Oh, what a tangeled web we weive,When first we practice to decieve.Sir Walter Scott.
Oh, what a tangeled web we weive,When first we practice to decieve.Sir Walter Scott.
Oh, what a tangeled web we weive,When first we practice to decieve.Sir Walter Scott.
Hannah gave me a horrafied Glare, and dipped into the Suitcase again. She brought up a tin box of Cigarettes, and I thought she was going to have delerium tremens at once.
Well, at first I thought the girls at school had played a Trick on me, and a low down mean Trick at that. There are always those who think it is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeel whenanything is done to them. Once I put a small garter Snake in a girl’s muff, and it went up her sleave, which is nothing to some of the things she had done to me. And you would have thought the School was on fire.
Anyhow, I said to myself that some Smarty was trying to get me into trouble, and Hannah would run to the Familey, and they’d never beleive me. All at once I saw all my cherished plans for the summer gone, and me in the Country somewhere with Mademoiselle, and walking through the pasture with a botany in one hand and a folding Cup in the other, in case we found a spring a cow had not stepped in. Mademoiselle was once my Governess, but has retired to private life, except in cases of emergency.
I am naturaly very quick in mind. The Archibalds are all like that, and when once we decide on a Course we stick to it through thick and thin. But we do not lie. It is rediculous for Hannah to say I said the cigarettes were mine. All I said was:
“I suppose you are going to tell the Familey. You’d better run, or you’ll burst.”
“Oh, Miss Barbara, Miss Barbara!” she said. “And you so young to be so wild!”
This was unjust, and I am one to resent injustice. I had returned home with my mind fixed on serious Things, and now I was being told I was wild.
“If I tell your mother she’ll have a fit,” Hannah said, evadently drawn hither and thither by emotion. “Now see here, Miss Bab, you’ve just come Home, and there was trouble at your last vacation thatI’m like to remember to my dieing day. You tell me how those things got there, like a good girl, and I’ll say nothing about them.”
I am naturaly sweet in disposition, but to call me a good girl and remind me of last Xmas holadays was too much. My natural firmness came to the front.
“Certainlynot,” I said.
“You needn’t stick your lip out at me, Miss Bab, that was only giving you a chance, and forgetting my Duty to help you, not to mention probably losing my place when the Familey finds out.”
“Finds out what?”
“What you’ve been up to, the stage, and writing plays, and now liquor and tobacco!”
Now I may be at fault in the Narative that follows. But I ask the school if this was fair treatment. I had returned to my home full of high Ideals, only to see them crushed beneath the heal of domestic tyranny.
Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.William Pitt.
Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt.
How true are these immortal words.
It was with a firm countenance but a sinking heart that I saw Hannah leave the room. I had come home inspired with lofty Ambition, and it had ended thus. Heart-broken, I wandered to the bedside, and let my eyes fall on the Suitcase, the container of all my woe.
Well, I was surprised, all right. It was not and never had been mine. Instead of my blue serge sailorsuit and myrobe de nuitand kimona etc., it contained a checked gentleman’s suit, a mussed shirt and a cap. At first I was merely astonished. Then a sense of loss overpowered me. I suffered. I was prostrated with grief. Not that I cared a Rap for the clothes I’d lost, being most of them to small and patched here and there. But I had lost the plot of my Play. My Career was gone.
I was undone.
It may be asked what has this Recitle to do with the account of meeting a Celebrity. I reply that it has a great deal to do with it. A bare recitle of a meeting may be News, but it is not Art.
A theme consists of Introduction, Body and Conclusion.
This is still the Introduction.
When I was at last revived enough to think I knew what had happened. The young man who took the Cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside me, which I consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like Flirting, and he had brought his Suitcase over, and they had got mixed up. But I knew the Familey would call it Flirting, and not listen to a word I said.
A madness siezed me. Now that everything is over, I realize that it was madness. But “there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc.” It was to be. It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is. It was written in the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generaly ruin everything.
I locked the door behind Hannah, and stood withtradgic feet, “where the brook and river meet.” What was I to do? How hide this evadence of my (presumed) duplicaty? I was inocent, but I looked gilty. This, as everyone knows, is worse than gilt.
I unpacked the Suitcase as fast as I could, therfore, and being just about destracted, I bundled the things up and put them all together in the toy Closet, where all Sis’s dolls and mine are, mine being mostly pretty badly gone, as I was always hard on dolls.
How far removed were those Inocent Years when I played with dolls!
Well, I knew Hannah pretty well, and therfore was not surprised when, having hidden the trowsers under a doll buggy, I heard mother’s voice at the door.
“Let me in, Barbara,” she said.
I closed the closet door, and said: “What is it, mother?”
“Let me in.”
So I let her in, and pretended I expected her to kiss me, which she had not yet, on account of the whooping cough. But she seemed to have forgotten that. Also the Kiss.
“Barbara,” she said, in the meanest voice, “how long have you been smoking?”
Now I must pause to explain this. Had mother aproached me in a sweet and maternal manner, I would have been softened, and would have told the Whole Story. But she did not. She was, as you might say, steeming with Rage. And seeing that I was misunderstood, I hardened. I can be as hard as adamant when necessary.
“What do you mean, mother?”
“Don’t anser one question with another.”
“How can I anser when I don’t understand you?”
She simply twiched with fury.
“You—a mere Child!” she raved. “And I can hardly bring myself to mention it—the idea of your owning a Flask, and bringing it into this house—it is—it is——”
Well, I was growing cold and more hauty every moment, so I said: “I don’t see why the mere mention of a Flask upsets you so. It isn’t because you aren’t used to one, especialy when traveling. And since I was a mere baby I have been acustomed to intoxicants.”
“Barbara!” she intergected, in the most dreadful tone.
“I mean, in the Familey,” I said. “I have seen wine on our table ever since I can remember. I knew to put salt on a claret stain before I could talk.”
Well, you know how it is to see an Enemy on the run, and although I regret to refer to my dear mother as an Enemy, still at that moment she was such and no less. And she was beating it. It was the referance to my youth that had aroused me, and I was like a wounded lion. Besides, I knew well enough that if they refused to see that I was practicaly grown up, if not entirely, I would get a lot of Sis’s clothes, fixedup with new ribbons. Faded old things! I’d had them for years.
