young promising life like his and wreck it completely like that! To see
Elijah walking about with a trained nurse and those clippings at his age
is surely one of the most touching sights as this town'll ever see.
'Liza Em'ly says she offered a thousand dollars to any newspaper as
would print one good notice, 'cause the doctors say just one good notice
might turn the whole tide of his brain. But the newspapers say if they
printed one good notice of such a play, the Pure Food Commission would
have 'em up for libel within a week, and they just don't dare risk it.
This last doctor says he can't blame Elijah for going mad, 'cause he
knows a little about the stage through being in love with a actress
once, and he says he wasn't treated fair. He says play-writing is not
like any other kind of writing, and Elijah wasn't prepared for the
great difference. Seems all words on the stage mean something they don't
mean in the dictionary, and that makes it very hard for a mere ordinary
person to know what they're saying if they say anything a _tall_. And
then, too, Elijah never grasped that the main thing is to keep the
gallery laughing, even if the two-dollar people have tears running down
their cheeks. And you can't write for the stage nowadays without you
keep folks laughing the whole time. Elijah never thought about the
laughing, because his play was a tragedy like _Hamlet_, only with Hamlet
left out. For the lady is dead in the play, and her ghost is all that's
left of her. But 'Liza Em'ly told me to-day as his trouble came right in
the start, for the people who look plays over no sooner looked Elijah's
over before they took hold of it and fixed it. And they kept on fixing
it till it was _Hamlet_ with nobody but Hamlet left in. And then, so as
to manage the laughs, they dressed everybody like chickens if they
turned back-to. So that while the audience was weeping, if any one on
the stage turned 'round, they went off into shrieks of laughter. 'Liza
Em'ly says they never told Elijah about the chicken feathers, and the
opening night was the first he knew about that little game, for he was
laid up for ever so long before then. He got all used up in the first
part of the rehearsals; for it seems you can only have a theater to
rehearse in at times when even the people who sweep it don't feel to be
sweeping. And so they always rehearse from one to six in the morning.
And Elijah naturally wasn't used to that. But they'd had trouble even
before then; for right from the start there was a pretty how-d'ye-do
over the plot. Seems Elijah wanted his own plot and his own people in
his own play, and they had a awful time getting it through his head as
it's honor enough to have your own play, and it's only unreasonable to
stick out for your own plot and your own people too. 'Liza Em'ly says
they had a awful time with him over it all, and there was a time when he
felt so bad over giving up his plot and his people that any one ought
to have seen right there as he'd never be strong enough to stand all the
rest of what was surely coming. 'Liza Em'ly didn't tell me the whole of
the rest what come, but Mr. Kimball told me that what was one great
strain on Elijah, right through to the hour he begun to scream, was that
the leading lady fell in love with him and used to have him up at all
hours to fix up her part, and then kiss him. And Elijah didn't want to
fix up her part, and he hated to be kissed. But they told him the part
must be fixed up to suit her, and that the kisses didn't matter, because
they was only little things after all.
"He was wading along through the mire as best he could, when all of a
sudden it come out as she had one husband as she'd completely overlooked
and never divorced. He turned up most unexpectedly and come at Elijah
about the kisses. Then they told Elijah he couldn't do a better thing by
his play than to let the man shoot him two or three times in places as
would let him be carried pale and white to a box for the opening night;
and then, between the last two acts, marry the lady and let it be in all
the morning papers. You can maybe think, Mrs. Lathrop, how such a idea
would come to the man as is to be shot. But, oh, my, they didn't make
nothing of Elijah's feelings in the matter. Nothing a _tall_. They just
set right to work and called a meeting of the play manager and the stage
manager and the leading lady's manager and Elijah's manager, and the man
who really does the managing. They all got together, and they drew up a
diagram as to where Elijah was to be hit, and a contract for him and the
leading lady to sign as they wouldn't marry anybody else in the
meantime. And if it hadn't been for 'Liza Em'ly, the deal, as they
called it, would have gone straight through. For Elijah was so dead beat
by this time that about all he was fit for was to sit on a electric
battery with a ice bag on his head, and look up words in a stage
dictionary and then cross 'em out of his play."
