_ CHAPTER II
Which Repeats, for the Most Part, What Jim Campbell Said to Me and What I Said to Him
"Jim," said I, "what is the matter with me?"
Jim, who was seated in the ancient and dilapidated arm-chair which was the finest piece of furniture in the boathouse and which I always offered to visitors, looked at me over the collar of my sweater. I used the sweater as I did the arm-chair when I did not have visitors. He was using it then because, like an idiot, he had come to Cape Cod in April with nothing warmer than a very natty suit and a light overcoat. Of course one may go clamming and fishing in a light overcoat, but--one doesn't.
Jim looked at me over the collar of my sweater. Then he crossed his oilskinned and rubber-booted legs--they were my oilskins and my boots--and answered promptly.
"Indigestion," he said. "You ate nine of those biscuits this morning; I saw you."
"I did not," I retorted, "because you saw them first. MY interior is in its normal condition. As for yours--"
"Mine," he interrupted, filling his pipe from my tobacco pouch, "being accustomed to a breakfast, not a gorge, is abnormal but satisfactory, thank you--quite satisfactory."
"That," said I, "we will discuss later, when I have you out back of the bar in my catboat. Judging from present indications there will be some sea-running. The 'Hephzy' is a good, capable craft, but a bit cranky, like the lady she is named for. I imagine she will roll."
He didn't like that. You see, I had sailed with him before and I remembered.
"Ho-se-a," he drawled, "you have a vivid imagination. It is a pity you don't use more of it in those stories of yours."
"Humph! I am obliged to use the most of it on the royalty statements you send me. If you call me 'Hosea' again I will take the 'Hephzy' across the Point Rip. The waves there are fifteen feet high at low tide. See here, I asked you a serious question and I should like a serious answer. Jim, what IS the matter with me? Have I written out or what is the trouble?"
He looked at me again.
"Are you in earnest?" he asked.
"I am, very much in earnest."
"And you really want to talk shop after a breakfast like that and on a morning like this?"
"I do."
"Was that why you asked me to come to Bayport and spend the week-end?"
"No-o. No, of course not."
"You're another; it was. When you met me at the railroad station yesterday I could see there was something wrong with you. All this morning you've had something on your chest. I thought it was the biscuits, of course; but it wasn't, eh?"
"It was not."
"Then what was it? Aren't we paying you a large enough royalty?"
"You are paying me a good deal larger one than I deserve. I don't see why you do it."
"Oh," with a wave of the hand, "that's all right. The publishing of books is a pure philanthropy. We are in business for our health, and--"
"Shut up. You know as well as I do that the last two yarns of mine which your house published have not done as well as the others."
I had caught him now. Anything remotely approaching a reflection upon the business house of which he was the head was sufficient to stir up Jim Campbell. That business, its methods and its success, were his idols.
"I don't know any such thing," he protested, hotly. "We sold--"
"Hang the sale! You sold quite enough. It is an everlasting miracle to me that you are able to sell a single copy. Why a self-respecting person, possessed of any intelligence whatever, should wish to read the stuff I write, to say nothing of paying money for the privilege, I can't understand."
"You don't have to understand. No one expects an author to understand anything. All you are expected to do is to write; we'll attend to the rest of it. And as for sales--why, 'The Black Brig'--that was the last one, wasn't it?--beat the 'Omelet' by eight thousand or more."
"The Omelet" was our pet name for "The Queen's Amulet," my first offence in the literary line. It was a highly seasoned concoction of revolution and adventure in a mythical kingdom where life was not dull, to say the least. The humblest character in it was a viscount. Living in Bayport had, naturally, made me familiar with the doings of viscounts.
"Eight thousand more than the last isn't so bad, is it?" demanded Jim Campbell combatively.
