Janey Takes Her Pen in Hand

SHADOW fell across Mr. Warriner's typewriter. He looked up startled. Janey had come silently to his side, was standing slimly there, her hands folded. That was a sign mutually agreed upon that Janey had a question important enough to warrant interruption. “What is it, Janey?” Mr. Warriner asked.

“Uncle Jim, how do people get to be authors? Did you go to a school and learn how, or did you just grow that way?”

The twinkles which always came into Uncle Jim's eyes when he conversed with Janey seemed to waken echoes, so to speak, in twitchings at his mouth-corners.

“I expect I just grew that way, Janey,” he answered. “Only one question a day, remember, when I'm working.”

“Uncle Jim, just let me say one thing. Is it right to take a story that somebody else has written and write it all over again?”

“Not exactly. That's an art not practised in our best literary circles,” Mr. Warriner explained. “That's what we call—plagiarism.” Uncle Jim's vocabulary never lowered a notch in deference to Janey's youth. Now, with his characteristic patience, he spelled the long word out for her and made her pronounce it. “If you were to do that, people would say you plagiarized.”

“Uncle Jim, did you ever plagiarize?”

“Not so the editors noticed it.”

“Uncle Jim, I suppose it's dreffle hard being an author. Are there any more in the United States besides you and Mr. Dix and Mr. O'Brien?”

“Janey, paint not Utopias for your poor old uncle. My child, the woods are full of them. When people have failed at everything else, they go in for writing. I don't think I know anybody who doesn't write—except Giovanni—and he probably has a play up his sleeve.”

Giovanni was the Italian who worked in the garden. Janey could not quite believe that.

“Now run away, Jane Elizabeth, and play,” Uncle Jim concluded.

Janey ran away. But she did not play. She fell into absorbed meditation. “Caroline,” she said finally to her small cousin, “I guess when I grow up I won't keep a candy-shop after all. I've just about made up my mind to be an author. I don't know just presackly what I'm going to write, but most likely it'll be fairy-tales like Andersen and Grimm and books like Miss Alcott's. I shall make them so long that they'll last forever, for I have always noticed that the nicer a book is the shorter it is. And Uncle Jim says he's noticed the very same thing. You see, Caroline”—never had Janey's manner been more patronizing—“it won't be so very hard for me to learn to be an author, because Uncle Jim is a writer and Mr. Dix and Mr. O'Brien. And I'm sure they'd help me when it gets hard. But I think it's prob'ly easier than pie, writing books. I've watched authors and they hardly ever work. I'm not going to tell you what my story's about, Caroline, until I begin to write it. But you can stay with me while I'm working, if you want to.”

Caroline asked nothing better of life than the chance to watch Janey. By some mysterious vagary of the artistic temperament, the first efforts of that freshly energized young person were with the scissors, not the pen. Indeed, for one whole afternoon she did nothing but cut pictures from the advertising sections of the magazines.

But this, it seems, was only jockeying for a start. “I shall begin my book to-day, Caroline,” she said, impressively, the following morning. “And I'll prob'ly finish it before night—that is if Uncle Jim will give me three sheets of type-writer paper.”

Receiving twenty instead of the modest three that she begged, the incipient author toiled with a stubby pencil for hours. It was not such discouraging work as it looked, for she read each page to awed little Caroline as fast as it was written, and the whole story as often as she hanged a word. But she did not finish her book at a sitting. Indeed, at the end of three days she still labored.

It was inevitable that Janey Blair should launch into authorship sooner or later. In the first place, she was naturally as busy as the busiest little bee. In the second place, she was as imitative as the most active magpie. And in the third place, she was surrounded on all sides, as far as the eye could reach, by authors.

Now, of all the people who came to Scarsett, Janey liked Uncle Jim's friends, the writer-folk, most. They had the most unexpected point of view for grown-ups. It amounted, in fact, to their being almost as good as children.

Whenever the authors visited the Warriners, the people whom Uncle Jim called interchangeably “the plutocrats” and “the bromides” always entertained them with dinners. Now, Janey knew for a fact that these events meant sitting beside pretty ladies who emerged marble-bare as to arm and shoulder and simply wonderful as to piled-up, puffed and bedecked hair—from long, rustly, shiny dresses, and yet, at the first sign of an invitation, Uncle Jim's friends always groaned.

