Chapter 3

Cynthia had collected all the pictures she could find of herself in her father's house and sent them to G. G. There were pictures of her in the longest baby clothes and in the shortest. There were pictures posed for occasions, pictures in fancy clothes, and a quart of kodaks. He had her there on his knees--riding, driving, diving, skating, walking, sitting on steps, playing with dogs, laughing, looking sad, talking, dimpling, smiling. There were pictures that looked right at G. G., no matter at what angle he held them. There were pictures so delicious of her that he laughed aloud for delight.

All the stages of her life passed before his eyes--over and over--all day long; and, instead of growing more and more tired, he grew more and more refreshed. He made up his spotless mind to be worthy of her and to make, for her to bear, a name of which nobody should be able to say anything unkind.

If G. G. had had very little education he had made great friends with some of the friendliest and most valuable books that had ever been written. And he made up his mind, lying at full length--the livelong day--in the bright, cold air--his mittened hands plunged into deep pockets full of photographs--that, for her sake and to hasten that time when they might always be together, he would learn to write books, taking infinite pains. And he determined that these books should be as sweet and clean and honorable as he could make them. You see, G. G. had been under the weather so much and had suffered so much all alone by himself, with nobody to talk to, that his head was already full of stories about make-believe places and people that were just dying to get themselves written. So many things that are dead to most people had always been alive to him--leaves, flowers, fairies. He had always been a busy maker of verses, which was because melody, rhythm, and harmony had always been delicious to his ear. And he had had, as a little boy, a soprano voice that was as true as truth and almost as agile as a canary bird's.

He decided, then, very deliberately--lying upon his back and healing that traitor lung of his--to be a writer. He didn't so decide entirely because that was what he had always wanted to be, but for many reasons. First place, he could say things to her through prose and verse that could not be expressed in sculpture, music, painting, groceries, or dry-goods. Second place, where she was, there his heart was sure to be; and where the heart is, there the best work is done. And, third place, he knew that the chances were against his ever living in dusty cities or in the places of business thereof.

"I am so young," he wrote to her, "that I can begin at the beginning and learn to be anything--in time to be it! And so every morning now you shall think of G. G. out with his butterfly net, running after winged words. That's nonsense. I've a little pad and a big pencil, and a hot potato in my pocket for to warm the numb fingers at. And father's got an old typewriter in his office that's to be put in order for me; and nights I shall drum upon it and print off what was written down in the morning, and study to see why it's all wrong. I think I'll never write anything but tales about people who love each other. 'Cause a fellow wants to stick to what he knows about...."

Though G. G. was not to see Cynthia again for a whole year he didn't find any trouble in loving her a little more every day. To his mind's eye she was almost as vivid as if she had been standing right there in front of him. And as for her voice, that dwelt ever in his ear, like those lovely airs which, once heard, are only put aside with death. You may have heard your grandmother lilting to herself, over her mending, some song of men and maidens and violets that she had listened to in her girlhood and could never forget.

And then, of course, everything that G. G. did was a reminder of Cynthia. With the help of one of Doctor Trudeau's assistants, who came every day to see how he was getting on, he succeeded in understanding very well what was the matter with him and under just what conditions a consumptive lung heals and becomes whole. To live according to the letter and spirit of the doctor's advice became almost a religion with him.

For six hours of every day he sat on the porch of the house where he had rooms, writing on his little pad and making friends with the keen, clean, healing air. Every night the windows of his bedroom stood wide open, so that in the morning the water in his pitcher was a solid block. And he ate just the things he was told to--and willed himself to like milk and sugar, and snow and cold, and short days!

In his writing he began to see progress. He was like a musical person beginning to learn an instrument; for, just as surely as there are scales to be run upon the piano before your virtuoso can weave music, binding the gallery gods with delicious meshes of sound, so in prose-writing there must be scales run, fingerings worked out, and harmonies mastered. For in a page of _lo bello stile_ you will find trills and arpeggios, turns, grace notes, a main theme, a sub theme, thorough-bass, counterpoint, and form.

