“They sat there and stared at it in silence. Neither spoke; but the woman’s heart ticked like a watch.”
That was better; but best of all she liked: “Lee Lorimer leaned to him across the flowers. She had always known that this was coming …” Ivy could imagine tying a story on to that.
But she had promised to write a war story; and in a war story the flowers must be at the end and not at the beginning.
At any rate, there was one clear conclusion to be drawn from the successive study of all these opening paragraphs; and that was that you must begin in the middle, and take for granted that your reader knew what you were talking about.
Yes; but where was the middle, and how could your reader know what you were talking about when you didn’t know yourself?
After some reflection, and more furtive scrutiny of “Fact and Fiction,” the puzzled authoress decided that perhaps, if you pretended hard enough that you knew what your story was about, you might end by finding out toward the last page. “After all, if the reader can pretend, the author ought to be able to,” she reflected. And she decided (after a cautious glance over her shoulder) to steal the magazine and take it home with her for private dissection.
On the threshold she met her governess, who beamed on her tenderly.
“Cherie, I saw you slip off, but I didn’t follow. I knew you wanted to be alone with your inspiration.” Mademoiselle lowered her voice to add: “Have you found your plot?”
Ivy tapped her gently on the wrinkled cheek. “Dear old Madsy! People don’t bother with plots nowadays.”
“Oh, don’t they, darling? Then it must be very much easier,” said Mademoiselle. But Ivy was not so sure—
After a day’s brooding over “Fact and Fiction,” she decided to begin on the empiric system. (“It’s sure to come to me as I go along,” she thought.) So she sat down before the mauve paper and wrote “A shot rang out—”
But just as she was appealing to her Inspiration to suggest the next phrase a horrible doubt assailed her, and she got up and turned to “Fact and Fiction.” Yes, it was just as she had feared, the last story in “Fact and Fiction” began: “A shot rang out—”
Its place on the list showed what the editor and his public thought of that kind of an opening, and her contempt for it was increased by reading the author’s name. The story was signed “Edda Clubber Hump.” Poor thing!
Ivy sat down and gazed at the page which she had polluted with that silly sentence.
And now (as they often said in “Fact and Fiction”) a strange thing happened. The sentence was there—she had written it—it was the first sentence on the first page of her story, it was the first sentence of her story. It was there, it had gone out of her, got away from her, and she seemed to have no further control of it. She could imagine no other way of beginning, now that she had made the effort of beginning in that way.
She supposed that was what authors meant when they talked about being “mastered by their Inspiration.” She began to hate her Inspiration.
On the fifth day an abased and dejected Ivy confided to her old governess that she didn’t believe she knew how to write a short story.
“If they’d only asked me for poetry!” she wailed.
She wrote to the editor of “The Man-at-Arms,” begging for permission to substitute a sonnet; but he replied firmly, if flatteringly, that they counted on a story, and had measured their space accordingly—adding that they already had rather more poetry than the first number could hold. He concluded by reminding her that he counted on receiving her contribution not later than September first; and it was now the tenth of August.
“It’s all so sudden,” she murmured to Mademoiselle, as if she were announcing her engagement.
“Of course, dearest—of course! I quite understand. How could the editor expect you to be tied to a date? But so few people know what the artistic temperament is; they seem to think one can dash off a story as easily as one makes an omelet.”
Ivy smiled in spite of herself. “Dear Madsy, what an unlucky simile! So few people make good omelets.”
“Not in France,” said Mademoiselle firmly.
Her former pupil reflected. “In France a good many people have written good short stories, too—but I’m sure they were given more than three weeks to learn how. Oh, what shall I do?” she groaned.
The two pondered long and anxiously; and at last the governess modestly suggested: “Supposing you were to begin by thinking of a subject?”
“Oh, my dear, the subject’s nothing!” exclaimed Ivy, remembering some contemptuous statement to that effect by the editor of “Zig-zag.”
