Part 11

"He said a good deal more'n his prayers, I can tell you that. He said his object in going to the Bahamas, to which he never went, after all, was to look into the possibility of securin' a large tract of land there for the cultivation and growth of sisal. Now what under the sun would you suppose sisal was? I saw in the book that sisal was being grown in increasing quantities in the islands, and I just naturally supposed it was some sort of animal. It might of been buffalo, or it might of been guinea pigs, but when I spoke at the Sewing Society of how Jathrop had mentioned the great number of sisal, and Mrs. Allen says: 'What is sisal?' I just right then and there on the spur of the minute says: 'Why, don't you know? Sisal is a sort of small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard.' And would you believe it, Mrs. Lathrop, when Mr. Kimball asked me that same question to-day, I said the very same thing--small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard. 'That's what Mrs. Allen told me you said, Miss Clegg,' says he, 'but accordin' to the paper, Jathrop Lathrop don't quite agree with you.' I don't know, Mrs. Lathrop, I d'n know, I'm sure, why Jathrop should take pleasure in making me appear like a ignoramus, but there ain't no question about it that that's what he did when he gave that interview to that there reporter. 'What kind of animal is a sisal, then, Mr. Kimball?' I asked, and you can believe me my blood was boilin' in my veins. 'It ain't no animal a _tall_,' he says. 'It's hemp what they make ropes out of to hang murderers with. And the seeds they feed canaries on.' 'Well,' I says, 'that may be the reporter's sisal, but it ain't mine, and it ain't Jathrop's. The newspapers never get nothin' right nohow, but when it comes to reducin' cattle into rope and birdseed, they are certainly goin' one better on the Chicago pork packers.' In all my life I have never been a respecter of the untruth, but I know enough on the subject to tell a good lie when necessity calls upon me and to stick to it as long as it has an eyelid to hang by. But I will say this for your son Jathrop, Mrs. Lathrop, and that is that before he got done with that reporter, he didn't leave so much as a eyelash, let alone a lid. It wasn't only that he'd never been to those islands a _tall_, and I'd been tellin' everybody in town as how I'd had a letter from him there every week the whole summer through, but he must air his acquaintance with things on the islands just as if he'd been born and raised there. And it seems there ain't no natives within miles of the Bahamas, and hasn't been since Columbus and his people was there, goin' on fifteen hundred years ago. Columbus told 'em that he'd take 'em to the land where all their dead relatives and friends had gone to, a land flowin' with milk and honey, and he kept his word. Seems he shipped every last mother's son and daughter of 'em back to Spain with him, and left the islands bare for the next comers. It may have appeared a rather roundabout way for the native Bahamians to reach heaven and their departed folks, seeing as it led through hard work in the Spanish mines, but there ain't no question whatever that they every one got there in the end."

"You mean--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop.

"I mean that unless Lathrop or the reporter made it up, or the pair of 'em together, that nobody lives there now except whites and blacks, and there's not enough whites to make a nice shepherd's plaid out of the combination. But savagery, except for pirates, has never had any place there, and cannibalism is absolutely unknown. It's all very humiliating, and it'd 'a' been much better to let people ask me and never said nothing back a _tall_. When people is in the dark, they've got to imagine for themselves, and as long as they don't tell what they imagine to others, no piece in a newspaper can never make 'em blush. I can tell you it's learnt me a lesson as I won't soon forget. I'll never get over the way Mr. Kimball looked at me when he said as how sisal was hemp; and me thinking all the time it was a animal when it was a herb. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a ill wind that don't chill the shorn lamb. I'm that chilled that I feel I never shall talk again. I'll never say black is black or white is white until I've looked at the color twice with my glasses on. Accuracy is the best policy, I says, from this day henceforth."

"You might--" began Mrs. Lathrop sympathetically.

"That's true, too. I might have known that it didn't sound true to be getting letters every week from a man who went away to the Klondike and never sent his mother so much as a picture postal card in all the years he was there. But then, too, you've got to consider the kind of folks as you're telling things to, and with all due respect to the ladies of the Sewing Society, from Mrs. Allen to Gran'ma Mullins, they're not over-burdened with the kind of intellect as can add two and two and get the same answer twice in succession. There wasn't a one of 'em as thought of that, or they'd 'a' said it straight out, without once considering my feelings. And I'll say this much for you, Mrs. Lathrop: you're not the best housekeeper I ever see, and you're about a match for Mrs. Sperrit's cousin when it comes to being practical, but you have got some brains, and I'd no more think of trying to deceive you than I'd think of trying to deceive Judge Fitch when he'd got a big retainer to get the truth out of me."

Mrs. Lathrop leaned down and turned out the oil burner.

"Was that--?"

"No, it wasn't all. There was something else that has set me all of a flutter. If it wasn't as you never can tell whether a newspaper is voracious or just bearing false witness, I'd certainly feel as if Jathrop was playing fast and loose with my affections. I can remember, and you can remember, too, when the freedom of the press didn't mean freedom to make a Pike's Peak out of a ant hill. But in these days there's no telling whether, when we read of a poor soul being attacked by a wild beast, it's a jungle tiger or just a pet yellow kitten. Folks would rather read about the tiger than the kitten, and so the papers give 'em what they want without any regard for the real facts a _tall_. Elijah Doxey, who's a real editor if there ever was one, and knows all about the paper business, says that the newspaper, like everything else, has to keep abreast of the times or go to the wall, and that since people in these days 'ld rather read fiction than history, it stands to reason a paper can't stand in its own light by sticking always to cold commonplace facts."

"Did the--?" Mrs. Lathrop attempted mildly to question.