Better to be considered a bad woman than an unformed child.
“However, mother,” I finished, “if it is any comfort to you, I did not buy that Flask. And I am not a confirmed alcoholic. By no means.”
“This settles it,” she said, in a melancoly tone. “When I think of the comfort Leila has been to me, and the anxiety you have caused, I wonder where you get your—yourDeviltryfrom. I am posatively faint.”
I was alarmed, for she did look queer, with her face all white around the Rouge. So I reached for the Flask.
“I’ll give you a swig of this,” I said. “It will pull you around in no time.”
But she held me off feircely.
“Never!” she said. “Never again. I shall emty the wine cellar. There will be nothing to drink in this house from now on. I do not know what we are coming to.”
She walked into the bathroom, and I heard her emptying the Flask down the drain pipe. It was a very handsome Flask, silver with gold stripes, and all at once I knew the young man would want it back. So I said:
“Mother, please leave the Flask here anyhow.”
“Certainly not.”
“It’s not mine, mother.”
“Whose is it?”
“It—a friend of mine loned it to me.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’ttellme! Barbara, I am utterly bewildered. I sent you away a simple child, and you return to me—what?”
Well, we had about an hour’s fight over it, and we ended in a compromise. I gave up the Flask, and promised not to smoke and so forth, and I was to have some new dresses and a silk Sweater, and to be allowed to stay up until ten o’clock, and to have a desk in my room for my work.
“Work!” mother said. “Career! What next? Why can’t you be like Leila, and settle down to haveing a good time?”
“Leila and I are diferent,” I said loftily, for I resented her tone. “Leila is a child of the moment. Life for her is one grand, sweet Song. For me it is a serious matter. ‘Life is real, life is earnest, and the Grave is not its goal,’”I quoted in impasioned tones.
(Because that is the way I feel. How can the Grave be its goal?There must be something beyond.I have thought it all out, and I beleive in a world beyond, but not in a hell. Hell, I beleive, is the state of mind one gets into in this world as a result of one’s wicked Acts or one’s wicked Thoughts, and is in one’s self.)
As I have said, the other side of the Compromise was that I was not to carry Flasks with me, or drinkany punch at parties if it had a stick in it, and you can generally find out by the taste. For if it is what Carter Brooks calls “loaded” it stings your tongue. Or if it tastes like cider it’s probably Champane. And I was not to smoke any cigarettes.
Mother was holding out on the Sweater at that time, saying that Sis had a perfectly good one from Miami, and why not wear that? So I put up a strong protest about the cigarettes, although I have never smoked but once as I think the School knows, and that only half through, owing to getting dizzy. I said that Sis smoked now and then, because she thought it looked smart; but that, if I was to have a Career, I felt that the sootheing influence of tobaco would help a lot.
So I got the new Sweater, and everything looked smooth again, and mother kissed me on the way out, and said she had not meant to be harsch, but that my great uncle Putnam had been a notorious drunkard, and I looked like him, although of a more refined tipe.
There was a dreadful row that night, however, when father came home. We were all dressed for dinner, and waiting in the drawing room, and Leila was complaining about me, as usual.
“She looks older than I do now, mother,” she said. “If she goes to the seashore with us I’ll have her always taging at my heals. I don’t see why I can’t have my first summer in peace.” Oh, yes, we were going to the shore, after all. Sis wanted it, and everybodydoes what she wants, regardless of what they prefer, even Fishing.
“First summer!” I exclaimed. “One would think you were a teething baby!”
“I was speaking to mother, Barbara. Everyone knows that a Débutante only has one year nowadays, and if she doesn’t go off in that year she’s swept away by the flood of new Girls the next fall. We might as well be frank. And while Barbara’s not a beauty, as soon as the bones in her neck get a little flesh on them she won’t be hopeless, and she has a flipant manner that Men like.”
“I intend to keep Barbara under my eyes this summer,” mother said firmly. “After last Xmas’s happenings, and our Discovery today, I shall keep her with me. She need not, however, interfere with you, Leila. Her Hours are mostly diferent, and I will see that her friends are the younger boys.”
I said nothing, but I knew perfectly well she had in mind Eddie Perkins and Willie Graham, and a lot of other little kids that hang around the fruit Punch at parties, and throw the peas from the Croquettes at each other when the footmen are not near, and pretend they are allowed to smoke, but have sworn off for the summer.
I was naturaly indignant at Sis’s words, which were not filial, to my mind, but I replied as sweetly as possable:
“I shall not be in your way, Leila. I ask nothing but Food and Shelter, and that perhaps not for long.”
“Why? Do you intend to die?” she demanded.
“I intend to work,” I said. “It’s more interesting than dieing, and will be a novelty in this House.”
Father came in just then, and he said:
“I’ll not wait to dress, Clara. Hello, children. I’ll just change my coller while you ring for the Cocktails.”
Mother got up and faced him with Magesty.
“We are not going to have any,” she said.
“Any what?” said father from the doorway.
“I have had some fruit juice prepared with a dash of bitters. It is quite nice. And I’ll ask you, James, not to explode before the servants. I will explain later.”
Father has a very nice disposition but I could see that mother’s manner got on his Nerves, as it got on mine. Anyhow there was a terific fuss, with Sis playing the Piano so that the servants would not hear, and in the end father had a Cocktail. Mother waited until he had had it, and was quieter, and then she told him about me, and my having a Flask in my Suitcase. Of course I could have explained, but if they persisted in mis-understanding me, why not let them do so, and be miserable?
“It’s a very strange thing, Bab,” he said, looking at me, “that everything in this House is quiet until you come home, and then we get as lively as kittens in a frying pan. We’ll have to marry you off pretty soon, to save our piece of mind.”
“James!” said my mother. “Remember last winter, please.”
There was no Claret or anything with dinner, and father ordered mineral water, and criticised the food, and fussed about Sis’s dressmaker’s bill. And the second man gave notice immediately after we left the dining room. When mother reported that, as we were having coffee in the drawing room, father said:
“Humph! Well, what can you expect? Those fellows have been getting the best half of a bottle of Claret every night since they’ve been here, and now it’s cut off. Damed if I wouldn’t like to leave myself.”
