Which Repeats, for the Most Part, What Jim Campbell Said to Me and What
I Said to Him
“Jim,” said I, “what is the matter with me?”
Jim, who was seated in the ancient and dilapidated arm-chair which
was the finest piece of furniture in the boathouse and which I always
offered to visitors, looked at me over the collar of my sweater. I used
the sweater as I did the arm-chair when I did not have visitors. He was
using it then because, like an idiot, he had come to Cape Cod in April
with nothing warmer than a very natty suit and a light overcoat. Of
course one may go clamming and fishing in a light overcoat, but--one
doesn't.
Jim looked at me over the collar of my sweater. Then he crossed
his oilskinned and rubber-booted legs--they were my oilskins and my
boots--and answered promptly.
“Indigestion,” he said. “You ate nine of those biscuits this morning; I
saw you.”
“I did not,” I retorted, “because you saw them first. MY interior is in
its normal condition. As for yours--”
“Mine,” he interrupted, filling his pipe from my tobacco pouch, “being
accustomed to a breakfast, not a gorge, is abnormal but satisfactory,
thank you--quite satisfactory.”
“That,” said I, “we will discuss later, when I have you out back of the
bar in my catboat. Judging from present indications there will be some
sea-running. The 'Hephzy' is a good, capable craft, but a bit cranky,
like the lady she is named for. I imagine she will roll.”
He didn't like that. You see, I had sailed with him before and I
remembered.
“Ho-se-a,” he drawled, “you have a vivid imagination. It is a pity you
don't use more of it in those stories of yours.”
“Humph! I am obliged to use the most of it on the royalty statements you
send me. If you call me 'Hosea' again I will take the 'Hephzy' across
the Point Rip. The waves there are fifteen feet high at low tide. See
here, I asked you a serious question and I should like a serious answer.
Jim, what IS the matter with me? Have I written out or what is the
trouble?”
He looked at me again.
“Are you in earnest?” he asked.
“I am, very much in earnest.”
“And you really want to talk shop after a breakfast like that and on a
morning like this?”
“I do.”
“Was that why you asked me to come to Bayport and spend the week-end?”
“No-o. No, of course not.”
“You're another; it was. When you met me at the railroad station
yesterday I could see there was something wrong with you. All this
morning you've had something on your chest. I thought it was the
biscuits, of course; but it wasn't, eh?”
“It was not.”
“Then what was it? Aren't we paying you a large enough royalty?”
“You are paying me a good deal larger one than I deserve. I don't see
why you do it.”
“Oh,” with a wave of the hand, “that's all right. The publishing of
books is a pure philanthropy. We are in business for our health, and--”
“Shut up. You know as well as I do that the last two yarns of mine which
your house published have not done as well as the others.”
I had caught him now. Anything remotely approaching a reflection upon
the business house of which he was the head was sufficient to stir
up Jim Campbell. That business, its methods and its success, were his
idols.
“I don't know any such thing,” he protested, hotly. “We sold--”
“Hang the sale! You sold quite enough. It is an everlasting miracle
to me that you are able to sell a single copy. Why a self-respecting
person, possessed of any intelligence whatever, should wish to read the
stuff I write, to say nothing of paying money for the privilege, I can't
understand.”
“You don't have to understand. No one expects an author to understand
anything. All you are expected to do is to write; we'll attend to the
rest of it. And as for sales--why, 'The Black Brig'--that was the last
one, wasn't it?--beat the 'Omelet' by eight thousand or more.”
“The Omelet” was our pet name for “The Queen's Amulet,” my first offence
in the literary line. It was a highly seasoned concoction of revolution
and adventure in a mythical kingdom where life was not dull, to say the
least. The humblest character in it was a viscount. Living in Bayport
had, naturally, made me familiar with the doings of viscounts.
“Eight thousand more than the last isn't so bad, is it?” demanded Jim
Campbell combatively.