“Isn't there any way out of it this year, Jim? Have we really got to climb into a claw-hammer? Couldn't we be sick, dead, turn anarchists, or develop leprosy?”

However, if the authors happened to be in Scarsett, they always came trooping up to the grammar school to hear Janey and her friends recite “pieces” at the Memorial Day exercises. Their applause, at these times, was almost deafening. And on Memorial Day, when the Scarsett nine played the Satuit nine, they always attended the ball game and cheered the players, although in terms that Janey did not consider quite respectful. Moreover, when midway in the game, the ball lost itself in Grandpa Wade's orchard, when both teams had to turn to and hunt it up—Janey, meantime, suffering the tortures of suspense—the writers only laughed and laughed and laughed. More than that, though this seems incredible, once when Janey had a party, they not only toiled like galley-slaves to help decorate the house, but they played every game that the ten-year-olds played. All this in the face of the fact that they had that very day given “work” as an excuse for keeping away from a tea.

Work! It was their excuse for doing everything. It was their excuse for doing nothing. Janey had never seen people who could present so convincingly the appearance of just going to work and yet never doing it. In fact, they baffled every conclusion in regard to grown-ups to which Janey had come. They stultified every general statement that she would have made. Of course, in ideal conditions, this was as it should be. But before the authors arrived, Janey had made up her mind that, with adults, things never were as they should be.

But even admitting that authors were only children grown tall, there were some things about them to which Janey had to get used. For, instance, the way they talked.

This was what happened the very day of their arrival. Uncle Jim was running the lawn-mower about the tennis-court. Sitting peaceably near, Janey entertained him with reading aloud. The authors, returning from the office, paused at the sight, and struck attitudes.

“Good work, Jim!” Timothy Dix cheered him on. “You blue-faced old mutt, you! You puffing old porpoise, you! It's time you reduced some of that—”

Whereupon, he received Janey, head-on, straight in the pit of his stomach.

“Don't you dare call my Uncle Jim such names.” she hissed, belaboring him with fists the size of hazel nuts. “If you do, I'll—”

Timothy allayed Janey with a finger. “I beg your pardon, Miss Blair,” he said contritely. “James, I beg yours. Your face is like the lily, James, your eye is heaven's own blue. You have a galumphing, gazelle-like grace, James. From every feature shines malevolence, maliganancy and maliciousness.”

Janey glared. This did not sound like reparation. Also she distrusted those long words at the end.

“If you think I don't know how to look words up in the dictionary!” she was threatening, when Richard O'Brien interrupted.

“Timothy, I blush for you,” he said in a shocked tone. “James has all the noblest qualities of mind and heart. He has the Adonis skun a nautical league. He makes the Apollo Belvedere look like a selling—”

“Well, if Janey hadn't spoken up when she did,” Uncle Jim said, drooping sadly over the lawn-mower, “I had made up my mind to go down to the mud-hole and end it all.”

“Now you see how you have hurt his feelings,” Janey said. “Uncle Jim, I think you're just as pretty as you can be. But I wish you wouldn't call the fairy-pond 'the mud-hole.'”

Gradually Janey learned that just as she and Uncle Jim had a special language, the authors talked in a speech all their own.

For instance, once when they all sat writing in the living-room, Janey loitered, passing through.

“Janey, do not feed or annoy the authors,” Warriner said.

Now Janey knew perfectly well that this, coming from Uncle Jim, meant that she was not to borrow pencils, paper or rubber, and that she was not to ask questions.

But her language and Uncle Jim's was gentle, whereas the authors— At first the things they said almost terrified her. During the mysterious process of collaboration, she was always glimpsing conversational rockets like the following:

“Gee, Timothy, but your style is putrid! Didn't they teach you anything at the Snub Factory?”

(The Snub Factory, it seems, was Harvard University. Richard was a Yale man.)

“Now see here, Richard, we can't let that go by. No decent female talks like that. Far be it from me to pry into your past, but what kind of girls have you associated with, anyway?”

“What this thing needs is uplift!”

“All right. Chuck in some uplift—if you can find a spot among the gang of grafters where it'll stick.”

“Timothy, I never hated any of God's creatures the way I hate our fair young heroine.”