"Oh, I--" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"That's just what 'Liza Em'ly said she said," rejoined Susan Clegg. "I
tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, 'Liza Em'ly is no fool since her book's gone
into the thirty-seventh edition, and that's a fact. She told me to-day
as when she realized the man she loved--for 'Liza Em'ly really loves
Elijah; any one can see that just by looking at the trained nurse she's
got him--was being murdered alive, she went straight up and took a hand
in the matter herself. I guess she had a pretty hard time, for the
leading lady wouldn't hear to changing any of what they call the
routing, and said if Elijah wasn't shot and married according to the
signed agreement, she wouldn't play. And when a leading lady won't play,
then is when you find out what Shakespeare really did write for,
according to 'Liza Em'ly. For a little they was all running this way and
that way, just beside themselves, with the leading lady in the
Adirondacks and two detectives watching her husband. And the man as was
painting the scenery took a overdose of chloral and went off with all
his ideas in his head, and that unexpected trouble brought 'em all
together again. The husband came down off his high horse and said he'd
take five per cent, of the net--Don't ask me what that means, for Mr.
Dill don't know either--and the littlest chorus girl and go to Europe.
And he said, too, as he'd sign a paper first releasing Elijah from all
claim on account of his wife. So they all signed, and he sailed. He was
clear out to sea before they discovered as he had another wife as he'd
never divorced, so the leading lady could of married Elijah, after all.
Well, that was a pretty mess, with a husband as had no claim on nobody
gone off to Europe with five percent of the net. The stage manager and
Elijah's manager took the _Mauretania_ and started right after him, for
when it comes to five per cent. on any kind of stage thing, Mr. Kimball
says, any monkeying counts up so quick that even hiring a yacht is
nothing if you want to catch that five per cent. in time. So they was
off, one in the captain's room and the other in the bridal suite, while
'Liza Em'ly was down in Savannah getting local color to patch up the
scenery, leaving Elijah totally unprotected on his battery with his
ideas.
"But Elijah wasn't to be left in peace even now. Seems they was having a
investigation into the poor quality of the electricity in the city, and
a newspaper opened a referendum and made 'em double the power. The
company was so mad, they didn't give no warning to a soul, but just slid
up the needle from 100 to 200 right then and there; and one of the
results was they blew Elijah nearly through the ceiling. Nothing in the
world but the ice bag saved him from having his skull caved in, and the
specialist thinks he's got a concussion in his sinus right now. Poor
Elijah!"
"But--?" Mrs. Lathrop queried.
"They took him to the hospital, and from then on to the opening night
he had nothing to do with his own play. The leading lady married the
stage manager till she got the stage to suit her, and then she married
the man who really does the managing until she got everything else to
suit her. Next, without letting any of the others know, she married
Elijah's manager secretly, so that when poor Elijah in the hospital
thought he was looking at his manager, he was really nursing a viper in
his bosom. When 'Liza Em'ly came back with her local color, they told
her they didn't want it because they was going to have the camping-out
scene in the parlor, and play the people all liked a joke. When she went
to a lawyer to protest, the lawyer looked through all Elijah's contracts
and said Elijah had never stipulated as the camping-out scene should be
in the woods. So 'Liza Em'ly paid him fifty dollars and come away a good
deal wiser than she went.