From that time on I knew that I was watched. It made little or no diference to me. I had my Work, and it filled my life. There were times when my Soul was so filled with joy that I could hardly bare it. I had one act done in two days. I wrote out the Love seens in full, because I wanted to be sure of what they would say to each other. How I thrilled as each marvelous burst of Fantacy flowed from my pen! But the dialogue of less interesting parts I left for the actors to fill in themselves. I consider this the best way, as it gives them a chance to be original, and not to have to say the same thing over and over.
Jane Raleigh came over to see me the day after I came home, and I read her some of the Love seens. She posatively wept with excitement.
“Bab,” she said, “if any man, no matter who, ever said those things to me, I’d go straight into his arms. I couldn’t help it. Whose going to act in it?”
“I think I’ll have Robert Edeson, or Richard Mansfield.”
“Mansfield’s dead,” said Jane.
“Honestly?”
“Honest he is. Why don’t you get some of these moveing picture actors? They never have a chance in the Movies, only acting and not talking.”
Well, that sounded logicle. And then I read her the place where the cruel first husband comes back and finds her married again and happy, and takes the Children out to drown them, only he can’t because they can swim, and they pull him in instead. The curtain goes down on nothing but a few bubbles rising to mark his watery Grave.
Jane was crying.
“It is too touching for words, Bab!” she said. “It has broken my heart. I can just close my eyes and see the Theater dark, and the stage almost dark, and just those bubbles coming up and breaking. Would you have to have a tank?”
“I darsay,” I replied dreamily. “Let the other people worry about that. I can only give them the material, and hope that they have intellagence enough to grasp it.”
I think Sis must have told Carter Brooks something about the trouble I was in, for he brought me a box of Candy one afternoon, and winked at me when mother was not looking.
“Don’t open it here,” he whispered.
So I was forced to controll my impatience, thoughpassionately fond of Candy. And when I got to my room later, the box was full of cigarettes. I could have screamed. It just gave me one more thing to hide, as if a man’s suit and shirt and so on was not suficient.
But Carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at a tea dance sombody had at the Country Club he took me to one side and gave me a good talking to.
“You’re being rather a bad child, aren’t you?” he said.
“Certainly not.”
“Well, not bad, but—er—naughty. Now see here, Bab, I’m fond of you, and you’re growing into a mightey pretty girl. But your whole Social Life is at stake. For heaven’s sake, at least until you’re married, cut out the cigarettes and booze.”
That cut me to the heart, but what could I say?
Well, July came, and we had rented a house at Little Hampton and everywhere one went one fell over an open trunk or a barrell containing Silver or Linen.
Mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles, headache tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets.
Sis got some lovely Clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman come in and sow for me. Hannah and she used to interupt my most precious Moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a paper pattern to me. The sowingwoman always had her mouth full of Pins, and once, owing to my remarking that I wished I had been illagitimate, so I could go away and live my own life, she swallowed one. It caused a grate deal of excitement, with Hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar to swallow to soften the pin. Well, it turned out all right, for she kept on living, but she pretended to have sharp pains all over her here and there, and if the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled from spot to spot, it could not have hurt in so many Places.
Of course they blamed me, and I shut myself up more and more in my Sanctuery. There I lived with the creatures of my dreams, and forgot for a while that I was only a Sub-Deb, and that Leila’s last year’s tennis clothes were being fixed over for me.
But how true what dear Shakspeare says:
dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
I loved my dreams, but alas, they were not enough. After a tortured hour or two at my desk, living in myself the agonies of my characters, suffering the pangs of the wife with two husbands and both living, struggling in the water with the children, fruit of the first union, dying with number two and blowing my last Bubbles heavenward—after all these emotions, I was done out.
Jane came in one day and found me prostrate on my couch, with a light of sufering in my eyes.
“Dearest!” cried Jane, and gliding to my side, fell on her knees.
“Jane!”
“What is it? You are ill?”
I could hardly more than whisper. In a low tone I said:
“He is dead.”
“Dearest!”
“Drowned!”
At first she thought I meant a member of my Familey. But when she understood she looked serious.
“You are too intence, Bab,” she said solemly. “You suffer too much. You are wearing yourself out.”
“There is no other way,” I replied in broken tones.
Jane went to the Mirror and looked at herself. Then she turned to me.
“Others don’t do it.”
“I must work out my own Salvation, Jane,” I observed firmly. But she had roused me from my apathy, and I went into Sis’s room, returning with a box of candy some one had sent her. “I must feel, Jane, or I cannot write.”
“Pooh! Loads of writers get fat on it. Why don’t you try Comedy? It pays well.”
“Oh—money!” I said, in a disgusted tone.
“Yourforte, of course, is Love,” she said. “Probably that’s because you’ve had so much experience.” Owing to certain reasons it is generaly supposed that I have experienced the gentle Passion. But not so, alas! “Bab,” Jane said, suddenly, “I have been your friend for a long time. I have never betrayed you. You can trust me with your Life. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Somthing has happened. I see it in your eyes. No girl who is happy and has not a tradgic story stays at home shut up at a messy desk when everyone is out at the Club playing tennis. Don’t talk to me about a Career. A girl’s Career is a man and nothing else. And especialy after last winter, Bab. Is—is it the same one?”
Here I made my fatal error. I should have said at once that there was no one, just as there had been no one last Winter. But she looked so intence, sitting there, and after all, why should I not have an amorus experience? I am not ugly, and can dance well, although inclined to lead because of dansing with other girls all winter at school. So I lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling.
“No. It is not the same man.”
“What is he like? Bab, I’m so excited I can’t sit still.”
“It—it hurts to talk about him,” I observed faintly.
Now I intended to let it go at that, and should have, had not Jane kept on asking Questions. Because I had had a good lesson the winter before, and did not intend to decieve again. And this I will say—I realytold Jane Raleigh nothing. She jumped to her own conclusions. And as for her people saying she cannot chum with me any more, I will only say this: If Jane Raleigh smokes she did not learn it from me.
Well, I had gone as far as I meant to. I was not realy in love with anyone, although I liked Carter Brooks, and would posibly have loved him with all the depth of my Nature if Sis had not kept an eye on me most of the time. However——
Jane seemed to be expecting somthing, and I tried to think of some way to satisfy her and not make any trouble. And then I thought of the Suitcase. So I locked the door and made her promise not to tell, and got the whole thing out of the Toy Closet.