Music is an easier art than prose, however. It comes to men as a more direct and concrete gift of those gods who delight in sound and the co-ordination of parts. The harmonies are more quickly grasped by the well-tuned ear. We can imagine the boy Mozart discoursing lovely music at the age of five; but we cannot imagine any one of such tender years compiling even a fifth-rate paragraph of prose.

Those men who have mastered _lo bello stile_ in music can tell us pretty clearly how the thing is done. There be rules. But your prose masters either cannot formulate what they have learned--or will not.

G. G. was very patient; and there were times when the putting together of words was fascinating, like the putting together of those picture puzzles which were such a fad the other day. And such reading as he did was all in one book--the dictionary. For hours, guided by his nice ear for sound, he applied himself to learning the derivatives and exact meanings of new words--or he looked up old words and found that they were new.

As for his actual compositions, he had only the ambition to make them as workmanlike as he could. He made little landscapes; he drew little interiors. He tried to get people up and down stairs in the fewest words that would make the picture. And when he thought that he had scored a little success he would count the number of words he had used and determine to achieve the same effect with the use of only half that number.

Well, G. G.'s lung healed again; and this time he was very careful not to overdo. He had gained nine pounds, he wrote to Cynthia--"saved them" was the way he put it; and he was determined that this new tissue, worth more than its weight in gold, should go to bank and earn interest for him--and compound interest.

"Shall I get well?" he asked that great dreamer who dreamed that there was hope for people who had never hoped before--and who has lived to see his dream come true; and the great dreamer smiled and said:

"G. G., if growing boys are good boys and do what they are told, and have any luck at all--they always get well!"

Then G. G. blushed.

"And when I am well can I live where I please--and--and get married--and all that sort of thing?"

"You can live where you please, marry and have children; and if you aren't a good husband and a good father I dare say you'll live to be hanged at ninety. But if I were you, G. G., I'd stick by the Adirondacks until you're old enough to--know better."

And G. G. went back to his rooms in great glee and typewrote a story that he had finished as well as he could, and sent it to a magazine. And six days later it came back to him, with a little note from the editor, who said:

"There's nothing wrong with your story except youth. If you say so we'll print it. We like it. But, personally, and believing that I have your best interests at heart, I advise you to wait, to throw this story into your scrap basket, and to study and to labor until your mind and your talent are mature. For the rest, I think you are going to do some fine things. This present story isn't that--it's not fine. At the same time, it is so very good in some ways that we are willing to leave its publication or its destruction to your discretion."

G. G. threw his story into the scrap basket and went to bed with a brand-new notion of editors.

"Why," said he to the cold darkness--and his voice was full of awe and astonishment--"they're--alive!"

III

Cynthia couldn't get at G. G. and she made up her mind that she must get at something that belonged to him--or die. She had his letter, of course, and his kodaks; and these spoke the most eloquent language to her--no matter what they said or how they looked--but she wanted somehow or other to worm herself deeper into G. G.'s life. To find somebody, for instance, who knew all about him and would enjoy talking about him by the hour. Now there are never but two people who enjoy sitting by the hour and saying nice things about any man--and these, of course, are the woman who bore him and the woman who loves him. Fathers like their sons well enough--sometimes--and will sometimes talk about them and praise them; but not always. So it seemed to Cynthia that the one and only thing worth doing, under the circumstances, was to make friends with G. G.'s mother. To that end, Cynthia donned a warm coat of pony-skin and drove in a taxicab to G. G.'s mother's address, which she had long since looked up in the telephone book.

"If she isn't alone," said Cynthia, "I shan't know what to say or what to do."

And she hesitated, with her thumb hovering about the front-door bell--as a humming-bird hovers at a flower.

Then she said: "What does it matter? Nobody's going to eat me." And she rang the bell.

