A Literary Accident

IT is a sweet and vexatious thing to be a member of a small community. One does not know whether one is more stimulated or hampered by it, more cheered or exasperated. The result is at least peculiarly human; and that is so good that we in our village do not see how substantial things ever come to pass at all in the detached life of cities.

Among us, everything that happens to any one happens to all the rest; every ambition is a community affair; every destiny is common. Nobody lives to himself or even to his profession, whatever that may chance to be. I have admitted that it is vexatious. Silas Hapgood resorts to profanity every spring when he starts in to cultivate his long meadow that borders the highroad — he gets so much advice from passers-by. And Lucy Merwin repeatedly declares that she will never make another of her famous pound cakes, because, in spite of their excellence, somebody is always found to suggest a further improvement. Nevertheless, that particular meadow grows in fertility from year to year, and the cakes grow in lusciousness; and the community’s pride in them both is just and natural. I am sure that John Underwood never would have learned to play the organ so well, if old Plynn Holcomb had not stood right up in meeting and shouted, ‘For God’s sake, take your foot off that loud pedal!’ New Englanders are supposed to be stiffnecked; and so they are sometimes with outsiders. But they stand a great deal from one another.

In my own case, when I came back from college and settled down in my spinster cottage and began to send contributions, first to the local weekly, then to the Springfield Republican, then to a few magazines, I was at once aware that my neighbors were watching me eagerly. We had had a musician or two in our midst. We had had an artist. We had had any number of teachers and three ministers. But we had never had a writer. Fieldsborough, the neighboring township, had one. For lack of a nearer, more personal loyalty, we all read her stories assiduously and enjoyed them in spite of ourselves; but there was an element of jealousy in our admiration. As a matter of fact, I suppose, one obscure reason for my turning my hand to the pen at all lay in Fieldsborough’s unspoken challenge.

The mere fact that I succeeded in getting anything accepted and published seemed at first so surprising to the villagers that they gave me wholehearted applause.

‘Millicent Roswell!’ (Thus I heard them behind my back.) ‘Why, she’s just like any one, she’s just folks. Would you have believed she had it in her? A real pretty piece, too — about — well, about —I guess I’ve sort of forgotten, but never mind, it was good.’

This was all very well, so far as it went. I was glad of the sympathetic encouragement; in fact — thorough villager as I am — I do not know how I could have got along without it. But of course I detected a menace in the general failure to remember what my ‘pieces’were about; and it was with much apprehension that I watched the development of my small talent.

I could not write stories. Every time I tried, I failed so dismally that the return mail was hardly quick enough for them to come back to me from newspaper or magazine. With essays, on the other hand, I had a growing success. They were quiet little productions — about the beauty of the world, about certain moral aspects of human life that seemed to me particularly worth consideration, about philosophical theories. I was not excited over them, but I thought them the best I could do. They found a limited audience somewhere out in the great world; and they brought me in an equally limited income. Now and then I had a letter from a sympathetic stranger which went to my very heart.

I was not surprised, however, when a note of uneasiness began to make itself heard in my fellow villagers’ comments.

‘Say, Milly, I had to sit up till ten o’clock over that last paper of yours, and even now I’m not sure I understand it. It’s learned stuff, and I’m proud to think you could write it; but I do sort of wish you’d write a story once in a while.’

I was not going to confess that I had written stories — scrap-baskets full of them. I hoped against hope that that secret lay between the postmaster and myself. So I said nothing.

‘There’s an awful good Fieldsborough story in the last Sunset,’ my neighbor continued: ‘about a man who hated a woman so that at last he just had to tell her about it; and as soon as he began to speak, he found himself begging her to marry him. Gee! that was true to life.’

There was a wistful pause. Still I said nothing — what could I say? So, with a sigh, she left me, and I went in and shook my head at my ink-bottle. This sort of thing happened again and again; and I began to feel, not only disappointed in myself, but distinctly guilty toward my community. I was not doing what they expected of me, what the situation demanded; I was falling short of an obvious goal. I grew unhappy, and ceased to write at all.

Then, one summer evening, I was sitting on my front steps in the dusk, when Joel Potter came up the street and stopped to speak to me.

‘Have n’t read anything of yours in a long time,’ he said. ‘That’s a saving of Library fines, for I always had to keep your papers out more than three days. But I hope you have n’t run out. I suppose you ’ve read the last Fieldsborough story. A good one, was n’t it?’

It is hard to say why one challenge, more than another, strikes home and rouses the spirit. Other people had spoken to me thus, all too often, and I had only sat still. But there was something in Joel’s remarks, and in the tone in which he proffered them, that was at last too much for my New England patience. In the light of the outcome, I now think there may have been something fatal in the very fact that it was Joel who spoke. At any rate, no sooner had he disappeared up the street, than I had made a mighty, irrevocable resolve to write a good story. In the name of all that was self-respecting and civically loyal, I must and would.

Yes, surely, Fate had a hand in the business; for, as I sat there, white-hot with my purpose and intent on means of accomplishing it, Deborah Brewster went by. It could not have meant just nothing that she should so promptly follow in Joel’s wake.