“Say, that's all right, Richard! Put in all the goo about the baby you can. Vick's just had a baby, and he's strong for heart-interest. Can't we get in more he-and-she slush in chapter seven?”

“Timothy, what an ass you are!”

Janey heard her mother remark to Mrs. Morgan, “I never saw men so fond of each other. But if you could hear the abuse! I shudder to think what they call each other when I'm not about.”

But now that Janey had herself embarked on a literary career, she began to feel a great deal of sympathy with the authors.

“I know why more people aren't writers, Caroline,” she sighed once. “It's the 'he saids' and the 'she-saids.' You do get so sick of them.” And later, with a mournfulness even more pronounced, she remarked: “Caroline, I don't see how people get so many words. Sometimes I feel as if I didn't know enough words to write a whole book. I looked in the dictionary the other day, but I didn't seem to find any that went with my story.”

Perhaps the young genius—to indulge in mixed metaphor—hitting against this rock in the literary stream, would have been nipped untimely in the bud if Janey had not happened to overhear a remark of Uncle Jim's.

“If I didn't read Carlyle for another blessed thing,” he said to Timothy, “I'd read him for his words. I always accumulate a new vocabulary with each volume.”

So that was the way they did it! You would naturally conclude that for words you went to the dictionary, just as, for coal, you went to the coal-bin. But instead, you sopped them up out of your reading. Very well, then, Janey would read. But what? Not any more children's books. Her mind was firmly made up to that. She did not want teeney-weeny, foolish children's words. She wanted long, high-sounding grown-up words like “magnificent” and “notwithstanding” and—and—well, Uncle Jim was always using “connotative” and “subtle” and “sulphitic” and “gripping” and “atmospheric.” But somehow, although she had a nice ear for the sound of these exotics, Janey never could get the hang of them.

How was she to manage about this problem of vocabulary? If only you could take a basket and gather words like stones or seashells! It was forbidden that she read the grown-up books in Uncle Jim's library. Janey's eyes fell on a newspaper. Nothing had ever been said to her about newspapers—perhaps because it had never occurred. to her to touch one. Suddenly a great light dawned. Uncle Jim had worked on a newspaper before he became an author. So, singularly enough, had Timothy Dix and Richard O'Brien. They were always talking about their experiences when they were “cubs.” Evidently authorship was mixed in some mysterious way with the daily press. Every afternoon, thereafter, Janey furtively abstracted the newspaper from the basket. She bore it off to the “fairy pond.” Weddings, funerals, prize-fights, abductions, burglaries, accidents, suicides, murders—Janey read them all aloud to little Caroline, who, in consequence, quaked nightly in her bed. Janey congratulated herself on her acumen. The newspaper was simply full of words.

Things went better after this. “Caroline,” Janey said once in that exultation which comes from successful creation, “I find it partickly easy to be an author. You see, in the first place, I can write on a type-writer if Uncle Jim will fix the spaces after every line. Besides I know about so many things that authors know—collaborations and publishers and editors.”

Janey was not boasting.

She did know what a collaboration was. It was a fight.

She did know what a publisher was. He was a leader of a gang of pirates who first terrorized and then robbed poor defenseless authors.

She did know what an editor was. He was—but words failed her. Janey's mental picture was of a squat, black-bearded, lame old man who went about hitting sick babies on the head with a hammer.

“Editors are the most dreadful things that live, I guess,” she explained to Caroline.

“They're just like bad fairies in story-books, and wicked ogres and giants and genii. If you ever see an editor coming, Caroline Benton, you run home just as fast as you can.”

The very day that Janey made the foregoing remark, Uncle Jim said casually: “Oh, by the way, Miriam, Dan Vickery's coming down Saturday to stay a week or ten days. Mrs. Vick's away with the baby. You've heard me speak of Dan Vickery. He's editor of The Moment. Say, you-two—” “You-two” always meant Timothy Dix and Richard O'Brien who were writing a novel together—“why don't you try to get the first part of that gold-brick into shape to show Vick? He's been yelling for something from you all winter long.”

“Sure, we'll do that thing,” Timothy said. “Get Vick away from the office and he's quite human. Flash a manuscript in front of him and he always shows the cloven hoof.”

Janey's heart dropped with a great thump of terror. So their home was to be defiled by the presence of an editor. In addition to all the dreadful things she knew to be true of the species, they had hoofs—cloven at that.