"I don't know, I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop. But the interview with Jathrop wasn't all interview, by no means. It said a lot about his party, and it mentioned each of the millionaires as was in it. Seems the interview was given on one of those Atlantic City board walks, and it was given--from what on earth do you think, Mrs. Lathrop? From a wheel chair. Jathrop in a wheel chair! Think of that! And not alone, either. 'Beside him,' wrote the interviewer, 'was the beautiful, dark-eyed Cuban señora who, rumor says, is soon to become his bride.' My lands! If it hadn't been for Mr. Kimball's apple barrel, I certainly would have dropped. It would 'a' been bad enough if they was both strong and well, but to think of Jathrop being too weak to walk and going to marry a foreigner no more robust than himself. You can't imagine the shock it give me. For a minute I was clean speechless, and I'd 'a' been dumb yet, I do believe, if it wasn't as I begun to figure things out in my head and got sight of a ray of hope. Just as like as not, I says, Jathrop was suffering from the sudden change of climate,--from the Klondike to Cuba seems to me a pretty rigorous switch for any constitution,--and the Cuban woman was more'n likely his trained nurse fetched from the island. Either that or the woman was just recovering from a illness, and Jathrop got in to ride with her out of pure kindness of heart. Then, too, I remembered that: 'rumor says,' and cheered right up. Rumor never told the truth yet, as far as I know, and it's not in reason to believe the shameless thing is going to reform in these degenerate days. Jathrop may be going to marry the señora, I don't say he isn't, and I don't say he is. But before I believe it, I've got to have some better authority than what rumor says. He's steered clear of wives in the Klondike, and he's steered clear of 'em in other places, and I don't see as there's any reason to think his steering apparatus come to grief while he was in Cuba. 'How's Susan Clegg?' That was what he wrote in the first letter you'd had from him in a dog's age, Mrs. Lathrop, and it showed pretty clear to me who he was thinking of while engaged in the steering operation."

"You don't think--" Mrs. Lathrop began distressfully.

"No man as was seriously sick, Mrs. Lathrop, ever talked two whole long newspaper columns to a reporter. You can bank on that. He was well enough to make me out the king of prevaricators, and it took some strength and a good deal of attention to small details to do it, and as the Cuban señora never said one word in all that time, I can't think as she is cutting any figure eights in his affairs. Consequently, I don't believe it'll pay either of us to do any great lot of worrying."

"If--" Mrs. Lathrop attempted once more to interpolate.

"That's just what I told Mr. Kimball. 'If Mrs. Lathrop could only see this paper,' I says, 'I know she'd be delighted.' It stands to reason as a mother must be proud of a son who, after having no more sense than to take a kicking cow for a bad debt, goes to the Klondike and comes back a millionaire; but it stands to reason, too, that she'd be more proud of him to get two columns of free advertising in a New York paper that can sell its columns to the department stores for real money. Well, I asked him for the paper just to show you, and though he didn't feel to part with it, just the same he did in the end, and I carried it away in triumph."

"You've brought--"

"No, I haven't. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Lathrop, more sorry than I am to disappoint Mr. Kimball in not being able to return it, but the truth is I lost it on the way home."

"Lost--"

"Every last scrap of it. And I can't say as it was altogether accidental either. As Shakespeare says: 'Self-protection is the best part of valor.' If that paper was ever to get before the Sewing Society, my character would be stripped off me to the last rag. Mr. Kimball can say what was in it, but without the paper itself, he'll have a hard time proving anything, and my word when it comes to a dispute is as good as his and a thousand times better."

Mrs. Lathrop leaned forward and for a moment stopped rocking.

"You--" she said quietly but tensely.

"Tore it into small bits," returned Susan, rising, "and scattered them to the winds of heaven. There's a paper trail all the way from the square to Mrs. Macy's gate."

Mrs. Lathrop resumed her rocking and relapsed into silence.

Susan Clegg, laying her finger to her lips as a parting warning, went quietly out.

XI

SUSAN CLEGG AND THE PLAYWRIGHT

"Well," said Miss Clegg to her dear friend in the early fall of that same year, while they still waited under alien roofs the completion of their own made-over houses, "the men who write the Sunday papers and say that when you look at the world with a impartial eye in this century you can't but have hopes of women some day developing into something, surely would know they spoke the truth if they could see Elijah Doxey now."

"But Eli--" expostulated Mrs. Lathrop.

"No, of course not. But 'Liza Em'ly is, and it's her I'm talking about. She was up to see me this afternoon, and she says she'll spare no money nowhere. The trained nurse is to stay with him right along forever if he likes, and the two can have her automobile and ride or walk or do anything, without thinking once what it costs. There was a doctor up from the city again yesterday, and that makes four visits at a hundred a visit. But 'Liza Em'ly says even if Elijah hadn't anything of his own, she'd pay all the bills sooner'n think anything that could be done was being left out. It's a pretty sad case, Mrs. Lathrop, and this last doctor says he never see a sadder. He said nothing more could be done right now, for there really is nothing in this community to remind Elijah that he ever wrote a play, if they only could get those clippings from the newspapers away from him. But that's just what they can't do. He keeps looking them over, and then such a look of agony comes into his eyes,--and Elijah was never one to bear pain as you must know, remembering him with the colic,--and he clasps his hands and shakes his head, and--well, Mrs. Lathrop, Elijah just wasn't strong enough to write a play, and some one as was stronger ought to of restrained him right in the first of it."

"He--" said Mrs. Lathrop pityingly.

"Yes, that's it," confirmed Susan, "and oh, it's awful to take a bright 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.