G. G.'s mother was at home. She was alone. She was sitting in G. G.'s father's library, where she always did sit when she was alone. It was where she kept most of her pictures of G. G.'s father and of G. G., though she had others in her bedroom; and in her dressing-room she had a dapple-gray horse of wood that G. G. had galloped about on when he was little. She had a sweet face, full of courage and affection. And everything in her house was fresh and pretty, though there wasn't anything that could have cost very much. G. G.'s father was a lawyer. He was more interested in leaving a stainless name behind him than a pot of money. And, somehow, fruit doesn't tumble off your neighbor's tree and fall into your own lap--unless you climb the tree when nobody is looking and give the tree a sound shaking. I might have said of G. G., in the very beginning, that he was born of poor _and_ honest parents. It would have saved all this explanation.

G. G.'s mother didn't make things hard for Cynthia. One glance was enough to tell her that dropping into the little library out of the blue sky was not a pretty girl but a blessed angel--not a rich man's daughter but a treasure. It wasn't enough to give one hand to such a maiden. G. G.'s mother gave her two. But she didn't kiss her. She felt things too deeply to kiss easily.

"I've come to talk about G. G.," said Cynthia. "I couldn't help it. I think he's the _dearest_ boy!"

She finished quite breathless--and if there had been any Jacqueminot roses present they might have hung their lovely heads in shame and left the room.

"G. G. has shown me pictures of you," said his mother. "And once, when we thought we were going to lose him, he used his last strength to write to you. I mailed the letter. That is a long time ago. Nearly two years.

"And I didn't know that he'd been ill in all that time," said Cynthia; "he never told me."

"He would have cut off his hand sooner than make you anxious. That was why he _would_ write his daily letter to you. That one must have been almost as hard to write as cutting off a hand."

"He writes to me every day," said Cynthia, "and I write to him; but I haven't seen him for a year and I don't feel as if I could stand it much longer. When he gets well we're going to be married. And if he doesn't get well pretty soon we're going to be married anyway."

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed G. G.'s mother. "You know that wouldn't be right!"

"I don't know," said Cynthia; "and if anybody thinks I'm going to be tricked out of the man I love by a lot of silly little germs they are very much mistaken!"

"But, my dear," said G. G.'s mother, "G. G. can't support a wife--not for a long time anyway. We have nothing to give him. And, of course, he can't work now--and perhaps can't for years."

"I, too," said Cynthia--with proper pride--"have parents. Mine are rolling in money. Whenever I ask them for anything they always give it to me without question."

"You have never asked them," said G. G.'s mother, "for a sick, penniless boy."

"But I shall," said Cynthia, "the moment G. G.'s well--and maybe sooner."

There was a little silence.

Then G. G.'s mother leaned forward and took both of Cynthia's hands in hers.

"I don't wonder at him," she said--"I don't. I was ever so jealous of you, but I'm not any more. I think you're the _dearest_ girl!"

"Oh!" cried Cynthia. "I am so glad! But will G. G.'s father like me too?"

"He has never yet failed," said G. G.'s mother, "to like with his whole heart anything that was stainless and beautiful."

"Is he like G. G.?"

"He has the same beautiful round head, but he has a rugged look that G. G. will never have. He has a lion look. He might have been a terrible tyrant if he hadn't happened, instead, to be a saint."

And she showed Cynthia, side by side, pictures of the father and the boy.

"They have such valiant eyes!" said Cynthia.

"There is nothing base in my young men," said G. G.'s mother.

Then the two women got right down to business and began an interminable conversation of praise. And sometimes G. G.'s mother's eyes cried a little while the rest of her face smiled and she prattled like a brook. And the meeting ended with a great hug, in which G. G.'s mother's tiny feet almost parted company with the floor.

And it was arranged that they two should fly up to Saranac and be with G. G. for a day.