“Mother,” she said later, emerging from a terrorful revery, “I should think you'd have a key to our room so that if we wanted to lock the door nights to keep out—anything—we could.”

But there 1s nothing more fascinating than terror, provided it is surrounded by a sense of personal safety. Besides—another great light dawned on Janey. The thorny way to publication must lie through an editor. And here, in a few days, they would have one, tamed and domesticated maybe, eating at their very board. Janey found herself actually longing for Saturday to come. She tried to help it along by steady work on her book. Saturday noon, Dan Vickery noticed, even in the midst of vociferous welcome, two silent children standing in the doorway of the Warriner house. One, roly-poly, brown, bright-eyed, studied him open-mouthed, a meditative finger at her lips. The other, tow-haired, freckled, stared at him with gray eves so dilated and wide-open that it seemed as if they must pop out of her head. They fell back to a normal size and position, however, as their look shifted to his feet.

“My prophetic soul tells me that this is Janey,” Mr. Vickery said, offering her his hand. “You don't know me, Janey, but I know you. Everybody in New York who knows Uncle Jim knows Janey. And pray who is this gigantic young person? Caroline? Oh, I see. My eye, what nice little girls!”

This sounded good. But Janey was not to be put off her guard.

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Vickery begged the privilege of a salt-water dip before luncheon. Slipping with masculine dispatch into his bathing-suit, he descended to the living-room. Quick as he was, Janey was quicker. Seated upright in the melon-chair, a one-piece bathing-suit making innocent revelations of her charming little-girl slimness, she seemed to be waiting for something. Again Mr. Vickery got the impression that her eyes were going to pop out of her head. Again, leaving his face, their look riveted itself on his feet.

He swung her to his shoulder and in the midst of her unexpressed terror, bore her to the beach. Janey kept looking behind to see if the others were close. After a while, to her great relief, they caught up.

“Oh, say,” Mr. Vickery began, “maybe we aren't going to rip things up next winter. I stopped in Boston and had a talk with Martindale. And you listen to me, that little man's got it in him. He's just given us a series of articles that—”

“Oh, cut it out, Vick!” Timothy demanded. “Of course when we're in your office, we have to listen to your editorial piffle, but down here, you listen to us. We're going to make a man of you or die in the attempt. To-night, for instance, Richard and I, relieving each other at intervals, propose to read aloud to you the first fifty thousand words of our new serial. And you're going to print it. See?”

There the authors were again, Janey observed, with disapproval, at their old game of picking on people.

“Police!” Mr. Vickery called gaily. “When did you say the next train went out, Jim?”

Janey continued covertly to watch the editor. She continued, intently to listen to his words.

She was waiting.

He puzzled her more than anybody she had ever known. He was long, lean, dark, handsome. When he talked with her, his lips said one thing and his eyes said another. One eye-brow that flew up and down in the most distracting manner and at the most unexpected times added to this facial mystery. Janey made up her mind to pin her faith to his eyes. This decision simplified things enormously.

Mr. Vickery spent that afternoon on the tennis-court, beating the authors, as they admitted, with one hand tied behind him. Later, they walked over to the Post Office. He insisted that Janey should go too. He bought her a balloon. That evening, Mr. Morgan took them about in his auto. Mr. Vickery insisted that Janey should go, too. He bought her a bean-bag. Coming back, they bowled a string. Mr. Vickery insisted that Janey should bowl, too. Sunday, he wheeled over to the village for the newspapers. He insisted that Janey should wheel in front on the handle-bar. He bought her an ice cream soda.

It was the same with every member of the family. He inspected Mrs. Blair's rose-garden and gave her some advice for which she thanked him, almost with tears of gratitude. He talked with Mrs. Benton about her husband's engineering work in the West and he said that “Brother” was as husky a six-week-older as he ever saw. He even talked Italian with Giovanni. Of course, the fact remained that he was an editor. But Janey was beginning to wonder if even that grave social handicap compelled him to stand constant insult at the hands of the authors.

Sunday at dinner Mr. Vickery made caustic comments on the serial that, sometime and somehow, he had found leisure to read and, tentatively, to accept.