“It isn't. It is astonishingly good. It is the books themselves that
are bad. The 'Omelet' was bad enough, but I wrote it more as a joke than
anything else. I didn't take it seriously at all. Every time I called
a duke by his Christian name I grinned. But nowadays I don't grin--I
swear. I hate the things, Jim. They're no good. And the reviewers are
beginning to tumble to the fact that they're no good, too. You saw the
press notices yourself. 'Another Thriller by the Indefatigable Knowles'
'Barnacles, Buccaneers and Blood, not to Mention Beauty and the
Bourbons.' That's the way two writers headed their articles about 'The
Black Brig.' And a third said that I must be getting tired; I wrote as
if I was. THAT fellow was right. I am tired, Jim. I'm tired and sick
of writing slush. I can't write any more of it. And yet I can't write
anything else.”
Jim's pipe had gone out. Now he relit it and tossed the match over the
veranda rail.
“How do you know you can't?” he demanded.
“Can't what?”
“Can't write anything but slush?”
“Ah ha! Then it is slush. You admit it.”
“I don't admit anything of the kind. You may not be a William
Shakespeare or even a George Meredith, but you have written some mighty
interesting stories. Why, I know a chap who sits up till morning to
finish a book of yours. Can't sleep until he has finished it.”
“What's the matter with him; insomnia?”
“No; he's a night watchman. Does that satisfy you, you crossgrained
old shellfish? Come on, let's dig clams--some of your own blood
relations--and forget it.”
“I don't want to forget it and there is plenty of time for clamming. The
tide won't cover the flats for two hours yet. I tell you I'm serious,
Jim. I can't write any more. I know it. The stuff I've been writing
makes me sick. I hate it, I tell you. What the devil I'm going to do for
a living I can't see--but I can't write another story.”
Jim put his pipe in his pocket. I think at last he was convinced that I
meant what I said, which I certainly did. The last year had been a year
of torment to me. I had finished the 'Brig,' as a matter of duty, but if
that piratical craft had sunk with all hands, including its creator, I
should not have cared. I drove myself to my desk each day, as a horse
might be driven to a treadmill, but the animal could have taken no less
interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad--bad--bad;
worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one
in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which
might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed,
had now reached the point where that had failed, too. Campbell's surmise
was correct; with the pretence of asking him to the Cape for a
week-end of fishing and sailing I had lured him there to tell him of my
discouragement and my determination to quit.
He took his feet from the rail and hitched his chair about until he
faced me.
“So you're not going to write any more,” he said.
“I'm not. I can't.”
“What are you going to do; live on back royalties and clams?”
“I may have to live on the clams; my back royalties won't keep me very
long.”
“Humph! I should think they might keep you a good while down here. You
must have something in the stocking. You can't have wasted very much in
riotous living on this sand-heap. What have you done with your money,
for the last ten years; been leading a double life?”
“I've found leading a single one hard enough. I have saved something, of
course. It isn't the money that worries me, Jim; I told you that. It's
myself; I'm no good. Every author, sometime or other, reaches the point
where he knows perfectly well he has done all the real work he can
ever do, that he has written himself out. That's what's the matter with
me--I'm written out.”
Jim snorted. “For Heaven's sake, Kent Knowles,” he demanded, “how old
are you?”
“I'm thirty-eight, according to the almanac, but--”
“Thirty-eight! Why, Thackeray wrote--”
“Drop it! I know when Thackeray wrote 'Vanity Fair' as well as you do.
I'm no Thackeray to begin with, and, besides, I am older at thirty-eight
than he was when he died--yes, older than he would have been if he had
lived twice as long. So far as feeling and all the rest of it go, I'm a
second Methusaleh.”
“My soul! hear the man! And I'm forty-two myself. Well, Grandpa, what do
you expect me to do; get you admitted to the Old Man's Home?”
“I expect--” I began, “I expect--” and I concluded with the lame
admission that I didn't expect him to do anything. It was up to me to do
whatever must be done, I imagined.
He smiled grimly.
“Glad your senility has not affected that remnant of your common-sense,”
he declared. “You're dead right, my boy; it IS up to you. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am, but that doesn't help me a whole lot.”
“Nothing will help you as long as you think and speak as you have this
morning. See here, Kent! answer me a question or two, will you? They may
be personal questions, but will you answer them?”
