Edgar Saltus: The Man Part 7

"Here, Edgar,"--my brother caught Mr. Saltus by the arm--"disabuse this kid of the idea that she can learn to write."

Mr. Saltus turned, but a wave was quicker. It took him like a top, spinning him around and around, depositing him finally at my feet. He attempted to rise. The undertow thought otherwise. With his accustomed facetious flattery, he asked:

"What do I get for lying at the feet of a child?"

"A kick," was the reply, action following the words.

Our introduction was effected. Going up on the beach we sat down on the sand. It was a brilliant July morning.

"So you think you would like to write, Bambina? Don't. Take fatherly advice. A woman's sole duty in life is to charm and do nothing. Only old scoundrels like myself should work. Behold the result."

"You were badly brought up," he was told.

"How would you have tackled the job?" he inquired.

"Taking you down would have suited me much better."

That amused him. He laughed.

"Of course. It is only from babes like you that age learns now-a-days. How is it that you are the one of your family I meet last?" He hesitated.

"No--not last,--for I seem always to have remembered you. Long ago you closed a door and left me in darkness. Now you open it again and smile. You should never do anything but smile,--and yet you have--oh, I don't know what! You take me back to Rome--back and back through lives and lives--if such were true."

I hastened to rea.s.sure him.

"Such things are true, surely. From the time I was able to think at all, I remembered many events from former lives. I have no recollection of knowing you, however."

"But you believe that you lived before? I'll tell you what I have never mentioned to any one. From an agnostic it would not ring true. If I have written anything which will live it is 'Imperial Purple.' The reason is simple. If there is anything in your theory at all, I lived in Rome. I was an eye-witness of the killing of Caesar. The story of it ran off my pen.

Text books were needless. I wrote as I remembered, and truth penetrates.

Later I tried to write of Greece, and failed. It was mechanical. There was no subconscious memory to help me. A pretty theory,--that is all. When a bee dies it ceases to hum."

Joining my brother and myself Mr. Saltus lunched at the Casino. Later in the afternoon, overtaking us on the road with his bicycle, he joined us again. So satisfied and overbearing was his exterior, so arrogant his veneer, that it was with difficulty one could penetrate it and see the over-indulged and pampered little boy, full of fun and longing to play,--sympathetic and full of sentiment, hiding the best beneath the worst,--fearful of being misunderstood,--of being his real self. Coming face to face with a little girl more pampered and self-willed even than himself gave him a shock.

That evening, a woman friend of my brother's making a fourth, we were Mr.

Saltus' guests for dinner at the Casino. In those days Sherry's old Casino was a fairyland of fashion, beauty and smartness. It presented a brilliant scene at that moment.

In faultless evening clothes, his dark colouring emphasized by the expanse of shirt front, Mr. Saltus looked what he may have been,--an Oriental, trying to adapt himself to a foreign environment. He was, on the contrary, silhouetted against it.

Dinner over, my brother took his friend to watch the dancing. We were supposed to follow. At Mr. Saltus' suggestion, however, we turned and went to the upper turret of the Casino. From there we stood and looked down upon the panorama below. It was an interesting sight. At tables shaded by immense coloured umbrellas made visible by multiple electric lights, the murmur of well turned out men, talking to beautiful women, rose like the hum of bees.

The orchestra, which was unusually fine, muted their violins with the plaintive strains of the Liebestod. Mr. Saltus could not tell one note from another, nor could he play on any musical instrument, but he had an ear as sensitive to the slightest discord as a composer's. The Liebestod spoke a language he understood. That language was mine also. It spoke even more clearly to me,--saturated as I had been with Wagner and the various motifs of his masterpieces since babyhood. Music moved me profoundly.

When he turned at last, it was to see tears in my eyes. He said nothing.

There is that in silence which is more forceful than words. That also was a language he understood. The orchestra ceased. The hum began again, but from a far distant ball-room there filtered the faint but unmistakable notes of "Love's Dream After the Ball." July twilights are long. Still silent, we watched a sky of coral and jade melt into a night spattered with stars.

A school girl, with little knowledge of men save that gleaned from Scott and Ouida, it was no wonder that at his first words I had the surprise of my life.

In true Ouidaesque style Mr. Saltus took a fold of my gown in his hand, dropped to his knees, and kissing it said:--

"All my life I have been a rudderless ship seeking harbour. Now I am home.

I come a weary and sinful pilgrim to knock at the portals of paradise."

Indignant in the belief that I was considered too young to be treated as an equal,--regarding him, in spite of his extreme beauty, as too old to be thinking seriously about the future, I received his words with a blaze of anger. A hasty and dignified exit was called for. That, however, was not easy to make. His back against the gate, Mr. Saltus went on talking. He said a great deal and he said it well.

Only that morning a woman sitting on the veranda of the hotel where we were stopping, had entertained the other old women who were knitting, with the recital of Mr. Saltus' life and his misdeeds. One remark constantly interjected had amused me:--

"He boasts that every novel he has written has been dug from a woman's heart."

