why. I am a woman!”

Bull’s-eye! The perfect answer! He put his arm around her.

“Come, let’s forget it.”

She saw Huggo in prison. “Why did you do it, Huggo?”

“My name’s Hugh. Everybody at home called me that awful name. I couldn’t stick it. I’d rather be in jail.”

Strike one!

CHAPTER XIII

Doda now. Her turn. The less said the better. But one must say something. Say—Doda, then, baby girl, tiny daughter. That’ll do to start it.

Say—look, there she is! She’s fourteen. Look, there she is! She’s sixteen. Look, there she is! She’s eighteen. That’ll help out a bit.

Say—Dances. Untidiness. Powder on her nose. No Jonah in her head. That’ll do to fill in.

Say—look, there she is! She’s dead. That’ll finish her.

The less said, the better.

Strike two!

And Benji. Look, there he is. Benji! Look, there’s the Benji one! Not much to look at, Benji. Mostly spectacles, the darling. Her Benji! He’s at school, is Benji. He’s at his books. He gets prizes. Harry idolizes him, weeps over him. Rosalie, too, though a woman. Her wee one. One should have mentioned that his name was Benji.

Little Benji collides with a train. It isn’t a fair match. Benji was outclassed. The train and Benji weren’t in the same class at all. A bicycle would have sufficed.

But, the result is the same—Benji dies. She had never taught him about Jonah and not to collide with trains.

Therefore, he’s dead.

Strike three! Striker out!

That’s all there is. There isn’t any more. Supply of children exhausted. Yet there was to have been more—much more and worse. Harry dynamiting the Albert Memorial as a protest against matrimony. Rosalie—what? Who can say?

But one cannot any more go on. Tears run down one’s nose and dilute one’s ink. One’s heart——

Look forward then....

146They’re all right now. Huggo in Canada, reformed. So he’s all right now. Rosalie at home, every day, all day, teaches Huggo’s daughter about Jonah. So she’s all right now. Harry say “Mice and mumps” over and over again all day long. So he’s all right now. Doda and Benji still dead. So they’re all right now.

I

The Crabtree family is ancient and honorable. Though the beginnings of the American branch are obscure, the family’s origin is undoubted. Its founder was the well-known Adam Crabtree, a landed proprietor whose country estate was notable for its extent and magnificence, but especially for a certain famous tree, which bore beautiful but bitter apples, called crabs, whence the family took its name. He had perhaps the largest private zoölogical garden ever assembled, unequaled for completeness, until one of his descendants, Noah Crabtree, built up his collection.

Adam Crabtree lived in Eden, Mesopotamia, where, in 4004 B. C., he married his second wife, Eve Sparerib. Their third son, Seth, was the ancestor of the American branch of the family.

Though a man of large means, Adam Crabtree’s 148taste in dress was simple. He commonly wore only a sort of sporran made of fig-leaves. His second wife, Eve, was more given to dress than his first, Lilith, but was really unostentatious. Her costume was a mere surcingle of the same material, edged with scallops of geraniums. It is regrettable that her quiet taste was not inherited by her American descendants.

The dominant family trait of restlessness was early displayed in the departure of the Adam Crabtrees from Eden, shortly after their marriage. Longevity was also a characteristic, emphasized in the case of old Methuselah Crabtree. At the time of his death he was the oldest inhabitant of his home town.

Noah Crabtree was an eminent shipmaster. He was the genius who put the ark in archæology. Successive Crabtrees kept on the move, Arphaxad, grandson of Noah, Terah, his descendant in the seventh generation, and Abraham, son of Terah, were notable travelers.

Abraham’s great-grandson was the first Reuben Crabtree. The first to engage in the business so successfully conducted years afterward in San Francisco, the dealing in spices, was Solomon Crabtree, an importer in a large way of business.

The coming of the family to England, whence the founder of the American branch emigrated, 149is wrapped in the mists of history. But at the Round Table, it seems, the family was represented by the knight known by the family’s commonest pseudonym, Bors.