“I guess so. There has been what a disinterested listener might call
a slightly personal flavor to your remarks so far. Do your worst. Fire
away.”
“All right. You've lived in Bayport ten years or so, I know that. What
have you done in all that time--besides write?”
“Well, I've continued to live.”
“Doubted. You've continued to exist; but how? I've been here before.
This isn't my first visit, by a good deal. Each time I have been
here your daily routine--leaving out the exciting clam hunts and the
excursions in quest of the ferocious flounder, like the one we're
supposed--mind, I say supposed--to be on at the present moment--you
have put in the day about like this: Get up, bathe, eat, walk to the
post-office, walk home, sit about, talk a little, read some, walk some
more, eat again, smoke, talk, read, eat for the third time, smoke, talk,
read and go to bed. That's the program, isn't it?”
“Not exactly. I play tennis in summer--when there is anyone to play with
me--and golf, after a fashion. I used to play both a good deal, when I
was younger. I swim, and I shoot a little, and--and--”
“How about society? Have any, do you?”
“In the summer, when the city people are here, there is a good deal
going on, if you care for it--picnics and clam bakes and teas and lawn
parties and such.”
“Heavens! what reckless dissipation! Do you indulge?”
“Why, no--not very much. Hang it all, Jim! you know I'm no society man.
I used to do the usual round of fool stunts when I was younger, but--”
“But now you're too antique, I suppose. Wonder that someone hasn't
collected you as a genuine Chippendale or something. So you don't 'tea'
much?”
“Not much. I'm not often invited, to tell you the truth. The summer
crowd doesn't take kindly to me, I'm afraid.”
“Astonishing! You're such a chatty, entertaining, communicative cuss on
first acquaintance, too. So captivatingly loquacious to strangers. I can
imagine how you'd shine at a 'tea.' Every summer girl that tried to talk
to you would be frost-bitten. Do you accept invitations when they do
come?”
“Not often nowadays. You see, I know they don't really want me.”
“How do you know it?”
“Why--well, why should they? Everybody else calls me--”
“They call you a clam and so you try to live up to your reputation. I
know you, Kent. You think yourself a tough old bivalve, but the most
serious complaint you suffer from is ingrowing sensitiveness. They do
want you. They'd invite you if you gave them half a chance. Oh, I know
you won't, of course; but if I had my way I'd have you dragged by main
strength to every picnic and tea and feminine talk-fest within twenty
miles. You might meet some persevering female who would propose
marriage. YOU never would, but SHE might.”
I rose to my feet in disgust.
“We'll go clamming,” said I.
He did not move.
“We will--later on,” he answered. “We haven't got to the last page
of the catechism yet. I mentioned matrimony because a good, capable,
managing wife would be my first prescription in your case. I have one
or two more up my sleeve. Tell me this: How often do you get away from
Bayport? How often do you get to--well, to Boston, we'll say? How many
times have you been there in the last year?”
“I don't know. A dozen, perhaps.”
“What did you do when you went?”
“Various things. Shopped some, went to the theater occasionally, if
there happened to be anything on that I cared to see. Bought a good many
books. Saw the new Sargent pictures at the library. And--and--”
“And shook hands with your brother fossils at the museum, I suppose.
Wild life you lead, Kent. Did you visit anybody? Meet any friends or
acquaintances--any live ones?”
“Not many. I haven't many friends, Jim; you know that. As for the wild
life--well, I made two visits to New York this year.”
“Yes,” drily; “and we saw Sothern and Marlowe and had dinner at the
Holland. The rest of the time we talked shop. That was the first visit.
The second was more exciting still; we talked shop ALL the time and you
took the six o'clock train home again.”
“You're wrong there. I saw the new loan collections at the Metropolitan
and heard Ysaye play at Carnegie Hall. I didn't start for home until the
next day.”
“Is that so. That's news to me. You said you were going that afternoon.
That was to put the kibosh on my intention of taking you home to my wife
and her bridge party, I suppose. Was it?”
