IV

Horace and Marcia were married early in February. The sensation

in academic circles both at Yale and Princeton was tremendous.

Horace Tarbox, who at fourteen had been played up in the Sunday

magazines sections of metropolitan newspapers, was throwing over

his career, his chance of being a world authority on American

philosophy, by marrying a chorus girl--they made Marcia a chorus

girl. But like all modern stories it was a four-and-a-half-day

wonder.

They took a flat in Harlem. After two weeks' search, during which

his idea of the value of academic knowledge faded unmercifully,

Horace took a position as clerk with a South American export

company--some one had told him that exporting was the coming

thing. Marcia was to stay in her show for a few months--anyway

until he got on his feet. He was getting a hundred and

twenty-five to start with, and though of course they told him it

was only a question of months until he would be earning double

that, Marcia refused even to consider giving up the hundred and

fifty a week that she was getting at the time.

"We'll call ourselves Head and Shoulders, dear," she said softly,

"and the shoulders'll have to keep shaking a little longer until

the old head gets started."

"I hate it," he objected gloomily.

"Well," she replied emphatically, "Your salary wouldn't keep us

in a tenement. Don't think I want to be public--I don't. I want

to be yours. But I'd be a half-wit to sit in one room and count

the sunflowers on the wall-paper while I waited for you. When you

pull down three hundred a month I'll quit."

And much as it hurt his pride, Horace had to admit that hers was

the wiser course.

March mellowed into April. May read a gorgeous riot act to the

parks and waters of Manhatten, and they were very happy. Horace,

who had no habits whatsoever--he had never had time to form

any--proved the most adaptable of husbands, and as Marcia

entirely lacked opinions on the subjects that engrossed him there

were very few jottings and bumping. Their minds moved in

different spheres. Marcia acted as practical factotum, and Horace

lived either in his old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of

triumphantly earthy worship and adoration of his wife. She was a

continual source of astonishment to him--the freshness and

originality of her mind, her dynamic, clear-headed energy, and

her unfailing good humor.

And Marcia's co-workers in the nine-o'clock show, whither she had

transferred her talents, were impressed with her tremendous

pride in her husband's mental powers. Horace they knew only as a

very slim, tight-lipped, and immature-looking young man, who

waited every night to take her home.

"Horace," said Marcia one evening when she met him as usual at

eleven, "you looked like a ghost standing there against the

street lights. You losing weight?"

He shook his head vaguely.

"I don't know. They raised me to a hundred and thirty-five

dollars to-day, and---"

"I don't care," said Marcia severely. "You're killing yourself

working at night. You read those big books on economy---"

"Economics," corrected Horace.

"Well, you read 'em every night long after I'm asleep. And you're

getting all stooped over like you were before we were married."

"But, Marcia, I've got to---"

"No, you haven't dear. I guess I'm running this shop for the

present, and I won't let my fella ruin his health and eyes. You

got to get some exercise."

"I do. Every morning I---"

"Oh, I know! But those dumb-bells of yours wouldn't give a

consumptive two degrees of fever. I mean real exercise. You've

got to join a gymnasium. 'Member you told me you were such a

trick gymnast once that they tried to get you out for the team in

college and they couldn't because you had a standing date with

Herb Spencer?"

"I used to enjoy it," mused Horace, "but it would take up too

much time now."

"All right," said Marcia. "I'll make a bargain with you. You join

a gym and I'll read one of those books from the brown row of

'em."

"'Pepys' Diary'? Why, that ought to be enjoyable. He's very

light."

"Not for me--he isn't. It'll be like digesting plate glass. But

you been telling me how much it'd broaden my lookout. Well, you

go to a gym three nights a week and I'll take one big dose of

Sammy."

Horace hesitated.

"Well---"

"Come on, now! You do some giant swings for me and I'll chase

some culture for you."

So Horace finally consented, and all through a baking summer he

spent three and sometimes four evenings a week experimenting on

the trapeze in Skipper's Gymnasium. And in August he admitted to

Marcia that it made him capable of more mental work during the

day.

"MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO," he said.

"Don't believe in it," replied Marcia. "I tried one of those

patent medicines once and they're all bunk. You stick to

gymnastics."

One night in early September while he was going through one of

his contortions on the rings in the nearly deserted room he was

addressed by a meditative fat man whom he had noticed watching

him for several nights.

"Say, lad, do that stunt you were doin' last night."

Horace grinned at him from his perch.

"I invented it," he said. "I got the idea from the fourth

proposition of Euclid."

"What circus he with?"

"He's dead."

"Well, he must of broke his neck doin' that stunt. I set here

last night thinkin' sure you was goin' to break yours."

"Like this!" said Horace, and swinging onto the trapeze he did

his stunt.

"Don't it kill your neck an' shoulder muscles?"

"It did at first, but inside of a week I wrote the QUOD ERAT

DEMONSTRANDUM on it."

"Hm!"

Horace swung idly on the trapeze.

"Ever think of takin' it up professionally?" asked the fat man.

"Not I."

"Good money in it if you're willin' to do stunts like 'at an' can

get away with it."

"Here's another," chirped Horace eagerly, and the fat man's mouth

dropped suddenly agape as he watched this pink-jerseyed

Prometheus again defy the gods and Isaac Newton.

The night following this encounter Horace got home from work to

find a rather pale Marcia stretched out on the sofa waiting for

him.

"I fainted twice to-day," she began without preliminaries.

"What?"

"Yep. You see baby's due in four months now. Doctor says I ought

to have quit dancing two weeks ago."

Horace sat down and thought it over.

"I'm glad of course," he said pensively--"I mean glad that we're

going to have a baby. But this means a lot of expense."

"I've got two hundred and fifty in the bank," said Marcia

hopefully, "and two weeks' pay coming."

Horace computed quickly.

"Inducing my salary, that'll give us nearly fourteen hundred for

the next six months."

Marcia looked blue.

"That all? Course I can get a job singing somewhere this month.

And I can go to work again in March."

"Of course nothing!" said Horace gruffly. "You'll stay right

here. Let's see now--there'll be doctor's bills and a nurse,

besides the maid: We've got to have some more money."

"Well," said Marcia wearily, "I don't know where it's coming

from. It's up to the old head now. Shoulders is out of business."

Horace rose and pulled on his coat.

"Where are you going?"

"I've got an idea," he answered. "I'll be right back."

Ten minutes later as he headed down the street toward Skipper's

Gymnasium he felt a placid wonder, quite unmixed with humor, at

what he was going to do. How he would have gaped at himself a

year before! How every one would have gaped! But when you opened

your door at the rap of life you let in many things.

The gymnasium was brightly lit, and when his eyes became

accustomed to the glare he found the meditative fat man seated on

a pile of canvas mats smoking a big cigar.

"Say," began Horace directly, "were you in earnest last night

when you said I could make money on my trapeze stunts?"

"Why, yes," said the fat man in surprise.

"Well, I've been thinking it over, and I believe I'd like to try

it. I could work at night and on Saturday afternoons--and

regularly if the pay is high enough."

The fat men looked at his watch.

"Well," he said, "Charlie Paulson's the man to see. He'll book

you inside of four days, once he sees you work out. He won't be

in now, but I'll get hold of him for to-morrow night."

The fat man was as good as his word. Charlie Paulson arrived next

night and put in a wondrous hour watching the prodigy swap

through the air in amazing parabolas, and on the night following

he brought two age men with him who looked as though they had

been born smoking black cigars and talking about money in low,

passionate voices. Then on the succeeding Saturday Horace

Tarbox's torso made its first professional appearance in a

gymnastic exhibition at the Coleman Street Gardens. But though

the audience numbered nearly five thousand people, Horace felt no

nervousness. From his childhood he had read papers to

audiences--learned that trick of detaching himself.

