ONE THING AND ANOTHER

Seldom have we longed for anything so much as for the pen of a Fielding or a Thackeray to come to our aid at the present moment and, by means of just such a delightful detached essay as occurs from time to time in "Tom Jones" or "The Virginians," impart a feeling of the intermission that at this point appears in our story. There is nothing like a digression on human frailty or the condition of footmen in the reign of King George the Second to lift the mind of a reader off any particular moment of a story and, by throwing a few useful hints into the discourse, prepare him ever so gently to be set down at last at the exact point where he is to take it up again. That is making an art of skipping, indeed. We admire it intensely, but realize how impossible it is in this case. Not only is such a thing frankly outside our power, but the prejudice of the times is set against it, so our only course is to confess our weakness and plod along as best we may.

Why on earth every human being who ever knew him should not have known of his engagement as soon as it occurred—or long before, for that matter—Harry could never discover. That they did not, in most cases, was due partly to reasons which could have been best explained by James and partly to the fact that the person who is most careless of concealment in such matters is very often the one who is least suspected. And then so many men had been after Madge! So that when the great news burst upon the world at the dinner that Mrs. Gilson could not decently be prevented from giving, the surprise, in the words of ninety-nine per cent. of their well-meaning friends, was as great as the pleasure.

That occurred about a week after James' sudden departure from Bar Harbor, a phenomenon amply accounted for by business. Trouble in the Balkans—there always was trouble in the Balkans—had resulted, it appeared, in Orders; and Orders demanded James' presence at his post. This from Beatrice, with impregnable casualness. Beatrice was really rather magnificent, these days. When she received her invitation to Mrs. Gilson's dinner she vowed that nothing should take her there, but the next moment she knew she would go; that nothing should keep her from going. Obviously the first guiding principle of destiny-fighting was to go on exactly as if nothing had happened.

About a week after the dinner Harry received a note from his brother in New York saying that he was engaged to Beatrice; that the wedding was to take place in London in October and that he hoped Harry would go over with him and act as his best man. "I refrained from mentioning it before," added James, "because I did not want to take the wind out of your sails. We are also enabled by waiting to reap the benefit of your experience; I refer to the Gilsons. We are taking no risks; it will appear in the papers on Wednesday the sixteenth, with Beatrice in Bar Harbor and me in New York. Beatrice sails the following Saturday."

That was all very well, if a little hard. James and Beatrice were both undemonstrative, businesslike souls; the arrangement was quite characteristic.

Beatrice in due time sailed for home, and James followed her some three weeks afterward. Harry went with him, returning immediately after the wedding by the fastest ship he could get; he was out of the country just eighteen days, all told. The voyage over was an uneventful one; the ship was nearly empty and Harry worked hard at his new play. He had rather looked forward to enjoying this last week of unmarried companionship with his brother, but somehow they did not seem to have more than usual to say to each other when they were together. Rather less, in fact.

"You're looking low, seems to me," said Harry after they had paced the wet deck in silence for nearly half of a certain evening.

"I've been rather low, lately."

"What—too much work?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's nothing."

"Not seasick, are you?"

"I hope not." Both gave a slight snort expressive of amusement. This was occasioned by the fact that Aunt Cecilia had offered James the use of her yacht—or rather the largest and most sumptuous of her yachts—for his wedding trip, and he and Beatrice were going to cruise for two months in the Mediterranean. As for the time—well, he was simply taking it, defying McClellan's to fire him if they dared.

"It's funny, isn't it, our getting engaged at the same time," Harry went on after a moment. It was the first reference he had made to the coincidence.

"Oh, yes," said James, "it's one of the funniest things I can remember."

"And the funniest part of it is that neither of us seems to have suspected about the other. At least I didn't."

"Oh, neither did I; not a thing."

"And practically nobody else did either, apparently."

"No. It might have been just the other way round, for all anybody knew—you and Beatrice, and Madge and me."

Harry could not but take away from that conversation and from the whole voyage a vague feeling of disappointment. Since he heard of James' engagement he had entertained an elusive conviction that love coming into their lives at so nearly the same time should somehow make a difference for the better between them. When he tried to put this idea into words, however, he found his mind mechanically running to such phrases as "deeper sympathy" and "fuller understanding," all of which he dismissed as sentimental cant. It was easy to reassure himself on all grounds of reason and commonsense; James and he were in no need of fuller understandings. And yet, especially after the above conversation, he could not but be struck by a certain inapproachability in his brother which for some reason he could not construe as natural undemonstrativeness.