“Well--well, you see, Jim, I--I don't play bridge and I AM such a
stick in a crowd like that. I wanted to stay and you were mighty kind,
but--but--”
“All right. All right, my boy. Next time it will be Bustanoby's, the
Winter Garden and a three A. M. cabaret for yours. My time is coming.
Now--Well, now we'll go clamming.”
He swung out of the arm-chair and walked to the top of the steps leading
down to the beach. I was surprised, of course; I have known Jim Campbell
a long time, but he can surprise me even yet.
“Here! hold on!” I protested. “How about the rest of that catechism?”
“You've had it.”
“Were those all the questions you wanted to ask?”
“Yes.”
“Humph! And that is all the advice and encouragement I'm to get from
you! How about those prescriptions you had up your sleeve?”
“You'll get those by and by. Before I leave this gay and festive scene
to-morrow I'm going to talk to you, Ho-se-a. And you're going to listen.
You'll listen to old Doctor Campbell; HE'LL prescribe for you, don't
you worry. And now,” beginning to descend the steps, “now for clams and
flounders.”
“And the Point Rip,” I added, maliciously, for his frivolous treatment
of what was to me a very serious matter, was disappointing and
provoking. “Don't forget the Point Rip.”
We dug the clams--they were for bait--we boarded the “Hephzy,” sailed
out to the fishing grounds, and caught flounders. I caught the most of
them; Jim was not interested in fishing during the greater part of the
time. Then we sailed home again and walked up to the house. Hephzibah,
for whom my boat is named, met us at the back door. As usual her
greeting was not to the point and practical.
“Leave your rubber boots right outside on the porch,” she said. “Here,
give me those flatfish; I'll take care of 'em. Hosy, you'll find dry
things ready in your room. Here's your shoes; I've been warmin' 'em. Mr.
Campbell I've put a suit of Hosy's and some flannels on your bed. They
may not fit you, but they'll be lots better than the damp ones you've
got on. You needn't hurry; dinner won't be ready till you are.”
I did not say anything; I knew Hephzy--had known her all my life. Jim,
who, naturally enough, didn't know her as well, protested.
“We're not wet, Miss Cahoon,” he declared. “At least, I'm not, and I
don't see how Kent can be. We both wore oilskins.”
“That doesn't make any difference. You ought to change your clothes
anyhow. Been out in that boat, haven't you?”
“Yes, but--”
“Well, then! Don't say another word. I'll have a fire in the
sittin'-room and somethin' hot ready when you come down. Hosy, be
sure and put on BOTH the socks I darned for you. Don't get thinkin' of
somethin' else and come down with one whole and one holey, same as you
did last time. You must excuse me, Mr. Campbell. I've got saleratus
biscuits in the oven.”
She hastened into the kitchen. When Jim and I, having obeyed orders
to the extent of leaving our boots on the porch, passed through that
kitchen she was busy with the tea-kettle. I led the way through the
dining-room and up the front stairs. My visitor did not speak until we
reached the second story. Then he expressed his feelings.
“Say, Kent” he demanded, “are you going to change your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You're no wetter than I am, are you?”
“Not a bit, but I'm going to change, just the same. It's the easier
way.”
“It is, is it! What's the other way?”
“The other way is to keep on those you're wearing and take the
consequences.”
“What consequences?”
“Jamaica ginger, hot water bottles and an afternoon's roast in front of
the sitting-room fire. Hephzibah went out sailing with me last October
and caught cold. That was enough; no one else shall have the experience
if she can help it.”
“But--but good heavens! Kent, do you mean to say you always have to
change when you come in from sailing?”
“Except in summer, yes.”
“But why?”
“Because Hephzy tells me to.”
“Do you always do what she tells you?”
“Generally. It's the easiest way, as I said before.”
“Good--heavens! And she darns your socks and tells you what--er lingerie
to wear and--does she wash your face and wipe your nose and scrub behind
your ears?”
“Not exactly, but she probably would if I didn't do it.”
“Well, I'll be hanged! And she extends the same treatment to all your
guests?”
“I don't have any guests but you. No doubt she would if I did. She
mothers every stray cat and sick chicken in the neighborhood. There,
Jim, you trot along and do as you're told like a nice little boy. I'll
join you in the sitting-room.”
