Which, Although It Is Largely Family History, Should Not Be Skipped by
the Reader
Let us take the Knowleses first. My name is Hosea Kent Knowles--I said
that before--and my father was Captain Philander Kent Knowles. He was
lost in the wreck of the steamer “Monarch of the Sea,” off Hatteras. The
steamer caught fire in the middle of the night, a howling gale blowing
and the thermometer a few degrees above zero. The passengers and crew
took to the boats and were saved. My father stuck by his ship and went
down with her, as did also her first mate, another Cape-Codder. I was
a baby at the time, and was at Bayport with my mother, Emily Knowles,
formerly Emily Cahoon, Captain Barnabas Cahoon's niece. Mother had a
little money of her own and Father's life was insured for a moderate
sum. Her small fortune was invested for her by her uncle, Captain
Barnabas, who was the Bayport magnate and man of affairs in those days.
Mother and I continued to live in the old house in Bayport and I went
to school in the village until I was fourteen, when I went away to a
preparatory school near Boston. Mother died a year later. I was an only
child, but Hephzibah, who had always seemed like an older sister to me,
now began to “mother” me, the process which she has kept up ever since.
Hephzibah was the daughter of Captain Barnabas by his first wife. Hephzy
was born in 1859, so she is well over fifty now, although no one would
guess it. Her mother died when she was a little girl and ten years later
Captain Barnabas married again. His second wife was Susan Hammond, of
Ostable, and by her he had one daughter, Ardelia. Hephzy has always
declared “Ardelia” to be a pretty name. I have my own opinion on that
subject, but I keep it to myself.
At any rate, Ardelia herself was pretty enough. She was pretty when a
baby and prettier still as a schoolgirl. Her mother--while she lived,
which was not long--spoiled her, and her half-sister, Hephzy, assisted
in the petting and spoiling. Ardelia grew up with the idea that most
things in this world were hers for the asking. Whatever took her fancy
she asked for and, if Captain Barnabas did not give it to her, she
considered herself ill-used. She was the young lady of the family and
Hephzibah was the housekeeper and drudge, an uncomplaining one, be
it understood. For her, as for the Captain, the business of life was
keeping Ardelia contented and happy, and they gloried in the task.
Hephzy might have married well at least twice, but she wouldn't think
of such a thing. “Pa and Ardelia need me,” she said; that was reason
sufficient.
In 1888 Captain Barnabas went to Philadelphia on business. He had
retired from active sea-going years before, but he retained an interest
in a certain line of coasting schooners. The Captain, as I said, went to
Philadelphia on business connected with these schooners and Ardelia
went with him. Hephzibah stayed at home, of course; she always stayed
at home, never expected to do anything else, although even then her
favorite reading were books of travel, and pictures of the Alps, and of
St. Peter's at Rome, and the Tower of London were tacked up about her
room. She, too, might have gone to Philadelphia, doubtless, if she had
asked, but she did not ask. Her father did not think of inviting her.
He loved his oldest daughter, although he did not worship her as he did
Ardelia, but it never occurred to him that she, too, might enjoy the
trip. Hephzy was always at home, she WAS home; so at home she remained.
In Philadelphia Ardelia met Strickland Morley.
I give that statement a line all by itself, for it is by far the most
important I have set down so far. The whole story of the Cahoons and the
Knowleses--that is, all of their story which is the foundation of this
history of mine--hinges on just that. If those two had not met I should
not be writing this to-day, I might not be writing at all; instead of
having become a Bayport “quahaug” I might have been the Lord knows what.
However, they did meet, at the home of a wealthy shipping merchant named
Osgood who was a lifelong friend of Captain Barnabas. This shipping
merchant had a daughter and that daughter was giving a party at her
father's home. Barnabas and Ardelia were invited. Strickland Morley was
invited also.
Morley, at that time--I saw a good deal of him afterward, when he was
at Bayport and when I was at the Cahoon house on holidays and
vacations--was a handsome, aristocratic young Englishman. He was
twenty-eight, but he looked younger. He was the second son in a
Leicestershire family which had once been wealthy and influential but
which had, in its later generations, gone to seed. He was educated, in
a general sort of way, was a good dancer, played the violin fairly well,
sang fairly well, had an attractive presence, and was one of the most
plausible and fascinating talkers I ever listened to. He had studied
medicine--studied it after a fashion, that is; he never applied himself
to anything--and was then, in '88, “ship's doctor” aboard a British
steamer, which ran between Philadelphia and Glasgow. Miss Osgood had met
him at the home of a friend of hers who had traveled on that steamer.
Hephzy and I do not agree as to whether or not he actually fell in love
with Ardelia Cahoon. Hephzy, of course, to whom Ardelia was the most
wonderfully beautiful creature on earth, is certain that he did--he
could not help it, she says. I am not so sure. It is very hard for me to
believe that Strickland Morley was ever in love with anyone but himself.
Captain Barnabas was well-to-do and had the reputation of being much
richer than he really was. And Ardelia WAS beautiful, there is no doubt
of that. At all events, Ardelia fell in love, with him, violently,
desperately, head over heels in love, the very moment the two were
introduced. They danced practically every dance together that evening,
met surreptitiously the next day and for five days thereafter, and
on the sixth day Captain Barnabas received a letter from his daughter
announcing that she and Morley were married and had gone to New York
together. “We will meet you there, Pa,” wrote Ardelia. “I know you will
forgive me for marrying Strickland. He is the most wonderful man in the
wide world. You will love him, Pa, as I do.”
