Chapter III

Jane settled jubilantly into the new life,--a brisk walk after breakfast, up the gay Avenue or down the gray streets below the Square, then three honest hours at the elderly typewriter, writing at top speed ... tearing up all she had written ... writing slowly, polishing a paragraph with passionate care, salvaging perhaps a page, perhaps a sentence out of the morning's toil. Then she hooded her machine, lunched, and gave herself up to an afternoon of vivid living,--a Russian pianist, or an exhibition of vehemently modern pictures screaming their message from quiet walls in a Fifth Avenue Gallery, an hour at Hope House Settlement with Emma Ellis or Michael Daragh, tea and dancing with Rodney Harrison, or dinner and a play with him, or a little session of snug coziness with Mrs. Hetty Hills, giving the exile news of the Vermont village,--nothing was dull or dutiful; the prosiest matters of every day were lined with rose. She dramatized every waking moment. She was going to _work_, she wrote Sarah.

I have been just marking time before, but now I'm marching, Sally.
I was up at six-thirty, had a cold dip and a laborer's breakfast,--I'm
afraid I haven't any temperament in my appetite, you know--and
sped off for atmosphere _and_ ozone, far below the Square, on a
two-mile tramp, and now I'm about to write. Rodney Harrison, who
knows everybody who _is_ anybody, has introduced me to some
vaudeville-powers-that-be and I am encouraged to try my hand at
what they call a sketch--a one-act play. It seems that they are in
need of something a little less thin than the usual article they've
been serving up to their patrons,--more of a playlet; something, I
suppose, to edify the wife of the Tired Business Man after he has
enjoyed the Tramp Juggler and the Trained Seals. Rodney Harrison has
helped me no end,--trotted me about to all the best places and
helped me to study and learn from them, and now I'm ready to begin.

And--heavens--how I adore it, Sally!

It's breaking my iron schedule to write a letter in business hours
but I knew you'd love to picture me here, gleefully clicking off
dollars and fame. Poor lamb! I wish you were on a job like this,
instead of pegging away at your piano. I wish there could be as much
fun in your work as mine. Of course, music is the most marvelous
thing in the world, but isn't there something of deadly monotony in
it?

But I fly to my toil!

Busily,

JANE.

_January Ninth_, 8.30 A.M.

It is just one week since I wrote you. I rend my garments, Sarah
Farraday, and sit in the dust. That fatuous note I sent you was a
thin crust of bluff over an abyss of fright. Who am I to write a
one-act play? I have sat here for eight solid horrible days with a
fine fat box of extra quality paper untouched and the keyboard
leering at me, and not a line, not a word, have I written! The
hideous period of beginning to begin! I imagine it's like the tense
moment in a football game, just before the kickoff, only those lucky
youths are pushed and prodded into action, willynilly. If only a
whistle would blow or a pistol crack for me!

I have come to realize that the most dangerous thing for a writer to
have is uninterrupted leisure. _Now_ I know how Harriet Beecher
Stowe could write _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ with poverty and sickness
and a debilitating climate and seven children. So could I. It's the
awful quiet of this orderly room, the jeering taunt of Washington
Square, looking in at my window to say, "What! here you are in my
throbbing, thrilling midst at last, having left your sylvan home
because it ceased to nourish you,--and you have nothing to say?"

I've simulated a mad business. I've answered every letter--some that
I've owed for years; I've put my bureau and chiffonier and closet in
sickening order; I've mended every scrap of clothing I possess,
reinforced all my buttons and run in miles of ribbon; I've visited
the sick and even been to the dentist. I really ought to die just
before I start a new piece of work. At no other time is my house of
life in such shining order.

Sally, didn't I say something nitwitted about music? Now, indeed, I
pour ashes on my head. Lucky you, who need only sit down and spill
out your soul in something thoughtfully arranged for that very
purpose by Mr. Chopin or Mr. Tschaikovsky! While I--"out of senseless
nothing to evoke"--I wish I did something definite and tangible like
plain sewing! If I don't start soon I'll sell this think-mobile for
junk and put out a sign--"Mending and Washing and Going Out by the
Day Taken in Here."

Just now the painted ship upon the painted ocean is a bee-hive of
activity compared to me.

JANE.

_Monday Noon._

SARAH,

Sh-h...! I'm off!

J.

_Wednesday, more than midnight._

DEAREST S.,

I'm a dying woman but my sketch is done! I've lived on board the
typewriter since twelve o'clock on Monday, coming briefly ashore for
a snatch of food or sleep, but it's done and I adore it! (Says the
author, modestly.) The heavenly mad haste of the actual doing makes
up for all the agonies of the start, restoring the years that the
locusts have eaten. I'll tell you all about it in the morning.

Drowsily but triumphantly,

JANE.

_Thursday._

Sally, my dear, I wouldn't thank King George to be my uncle, as Aunt
Lyddy would say! I never experienced anything in all my life as
satisfying as pounding out that word CURTAIN!

Want to hear about it? You must,--you can't elude me.