“Humph! perhaps I'd better. I may be spanked and put to bed if I don't.
Well, well! and you are the author of 'The Black Brig!' 'Buccaneers and
Blood!' 'Bibs and Butterscotch' it should be! Don't stand out here in
the cold hall, Hosy darling; you may get the croup if you do.”
I was waiting in the sitting-room when he came down. There was a roaring
fire in the big, old-fashioned fireplace. That fireplace had been
bricked up in the days when people used those abominations, stoves. As a
boy I was well acquainted with the old “gas burner” with the iron urn
on top and the nickeled ornaments and handles which Mother polished so
assiduously. But the gas burner had long since gone to the junk dealer.
Among the improvements which my first royalty checks made possible were
steam heat and the restoration of the fireplace.
Jim found me sitting before the fire in one of the two big “wing” chairs
which I had purchased when Darius Barlay's household effects were sold
at auction. I should not have acquired them as cheaply if Captain Cyrus
Whittaker had been at home when the auction took place. Captain Cy loves
old-fashioned things as much as I do and, as he has often told me since,
he meant to land those chairs some day if he had to run his bank account
high and dry in consequence. But the Captain and his wife--who used to
be Phoebe Dawes, our school-teacher here in Bayport--were away visiting
their adopted daughter, Emily, who is married and living in Boston, and
I got the chairs.
At the Barclay auction I bought also the oil painting of the bark
“Freedom”--a command of Captain Elkanah Barclay, uncle of the late
Darius--and the set--two volumes missing--of The Spectator, bound in
sheepskin. The “Freedom” is depicted “Entering the Port of Genoa, July
10th, 1848,” and if the port is somewhat wavy and uncertain, the
bark's canvas and rigging are definite and rigid enough to make up.
The Spectator set is chiefly remarkable for its marginal notes; Captain
Elkanah bought the books in London and read and annotated at spare
intervals during subsequent voyages. His opinions were decided and his
notes nautical and emphatic. Hephzibah read a few pages of the
notes when the books first came into the house and then went to
prayer-meeting. As she had announced her intention of remaining at home
that evening I was surprised--until I read them myself.
Jim came downstairs, arrayed in the suit which Hephzy had laid out for
him. I made no comment upon his appearance. To do so would have been
superfluous; he looked all the comments necessary.
I waved my hand towards the unoccupied wing chair and he sat down. Two
glasses, one empty and the other half full of a steaming mixture, were
on the little table beside us.
“Help yourself, Jim,” I said, indicating the glasses. He took up the one
containing the mixture and regarded it hopefully.
“What?” he asked.
“A Cahoon toddy,” said I. “Warranted to keep off chills, rheumatism,
lumbago and kindred miseries. Good for what ails you. Don't wait; I've
had mine.”
He took a sniff and then a very small sip. His face expressed genuine
emotion.
“Whew!” he gasped, choking. “What in blazes--?”
“Jamaica ginger, sugar and hot water,” I explained blandly. “It
won't hurt you--longer than five minutes. It is Hephzy's invariable
prescription.”
“Good Lord! Did you drink yours?”
“No--I never do, unless she watches me.”
“But your glass is empty. What did you do with it?”
“Emptied it behind the back log. Of course, if you prefer to drink it--”
“Drink it!” His “toddy” splashed the back log, causing a tremendous
sizzle.
Before he could relieve his mind further, Hephzy appeared to announce
that dinner was ready if we were. We were, most emphatically, so we went
into the dining-room.
Hephzy and Jim did most of the talking during the meal. I had talked
more that forenoon than I had for a week--I am not a chatty person,
ordinarily, which, in part, explains my nickname--and I was very willing
to eat and listen. Hephzy, who was garbed in her best gown--best weekday
gown, that is; she kept her black silk for Sundays--talked a good deal,
mostly about dreams and presentiments. Susanna Wixon, Tobias Wixon's
oldest daughter, waited on table, when she happened to think of it, and
listened when she did not. Susanna had been hired to do the waiting and
the dish-washing during Campbell's brief visit. It was I who hired
her. If I had had my way she would have been a permanent fixture in the
household, but Hephzy scoffed at the idea. “Pity if I can't do housework
for two folks,” she declared. “I don't care if you can afford it.