Throughout this distinguished line of ancestors there were displayed the Crabtree characteristics of longevity, frequent change of abode, large families and complicated kinships. These are especially observable in the Earlier Eastern line but persist remarkably to the present day. No Crabtree can ever confidently state his relationship to any other without consulting the family tree, which each carries about with him.

II

The Reuben Crabtree family mansion at San Rafael was a large house with three floors and as many ceilings. It also had a cellar, four walls, a roof, numerous bay-windows, a kitchen and a sink. It was fully furnished with chairs, tables, beds, bureaus, carpets, wallpapers, stationary washstands and daughters. It was surrounded, as well as inhabited, by wallflowers, also by syringas, fuchsias and fences.

Reuben’s daughter, May Brewer, lived in the house and was responsible for its upkeep, also, in part, for the daughters. Mrs. Brewer had a high bosom and many fine costumes, descriptions of which may be found in Godey’s Lady’s 150Book and Harper’s Bazaar of appropriate dates.

The chief occupation of the Brewer household was husband hunting. Just what the girls would do with their husbands after they were caught, they did not know, having been brought up very carefully.

“Tina,” said Vicky, who wore a figured lavender foulard, pleated and flounced over a small bustle, its skirts sweeping the ground, its tight sleeve ending below the elbow and above the wrist, the other sleeve doing the same, “do you think Vernon Yelland will marry you?”

“Well,” answered Tina, who wore a girlish white muslin and no bustle, her broad uncorseted waist merely indicated by a sash of satin ribbon, “I’ve looked at the family tree and find that he has to marry Grace Fairchild first, but that she will die in 1894 and then he marries me.”

“What a long time to wait,” said Esme, in a pleated pink challis gown, trimmed with blue cashmere, cut on the bias, hemstitched with broad bands of guipure lace, with flounces of dimity and old rose brocade.

“Yes,” said Tina, “but it’s a cinch at that, compared with your chance or Vicky’s.”

“A what, my dear?” asked her mother, who wore a costume of purple cloth, ornamented with festoons of flowered satine en brochette, 151from which hung elegant tabs of peau de soie, garnished with paillettes of crimson plush and organdie, the panniers cut en train and looped over the bustle with ropes of blue sarsenet, pleated with rosemary chenille. “Do not let Mamma hear you use that naughty word again. Say—‘I’m sorry, Mamma.’”

Lou, the fourth daughter, clad in scarlet tapestry, trimmed with jet chignons and basques of green corduroy, interrupted the conversation.

“Sh-h-h! there’s someone coming up the drive.”

“A man?” they cried in unison.

“I think so.”

“To your stations, girls!” said their mother. “Whose turn is it to-day?”

“Vicky’s,” said Esme reluctantly.

Vicky seized the lasso which hung ready to hand and, clambering through the window, stretched herself prone upon the porch roof, over the front steps. Her mother, holding the end of the rope, braced herself against the window sill for a strong pull at the proper moment.

The others scurried down the back-stairs and circled the house. Two of them took up positions in the shrubbery bordering the drive, Esme with a shot-gun, Lou with a pitchfork, to prevent the evasion of their prey. Tina reached the gate unseen, closed it, locked it and chained to it the man-eating watch-dog.

152There was a moment of tense excitement, then Esme’s voice calling, “Sold again, Vicky. It’s only Papa.”

Mr. Brewer approached the house. His face was simply dressed in a full beard, à la Russe, garnished with sidewhiskers of the same.

“Anybody married since I left this morning?” he asked hopefully. There was no response. A look of deep melancholy overspread his features, his shoulders sagged visibly, the wrinkles in his bombazine coat showed plainly his desperation.

III

Aunt Fanny and Aunt Lucy came over to San Rafael to spend the day. They had taken the nine-forty-five ferry to Sausalito and the ten-thirty train hence. There had been a change in the schedule the previous week, the boat formerly leaving at nine-forty now left at nine-forty-five, and the train, whose time had been ten-fifteen, now departed at ten-thirty. They had with difficulty adjusted themselves to these innovations.