Well, I've called it "ONE CROWDED HOUR." The scene is a lonely
telegraph station on the desert and the time is the present. The
characters are: THE GIRL--THE BROTHER--THE MAN.

The setting shows the front room of the telegraph station crude and
rough and bare, just the ticker on the table, another table and three
chairs, yet there is a pathetic attempt at softening the ugliness,--a
bunch of dried grasses, magazine covers pinned to the wall, gay
cushions in the chairs, a work basket, books.

At rise of curtain GIRL is discovered alone, sewing. She is faintly,
quaintly pretty in a mild New England way, no longer young, yet with
a pathetic, persistent girlishness about her. A faint whistle is
heard. She rises, goes to door of rear room and calls to BROTHER
that the train has whistled for the bend. The two trains--east-bound
and west-bound--are the events of their silent and solitary days.
She brings him from rear room, her arm about him, steadying him. He
is younger than his sister, frail, despondent. She seats him at the
instrument and brings him a cup of hot broth, standing over him
until he drinks it up.

The necessary exposition comes in brief dialogue: he has been sent
west for his cough, has become so weak he is unable to do his work,
has taught her, and she in reality carries on all the affairs of the
lonely station. He stays in bed most of the time, only dragging
himself up at train time, so that the trainmen will not suspect their
secret.

The noise of the approaching limited grows louder and louder until
it arrives with loud clamor just off stage. GIRL runs out with the
orders and the train is heard pulling out again. She comes in and is
about to help him back to bed when the instrument begins to click
and instantly they are electrified.

"THE HAWK," a daring hold-up man who has baffled justice for a year,
has just made off with the Bar K Ranch paysack and posses are
forming, but the new sheriff has sworn to take him single-handed.
BROTHER excitedly asserts that the sheriff can do it,--a regular
fellow, that new sheriff,--looks and acts just like a man in a
movie! He regrets that his sister was not at home the day he came to
see them--the one time she'd left the station for more than an hour.
She'd have liked him fine! They excitedly discuss the chances of the
bandit's coming their way, for just beyond their station is the
famous Pass through the mountains, through which so many rogues have
ridden to freedom. In feverish haste BROTHER gets out his clumsy
pistol and loads it, to her timid distress. Their drab day has
turned to scarlet; he talks glowingly of the new sheriff, envies
him.... Instrument clicks again. It is the sheriff, asking if they
have seen a solitary horseman, and saying that he is on his way
there, to watch the Pass.

BROTHER gets himself so wrought up that he brings on a fit of
coughing and she makes him go back to bed.

Left alone again in the front room, she tries to settle down to her
sewing, but she sings as she rocks--

"In days of old
When knights were bold,
And barons held their sway--"

Then, childishly, half ashamed, she begins to "pretend." She snatches
off the red table cover and drapes it about herself for a train,
casts the crude furniture for the roles of moat and drawbridge and
castle wall, and herself for a captive princess, held by a robber
chief, flinging herself into her fantasy with such abandon that she
does not hear the approaching hoof beats. At the pinnacle of her big
speech the door is wrenched open and THE MAN stands there, a gun in
each hand, demanding--

"Who's here?"

It fits in with her make-believe so amazingly that for an instant she
is dazed and can hardly tell reality from romance, but then she
gathers herself and says with a little gasp--

"Why, Mister Sheriff, we aren't hiding THE HAWK!"

THE MAN, who is, of course, the bandit, instantly catches her mistake
and poses as the sheriff. She asks him eagerly if she may send a
message for him, to cover up her confusion as she takes off her
table-cloth train. Then, realizing that she has betrayed their
secret, she throws herself on his mercy and tells of her brother's
failing health, and of how she has had to do the work to hold the
job, and begs him not to tell. He promises, and then has her send
several messages for him in the name of the sheriff, and from his
expression as she is telegraphing, the audience will infer that he
has good and sufficient reason to know that the sheriff will not
arrive. He states to the several ranches where she wires for him that
he--the sheriff--will guard the Pass.

BROTHER, roused by voices, comes silently to the door. Their backs
are toward him and they do not see him. BROTHER hears her call him
"Mister Sheriff," stares, takes in the situation, his face speaking
his terror. He softly pulls the door to and disappears.

GIRL and MAN talk. He is a gay, dashing, Robin Hood sort of chap and
she is charmed. She asks him to step outside to see the gallant
little garden she is raising in the desert. They go out, and
instantly BROTHER creeps out, stumbles to table, waits until they are
out of hearing, sends a quick message. Then he creeps to the door and
conveys by his mutterings that he is going to untie THE HAWK's horse
and let him run away. Apparently the horse doesn't go, for he reaches
back, picks up a cane and leans out again. This time there is the
sound of skurrying hoofs and the horse tears away. BROTHER staggers
back into the rear room, closing the door.

MAN and GIRL rush in. He is desperate,--the horse,--a wild and
half-broken one, has made straight for the Pass. GIRL wants to wire
for another horse to be brought to him, but after a moment's grim
thought, he decides to jump on the eastbound train, due in a few
minutes, and go on to the next station, where he can get a good
horse.