IV

It wasn't from shame that G. G. signed another name than his own to the stories that he was making at the rate of one every two months. He judged calmly and dispassionately that they were "going to be pretty good some day," and that it would never be necessary for him to live in a city. He signed his stories with an assumed name because he was full of dramatic instinct. He wanted to be able--just the minute he was well--to say to Cynthia:

"Let us be married!" Then she was to say: "Of course, G. G.; but what are we going to live on?" And G. G. was going to say: "Ever hear of so-and-so?"

CYNTHIA: Goodness gracious! Sakes alive! Yes; I should think I had! And, except for you, darlingest G. G., I think he's the very greatest man in all the world!

G. G.: Goosey-Gander, know that he and I are one and the same person--and that we've saved seventeen hundred dollars to get married on!

(Tableau not to be seen by the audience.)

So far as keeping Cynthia and his father and mother in ignorance of the fledgling wings he was beginning to flap, G. G. succeeded admirably; but it might have been better to have told them all in the beginning.

Now G. G.'s seventeen hundred dollars was a huge myth. He was writing short stories at the rate of six a year and he had picked out to do business with one of the most dignified magazines in the world. Dignified people do not squander money. The magazine in question paid G. G. from sixty to seventy dollars apiece for his stories and was much too dignified to inform him that plenty of other magazines--very frivolous and not in the least dignified--would have been ashamed to pay so little for anything but the poems, which all magazines use to fill up blank spaces. So, even in his own ambitious and courageous mind, a "married living" seemed a very long way off.

He refused to be discouraged, however. His health was too good for that. The doctor pointed to him with pride as a patient who followed instructions to the letter and was not going to die of the disease which had brought him to Saranac. And they wrote to G. G's father--who was finding life very expensive--that, if he could keep G. G. at Saranac, or almost anywhere out of New York, for another year or two, they guaranteed--as much as human doctors can--that G. G. would then be as sound as a bell and fit to live anywhere.

This pronouncement was altogether too much of a good thing for Fate. As G. G's father walked up-town from his office, Fate raised a dust in his face which, in addition to the usual ingredients of city dust, contained at least one thoroughly compatible pair of pneumonia germs. These went for their honey-moon on a pleasant, warm journey up G. G's father's left nostril and to house-keeping in his lungs. In a few hours they raised a family of several hundred thousand bouncing baby germs; and these grew up in a few minutes and began to set up establishments of their own right and left.

G. G.'s father admitted that he had a "heavy cold on the chest." It was such a heavy cold that he became delirious, and doctors came and sent for nurses; and there was laid in the home of G. G.'s father the corner-stone of a large edifice of financial disaster.

He had never had a partner. His practice came to a dead halt. The doctors whom G. G.'s mother called in were, of course, the best she had ever heard of. They would have been leaders of society if their persons had been as fashionable as their prices. The corner drug store made its modest little profit of three or four hundred per cent on the drugs which were telephoned for daily. The day nurse rolled up twenty-five dollars a week and the night nurse thirty-five. The servant's wages continued as usual. The price of beef, eggs, vegetables, etc., rose. The interest on the mortgage fell due. And it is a wonder, considering how much he worried, that G. G.'s father ever lived to face his obligations.

Cynthia, meanwhile, having heard that G. G. was surely going to get well, was so happy that she couldn't contain the news. And she proceeded to divulge it to her father.

"Papa," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that years ago, at Saranac--that Christmas when I went up with the Andersons--I met the man that I am going to marry. He was a boy then; but now we're both grown up and we feel just the same about each other."

And she told her father G. G.'s name and that he had been very delicate, but that he was surely going to get well. Cynthia's father, who had always given her everything she asked for until now, was not at all enthusiastic.

"I can't prevent your marrying any one you determine to marry, Cynthia," he said. "Can this young man support a wife?"

"How could he!" she exclaimed--"living at Saranac and not being able to work, and not having any money to begin with! But surely, if the way _we_ live is any criterion, you could spare us some money--couldn't you?"