All the female members of the Brewer family and their guests were assembled in the parlor. The Brewer girls ranged in age from twenty-four to twenty-eight years.

Aunt Fanny was an old maid with a flexible nose, which, when agitated, she used to beat. 153By the intervals between the blows and by their force, one could measure the depth of her agitation. She wore a blue foulard, trimmed with camel’s hair, flounced with calico and broadcloth and ornamented with passementrie and passepartout in contrasting colors.

Aunt Lucy was garbed in a crazy-quilt which she had made out of her former husband’s discarded neckties.

Mrs. Brewer and the girls wore the dresses described in the previous chapter.

“Have you heard of Amelia lately?” asked Mrs. Brewer.

“Who is Amelia?” asked Vicky, aged twenty-eight.

“Vicky, dearest, you shouldn’t ask Mamma such questions,” chided Mrs. Brewer. “Mamma doesn’t like it. Amelia is your third cousin once removed, the daughter of Aunt Caroline’s first husband, who was the son of his father, one of the Brewers of Milwaukee.”

“No,” replied Aunt Fanny, beating her nose gently. “But Rebecca’s mother, who was old Hannibal Crabtree’s niece by his marriage to Belinda Johnson, the sister of Cicero Tompkins, who was divorced from her uncle’s sister.”

“What about her?” said Esme.

“Nothing,” answered Fanny.

“How do you make that delicious fruit cake, May?” asked Lucy.

154“Two cups of flour, four eggs, a spoonful of saleratus and two cups of horseradish. Break the eggs gently, add the gravy drop by drop, stir from left to right. Let it simmer on the back of the stove for two days and fry in a colander over a slow fire,” said May.

“Lou,” interjected Tina. “Did you know our cat has kittens?”

“Teeny-weeny!” cried her mother. “Don’t you know that such things should never be alluded to in Mamma’s presence? Mamma is deeply grieved. Perhaps a few days in your room on bread and water will be needed.”

“Yes, Mamma,” said Tina meekly.

“How about Pa Crabtree?” asked Mrs. Brewer of Fanny. “Any prospects of his dying soon?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Fanny, beating her nose staccato. “He does hang on so.”

“Girls,” said Mrs. Brewer, “go out on the porch for a few minutes.” Obediently they trooped out.

“Is—Alice?”

“Yes,” said Lucy, “December.”

“And—Nellie?”

“November.”

“And—Dessie?”

“October.”

“Lola is—January,” said Mrs. Brewer. “Mrs. Yelland, February and Mrs. Torrey, 155March. The cat, yesterday. I hope my daughters will never be so unladylike.”

Aunt Fanny beat her nose violently, expressing chagrin.

“Come in, girls,” called Mamma. “Tell Auntie Fanny how you make that delightful new salad.”

“Four cups of vinegar,” began Vicky, “a pound of macaroons, nine artichokes, two peppers and a turnip. Crumble the eggs in a warming pan, add the glycerine, chop the tomatoes into small pieces and serve in patty-pans garnished with ostrich feathers.”

“How lovely,” said Lucy.

“This whole thing,” whispered Lou to Tina, “sounds to me like two pages out of the Ladies’ Home Journal.”

Father’s footsteps were heard in the hall.

“Anybody married yet?” he asked. “Hello, Fanny. Is your Pa dead?” He read the answers in their faces, groaned audibly and left the room.

IV

It was a fine bright day in the latter part of the last chapter. May Brewer and Stephen, her husband, were busy in the kitchen. She washed the dishes at the sink. He dried them.

“Well,” said she, “it’s about finished.”

“Yes,” he replied, “Esme’s dead. Vicky’s 156working her head off at Napa to keep the wolf from their door. Tina’s married to a poor preacher and has three step-children beside her own brood. Lou married that old fellow in Buenos Aires. Bertie’s thoroughly unhappy with his wife. Lucy’s left Harry and he’s living on George. Nelly’s husband is a drunkard. Alice’s beats her. Bob’s wife’s dead. The family business is bankrupt, and I’ve got nothing to do but wash dishes in this mortgaged house and live on remittances from Lou’s husband. It’s been a great life.”