There was very little love expressed by the Captain when he read the
note. According to Mr. Osgood's account, Barnabas's language was a
throwback from the days when he was first mate on a Liverpool packet.
That his idolized daughter had married without asking his consent
was bad enough; that she had married an Englishman was worse. Captain
Barnabas hated all Englishmen. A ship of his had been captured and
burned, in the war time, by the “Alabama,” a British built privateer,
and the very mildest of the terms he applied to a “John Bull” will not
bear repetition in respectable society. He would not forgive Ardelia.
She and her “Cockney husband” might sail together to the most tropical
of tropics, or words to that effect.
But he did forgive her, of course. Likewise he forgave his son-in-law.
When the Captain returned to Bayport he brought the newly wedded pair
with him. I was not present at that homecoming. I was away at prep
school, digging at my examinations, trying hard to forget that I was
an orphan, but with the dull ache caused by my mother's death always
grinding at my heart. Many years ago she died, but the ache comes back
now, as I think of her. There is more self-reproach in it than
there used to be, more vain regrets for impatient words and wasted
opportunities. Ah, if some of us--boys grown older--might have our
mothers back again, would we be as impatient and selfish now? Would we
neglect the opportunities? I think not; I hope not.
Hephzibah, after she got over the shock of the surprise and the pain
of sharing her beloved sister with another, welcomed that other for
Ardelia's sake. She determined to like him very much indeed. This wasn't
so hard, at first. Everyone liked and trusted Strickland Morley at first
sight. Afterward, when they came to know him better, they were not--if
they were as wise and discerning as Hephzy--so sure of the trust. The
wise and discerning were not, I say; Captain Barnabas, though wise and
shrewd enough in other things, trusted him to the end.
Morley made it a point to win the affection and goodwill of his
father-in-law. For the first month or two after the return to Bayport
the new member of the family was always speaking of his plans for the
future, of his profession and how he intended soon, very soon, to look
up a good location and settle down to practice. Whenever he spoke
thus, Captain Barnabas and Ardelia begged him not to do it yet, to wait
awhile. “I am so happy with you and Pa and Hephzy,” declared Ardelia.
“I can't bear to go away yet, Strickland. And Pa doesn't want us to; do
you, Pa?”
Of course Captain Barnabas agreed with her, he always did, and so the
Morleys remained at Bayport in the old house. Then came the first of the
paralytic shocks--a very slight one--which rendered Captain Barnabas,
the hitherto hale, active old seaman, unfit for exertion or the cares of
business. He was not bedridden by any means; he could still take short
walks, attend town meetings and those of the parish committee, but he
must not, so Dr. Parker said, be allowed to worry about anything.
And Morley took it upon himself to prevent that worry. He spoke no more
of leaving Bayport and settling down to practice his profession. Instead
he settled down in Bayport and took the Captain's business cares upon
his own shoulders. Little by little he increased his influence over the
old man. He attended to the latter's investments, took charge of
his bank account, collected his dividends, became, so to speak, his
financial guardian. Captain Barnabas, at first rebellious--“I've always
bossed my own ship,” he declared, “and I ain't so darned feeble-headed
that I can't do it yet”--gradually grew reconciled and then contented.
He, too, began to worship his daughter's husband as the daughter herself
did.
“He's a wonder,” said the Captain. “I never saw such a fellow for money
matters. He's handled my stocks and things a whole lot better'n I ever
did. I used to cal'late if I got six per cent. interest I was doin'
well. He ain't satisfied with anything short of eight, and he gets it,
too. Whatever that boy wants and I own he can have. Sometimes I think
this consarned palsy of mine is a judgment on me for bein' so sot
against him in the beginnin'. Why, just look at how he runs this house,
to say nothing of the rest of it! He's a skipper here; the rest of us
ain't anything but fo'most hands.”
Which was not the exact truth. Morley was skipper of the Cahoon house,
Ardelia first mate, her father a passenger, and the foremast hand
was Hephzy. And yet, so far as “running” that house was concerned the
foremast hand ran it, as she always had done. The Captain and Ardelia
were Morley's willing slaves; Hephzy was, and continued to be, a free
woman. She worked from morning until night, but she obeyed only such
orders as she saw fit.
She alone did not take the new skipper at his face value.
“I don't know what there was about him that made me uneasy,” she has
told me since. “Maybe there wasn't anything; perhaps that was just the
reason. When a person is SO good and SO smart and SO polite--maybe the
average sinful common mortal like me gets jealous; I don't know. But
I do know that, to save my life, I couldn't swallow him whole the way
Ardelia and Father did. I wanted to look him over first; and the more I
looked him over, and the smoother and smoother he looked, the more sure
I felt he'd give us all dyspepsy before he got through. Unreasonable,
wasn't it?”
For Ardelia's sake she concealed her distrust and did her best to get
on with the new head of the family. Only one thing she did, and that
against Motley's and her father's protest. She withdrew her own little
fortune, left her by her mother, from Captain Barnabas's care and
deposited it in the Ostable savings bank and in equally secure places.