"Then come the opening night, and Mr. Kimball says he shall never forget
that opening night as long as he lives. You know he bought himself one
of those hats as when you sit on 'em just gets a better shape, and then
he went up to see his own nephew's own play. Seems he sat on his hat in
Elijah's own box, but he says Elijah was looking very bad even before
the curtain went up. Seems Elijah didn't expect much, but he did have
just a little hope that here and there in spots he'd see some of his own
play. But the hope was very faint. After the curtain went up, it kept
getting fainter. Of course Elijah meant it for a tragedy and called it
_Millicent_; and seeing the title changed to _Milly Tilly_ was a hard
blow to him right in the beginning. Seems the woman poisoned herself
because she was unhappy, and after she's dead, she remembers there was
some poison left in the bottle, and so she wants to warn the family. It
was a very nice plot, Polly White thinks, and Elijah was wild over it
'cause there's never been a plot used like it. But of course his idea
was as it should be took seriously. Do you wonder then, Mrs. Lathrop,
that the first time in the play when one of the play actors turned
round he nearly died? Mr. Kimball says he nearly died himself. He says
he never saw anything so funny as those chicken backs in all his life.
He says people was just laying any way and every way in their seats,
wailing to stop, so they could stop too. He says he was laughing fit to
kill himself when all of a sudden he looked up to see Elijah, and he
says nothing ever give him such a chill as Elijah's then-and-there
expression. Seems Elijah was just staring at the leading lady as was
flapping her wings and playing crow, while the gallery was pounding and
yelling like mad. And then Elijah suddenly shot out of the box and round
behind the scenes and vanished completely."
Mrs. Lathrop gasped and lifted her hands, but no word issued from
between her lips.
"Well, of course we know now what happened, but nobody did then. Nobody
was expecting him on the stage, before the scenes or behind 'em, and Mr.
Kimball didn't know where he was gone. So it was the end of the piece
before he was really missed. Then they begun to hunt, and no Elijah high
or low nowhere. You know how the papers was full of it, and there would
have been more about it, only Mr. Kimball and 'Liza Em'ly supposed it
was just advertising. Even 'Liza Em'ly thought it was the wrong kind of
advertising and that the leading lady had seen Elijah's face and thought
it was better to kidnap him until the play got settled down her way.
Seems if you can keep a play going any kind of a way for a little while,
you can't never change it afterwards, no matter what you've put in it.
It's all most remarkable business, a play is. But anyway, wherever he
was, they all moved on to the next town anyhow. 'Liza Em'ly and Mr.
Kimball went right with them to protect Elijah's interest, as it was
plain to be seen from where Elijah's manager was sleeping, where his
interest was now. And as soon as they begun to unload the scenery, the
afternoon of that day, whatever do you suppose? There was Elijah, just
where he'd fell when he tripped over the first scene. They'd carted him
off in the triangle that unfolds into a grand piano, right along to the
baggage-car, where they'd piled the whole of his play on top of him,
ending up even with the chicken feathers."
"Great heav--!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"So he said," interrupted Miss Clegg. "But there was no help for it.
Seems while you're playing Act III. of a play, Act II. is getting packed
up, and Act I. is already in the train. So Elijah was all packed and
pretty flat before they even missed him, and most crazy before he was
found. Well, and so to try and soothe him they took him to the theater
that night again, and the leading lady, when she looked at him and saw
how awful weak he looked, sent him in a new idea she'd got, which was to
let her have a poster done of him packed up in the scenery. Then every
night he could sit in a box and at a certain sign give a yell and shoot
out. Then she'd make a speech about his having been in the scenery car
all the night before, and being naturally kind of excited. She said it
would make the play draw like mad. Well, Elijah wouldn't consent to that
a _tall_. And then again they worked with him and talked to him and
called him a fool till he really begun to get awfully scared. They had
in all the managers together, and they wouldn't let him consult any one.
Seems they just all sat looking at his forehead just over his nose where
you hypnotize people, and he kept getting more and more scared. Seems he
told his nurse, during what they call a lucid interval, that you can
talk all you please about will power--and it may be true of people in
general--but no rule ever made on earth can possibly apply to any one
who has just written a play. There's something about writing a play as
takes all the marrow out of your bones and the blood out of your body.
