PREFACE By Edward C. Venable Author of "Pierre Vinton," "Lasca," etc. ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALLACE MORGAN DON'T know who wrote As I looked at her, at her ridiculous shoes and coiffure, at the rings and the laces and fur and bangles, I decided that she probably was. this book, whether it was Justin Poythress, or Dorothy Lewis, or whether I wrote it myself. I certainly wrote a great deal of it and she wrote a great deal of it, and yet, if Poythress were alive I should certainly not dare to publish it. Altogether, the question who wrote it is much more interesting, I think, than the book itself. And that is the excuse for such a very long preface. When I first saw Dorothy Lewis she was seated by a window high up in a great building that looked down into Madison Square. She sat there every working-day in the year. At one hand was a pile of manuscripts, in front of her was a typewriter, and on the other hand a smaller pile of typescript. Somebody, presumably, had poured out the contents of his mind into the manuscripts. Thence it was taken up through the mind of Dorothy, and flowed forth at her fingers, visible on white paper once more. Thought of all kinds went through this process in the course of the years: entangled legal documents, letters of business, letters of pleasure, stories, novels, plays, diaries, accountings, a vast mass of unassorted facts, figures, and fancies. I watched her in amazement for nearly an hour one day while I waited for her employers. All of this flowed daily through her head, somehow-like water through a pipe, I figured. With what effect, I wondered? Even water flowing through a pipe leaves a sediment of some kind behind it. Was there as much as a trace left in this girl's brain of all this traffic through it? Thought is a most dangerous fluid, and bites through the most obdurate mental surfaces occasionally in an unexpected manner. Had it ever bitten through here in any such way? Or was she a completely desensitized conduit for all such stuff? She was not, of course. If she had been, as I have said, I would not have written the following tale. But that morning I thought she was, and, in my defense I must add, she looked the part to perfection. If I had wished to purchase such a remarkable instrument as a desensitized conduit of human thought, I would have bought Dorothy Lewis as confidently as any object I ever looked at. It is rather amusing to remember that I was writing a book about women at the time. Still, they were dead, French, and highly immoral, and I am reasonably sure that Dorothy is none of these three. I would never have discovered the error, however, if Poythress had not died and Griffith had not mentioned the fact to me. Griffith sometimes publishes my productions. He always published Poythress's. He balanced, I suppose, my immoral Frenchwomen with Poythress's immaculate American heroines. He was in a terrible pother about Poythress's death, and very naturally too, I thought, when it came out that he had paid Poythress some extravagant advance royalty, and now, when he was dead, there was no sign of the manuscript. That was the long and the short of it. Only it was much longer as Griffith told it, occupying, in fact, all the time between Morristown and Jersey City. "It serves you right," I told him, "for paying so much good money for so much bad writing." "He was worth it," said Griffith. "He was a lion in his trade." Being alive, and more or less of a dog, I am afraid, I suggested that Poythress never wrote it. "But I know he did," declared Griffith. "He not only wrote it but he fin ished it, and he had not only finished it but it had been typed, and the Leiters swear, and show receipts to prove, that they mailed the parcel of manuscript to Manhassett on the 11th." I had no more suggestions to offer. And I had no sympathy either. I thoroughly disapproved of Poythress's royalties, which I had always seemed to read of in a newspaper when I was hardest up. But Griffith was in that mood when a man must have somebody to swear to, and he induced me to go with him to the Leiters' offices. I went, of course. Any mystery is sufficiently alluring to waste time on. And there was something mysterious about the matter as Griffith explained it. About it, not in it. There were many possible explanations of the loss of a parcelpost package between New York and Manhassett, especially if the addressee had happened to die in the meanwhile and delivery had been made into a distraught and grief-stricken household. But still it was mysterious enough to waste a morning on. So I went to the Leiters and waited in the outside office, while Griffith inside ranted and raved to the Leiter sisters. There were some ten or twelve girls writing on typewriters in that outer office, all very busy, all looking startlingly unlike one another. I never saw an equal number of women present so many glaring contrasts. While I was reflecting on this interesting subject, Griffith within suddenly ceased to rave and came forth accompanied by the two Misses Leiter, who, according to the general perversity of that office, presented no contrast at all, but were alike enough to each other to be twins. The three gathered about Dorothy Lewis-whose name, of course, I did not know at this time-and began to question her about the vanished manuscript. So I gradually learned that she had had charge of it. By that time I was as much bored by the manuscript as by anything else that Poythress had ever written. Besides, Griffith was rude to the girl, and she looked