Of course she told the Captain of her determination to do this before
she did it and the telling was the cause of the only disagreement,
almost a quarrel, which she and her father ever had. The Captain was
very angry and demanded reasons. Hephzibah declared she didn't know that
she had any reasons, but she was going to do it, nevertheless. And
she did do it. For months thereafter relations between the two were
strained; Barnabas scarcely spoke to his older daughter and Hephzy shed
tears in the solitude of her bedroom. They were hard months for her.
At the end of them came the crash. Morley had developed a habit
of running up to Boston on business trips connected with his
father-in-law's investments. Of late these little trips had become more
frequent. Also, so it seemed to Hephzy, he was losing something of
his genial sweetness and suavity, and becoming more moody and less
entertaining. Telegrams and letters came frequently and these he read
and destroyed at once. He seldom played the violin now unless Captain
Barnabas--who was fond of music of the simpler sort--requested him to do
so and he seemed uneasy and, for him, surprisingly disinclined to talk.
Hephzy was not the only one who noticed the change in him. Ardelia
noticed it also and, as she always did when troubled or perplexed,
sought her sister's advice.
“I sha'n't ever forget that night when she came to me for the last
time,” Hephzy has told me over and over again. “She came up to my room,
poor thing, and set down on the side of my bed and told me how worried
she was about her husband. Father had turned in and HE was out, gone
to the post-office or somewheres. I had Ardelia all to myself, for a
wonder, and we sat and talked just the same as we used to before she was
married. I'm glad it happened so. I shall always have that to remember,
anyhow.
“Of course, all her worry was about Strickland. She was afraid he was
makin' himself sick. He worked so hard; didn't I think so? Well, so far
as that was concerned, I had come to believe that almost any kind of
work was liable to make HIM sick, but of course I didn't say that to
her. That somethin' was troublin' him was plain, though I was far enough
from guessin' what that somethin' was.
“We set and talked, about Strickland and about Father and about
ourselves. Mainly Ardelia's talk was a praise service with her husband
for the subject of worship; she was so happy with him and idolized
him so that she couldn't spare time for much else. But she did speak a
little about herself and, before she went away, she whispered somethin'
in my ear which was a dead secret. Even Father didn't know it yet,
she said. Of course I was as pleased as she was, almost--and a little
frightened too, although I didn't say so to her. She was always a frail
little thing, delicate as she was pretty; not a strapping, rugged,
homely body like me. We wasn't a bit alike.
“So we talked and when she went away to bed she gave me an extra hug and
kiss; came back to give 'em to me, just as she used to when she was a
little girl. I wondered since if she had any inklin' of what was goin'
to happen. I'm sure she didn't; I'm sure of it as I am that it did
happen. She couldn't have kept it from me if she had known--not that
night. She went away to bed and I went to bed, too. I was a long while
gettin' to sleep and after I did I dreamed my first dream about 'Little
Frank.' I didn't call him 'Little Frank' then, though. I don't seem to
remember what I did call him or just how he looked except that he looked
like Ardelia. And the next afternoon she and Strickland went away--to
Boston, he told us.”
From that trip they never returned. Morley's influence over his wife
must have been greater even than any of us thought to induce her to
desert her father and Hephzy without even a written word of explanation
or farewell. It is possible that she did write and that her husband
destroyed the letter. I am as sure as Hephzy is that Ardelia did not
know what Morley had done. But, at all events, they never came back
to Bayport and within the week the truth became known. Morley had
speculated, had lost and lost again and again. All of Captain Barnabas's
own money and all intrusted to his care, including my little nest-egg,
had gone as margins to the brokers who had bought for Morley his
worthless eight per cent. wildcats. Hephzy's few thousands in the
savings bank and elsewhere were all that was left.
I shall condense the rest of the miserable business as much as I can.
Captain Barnabas traced his daughter and her husband as far as the
steamer which sailed for England. Farther he would not trace them,
although he might easily have cabled and caused his son-in-law's arrest.
For a month he went about in a sort of daze, speaking to almost no
one and sitting for hours alone in his room. The doctor feared for
his sanity, but when the breakdown came it was in the form of a second
paralytic stroke which left him a helpless, crippled dependent, weak and
shattered in body and mind.
He lived nine years longer. Meanwhile various things happened. I managed
to finish my preparatory school term and, then, instead of entering
college as Mother and I had planned, I went into business--save the
mark--taking the exalted position of entry clerk in a wholesale drygoods
house in Boston. As entry clerk I did not shine, but I continued to keep
the place until the firm failed--whether or not because of my connection
with it I am not sure, though I doubt if my services were sufficiently
important to contribute toward even this result. A month later I
obtained another position and, after that, another. I was never
discharged; I declare that with a sort of negative pride; but when I
announced to my second employer my intention of resigning he bore the
shock with--to say the least--philosophic fortitude.
“We shall miss you, Knowles,” he observed.
“Thank you, sir,” said I.
“I doubt if we ever have another bookkeeper just like you.”
I thanked him again, fighting down my blushes with heroic modesty.
“Oh, I guess you can find one if you try,” I said, lightly, wishing to
comfort him.