"It isn't. It is astonishingly good. It is the books themselves that are bad. The 'Omelet' was bad enough, but I wrote it more as a joke than anything else. I didn't take it seriously at all. Every time I called a duke by his Christian name I grinned. But nowadays I don't grin--I swear. I hate the things, Jim. They're no good. And the reviewers are beginning to tumble to the fact that they're no good, too. You saw the press notices yourself. 'Another Thriller by the Indefatigable Knowles' 'Barnacles, Buccaneers and Blood, not to Mention Beauty and the Bourbons.' That's the way two writers headed their articles about 'The Black Brig.' And a third said that I must be getting tired; I wrote as if I was. THAT fellow was right. I am tired, Jim. I'm tired and sick of writing slush. I can't write any more of it. And yet I can't write anything else."
Jim's pipe had gone out. Now he relit it and tossed the match over the veranda rail.
"How do you know you can't?" he demanded.
"Can't what?"
"Can't write anything but slush?"
"Ah ha! Then it is slush. You admit it."
"I don't admit anything of the kind. You may not be a William Shakespeare or even a George Meredith, but you have written some mighty interesting stories. Why, I know a chap who sits up till morning to finish a book of yours. Can't sleep until he has finished it."
"What's the matter with him; insomnia?"
"No; he's a night watchman. Does that satisfy you, you crossgrained old shellfish? Come on, let's dig clams--some of your own blood relations--and forget it."
"I don't want to forget it and there is plenty of time for clamming. The tide won't cover the flats for two hours yet. I tell you I'm serious, Jim. I can't write any more. I know it. The stuff I've been writing makes me sick. I hate it, I tell you. What the devil I'm going to do for a living I can't see--but I can't write another story."
Jim put his pipe in his pocket. I think at last he was convinced that I meant what I said, which I certainly did. The last year had been a year of torment to me. I had finished the 'Brig,' as a matter of duty, but if that piratical craft had sunk with all hands, including its creator, I should not have cared. I drove myself to my desk each day, as a horse might be driven to a treadmill, but the animal could have taken no less interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad--bad--bad; worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed, had now reached the point where that had failed, too. Campbell's surmise was correct; with the pretence of asking him to the Cape for a week-end of fishing and sailing I had lured him there to tell him of my discouragement and my determination to quit.
He took his feet from the rail and hitched his chair about until he faced me.
"So you're not going to write any more," he said.
"I'm not. I can't."
"What are you going to do; live on back royalties and clams?"
"I may have to live on the clams; my back royalties won't keep me very long."
"Humph! I should think they might keep you a good while down here. You must have something in the stocking. You can't have wasted very much in riotous living on this sand-heap. What have you done with your money, for the last ten years; been leading a double life?"
"I've found leading a single one hard enough. I have saved something, of course. It isn't the money that worries me, Jim; I told you that. It's myself; I'm no good. Every author, sometime or other, reaches the point where he knows perfectly well he has done all the real work he can ever do, that he has written himself out. That's what's the matter with me--I'm written out."
Jim snorted. "For Heaven's sake, Kent Knowles," he demanded, "how old are you?"
"I'm thirty-eight, according to the almanac, but--"
"Thirty-eight! Why, Thackeray wrote--"
"Drop it! I know when Thackeray wrote 'Vanity Fair' as well as you do. I'm no Thackeray to begin with, and, besides, I am older at thirty-eight than he was when he died--yes, older than he would have been if he had lived twice as long. So far as feeling and all the rest of it go, I'm a second Methusaleh."
"My soul! hear the man! And I'm forty-two myself. Well, Grandpa, what do you expect me to do; get you admitted to the Old Man's Home?"
"I expect--" I began, "I expect--" and I concluded with the lame admission that I didn't expect him to do anything. It was up to me to do whatever must be done, I imagined.
He smiled grimly.
"Glad your senility has not affected that remnant of your common-sense," he declared. "You're dead right, my boy; it IS up to you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"I am, but that doesn't help me a whole lot."
"Nothing will help you as long as you think and speak as you have this morning. See here, Kent! answer me a question or two, will you? They may be personal questions, but will you answer them?"
