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VII
"You are queer folk, you writers of fiction," she mused aloud. "Nomonarch ordained of God takes himself more seriously; no actor livesmore absolutely in a world made out of his imagination."
She lighted her cigarette: "You often speak of your most 'important'book,--as though any fiction ever written were important. Painters speakof their most important pictures; sculptors, composers, creativecreatures of every species employ the adjective. And it is all verysilly. Facts only can be characterised as important; figments of thecreative imagination are as unimportant----" she blew a dainty ring ofsmoke toward the crystal globe--"as that! '_Tout ce qu'ont fait leshommes, les hommes peuvent le detruire. Il n'y a de caracteresineffacables que ceux qu' imprime la nature._' There has never been butone important author."
I said smilingly: "To quote the gentleman you think important enough toquote, Athalie, '_Tout est bien sortant des mains de l'Auteur deschoses: tout degenere entre les mains de l'homme_.'"
Said the novelist simply: "Imagination alone makes facts important.'_Cette superbe puissance, ennemie de la raison!_'"
"O Athalie," whispered Duane, "night-blooming, exquisite blossom of thearid municipal desert, recount for us these facts which you possess andwhich, in your delightful opinion, are stranger than fiction, and moreimportant."
And Athalie, choosing another sweetmeat, looked at us until it haddissolved in her fragrant mouth. Then she spoke very gravely, while herdark eyes laughed at us:
* * * * *
When young Lord Willowmere's fiancee ran away from him and marriedDelancy Jones, that bereaved nobleman experienced a certain portion ofthe universal shock which this social seismic disturbance spread far andwide over two hemispheres.
That such a girl should marry beneath her naturally disgusted everybody.So both Jones and his wife were properly damned.
England read its morning paper, shrugged its derision, and remarked thatnobody ought to be surprised at anything that happened in the States."The States" swallowed the rebuke and squirmed.
Now, among the sturdy yeomanry, gentry, and nobility of those sameBritish and impressive Isles there was an earnest gentleman whose amplewaist and means and scholarly tastes inclined him to a sedentary life ofresearch. The study of human nature in its various native and exoticphases had for forty years obsessed his insular intellect. Philologist,anthropologist, calm philosopher, and benignant observer, thisgentleman, who had never visited the United States, determined to do sonow. For, he reasoned--and very properly--a country where such a thingcould happen to a British nobleman and a Peer of the Realm must be worthexploring, and its curious inhabitants merited, perhaps, theimpersonally judicial inspection of an F. R. B. A. whose gigantic workon the folk manners of the world had now reached its twentieth volume,without as yet including the United States. So he determined to devoteseveral chapters in the forthcoming and twenty-first volume to therecent colonies of Great Britain.
Now, when the Duke of Pillchester concluded to do anything, that thingwas invariably and thoroughly done. And so, before it entirely realisedthe honour in store for it, the United States was buttoning its collar,tying its white tie, and rushing down stairs to open its front door tothe Duke of Pillchester, the Duchess of Pillchester, and the Lady AleneInnesly, their youthful and ornamental daughter.
For a number of months after its arrival, the Ducal party inspected theYankee continent through a lens made for purposes of scientificinvestigation only. The massed wealth of the nation met their Graces insolid divisions of social worth. The shock was mutual.
Then the massed poverty of the continent was exhibited, leaving thepoverty indifferent and slightly bored, and the Ducal party takingnotes.
It was his Grace's determination to study the folk-ways of Americans;and what the Duke wished the Duchess dutifully desired. The Lady AleneInnesly, however, was dragged most reluctantly from function tofunction, from palace to purlieu, from theatre to cathedral, from ConeyIsland to Newport. She was "havin' a rotten time."
All day long she had nothing to look at but an overdressed and alienrace whose voices distressed her; day after day she had nothing to sayexcept, "How d'y do," and "Mother, shall we have tea?" Week after weekshe had nothing to think of except the bare, unkempt ugliness of thecities she saw; the raw waste and sordid uglification of what once hadbeen matchless natural resources; dirty rivers, ruined woodlands, flimsybuildings, ignorant architecture. The ostentatious and wretched hotelsdepressed her; the poor railroads and bad manners disgusted her.
Listless, uninterested, Britishly enduring what she could not escape,the little Lady Alene had made not the slightest effort to mitigate thecircumstances of her temporary fate. She was civilly incuriousconcerning the people she met; their social customs, amusements,pastimes, duties, various species of business or of leisure interestedher not a whit. All the men looked alike to her; all the women wereover-gowned, tiresomely pretty, and might learn one day how to behavethemselves after they had found out how to make their voices behave.
Meanwhile, requiring summer clothing--tweeds and shooting boots beingnot what the climate seemed to require in July--she discovered withlanguid surprise that for the first time in her limited life she waswell gowned. A few moments afterward another surprise faintly thrilledher, for, chancing to glance at herself after a Yankee hairdresser hadfinished her hair, she discovered to her astonishment that she waspretty.
For several days this fact preyed upon her mind, alternately troublingand fascinating her. There were several men at home who would certainlysit up; Willowmere among others.
As for considering her newly discovered beauty any advantage in America,the idea had not entered her mind. Why should it? All the men lookedalike; all wore sleek hair, hats on the backs of their heads, clothingthat fitted like a coster's trousers. She had absolutely no use forthem, and properly.
However, she continued to cultivate her beauty and to adorn it withYankee clothing and headgear befitting; which filled up considerabletime during the day, leaving her fewer empty hours to fill with tea andthree-volumed novels from the British Isles.
Now, it had never occurred to the Lady Alene Innesly to read anythingexcept British fact and fiction. She had never been sufficientlyinterested even to open an American book. Why should she, as long as thethree props of her national literature endured intact--curates, tea, andthoroughbred horses?
But there came a time during the ensuing winter when the last of thethree-volumed novels had been assimilated, the last serious tomedigested; and there stretched out before her a bookless prospect whichpresently began to dismay her with the aridness of its perspective.
The catastrophe occurred while the Ducal party was investigating thestrange folk-customs of those Americans who gathered during the winterin gigantic Florida hotels and lived there, uncomfortably lodged, vilelyfed, and shamelessly robbed, while third-rate orchestras play cabaretmusic and enervating breezes stir the cabbage-palmettos till they rustlelike bath-room rubber plants.
It was a bad place and a bad time of year for a young and British girlto be deprived of her native and soporific fiction; for the livelier andFrenchier of British novelists were self-denied her, because somebodyhad said they were not unlike Americans.
Now she was, in the uncouth vernacular of the country, up against itfor fair! She didn't know what it was called, but she realised how itfelt to be against something.
Three days she endured it, dozing in her room, half awake when thesea-breeze rattled the Venetian blinds, or the niggers were noisy atbaseball.
On the fourth day she arose, went to the window, gazed disgustedly outover the tawdry villas of Verbena Inlet, then rang for her maid.
"Bunn," she said, "here are three sovereigns. You will please buy for meone specimen of every book on sale in the corridor of this hotel. And,Bunn!----"
"Yes, my lady."
"What was it you were eating the other day?"
"Chewing-gum, my lady."
"Is it--
agreeable?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Is it nourishing?"
"No, my lady. It is not intended to be eaten; it is to be chewed."
"Then one does not swallow it when one supposes it to be sufficientlymasticated?"
"No, my lady."
"What does one do with it?"
"Beg pardon, my lady--one spits it out."
"Ow," said the girl.