like a nice girl, or rather as if she had been before she dressed. "Oh, let it go, Griffith," I suggested. "It will probably turn up." Griffith turned on me, and Dorothy Lewis got a chance at her pocket-handkerchief. "And if it doesn't," I added soothingly, "get one of these ladies to write you another." Griffith glared, Dorothy sobbed, and the Miss Leiter nearest Griffith looked shocked and the one next to me looked amused. "Don't," spluttered Griffith. "Don't you be an ass too." Thus getting a slap at everybody. "It was such a beautiful book," sobbed Dorothy. "I just loved it." It is a wide discussion just when books are born, and various famous volumes have their natal moments preserved in history, but if ever a book had a clear claim to such a distinction this book has. It was born at that moment in the outer office of the Misses Leiter, when Dorothy Lewis said, "I l-o-o-ved it." Perhaps, indeed, the preface should stop at this point and the book begin, inasmuch as this was the book's birth moment. Did she, I thought? And for one dizzy moment I wondered if that was why she was crying. Could her tears have been caused, not by Griffith's manners, which are often bad enough to make angels weep, but by the loss of the book? Could a book which I was confident was as bad as Griffith's manners make any girl cry so? Confound it, no one ever wept over my duchesses. That reflection was destined to be my atra cura for many days thereafter. I have read, and tried to read, many of the books of Justin Poythress for professional purposes, and I can truly assert there is not in my memory any lingering morsel of their contents, and has not been since the day after I had finished the last one. But this last volume, which I had not read, haunted my thoughts and dreams inexpugnably. Queerer posthumous fame I am sure no man ever had than Justin Poythress in regard to me. At first this exasperated me. His book interfered with my book. It came between me and the French duchesses. I lost touch with them. I could no longer see them against the splendor of Versailles-gorgeous gamblers with the nations, stately ladies who made a joke of starving twenty-five million fellow men and a ceremony of feeding goldfish. I could only see them as Thackeray saw the Grand Monarque; and through these ill-clad visions vividly I always saw Dorothy Lewis weeping into her typewriter because some one had lost the book that she "loved." What could that book have been like? I didn't know, and very probably never should know. Griffith did not know. Poythress knew; but then Poythress was dead. Only a psychic phenomenon could get at Poythress. Dorothy knew. I chose Dorothy. I had some trouble getting her, however. I called up the Misses Leiter and asked for the services of a stenographer at a moderate salary for an indefinite period of time. They were delighted, and assured me I could be supplied. But when I specified Dorothy Lewis doubts of my moral reputation manifestly rose. They mentioned a Miss Clarke, apparently a stenographic phenomenon. I had thrown all phenomena over, however, and stoutly demanded Miss Lewis. Eventually I got her. Poor child! I don't know what light the Misses Leiter had thrown upon my character, but it must have been lurid. She came out by the early morning train, and I found her, when I came down to breakfast, sitting in the hall, hat and gloves on, and an umbrella grasped in both hands. She refused breakfast as if it had been a midnight supper on the Montmartre, and I could not get a word from her all morning. I set her to work on my French duchesses and left her severely alone, hoping in time to clear up my tarnished reputation. There was nothing in the French duchesses particularly to reassure her, but when she took the evening train back to town I felt a trifle less ashamed of myself in her presence. So I did not despair. It was three days, however, before I mentioned such a detached subject as Poythress's book. I did not get at the matter directly, of course. I flanked the situation and asked her what she thought of my book. She thought it was very "interesting." I thanked her and talked about it. I fancied she was used to authors, and this would be reassuring. What was the most interesting book she had ever read? She said Macaulay's "History of England." I saw I should have to wade through the public-school course in English literature on that line, so I narrowed the question to novels. Fortunately, she mentioned one of Poythress's. "What a pity one should be lost!" I exclaimed. (For that matter, I was no franker than Miss Lewis.) "It really, really warn't my fault. I took it I scorned the suggestion and abused the postal service. She smiled at that, and we progressed wonderfully. It was awful such a book should be lost, she thought. "Of course," she added, "it warn't a bit like your book, not so-so historical, you know, but I interrupted. "Of course not. And, do you know, I should like very much to know just what was the difference?" "Why, yours," she began, "is a great big book. A historical book." That seemed to be the limit of her vocabulary in this direction. "Historical," I perceived, was in a vague sense synonymous with immortal. I saw that Miss Lewis was a victim of the vulgar error that history preserves only what is worthy of preservation. But it was not the defects of Dorothy's intelligence that interested me; it was the capabilities. It has been the business of my life to learn how people write books, and I believe I have acquired a certain skill at it, a bread-and-butter knowledge