The wedding took place in an atmosphere of unconstrained formality. Harry was not able to get a boat until two days after it, and he could not resist the temptation of writing Madge all about it that very night, though he knew the letter could hardly reach her before he did:—

"It was quite a small wedding, chiefly because, as far as I can make out, there are only some thirty-odd dukes in the kingdom. It occurred at the odd hour of 2:30, but that didn't seem to prevent any one from enjoying the food, and more especially the drink, that was handed around afterward at Lady Archie's. Lord Moville, Beatrice's uncle, was there and seemed greatly taken with James. After he had got outside about a quart of champagne he amused himself by feeling James' biceps and thumping him on the chest and saying that with a fortnight's training he'd back him for anything he wanted against the Somerset Cockerel, or some one of the sort, most of which left James rather cold, though he bore it smiling. His youngest daughter (Lord M.'s), a child of about eighteen, apparently the only living person who has any control over him, was quite frank about it. 'Fido's drunk again,' she announced pleasantly to all who might hear. 'Oh, so's Ned,' said Jane Twombly, Beatrice's sister; 'there's no use trying to help it at weddings, I find!' Just then Lady Archie came running up in despair. 'Oh, Sibyl,' she said, 'do try to do something with your father. He's been threatening to take off his coat because he says the room's too hot, and now he wants old Lady Mulford to kiss him!' And off darts Sibyl into the dining-room where her father and Ned Twombly stand arm in arm waving glasses of champagne and shouting 'John Peel' at the top of their lungs. 'Fido!' she shouted, running straight up to him, 'put down that glass directly and come home! Instantly! Do you hear? You're disgracing us! The next time I take you out to a wedding you'll know it!' 'Oh, Sib,' pleaded the noble Marquis, 'don't be too hard on us! Only drinkin' bride's health—must drink bride's health—not good manners not to. Sib shall drink with us; here's a glass, Sib—for his view, view HALLO! would awaken the dead—' 'Fido, do you know what you're doing? You're ruining your season's hunting! Gout-stool and Seidlitz powders all the winter for you, if you don't go easy!' But still Fido refused to obey till at last the dauntless child went up and whispered something in his ear, after which he calmed down and presently followed her out of the house, gently as a lamb. 'She threatened to tell her mother about the woman in Wimbledon,' explained Jane to me. 'Of course every one knows all there is to know about her, including Aunt Susan, but he hasn't found that out yet, and it gives Sib rather a strangle-hold on him. Good idea, isn't it? Marjorie—Ned's sister, you know—has promised to work the same trick for me with Ned, when the time comes.' I hope I am not more straight-laced than my neighbors, but do you know, the whole atmosphere struck me as just a teeny-weeny bit decadent...."

After he reached home Harry saw that it would be quite useless, what with Madge and other diverting influences, to try to finish his play in New Haven, so he repaired to the solitudes of the Berkshires for the remainder of the autumn. He occupied two rooms in an almost empty inn in Stockbridge, working and living for two months on a strict rÉgime. It was his habit to work from nine till half-past one. He spent most of the afternoon in exercise and the evening in more writing; not the calm, well-balanced writing of the morning, but in feverish and untrammeled scribbling. Each morning he had to write over all that he had done the night before, but he found it well worth while, discovering that reason and inspiration kept separate office hours.

Meanwhile Madge, though freed from the trammels of Miss Snellgrove, was very busy at home with her trousseau and other matters. She was supremely happy these days; happy even in Harry's absence, because she could feel that he was doing better work than he could with her near, and that provided just the element of self-sacrifice that every woman—every woman that is worth anything—yearns to infuse into her love. She had ample opportunity of trying her hand at writing love letters, but, to tell the truth, she was never very good at it. Neither was Harry, for that matter; possibly because he was now putting every ounce of creative power in him into something the result of which justified the effort much better.... But suppose we allow some of the letters to speak for themselves.