“Still—in writing a story, one has to have a subject. Of course I know it’s only the treatment that really matters; but the treatment, naturally, would be yours, quite yours….”
The authoress lifted a troubled gaze upon her Mentor. “What are you driving at, Madsy?”
“Only that during my year’s work in the hospital here I picked up a good many stories—pathetic, thrilling, moving stories of our poor poilus; and in the evening sometimes I used to jot them down, just as the soldiers told them to me—oh, without any art at all … simply for myself, you understand….”
Ivy was on her feet in an instant. Since even Mademoiselle admitted that “only the treatment really mattered,” why should she not seize on one of these artless tales and transform it into Literature? The more she considered the idea, the more it appealed to her; she remembered Shakespeare and Moliere, and said gayly to her governess: “You darling Madsy! Do lend me your book to look over—and we’ll be collaborators!”
“Oh—collaborators!” blushed the governess, overcome. But she finally yielded to her charge’s affectionate insistence, and brought out her shabby copybook, which began with lecture notes on Mr. Bergson’s course at the Sorbonne in 1913, and suddenly switched off to “Military Hospital No. 13. November, 1914. Long talk with the Chasseur Alpin Emile Durand, wounded through the knee and the left lung at the Hautes Chaumes. I have decided to write down his story….”
Ivy carried the little book off to bed with her, inwardly smiling at the fact that the narrative, written in a close, tremulous hand, covered each side of the page, and poured on and on without a paragraph—a good deal like life. Decidedly, poor Mademoiselle did not even know the rudiments of literature!
The story, not without effort, gradually built itself up about the adventures of Emile Durand. Notwithstanding her protests, Mademoiselle, after a day or two, found herself called upon in an advisory capacity, and finally as a collaborator. She gave the tale a certain consecutiveness, and kept Ivy to the main point when her pupil showed a tendency to wander; but she carefully revised and polished the rustic speech in which she had originally transcribed the tale, so that it finally issued forth in the language that a young lady writing a composition on the Battle of Hastings would have used in Mademoiselle’s school days.
Ivy decided to add a touch of sentiment to the anecdote, which was purely military, both because she knew the reader was entitled to a certain proportion of “heart interest,” and because she wished to make the subject her own by this original addition. The revisions and transpositions which these changes necessitated made the work one of uncommon difficulty; and one day, in a fit of discouragement, Ivy privately decided to notify the editor of “The Man-at-Arms” that she was ill and could not fulfill her engagement.
But that very afternoon the “artistic” photographer to whom she had posed for her portrait sent home the proofs; and she saw herself, exceedingly long, narrow and sinuous, robed in white and monastically veiled, holding out a refreshing beverage to an invisible sufferer with a gesture half way between Melisande lowering her braid over the balcony and Florence Nightingale advancing with the lamp.
The photograph was really too charming to be wasted, and Ivy, feeling herself forced onward by an inexorable fate, sat down again to battle with the art of fiction. Her perseverance was rewarded, and after a while the fellow
authors (though Mademoiselle disclaimed any right to the honors of literary partnership) arrived at what seemed to both a satisfactory result.
“You’ve written a very beautiful story, my dear,” Mademoiselle sighed with moist eyes; and Ivy modestly agreed that she had.
The task was finished on the last day of her leave; and the next morning she traveled back to Paris, clutching the manuscript to her bosom, and forgetting to keep an eye on the bag that contained her passport and money, in her terror lest the precious pages should be stolen.
As soon as the tale was typed she did it up in a heavily-sealed envelope (she knew that only silly girls used blue ribbon for the purpose), and dispatched it to the pale gentleman in spectacles, accompanied by the Melisande-Nightingale photograph. The receipt of both was acknowledged by a courteous note (she had secretly hoped for more enthusiasm), and thereafter life became a desert waste of suspense. The very globe seemed to cease to turn on its axis while she waited for “The Man-at-Arms” to appear.