He shook his head. “I sha'n't try,” he declared. “I am not as young and
as strong as I was and--well, there is always the chance that we might
succeed.”
It was a mean thing to say--to a boy, for I was scarcely more than that.
And yet, looking back at it now, I am much more disposed to smile and
forgive than I was then. My bookkeeping must have been a trial to his
orderly, pigeon-holed soul. Why in the world he and his partner put up
with it so long is a miracle. When, after my first novel appeared,
he wrote me to say that the consciousness of having had a part, small
though it might be, in training my young mind upward toward the success
it had achieved would always be a great gratification to him, I did not
send the letter I wrote in answer. Instead I tore up my letter and his
and grinned. I WAS a bad bookkeeper; I was, and still am, a bad business
man. Now I don't care so much; that is the difference.
Then I cared a great deal, but I kept on at my hated task. What else was
there for me to do? My salary was so small that, as Charlie Burns, one
of my fellow-clerks, said of his, I was afraid to count it over a bare
floor for fear that it might drop in a crack and be lost. It was my only
revenue, however, and I continued to live upon it somehow. I had a
small room in a boarding-house on Shawmut Avenue and I spent most of my
evenings there or in the reading-room at the public library. I was not
popular at the boarding-house. Most of the young fellows there went
out a good deal, to call upon young ladies or to dance or to go to the
theater. I had learned to dance when I was at school and I was fond of
the theater, but I did not dance well and on the rare occasions when
I did accompany the other fellows to the play and they laughed and
applauded and tried to flirt with the chorus girls, I fidgeted in my
seat and was uncomfortable. Not that I disapproved of their conduct; I
rather envied them, in fact. But if I laughed too heartily I was sure
that everyone was looking at me, and though I should have liked to
flirt, I didn't know how.
The few attempts I made were not encouraging. One evening--I was
nineteen then, or thereabouts--Charlie Burns, the clerk whom I have
mentioned, suggested that we get dinner downtown at a restaurant and “go
somewhere” afterward. I agreed--it happened to be Saturday night and I
had my pay in my pocket--so we feasted on oyster stew and ice cream and
then started for what my companion called a “variety show.” Burns, who
cherished the fond hope that he was a true sport, ordered beer with his
oyster stew and insisted that I should do the same. My acquaintance with
beer was limited and I never did like the stuff, but I drank it with
reckless abandon, following each sip with a mouthful of something else
to get rid of the taste. On the way to the “show” we met two young
women of Burns' acquaintance and stopped to converse with them. Charlie
offered his arm to one, the best looking; I offered mine to the discard,
and we proceeded to stroll two by two along the Tremont Street mall of
the Common. We had strolled for perhaps ten minutes, most of which
time I had spent trying to think of something to say, when Burns'
charmer--she was a waitress in one of Mr. Wyman's celebrated “sandwich
depots,” I believe--turned and, looking back at my fair one and myself,
observed with some sarcasm: “What's the matter with your silent partner,
Mame? Got the lock-jaw, has he?”
I left them soon after that. There was no “variety show” for me that
night. Humiliated and disgusted with myself I returned to my room at the
boarding-house, realizing in bitterness of spirit that the gentlemanly
dissipations of a true sport were never to be mine.
As I grew older I kept more and more to myself. My work at the office
must have been a little better done, I fancy, for my salary was raised
twice in four years, but I detested the work and the office and all
connected with it. I read more and more at the public library and began
to spend the few dollars I could spare for luxuries on books. Among my
acquaintances at the boarding-house and elsewhere I had the reputation
of being “queer.”
My only periods of real pleasure were my annual vacations in summer.
These glorious fortnights were spent at Bayport. There, at our old home,
for Hephzibah had sold the big Cahoon house and she and her father were
living in mine, for which they paid a very small rent, I was happy.
I spent the two weeks in sailing and fishing, and tramping along the
waved-washed beaches and over the pine-sprinkled hills. Even in Bayport
I had few associates of my own age. Even then they began to call me “The
Quahaug.” Hephzy hugged me when I came and wept over me when I went away
and mended my clothes and cooked my favorite dishes in the interval.
Captain Barnabas sat in the big arm-chair by the sitting-room window,
looking out or sleeping. He took little interest in me or anyone
else and spoke but seldom. Occasionally I spent the Fourth of July or
Christmas at Bayport; not often, but as often as I could.
One morning--I was twenty-five at the time, and the day was Sunday--I
read a story in one of the low-priced magazines. It was not much of a
story, and, as I read it, I kept thinking that I could write as good
a one. I had had such ideas before, but nothing had come of them. This
time, however, I determined to try. In half an hour I had evolved a
plot, such as it was, and at a quarter to twelve that night the story
was finished. A highwayman was its hero and its scene the great North
Road in England. My conceptions of highwaymen and the North Road--of
England, too, for that matter--were derived from something I had read
at some time or other, I suppose; they must have been. At any rate,
I finished that story, addressed the envelope to the editor of the
magazine and dropped the envelope and its inclosure in the corner
mail-box before I went to bed. Next morning I went to the office as
usual. I had not the faintest hope that the story would be accepted. The
writing of it had been fun and the sending it to the magazine a joke.
