Jap Herron Part 2

I asked him if he was satisfied with the use of the word "_Herald_"

twice in that last sentence. He replied:

"You must excuse me. I am all in. I told you I would leave minor points to your pencil. T-i-r-e-d. Good-bye."

Our first acquaintance with Wat Harlow, as he appeared in the fourth chapter, gave little promise of the character into which he was destined to be developed. To the three of us, who laughed over the episode of the vermilion handbill, he appeared to be nothing more than a third-rate country politician. In the original transcription he received only an occasional pa.s.sing touch, until the death of Ellis brought him forth in a new light. We did not know then what Ellis had meant by "that reformed auctioneer," for the story of Wat's connection with the upbuilding of Bloomtown, as it is set forth in the sixth chapter, was not told until we were well along with the work of revision.

One of the most interesting personal touches, to be found only in our private record, was introduced at the end of the fourth chapter. It had been a long stretch of dictation, and when the planchette stopped I asked if there was any more. The pointer gave only this, "No--30."

Having had no experience with printing offices, I was mystified until my husband explained that "30 on the hook" means the end of a given piece of work.

Mark once made use of the expression, "the story contains a great deal of brevity that will have to be untied later on." This untying process is nowhere more aptly ill.u.s.trated than in the fourth chapter of our original copy, a brief chapter that contained the condensed material of Wat Harlow's letter to j.a.p, the birth of little J.W. and Isabel Granger's first kiss. There was nothing about Bill's boyhood, no record of j.a.p's home surroundings, none of the amusing details of the printing office wherein j.a.p and Bill were learning their trade. All these incidents, which seem so essential to the story, were introduced when the first draft of the story had been completed. The seventh chapter, which has to do with the babyhood of little J.W., was dictated after the revision had apparently been completed. When I asked Mark why he inserted it, the planchette made this curious reply:

"I was thinking that we'd better soften the shock of the boy's death."

For us, through whom the story was being transmitted, there was no softening of Ellis Hinton's death. We knew from the foregoing chapter that the country editor had gone to the mountains for his health, and that Flossy had no hope; but when we had recorded the words: "j.a.p closed the press upon the inky type, and gathered the great bunches of fragrant blossoms and heaped them upon the press, to be forever silent," a great wave of sadness swept over me, I knew not why. The action of the planchette was so rapid that I could not stop to think or question. It was as if the man dictating the story had an unpleasant task before him, which he wished to have done with as soon as possible.

When the final words, "At rest. FLOSSY," had been spelled out, and the planchette stopped abruptly, Mrs. Hays cried:

"My G.o.d, what has happened!" and I looked up to see that she was very white, and tears were slipping down her cheeks.

"Ellis is dead," my husband said, very simply. He had foreseen the end, had grasped the infinite pathos of that old Washington press, decked as a funeral casket with the flowers that had been sent to usher in the new regime.

When the evening's copy had been read, I asked Mark if he wished to comment on it.

"Not to-night, Emily," the planchette spelled. "I am all broken up. I didn't want Ellis to die. I tried to figure a way to save him; but I couldn't make it go."

When we met again, on the 2d of October, the dictation began with these words:

"I want Edwin to go back to the beginning of the last chapter. I left out a sentence that is necessary. It explains why Ellis left by rail.

You insert."

Then he dictated the pa.s.sage relating to the new railroad and the temporary station. When he had finished he said, "Go on with the story," and the next sentence began, "When Ellis went away it was to the sound of jollity." The reference to Robert Louis Stevenson was new to both of us, and we have not sought to verify the incident. That Mark wanted it included in his story was sufficient for us.

That next chapter contained another acc.u.mulation of brevity which was afterward untied. The funeral, the reading of Ellis Hinton's will, Judge Bowers's candidacy, the nomination of j.a.p Herron as the ugliest man in Bloomtown, Bill's first spree and the local option fight, all these were sketched with the sharpness and sudden transition of pictures on a cinematograph screen. The following chapter was almost as tightly packed with incident, and in the midst of it there was a break, with an astonishing explanation. Three evenings in succession we had had trouble with the planchette. It had seemed to me that Mrs.

Hays was trying to pull it from beneath my fingers. Meanwhile she had mentally accused me of digital heaviness. She uses the finger tips of her left hand while I use my right. As a rule our touch is so light that the planchette glides automatically. On these three evenings we had left the board with cramped fingers, and a general sense of dissatisfaction. Several sentences that were plainly spurious were afterward stricken from the record; but we had forgotten about the other scribes who wanted "a pencil on earth," until Mark interrupted the story to say:

"I must ask you to be wary and sharp to dismiss impostors. Right now there are more than twenty hands trying to control your dictation. It is very hard for me. I am disconsolate, and powerless to help myself.