Finally one day a thick packet bearing an English publisher’s name was brought to her: she undid it with trembling fingers, and there, beautifully printed on the large rough pages, her story stood out before her.
At first, in that heavy text, on those heavy pages, it seemed to her a pitifully small thing, hopelessly insignificant and yet pitilessly conspicuous. It was as though words meant to be murmured to sympathetic friends were being megaphoned into the ear of a heedless universe.
Then she began to turn the pages of the review: she analyzed the poems, she read the Queen of Norromania’s domestic confidences, and she looked at the portraits of the authors. The latter experience was peculiarly comforting. The Queen was rather good-looking—for a Queen—but her hair was drawn back from the temples as if it were wound round a windlass, and stuck out over her forehead in the good old-fashioned Royal Highness fuzz; and her prose was oddly built out of London drawing-room phrases grafted onto German genitives and datives. It was evident that neither Ivy’s portrait nor her story would suffer by comparison with the royal contribution.
But most of all was she comforted by the poems. They were nearly all written on Kipling rhythms that broke down after two or three wheezy attempts to “carry on,” and their knowing mixture of slang and pathos seemed oddly old-fashioned to the author of “Vibrations.” Altogether, it struck her that “The Man-at-Arms” was made up in equal parts of tired compositions by people who knew how to write, and artless prattle by people who didn’t. Against such a background “His Letter Home” began to loom up rather large.
At any rate, it took such a place in her consciousness for the next day or two that it was bewildering to find that no one about her seemed to have heard of it. “The Man-at-Arms” was conspicuously shown in the windows of the principal English and American book shops, but she failed to see it lying on her friends’ tables, and finally, when her tea-pouring day came round, she bought a dozen copies and took them up to the English ward of her hospital, which happened to be full at the time.
It was not long before Christmas, and the men and officers were rather busy with home correspondence and the undoing and doing-up of seasonable parcels; but they all received “The Man-at-Arms” with an appreciative smile, and were most awfully pleased to know that Miss Spang had written something in it. After the distribution of her tale Miss Spang became suddenly hot and shy, and slipped away before they had begun to read her.
The intervening week seemed long; and it was marked only by the appearance of a review of “The Man-at-Arms” in the “Times”—a long and laudatory article—in which, by some odd accident, “His Letter Home” and its author were not so much as mentioned. Abridged versions of this notice appeared in the English and American newspapers published in Paris, and one anecdotic and intimate article in a French journal celebrated the maternal graces and literary art of the Queen of Norromania. It was signed “Fleur-de-Lys,” and described a banquet at the Court of Norromania at which the writer hinted that she had assisted.
The following week, Ivy reentered her ward with a beating heart. On the threshold one of the nurses detained her with a smile.
“Do be a dear and make yourself specially nice to the new officer in Number 5; he’s only been here two days, and he’s rather down on his luck. Oh, by the way—he’s the novelist, Harold Harbard; you know, the man who wrote the book they made such a fuss about.”
Harold Harbard—the book they made such a fuss about! What a poor fool the woman was—not even to remember the title of “Broken Wings!” Ivy’s heart stood still with the shock of the discovery; she remembered that she had left a copy of “The Man-at-Arms” in Number 5, and the blood coursed through her veins and flooded her to the forehead at the idea that Harold Harbard might at that very moment be reading “His Letter Home.”
To collect herself, she decided to remain a while in the ward, serving tea to the soldiers and N. C. O.’s before venturing into Number 5, which the previous week had been occupied only by a polo-player drowsy with chloroform and uninterested in anything but his specialty. Think of Harold Harbard lying in the bed next to that man!
Ivy passed into the ward, and as she glanced down the long line of beds she saw several copies of “The Man-at-Arms” lying on them, and one special favorite of hers, a young lance-corporal, deep in its pages.
She walked down the ward, distributing tea and greetings; and she saw that her patients were all very glad to see her. They always were; but this time there was a certain unmistakable emphasis in their gladness; and she fancied they wanted her to notice it.