“Wha—what is it?” asked Jane.
I said nothing, but opened it all up. The Flask was gone, but the rest was there, and Carter’s box too. Jane leaned down and lifted the trowsers, and poked around somewhat. Then she straitened and said:
“You have run away and got married, Bab.”
“Jane!”
She looked at me peircingly.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said accusingly. “Or else what are you doing with a man’s whole Outfit, including his dirty coller? Bab, I just can’t bare it.”
Well, I saw that I had gone to far, and was about to tell Jane the truth when I heard the sowing Woman in the hall. I had all I could do to get the things put away, and with Jane looking like death I had to standthere and be fitted for one of Sis’s chiffon frocks, with the low neck filled in with net.
“You must remember, Miss Bab,” said the human Pin cushon, “that you are still a very young girl, and not out yet.”
Jane got up off the bed suddenly.
“I—I guess I’ll go, Bab,” she said. “I don’t feel very well.”
As she went out she stopped in the Doorway and crossed her Heart, meaning that she would die before she would tell anything. But I was not comfortable. It is not a pleasant thought that your best friend considers you married and gone beyond recall, when in truth you are not, or even thinking about it, except in idle moments.
The seen now changes. Life is nothing but such changes. No sooner do we alight on one Branch, and begin to sip the honey from it, but we are taken up and carried elsewhere, perhaps to the Mountains or to the Sea-shore, and there left to make new friends and find new methods of Enjoyment.
The flight—or journey—was in itself an anxious time. For on my otherwise clear conscience rested the weight of that strange Suitcase. Fortunately Hannah was so busy that I was left to pack my belongings myself, and thus for a time my gilty secret was safe. I put my things in on top of the masculine articles, not daring to leave any of them in the closet, owing to house-cleaning, which is always done before our return in the fall.
On the train I had a very unpleasant experience, due to Sis opening my Suitcase to look for a magazine, and drawing out a soiled gentleman’s coller. She gave me a very peircing Glance, but said nothing and at the next opportunity I threw it out of a window, concealed in a newspaper.
We now approach the Catastrofe. My book on playwriting divides plays into Introduction, Development, Crisis, Dénouement and Catastrofe. And so one may devide life. In my case the Cinder proved the Introduction, as there was none other. I consider that the Suitcase was the Development, my showing it to Jane Raleigh was the Crisis, and the Dénouement or Catastrofe occured later on.
Let us then procede to the Catastrofe.
Jane Raleigh came to see me off at the train. Her Familey was coming the next day. And instead of Flowers, she put a small bundel into my hands. “Keep it hiden, Bab,” she said, “and tear up the card.”
I looked when I got a chance, and she had crocheted me a wash cloth, with a pink edge. “For your linen Chest,” the card said, “and I’m doing a bath towle to match.”
I tore up the Card, but I put the wash cloth with the other things I was trying to hide, because it is bad luck to throw a Gift away. But I hoped, as I seemed to be getting more things to conceal all the time, that she would make me a small bath towle, and not the sort as big as a bed spread.
Father went with us to get us settled, and we hada long talk while mother and Sis made out lists for Dinners and so forth.
“Look here, Bab,” he said, “somthing’s wrong with you. I seem to have lost my only boy, and have got instead a sort of tear-y young person I don’t recognize.”
“I’m growing up, father,” I said. I did not mean to rebuke him, but ye gods! Was I the only one to see that I was no longer a Child?
“Somtimes I think you are not very happy with us.”
“Happy?” I pondered. “Well, after all, what is happiness?”
He took a spell of coughing then, and when it was over he put his arms around me and was quite afectionate.
“What a queer little rat it is!” he said.
I only repeat this to show how even my father, with all his afection and good qualities, did not understand and never would understand. My Heart was full of a longing to be understood. I wanted to tell him my yearnings for better things, my aspirations to make my life a great and glorious thing.And he did not understand.
He gave me five dollars instead. Think of the Tradgedy of it!
As we went along, and he pulled my ear and finaly went asleep with a hand on my shoulder, the bareness of my Life came to me. I shook with sobs. And outside somewhere Sis and mother made Dinner lists.Then and there I made up my mind to work hard and acheive, to become great and powerful, to write things that would ring the Hearts of men—and women, to, of course—and to come back to them some day, famous and beautiful, and when they sued for my love, to be kind and hauty, but cold. I felt that I would always be cold, although gracious.
I decided then to be a writer of plays first, and then later on to act in them. I would thus be able to say what came into my head, as it was my own play. Also to arrange the seens so as to wear a variety of gowns, including evening things. I spent the rest of the afternoon manacuring my nails in our state room.
Well, we got there at last. It was a large house, but everything was to thin about it. The School will understand this, the same being the condition of the new Freshman dormitory. The walls were to thin, and so were the floors. The Doors shivered in the wind, and palpatated if you slamed them. Also you could hear every Sound everywhere.
I looked around me in dispair. Where, oh where, was I to find my cherished solatude? Where?
On account of Hannah hating a new place, and considering the house an insult to the Servants, especialy only one bathroom for the lot of them, she let me unpack alone, and so far I was safe. But where was I to work? Fate settled that for me however.
There is no armour against fate;Death lays his icy hand on Kings.J. Shirley; Dirge.
There is no armour against fate;Death lays his icy hand on Kings.J. Shirley; Dirge.
There is no armour against fate;Death lays his icy hand on Kings.J. Shirley; Dirge.
Previously, however, mother and I had had a talk. She sailed into my room one evening, dressed for dinner, and found me in myrobe de nuit, curled up in the window seat admiring the view of the ocean.
“Well!” she said. “Is this the way you intend going to dinner?”
“I do not care for any dinner,” I replied. Then, seeing she did not understand, I said coldly. “How can I care for food, mother, when the Sea looks like a dying ople?”
“Dying pussycat!” mother said, in a very nasty way. “I don’t know what has come over you, Barbara. You used to be a normle Child, and there was some accounting for what you were going to do. But now! Take off that nightgown, and I’ll have Tanney hold off dinner for half an hour.”
Tanney was the butler who had taken Patrick’s place.
“If you insist,” I said coldly. “But I shall not eat.”
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t understand, mother.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t? Well, suppose I try,” she said, and sat down. “I am not very intellagent, but if you put it clearly I may grasp it. Perhaps you’d better speak slowly, also.”