If we do not watch every avenue, our work is spoiled. There has been a constant struggle for my rights. I only ask a little help, and you are all my hope. If you fail me, I am undone."

This illuminating outburst served to clear the atmosphere, and the three chapters were afterward expanded into seven, much of the same diction being reproduced. It was as if Mark, knowing the difficulties on his own side of the shadow-line, had tried to get at least the outline of his story down on paper, lest he lose his hold entirely.

After that evening we had almost no trouble with intruders.

The story of Jones, of the Barton _Standard_, came to us like a thunder clap from a cloudless sky, for the part which old Pee-Dee Jones played in the development of Bloomtown and Barton was not related until we had begun the work of revision. In the original story of that near-fight, Mark gave us a significant cross-light on the conditions under which he lives. The marshal had appeared in the office at the crucial moment, as if he had dropped through the roof or arisen out of the floor.

Several times in the earlier part of the work the characters had thus appeared without obvious means of locomotion, and I had called attention to the inconsistency, with the result that Mark had dictated a few words to show how or whence the new arrival had come. When Wilfred Jones shouted to the marshal, "I demand protection," my husband, who was reading the evening's copy aloud to us, said:

"How does the marshal happen to be there? I don't see any previous mention of him."

Instantly the planchette, which we always kept in readiness under our finger tips, began to move. It dictated this:

"You might say, 'at that moment the town marshal, wearing his star pinned to his blue flannel shirt, strolled in.' I have been away from the need of going up-stairs and down-stairs for so long that I forget about it."

"How do you get from one place to another, Mark?" I asked.

"Now, Emily, curiosity! But you know we haven't any Pullman cars or elevators here. When I want to be at a place where I am free to go--why, I am there."

He took occasion, when our difficulties seemed to be at an end and his grip on his "pencil" was once more firmly established, to make it very plain to me that I alone was responsible for the annoyance we had had.

He put it thus:

"Things will be all right if you don't give way to any more curiosity.

In the beginning I told you that it would not do. Emily wants to investigate too much. It must be one or all. Edwin and I understand.

It was you that mixed the type. Lola must be pa.s.sive. If she tries to watch for intruders, she gets in my way. So it is up to the Hannibal girl."

I do not know, even now, how I could have prevented the trouble that well-nigh wrecked our work. It is true I had taken part in another psychic demonstration, but it was in a remote part of the city and it had nothing to do with Mark Twain's "pencil." However, I took no further chance with psychic investigation.

When j.a.p Herron was elected Mayor of Bloomtown, and the girl he loved had walked right into his astonished arms, it seemed to us that the story must be ended. We had forgotten that j.a.p ever had a family of his own, a mother and two sisters, and when the drunken hag reeled into the _Herald_ office we were as greatly horrified as j.a.p himself was. I had put my husband's carefully kept copy into type-written form, and it occurred to me to get the opinion of a master critic on the story, not as evidence of the survival of the human mind after physical death, but as pure fiction. Acting upon the impulse, and without telling either my husband or Mrs. Hays what I intended to do, I took the copy to William Marion Reedy,[1] permitting him to infer that I had created it, and asked him to tell me whether, in his judgment, the story was worth finishing. It was the beginning of the week, when the issuing of the _Mirror_ consumed all his time, and while I was waiting for his verdict we received three more chapters. In the first of these we had a new light on Isabel Granger's character, and came for the first time absolutely to love Bill Bowers. After that nothing that Bill might do would shake our faith in his ability to make good in the end. He might be weak and foolish, but we understood why j.a.p believed in and loved him. We were jubilant when Rosy Raymond was eliminated from the game, for we feared, whenever we permitted ourselves to speculate, that Bill would marry her, and regret the step. We a.s.sumed that the son of the much-married Judge Bowers had inherited a nature sufficiently mobile to recover from the shock of the silly girl's perfidy.

While this unexpected development of the story was being revealed to us, William Marion Reedy sent me, in the envelope with the first ten chapters of "j.a.p Herron," a criticism that fairly made me tingle with delight. Had the work been my own, I could not have been more pleased with his unstinted praise. I wanted to go to him at once and confess the truth; but he was not in his office when I called.

Two of the succeeding chapters were taken down by friends who had been let into the secret of our work and had asked permission to sit with us. It was the time of year when my husband could seldom spare an evening from his work, and Mark consented to break into his beloved office-force arrangement, for the sake of expediency. Three men and five women served us in the capacity of amanuenses while the latter third of the book was being transmitted. The first deviation from our original arrangement came in connection with the dictation of the seventeenth chapter, the chapter that ends with the death of Flossy and her son. We were three sympathetic women, and when the planchette had traced the words, "It was a smile of heavenly beauty, as the pure soul of Ellis Hinton's wife flew to join her loved ones," we three burst simultaneously into violent weeping. I have never experienced more genuine grief at the grave of a departed friend or relative than I felt when this woman, who had come to be more than human to me, was released from her envelope of mortal clay.