“You shut up, Vick,” Richard said, “haven't we put in a typical young magazine-cover female just to cater to your low-brow, bromidic editorial taste—”

“And didn't we throw in one perfectly good baby for full measure?” Timothy demanded. “If you say another word—”

Janey's wrath burst its dam at last. “I think you're perfectly dreadful to the editor-man. He's just as good as you are and a great deal better. Besides, that was a lie about his having a cloven hoof and you know it. I looked when he went in bathing.”

Janey could never get accustomed to the obtuseness of grown-ups. The more obvious the truth in the remarks she made, the greater the sensation they produced. Uproar greeted this.

“Janey,” Timothy assured her solemnly at last, “you haven't seen the brutish inner nature of the man yet. It's a peculiarity of the beast that it never shows the cloven hoof until you make a noise like a manuscript.”

But Janey had lost all faith in authors.

“I think Mr. Vickery is a very nice man,” she persisted firmly, “even if he is an editor. And to-morrow morning, I'm going to read him a story that I've just written myself.”

What had seemed uproar before faded to a mere patter.

Timothy pounded on the table with a spoon. “Stung again, Vick! That's right, go to it, Janey, while we've got him in our power. Vick, you're hoist with your own petard. Say, fellows, Vick's so got into the habit of conning authorines that he practises his nefarious arts on all females between nine and ninety. Balloons and bean-bags and bowling and bicycling—see how he wins their trusting young hearts. Vick, I entreat you to bear in mind that your position in this household is that of a guest.”

“Now don't get new, Tim,” Richard said. “It may be that Vick's got one of those long-distance editorial eyes. He can see it coming even in the cradle. Janey, if he accepts your manuscript, we'll make him give you a pink tea when you come to New York.”

But the author-ego still held Janey in its clutch. “I would read my story to-day,” she said in a coy tone, “but I'm not sure it's the kind of story to read on Sundays.”

Mr. Vickery looked shocked. “My dear Miss Blair,” he said solemnly.

Janey would have been quite frightened if she had not made that decision to go by his eyes, not by his words.

“We publish nothing in The Moment that cannot be read week-days, Sundays and Washington's Birthday,” Mr. Vickery continued.

“Well, Janey,” Uncle Jim said, “if you're really going in for authoring, my advice would be to marry an editor. That would be a good strategic move. You see, between us, we could train him the way he should go.”

It was finally decided—Mr. Vickery made a most impassioned and unselfish plea for his friends—that Janey should read her story to the whole family that afternoon.

“Now don't one of you crack a smile,” Uncle Jim warned them while the trembling young author went upstairs for her manuscript. “It'll be all off if you do. Janey won't stand being laughed at.”

When Janey reappeared, Mr. Vickery with great ceremony, placed a chair for her beside a table. With even greater ceremony, Mr. Dix brought her a glass of water on the Sheffield plate tray.

“Now, in the first place,” Janey explained, “when I made up my mind to be an author, I couldn't seem to think of anything to write about.”

“A mere bagatelle!” Timothy commented with an airy shrug of his shoulder. “That's the least of a real author's troubles.”

“And then I thought of a perfickly bee-you-tiful way to make stories. I cut a whole lot of pictures out of the magazines and pasted them in a blank book and wrote my story about the pictures.”

“Richard O'Brien,” Timothy said, “why didn't you—we—think of that first. Fellow-scribes, I have a moment of great illumination. Janey's methods explain perfectly the phenomenon of the lists of best-sellers. Richard, to-morrow we take our shears in hand.”

“It's called 'The Story of the Princess Elsie and the Peasant Stephen,'” Janey went on. “And I have dedicated it, just the way Uncle Jim does, 'To my oldest doll—black Dinah!”

Janey stopped and sipped importantly from the glass of water.

“'Once upon a time,' she began, 'there lived a beautiful princess by the name of Elsie in a faraway land and she lived in a palace that crowned a noble eminence beside a river.'”

“'Crowned a noble eminence!'” Timothy said admiringly. “'Good work, Janey! How you can turn a phrase!”

Janey blushed with delight.

“'The palace was surrounded by grass and trees and parks with deer in them and gardens with flowers and fountains, but most specially it was surrounded with atmosphere so that everybody who came there said how atmospheric it was, partickly writers who know better than anybody else what atmospheric meant.'”

The sentence practically exhausted the author's wind. She paused to breathe. By a curious coincidence, the authors all sat in the same position, their hands to their faces.