And he says he wasn't no more responsible when he signed that contract
to go mad in a box every evening and at least one matinee every week
than a grasshopper. He says his one and only thought by that time was
to get away from 'em and make a break to where he'd never hear about his
play again. But after he'd signed, they never let him out of sight. They
locked him up in a dressing-room with the leading lady's pet mouse until
after the performance, and then they took him and introduced him to two
very big managers as was engaged to do nothing except manage him nights
in the box.
"Well, you know the rest, Mrs. Lathrop. He really did go mad, then, and
we've got him here now helpless, getting rich almost as fast as 'Liza
Em'ly, and crazy as a loon. I declare, it's one of the saddest cases I
ever see. I don't know whatever can be done. They say as fast as he gets
sane, the play'll surely drive him crazy again, so I don't see what
'Liza Em'ly will do. She set with me the whole afternoon and talked very
nicely about it all. To see her here, you'd never think she could act
the way Mrs. Macy and Mrs. Fisher tell about. I can see she's got a
little airy, and she says she misses her maid and her secretary more
than she ever tells the minister's family; but on the whole I like her
very much, and her devotion to Elijah is most beautiful. She says he's
the one love of her life, and she shall marry him if ever he gets sense
enough to know what he's doing. If he doesn't, she says she shall take a
yacht and sail with him and write books until he dies. She says they can
land once in a while to get their provisions and their royalties. But
she says the only possible salvation for Elijah, as things are now, will
be to stay where he never sees a car to remind him of scenery, or a
house to remind him of a stage, for years and years to come. I asked her
what she _really_ thought of his play, and she said she thought the
leading lady was just right and very clever, only Elijah was too
sensitive a nature to understand little artistic touches like the
chicken feathers. She says folks are too tired nowadays to be bothered
to laugh. They want to be made to laugh without even thinking. She says
Elijah is a earnest nature as likes to work his laughs out very
carefully and conscientious; but the leading lady understands getting
the same effect, only a million times quicker, with chicken feathers and
divorces. 'Liza Em'ly says the leading lady is very fair according to
her own idea of fairness. She didn't have no money to put in the play,
so she agreed to put in four divorces and one scandal as her part of the
stock. Now the play's only been on a month, and she's paid up everything
except one divorce and the scandal; and she's done so well they're
trying to work up some scheme to let her pay both those off at the same
time. The play is going fine. They print columns about Elijah and his
madness, and the whole company is learning to crow together at the end
of the second act. Every night they take out a little of what Elijah
wrote, and the main manager says that there'll soon be nothing of Elijah
left in except the ghost, and the ghost of the bottle, and the agreement
to pay Elijah his royalties. And according to the main manager's views,
that's being pretty fair and square with Elijah."
"Do you--?" queried Mrs. Lathrop.
"Well, I don't know," answered Miss Clegg, "I really d'n know what to
say. I'm kind of dumb did over both 'Liza Em'ly and Elijah, for you know
as well as I do, Mrs. Lathrop, that nobody ever looked for those kind of
things from them."
"Shall--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, if it ever comes where I can," responded Miss Clegg, "I shall like
to see it very much."
"Did--?" pressed Mrs. Lathrop.
"Oh, yes, I asked her," Susan admitted, "I asked her fair and square. I
says: ''Liza Em'ly, there's no use denying as you've used real people in
this community in your book, and now I want to know who is Deacon
Tooker?' She said Deacon Tooker was just the book itself. She seemed
more amused than there was any particular sense in; but I thought if
anything could give her a good laugh, it wasn't me would begrudge her.
There's this to be said for our young folks when they do get rich, Mrs.
Lathrop, and that is that they're nice about it, and it makes every one
feel kindly towards 'em. Every one feels kindly towards Jathrop, and
every one feels kindly towards 'Liza Em'ly, and as for poor, dear
Elijah--Well!"
The tone was expressive enough. Mrs. Lathrop shook her head sadly. Then
both were silent.