"You wish me to say that I will support a delicate son-in-law whom I have never seen? Consult your intelligence, Cynthia."

"I have my allowance," she said, her lips curling.

"Yes," said her father, "while you live at home and do as you're told."

"Now, papa, don't tell me that you're going to behave like a lugubrious parent in a novel! Don't tell me that you are going to cut me off with a shilling!"

"I shan't do that," he said gravely; "it will be without a shilling." But he tempered this savage statement with a faint smile.

"Papa, dear, is this quite definite? Are you talking in your right mind and do you really mean what you say?"

"Suppose you talk the matter over with your mother--she's always indulged you in every way. See what she says."

It developed that neither of Cynthia's parents was enthusiastic at the prospect of her marrying a nameless young man--she had told them his name, but that was all she got for her pains--who hadn't a penny and who had had consumption, and might or might not be sound again. Personally they did not believe that consumption can be cured. It can be arrested for a time, they admitted, but it always comes back. Cynthia's mother even made a physiological attack on Cynthia's understanding, with the result that Cynthia turned indignantly pink and left the room, saying:

"If the doctor thinks it's perfectly right and proper for us to marry I don't see the least point in listening to the opinions of excited and prejudiced amateurs."

The ultimatum that she had from her parents was distinct, final, and painful.

"Marry him if you like. We will neither forgive you nor support you."

They were perfectly calm with her--cool, affectionate, sensible, and worldly, as it is right and proper for parents to be. She told them they were wrong-headed, old-fashioned, and unintelligent; but as long as they hadn't made scenes and talked loud she found that she couldn't help loving them almost as much as she always had; but she loved G. G. very much more. And having definitely decided to defy her family, to marry G. G. and live happily ever afterward, she consulted her check-book and discovered that her available munition of war was something less than five hundred dollars--most of it owed to her dress-maker.

"Well, well!" she said; "she's always had plenty of money from me; she can afford to wait."

And Cynthia wrote to her dress-maker, who was also her friend!

MY DEAR CELESTE: I have decided that you will have to afford to wait for your money. I have an enterprise in view which calls for all the available capital I have. Please write me a nice note and say that you don't mind a bit. Otherwise we shall stop being friends and I shall always get my clothes from somebody else. Let me know when the new models come....

V

On her way down-town Cynthia stopped to see G. G.'s mother and found the whole household in the throes occasioned by its head's pneumonia.

"Why haven't you let me know?" exclaimed Cynthia. "There must be so many little things that I could have done to help you."

Though the sick man couldn't have heard them if they had shouted, the two women talked in whispers, with their heads very close together.

"He's better," said G. G.'s mother, "but yesterday they wanted me to send for G. G. 'No,' I said. 'You may have given him up, but I haven't. If I send for my boy it would look as if I had surrendered,' And almost at once, if you'll believe it, he seemed to shake off something that was trying to strangle him and took a turn for the better; and now they say that, barring some long names, he will get well.... It does look, my dear, as if death had seen that there was no use facing a thoroughly determined woman."

At this point, because she was very much overwrought, G. G.'s mother had a mild little attack of hysteria; and Cynthia beat her on the back and shook her and kissed her until she was over it. Then G. G.'s mother told Cynthia about her financial troubles.

"It isn't us that matters," she said, "but that G. G. ought to have one more year in a first-rate climate; and it isn't going to be possible to give it to him. They say that he's well, my dear, absolutely well; but that now he should have a chance to build up and become strong and heavy, so that he can do a man's work in the world. As it is, we shall have to take him home to live; and you know what New York dust and climate can do to people who have been very, very ill and are still delicate and high-strung."

"There's only one thing to do for the present," said Cynthia--"anybody with the least notion of business knows that--we must keep him at Saranac just as long as our credit holds out, mustn't we?--until the woman where he boards begins to act ugly and threatens to turn him out in the snow."