“'There was an island in the silvery stream beside the palace that crowned the noble eminence and on the island there was an enchanted castle. One day, the Princess Elsie decided that she would go over to the island all by herself and have a picnic. Elsie had golden hair, blue eyes, cherry lips, pearly teeth and dimples. She looked perfectly beautiful when she was dressed. She wore a blue satin dress and a blue plush coat, a blue merry widow hat, blue silk drawn-thread stockings, blue satin slippers and blue kid gloves. She wore a golden round-comb with turquoises in it and a gold watch with turquoises in it and on her arm a gold bracelet with turquoises in it and on her fingers three rings with turquoises in them and in her hand she held a blue canton flannel bag, lined with rubber that she carried her lunch in.'”

Here Janey paused and looked furtively about, for she was very proud of that description. By another curious coincidence, none of the authors was looking at her or at the others. They all gazed straight ahead, their eyes positively glassy.

“When Elsie stepped out of her little shallop a beautiful peasant named Stephen came forward to meet her. Stephen had black eyes, black hair, red lips, white teeth and a long flowing black beard. “Where are you going, my pretty maid?” he asked. “To yon castle, sir,” she said. “May I go with you, my pretty maid?” he asked. “A burly negro guards the door.”

“'Burly negro'!” Richard commented admiringly. But at the same time he shook his head. “Janey, I'm afraid you're an iconoclast. I fear the language won't stand the strain you're putting it to.”

“'Stephen politely led Elsie to the enchanted castle. Stephen knew how to be polite because he was a prominent clubman in the village where he lived and he occupied a palatial residence in the suburbs and—'”

But now the authors were struggling with handkerchiefs—you would have thought they all had the nose-bleed.

“'As they approached the front yard of the castle, the janitor came out. “Get off the grass,” he said, “for I'll call a policeman.”

“'How dare you insult the Princess Elsie!” said Stephen, for this made him awful mad. He hit the janitor with a left-hook and killed him. The body fell—'” Janey paused as one about to emit a masterpiece of phraseology, “'with a dull sickening thud, and—'”

Timothy rolled from the couch to the floor. “'Dull sickening thud'! O, friend of my cub-days—welcome to our fair city!”

It is not our intention to quote the whole of this early masterpiece of Jane Elizabeth Blair. Suffice it to say—as she would herself have remarked—that there was not a slow moment in it anywhere.

“'And so, the Princess Elsie and the Peasant Stephen were married and lived happily ever afterwards,'” Janey concluded. “And I thought it would be nice to end it with some poetry, so I put in a piece I learned at school:

She ended in the midst of a whirlwind of applause.

“Miss Blair,” Mr. Vickery said, “we accept your manuscript for our children's page. Under ordinary circumstances, we should feel that we could not offer you more than an eighth of a cent a word. But your story shows such originality of plot and such hair-raising originality of diction that we have decided to start you at a quarter of a cent. I calculate that your manuscript is about six hundred words—”

“I shall count the words myself,” Janey said, setting her lips.

“Roughly speaking, that means two dollars. Check follows immediately on acceptance. But” Mr. Vickery raised a warning hand, “considering that we have offered you such liberal terms, we feel that that ought to entitle us to the first look at your next book.”

“Oh, of course!” Janey said, “I wouldn't think of sending it anywhere else.”

The world was swimming in a rosy haze to Janey. Surely the hardships of the literary career had been exaggerated. As for editors, in her opinion they stood lower only than angels. It was almost a half-minute before she spoke. Then, “When will I get the money?” she asked.

At this, Uncle Jim, who hitherto had only twinkled, collapsed. “She's an author all right. No further proof is needed.”

And now, quite as if the authors had been released from some invisible strain, they laughed very hard and very long at nothing in particular.

But gradually all the joy went out of Janey's face. Janey's conscience—and it was the biggest organ Janey had—was hectoring—was stinging—was lashing her to the heights of renunciation. A moment she struggled. But it had to be done, and she knew it. She sighed heavily.

“Mr. Vickery,” she said, “maybe you won't want to publish my story when I tell you something. I didn't make up every bit of it myself. I copied some things in it out of the newspapers.”

Would she ever understand grown-ups! What booted it, as far as they were concerned, her moral conflict, her spiritual victory? They kept right on laughing.