its progress caught at once and teased your interest always, so that
having begun it, most people would read to the end, if only to discover
"how it all came out." I knew the book, in fine, could hardly fail to
please and interest a number of people by reason of its plot alone.
I ought to have been content with this. But I had somehow contracted an
insane notion that a novel is the more enjoyable when it is adroitly
written. In point of fact, of course, no man who writes with care is
ever read with pleasure; you may toil through a page or two perhaps,
but presently you are noting how precisely every word is fitted to the
thought, and later you are noting nothing else. You are insensibly
beguiled into a fidgety-footed analysis of every clause, which fatigues
in the outcome, and by the tenth page you are yawning.
But I did not comprehend this then. And so I fashioned my apt phrases,
and weighed my synonyms, and echoed this or that vowel very skilfully,
I thought, and alliterated my consonants with discretion. In fine, I
did not overlook the most meticulous device of the stylist; and I
enjoyed it. It was a sort of game; and they taught me at least, those
six delightful months, that a man writes admirable prose not at all for
the sake of having it read, but for the more sensible reason that he
enjoys playing solitaire.
I led a hermit's life that winter; and I enjoyed that too. Night, after
all, is the one time for writing, particularly when you are inane
enough to hanker after perfected speech, and so misguided as to be the
slave of the "right word." You sit alone in a bright, comfortable room;
the clock ticks companionably; there is no other sound in the world
except the constant scratching of your pen, and the occasional far-off
puffing of a freight-train coming into Lichfield; there is snow
outside, but before your eyes someone, that is not you exactly,
arranges and redrills the scrawls which will bring back the sweet and
languid summer and remarshal all its pleasant trivialities for anyone
that chooses to read through the printed page, although he read two
centuries hence, in Nova Zembla....
Then you dip into an Unabridged, and change every word that has been
written, for a better one, and do it leisurely, rolling in the mouth,
as it were, the flavour of every possible synonym, before decision.
Then you reread, with a corrective pen in hand the while, and you
venture upon the whole to agree with Mérimée that it is preferable to
write one's own books, since those of others are not, after all,
particularly worth reading in comparison.
And by this time the windows are pale blue, like the blue of a dying
flame, and you peep out and see the sparrows moving like rather poorly
made mechanical toys about the middle of the deserted street, where
there is neither light nor shade. The colour of everything is perfectly
discernible, but there is no lustre in the world as yet, though yonder
the bloat sun is already visible in the blue and red east, which is
like a cosmic bruise; and upon a sudden you find it just possible to
stay awake long enough to get safely into bed....
6
Thus I dandled the child of my brain for a long while, and arrayed it
in beautiful and curious garments, adorning each beloved notion with
far-sought words that had a taste in the mouth, and would one day lend
an aroma to the printed page; and I rejoiced shamelessly in that which
I had done. Then it befell that I went forth and sought the luxury of a
Turkish bath, and in the morning, after a rub-down and an ammonia
cocktail, awoke to the fact that the world had been going on much as
usual, that winter.
Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after
all, according to the morning _Courier-Herald_, despite that Democratic
paper's colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the
contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to
the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women's
Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible
hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop,
and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been
derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in
honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr.
Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear
that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached
the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound.
The world, in short, in spite of my six months' retiring therefrom,
seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper
to face the six months' accumulation of mail.
7
A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of
his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten
pages to establish his title.
Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of _As the Coming of Dawn_,
and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened.
"Look here!" he said, suddenly; "have you seen _The Imperial
Votaress?_"
I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a
particularly well-balanced sentence. "Don't know the lady," said I.
"She is advertised on half the posters in town," said Mr. Bulmer. "And
it is the book of the year. And it is your book."
At this moment I laid down my manuscript. '"I _beg_ your pardon?" said
I.
"Your book!" Uncle George repeated firmly; "and scarcely a hair's
difference between them, except in the names."
"H'm!" I observed, in a careful voice. "Who wrote it?"