Dear Inamorato: (wrote Madge one day in November) I'm not at all sure that that word exists; it looks so odd in the masculine and just shows how the male sex more or less spoils everything it touches. However! I've been hemming towels all day and am ready to drop, but after I finish with them there will be only the pillow cases to attend to before I am done. By the bye, what do you suppose arrived to-day? Four (heavily underscored) most exquisite (same business) linen sheets, beautifully hemstitched and marked and from who ("Good Heavens, and the woman taught school!" exclaimed Harry) do you think? Miss Snellgrove! Wasn't it sweet of her? That makes ten in all. Everybody has been lovely and we shall do very well for linen, but clothes are much more difficult. In them, you see, I have to please not only myself but Mama and Aunt Tizzy as well. I went shopping with both of them yesterday, and they were possessed to make me order an evening gown of black satin with yellow trimmings which was something like a gown Aunt Tizzy had fascinated people in during the early eighties. It wasn't such a bad idea, but unfortunately it would have made me resemble a rather undersized wasp. We compromised at last on a blue silk that's going to have a Watteau pleat and will fall in nice little straight folds and make me look about seven feet high. Aunt Tizzy is too perfectly dear and keeps telling me not to scrimp, but her idea of not scrimping is to spend simply millions and always go ahead and get the very best in the extravagantest way, and my conscience rebels. I hope to pick up some things at the January sales in New York; if you are there seeing about your play at that time we can be together, can't we? I still have to get a suit and an afternoon gown and various other things the nature of which I do not care to specify!

I run over and look in on Aunt Selina every time I get a chance. She is so dear and uncomplaining about being left alone and keeps saying that having me in the house will be as good as having Beatrice, which is absurd, though sweet. Heavens, how I tremble when I think of trying to fill her shoes!

I must stop now, dearest, so good-night. Ever your own,

Madge

O O O O O O

Those O's stand for osculations. Do you know how hard it is to kiss in a small space? Like tying a bow-knot with too short a piece of ribbon.

---

For Heaven's sake, my good woman (wrote Harry in reply), don't write me another letter like that! How do you think I feel when, fairly thirsting for fire and inspiration and that sort of thing, I tear open an envelope from you and find it contains an unusually chatty Woman's Column? How do you suppose poor old D. Alghieri would have written his Paradiso if Beatrice had held forth on the subject of linen sheets, and do you or do you not suppose it would have improved Petrarch's sonnets if Laura had treated him to a disquisition on the ins and outs of the prices of evening gowns?

Remember your responsibility! If you continue to deny me inspiration my play will fail and you will live in disgrace and misery in the basement of a Harlem tenement in an eternal smell of cabbages and a well-justified fear of cockroaches, with one cracked looking-glass to see your face in and dinner served up in a pudding basin!

The c. of my b. (that was his somewhat flippant abbreviation of child of my brain) is coming along well enough, considering. The woman is shaping quite well. What was the name you suggested for her the last time I saw you? If it was Hermione, I'm afraid it won't do, because every one in the theater, from Bachmann down to the call-boy, will call it Hermy-one, and I shall have to correct them all, which will be a bad start. I call her Mamie for the present, because I know I can't keep it. What would be the worst possible name, do you think? Hannah? Florrie? Mae? Keren-happuch and Glwadwys also have their points.

Please forgive me for being (a) short-tempered; (b) tedious. I was going to tear up what I have written, only I decided it would not be quite fair, as you have a right to know just how dreadful I can be, in case you want to change your mind about February.—What a discreetly euphemistic phrase!—It has grown fearfully cold here, and we had the first skating of the winter to-day. I got hold of some skates and went out and, fired by the example of two or three people here who skate rather well, I swore I would do a 3-turn or die in the attempt. The latter alternative occurred. I am writing this on the mantelpiece.

Farewell. Write early and write often, and write Altman catalogues if you must, but not if you are interested in the uplift of drahmah. Give my best to Grandmama, and consider yourself embraced.

Io El Rey.

Madge's reply to this missive was telegraphic in form and brief in substance. It read simply "Sorry. Laura." "I would have signed it Beatrice," she explained in her next letter, "only I was afraid you might think it was from your sister-in-law Beatrice, and there's nothing for her to be sorry about."