So, sitting there in my room, while the sea throbed in tireless beats against the shore, while the light faded and the stars issued, one by one, like a rash on the Face of the sky, I told mother of my dreams. I intended, I said, to write Life as it realy is, and not as supposed to be.
“It may in places be ugly,” I said, “but Truth is my banner. The Truth is never ugly, because it is real. It is, for instance, not ugly if a man is in love with the wife of another, if it is real love, and not the passing fansy of a moment.”
Mother opened her mouth, but did not say anything.
“There was a time,” I said, “when I longed for things that now have no value whatever to me. I cared for clothes and even for the attentions of the Other Sex. But that has passed away, mother. I have now no thought but for my Career.”
I watched her face, and soon the dreadfull understanding came to me. She, to, did not understand. My literary Aspirations were as nothing to her!
Oh, the bitterness of that moment. My mother, who had cared for me as a child, and obeyed my slightest wish, no longer understood me. And sadest of all, there was no way out. None. Once, in my Youth, I had beleived that I was not the child of my parents at all, but an adopted one—perhaps of rank and kept out of my inheritance by those who had selfish motives. But now I knew that I had no rank or Inheritance, save what I should carve out for myself. There was no way out. None.
Mother rose slowly, stareing at me with perfectly fixed and glassy Eyes.
“I am absolutely sure,” she said, “that you are onthe edge of somthing. It may be tiphoid, or it may be an elopement. But one thing is certain. You are not normle.”
With this she left me to my Thoughts. But she did not neglect me. Sis came up after Dinner, and I saw mother’s fine hand in that. Although not hungry in the usual sense of the word, I had begun to grow rather empty, and was nibling out of a box of Chocolates when Sis came.
She got very little out of me. To one with softness and tenderness I would have told all, but Sis is not that sort. And at last she showed her clause.
“Don’t fool yourself for a minute,” she said. “This literary pose has not fooled anybody. Either you’re doing it to apear Interesting, or you’ve done somthing you’re scared about. Which is it?”
I refused to reply.
“Because if it’s the first, and you’re trying to look literary, you are going about it wrong,” she said. “Real Literary People don’t go round mooning and talking about the ople sea.”
I saw mother had been talking, and I drew myself up.
“They look and act like other people,” said Leila, going to the bureau and spilling Powder all over the place. “Look at Beecher.”
“Beecher!” I cried, with a thrill that started inside my elbows. (I have read this to one or two of the girls, and they say there is no such thrill. But notall people act alike under the influence of emotion, and mine is in my Arms, as stated.)
“The playwright,” Sis said. “He’s staying next door. And if he does any languishing it is not by himself.”
There may be some who have for a long time had an Ideal, but without hoping ever to meet him, and then suddenly learning that he is nearby, with indeed but a wall or two between, can be calm and cool. But I am not like that. Although long supression has taught me to disemble at times, where my Heart is concerned I am powerless.
For it was at last my heart that was touched. I, who had scorned the Other Sex and felt that I was born cold and always would be cold, that day I discovered the truth. Reginald Beecher was my ideal. I had never spoken to him, nor indeed seen him, except for his pictures. But the very mention of his name brought a lump to my Throat.
Feeling better imediately, I got Sis out of the room and coaxed Hannah to bring me some dinner. While she was sneaking it out of the Pantrey I was dressing, and soon, as a new being, I was out on the stone bench at the foot of the lawn, gazing with wrapt eyes at the sea.
But Fate was against me. Eddie Perkins saw me there and came over. He had but recently been put in long trowsers, and those not his best ones but only white flannels. He was never sure of his garters, and was always looking to see if his socks were comingdown. Well, he came over just as I was sure I saw Reginald Beecher next door on the veranda, and made himself a nusance right away, trying all sorts of kid tricks, such as snaping a rubber Band at me, and pulling out Hairpins.
But I felt that I must talk to somone. So I said:
“Eddie, if you had your choice of love or a Career, which would it be?”
“Why not both,” he said, hiching the rubber band onto one of his front teeth and playing on it. “Niether ought to take up all a fellow’s time. Say, listen to this! Talk about a eukelele!”
“A woman can never have both.”
He played a while, struming with one finger until the band sliped off and stung him on the lip.
“Once,” I said, “I dreamed of a Career. But I beleive love’s the most important.”
Well, I shall pass lightly over what followed. Why is it that a girl cannot speak of Love without every member of the Other Sex present, no matter how young, thinking it is he? And as for mother maintaining that I kissed that wreched Child, and they saw me from the drawing-room, it is not true and never was true. It was but one more Misunderstanding which convinced the Familey that I was carrying on all manner of afairs.
Carter Brooks had arrived that day, and was staying at the Perkins’ cottage. I got rid of the Perkins’ baby, as his Nose was bleeding—but I had not slaped him hard at all, and felt little or no compunction—when I heard Carter coming down the walk. He had called to see Leila, but she had gone to a beech dance and left him alone. He never paid any attention to me when she was around, and I recieved him cooly.
“Hello!” he said.
“Well?” I replied.
“Is that the way you greet me, Bab?”
“It’s the way I would greet most any Left-over,” I said. “I eat hash at school, but I don’t have to pretend to like it.”
“I came to seeyou.”
“How youthfull of you!” I replied, in stinging tones.
He sat down on a Bench and stared at me.
“What’s got into you lately?” he said. “Just as you’re geting to be the prettiest girl around, and I’m strong for you, you—you turn into a regular Rattlesnake.”
The kindness of his tone upset me considerably, to who so few kind Words had come recently. I am compeled to confess that I wept, although I had not expected to, and indeed shed few tears, although bitter ones.
How could I posibly know that the chaste Salute of Eddie Perkins and my head on Carter Brooks’ shoulder were both plainly visable against the rising moon? But this was the Case, especialy from the house next door.
But I digress.
Suddenly Carter held me off and shook me somewhat.
“Sit up here and tell me about it,” he said. “I’m geting more scared every minute. You are such an impulsive little Beast, and you turn the fellows’ heads so—look here, is Jane Raleigh lying, or did you run away and get married to somone?”
I am aware that I should have said, then and there, No. But it seemed a shame to spoil Things just as they were geting interesting. So I said, through my tears:
“Nobody understands me. Nobody. And I’m so lonely.”