Keepin' hired help in a family no bigger than this, is a sinful
extravagance.” As Susanna's services had been already engaged for the
weekend she could not discharge her, but she insisted on doing all the
cooking herself.
Her conversation, as I said, dealt mainly with dreams and presentiments.
Hephzibah is not what I should call a superstitious person. She doesn't
believe in “signs,” although she might feel uncomfortable if she broke a
looking-glass or saw the new moon over her left shoulder. She has a most
amazing fund of common-sense and is “down” on Spiritualism to a degree.
It is one of Bayport's pet yarns, that at the Harniss Spiritualist
camp-meeting when the “test medium” announced from the platform that he
had a message for a lady named Hephzibah C--he “seemed to get the name
Hephzibah C”--Hephzy got up and walked out. “Any dead relations I've
got,” she declared, “who send messages through a longhaired idiot like
that one up there”--meaning the medium,--“can't have much to say that's
worth listenin' to. They can talk to themselves if they want to, but
they shan't waste MY time.”
In but one particular was Hephzy superstitious. Whenever she dreamed of
“Little Frank” she was certain something was going to happen. She had
dreamed of “Little Frank” the night before and, if she had not been
headed off, she would have talked of nothing else.
“I saw him just as plain as I see you this minute, Hosy,” she said to
me. “I was somewhere, in a strange place--a foreign place, I should say
'twas--and there I saw him. He didn't know me; at least I don't think he
did.”
“Considering that he never saw you that isn't so surprising,” I
interrupted. “I think Mr. Campbell would have another cup of coffee if
you urged him. Susanna, take Mr. Campbell's cup.”
Jim declined the coffee; said he hadn't finished his first cup yet. I
knew that, of course, but I was trying to head off Hephzy. She refused
to be headed, just then.
“But I knew HIM,” she went on. “He looked just the same as he has when
I've seen him before--in the other dreams, you know. The very image of
his mother. Isn't it wonderful, Hosy!”
“Yes; but don't resurrect the family skeletons, Hephzy. Mr. Campbell
isn't interested in anatomy.”
“Skeletons! I don't know what you're talkin' about. He wasn't a
skeleton. I saw him just as plain! And I said to myself, 'It's little
Frank!' Now what do you suppose he came to me for? What do you suppose
it means? It means somethin', I know that.”
“Means that you weren't sleeping well, probably,” I answered. “Jim,
here, will dream of cross-seas and the Point Rip to-night, I have no
doubt.”
Jim promptly declared that if he thought that likely he shouldn't mind
so much. What he feared most was a nightmare session with an author.
Hephzibah was interested at once. “Oh, do you dream about authors, Mr.
Campbell?” she demanded. “I presume likely you do, they're so mixed up
with your business. Do your dreams ever come true?”
“Not often,” was the solemn reply. “Most of my dream-authors are
rational and almost human.”
Hephzy, of course, did not understand this, but it did have the effect
for which I had been striving, that of driving “Little Frank” from her
mind for the time.
“I don't care,” she declared, “I s'pose it's awful foolish and silly of
me, but it does seem sometimes as if there was somethin' in dreams, some
kind of dreams. Hosy laughs at me and maybe I ought to laugh at myself,
but some dreams come true, or awfully near to true; now don't they.
Angeline Phinney was in here the other day and she was tellin' about her
second cousin that was--he's dead now--Abednego Small. He was constable
here in Bayport for years; everybody called him 'Uncle Bedny.' Uncle
Bedny had been keepin' company with a woman named Dimick--Josiah
Dimick's niece--lots younger than he, she was. He'd been thinkin' of
marryin' her, so Angie said, but his folks had been talkin' to him,
tellin' him he was too old to take such a young woman for his third
wife, so he had made up his mind to throw her over, to write a letter
sayin' it was all off between 'em. Well, he'd begun the letter but
he never finished it, for three nights runnin' he dreamed that awful
trouble was hangin' over him. That dream made such an impression on him
that he tore the letter up and married the Dimick woman after all. And
then--I didn't know this until Angie told me--it turned out that she
had heard he was goin' to give her the go-by and had made all her
arrangements to sue him for breach of promise if he did. That was the
awful trouble, you see, and the dream saved him from it.”