"Some female woman out west," said Mr. Bulmer. "She's a George
Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those
authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less
gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven
they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up
like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it
began with an S--Why, to be sure! it's Marian Winwood."
"Amaimon sounds well," I observed; "Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet
they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but--Marian Winwood!"
"Dear me!" he remonstrated. "Why, she wrote _A Bright Particular Star_,
you know, and _The Acolytes_, and lots of others."
The author of _As the Coming of Dawn_ swallowed a whole glass of
Chianti at a gulp.
"Of course," I said, slowly, "I cannot, in my rather peculiar position,
run the risk of being charged with plagiarism--by a Chinese-eyed mental
sneak-thief...."
Thereupon I threw the manuscript into the open fire, which my
preference for the picturesque rendered necessary, even in May.
"Oh, look here!" my uncle cried, and caught up the papers. "It is
infernally good, you know! Can't you--can't you fix it,--and--er--
change it a bit? Typewriting is so expensive these days that it seems a
pity to waste all this."
I took the manuscript and replaced it firmly among the embers. "As you
justly observe," said I, "it is infernally good. It is probably a deal
better than anything else I shall ever write."
"Why, then--" said Uncle George.
"Why, then," said I, "the only thing that remains to do is to read _The
Imperial Votaress._"
8
And I read it with an augmenting irritation. Here was my great and
comely idea transmuted by "George Glock"--which was the woman's foolish
pen-name,--into a rather clever melodrama, and set forth anyhow, in a
hit or miss style that fairly made me squirm. I would cheerfully have
strangled Marian Winwood just then, and not upon the count of larceny,
but of butchery.
"And to cap it all, she has assigned her hero every pretty speech I
ever made to her! I honestly believe the rogue took shorthand jottings
on her cuffs. 'There is a land where lovers may meet face to face, and
heart to heart, and mouth to mouth'--why, that's the note I wrote her
on the day she wasn't feeling well!"
Presently, however, I began to laugh, and presently sitting there
alone, I began to applaud as if I were witnessing a play that took my
fancy.
"Oh, the adorable jade!" I said; and then: "George Glock, forsooth!
_George Dandin, tu l' as voulu._"
9
Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And--though even
to myself it seems incredible,--Miss Winwood wrote me within three days
of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter.
For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining,
about my little magazine tale.... "Why don't you stop writing, and try
plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? _You can't
write!_ If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my
material"....
--Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal
of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately
amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously
refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw
"material," to be developed rather than shocked by....
18.
_He Spends an Afternoon in Arden_
I had, in a general way, intended to marry Rosalind Jemmett so soon as
I had completed _As the Coming of Dawn_; but in the fervour of writing
that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a
little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was
interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in
anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the
young lady's existence.
Now, however, my thoughts harked back to her; and I found, upon
inquiry, that Rosalind had spent all of May and a good half of April in
Lichfield, in the same town with myself, and was now engaged to Alfred
Chaytor,--an estimable person, but popularly known as "Sissy" Chaytor.
2
And this gave an additional whet to my intentions. So I called upon the
girl, and she, to my chagrin, received me with an air of having danced
with me some five or six times the night before; our conversation was
at first trivial and, on her part, dishearteningly cordial; and, in
fine, she completely baffled me by not appearing to expect any least
explanation of my discourteous neglect. This, look you, when I had been
at pains to prepare a perfectly convincing one.
It must be conceded I completely lost my temper; shortly afterward
neither of us was speaking with excessive forethought; and each of us
languidly advanced a variety of observations which were more dexterous
than truthful. But I followed the intractable heiress to the Moncrieffs
that spring, in spite of this rebuff, being insufferably provoked by
her unshakable assumptions of my friendship and of nothing more.
3
It was perhaps a week later she told me: "This, beyond any reasonable
doubt, is the Forest of Arden."
"But where Rosalind is is always Arden," I said, politely. Yet I made a
mental reservation as to a glimpse of the golf-links, which this
particular nook of the forest afforded, and of a red-headed caddy in
search of a lost ball.