"I guess so. There has been what a disinterested listener might call a slightly personal flavor to your remarks so far. Do your worst. Fire away."
"All right. You've lived in Bayport ten years or so, I know that. What have you done in all that time--besides write?"
"Well, I've continued to live."
"Doubted. You've continued to exist; but how? I've been here before. This isn't my first visit, by a good deal. Each time I have been here your daily routine--leaving out the exciting clam hunts and the excursions in quest of the ferocious flounder, like the one we're supposed--mind, I say supposed--to be on at the present moment--you have put in the day about like this: Get up, bathe, eat, walk to the post-office, walk home, sit about, talk a little, read some, walk some more, eat again, smoke, talk, read, eat for the third time, smoke, talk, read and go to bed. That's the program, isn't it?"
"Not exactly. I play tennis in summer--when there is anyone to play with me--and golf, after a fashion. I used to play both a good deal, when I was younger. I swim, and I shoot a little, and--and--"
"How about society? Have any, do you?"
"In the summer, when the city people are here, there is a good deal going on, if you care for it--picnics and clam bakes and teas and lawn parties and such."
"Heavens! what reckless dissipation! Do you indulge?"
"Why, no--not very much. Hang it all, Jim! you know I'm no society man. I used to do the usual round of fool stunts when I was younger, but--"
"But now you're too antique, I suppose. Wonder that someone hasn't collected you as a genuine Chippendale or something. So you don't 'tea' much?"
"Not much. I'm not often invited, to tell you the truth. The summer crowd doesn't take kindly to me, I'm afraid."
"Astonishing! You're such a chatty, entertaining, communicative cuss on first acquaintance, too. So captivatingly loquacious to strangers. I can imagine how you'd shine at a 'tea.' Every summer girl that tried to talk to you would be frost-bitten. Do you accept invitations when they do come?"
"Not often nowadays. You see, I know they don't really want me."
"How do you know it?"
"Why--well, why should they? Everybody else calls me--"
"They call you a clam and so you try to live up to your reputation. I know you, Kent. You think yourself a tough old bivalve, but the most serious complaint you suffer from is ingrowing sensitiveness. They do want you. They'd invite you if you gave them half a chance. Oh, I know you won't, of course; but if I had my way I'd have you dragged by main strength to every picnic and tea and feminine talk-fest within twenty miles. You might meet some persevering female who would propose marriage. YOU never would, but SHE might."
I rose to my feet in disgust.
"We'll go clamming," said I.
He did not move.
"We will--later on," he answered. "We haven't got to the last page of the catechism yet. I mentioned matrimony because a good, capable, managing wife would be my first prescription in your case. I have one or two more up my sleeve. Tell me this: How often do you get away from Bayport? How often do you get to--well, to Boston, we'll say? How many times have you been there in the last year?"
"I don't know. A dozen, perhaps."
"What did you do when you went?"
"Various things. Shopped some, went to the theater occasionally, if there happened to be anything on that I cared to see. Bought a good many books. Saw the new Sargent pictures at the library. And--and--"
"And shook hands with your brother fossils at the museum, I suppose. Wild life you lead, Kent. Did you visit anybody? Meet any friends or acquaintances--any live ones?"
"Not many. I haven't many friends, Jim; you know that. As for the wild life--well, I made two visits to New York this year."
"Yes," drily; "and we saw Sothern and Marlowe and had dinner at the Holland. The rest of the time we talked shop. That was the first visit. The second was more exciting still; we talked shop ALL the time and you took the six o'clock train home again."
"You're wrong there. I saw the new loan collections at the Metropolitan and heard Ysaye play at Carnegie Hall. I didn't start for home until the next day."
"Is that so. That's news to me. You said you were going that afternoon. That was to put the kibosh on my intention of taking you home to my wife and her bridge party, I suppose. Was it?"