But the story was accepted and the check which I received--forty
dollars--was far from a joke to a man whose weekly wage was half that
amount. The encouraging letter which accompanied the check was best of
all. Before the week ended I had written another thriller and this, too,
was accepted.
Thereafter, for a year or more, my Sundays and the most of my evenings
were riots of ink and blood. The ink was real enough and the blood
purely imaginary. My heroes spilled the latter and I the former.
Sometimes my yarns were refused, but the most of them were accepted and
paid for. Editors of other periodicals began to write to me requesting
contributions. My price rose. For one particularly harrowing and
romantic tale I was paid seventy-five dollars. I dressed in my best that
evening, dined at the Adams House, gave the waiter a quarter, and saw
Joseph Jefferson from an orchestra seat.
Then came the letter from Jim Campbell requesting me to come to New York
and see him concerning a possible book, a romance, to be written by me
and published by the firm of which he was the head. I saw my employer,
obtained a Saturday off, and spent that Saturday and Sunday in New York,
my first visit.
As a result of that visit began my friendship with Campbell and my first
long story, “The Queen's Amulet.” The “Amulet,” or the “Omelet,” just as
you like, was a financial success. It sold a good many thousand copies.
Six months later I broke to my employers the distressing news that their
business must henceforth worry on as best it could without my aid; I was
going to devote my valuable time and effort to literature.
My fellow-clerks were surprised. Charlie Burns, head bookkeeper now, and
a married man and a father, was much concerned.
“But, great Scott, Kent!” he protested, “you're going to do something
besides write books, ain't you? You ain't going to make your whole
living that way?”
“I am going to try,” I said.
“Great Scott! Why, you'll starve! All those fellows live in garrets and
starve to death, don't they?”
“Not all,” I told him. “Only real geniuses do that.”
He shook his head and his good-by was anything but cheerful.
My plans were made and I put them into execution at once. I shipped my
goods and chattels, the latter for the most part books, to Bayport and
went there to live and write in the old house where I was born. Hephzy
was engaged as my housekeeper. She was alone now; Captain Barnabas had
died nearly two years before.
Among the Captain's papers and discovered by his daughter after his
death was a letter from Strickland Morley. It was written from a town in
France and was dated six years after Morley's flight and the disclosure
of his crookedness. Captain Barnabas had never, apparently, answered the
letter; certainly he had never told anyone of its receipt by him. The
old man never mentioned Morley's name and only spoke of Ardelia during
his last hours, when his mind was wandering. Then he spoke of and asked
for her continually, driving poor Hephzibah to distraction, for her love
for her lost sister was as great as his.
The letter was the complaining whine of a thoroughly selfish man. I can
scarcely refer to it without losing patience, even now when I understand
more completely the circumstances under which it was written. It was not
too plainly written or coherent and seemed to imply that other letters
had preceded it. Morley begged for money. He was in “pitiful straits,”
he declared, compelled to live as no gentleman of birth and breeding
should live. As a matter of fact, the remnant of his resources, the
little cash left from the Captain's fortune which he had taken with him
had gone and he was earning a precarious living by playing the violin in
a second-rate orchestra. “For poor dead Ardelia's sake,” he wrote, “and
for the sake of little Francis, your grandchild, I ask you to extend
the financial help which I, as your heir-in-law, might demand. You may
consider that I have wronged you, but, as you should know and must know,
the wrong was unintentional and due solely to the sudden collapse of
the worthless American investments which the scoundrelly Yankee brokers
inveigled me into making.”
If the money was sent at once, he added, it might reach him in time to
prevent his yielding to despondency and committing suicide.
“Suicide! HE commit suicide!” sniffed Hephzy when she read me the
letter. “He thinks too much of his miserable self ever to hurt it. But,
oh dear! I wish Pa had told me of this letter instead of hidin' it away.
I might have sent somethin', not to him, but to poor, motherless Little
Frank.”
She had tried; that is, she had written to the French address, but
her letter had been returned. Morley and the child of whom this letter
furnished the only information were no longer in that locality. Hephzy
had talked of “Little Frank” and dreamed about him at intervals ever
since. He had come to be a reality to her, and she even cut a child's
picture from a magazine and fastened it to the wall of her room beneath
the engraving of Westminster Abbey, because there was something about
the child in the picture which reminded her of “Little Frank” as he
looked in her dreams.
She and I had lived together ever since, I continuing to turn out, each
with less enthusiasm and more labor, my stories of persons and places of
which, as Campbell said but too truly, I knew nothing whatever. Finally
I had reached my determination to write no more “slush,” profitable
though it might be. I invited Jim to visit me; he had come and the
conversation at the boathouse and his remarks at the bedroom door were
all the satisfaction that visit had brought me so far.
I sat there in my study, going over all this, not so fully as I have
set it down here, but fully nevertheless, and the possibility of
finding even a glimmer of interest or a hint of fictional foundation in
Hephzibah or her life or mine was as remote at the end of my thinking as
it had been at the beginning. There might be a story there, or a part of
a story, but I could not write it. The real trouble was that I could not
write anything. With which, conclusion, exactly what I started with, I
blew out the lamp and went upstairs to bed.