This I threw at him like a bomb. He took it standing. He had to stand to control the gate which was the sole exit from the turret. Thereupon, and in spite of my efforts to go, he told me the story of his life in brief, pouring it out as rapidly as he could, admitting his mistakes and wrong doing,--confessing three-fold the iniquities which had been put to his discredit by the public. Carrying it up to date, he admitted that though he was under the same roof with his wife, he was not living with her, and that he wanted to be free to start life over again.

"You are so young, I can almost bring you up," he said.

"Bring me up, indeed!" I exclaimed. "You will dig no experience out of my heart. The shadow of your personality shall never cloud my life." That seemed such a fine phrase at the time. Still indignant and fearful of being considered an ignorant child, I became silent. That was the way a Ouida heroine should act.

Disregarding both my silence and my resentment, Mr. Saltus went on talking:--

"I don't like your name. It means sorrow, and every Marie who has encountered the Saltus family has suffered from it. You shall be the exception. I will use the name you invented when as a baby you tried to p.r.o.nounce it,--Mowgy. That is your name, and being such a pert little puss I will add that for good measure,--Mowgy-Puss. Now what animal will you attach to me?"

While speaking, Mr. Saltus had released his hold on the gate. He was anxious to know what animal I would a.s.sign to him. Afterward he confessed that he had expected me to say a lion. That would have pleased him too well. Distracting his attention from the exit, I moved nearer to it.

Answering "A skunk!" I emphasized it with a sudden bolt through the gate and rushed down stairs to the Casino.

An avalanche overwhelmed us there. Our absence having become prolonged, my brother, with Archibald Clavering Gunter, who warned him of my danger with every step, had searched not only the Casino but the sands. There was a heated scene. The friendship of years snapped like a wish-bone, and I was dragged back to the hotel.

There it might have ended,--would probably have ended, and the biography of Edgar Saltus have fallen into other hands than mine to write, but well-intentioned friends and relatives a.s.sisted things so super-abundantly, that what might have died a natural death took on new life and flourished.

Forbidden to speak to Mr. Saltus under penalty of being sent home to my father, it became at once an interesting romance. The following morning there was not a dowager in the hotel unacquainted with my misdeed, and none omitted to add their warning and advice. Hearing of the adventure, and that I was taking a land-slide to perdition and was h.e.l.l-bent, friends called to warn and save me. Dear old Gunter with genuine kindness of heart came also.

"I am a very busy man just now," he said, "but if you are determined to learn how to write, and will wait till I get this novel off my mind, I will take you in hand and see what I can make of you."

Everyone did their duty. The only one not offering advice was the hotel cat. Not permitted for a moment to leave my brother's side I seemed safe and secure. It was all in the seeming, for Mr. Saltus was a very ingenious man. The early afternoon papers from New York used to reach the Pier about three, boys taking them to all the hotels on the front. One stopped at ours. We were sitting on the veranda at the time, my brother buying a paper as usual. With a knowing wink the newsboy shoved another into my hand.

While every one else was reading I unfolded it. A note from Mr. Saltus fell out. It suggested that after I was supposed to be in bed that evening, I slip out, go down a back staircase and meet the writer at a place on the beach he designated. It was urgent. It was more. It suggested that if I did not appear he would drink himself into delirium, and then come to the hotel and have it out with my brother.

Youth is credulous. I met him at the place suggested. After that the newsboy served as a postman. Letters came and went. There was a thrill in doing it under their noses. It came out at last, however. I was returned to my father minus a character and the family warned to watch me very closely.

So fate went on weaving its web, and the karmic links of anterior lives reached out, binding our destiny.

CHAPTER VI

Autumn came, and the paw of the tiger that destiny is, reached out. It was a paw of velvet, however. I was called to the telephone one afternoon to speak to my violin teacher. Such a call was not unexpected. It had all been arranged beforehand, and it was Mr. Saltus saying "h.e.l.lo!" None of the family had seen my violin teacher or heard his voice. All they knew was that I practiced many hours a day. The arrangement worked to perfection. If I went off for my lessons a little earlier than necessary, it was unnoticed. The bicycle was useful also, being considered a healthful and needed exercise. I was encouraged to ride every afternoon, and Mr. Saltus and I would meet on the Riverside for a chat.

Barring his little daughter, Elsie, of whom Mr. Saltus was exceedingly fond, he made no mention of his family life, nor did I. This was in pre-flapper days. The world was very old-fashioned. Bachelor girls and the rights of the individual were not talked about, or even thought of. Strange as it may seem in this emanc.i.p.ated era, any friendship between a married man and a young girl was looked upon not only as disgraceful, but impossible.

We talked it over. Realizing that while he remained under the roof with his wife, he owed her more than he could ever pay, realizing too that any indiscretion of mine must react upon a greatly beloved father, I closed the episode--or thought I had.

Within a few days after this Mrs. Francis Henry Saltus, Mr. Saltus' mother, called and invited me to tea at her home. There, at least, one would be free from censure. Other invitations followed and were accepted.