"Marcia," he said cheerfully later that same night, "I think

we're out of the woods. Paulson thinks he can get me an opening

at the Hippodrome, and that means an all-winter engagement. The

Hippodrome you know, is a big---"

"Yes, I believe I've heard of it," interrupted Marcia, "but I

want to know about this stunt you're doing. It isn't any

spectacular suicide, is it?"

"It's nothing," said Horace quietly. "But if you can think of an

nicer way of a man killing himself than taking a risk for you,

why that's the way I want to die."

Marcia reached up and wound both arms tightly round his neck.

"Kiss me," she whispered, "and call me 'dear heart.' I love to

hear you say 'dear heart.' And bring me a book to read to-morrow.

No more Sam Pepys, but something trick and trashy. I've been

wild for something to do all day. I felt like writing letters,

but I didn't have anybody to write to."

"Write to me," said Horace. "I'll read them."

"I wish I could," breathed Marcia. "If I knew words enough I

could write you the longest love-letter in the world--and never

get tired."

But after two more months Marcia grew very tired indeed, and for

a row of nights it was a very anxious, weary-looking young

athlete who walked out before the Hippodrome crowd. Then there

were two days when his place was taken by a young man who wore

pale blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But

after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close

to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on

that young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly

in the air an the middle of his amazing and original shoulder

swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and

dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time--and then

tiptoed very carefully into a quiet room.

"Marcia," he whispered.

"Hello!" She smiled up at him wanly. "Horace, there's something I

want you to do. Look in my top bureau drawer and you'll find a

big stack of paper. It's a book--sort of--Horace. I wrote it down

in these last three months while I've been laid up. I wish you'd

take it to that Peter Boyce Wendell who put my letter in his

paper. He could tell you whether it'd be a good book. I wrote it

just the way I talk, just the way I wrote that letter to him.

It's just a story about a lot of things that happened to me. Will

you take it to him, Horace?"

"Yes, darling."

He leaned over the bed until his head was beside her on the

pillow, and began stroking back her yellow hair.

"Dearest Marcia," he said softly.

"No," she murmured, "call me what I told you to call me."

"Dear heart," he whispered passionately--"dearest heart."

"What'll we call her?"

They rested a minute in happy, drowsy content, while Horace

considered.

"We'll call her Marcia Hume Tarbox," he said at length.

"Why the Hume?"

"Because he's the fellow who first introduced us."

"That so?" she murmured, sleepily surprised. "I thought his name

was Moon."

Her eyes dosed, and after a moment the slow lengthening surge of

the bedclothes over her breast showed that she was asleep.

Horace tiptoed over to the bureau and opening the top drawer

found a heap of closely scrawled, lead-smeared pages. He looked

at the first sheet:

SANDRA PEPYS, SYNCOPATED

BY MARCIA TARBOX

He smiled. So Samuel Pepys had made an impression on her after

all. He turned a page and began to read. His smile deepened--he

read on. Half an hour passed and he became aware that Marcia had

waked and was watching him from the bed.

"Honey," came in a whisper.

"What Marcia?"

"Do you like it?"

Horace coughed.

"I seem to be reading on. It's bright."

"Take it to Peter Boyce Wendell. Tell him you got the highest

marks in Princeton once and that you ought to know when a book's

good. Tell him this one's a world beater."

"All right, Marcia," Horace said gently.

Her eyes closed again and Horace crossing over kissed her

forehead--stood there for a moment with a look of tender pity.

Then he left the room.

All that night the sprawly writing on the pages, the constant

mistakes in spelling and grammar, and the weird punctuation

danced before his eyes. He woke several times in the night, each

time full of a welling chaotic sympathy for this desire of

Marcia's soul to express itself in words. To him there was

something infinitely pathetic about it, and for the first time in

months he began to turn over in his mind his own half-forgotten

dreams.

He had meant to write a series of books, to popularize the new

realism as Schopenhauer had popularized pessimism and William

James pragmatism.

But life hadn't come that way. Life took hold of people and

forced them into flying rings. He laughed to think of that rap at

his door, the diaphanous shadow in Hume, Marcia's threatened

kiss.