Next morning Jim and I went for another sail from which we did not
return until nearly dinner-time. During that whole forenoon he did not
mention the promised “prescription,” although I offered him plenty of
opportunities and threw out various hints by way of bait.
He ignored the bait altogether and, though he talked a great deal and
asked a good many questions, both talk and questions had no bearing on
the all-important problem which had been my real reason for inviting
him to Bayport. He questioned me again concerning my way of spending my
time, about my savings, how much money I had put by, and the like, but
I was not particularly interested in these matters and they were not his
business, to put it plainly. At least, I could not see that they were.
I answered him as briefly as possible and, I am afraid, behaved rather
boorishly to one, who next to Hephzy, was perhaps the best friend I had
in the world. His apparent lack of interest hurt and disappointed me
and I did not care if he knew it. My impatience must have been apparent
enough, but if so it did not trouble him; he chatted and laughed and
told stories all the way from the landing to the house and announced to
Hephzy, who had stayed at home from church in order to prepare and
cook clam chowder and chicken pie and a “Queen pudding,” that he had an
appetite like a starved shark.
When, at last, that appetite was satisfied, he and I adjourned to the
sitting-room for a farewell smoke. His train left at three-thirty and
it lacked but an hour of that time. He had worn my suit, the one which
Hephzibah had laid out for him the day before, but had changed to his
own again and packed his bag before dinner.
We camped in the wing chairs and he lighted his cigar. Then, to my
astonishment, he rose and shut the door.
“What did you do that for?” I asked.
He came back to his chair.
“Because I'm going to talk to you like a Dutch uncle,” he replied, “and
I don't want anyone, not even a Cape Cod cousin, butting in. Kent, I
told you that before I went I was going to prescribe for you, didn't I?
Well, I'm going to do it now. Are you ready for the prescription?”
“I have been ready for it for some time,” I retorted. “I began to think
you had forgotten it altogether.”
“I hadn't. But I wanted it to be the last word you should hear from me
and I didn't want to give you time to think up a lot of fool objections
to spring on me before I left. Look here, I'm your doctor now; do you
understand? You called me in as a specialist and what I say goes. Is
that understood?”
“I hear you.”
“You've got to do more than hear me. You've got to do what I tell you.
I know what ails you. You've buried yourself in the mud down here. Wake
up, you clam! Come out of your shell. Stir around. Stop thinking about
yourself and think of something worth while.”
“Dear! dear! hark to the voice of the oracle. And what is the something
worth while I am to think about; you?”
“Yes, by George! me! Me and the dear public! Here are thirty-five
thousand seekers after the--the higher literature, panting open-mouthed
for another Knowles classic. And you sit back here and cover yourself
with sand and seaweed and say you won't give it to them.”
“You're wrong. I say I can't.”
“You will, though.”
“I won't. You can bet high on that.”
“You will, and I'll bet higher. YOU write no more stories! You! Why,
confound you, you couldn't help it if you tried. You needn't write
another 'Black Brig' unless you want to. You needn't--you mustn't write
anything UNTIL you want to. But, by George! you'll get up and open your
eyes and stir around, and keep stirring until the time comes when you've
found something or someone you DO want to write about. THEN you'll
write; you will, for I know you. It may turn out to be what you call
'slush,' or it may not, but you'll write it, mark my words.”
He was serious now, serious enough even to suit me. But what he had said
did not suit me.
“Don't talk nonsense, Jim,” I said. “Don't you suppose I have thought--”
“Thought! that's just it; you do nothing but think. Stop thinking.
Stop being a quahaug--a dead one, anyway. Drop the whole business, drop
Bayport, drop America, if you like. Get up, clear out, go to China, go
to Europe, go to--Well, never mind, but go somewhere. Go somewhere and
forget it. Travel, take a long trip, start for one place and, if you
change your mind before you get there, go somewhere else. It doesn't
make much difference where, so that you go, and see different things.
I'm talking now, Kent Knowles, and it isn't altogether because it pays
us to publish your books, either. You drop Bayport and drop writing. Go
out and pick up and go. Stay six months, stay a year, stay two years,
but keep alive and meet people and give what you flatter yourself is
a brain house-cleaning. Confound you, you've kept it shut like one of
these best front parlors down here. Open the windows and air out. Let
the outside light in. An idea may come with it; it is barely possible,
even to you!”
He was out of breath by this time. I was in a somewhat similar condition
for his tirade had taken mine away. However, I managed to express my
feelings.
“Humph!” I grunted. “And so this is your wonderful prescription. I am to
travel, am I?”
“You are. You can afford it, and I'll see that you do.”
“And just what port would you recommend?”
“I don't care, I tell you, except that it ought to be a long way off.
I'm not joking, Kent; this is straight. A good long jaunt around the
world would do you a barrel of good. Don't stop to think about it, just
start, that's all. Will you?”
I laughed. The idea of my starting on a pleasure trip was ridiculous. If
ever there was a home-loving and home-staying person it was I. The bare
thought of leaving my comfort and my books and Hephzy made me shudder. I
hadn't the least desire to see other countries and meet other people. I
hated sleeping cars and railway trains and traveling acquaintances. So I
laughed.
“Sorry, Jim,” I said, “but I'm afraid I can't take your prescription.”