I smiled. “The fault there was in the interpretation of the dream,” I
said. “The 'awful trouble' of the breach of promise suit wouldn't have
been a circumstance to the trouble poor Uncle Bedny got into by marrying
Ann Dimick. THAT trouble lasted till he died.”
Hephzibah laughed and said she guessed that was so, she hadn't thought
of it in that way.
“Probably dreams are all nonsense,” she admitted. “Usually, I don't pay
much attention to 'em. But when I dream of poor 'Little Frank,' away off
there, I--”
“Come into the sitting-room, Jim,” I put in hastily. “I have a cigar or
two there. I don't buy them in Bayport, either.”
“And who,” asked Jim, as we sat smoking by the fire, “is Little Frank?”
“He is a mythical relative of ours,” I explained, shortly. “He was born
twenty years ago or so--at least we heard that he was; and we haven't
heard anything of him since, except by the dream route, which is not
entirely convincing. He is Hephzy's pet obsession. Kindly forget him, to
oblige me.”
He looked puzzled, but he did not mention “Little Frank” again, for
which I was thankful.
That afternoon we walked up to the village, stopping in at Simmons's
store, which is also the post-office, for the mail. Captain Cyrus
Whittaker happened to be there, also Asaph Tidditt and Bailey Bangs and
Sylvanus Cahoon and several others. I introduced Campbell to the crowd
and he seemed to be enjoying himself. When we came out and were walking
home again, he observed:
“That Whittaker is an interesting chap, isn't he?”
“Yes,” I said. “He is all right. Been everywhere and seen everything.”
“And that,” with an odd significance in his tone, “may possibly help to
make him interesting, don't you think?”
“I suppose so. He lives here in Bayport now, though.”
“So I gathered. Popular, is he?”
“Very.”
“Satisfied with life?”
“Seems to be.”
“Hum! No one calls HIM a--what is it--quahaug?”
“No, I'm the only human clam in this neighborhood.”
He did not say any more, nor did I. My fit of the blues was on again
and his silence on the subject in which I was interested, my work and my
future, troubled me and made me more despondent. I began to lose faith
in the “prescription” which he had promised so emphatically. How could
he, or anyone else, help me? No one could write my stories but myself,
and I knew, only too well, that I could not write them.
The only mail matter in our box was a letter addressed to Hephzibah.
I forgot it until after supper and then I gave it to her. Jim retired
early; the salt air made him sleepy, so he said, and he went upstairs
shortly after nine. He had not mentioned our talk of the morning, nor
did he until I left him at the door of his room. Then he said:
“Kent, I've got one of the answers to your conundrum. I've diagnosed one
of your troubles. You're blind.”
“Blind?”
“Yes, blind. Or, if not blind altogether you're suffering from the worse
case of far-sightedness I ever saw. All your literary--we'll call it
that for compliment's sake--all your literary life you've spent writing
about people and things so far off you don't know anything about them.
You and your dukes and your earls and your titled ladies! What do you
know of that crowd? You never saw a lord in your life. Why don't you
write of something near by, something or somebody you are acquainted
with?”
“Acquainted with! You're crazy, man. What am I acquainted with, except
this house, and myself and my books and--and Bayport?”
“That's enough. Why, there is material in that gang at the post-office
to make a dozen books. Write about them.”
“Tut! tut! tut! You ARE crazy. What shall I write; the life of Ase
Tidditt in four volumes, beginning with 'I swan to man' and ending with
'By godfrey'?”
“You might do worse. If the book were as funny as its hero I'd undertake
to sell a few copies.”
“Funny! _I_ couldn't write a funny book.”
“Not an intentionally funny one, you mean. But there! There's no use to
talk to you.”
“There is not, if you talk like an imbecile. Is this your brilliant
'prescription'?”