Another letter of Harry's, written a few weeks later, shows him in a different mood:

Querida de mis ojos—You don't know Spanish but you ought to gather what that means without great effort—I have weighty news for you. I dashed down to New York on the spur of the moment day before yesterday and showed the first draught of my completed MS to Leo. My dear, he said IT WOULD DO! You don't know what that means, of course; no one could. You all think I have simply to write and say 'Here, play this,' and it is played. You know nothing of how it hurts to put ideas on paper, nothing of the dead weight of responsibility, the loneliness, the self-distrust, the hate of one's own work that the creative brain has to struggle against. Consequently, my dearest, you will just have to take it on trust from me that an interview such as I had yesterday with Bachmann is nothing less than a rebirth. He even advised me not to try to change or improve it much, saying that what changes were needed could best be put in at rehearsals, and I think he's dead right. So I shall do no more than put the third act in shape before I hand the thing over to him and dash home for the holidays. Atmosphere of Yule logs, holly berry and mistletoe!

I really am absurdly happy. You see, it isn't merely success, or a premonition of success (for the first night is still to come); it's in a way a justification of my whole life. If this thing is as good as I think it is, it will amount to a sort of written permit from headquarters to love you, to go on thinking as I do think about certain things and to regard myself—well, it's hard to put into words, but as a dynamic force, rather than as a lucky fool that stumbled across one rather good thing. Not that I shouldn't do all three anyway, to be sure!—And every kind friend will say he knew I would 'make good'; that there never was any doubt my 'coming into my own,' and all the rest. Oh, Lord, if people only knew! But thank Heaven they don't!

I am becoming obscure and rhapsodic. I seem to 'see' things to-night, like Tilburina in the play. I see strange and distorted conceptions of myself, for one thing; endless and bewildering publicity. Oh, what a comfort it is to think that no matter what I may be to other people, to you I shall always be simply the same stupid, bungling, untidy

Harry!

I love you with an intensity that beggars the power of human expression.

I did a bracket this afternoon.

Madge never received a letter from him that pleased her more. She was fully alive to its chaotic immaturity, and she smiled at the way he unconsciously appeared to shove his love for her into second place. But there was that about it that convinced her of his greatness as nothing had yet done. It seemed to her that when he spoke of the loneliness of genius and in his prophetic touch at the end about the different ways in which people would regard him he spoke with the true voice of a seer. It all made her feel very humble and solemn. To think that Harry, her Harry, that tall thin thing with the pink cheeks and dark brown hair and the restless black eyes, should be one of the great men of his day, perhaps one of the great ones of all time! Keats—Harry was already older than Keats when he died, but she thought he had much the same temperament; Congreve—she knew how he loved Congreve; Marlowe—she had often compared his golden idealism to that of Marlowe; Shakespeare...? No, no—of course not! She knew perfectly well he was no Shakespeare.... Still, why not, in time?... And anyway, Marlowe, Congreve, Keats—Wimbourne!

So she dreamed on, till the future, which hitherto she had seen as merely smiling toward her, seemed to rise and with solemn face beckon her to a new height, a place hard to reach and difficult to hold, but one whose very base seemed more exalted than anything she had yet known....

Now Madge was, on the whole, a very fairly modern type of young woman. Her outlook on the world was based on Darwin, and she held firmly to such eugenic principles as seemed to flow directly from the doctrine of evolution. She had long since declared war to the death on disease, filth and vice, to which she added a lesser foe generally known as "suppression of facts," and she had done a certain amount of real work in helping those less fortunate than herself to the acquisition of health, cleanliness, virtue and "knowledge." She thought that women would get the vote some day, though they weren't ready for it yet, and hadn't joined the Antis because there was no use in being a drag on the wheels of progress, even if you didn't feel like helping. She believed in the "social regeneration" of woman. It was quite clear to her that in the early years of the twentieth century women were beginning—and only just beginning—to take their place beside men in the active work of saving the race; "why, you had only to look at Jane Addams and Florence Nightingale to see—" et cetera.

And yet, and yet....

It was at least as fine a thing to become Mrs. Harold Wimbourne and devote a lifetime to ministering to one of the great creative geniuses of the time as to be a heavy gun on her own account, was what she meant, of course. But that wasn't quite enough. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Harry were not one of the great creative geniuses of the age; suppose there were no question of Congreve, Keats, Wimbourne and so forth; suppose being his wife meant being plain Mrs. Harold Wimbourne and nothing more—what then?