“Why not?”
“For one reason because I don't want to.”
“That's no reason at all. It doesn't make any difference what you want.
Anything else?”
“Yes. I would no more wander about creation all alone than--”
“Take someone with you.”
“Who? Will you go, yourself?”
He shook his head.
“I wish I could,” he said, and I think he meant it. “I'd like nothing
better. I'D keep you alive, you can bet on that. But I can't leave the
literature works just now. I'll do my best to find someone who will,
though. I know a lot of good fellows who travel--”
I held up my hand. “That's enough,” I interrupted. “They can't travel
with me. They wouldn't be good fellows long if they did.”
He struck the chair arm with his fist.
“You're as near impossible as you can be, aren't you,” he exclaimed.
“Never mind; you're going to do as I tell you. I never gave you bad
advice yet, now did I?”
“No--o. No, but--”
“I'm not giving it to you now. You'll go and you'll go in a hurry. I'll
give you a week to think the idea over. At the end of that time if I
don't hear from you I'll be down here again, and I'll worry you every
minute until you'll go anywhere to get rid of me. Kent, you must do it.
You aren't written out, as you call it, but you are rusting out, fast.
If you don't get away and polish up you'll never do a thing worth while.
You'll be another what's-his-name--Ase Tidditt; that's what you'll be. I
can see it coming on. You're ossifying; you're narrowing; you're--”
I broke in here. I didn't like to be called narrow and I did not like
to be paired with Asaph Tidditt, although our venerable town clerk is a
good citizen and all right, in his way. But I had flattered myself that
way was not mine.
“Stop it, Jim!” I ordered. “Don't blow off any more steam in this
ridiculous fashion. If this is all you have to say to me, you may as
well stop.”
“Stop! I've only begun. I'll stop when you start, and not before. Will
you go?”
“I can't, Jim. You know I can't.”
“I know you can and I know you're going to. There!” rising and laying a
hand on my shoulder, “it is time for ME to be starting. Kent, old man, I
want you to promise me that you will do as I tell you. Will you?”
“I can't, Jim. I would if I could, but--”
“Will you promise me to think the idea over? Think it over carefully;
don't think of anything else for the rest of the week? Will you promise
me to do that?”
I hesitated. I was perfectly sure that all my thinking would but
strengthen my determination to remain at home, but I did not like to
appear too stubborn.
“Why, yes, Jim,” I said, doubtfully, “I promise so much, if that is any
satisfaction to you.”
“All right. I'll give you until Friday to make up your mind. If I don't
hear from you by that time I shall take it for granted that you have
made it up in the wrong way and I'll be here on Saturday. I'll keep the
process up week in and week out until you give in. That's MY promise.
Come on. We must be moving.”
He said good-by to Hephzy and we walked together to the station. His
last words as we shook hands by the car steps were: “Remember--think.
But don't you dare think of anything else.” My answer was a dubious
shake of the head. Then the train pulled out.
I believe that afternoon and evening to have been the “bluest” of all my
blue periods, and I had had some blue ones prior to Jim's visit. I was
dreadfully disappointed. Of course I should have realized that no advice
or “prescription” could help me. As Campbell had said, “It was up to
me;” I must help myself; but I had been trying to help myself for months
and I had not succeeded. I had--foolishly, I admit--relied upon him to
give me a new idea, a fresh inspiration, and he had not done it. I was
disappointed and more discouraged than ever.
My state of mind may seem ridiculous. Perhaps it was. I was in good
health, not very old--except in my feelings--and my stories, even the
“Black Brig,” had not been failures, by any means. But I am sure that
every man or woman who writes, or paints, or does creative work of any
kind, will understand and sympathize with me. I had “gone stale,” that
is the technical name for my disease, and to “go stale” is no joke. If
you doubt it ask the writer or painter of your acquaintance. Ask him if
he ever has felt that he could write or paint no more, and then ask
him how he liked the feeling. The fact that he has written or painted a
great deal since has no bearing on the matter. “Staleness” is purely a
mental ailment, and the confident assurance of would-be doctors that its
attacks are seldom fatal doesn't help the sufferer at the time. He knows
he is dead, and that is no better, then, than being dead in earnest.
I knew I was dead, so far as my writing was concerned, and the advice
to go away and bury myself in a strange country did not appeal to me. It
might be true that I was already buried in Bayport, but that was my
home cemetery, at all events. The more I thought of Jim Campbell's
prescription the less I felt like taking it.
However, I kept on with the thinking; I had promised to do that. On
Wednesday came a postcard from Jim, himself, demanding information.
“When and where are you going?” he wrote. “Wire answer.” I did not wire
answer. I was not going anywhere.
I thrust the card into my pocket and, turning away from the frame of
letter boxes, faced Captain Cyrus Whittaker, who, like myself, had come
to Simmons's for his mail. He greeted me cordially.
“Hello, Kent,” he hailed. “How are you?”
“About the same as usual, Captain,” I answered, shortly.
“That's pretty fair, by the looks. You don't look too happy, though,
come to notice it. What's the matter; got bad news?”
“No. I haven't any news, good or bad.”
“That so? Then I'll give you some. Phoebe and I are going to start for
California to-morrow.”
“You are? To California? Why?”