“Why,” she cried gayly, “how uncommonly cheerful you all look!”
She was handing his tea to the young lance-corporal, who was usually the spokesman of the ward on momentous occasions. He lifted his eyes from the absorbed perusal of “The Man-at-Arms,” and as he did so she saw that it was open at the first page of her story.
“I say, you know,” he said, “it’s simply topping—and we’re so awfully obliged to you for letting us see it.”
She laughed, but would not affect incomprehension.
“That?” She laid a light finger on the review. “Oh, I’m glad—I’m awfully pleased, of course—you do really like it?” she stammered.
“Rather—all of us—most tremendously—!” came a chorus from the long line of beds.
Ivy tasted her highest moment of triumph. She drew a deep breath and shone on them with glowing cheeks.
“There couldn’t be higher praise … there couldn’t be better judges…. You think it’s really like, do you?”
“Really like? Rather! It’s just topping,” rand out the unanimous response.
She choked with emotion. “Coming from you—from all of you—it makes me most awfully glad.”
They all laughed together shyly, and then the lance-corporal spoke up.
“We admire it so much that we’re going to ask you a most tremendous favor—”
“Oh, yes,” came from the other beds.
“A favor—?”
“Yes; if it’s not too much.” The lance-corporal became eloquent. “To remember you by, and all your kindness; we want to know if you won’t give one to each of us—”
(“Why, of course, of course,” Ivy glowed.)
“—to frame and take away with us,” the lance-corporal continued sentimentally. “There’s a chap here who makes rather jolly frames out of Vichy corks.”
“Oh—” said Ivy, with a protracted gasp.
“You see, in your nurse’s dress, it’ll always be such a jolly reminder,” said the lance-corporal, concluding his lesson.
“I never saw a jollier photo,” spoke up a bold spirit.
“Oh, do say yes, nurse,” the shyest of the patients softly whispered; and Ivy, bewildered between tears and laughter, said, “Yes.”
It was evident that not one of them had read her story.
She stopped on the threshold of Number 5, her heart beating uncomfortably.
She had already recov
ered from her passing mortification: it was absurd to have imagined that the inmates of the ward, dear, gallant young fellows, would feel the subtle meaning of a story like “His Letter Home.” But with Harold Harbard it was different. Now, indeed, she was to be face to face with a critic.
She stopped on the threshold, and as she did so she heard a burst of hearty, healthy laughter from within. It was not the voice of the polo-player; could it be that of the novelist?
She opened the door resolutely and walked in with her tray. The polo-player’s bed was empty, and the face on the pillow of the adjoining cot was the brown, ugly, tumultuous-locked head of Harold Harbard, well-known to her from frequent photographs in the literary weeklies. He looked up as she came in, and said in a voice that seemed to continue his laugh: “Tea? Come, that’s something like!” And he began to laugh again.
It was evident that he was still carrying on the thread of his joke, and as she approached with the tea she saw that a copy of “The Man-at-Arms” lay on the bed at his side, and that he had his hand between the open pages.
Her heart gave an apprehensive twitch, but she determined to carry off the situation with a high hand.
“How do you do, Captain Harbard? I suppose you’re laughing at the way the Queen of Norromania’s hair is done.”
He met her glance with a humorous look, and shook his head, while the laughter still rippled the muscles of his throat.
“No—no; I’ve finished laughing at that. It was the next thing; what’s it called? ‘His Letter Home,’ by—” The review dropped abruptly from his hands, his brown cheek paled, and he fixed her with a stricken stare.
“Good lord,” he stammered out, “but it’s you!”
She blushed all colors, and dropped into a seat at his side. “After all,” she faltered, half-laughing too, “at least you read the story instead of looking at my photograph.”
He continued to scrutinize her with a reviving eye. “Why—do you mean that everybody else—”
“All the ward over there,” she assented, nodding in the direction of the door.
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