"Well, I suppose I'd still rather be plain Mrs. H. W., if you will have it!" she retorted petulantly to her relentless self. But she soon became glad she had brought herself to the point of admitting it, for, the issue definitely settled, her mind became unaccountably peaceful....

New Year's was scarcely over when rehearsals began, and Harry was in for another period of lounging in shrouded orchestra chairs and watching other people air their ideas, or lack of ideas, on the child of his brain. His lounging was now, however, quite freely punctuated by interruptions and not infrequently by scramblings over the footlights to illustrate a fine point. This rather bored the actors; Harry had become almost uncomfortably acute in matter of stage technique. But they had to admit that his suggestions were never foolish or unnecessary.

In due time came the first night. It is no part of our purpose to describe "Pastures New" or its success in this place. If—which is improbable—you have to refresh your mind on it, you have only to ask one of your journalistic friends—don't pretend that you haven't at least one friend on a newspaper—to show you the files of his sheet. There you will see it all, in what scholars call primary sources:—"New Yorkers Roar With Delight at Feminist Satire," and all the rest of it, like as not on the front page. Harry hated its being called a satire; that was such a cheap and easy way of getting out of it. For when all was over, when people had cried with laughing at its whimsical humor, poked each other with delight at its satirical touches—oh yes, there were plenty of them—quoted its really brilliant dialogue, sat enthralled by its swift and compelling action—for Harry had made good his promise that this play should have "punch"—when they had done all these things to their heart's content, still not a person saw the play who did not come away from it more fully convinced than ever he had been of—well, of what you had only to look at Jane Addams and Florence Nightingale to see. For there were really great moments in the play; moments when no one even thought of laughing, though one was almost always made to laugh the moment after. That was Harry's way, that was his power, to "hit 'em hard and then make 'em laugh just as they begin to feel smarty in the eyes," as Burchard the stage manager not unaptly put it.

"Pastures New" ran for six months in New York alone, and no one laughed harder or less rancorously at it than the "feminists" themselves—or all of them that were worth anything.

Of course both Harry and Madge were tired to death by the time the wedding became imminent, and the final preparations were made in what might be called broad impressionistic strokes.

Madge had at first intended to have a small informal reception in her own house, but Aunt Tizzy had been so disappointed that she had at last consented to let it be at her aunt's and attain the dimensions of a perfect tomasha—the phrase is her own—if it wanted to. Why not? Aunt Tizzy's house could hold it.

"Besides, my dear," argued Harry, "it's only once in a lifetime, after all. If you marry again as a widow you'll only have a silly little wedding, without a veil and no bridesmaids, and if we're divorced you won't have any wedding at all, worth mentioning. Much better do it up brown when you have the chance."

"What about music?" asked Harry as the two stood in final consultation with the organist on the night of the rehearsal. "I've always wondered why people had such perfectly rotten music at weddings, but I begin to see now. Still, if we could have something other than Lohengrin and Mendelssohn I think I could face marriage with a little better heart. What about it, dear?"

Madge groaned. "Oh, anything! The Star-Spangled Banner, if you want!"

"I think I can arrange it," said the organist smiling, and he played the march from "TannhÄuser" and the march from "Athalie," which he always played when people asked for something unusual, and the effect was considered very pleasing and original. Altogether it was the prettiest wedding any one had seen in years, according to the testimony of those who attended the reception—which did become a perfect tomasha. But as tomasha-goers are notoriously biased their testimony probably wasn't legal and no respectable judge would have accepted it as evidence. The only legal thing about the whole affair was the ceremony, which was fully as much so as if it had been before a magistrate, which Madge swore it should be if she ever had to go through it again and regretted bitterly it hadn't been this time.... Well, perhaps, when she looked about her and saw how unaffectedly happy her mother and Aunt Tizzy and the bridesmaids and all the other good people were, she didn't regret it quite so much.

"Though it is rather absurd, getting married to please other people, isn't it?" she remarked as they drove off at last, leaving the tomasha-goers to carouse as long as Aunt Tizzy could make them.

"I think I'd do almost anything to please Aunt Tizzy," said Harry. "Now that it's all over, that is. Get married again, even.... After all," he added suddenly, shamelessly going back on all his professions of the last few days; "after all, you know, it was rather a good wedding!"

Which shows that he was just as biased as any one, at bottom!