“And of course you haven’t run away with anyone, have you?”
“Not—exactly.”
“Bless you, Bab!” he said. And I might as well say that he kissed me, because he did, although unexpectedly. Sombody just then moved a Chair on the porch next door and coughed rather loudly, so Carter drew a long breath and got up.
“There’s somthing about you lately, Bab, that I don’t understand,” he said. “You—you’re mysterious. That’s the word. In a couple of Years you’ll be the real thing.”
“Come and see me then,” I said in a demure manner. And he went away.
So I sat on my Bench and looked at the sea and dreamed. It seemed to me that Centuries must have passed since I was a light-hearted girl, running up anddown that beech, paddling, and so forth, with no thought of the future farther away than my next meal.
Once I lived to eat. Now I merely ate to live, and hardly that. The fires of Genius must be fed, but no more.
Sitting there, I suddenly made a discovery. The boat house was near me, and I realize that upstairs, above the Bath-houses, et cetera, there must be a room or two. The very thought intriged me (a new word for interest, but coming into use, and sounding well).
Solatude—how I craved it for my work. And here it was, or would be when I had got the Place fixed up. True, the next door boat-house was close, but a boat-house is a quiet place, generaly, and I knew that nowhere, aside from the dessert, is there perfect Silence.
I investagated at once, but found the place locked and the boatman gone. However, there was a latice, and I climbed up that and got in. I had a Fright there, as it seemed to be full of people, but I soon saw it was only the Familey bathing suits hung up to dry. Aside from the odor of drying things it was a fine study, and I decided to take a small table there, and the various tools of my Profession.
Climbing down, however, I had a surprise. For a man was just below, and I nearly put my foot on his shoulder in the darkness.
“Hello!” he said. “So it’syou.”
I was quite speachless. It was Mr. Beecher himself, in his dinner clothes and bareheaded.
Oh flutering Heart, be still. Oh Pen, move steadily.Oh tempora o mores!
“Let me down,” I said. I was still hanging to the latice.
“In a moment,” he said. “I have an idea that the instant I do you’ll vanish. And I have somthing to tell you.”
I could hardly beleive my ears.
“You see,” he went on, “I think you must move that Bench.”
“Bench?”
“You seem to be so very popular,” he said. “And of course I’m only a transient and don’t matter. But some evening one of the admirers may be on the Patten’s porch, while another is with you on the bench. And—the Moon rises beyond it.”
I was silent with horor. So that was what he thought of me. Like all the others, he, to, did not understand. He considered me a Flirt, when my only Thoughts were serious ones, of imortality and so on.
“You’d better come down now,” he said. “I was afraid to warn you until I saw you climbing the latice. Then I knew you were still young enough to take a friendly word of Advise.”
I got down then and stood before him. He was magnifacent. Is there anything more beautiful than a tall man with a gleaming expance of dress shirt? I think not.
But he was staring at me.
“Look here,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake after all. I thought you were a little girl.”
“That needn’t worry you. Everybody does,” I replied. “I’m seventeen, but I shall be a mere Child until I come out.”
“Oh!” he said.
“One day I am a Child in the nursery,” I said. “And the next I’m grown up and ready to be sold to the highest Bider.”
“I beg your pardon, I——”
“But I am as grown up now as I will ever be,” I said. “And indeed more so. I think a great deal now, because I have plenty of Time. But my sister never thinks at all. She is to busy.”
“Suppose we sit on the Bench. The moon is to high to be a menace, and besides, I am not dangerous. Now, what do you think about?”
“About Life, mostly. But of course there is Death, which is beautiful but cold. And—one always thinks of Love, doesn’t one?”
“Does one?” he asked. I could see he was much interested. As for me, I dared not consider whom it was who sat beside me, almost touching. That way lay madness.
“Don’t you ever,” he said, “reflect on just ordinary things, like Clothes and so forth?”
I shruged my shoulders.
“I don’t get enough new clothes to worry about. Mostly I think of my Work.”
“Work?”
“I am a writer,” I said in a low, ernest tone.
“No! How—how amazing. What do you write?”
“I’m on a play now.”
“A Comedy?”
“No. A Tradgedy. How can I write a Comedy when a play must always end in a catastrofe? The book says all plays end in Crisis, Dénouement and Catastrofe.”
“I can’t beleive it,” he said. “But, to tell you a Secret, I never read any books about Plays.”
“We are not all gifted from berth, as you are,” I observed, not to merely please him, but because I considered it the simple Truth.
He pulled out his watch and looked at it in the moonlight.
“All this reminds me,” he said, “that I have promised to go to work tonight. But this is so—er—thrilling that I guess the work can wait. Well—now go on.”
Oh, the Joy of that night! How can I describe it? To be at last in the company of one who understood, who—as he himself had said in “Her Soul”—spoke my own languidge! Except for the occasional mosquitoe, there was no sound save the turgescent sea and his Voice.
Often since that time I have sat and listened to conversation. How flat it sounds to listen to father prozing about Gold, or Sis about Clothes or even to theyoung men who come to call, and always talk about themselves.
We were at last interupted in a strange manner. Mr. Patten came down their walk and crossed to us, walking very fast. He stopped right in front of us and said:
“Look here, Reg, this is about all I can stand.”
“Oh, go away, and sing, or do somthing,” said Mr. Beecher sharply.
“You gave me your word of Honor,” said the Patten man. “I can only remind you of that. Also of the expence I’m incuring, and all the rest of it. I’ve shown all sorts of patience, but this is the limit.”
He turned on his Heal, but came back for a last word or two.
“Now see here,” he said, “we have everything fixed the way you said You wanted it. And I’ll give you ten minutes. That’s all.”
He stocked away, and Mr. Beecher looked at me.
“Ten minutes of Heaven,” he said, “and then perdetion with that bunch. Look here,” he said, “I—I’m awfully interested in what you are telling me. Let’s cut off up the beech and talk.”
Oh night of Nights! Oh moon of Moons!
Our talk was strictly business. He asked me my Plot, and although I had been warned not to do so, even to David Belasco, I gave it to him fully. And even now, when all is over, I am not sorry. Let him use it if he will. I can think of plenty of Plots.