XII
SUSAN CLEGG'S DISAPPEARANCE
The "building-over" of Susan Clegg and her friend, Mrs. Lathrop, was
completed during the second week in December, and in less than
twenty-four hours they were once more established in their own
dwellings, surrounded by their own goods and chattels. For only the
briefest space, however, did Miss Clegg remain where she was put. Then
she hurried through the passageway afforded by the connecting pergola
and burst excitedly into her neighbor's brand new kitchen in the very
center of which sat Mrs. Lathrop in her old-gold-plush stationary
rocker, calmly surveying her domiciliary spick-and-spanness. On her lap
lay a just-opened letter; but for once the scrupulously observing Miss
Clegg failed to observe. She was too full of fresh trials.
"I d'n know whatever sins I committed in this world, Mrs. Lathrop," she
began, dropping into the nearest chair and facing her friend in an
upright, a little bent forward attitude that was clearly pugnacious,
"that I should have these things visited upon me. The Lord knows, just
the same as you do, as I've always been a good and pure woman, loving my
neighbors like myself and doing all my Christian duties as I was give to
see 'em. When I was tore up from my home by the roots and cast wilted
and faded upon Gran'ma Mullins, where the infant memories of Hiram
certainly wasn't calculated to do no reviving, I made the best of it. I
made the best of Lucy and a dog with a cold nose, too; and I bore up
with courage and no complaint under Mrs. Allen and her Persian religion.
And I did it all to please you, Mrs. Lathrop, and your fool of a son,
Jathrop, whose money, it's my opinion, has acted on him in a most
injurious way. He never had much sense, as you yourself know, but now he
ain't got no sense a _tall_."
"I don't--" Mrs. Lathrop started gently to protest.
"Well, I do," rejoined Susan Clegg spiritedly; "and if you don't, you
ought to. Anyhow, I mean to tell you, if it's the last act of my life.
Anybody as has any sense a _tall_ must have seen that building over was
just a mite removed from building new; and what's new never did go with
what's old, and it never will. If we was to be built over, we ought to
have been all built over or let alone. Jathrop's built the houses over,
but he ain't built over the furnishings, and the built-over houses and
the not-built-over furniture and carpets and window shades and pots and
kettles and pans and china and linen and everything else don't agree and
just naturally can't and never can. They're fighting now like sixty, and
they'll go on fighting the longer they're kept together. My house was
restful and peaceful before, but now it's like a circus with all the
wild animals let loose. And I can tell you this, Mrs. Lathrop; my things
is getting the worst of it. Why, before they went to storage at Mr.
Shores', they was in the best repair you ever see, and now it would make
your heart ache to look at 'em. They've aged a century at least during
the summer. They're wrinkled and halt and lame and blind, and the new
paper on the walls and the new polish on the floors and the new paint on
the woodwork is making 'em look sicker and sicker every minute. If
there's a society for the prevention of cruelty to furniture and other
household goods, it ought to put Jathrop Lathrop in prison. I feel so
sorry for those poor tables and chairs and bedsteads and all the rest of
'em as I could cry my eyes out this very minute. There's one walnut,
haircloth sofa as Father laid on before he was took to his bed as is
pitiful to behold. It looks sicker than Father did even in his last
hours, and I wouldn't be surprised any minute to see it just turn over
all of itself and give up the ghost. And everything has on such a
reproachful look it's more than human nature can bear to face it. If I'd
ever thought as being built over would of come to this, I'd of gone on
my knees and worked 'em to the bare bones before I'd of put up with it."
Mrs. Lathrop continued to rock in silence.