"Well--well, you see, Jim, I--I don't play bridge and I AM such a stick in a crowd like that. I wanted to stay and you were mighty kind, but--but--"
"All right. All right, my boy. Next time it will be Bustanoby's, the Winter Garden and a three A. M. cabaret for yours. My time is coming. Now--Well, now we'll go clamming."
He swung out of the arm-chair and walked to the top of the steps leading down to the beach. I was surprised, of course; I have known Jim Campbell a long time, but he can surprise me even yet.
"Here! hold on!" I protested. "How about the rest of that catechism?"
"You've had it."
"Were those all the questions you wanted to ask?"
"Yes."
"Humph! And that is all the advice and encouragement I'm to get from you! How about those prescriptions you had up your sleeve?"
"You'll get those by and by. Before I leave this gay and festive scene to-morrow I'm going to talk to you, Ho-se-a. And you're going to listen. You'll listen to old Doctor Campbell; HE'LL prescribe for you, don't you worry. And now," beginning to descend the steps, "now for clams and flounders."
"And the Point Rip," I added, maliciously, for his frivolous treatment of what was to me a very serious matter, was disappointing and provoking. "Don't forget the Point Rip."
We dug the clams--they were for bait--we boarded the "Hephzy," sailed out to the fishing grounds, and caught flounders. I caught the most of them; Jim was not interested in fishing during the greater part of the time. Then we sailed home again and walked up to the house. Hephzibah, for whom my boat is named, met us at the back door. As usual her greeting was not to the point and practical.
"Leave your rubber boots right outside on the porch," she said. "Here, give me those flatfish; I'll take care of 'em. Hosy, you'll find dry things ready in your room. Here's your shoes; I've been warmin' 'em. Mr. Campbell I've put a suit of Hosy's and some flannels on your bed. They may not fit you, but they'll be lots better than the damp ones you've got on. You needn't hurry; dinner won't be ready till you are."
I did not say anything; I knew Hephzy--had known her all my life. Jim, who, naturally enough, didn't know her as well, protested.
"We're not wet, Miss Cahoon," he declared. "At least, I'm not, and I don't see how Kent can be. We both wore oilskins."
"That doesn't make any difference. You ought to change your clothes anyhow. Been out in that boat, haven't you?"
"Yes, but--"
"Well, then! Don't say another word. I'll have a fire in the sittin'-room and somethin' hot ready when you come down. Hosy, be sure and put on BOTH the socks I darned for you. Don't get thinkin' of somethin' else and come down with one whole and one holey, same as you did last time. You must excuse me, Mr. Campbell. I've got saleratus biscuits in the oven."
She hastened into the kitchen. When Jim and I, having obeyed orders to the extent of leaving our boots on the porch, passed through that kitchen she was busy with the tea-kettle. I led the way through the dining-room and up the front stairs. My visitor did not speak until we reached the second story. Then he expressed his feelings.
"Say, Kent" he demanded, "are you going to change your clothes?"
"Yes."
"Why? You're no wetter than I am, are you?"
"Not a bit, but I'm going to change, just the same. It's the easier way."
"It is, is it! What's the other way?"
"The other way is to keep on those you're wearing and take the consequences."
"What consequences?"
"Jamaica ginger, hot water bottles and an afternoon's roast in front of the sitting-room fire. Hephzibah went out sailing with me last October and caught cold. That was enough; no one else shall have the experience if she can help it."
"But--but good heavens! Kent, do you mean to say you always have to change when you come in from sailing?"
"Except in summer, yes."
"But why?"
"Because Hephzy tells me to."
"Do you always do what she tells you?"
"Generally. It's the easiest way, as I said before."
"Good--heavens! And she darns your socks and tells you what--er lingerie to wear and--does she wash your face and wipe your nose and scrub behind your ears?"
"Not exactly, but she probably would if I didn't do it."
"Well, I'll be hanged! And she extends the same treatment to all your guests?"
"I don't have any guests but you. No doubt she would if I did. She mothers every stray cat and sick chicken in the neighborhood. There, Jim, you trot along and do as you're told like a nice little boy. I'll join you in the sitting-room."