“There are compensations, dear,” said May.

“Yes, to be sure,” admitted Stephen. “Your Pa’s dead. That helps some.”

I

“Buenas dias, señor!”

The girl’s liquid accents exactly fitted the dark, piquant, little face whence they had emerged. The slender grace of her slight form, the delicate arch of her instep, the shapely grace of her dainty ankle, all marked her as the child of a Mexican laborer, Margarita the Maid of Muchacho.

“Muchus gracious, seenora!”

Adam Larey’s Spanish was not that of the lower class of Mexicans, but it was the best he had. Adam Larey’s face flushed beneath its coat of tan and his breath came in short pants, for he was clothed in the innocence of eighteen summers. Though his lofty stature betokened budding manhood, Adam Larey had never before spoken to a woman other than his mother or an occasional sister.

Then, suddenly, Margarita launched herself upon him. Her slender twining form enveloped him like a wind of flame, like a lissom spectre. 158A strong shuddering shook his heart. His blood leaped, beat, burnt in his veins. He was gathered in her close embrace.

“Don’t! don’t!” he gasped. “You mustn’t! Someone will see——”

His words were stifled by those eager searching lips and—she kissed him.

It was over in a single, scorching, flaming moment. Exerting his enormous strength to the utmost, he tore himself from her twining arms, half ran, half stumbled up the rocky path to his cabin, flung himself upon his bed and burst into a blinding flood of tears.

II

Adam Larey’s aching eyelids opened on the cold gray dawn of the morning after. Simultaneously, the dread realization of his loss overwhelmed him, devastated him, made him feel very bad. He had been through the fires of passion, through the flames of dishonor. He could never, never be the same pure man again as previously he had been before. She must atone. She must marry him, make an honest man of him.

He found her in converse with his brother Guerd Larey—tall, superbly built, handsome, bold, keen, reckless, gay Guerd Larey—whose face was perfect of feature, not a single one 159missing—Guerd Larey, a creature of G—dlike beauty, with a heart as false as h—l!!

“Margarita! Maggie! Mag!” he faltered. “Will you—won’t you—ain’t you going to—marry me? After what happened—last night—you won’t, will you?—I mean, you will, won’t you? You ain’t chucked me, are you? I’m on, ain’t I? You can’t can me, can you? Aw! You know what I mean!”

“Nachitoches, señor!” she answered lightly.

“Meaning?” he inquired.

“Nay—no—not—nix—never—not at all—nothing doing—and several other expressions of like import,” said she.

“Ha! ha!” commented Guerd Larey.

His mocking tones roused all the d—vil in the breast of Adam Larey.

“Take care, Guerd Larey!” he said omnivorously.

“Say not so, Adam! say not so!” taunted Guerd Larey, and at the same time seized a huge rock of several hundred-weight and hurled it at his brother. It struck Adam Larey full in the face and dazed him for a moment.

Then a rushing gush of rage overwhelmed him. He snatched his gun from its holster.

“You have snore your last sneer, Guerd Larey!” he cried, closed both eyes and pulled the trigger—or whatever you call that little thing that makes it shoot—turned and fled to 160the desert—the registered trade-mark of Cain upon him.

III

Adam Larey’s dull eyelids opened on the grim, dim dawn of the zanegrey desert. Before him a wide, barren, endless, bleak, lifeless, silent, desolate plateau—illimitable space and silence and solitude and desolation stretched illimitably to a illimitable horizon—wild and black and sharp—colossal buttresses, chocolate mountain ranges, bare and jagged peaks, silhouetted against the hazel dawn.

Here and there were sparse, vague tufts of sage-brush, greasewood, sneezewood, cacti, neckti, octopi, ocatilla, ocarina and similar hardy perennials—the strange verbiage of the desert.