But beyond these things the sun was dying out in a riot of colour, and
its level rays fell kindlily upon the gaunt pines that were thick about
us two, converting them into endless aisles of vaporous gold.
There was primeval peace about; an evening wind stirred lazily above,
and the leaves whispered drowsily to one another over the waters of
what my companion said was a "brawling loch," though I had previously
heard it reviled as a particularly treacherous and vexatious hazard.
Altogether, I had little doubt that we had reached, in any event, the
outskirts of Arden.
"And now," quoth she, seating herself on a fallen log, "what would you
do if I were your very, very Rosalind?"
"Don't!" I cried in horror. "It wouldn't be proper! For as a decent
self-respecting heroine, you would owe it to Orlando not to listen."
"H'umph!" said Rosalind. The exclamation does not look impressive,
written out; but, spoken, it placed Orlando in his proper niche.
"Oh, well," said I, and stretched myself at her feet, full
length,--which is supposed to be a picturesque attitude,--"why quarrel
over a name? It ought to be Gamelyn, anyhow; and, moreover, by the
kindness of fate, Orlando is golfing."
Rosalind frowned, dubiously.
"But golf is a very ancient game," I reassured her. Then I bit a
pine-needle in two and sighed. "Foolish fellow, when he might be--"
"Admiring the beauties of nature," she suggested.
Just then an impudent breeze lifted a tendril of honey-coloured hair
and toyed with it, over a low, white brow,--and I noted that Rosalind's
hair had a curious coppery glow at the roots, a nameless colour that I
have never observed anywhere else....
"Yes," said I, "of nature."
"Then," queried she, after a pause, "who are you? And what do you in
this forest?"
"You see," I explained, "there were conceivably other men in Arden--"
"I suppose so," she sighed, with exemplary resignation.
"--For you were," I reminded her, "universally admired at your uncle's
court,--and equally so in the forest. And while Alfred--or, strictly
speaking, Gamelyn, or, if you prefer it, Orlando,--is the great love of
your life, still--"
"Men are so foolish!" said Rosalind, irrelevantly.
"--it did not prevent you--"
"Me!" cried she, indignant.
"You had such a tender heart," I suggested, "and suffering was
abhorrent to your gentle nature."
"I don't like cynicism, sir," said she; "and inasmuch as tobacco is not
yet discovered--"
"It is clearly impossible that I am smoking," I finished; "quite true."
"I don't like cheap wit, either," said Rosalind. "You," she went on,
with no apparent connection, "are a forester, with a good cross-bow and
an unrequited attachment,--say, for me. You groan and hang verses and
things about on the trees."
"But I don't write verses--any longer," I amended. "Still how would
this do,--for an oak, say,--
"I found a lovely centre-piece
Upon the supper-table,
But when I looked at it again
I saw I wasn't able,
And so I took my mother home
And locked her in the stable."
She considered that the plot of this epic was not sufficiently
inevitable. It hadn't, she lamented, a quite logical ending; and the
plot of it, in fine, was not, somehow, convincing.
"Well, in any event," I optimistically reflected, "I am a nickel in. If
your dicta had emanated from a person in Peoria or Seattle, who hadn't
bothered to read my masterpiece, they would have sounded exactly the
same, and the clipping-bureau would have charged me five cents.
Maybe I can't write verses, then. But I am quite sure I can groan." And
I did so.
"It sounds rather like a fog-horn," said Rosalind, still in the
critic's vein; "but I suppose it is the proper thing. Now," she
continued, and quite visibly brightening, "you can pretend to have an
unrequited attachment for me."
"But I can't--" I decisively said.
"Can't," she echoed. It has not been mentioned previously that Rosalind
was pretty. She was especially so just now, in pouting. And, therefore,
"--pretend," I added.
She preserved a discreet silence.
"Nor," I continued, with firmness, "am I a shambling, nameless,
unshaven denizen of Arden, who hasn't anything to do except to carry a
spear and fall over it occasionally. I will no longer conceal the
secret of my identity. I am Jaques."