The real tradgedy is that we met father. He hadbeen ordered to give up smoking, and I considered had done so, mother feeling that I should be encouraged in leaving off cigarettes. So when I saw the cigar I was sure it was not father. It proved to be, however, and although he passed with nothing worse than a Glare, I knew I was in more trouble.
At last we reached the Bench again, and I said good night. Our relations continued business-like to the last. He said:
“Good night, little authoress, and let’s have some more talks.”
“I’m afraid I’ve board you,” I said.
“Board me!” he said. “I haven’t spent such an evening for years!”
The Familey acted perfectly absurd about it. Seeing that they were going to make a fuss, I refused to say with whom I had been walking. You’d have thought I had committed a crime.
“It has come to this, Barbara,” mother said, pacing the floor. “You cannot be trusted out of our sight. Where do you meet all these men? If this is how things are now, what will it be when given your Liberty?”
Well, it is to painful to record. I was told not to leave the place for three days, although allowed the boat-house. And of course Sis had to chime in that she’d heard a roomer I had run away and got married, and although of course she knew it wasn’t true, owing to no time to do so, still where there was Smoke there was Fire.
But I felt that their confidence in me was going, and that night, after all were in the Land of Dreams, I took that wreched suit of clothes and so on to the boat-house, and hid them in the rafters upstairs.
I come now to the strange Event of the next day, and its sequel.
The Patten place and ours are close together, and no other house near. Mother had been very cool about the Pattens, owing to nobody knowing them that we knew. Although I must say they had the most interesting people all the time, and Sis was crazy to call and meet some of them.
Jane came that day to visit her aunt, and she ran down to see me first thing.
“Come and have a ride,” she said. “I’ve got the Runabout, and after that we’ll bathe and have a real time.”
But I shook my head.
“I’m a prisoner, Jane,” I said.
“Honestly! Is it the Play, or somthing else?”
“Somthing else, Jane,” I said. “I can tell you nothing more. I am simply in trouble, as usual.”
“But why make you a prisoner, unless——” She stopped suddenly and stared at me.
“He has claimed you!” she said. “He is here, somwhere about this Place, and now, having had time to think it over, you do not want to go to him. Don’t deny it. I see it in your face. Oh, Bab, my heart aches for you.”
It sounded so like a play that I kept it up. Alas, with what results!
“What else can I do, Jane?” I said.
“You can refuse, if you do not love him. Oh Bab, I did not say it before, thinking you loved him. But no man who wears clothes like those could ever win my heart. At least, not permanently.”
Well, she did most of the talking. She had finished the bath towle, which was a large size, after all, and monogramed, and she made me promise never to let my husband use it. When she went away she left it with me, and I carried it out and put it on the rafters, with the other things—I seemed to be getting more to hide every day.
Things went all wrong the next day. Sis was in a bad temper, and as much as said I was flirting with Carter Brooks, although she never intends to marry him herself, owing to his not having money and never having asked her.
I spent the morning in fixing up a Studio in the boat-house, and felt better by noon. I took two boards on trestles and made a desk, and brought a Dictionery and some pens and ink out. I use a Dictionery because now and then I am uncertain how to spell a word.
Events now moved swiftly and terrably. I did not do much work, being exhausted by my efforts to fix up the studio, and besides, feeling that nothing much was worth while when one’s Familey did not and never would understand. At eleven o’clock Sis and Carter and Jane and some others went in bathing from ourdock. Jane called up to me, but I pretended not to hear. They had a good time judging by the noise, although I should think Jane would cover her arms and neck in the water, being very thin. Legs one can do nothing with, although I should think stripes going around would help. But arms can have sleaves.
However—the people next door went in to, and I thrilled to the core when Mr. Beecher left the bath-house and went down to the beech. What a physic! What shoulders, all brown and muscular! And to think that, strong as they were, they wrote the tender Love seens of his plays. Strong and tender—what descriptive words they are! It was then that I saw he had been vacinated twice.
To resume. All the Pattens went in, and a new girl with them, in a one-peace Suit. I do not deny that she was pretty. I only say that she was not modest, and that the way she stood on the Patten’s dock and pozed for Mr. Beecher’s benafit was unecessary and well, not respectable.
She was nothing to me, nor I to her. But I watched her closely. I confess that I was interested in Mr. Beecher. Why not? He was a Public Character, and entitled to respect. Nay, even to love. But I maintain and will to my dying day, that such love is diferent from that ordinaraly born to the Other Sex, and a thing to be proud of.
Well, I was seeing a drama and did not even know it. After the rest had gone, Mr. Patten came to the door into Mr. Beecher’s room in the bath-house—theyare all in a row, with doors opening on the sand—and he had a box in his hand. He looked around, and no one was looking except me, and he did not see me. He looked very Feirce and Glum, and shortly after he carried in a chair and a folding card table. I thought this was very strange, but imagine how I felt when he came out carrying Mr. Beecher’s clothes! He brought them all, going on his tiptoes and watching every minute. I felt like screaming.
However, I considered that it was a practicle Joke, and I am no spoil sport. So I sat still and waited. They staid in the water a long time, and the girl with the Figure was always crawling out on the dock and then diving in to show off. Leila and the rest got sick of her actions and came in to Lunch. They called up to me, but I said I was not hungry.
“I don’t know what’s come over Bab,” I heard Sis say to Carter Brooks. “She’s crazy, I think.”
“She’s seventeen,” he said. “That’s all. They get over it mostly, but she has it hard.”
I lothed him.
Pretty soon the other crowd came up, and I could see every one knew the joke but Mr. Beecher. They all scuttled into their doorways, and Mr. Patten waited till Mr. Beecher was inside and had thrown out the shirt of his bathing Suit. Then he locked the door from the outside.
There was a silence for a minute. Then Mr. Beecher said in a terrable voice.
“So that’s the Game, is it?”
“Now listen, Reg,” Mr. Patten said, in a soothing voice. “I’ve tried everything but Force, and now I’m driven to that. I’ve got to have that third Act. The company’s got the first two acts well under way, and I’m getting wires about every hour. I’ve got to have that script.”
“You go to Hell!” said Mr. Beecher. You could hear him plainly through the window, high up in the wall. And although I do not approve of an oath, there are times when it eases the tortured Soul.