On the left, lofty Pistachio lifted its pale green peak. On the right Eskimopi, in lofty grandeur, heaved its chocolate height.

IV

Two weeks had elapsed since Adam Larey had flown the coop. Two weeks without food, without water, had left him both hungry and thirsty. Punctured by cactus-spines, his boots had suffered several important blow-outs and now he was traveling practically on his rims.

161More than fifty miles a day he had fled over the desert floor, composed chiefly of sand, gravel, lime, cement and other building materials, yet every one of the last ten nights he had slept in the same place.

Morning after morning, he had set out. Day after day, he had followed his own trail, now a broad, well-beaten track. Night after night, he had reached the same starting point. The doom of the desert had fallen on the wanderer. He was traveling in a circle.

V

The blazing disc of the sun mounted the coppery sky—the lord of day ascending the throne of this, his empire. The desert seemed aflame, when Adam Larey set out on his daily round. The rocks were hot as red-hot plates of iron or steel. The sand was very warm, also.

And now a low, seeping, silken rustle filled the air, sometimes rising to a soft roar—the dread simoom of the desert! It whipped up the sand in clouds, sheets, blankets, quilts, mattresses, till all the air was pale yellow, thick and opaque and moaning. It was hot with the heat of a blast-furnace, heavy with the weight of leaden fire.

It burned Adam Larey’s brow, charred his cheeks and baked his brains—seared, scorched 162the rest of him. His blood was boiling in his head. His motometer burst, steam issued from his ears and there was no water to replenish his radiator. Still doggedly Adam Larey strove forward.

Fiercer and hotter blew the wind. His hair was ignited. His celluloid collar button exploded. His shirt was charred to tinder. His suspender buttons melted. His trousers fell from him. Still doggedly Adam Larey strove forward.

Fiercer and hotter blew the wind. His skin dried, shriveled, was calcined, blew away in dust. His flesh followed. As deep inroads were thus made in his muscular substance, unarticulated bones, having no means of support, were detached and fell from him. Still doggedly Adam Larey strove forward.

But when both knee-caps dropped and his knee-joints worked with equal ease forward or backward, even he could no more. The skeleton of Adam Larey fell rattling to the ground.

VI

There Dismukes, the old prospector, found him. It was a heart-breaking job to rebuild Adam Larey—to find the missing parts. But the pertinacity of the old prospector was rewarded. Adam Larey’s chassis was re-assembled. 163A few cups of soup were administered, carefully at first because the gas-tank leaked, and at last Adam Larey, re-built, re-finished throughout, stood erect once more.

Dismukes gave him a new outfit, including a burro, showed him how to pack the burro neatly, so the drawers would close, and Adam Larey set out again on his travels.

VII

Eight years Adam Larey dwelt in the desert, growing daily stronger, finer, purer in its illimitable wilds—the abode of purity, silence and tarantulas. Climbing inaccessible heights, striding over impassable plains, stalking the savage antelope, the impatient grizzly, the querulous bob-cat, he acquired the eye of a mountain-sheep, the ear of a deer, the nose of a wolf and many other trophies of the chase.

He loved the lure of the desert. He learned its lore. The secrets of nature were disclosed to him. He knew whether the antelope chews her cud with a full set of teeth, upper and lower, or has to gum it in part—why grizzly-bears always walk in single file and why they never do—why the bark of a coyote or of a tree, whichever it is, is always rougher on the north or the south side, as the case may be—wherein 164the joyous cry of the great blue condor, weeping for its children, differs from the melancholy note of the lounge lizard courting its mate—whether the gray desert wolf is indigenous, like the horned toad, or monogamous, like the rattlesnake—whether the jack-rabbit’s tail curls in the direction of the movement of hands of a watch, like the trailing arbutus, or counter-clockwise, like the lesser celandine—whether the giraffe lies down to sleep or merely appears to do so—whether the mesquite-bush attracts lightning or whether it is the lightning’s own fault—whether sound travels faster in the direction in which it is going or in the opposite direction—whether the vulture finds carrion by the odor emanating from its prey or by its own sense of smell—whether the bob-cat can see in the dark as well or not as well or better or worse or at all or not at all or at night or partially or impartially or which, if any—Adam Larey at last knew the answers to all these questions as well as Stewart Edward White or any Boy Scout in America.