"And it's still me," he said aloud in wonder as he lay awake in

the darkness. "I'm the man who sat in Berkeley with temerity to

wonder if that rap would have had actual existence had my ear not

been there to hear it. I'm still that man. I could be

electrocuted for the crimes he committed.

"Poor gauzy souls trying to express ourselves in something

tangible. Marcia with her written book; I with my unwritten ones.

Trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get--and

being glad."

V

"Sandra Pepys, Syncopated," with an introduction by Peter Boyce

Wendell the columnist, appeared serially in JORDAN'S MAGAZINE,

and came out in book form in March. From its first published

instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough

subject--a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York

to go on the stage--treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of

phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very

inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made an irresistible appeal.

Peter Boyce Wendell, who happened at that time to be advocating

the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption

of expressive vernacular words, stood as its sponsor and

thundered his indorsement over the placid bromides of the

conventional reviewers.

Marcia received three hundred dollars an instalment for the

serial publication, which came at an opportune time, for though

Horace's monthly salary at the Hippodrome was now more than

Marcia's had ever been, young Marcia was emitting shrill cries

which they interpreted as a demand for country air. So early April

found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County, with a

place for a lawn, a place for a garage, and a place for

everything, including a sound-proof impregnable study, in which

Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up

when her daughter's demands began to be abated, and compose

immortally illiterate literature.

"It's not half bad," thought Horace one night as he was on his

way from the station to his house. He was considering several

prospects that had opened up, a four months' vaudeville offer in

five figures, a chance to go back to Princeton in charge of all

gymnasium work. Odd! He had once intended to go back there in

charge of all philosophic work, and now he had not even been

stirred by the arrival in New York of Anton Laurier, his old

idol.

The gravel crunched raucously under his heel. He saw the lights

of his sitting-room gleaming and noticed a big car standing in

the drive. Probably Mr. Jordan again, come to persuade Marcia to

settle down' to work.

She had heard the sound of his approach and her form was

silhouetted against the lighted door as she came out to meet him.

"There's some Frenchman here," she whispered nervously. "I

can't pronounce his name, but he sounds awful deep. You'll have

to jaw with him."

"What Frenchman?"

"You can't prove it by me. He drove up an hour ago with Mr.

Jordan, and said he wanted to meet Sandra Pepys, and all that sort

of thing."

Two men rose from chairs as they went inside.

"Hello Tarbox," said Jordan. "I've just been bringing together

two celebrities. I've brought M'sieur Laurier out with me.

M'sieur Laurier, let me present Mr. Tarbox, Mrs. Tarbox's

husband."

"Not Anton Laurier!" exclaimed Horace.

"But, yes. I must come. I have to come. I have read the book of

Madame, and I have been charmed"--he fumbled in his pocket--"ah

I have read of you too. In this newspaper which I read to-day it

has your name."

He finally produced a clipping from a magazine.

"Read it!" he said eagerly. "It has about you too."

Horace's eye skipped down the page.

"A distinct contribution to American dialect literature," it

said. "No attempt at literary tone; the book derives its very

quality from this fact, as did 'Huckleberry Finn.'"

Horace's eyes caught a passage lower down; he became suddenly

aghast--read on hurriedly:

"Marcia Tarbox's connection with the stage is not only as a

spectator but as the wife of a performer. She was married last

year to Horace Tarbox, who every evening delights the children at

the Hippodrome with his wondrous flying performance. It is said

that the young couple have dubbed themselves Head and Shoulders,

referring doubtless to the fact that Mrs. Tarbox supplies the

literary and mental qualities, while the supple and agile

shoulder of her husband contribute their share to the family

fortunes.

"Mrs. Tarbox seems to merit that much-abused title--'prodigy.'

Only twenty---"

Horace stopped reading, and with a very odd expression in his

eyes gazed intently at Anton Laurier.

"I want to advise you--" he began hoarsely.

"What?"

"About raps. Don't answer them! Let them alone--have a padded

door."