“Oh, just for instance, that's all. Time's come when I have to go
somewhere, and the Yosemite and the big trees look good to me. It's this
way, Kent; I like Bayport, you know that. Nobody's more in love with
this old town than I am; it's my home and I mean to live and die here,
if I have luck. But it don't do for me to stay here all the time. If I
do I begin to be no good, like a strawberry plant that's been kept in
one place too long and has quit bearin.' The only thing to do with that
plant is to transplant it and let it get nourishment in a new spot. Then
you can move it back by and by and it's all right. Same way with me.
Every once in a while I have to be transplanted so's to freshen up. My
brains need somethin' besides post-office talk and sewin'-circle gossip
to keep them from shrivelin'. I was commencin' to feel the shrivel,
so it's California for Phoebe and me. Better come along, Kent. You're
beginnin' to shrivel a little, ain't you?”
Was it as apparent as all that? I was indignant.
“Do I look it?” I demanded.
“No--o, but I ain't sure that you don't act it. No offence, you
understand. Just a little ground bait to coax you to come on the
California cruise along with Phoebe and me, that's all.”
It was not likely that I should accept. Two are company and three a
crowd, and if ever two were company Captain Cy and his wife were those
two. I thanked him and declined, but I asked a question.
“You believe in travel as a restorative, you do?” I asked.
“Hey? I sartin do. Change your course once in awhile, same as you change
your clothes. Wearin' the same suit and cruisin' in the same puddle all
the time ain't healthy. You're too apt to get sick of the clothes and
puddle both.”
“But you don't believe in traveling alone, do you?”
“No,” emphatically, “I don't, generally speakin.' If you go off by
yourself you're too likely to keep thinkin' ABOUT yourself. Take
somebody with you; somebody you're used to and know well and like,
though. Travelin' with strangers is a little mite worse than travelin'
alone. You want to be mighty sure of your shipmate.”
I walked home. Hephzibah was in the sitting-room, reading and knitting
a stocking, a stocking for me. She did not need to use her eyes for the
knitting; I am quite sure she could have knit in her sleep.
“Hello, Hosy,” she said, “been up to the office, have you? Any mail?”
“Nothing much. Humph! Still reading that Raymond and Whitcomb circular?”
“No, not that one. This is one I got last year. I've been sittin' here
plannin' out just where I'd go and what I'd see if I could. It's the
next best thing to really goin'.”
I looked at her. All at once a new idea began to crystallize in my mind.
It was a curious idea, a ridiculous idea, and yet--and yet it seemed--
“Hephzy,” said I, suddenly, “would you really like to go abroad?”
“WOULD I? Hosy, how you talk! You know I've been crazy to go ever since
I was a little girl. I don't know what makes me so. Perhaps it's the
salt water in my blood. All our folks were sailors and ship captains.
They went everywhere. I presume likely it takes more than one generation
to kill off that sort of thing.”
“And you really want to go?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why haven't you gone? You could afford to take a moderate-priced
tour.”
Hephzy laughed over her knitting.
“I guess,” she said, “I haven't gone for the reason you haven't, Hosy.
You could afford, it, too--you know you could. But how could I go and
leave you? Why, I shouldn't sleep a minute wonderin' if you were wearin'
clothes without holes in 'em and if you changed your flannels when the
weather changed and ate what you ought to, and all that. You've been
so--so sort of dependent on me and I've been so used to takin' care of
you that I don't believe either of us would be happy anywhere without
the other. I know certain sure _I_ shouldn't.”
I did not answer immediately. The idea, the amazing, ridiculous
idea which had burst upon me suddenly began to lose something of its
absurdity. Somehow it began to look like the answer to my riddle. I
realized that my main objection to the Campbell prescription had been
that I must take it alone or with strangers. And now--
“Hephzy,” I demanded, “would you go away--on a trip abroad--with me?”
She put down the knitting.
“Hosy Knowles!” she exclaimed. “WHAT are you talkin' about?”
“But would you?”
“I presume likely I would, if I had the chance; but it isn't likely
that--where are you goin'?”
I did not answer. I hurried out of the sitting-room and out of the
house.
When I returned I found her still knitting. The circular lay on the
floor at her feet. She regarded me anxiously.
“Hosy,” she demanded, “where--”
I interrupted. “Hephzy,” said I, “I have been to the station to send a
telegram.”
“A telegram? A TELEGRAM! For mercy sakes, who's dead?”
Telegrams in Bayport usually mean death or desperate illness. I laughed.
“No one is dead, Hephzy,” I replied. “In fact it is barely possible that
someone is coming to life. I telegraphed Mr. Campbell to engage passage
for you and me on some steamer leaving for Europe next week.”
Hephzibah turned pale. The partially knitted sock dropped beside the
circular.
“Why--why--what--?” she gasped.
“On a steamer leaving next week,” I repeated. “You want to travel,
Hephzy. Jim says I must. So we'll travel together.”
She did not believe I meant it, of course, and it took a long time to
convince her. But when at last she began to believe--at least to the
extent of believing that I had sent the telegram--her next remark was
characteristic.
“But I--I can't go, Hosy,” declared Hephzibah. “I CAN'T. Who--who would
take care of the cat and the hens?”