He had adopted the name of Woncefell—in memory of his single lapse from virtue, his momentary liaison with Margarita, the Maid of Muchacho. As Woncefell, the Wanderer, he was known and feared throughout that desert land.

Death Valley! Surrounded by ragged, jagged peaks, floored with ashes, borax, sandsoap, dutch-cleanser, watered by arsenic springs, swept by furnace blasts, it was, indeed, an unpleasant place. “The lid of h—ll,” a profane prospector had called it.

Yet there, in a rude shack on the sloping mountain side, overhung by an impending mass of loose rock, from which ever and anon gigantic fragments detached themselves to roll with a booming crash into the valley below, missing the cabin only by inches, dwelt Magdalene Virey and Elliott, her husband.

She was a woman of noble proportions, though frail—at least she had been on one occasion. She suffered from insomnia because Elliott spent his nights in the mass of rocks above the cabin, detaching great boulders and rolling them down with a booming crash into the valley below, trying to frighten his wife to death.

Elliott did not love his wife and he was a very disagreeable man. He was, perhaps, a little mad, but his wife never got that way. She had a very sweet forgiving nature. The great boulders always narrowly missed the tiny cabin. They bounded over, knocking the top off the chimney, and she had to rebuild it every 166morning. But the sad-eyed saint never complained.

IX

Thither came Woncefell, the Wanderer.

“Magdalene Virey, why do you dwell in this horrible place?” he asked.

“Woncefell, the Wanderer,” she answered, “I love the silence, the loneliness, the mystery of the great open spaces and, besides, dear Elliott finds his rock-golf so amusing. He is so ambitious to make the chimney in one.

“I can endure it only because I am sustained by my faith in G—d and by the hope that some night he’ll break his dod-gasted neck or pinch his fingers or something.”

“Magdalene Virey,” he said, “why does he do it?”

“Woncefell, the Wanderer,” she said, “because my daughter Ruth is not Elliott Virey’s daughter.”

“Magdalene Virey, who is Elliott Virey’s daughter, then?” he asked.

“Woncefell, the Wanderer, I do not know,” she answered.

“Magdalene Virey, my G—d!” he exclaimed.

Who was Elliott Virey’s daughter? The mystery was insoluble. It was plain to him now that he must kill Elliott Virey with his bare hands, like he had killed Baldy McKue, 167breaking his arms, one at a time, then his legs, then his ribs seriatim, then his neck—and that was about all.

X

That night Elliott Virey engaged as usual in his favorite outdoor sport. Rock after rock, boulder and yet more bould, crashed, streaked, hurtled down the mountain. Singly, in pairs, in column of fours, in mass formation, by dozens and hundreds, they crashed and boomed as the madman hurled them at the humble dwelling of his lawful wife.

The time had come! Adam Larey started up the slope.

“Virey,” he roared above the thunder of the rocks, “I’m going to break your bones like I done Baldy McKue’s.”

The madman heard him.

“Fore!” he yelled and with one last supreme effort tore loose the whole mountain side. Down it came with a thunderous roar, a cataclysmic rush, and with it came Virey. It swept the cabin from its underpinning.

As the mass of rocks bearing the little shack crashed past Adam Larey, the saintly woman leaned far out o’er the window sill and handed him a small photograph.

“Woncefell, the Wanderer,” she said in a low, clear voice, “take it. It is my daughter, 168my child, not Elliott’s. With the clairvoyant truth given to a dying woman, I tell you that you and she will meet. Go find her. And now, I do not know where we’re going but we’re certainly on our way. You’ll excuse my leaving you, won’t you? Her name is Ruth. Au revoir!”