"You can't be Jaques," she dissented; "you are too stout."
"I am well-built," I admitted, modestly; "as in an elder case, sighing
and grief have blown me up like a bladder; yet proper pride, if nothing
else, demands that my name should appear on the programme."
"But would Jaques be the sort of person who'd--?"
"Who wouldn't be?" I asked, with appropriate ardour. "No, depend upon
it, Jaques was not any more impervious to temptation than the rest of
us; and, indeed, in the French version, as you will find, he eventually
married Celia."
"Minx!" said she; and it seemed to me quite possible that she referred
to Celia Reindan, and my heart glowed.
"And how," queried Rosalind, presently, "came you to the Forest of
Arden, good Jaques?"
I groaned once more. "It was a girl," I darkly said.
"Of course," assented Rosalind, beaming as to the eyes. Then she went
on, and more sympathetically: "Now, Jaques, you can tell me the whole
story."
"Is it necessary?" I asked.
"Surely," said she, with sudden interest in the structure of
pine-cones; "since for a long while I have wanted to know all about
Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him."
"_So_!" I thought, triumphantly.
And aloud, "It is an old story," I warned her, "perhaps the oldest of
all old stories. It is the story of a man and a girl. It began with a
chance meeting and developed into a packet of old letters, which is the
usual ending of this story."
Rosalind's brows protested.
"Sometimes," I conceded, "it culminates in matrimony; but the ending is
not necessarily tragic."
I dodged exactly in time; and the pine-cone splashed into the hazard.
"It happened," I continued, "that, on account of the man's health, they
were separated for a whole year's time before--before things had
progressed to any extent. When they did progress, it was largely by
letters. That is why this story ended in such a large package.
"Letters," Rosalind confided, to one of the pines, "are so
unsatisfactory. They mean so little."
"To the man," I said, firmly, "they meant a great deal. They brought
him everything that he most wished for,--comprehension, sympathy, and,
at last, comfort and strength when they were sore needed. So the man,
who was at first but half in earnest, announced to himself that he had
made a discovery. 'I have found,' said he, 'the great white love which
poets have dreamed of. I love this woman greatly, and she, I think,
loves me. God has made us for each other, and by the aid of her love I
will be pure and clean and worthy even of her.' You have doubtless
discovered by this stage in my narrative," I added, as in parenthesis,
"that the man was a fool."
"Don't!" said Rosalind.
"Oh, he discovered it himself in due time--but not until after he had
written a book about her. _As the Coming of Dawn_ the title was to have
been. It was--oh, just about her. It tried to tell how greatly he loved
her. It tried--well, it failed of course, because it isn't within the
power of any writer to express what the man felt for that girl. Why,
his love was so great--to him, poor fool!--that it made him at times
forget the girl herself, apparently. He didn't want to write her
trivial letters. He just wanted to write that great book in her honour,
which would _make_ her understand, even against her will, and then to
die, if need be, as Geoffrey Rudel did. For that was the one thing
which counted--to make her understand--" I paused, and anyone could see
that I was greatly moved. In fact, I was believing every word of it by
this time.
"Oh, but who wants a man to _die_ for her?" wailed Rosalind.
"It is quite true that one infinitely prefers to see him make a fool of
himself. So the man discovered when he came again to bring his foolish
book to her,--the book that was to make her understand. And so he
burned it--in a certain June. For the girl had merely liked him, and
had been amused by him. So she had added him to her collection of men,
--quite a large one, by the way,--and was, I believe, a little proud of
him. It was, she said, rather a rare variety, and much prized by
collectors."
"And how was _she_ to know?" said Rosalind; and then, remorsefully:
"Was it a very horrid girl?"
"It was not exactly repulsive," said I, as dreamily, and looking up
into the sky.
There was a pause. Then someone in the distance--a forester, probably,
--called "Fore!" and Rosalind awoke from her reverie.
"Then--?" said she.
"Then came the customary Orlando--oh, well! Alfred, if you like. The
name isn't altogether inappropriate, for he does encounter existence
with much the same abandon which I have previously noticed in a muffin.