Then there is a pretty scene between them, when she confesses her
pity for THE HAWK and her wicked hope that he may get away--"I can't
bear to have even _things_ hunted, let alone a man!"

THE MAN is touched, and tells her that he knows a good deal about the
bandit; that he has had a rotten deal straight through life; that
there's a streak of decency in him for all the yellow; that he's
heard that THE HAWK meant to make this his last job ... to go back
east again and make a fresh start....

THE GIRL, star-eyed and pink-cheeked now, tells him of her home "down
east," of how keen she was to come to the wild, wonderful west, of
how she thinks that "one crowded hour of glorious life" is worth a
whole leaden existence. That reminds her of her graduating essay,
which she digs out of the trunk, tied with baby-blue ribbon. "One
Crowded Hour" was her burning topic, but her hours and days and years
have been crowded only with homely toil and poverty and worries.

THE MAN, softened incredibly, tells her she is the gentlest thing he
ever knew.... He takes the blue ribbon and says he's going to keep it
for luck. There is a beautiful, wordless moment for her, touched by
magic into girlhood again.

Then--shouts, galloping hoofs, shots! THE MAN springs to his feet,
hands on his guns.

BROTHER, at door of rear room, his old pistol describing wavering
circles in his shaking hand, cries hoarsely,

"Harriet Mary, you come here to me! That's not the sheriff! That's
THE HAWK!"

THE MAN, with a gentle word to her, tells her to stand aside....
"They'll never put THE HAWK in a cage!"

THE GIRL, after a dazed moment, turns to a veritable fury of
resolution. The east-bound train whistles. There is still a chance,
if she can get him on board. Sound of posse riding nearer. She makes
MAN hide under the curtain where her dresses hang.

BROTHER starts toward the front door but she seizes him roughly,
pushing him back toward the bedroom.

"Listen," he gasps, "Harriet Mary--that's THE HAWK!"

"I don't care! I don't care! I don't _care_! You hush! You keep
still!" She pushes him into the room so violently that he falls,
coughing terribly, to the floor. A look of fleeting horror crosses
her face but she bangs and bolts the door. She draws the curtain more
carefully over THE MAN, flings open the front door and calls above
the clamor of the on-coming train--

"He's gone! Gone! We tried to keep him--quick--through the Pass!
_Don't you see the hoof-prints?_"

The posse wheels and thunders away. The train roars in. THE MAN,
coming out from under the curtain, snatches up her thin hand, kisses
it, dashes out. She forces herself to take the message out to the
trainmen. She comes back, stands in strained and breathless
listening.... The train pulls noisily out.

Little by little her tension relaxes. The magic robe of youth,
renewed, falls from her thin shoulders. At a sound from the inner
room she gasps, clutches her hands together on her breast, her eyes
wide with terror and remorse, starts running to her brother.

CURTAIN!

Can you _see_ it, Sally? Do you think it will "get across?" Will
I be able to "put it over"?

Now, convoyed by Rodney Harrison, I'm off to the Booking Office with
a 'script, enchantingly typed in black and scarlet, under my arm and
hope in my heart.

Jauntily,

JANE.

_Later._

P.S. They were quite wonderful to me, which is to say, they
pronounced "not bad" and will cast it at once. They talk vaguely of
changes and "gingering it up," and "adding a little pep," but say
that can be done at rehearsals.

I started to say I preferred not to have any alterations made, but I
thought it would be more tactful to wait and see.

Oh, but the forlorn wretches in the waiting room! Some of them had
been there for hours and when the proud and prosperous-looking Rodney
sent in his name and we were taken in at once without waiting for our
turn and they looked at me with their mournful made-up eyes I felt as
if my wicked French heels were on their necks. I noticed one girl,
particularly; there was something so gallant about her cracked and
polished shoes, her mended gloves, her collar, laundered to a cobweb
thinness, and about the improbable sea-shell pink in her hollow
cheeks. She had a sort of eager, sharpened sweetness in her face and
a regular Burne-Jones jaw.

I refused tea and said farewell to Rodney uptown and walked home, and
on the way I saw her again, standing outside of one of the white and
shining _Café des Enfants_, watching the man turn the muffins. She
opened a collapsed little purse and poked about in it for an instant
and then shut it again and turned away. Before I knew what I meant
to do, I heard myself saying, "Hello! I saw you just now at the
Booking Office, didn't I? I wish you'd come in and have some coffee
and butter cakes,--I detest eating alone!"

She hung back a bit but they are not formal in her world, and in we
went. Sally, I wish you could have seen that poor thing eat! She's
been sick and out of work and fearfully depressed. I've got her name
and address and if all goes as well with this vaudeville work as
Rodney thinks it will, I may be able to help her. At any rate, she's
stuffed like a Christmas turkey at this moment.

Sally, I can't tell you how happy I am!

Much love, old dear,

JANE.

P.S. II. I read the act to Michael Daragh and he set the seal of his
sober approval on it. He thinks I'm going personally to uplift the
two-a-day.