"Still, there's no cloud, however black, as hasn't got some silk in its
lining, and the silk in this is the clock as Father gave Mother, which
was supposed to be marble and wasn't. Much as I hated that clock, I
couldn't have borne to see its agonies when set on by the new fireplace
below, and the pink and gold wall paper behind, and the roses and cupids
in the cornish above. It must just of shriveled in shame instead of
going out in glorious flight, as it did when I set it flying at the end
of the bed-slat. Lord knows, though, Mrs. Lathrop, that's a small thing
to be thankful for; and it's the only thing. I haven't begun yet to tell
you all. And I don't intend to. There's a limit to my temper, and if I
once got started, there's no saying where I'd end. But there's one thing
more as I can't hold in, and it's the thing as was marked on the plans:
'But. Pan.' I never did understand why I should be give a separate room
to keep butter pans in, seeing as I ain't got no cow, let alone no
dairy. And even if I had, why I should keep my butter pans or my milk
pans either in a little alley-way between the kitchen and the
dining-room, just where the heat and smells could get at 'em from one
side and the flies from both, not to mention the added footsteps put on
me journeying from the stove to the dinner table. You can see for
yourself, Mrs. Lathrop, there's no sense in it, whatever. But I'd never
say a word about it, if that was all. But it ain't all. It's the
littlest part. For Jathrop's cruelty hasn't stopped with torturing the
furniture. It's clear he couldn't be satisfied till he fixed up a trap
as sooner or later would hit me square in the face and break my nose. At
both ends of his 'But. Pan.' he's had hung doors as swing, and springs
on 'em to make 'em swing hard and deadly. What either one of those
swinging doors might do to my features, let alone to the pudding or stew
I might be carrying, it isn't in mortal tongue to express. If I could
find one thing as was right in the whole house, I'd be fair and square
enough to overlook the others; but there ain't to my mind a single
solitary betterment. There's glass knobs on all the doors as will show
every finger mark, and will keep me busy wiping from dawn to dark. The
old brown knobs never showed nothing and didn't never have to be thought
of, let alone polished. It's always been my idea as a cupboard was a
place to shut things up in out of sight, and here if he hasn't gone and
put glass doors on the one in the corner of the dining room, so as every
one can see just what's meant to be hid. It's clear to be seen he's
crazy on the subject of glass, which I ain't and never have been. And I
don't like the way he's stinted things as is necessary and put all the
money in things as had better been left out. Necessities before
everything is my motto. What use, I'd like to know, is that cupid and
rose cornish? But he puts that there just to catch dust and leaves out
the whole of one parlor wall. If you'll believe me, Mrs. Lathrop,
there's not a hair or hide of a wall between my entry hall and my
parlor. Nothing but a pair of white posts as most people use on their
piazzas. How I'm ever going to keep that parlor dark I don't see; for
he's got glass over the front door and on both sides of it, and no
shutters to keep the sun out. He's built in both the kitchen stove and
the ice box, and for the life of me, I can't find no reasonable way of
taking the ashes out of the one or the water out of the other. The
builder says the ashes dump into a place in the cellar and the water
from the ice drains down a pipe underneath the house. But I don't like
neither plan. The drip from a ice box is a very cheering sound, I think,
and with hot ashes going down cellar where you can't see 'em, I'll be in
deadly fear of the house going up in smoke while I'm dreaming in my bed.
The long and the short of it is, Mrs. Lathrop, I feel as I have been
assaulted and robbed. Jathrop's took away my home and left me a house as
isn't a home to me and never can be. And as far as I can see, he's done
the same to you, which is ten thousand times worse, you being his
mother."
"I--" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking up the letter from her lap so that at
last it was forced upon Susan's observance.
"From him, I suppose," Miss Clegg instantly concluded, reaching for it.
"If he's got anything to say in his defence, I'm sure I'd delight to
read it. But no matter what he says, he can't undo to me what he's done
to me. I'll never feel the same towards Jathrop, your son or not your
son, Mrs. Lathrop, as long as I live."
Mrs. Lathrop passed the letter to Miss Clegg. Like all of Jathrop's
letters, it was brief and to the point. He announced that he would spend
Christmas with his mother in her rebuilt home and would bring with him a
friend as his guest. Susan read it over twice, turning the page each
time, evidently in hope of finding an enlightening postscript.
"Well, of all things!" she exclaimed, as she passed the letter back to
her friend. "Coming to see his work of destruction and going to bring
_her_ with him!"
"He don't--" Mrs. Lathrop endeavored to explain.