The Cords of Vanity. A Comedy of Shirking

honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound.

The world, in short, in spite of my six months' retiring therefrom, seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper to face the six months' accumulation of mail.

7

A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten pages to establish his title.

Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of As the Coming of Dawn, and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened.

'Look here!' he said, suddenly; 'have you seen The Imperial Votaress?' 

I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a particularly well-balanced sentence. 'Don't know the lady,' said I.

'She is advertised on half the posters in town,' said Mr. Bulmer. 'And it is the book of the year. And it is your book.'

At this moment I laid down my manuscript. ''I beg your pardon?' said I. 

'Your book!' Uncle George repeated firmly; 'and scarcely a hair's difference between them, except in the names.'

'H'm!' I observed, in a careful voice. 'Who wrote it?'

'Some female woman out west,' said Mr. Bulmer. 'She's a George Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it began with an S—Why, to be sure! it's Marian Winwood.'

'Amaimon sounds well,' I observed; 'Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but—Marian Winwood!'

'Dear me!' he remonstrated. 'Why, she wrote A Bright Particular Star, you know, and The Acolytes, and lots of others.'

The author of As the Coming of Dawn swallowed a whole glass of Chianti at a gulp. 

'Of course,' I said, slowly, 'I cannot, in my rather peculiar position, run the risk of being charged with plagiarism—by a Chinese-eyed mental sneak-thief….'

Thereupon I threw the manuscript into the open fire, which my preference for the picturesque rendered necessary, even in May.

'Oh, look here!' my uncle cried, and caught up the papers. 'It is infernally good, you know! Can't you—can't you fix it,—and—er— change it a bit? Typewriting is so expensive these days that it seems a pity to waste all this.'

I took the manuscript and replaced it firmly among the embers. 'As you justly observe,' said I, 'it is infernally good. It is probably a deal better than anything else I shall ever write.'

'Why, then—' said Uncle George.

'Why, then,' said I, 'the only thing that remains to do is to read The Imperial Votaress.'

8

And I read it with an augmenting irritation. Here was my great and comely idea transmuted by 'George Glock'—which was the woman's foolish pen-name,—into a rather clever melodrama, and set forth anyhow, in a hit or miss style that fairly made me squirm. I would cheerfully have strangled Marian Winwood just then, and not upon the count of larceny, but of butchery.

'And to cap it all, she has assigned her hero every pretty speech I ever made to her! I honestly believe the rogue took shorthand jottings on her cuffs. 'There is a land where lovers may meet face to face, and heart to heart, and mouth to mouth'—why, that's the note I wrote her on the day she wasn't feeling well!'

Presently, however, I began to laugh, and presently sitting there alone, I began to applaud as if I were witnessing a play that took my fancy.

'Oh, the adorable jade!' I said; and then: 'George Glock, forsooth! George Dandin, tu l' as voulu.'

9

Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And—though even to myself it seems incredible,—Miss Winwood wrote me within three days of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter.

For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining, about my little magazine tale…. 'Why don't you stop writing, and try plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? You can't write! If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my material'….

—Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw 'material,' to be developed rather than shocked by…. 

18. He Spends an Afternoon in Arden

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I had, in a general way, intended to marry Rosalind Jemmett so soon as I had completed As the Coming of Dawn; but in the fervour of writing that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the young lady's existence.

Now, however, my thoughts harked back to her; and I found, upon inquiry, that Rosalind had spent all of May and a good half of April in Lichfield, in the same town with myself, and was now engaged to Alfred Chaytor,—an estimable person, but popularly known as 'Sissy' Chaytor.

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