“What a pretty name,” said Adam Larey, musingly, as the avalanche and Mr. and Mrs. Virey spilled over into the declivity below, lifting to heaven a thick, crashing, rolling roar of thunder. When the last rumble died away, silence and solitude reigned over all. Adam Larey was alone at last.

XI

He did meet Ruth on page 392. Her mother had evidently been reading ahead.

“Oh, you Sheik,” she said. “Desert man, I am lonesome. Stay—stay, desert man, and make me a woman.”

Gosh! wasn’t she awful? Adam Larey fled. The younger generation was too much for him. Besides, he had yet to atone for his brother’s death—to surrender to the sheriff, be hanged for murder—then, only then, would his conscience cease its seventeen years’ bickering—then, only then, could he return and claim her for his bride.

Muchacho again—the scene of his boyhood—and his old friend, Merrywell.

“Old friend,” said Adam Larey, “lead me to my brother’s grave.”

“His grave?” said Merrywell. “Gosh! he ain’t got none, as I knows on.”

“What?” cried Adam Larey. “Why didn’t they bury him?”

“’Cause he ain’t dead yit.”

“Didn’t I kill him?”

“Gosh, no! Your pistol missed fire. Guerd Larey’s ’live as you be.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Adam Larey, “that I’ve been expiating Guerd Larey’s death in the desert for seventeen years with sandstorms and tarantulas and everything, and he ain’t dead? This is an outrage! Somebody’ll pay for this!”

“Go easy, young man,” said Merrywell. “Ain’t you been workin’ fer Mr. Zane Grey? Well, don’t you know as Mr. Grey don’t never let his heroes do nothin’ ’at’s really bad?”

NOTES

Not only the title but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Mr. T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Mr. Eliot’s poem will elucidate the difficulties of my poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the amusement to be derived from it) because my poem will seem more lucid by contrast.

Following Mr. Eliot’s example, I have availed myself of the work of fellow bards. Credit has not been given in these notes in every case, but will be extended freely on application to our Credit Department.

I

Lines 1–7

Cf. The Waste Land, l.1–7.

II

11.

A phenomenon commonly observed.

177

14.

V. The Waste Land 1.26.

23.

St. Timothy I Timothy 23.

25–6.

V. H. Fielding Tom Thumb the Great I, Sc. II.

27–28.

Cf. Xenophon Anabasis, passim.

31–32.

V. Moody and Sankey Hymnal No. 1.

III

34.

Cf. The Waste Land l.26.

36–7.

Cf. The Waste Land l.348–9.

45.

Cf. The Waste Land l.199–201.

IV

59.

Inquire of any policeman or taxi-driver.

64–5.

This list is incomplete. For full particulars inquire as above.

66–7.

I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken.

V

68–69.

Cf. R. L. Stevenson, In the Highlands.

70–71.

Old song.

72.

Cf. W. Shakspeare Henry VIII Act 3, Sc. 2.

73.

V. John Milton Paradise Lost Bk. 7, 1.29.

74.

V. The Waste Land 1.204.

78–9.

So reported by travellers.

83.

Cf. The Waste Land, 1.379.

85.

Old song. This Bowling Green is not in The N. Y. Evening Post but in Ky.

86–7.

Cf. The Waste Land l.115–116.

90.

Cf. The Waste Land l.185.6.

92.

Cf. Old song.

96–7.

Cf. Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller l.1.

99–100.

Cf. W. Shakspeare The Tempest Act 1, Sc. 2.

102–3.

Cf. J. Milton Comus.

104.

V. B. Jonson Elegy on Lady Jane Pawlett.

106–13.

V. Hugh Wiley, passim.

114–15.

V. Emily Dickinson Poems.

VII

120–1.

Cf. The Waste Land l.69.

123.

Cf. The Waste Land l.339.

124–5.

V. Current advertisements.

VIII

128.

Old song of unknown origin.

129–31.

Cf. The Waste Land l.128–130.

137–8.

Cf. The Waste Land l.131.2.

IX

156.

Cf. The Waste Land passim.