“No. It might be; it would be, if you would take it, but you won't--not
now. You need something else first and I'll give it to you. But I'll
tell you this, and I mean it: Downstairs, in that dining-room of yours,
there's one mighty good story, at least.”
“The dining-room? A story in the dining-room?”
“Yes. Or it was there when we passed the door just now.”
I looked at him. He seemed to be serious, but I knew he was not. I hate
riddles.
“Oh, go to blazes!” I retorted, and turned away.
I looked into the dining-room as I went by. There was no story in sight
there, so far as I could see. Hephzy was seated by the table, mending
something, something of mine, of course. She looked up.
“Oh, Hosy,” she said, “that letter you brought was a travel book from
the Raymond and Whitcomb folks. I sent a stamp for it. It's awfully
interesting! All about tours through England and France and Switzerland
and everywhere. So cheap they are! I'm pickin' out the ones I'm goin' on
some day. The pictures are lovely. Don't you want to see 'em?”
“Not now,” I replied. Another obsession of Hephzy's was travel. She,
who had never been further from Bayport than Hartford, Connecticut, was
forever dreaming of globe-trotting. It was not a new disease with her,
by any means; she had been dreaming the same things ever since I had
known her, and that is since I knew anything. Some day, SOME day she
was going to this, that and the other place. She knew all about these
places, because she had read about them over and over again. Her
knowledge, derived as it was from so many sources, was curiously mixed,
but it was comprehensive, of its kind. She was continually sending
for Cook's circulars and booklets advertising personally conducted
excursions. And, with the arrival of each new circular or booklet, she
picked out, as she had just done, the particular tours she would go on
when her “some day” came. It was funny, this queer habit of hers, but
not half as funny as the thought of her really going would have been. I
would have as soon thought of our front door leaving home and starting
on its travels as of Hephzy's doing it. The door was no more a part and
fixture of that home than she was.
I went into my study, which adjoins the sitting-room, and sat down at my
desk. Not with the intention of writing anything, or even of considering
something to write about. That I made up my mind to forget for this
night, at least. My desk chair was my usual seat in that room and I took
that seat as a matter of habit.
As a matter of habit also I looked about for a book. I did not have to
look far. Books were my extravagance--almost my only one. They filled
the shelves to the ceiling on three sides of the study and overflowed in
untidy heaps on the floor. They were Hephzy's bugbear, for I refused to
permit their being “straightened out” or arranged.
I looked about for a book and selected several, but, although they were
old favorites, I could not interest myself in any of them. I tried and
tried, but even Mr. Pepys, that dependable solace of a lonely hour,
failed to interest me with his chatter. Perhaps Campbell's pointed
remarks concerning lords and ladies had its effect here. Old Samuel
loved to write of such people, having a wide acquaintance with them, and
perhaps that very acquaintance made me jealous. At any rate I threw the
volume back upon its pile and began to think of myself, and of my work,
the very thing I had expressly determined not to do when I came into the
room.
Jim's foolish and impossible advice to write of places and people I knew
haunted and irritated me. I did know Bayport--yes, and it might be true
that the group at the post-office contained possible material for many
books; but, if so, it was material for the other man, not for me. “Write
of what you know,” said Jim. And I knew so little. There was at least
one good yarn in the dining-room at that moment, he had declared. He
must have meant Hephzibah, but, if he did, what was there in Hephzibah's
dull, gray life-story to interest an outside reader? Her story and mine
were interwoven and neither contained anything worth writing about. His
fancy had been caught, probably, by her odd combination of the romantic
and the practical, and in her dream of “Little Frank” he had scented a
mystery. There was no mystery there, nothing but the most commonplace
record of misplaced trust and ingratitude. Similar things happen in so
many families.
However, I began to think of Hephzy and, as I said, of myself, and to
review my life since Ardelia Cahoon and Strickland Morley changed its
course so completely. And now it seems to me that, in the course of
my “edging around” for the beginning of this present chronicle--so
different from anything I have ever written before or ever expected to
write--the time has come when the reader--provided, of course, the
said chronicle is ever finished or ever reaches a reader--should know
something of that life; should know a little of the family history of
the Knowles and the Cahoons and the Morleys.