The following day Mrs. Hays and I were invited to the home of a delightful little Scotch woman who asked us to bring the planchette board. She knew nothing of the story, and had no intimation of the personality on the other side who was sending it across, through our planchette; nevertheless she was willing to keep copy for us. The chapter she wrote down is the eighteenth in the finished story, j.a.p's funeral sermon and Isabel's song beside Flossy's coffin. Even now I cannot think of that scene without a swelling of the throat and a blinding rush of tears. It is needless to say we wept when the dictation was ended.

When our hostess had read aloud the copy I asked our invisible companion if he had anything more to say. I avoided mentioning his name, for we did not wish his ident.i.ty disclosed. The planchette traced the curious words:

"You know that the air gets pretty damp for an old boy after this."

I looked out of the window. It was a murky November afternoon, and I asked, "Do you feel the dampness of the material atmosphere?" Like a flash came the reply:

"Emily, girl, you have been getting sob stuff."

Then I yearned to get my fingers in his shock of white hair, for I knew Mark Twain was laughing at me. But I had that which gave me consolation, for I had brought with me Mr. Reedy's letter, a.n.a.lyzing and commenting upon the story that Mark had created. Incidentally Mrs.

Reedy had asked Mrs. Hays and me to come to her home the following day to luncheon. I had told her that Mrs. Hays possessed a high degree of psychic power, and I consented to bring our board for a demonstration.

I wanted to see Mr. Reedy alone and explain to him that "j.a.p Herron"

had come to us over that insensate board, but opportunity was denied me. As soon as luncheon was over we went up to that beautiful yellow room in which the best of _Reedy's Mirror_ is created, and Mrs. Hays and I placed the board on our knees. As soon as Mr. Reedy's fountain pen was ready for action our planchette began:

"Well, I should doff my plaidie and don a kirtle, for 'tis not the sands o' Dee but the wearing o' the green." There was a wide sweep of the planchette, and then, "'Tis not the shine of steel that always reflects; but it is the claymore that cuts. Both are made of steel and both will mirror sometimes the shillalah. Yet the shillalah is better than the claymore, for the man that is cut will run; but if ye slug him with the blackthorn he will have to listen. This is just a flicker of high light. Bill jumped from bed as the rattle of the latch announced the arrival of a visitor."

My heart thumped wildly for a moment, then sank. I knew that the Bill referred to was Bill Bowers, and not the editor whom hundreds delight to call "Bill Reedy," and I knew, too, that it would be only a moment until he must realize that the sentences he was writing down from my dictation were part and parcel of the story whose first ten chapters he had read and praised. I dared not lift my eyes from the board, yet I wanted to stop and explain that I had not intended to deceive him--that I only wanted an unbiased opinion of Mark Twain's story. In vain I tried to stop the whirling planchette, my voice so husky that I could scarcely p.r.o.nounce the letters. It went right on, with a situation that neither Mrs. Hays nor I had antic.i.p.ated. We had schooled ourselves not to speculate, yet the previous afternoon we had left j.a.p in a fainting condition and on the verge of a long illness. The chapter we transmitted that day was the story of a gubernatorial election in a small Missouri town.

Subsequently, when Mark gave us the intervening chapter, j.a.p's visit to the cemetery and the humorous incidents of the campaign, I asked him:

"Why didn't you give this chapter last Thursday?"

"I thought that election would amuse Reedy. Don't worry, Emily. He understood you. He knows the Hannibal girl is honest," was the comforting reply.

When the revision of the story was under way, and several fragments had been dictated, the planchette spelled the words, "I want to add something to the Reedy chapter," and without further ado it proceeded: "The Bloomtown _Herald_ did itself proud that week." That fragment was the easiest of them all to fit into place. At its conclusion we were favored with a bit of pleasantry that seems significant. My husband gave us a lift whenever he could spare the time; but on this occasion a woman friend was sitting with us. She had written about two thousand words of copy, when the tenor of the dictation changed suddenly to the personal vein.

"Old Mark has been working like a badger, and is pleased with the story. The girls and friend Ed are going as well as Twain ever did when he wielded his own pen. When Edwin lights up a fresh smoke and smiles, I know that all is well. But when Lola frowns and Edwin forgets to smoke, look out for leaks. The story has sprung and therain was hesitthininspots." The last of the sentence came so rapidly that none of us had any idea what it meant, or that it meant anything at all. Before we had separated it into the words, "the rain washes it thin in spots," I asked that that last part be repeated. Instead we got the words:

"When a board is sprung, it lets in rain. It is Emily who has to hold the drip pan for the temperamental ones."