For the rest, he was a nicely washed fellow, with a sufficiency of the
mediaeval equivalents for bonds and rubber-tired buggies and country
places. Oh, yes! I forgot to say that the man was poor,--also that the
girl had a great deal of common-sense and no less than three longheaded
aunts. And so the girl talked to the man in a common-sense fashion--and
after that she was never at home."
"Never?" said Rosalind.
"Only that time they talked about the weather," said I. "So the man
fell out of bed just about then, and woke up and came to his sober
senses."
"He did it very easily," said Rosalind, almost as if in resentment.
"The novelty of the process attracted him," I pleaded. "So he said--in
a perfectly sensible way--that he had known all along it was only a
game they were playing,--a game in which there were no stakes. That was
a lie. He had put his whole soul into the game, playing as he knew for
his life's happiness; and the verses, had they been worthy of the love
which caused them to be written, would have been among the great songs
of the world. But while the man knew at last that he had been a fool,
he was swayed by a man-like reluctance against admitting it. So he
laughed--and lied--and broke away, hurt, but still laughing."
"You hadn't mentioned any verses before," said Rosalind.
"I told you he was a fool," said I. "And, after all, that is the entire
story."
Then I spent several minutes in wondering what would happen next.
During this time I lost none of my interest in the sky. I believed
everything I had said: my emotions would have done credit to a Romeo or
an Amadis.
"The first time that the girl was not at home," Rosalind observed,
impersonally, "the man had on a tan coat and a brown derby. He put on
his gloves as he walked down the street. His shoulders were the most
indignant--and hurt things she had ever seen. Then the girl wrote to
him,--a strangely sincere letter,--and tore it up."
"Historical research," I murmured, "surely affords no warrant for such
attire among the rural denizens of tranquil Arden."
"You see," continued Rosalind, oblivious to interruption, "I know all
about the girl,--which is more than you do."
"That," I conceded, "is disastrously probable."
"When she realised that she was to see the man again--_Did_ you ever
feel as if something had lifted you suddenly hundreds of feet above
rainy days and cold mutton for luncheon, and the possibility of other
girls' wearing black evening dresses, when you wanted yours to be the
only one in the room? Well, that is the way she felt at first, when she
read his note. At first, she realised nothing beyond the fact that he
was nearing her, and that she would presently see him. She didn't even
plan what she would wear, or what she would say to him. In an
indefinite way, she was happier than she had ever been before--or has
been since--until the doubts and fears and knowledge that give children
and fools a wide berth came to her,--and _then_ she saw it all against
her will, and thought it all out, and came to a conclusion."
I sat up. There was really nothing of interest occurring overhead.
"They had played at loving--lightly, it is true, but they had gone so
far in their letter writing that they could not go backward,--only
forward, or not at all. She had known all along that the man was but
half in earnest--believe me, a girl always knows that, even though she
may not admit it to herself,--and she had known that a love affair
meant to him material for a sonnet or so, and a well-turned letter or
two, and nothing more. For he was the kind of man that never quite
grows up. He was coming to her, pleased, interested, and a little
eager--in love with the idea of loving her,--willing to meet her
half-way, and very willing to follow her the rest of the way--if she
could draw him. And what was she to do? Could she accept his gracefully
insulting semblance of a love she knew he did not feel? Could they see
each other a dozen times, swearing not to mention the possibility of
loving,--so that she might have a chance to reimpress him with her
blondined hair--it _is_ touched up, you know--and small talk? And--and
_besides_--"
"It is the duty of every young woman to consider what she owes to her
family," said I, absentmindedly. Rosalind Jemmett's family consists of
three aunts, and the chief of these is Aunt Marcia, who lives in
Lichfield. Aunt Marcia is a portly, acidulous and discomposing person,
with eyes like shoe-buttons and a Savonarolan nose. She is also a
well-advertised philanthropist, speaks neatly from the platform, and
has wide experience as a patroness, and extreme views as to
ineligibles.