XII

It was excellent to see Jack Charteris again, as Colonel Musgrave did

within a few days of this. Musgrave was unreasonably fond of the

novelist and frankly confessed it would be as preposterous to connect

Charteris with any of the accepted standards of morality as it would be

to judge an artesian-well from the standpoint of ethics.

Anne was not yet in Lichfield. She had broken the journey to visit a

maternal grand-aunt and some Virginia cousins, in Richmond, Charteris

explained, and was to come thence to Matocton.

"And so you have acquired a boy and, by my soul, a very handsome wife,

Rudolph?"

"It is sufficiently notorious," said Colonel Musgrave. "Yes, we are

quite absurdly happy." He laughed and added: "Patricia--but you don't

know her droll way of putting things--says that the only rational

complaint I can advance against her is her habit of rushing into a

hospital every month or so and having a section or two of her person

removed by surgeons. It worries me,--only, of course, it is not the

sort of thing you can talk about. And, as Patricia says, it _is_ an

unpleasant thing to realize that your wife is not leaving you through

the ordinary channels of death or of type-written decrees of the court,

but only in vulgar fractions, as it were--"

"Please don't be quite so brutal, Rudolph. It is not becoming in a

Musgrave of Matocton to speak of women in any tone other than the most

honeyed accents of chivalry."

"Oh, I was only quoting Patricia," the colonel largely said,

"and--er--Jack," he continued. "By the way, Jack, Clarice Pendomer will

be at Matocton--"

"I rejoice in her good luck," said Charteris, equably.

"--and--well! I was wondering--?"

"I can assure you that there will be no--trouble. That skeleton is

safely locked in its closet, and the key to that closet is missing--more

thanks to you. You acted very nobly in the whole affair, Rudolph. I wish

I could do things like that. As it is, of course, I shall always detest

you for having been able to do it."

Charteris said, thereafter: "I shall always envy you, though, Rudolph.

No other man I know has ever attained the good old troubadourish ideal

of _domnei_--that love which rather abhors than otherwise the notion of

possessing its object. I still believe it was a distinct relief to a

certain military officer, whose name we need not mention, when Anne

decided not to marry you."

The colonel grinned, a trifle consciously. "Well, Anne meant youth, you

comprehend, and all the things we then believed in, Jack. It would have

been decidedly difficult to live up to such a contract, and--as it

were--to fulfil every one of the implied specifications!"

"And yet"--here Charteris flicked his cigarette--"Anne ruled in the

stead of Aline Van Orden. And Aline, in turn, had followed Clarice

Pendomer. And before the coming of Clarice had Pauline Romeyne, whom

time has converted into Polly Ashmeade, reigned in the land--"

"Don't be an ass!" the colonel pleaded; and then observed,

inconsequently: "I can't somehow quite realize Aline is dead. Lord,

Lord, the letters that I wrote to her! She sent them all back, you know,

in genuine romantic fashion, after we had quarreled. I found those

boyish ravings only the other day in my father's desk at Matocton, and

skimmed them over. I shall read them through some day and appropriately

meditate over life's mysteries that are too sad for tears."

He meditated now.

"It wouldn't be quite equitable, Jack," the colonel summed it up, "if

the Aline I loved--no, I don't mean the real woman, the one you and all

the other people knew, the one that married the enterprising brewer and

died five years ago--were not waiting for me somewhere. I can't express

just what I mean, but you will understand, I know--?"

"That heaven is necessarily run on a Mohammedan basis? Why, of course,"

said Mr. Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we

shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never

condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of

our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to

evolve a more enticing allurement toward becoming a deacon."

"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel

estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous,

Jack, you have a double right."

"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lichfield. I only wrote about

the Lichfield whose existence you continue to believe in, in spite of

the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris

returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful."

He cocked his head to one side--an habitual gesture with Charteris--and

the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily

reminiscent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said

Charteris:

"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of 'ole Marster' and

'ole Miss,' and throw in a sprinkling of 'mockin'-buds' and 'hants' and

'horg-killing time,' and of sweeping animadversions as to all 'free

niggers'; and to narrate how 'de quality use ter cum'--you spell it

c-u-m because that looks so convincingly like dialect--'ter de gret

hous.' Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable

love-interest--" Charteris paused, grinned, and pleasantly resumed:

"Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yankee cap'en, whar some uv our folks

done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid--a quite notorious

custom on the part of all Northern armies--un Young Miss had him fotch

up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same's he one uv de fambly, un dem two

jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion huccum dey's in love wid

each othuh till de War's ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention

that during the tale's progress it is necessary to introduce at least

one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel 'in de low grouns'

immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the

back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves."

"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own

nest."

"But, believe me, I don't at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest

voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the

commoner tricks of the trade--and yet when I am practising that trade,

when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and

women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in

my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and

because it would embarrass me so horribly if you believed it."

Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein, pray, have I harmed

Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis

and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons--and by having called

this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it

flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that,

I take it, is the true secret of romance--to induce the momentary

delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and

prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a

matter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I

find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically

insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with

very much the same enthusiasm that we display in expressing a preference

for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really,

Rudolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us

romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the

peace. For then sometimes--when the coachman obligingly cuts the

butler's throat in the back-alley, say--we actually presume to think for

a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making

counterfeit money...."

The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the

novelist said:

"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would

not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy

_Futility_, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging

candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy

lacked sustained interest, and that its participants were inconsistent;

that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors,

and no especial aim; and that it was equally deficient in all

time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few

people would understand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed,

is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable."

"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are

almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not

quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in

Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty

much as they come; but we meddle with nobody, and, after all, we don't

do any especial harm."

"We don't do anything whatever in especial, Rudolph. That would be

precisely the theme of my story of the real Lichfield if I were ever

bold enough to write it. There seems to be a sort of blight upon

Lichfield. Oh, yes! it would be unfair, perhaps, to contrast it with the

bigger Southern cities, like Richmond and Atlanta and New Orleans; but

even the inhabitants of smaller Southern towns are beginning to buy

excursion tickets, and thereby ascertain that the twentieth century has

really begun. Yes, it is only in Lichfield I can detect the raw stuff of

a genuine tragedy; for, depend upon it, Rudolph, the most pathetic

tragedy in life is to get nothing in particular out of it."

"But, for my part, I don't see what you are driving at," the colonel

stoutly said.

And Charteris only laughed. "And I hardly expected you to do so,

Rudolph--or not yet, at least."