of the business, at any rate. And if my efforts have not always been inspired by enthusiasms, they have certainly never been spiritless. There is a certain fascination in the trade. But in all these years it never occurred to me that there was another side to it, the reverse of the medal-the science of how people read books. Dorothy Lewis was at once my first instructor and my first specimen in that science. As a teacher she was from the first a hopeless failure, but as a specimen I sincerely believe she was incomparable. My chief difficulty was in the matter of communicating with her. We were separated all day and every day, she at her machine, I at my desk near the window, by the whole length of the library and by the detailed instructions of the Misses Leiter. To converse at that distance attempt. I asked her what the book was scheme, but it was the best I could devise about. She replied: "A girl and a fellow." The rebuke stung. I made no second attempt. Perhaps I should never have made a second if Dorothy had not been such a very bad speller. At least, she could not spell the titles of the French nobles as written down by me. So she frequently under the circumstances. By it I discovered that the "fellow" was strong, virtuous, and poor. "How poor was he?" I asked, while printing out "de Francueil" for her guid ance. "He was a newspaper reporter." That was, indeed, destitution. "But she," added Miss Lewis more cheerfully, "was a bank president's did Othello. I like them all the better for daughter.' Oh, Alpha! Oh, Omega! "Was she pretty?" I found time to put in before she went to the typewriter. "She was just lovely; she had yellow hair and white-fox furs." I have never seen either, so far as I know, but I felt sure that here also was a charming contrast. Later, thanks to the alphabetical difficulties of Penthièvrie, I found that the reporter and the bank president's daughter met first at a ball, but that they fell in love one morning in Madison Square. "It's pretty there sometimes in the spring," said Dorothy. "Did you ever happen to notice it?" I had noticed it. There are times in the spring when even Madison Square is pretty. And just then, furthermore, I remembered that Dorothy Lewis's workaday window looked down into Madison Square, in the spring as well as in the winter. It occurred to me that perhaps Dorothy had read the story at that window in dull moments between manuscripts, and, reading, had looked down and dreamed; and I began to dream of Dorothy's dreams. But Dorothy came over and interrupted me again, this time with the Polignacs, and my thoughts returned to Poythress's book once more. "Was he good-looking?" I took advantage of this interruption to inquire. "No illustrations," said Dorothy short ly. In further conversations in the following days, nevertheless, I got a fairly clear idea of what he looked like. Furthermore, he was a hero, the only hero I have ever liked. I have never recognized a hero in flesh, and I have never liked those I read of in books, but I liked this one of Dorothy's. And the more she talked of him the more I liked him. One of the reasons for my admiration was his inarticulateness. Whenever he talked, apparently, he made an ass of himself. And that, I maintain, is one of the necessities of heroship. Glibness is the destruction of all true greatness. This man was inarticulate. He performed marvels, but he talked like an ass. So did Achilles, so it. For instance, I asked Dorothy what they talked of in Madison Square that morning. She said "his work"; I recognized then the stuff the fellow was made of. If he had been of baser metal he would have talked of the white furs. It was the same in every instance; when we got to conversation our hero conversed idiotically. One night, at her father's palatial country residence, he, according to Dorothy, fairly gibbered. But I liked him the better for it. He was master of everything except the art of conversation, apparently. And the more I liked him the better pleased I was that Poythress's book was lost, for I was quite sure that he had been not at all this sort in the book-that as I knew him he was all Dorothy's and none Poythress's. At first, this presented itself to me as a mystery. I had not thought of Dorothy as a person with an especially keen instinct for the heroic. Perhaps I should have continued to think so if it had not been for her shoes. The solution of the mystery was suggested to me by Miss Dorothy Lewis's shoes. They were impossible shoes, I should have said if I had not seen them. And, as a matter of fact, they were before my eyes ten days before I really did see them. To begin with, they were mostly white paper; and they gave her a great deal of pain, I could see plainly. One day, because they did hurt so, and because she was a nice child even though she couldn't spell, I felt a sudden desire to give her a new pair of better shoes-sensible ones that did not pinch and kept the water out. It was impossible; the very thought of the Misses Leiter banished all possibility immediately. But they were such pathetic shoes in their glistening newness! If they had been rusty and full of holes they would have suggested poverty of pocket and stopped at that; but there was a sort of dwarfed, stunted idealism about these shoes that suggested a much more farreaching poverty, and that was infinitely more pathetic. For I recognized, even with my untrained eye, their distant kinship with shoes that were really white, and kept out the water, and did not pinch. Platonic ideals these, high up, inaccessi |