"Humph! perhaps I'd better. I may be spanked and put to bed if I don't. Well, well! and you are the author of 'The Black Brig!' 'Buccaneers and Blood!' 'Bibs and Butterscotch' it should be! Don't stand out here in the cold hall, Hosy darling; you may get the croup if you do."
I was waiting in the sitting-room when he came down. There was a roaring fire in the big, old-fashioned fireplace. That fireplace had been bricked up in the days when people used those abominations, stoves. As a boy I was well acquainted with the old "gas burner" with the iron urn on top and the nickeled ornaments and handles which Mother polished so assiduously. But the gas burner had long since gone to the junk dealer. Among the improvements which my first royalty checks made possible were steam heat and the restoration of the fireplace.
Jim found me sitting before the fire in one of the two big "wing" chairs which I had purchased when Darius Barlay's household effects were sold at auction. I should not have acquired them as cheaply if Captain Cyrus Whittaker had been at home when the auction took place. Captain Cy loves old-fashioned things as much as I do and, as he has often told me since, he meant to land those chairs some day if he had to run his bank account high and dry in consequence. But the Captain and his wife--who used to be Phoebe Dawes, our school-teacher here in Bayport--were away visiting their adopted daughter, Emily, who is married and living in Boston, and I got the chairs.
At the Barclay auction I bought also the oil painting of the bark "Freedom"--a command of Captain Elkanah Barclay, uncle of the late Darius--and the set--two volumes missing--of The Spectator, bound in sheepskin. The "Freedom" is depicted "Entering the Port of Genoa, July 10th, 1848," and if the port is somewhat wavy and uncertain, the bark's canvas and rigging are definite and rigid enough to make up. The Spectator set is chiefly remarkable for its marginal notes; Captain Elkanah bought the books in London and read and annotated at spare intervals during subsequent voyages. His opinions were decided and his notes nautical and emphatic. Hephzibah read a few pages of the notes when the books first came into the house and then went to prayer-meeting. As she had announced her intention of remaining at home that evening I was surprised--until I read them myself.
Jim came downstairs, arrayed in the suit which Hephzy had laid out for him. I made no comment upon his appearance. To do so would have been superfluous; he looked all the comments necessary.
I waved my hand towards the unoccupied wing chair and he sat down. Two glasses, one empty and the other half full of a steaming mixture, were on the little table beside us.
"Help yourself, Jim," I said, indicating the glasses. He took up the one containing the mixture and regarded it hopefully.
"What?" he asked.
"A Cahoon toddy," said I. "Warranted to keep off chills, rheumatism, lumbago and kindred miseries. Good for what ails you. Don't wait; I've had mine."
He took a sniff and then a very small sip. His face expressed genuine emotion.
"Whew!" he gasped, choking. "What in blazes--?"
"Jamaica ginger, sugar and hot water," I explained blandly. "It won't hurt you--longer than five minutes. It is Hephzy's invariable prescription."
"Good Lord! Did you drink yours?"
"No--I never do, unless she watches me."
"But your glass is empty. What did you do with it?"
"Emptied it behind the back log. Of course, if you prefer to drink it--"
"Drink it!" His "toddy" splashed the back log, causing a tremendous sizzle.
Before he could relieve his mind further, Hephzy appeared to announce that dinner was ready if we were. We were, most emphatically, so we went into the dining-room.
Hephzy and Jim did most of the talking during the meal. I had talked more that forenoon than I had for a week--I am not a chatty person, ordinarily, which, in part, explains my nickname--and I was very willing to eat and listen. Hephzy, who was garbed in her best gown--best weekday gown, that is; she kept her black silk for Sundays--talked a good deal, mostly about dreams and presentiments. Susanna Wixon, Tobias Wixon's oldest daughter, waited on table, when she happened to think of it, and listened when she did not. Susanna had been hired to do the waiting and the dish-washing during Campbell's brief visit. It was I who hired her. If I had had my way she would have been a permanent fixture in the household, but Hephzy scoffed at the idea. "Pity if I can't do housework for two folks," she declared. "I don't care if you can afford it. Keepin' hired help in a family no bigger than this, is a sinful extravagance." As Susanna's services had been already engaged for the weekend she could not discharge her, but she insisted on doing all the cooking herself.