“Now be reasonable, Reg,” Mr. Patten pleaded. “I’ve put a fortune in this thing, and you’re lying down on the job. You could do it in four hours if you’d put your mind to it.”
There was no anser to this. And he went on:
“I’ll send out food or anything. But nothing to drink. There’s Champane on the ice for you when you’ve finished, however. And you’ll find pens and ink and paper on the table.”
The anser to this was Mr. Beecher’s full weight against the door. But it held, even against the full force of his fine physic.
“Even if you do break it open,” Mr. Patten said, “you can’t go very far the way you are. Now be a good fellow, and let’s get this thing done. It’s for your good as well as mine. You’ll make a Fortune out of it.”
Then he went into his own door, and soon came out, looking like a gentleman, unless one knew, as I did, that he was a Whited Sepulcher.
How long I sat there, paralized with emotion, I do not know. Hannah came out and roused me from my Trance of grief. She is a kindly soul, although to afraid of mother to be helpful.
“Come in like a good girl, Miss Bab,” she said. “There’s that fruit salad that cook prides herself on, and I’ll ask her to brown a bit of sweetbread for you.”
“Hannah,” I said in a low voice, “there is a Crime being committed in this neighborhood, and you talk to me of food.”
“Good gracious, Miss Bab!”
“I cannot tell you any more than that, Hannah,” I said gently, “because it is only being done now, and I cannot make up my Mind about it. But of course I do not want any food.”
As I say, I was perfectly gentle with her, and I do not understand why she burst into tears and went away.
I sat and thought it all over. I could not leave, under the circumstances. But yet, what was I to do? It was hardly a Police matter, being between friends, as one may say, and yet I simply could not bare to leave my Ideal there in that damp bath-house without either food or, as one may say, raiment.
About the middle of the afternoon it occurred to me to try to find a key for the lock of the bath-house. I therfore left my Studio and preceded to the house. I passed close by the fatal building, but there was no sound from it.
I found a number of trunk-keys in a drawer in thelibrary, and was about to escape with them, when father came in. He gave me a long look, and said:
“Bee still buzzing?”
I had hoped for some understanding from him, but my Spirits fell at this speach.
“I am still working, father,” I said, in a firm if nervous tone. “I am not doing as good work as I would if things were diferent, but—I am at least content, if not happy.”
He stared at me, and then came over to me.
“Put out your tongue,” he said.
Even against this crowning infamey I was silent.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Now see here, Chicken, get into your riding togs and we’ll order the horses. I don’t intend to let this play-acting upset your health.”
But I refused. “Unless, of course, you insist,” I finished. He only shook his head, however, and left the room. I felt that I had lost my Last Friend.
I did not try the keys myself, but instead stood off a short distance and through them through the window. I learned later that they struck Mr. Beecher on the head. Not knowing, of course, that I had flung them, and that my reason was pure Friendliness and Idealizm, he through them out again with a violent exclamation. They fell at my feet, and lay there, useless, regected, tradgic.
At last I summoned courage to speak.
“Can’t I do somthing to help?” I said, in a quaking voice, to the window.
There was no anser, but I could hear a pen scraching on paper.
“I do so want to help you,” I said, in a louder tone.
“Go away,” said his voice, rather abstracted than angry.
“May I try the keys?” I asked. Be still, my Heart! For the scraching had ceased.
“Who’s that?” asked the beloved voice. I say ‘beloved’ because an Ideal is always beloved. The voice was beloved, but sharp.
“It’s me.”
I heard him mutter somthing, and I think he came to the Door.
“Look here,” he said. “Go away. Do you understand? I want to work. And don’t come near here again until seven o’clock.”
“Very well,” I said faintly.
“And then come without fail,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Beecher,” I replied. How commanding he was! Strong but tender!
“And if anyone comes around making a noise, before that, you shoot them for me, will you?”
“Shootthem?”
“Drive them off, or use a Bean-shooter. Anything. But don’t yell at them. It distracts me.”
It was a Sacred trust. I, and only I, stood between him and hismagnum opum. I sat down on the steps of our bath-house, and took up my vigel.
It was about five o’clock when I heard Jane approaching. I knew it was Jane, because she alwayswears tight shoes, and limps when unobserved. Although having the reputation of the smallest foot of any girl in our set in the city, I prefer Comfort and Ease, unhampered by heals—French or otherwise. No man will ever marry a girl because she wears a small shoe, and catches her heals in holes in the Boardwalk, and has to soak her feet at night before she can sleep. However——
Jane came on, and found me croutched on the doorstep, in a lowly attatude, and holding my finger to my lips.
She stopped and stared at me.
“Hello,” she said. “What do you think you are? A Statue?”
“Hush, Jane,” I said, in a low tone. “I can only ask you to be quiet and speak in Whispers. I cannot give the reason.”
“Good heavens!” she whispered. “What has happened, Bab?”
“It is happening now, but I cannot explain.”
“Whatis happening?”
“Jane,” I whispered, ernestly, “you have known me a long time and I have always been Trustworthy, have I not?”
She nodded. She is never exactly pretty, and now she had opened her mouth and forgot to close it.
“Then ask No Questions. Trust me, as I am trusting you.” It seemed to me that Mr. Beecher through his pen at the door, and began to pace the bath-house. Owing of course to his being in his bare feet, I wasnot certain. Jane heard somthing, to, for she clutched my arm.
“Bab,” she said, in intence tones, “if you don’t explain I shall lose my mind. I feel now that I am going to shreik.”
She looked at me searchingly.
“Sombody is a Prisoner. That’s all.”
It was the truth, was it not? And was there any reasons for Jane Raleigh to jump to conclusions as she did, and even to repeat later in Public that I had told her that my lover had come for me, and that father had locked him up to prevent my running away with him, imuring him in the Patten’s bath-house? Certainly not.
Just then I saw the boatman coming who looks after our motor boat, and I tiptoed to him and asked him to go away, and not to come back unless he had quieter boats and would not whistel. He acted very ugly about it, I must say, but he went.
When I came back, Jane was sitting thinking, with her forhead all puckered.
“What I don’t understand, Bab,” she said, “is, why no noise?”
“Because he is writing,” I explained. “Although his clothing has been taken away, he is writing. I don’t think I told you, Jane, but that is his business. He is a Writer. And if I tell you his name you will faint with surprise.”