VII

"You are queer folk, you writers of fiction," she mused aloud. "No

monarch ordained of God takes himself more seriously; no actor lives

more absolutely in a world made out of his imagination."

She lighted her cigarette: "You often speak of your most 'important'

book,--as though any fiction ever written were important. Painters speak

of their most important pictures; sculptors, composers, creative

creatures of every species employ the adjective. And it is all very

silly. Facts only can be characterised as important; figments of the

creative imagination are as unimportant----" she blew a dainty ring of

smoke toward the crystal globe--"as that! '_Tout ce qu'ont fait les

hommes, les hommes peuvent le detruire. Il n'y a de caracteres

ineffacables que ceux qu' imprime la nature._' There has never been but

one important author."

I said smilingly: "To quote the gentleman you think important enough to

quote, Athalie, '_Tout est bien sortant des mains de l'Auteur des

choses: tout degenere entre les mains de l'homme_.'"

Said the novelist simply: "Imagination alone makes facts important.

'_Cette superbe puissance, ennemie de la raison!_'"

"O Athalie," whispered Duane, "night-blooming, exquisite blossom of the

arid municipal desert, recount for us these facts which you possess and

which, in your delightful opinion, are stranger than fiction, and more

important."

And Athalie, choosing another sweetmeat, looked at us until it had

dissolved in her fragrant mouth. Then she spoke very gravely, while her

dark eyes laughed at us:

* * * * *

When young Lord Willowmere's fiancee ran away from him and married

Delancy Jones, that bereaved nobleman experienced a certain portion of

the universal shock which this social seismic disturbance spread far and

wide over two hemispheres.

That such a girl should marry beneath her naturally disgusted everybody.

So both Jones and his wife were properly damned.

England read its morning paper, shrugged its derision, and remarked that

nobody ought to be surprised at anything that happened in the States.

"The States" swallowed the rebuke and squirmed.

Now, among the sturdy yeomanry, gentry, and nobility of those same

British and impressive Isles there was an earnest gentleman whose ample

waist and means and scholarly tastes inclined him to a sedentary life of

research. The study of human nature in its various native and exotic

phases had for forty years obsessed his insular intellect. Philologist,

anthropologist, calm philosopher, and benignant observer, this

gentleman, who had never visited the United States, determined to do so

now. For, he reasoned--and very properly--a country where such a thing

could happen to a British nobleman and a Peer of the Realm must be worth

exploring, and its curious inhabitants merited, perhaps, the

impersonally judicial inspection of an F. R. B. A. whose gigantic work

on the folk manners of the world had now reached its twentieth volume,

without as yet including the United States. So he determined to devote

several chapters in the forthcoming and twenty-first volume to the

recent colonies of Great Britain.

Now, when the Duke of Pillchester concluded to do anything, that thing

was invariably and thoroughly done. And so, before it entirely realised

the honour in store for it, the United States was buttoning its collar,

tying its white tie, and rushing down stairs to open its front door to

the Duke of Pillchester, the Duchess of Pillchester, and the Lady Alene

Innesly, their youthful and ornamental daughter.

For a number of months after its arrival, the Ducal party inspected the

Yankee continent through a lens made for purposes of scientific

investigation only. The massed wealth of the nation met their Graces in

solid divisions of social worth. The shock was mutual.

Then the massed poverty of the continent was exhibited, leaving the

poverty indifferent and slightly bored, and the Ducal party taking

notes.

It was his Grace's determination to study the folk-ways of Americans;

and what the Duke wished the Duchess dutifully desired. The Lady Alene

Innesly, however, was dragged most reluctantly from function to

function, from palace to purlieu, from theatre to cathedral, from Coney

Island to Newport. She was "havin' a rotten time."

All day long she had nothing to look at but an overdressed and alien

race whose voices distressed her; day after day she had nothing to say

except, "How d'y do," and "Mother, shall we have tea?" Week after week

she had nothing to think of except the bare, unkempt ugliness of the

cities she saw; the raw waste and sordid uglification of what once had

been matchless natural resources; dirty rivers, ruined woodlands, flimsy

buildings, ignorant architecture. The ostentatious and wretched hotels

depressed her; the poor railroads and bad manners disgusted her.

Listless, uninterested, Britishly enduring what she could not escape,

the little Lady Alene had made not the slightest effort to mitigate the

circumstances of her temporary fate. She was civilly incurious

concerning the people she met; their social customs, amusements,

pastimes, duties, various species of business or of leisure interested

her not a whit. All the men looked alike to her; all the women were

over-gowned, tiresomely pretty, and might learn one day how to behave

themselves after they had found out how to make their voices behave.

Meanwhile, requiring summer clothing--tweeds and shooting boots being

not what the climate seemed to require in July--she discovered with

languid surprise that for the first time in her limited life she was

well gowned. A few moments afterward another surprise faintly thrilled

her, for, chancing to glance at herself after a Yankee hairdresser had

finished her hair, she discovered to her astonishment that she was

pretty.

For several days this fact preyed upon her mind, alternately troubling

and fascinating her. There were several men at home who would certainly

sit up; Willowmere among others.

As for considering her newly discovered beauty any advantage in America,

the idea had not entered her mind. Why should it? All the men looked

alike; all wore sleek hair, hats on the backs of their heads, clothing

that fitted like a coster's trousers. She had absolutely no use for

them, and properly.

However, she continued to cultivate her beauty and to adorn it with

Yankee clothing and headgear befitting; which filled up considerable

time during the day, leaving her fewer empty hours to fill with tea and

three-volumed novels from the British Isles.

Now, it had never occurred to the Lady Alene Innesly to read anything

except British fact and fiction. She had never been sufficiently

interested even to open an American book. Why should she, as long as the

three props of her national literature endured intact--curates, tea, and

thoroughbred horses?

But there came a time during the ensuing winter when the last of the

three-volumed novels had been assimilated, the last serious tome

digested; and there stretched out before her a bookless prospect which

presently began to dismay her with the aridness of its perspective.

The catastrophe occurred while the Ducal party was investigating the

strange folk-customs of those Americans who gathered during the winter

in gigantic Florida hotels and lived there, uncomfortably lodged, vilely

fed, and shamelessly robbed, while third-rate orchestras play cabaret

music and enervating breezes stir the cabbage-palmettos till they rustle

like bath-room rubber plants.

It was a bad place and a bad time of year for a young and British girl

to be deprived of her native and soporific fiction; for the livelier and

Frenchier of British novelists were self-denied her, because somebody

had said they were not unlike Americans.

Now she was, in the uncouth vernacular of the country, up against it

for fair! She didn't know what it was called, but she realised how it

felt to be against something.

Three days she endured it, dozing in her room, half awake when the

sea-breeze rattled the Venetian blinds, or the niggers were noisy at

baseball.

On the fourth day she arose, went to the window, gazed disgustedly out

over the tawdry villas of Verbena Inlet, then rang for her maid.

"Bunn," she said, "here are three sovereigns. You will please buy for me

one specimen of every book on sale in the corridor of this hotel. And,

Bunn!----"

"Yes, my lady."

"What was it you were eating the other day?"

"Chewing-gum, my lady."

"Is it--agreeable?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Is it nourishing?"

"No, my lady. It is not intended to be eaten; it is to be chewed."

"Then one does not swallow it when one supposes it to be sufficiently

masticated?"

"No, my lady."

"What does one do with it?"

"Beg pardon, my lady--one spits it out."

"Ow," said the girl.