Her conversation, as I said, dealt mainly with dreams and presentiments. Hephzibah is not what I should call a superstitious person. She doesn't believe in "signs," although she might feel uncomfortable if she broke a looking-glass or saw the new moon over her left shoulder. She has a most amazing fund of common-sense and is "down" on Spiritualism to a degree. It is one of Bayport's pet yarns, that at the Harniss Spiritualist camp-meeting when the "test medium" announced from the platform that he had a message for a lady named Hephzibah C--he "seemed to get the name Hephzibah C"--Hephzy got up and walked out. "Any dead relations I've got," she declared, "who send messages through a longhaired idiot like that one up there"--meaning the medium,--"can't have much to say that's worth listenin' to. They can talk to themselves if they want to, but they shan't waste MY time."
In but one particular was Hephzy superstitious. Whenever she dreamed of "Little Frank" she was certain something was going to happen. She had dreamed of "Little Frank" the night before and, if she had not been headed off, she would have talked of nothing else.
"I saw him just as plain as I see you this minute, Hosy," she said to me. "I was somewhere, in a strange place--a foreign place, I should say 'twas--and there I saw him. He didn't know me; at least I don't think he did."
"Considering that he never saw you that isn't so surprising," I interrupted. "I think Mr. Campbell would have another cup of coffee if you urged him. Susanna, take Mr. Campbell's cup."
Jim declined the coffee; said he hadn't finished his first cup yet. I knew that, of course, but I was trying to head off Hephzy. She refused to be headed, just then.
"But I knew HIM," she went on. "He looked just the same as he has when I've seen him before--in the other dreams, you know. The very image of his mother. Isn't it wonderful, Hosy!"
"Yes; but don't resurrect the family skeletons, Hephzy. Mr. Campbell isn't interested in anatomy."
"Skeletons! I don't know what you're talkin' about. He wasn't a skeleton. I saw him just as plain! And I said to myself, 'It's little Frank!' Now what do you suppose he came to me for? What do you suppose it means? It means somethin', I know that."
"Means that you weren't sleeping well, probably," I answered. "Jim, here, will dream of cross-seas and the Point Rip to-night, I have no doubt."
Jim promptly declared that if he thought that likely he shouldn't mind so much. What he feared most was a nightmare session with an author.
Hephzibah was interested at once. "Oh, do you dream about authors, Mr. Campbell?" she demanded. "I presume likely you do, they're so mixed up with your business. Do your dreams ever come true?"
"Not often," was the solemn reply. "Most of my dream-authors are rational and almost human."
Hephzy, of course, did not understand this, but it did have the effect for which I had been striving, that of driving "Little Frank" from her mind for the time.
"I don't care," she declared, "I s'pose it's awful foolish and silly of me, but it does seem sometimes as if there was somethin' in dreams, some kind of dreams. Hosy laughs at me and maybe I ought to laugh at myself, but some dreams come true, or awfully near to true; now don't they. Angeline Phinney was in here the other day and she was tellin' about her second cousin that was--he's dead now--Abednego Small. He was constable here in Bayport for years; everybody called him 'Uncle Bedny.' Uncle Bedny had been keepin' company with a woman named Dimick--Josiah Dimick's niece--lots younger than he, she was. He'd been thinkin' of marryin' her, so Angie said, but his folks had been talkin' to him, tellin' him he was too old to take such a young woman for his third wife, so he had made up his mind to throw her over, to write a letter sayin' it was all off between 'em. Well, he'd begun the letter but he never finished it, for three nights runnin' he dreamed that awful trouble was hangin' over him. That dream made such an impression on him that he tore the letter up and married the Dimick woman after all. And then--I didn't know this until Angie told me--it turned out that she had heard he was goin' to give her the go-by and had made all her arrangements to sue him for breach of promise if he did. That was the awful trouble, you see, and the dream saved him from it."
I smiled. "The fault there was in the interpretation of the dream," I said. "The 'awful trouble' of the breach of promise suit wouldn't have been a circumstance to the trouble poor Uncle Bedny got into by marrying Ann Dimick. THAT trouble lasted till he died."
Hephzibah laughed and said she guessed that was so, she hadn't thought of it in that way.
"Probably dreams are all nonsense," she admitted. "Usually, I don't pay much attention to 'em. But when I dream of poor 'Little Frank,' away off there, I--"
"Come into the sitting-room, Jim," I put in hastily. "I have a cigar or two there. I don't buy them in Bayport, either."
"And who," asked Jim, as we sat smoking by the fire, "is Little Frank?"
"He is a mythical relative of ours," I explained, shortly. "He was born twenty years ago or so--at least we heard that he was; and we haven't heard anything of him since, except by the dream route, which is not entirely convincing. He is Hephzy's pet obsession. Kindly forget him, to oblige me."
He looked puzzled, but he did not mention "Little Frank" again, for which I was thankful.
That afternoon we walked up to the village, stopping in at Simmons's store, which is also the post-office, for the mail. Captain Cyrus Whittaker happened to be there, also Asaph Tidditt and Bailey Bangs and Sylvanus Cahoon and several others. I introduced Campbell to the crowd and he seemed to be enjoying himself. When we came out and were walking home again, he observed:
"That Whittaker is an interesting chap, isn't he?"
"Yes," I said. "He is all right. Been everywhere and seen everything."
"And that," with an odd significance in his tone, "may possibly help to make him interesting, don't you think?"
"I suppose so. He lives here in Bayport now, though."
"So I gathered. Popular, is he?"
"Very."
"Satisfied with life?"
"Seems to be."
"Hum! No one calls HIM a--what is it--quahaug?"
"No, I'm the only human clam in this neighborhood."
He did not say any more, nor did I. My fit of the blues was on again and his silence on the subject in which I was interested, my work and my future, troubled me and made me more despondent. I began to lose faith in the "prescription" which he had promised so emphatically. How could he, or anyone else, help me? No one could write my stories but myself, and I knew, only too well, that I could not write them.
The only mail matter in our box was a letter addressed to Hephzibah. I forgot it until after supper and then I gave it to her. Jim retired early; the salt air made him sleepy, so he said, and he went upstairs shortly after nine. He had not mentioned our talk of the morning, nor did he until I left him at the door of his room. Then he said:
"Kent, I've got one of the answers to your conundrum. I've diagnosed one of your troubles. You're blind."
"Blind?"
"Yes, blind. Or, if not blind altogether you're suffering from the worse case of far-sightedness I ever saw. All your literary--we'll call it that for compliment's sake--all your literary life you've spent writing about people and things so far off you don't know anything about them. You and your dukes and your earls and your titled ladies! What do you know of that crowd? You never saw a lord in your life. Why don't you write of something near by, something or somebody you are acquainted with?"
"Acquainted with! You're crazy, man. What am I acquainted with, except this house, and myself and my books and--and Bayport?"
"That's enough. Why, there is material in that gang at the post-office to make a dozen books. Write about them."
"Tut! tut! tut! You ARE crazy. What shall I write; the life of Ase Tidditt in four volumes, beginning with 'I swan to man' and ending with 'By godfrey'?"
"You might do worse. If the book were as funny as its hero I'd undertake to sell a few copies."
"Funny! _I_ couldn't write a funny book."
"Not an intentionally funny one, you mean. But there! There's no use to talk to you."
"There is not, if you talk like an imbecile. Is this your brilliant 'prescription'?"
"No. It might be; it would be, if you would take it, but you won't--not now. You need something else first and I'll give it to you. But I'll tell you this, and I mean it: Downstairs, in that dining-room of yours, there's one mighty good story, at least."
"The dining-room? A story in the dining-room?"
"Yes. Or it was there when we passed the door just now."
I looked at him. He seemed to be serious, but I knew he was not. I hate riddles.
"Oh, go to blazes!" I retorted, and turned away.
I looked into the dining-room as I went by. There was no story in sight there, so far as I could see. Hephzy was seated by the table, mending something, something of mine, of course. She looked up.
"Oh, Hosy," she said, "that letter you brought was a travel book from the Raymond and Whitcomb folks. I sent a stamp for it. It's awfully interesting! All about tours through England and France and Switzerland and everywhere. So cheap they are! I'm pickin' out the ones I'm goin' on some day. The pictures are lovely. Don't you want to see 'em?"
"Not now," I replied. Another obsession of Hephzy's was travel. She, who had never been further from Bayport than Hartford, Connecticut, was forever dreaming of globe-trotting. It was not a new disease with her, by any means; she had been dreaming the same things ever since I had known her, and that is since I knew anything. Some day, SOME day she was going to this, that and the other place. She knew all about these places, because she had read about them over and over again. Her knowledge, derived as it was from so many sources, was curiously mixed, but it was comprehensive, of its kind. She was continually sending for Cook's circulars and booklets advertising personally conducted excursions. And, with the arrival of each new circular or booklet, she picked out, as she had just done, the particular tours she would go on when her "some day" came. It was funny, this queer habit of hers, but not half as funny as the thought of her really going would have been. I would have as soon thought of our front door leaving home and starting on its travels as of Hephzy's doing it. The door was no more a part and fixture of that home than she was.
I went into my study, which adjoins the sitting-room, and sat down at my desk. Not with the intention of writing anything, or even of considering something to write about. That I made up my mind to forget for this night, at least. My desk chair was my usual seat in that room and I took that seat as a matter of habit.
As a matter of habit also I looked about for a book. I did not have to look far. Books were my extravagance--almost my only one. They filled the shelves to the ceiling on three sides of the study and overflowed in untidy heaps on the floor. They were Hephzy's bugbear, for I refused to permit their being "straightened out" or arranged.
I looked about for a book and selected several, but, although they were old favorites, I could not interest myself in any of them. I tried and tried, but even Mr. Pepys, that dependable solace of a lonely hour, failed to interest me with his chatter. Perhaps Campbell's pointed remarks concerning lords and ladies had its effect here. Old Samuel loved to write of such people, having a wide acquaintance with them, and perhaps that very acquaintance made me jealous. At any rate I threw the volume back upon its pile and began to think of myself, and of my work, the very thing I had expressly determined not to do when I came into the room.
Jim's foolish and impossible advice to write of places and people I knew haunted and irritated me. I did know Bayport--yes, and it might be true that the group at the post-office contained possible material for many books; but, if so, it was material for the other man, not for me. "Write of what you know," said Jim. And I knew so little. There was at least one good yarn in the dining-room at that moment, he had declared. He must have meant Hephzibah, but, if he did, what was there in Hephzibah's dull, gray life-story to interest an outside reader? Her story and mine were interwoven and neither contained anything worth writing about. His fancy had been caught, probably, by her odd combination of the romantic and the practical, and in her dream of "Little Frank" he had scented a mystery. There was no mystery there, nothing but the most commonplace record of misplaced trust and ingratitude. Similar things happen in so many families.
However, I began to think of Hephzy and, as I said, of myself, and to review my life since Ardelia Cahoon and Strickland Morley changed its course so completely. And now it seems to me that, in the course of my "edging around" for the beginning of this present chronicle--so different from anything I have ever written before or ever expected to write--the time has come when the reader--provided, of course, the said chronicle is ever finished or ever reaches a reader--should know something of that life; should know a little of the family history of the Knowles and the Cahoons and the Morleys. _