Deborah Brewster was one of the most staid and deliberate spinsters in our community. At the time of our mutual crisis, she was about forty, and Joel was forty-five. She had always lived an utterly uneventful life, tied to the bedside of an invalid father who died when she was thirty-eight. She was not interesting; but then, she had never had anything to make her so. Nevertheless, contradictorily, she had always interested me. I could not tell what it was, but there was something about her. It lay in a certain curve of her placid mouth, in a caressing way she had with her hands, in an unexpected gleam that now and then shot through her eyes. She never lived up to these characteristics, never seemed to be even aware of them; but they were there — at least, they came and went — and, first and last, I have spent many minutes staring at her and trying to make quite sure that I understood her. The obvious, general effect she produced was one of stolidity.

We none of us knew her so very well; perhaps we did not care to. Her house stood a little aside from the village, and her long years of attendance on her father had fostered in her a habit of solitude. She read a great deal, and she was a famous housekeeper and gardener. Her rose-bushes alone must have taken hours of her time every summer.

When her father died, I was distinctly though vaguely excited. Now was her chance. If the curve and the gleam and the caress really meant anything, they were at last free to show it. But nothing happened. She went right on in her monotonous routine — did not even change the furniture or get a new dress; and I was forced to conclude that I had been mistaken, that her elusive characteristics were meaningless tricks of heredity. So I tried to put them out of my mind and relegate her once for all to the class of human prosiness where she undoubtedly belonged.

It will now be apparent what kind of a chance presented itself to me, as I sat on my steps, fired with my resolution, and watched Deborah Brewster go up the street. I had always thought that the failure of my stories lay in their unreality (I had spun them out of sheer imagination), and that if I could make a study from life I might succeed. But natural loyalty had forbidden me to use any of the human material which lay about me in my neighbors’ affairs. If, now, I should take Deborah for my heroine, and write her life-history, — not as it had been, but as it might have been, — might I not hope to achieve something quite inoffensive and at the same time solid and convincing? I was so delighted with the idea that I made haste to get a pad and pencil.

I had never enjoyed anything so much as writing that story. I began it by casting an anchor to reality in the description of Deborah; then I let loose the gleam and the curve and the caress, and gave them full liberty. It was amazing what a difference they made. They transformed my heroine into a creature of fire and light, involved her in love-affairs and adventures, and gave her some narrow escapes. Instead of a dull, monotonous existence, she lived a full and vivid life, replete with interest. The process worked such entire conviction with me that I was sure this was not only Deborah as she might have been, but Deborah as she was intended to be. I finished the story in a glow of satisfaction.

It was accepted and promptly published by that same Sunset Magazine in which Fieldsborough so largely figured. I was as pleased as a child when I held it in my hands. At last my neighbors would know what I was writing about, and what to say to me. At last they were spared the necessity of burning painful ten o’clock oil on my account. At last Fieldsborough was invited to share a tiny leaf of its laurels with our village. I could hardly wait to learn the verdict of the villagers.

I did not have to wait long. Several of our people take the Sunset Magazine, and there is always a copy in the Public Library. Before I had finished my supper, there came a hurried knock at my door and Lucy Merwin burst in. I had never seen her cheeks so red, and her eyes were like saucers.

‘ Why — why — why — Milly! ’ she stammered. ‘What in the world? How did you ever find out? I never was so surprised in my life. How did you ever find out?’

This was not what I had expected, and my mind misgave me obscurely, though the enormity of the situation was not yet apparent to me.

‘I guess I don’t know what you mean,’ I temporized.

‘Why, your story about Deborah Brewster, of course. You’ve described her to the life. And, now that you’ve opened my eyes, I can see how everything might have happened just as you’ve told it. In fact, I sort of think I suspicioned that affair of hers with Joel. But she’s always so innocentlooking — my! is n’t she deep? How did you ever find out?’

‘Joel?’

I got the word out as soon as my horrified lips could frame it. I felt myself turn pale.

‘Of course!’ Lucy was growing impatient with me. ‘ You did n’t describe him quite so closely as Deborah, but it was plain enough who you had in mind. My! he’s a sly one, too. I never was so surprised.’

My distress was almost too deep for words, but I could not yield to it — never had I needed words so badly. With all the impressiveness I could muster, I adjured Lucy to believe me. Not a detail of the story was true; I had made it all up; Joel Potter had not been in my mind when I was writing it.

‘He went up the street just before I began, and perhaps he was in my subconsciousness; but I had no intention of describing him. So far as I know, he has never had anything to do with Deborah. Oh, Lucy! you must believe me, you must help me make the village believe me. This might be too cruelly dreadful. Deborah Brewster! Why, Lucy, you know as well as I do that nothing has ever happened to her. She’s a quiet, dull old maid.’

But every one who has ever had anything to do with a New England village will understand how well-advised was the desperate element in my appeal. Villagers believe what they want to, and that is generally what rumor suggests. Moreover, they have a certain pride of omniscience, especially in affairs of the heart; and nothing can make them commit themselves to that in which, after all, they may find themselves caught napping. I could get no satisfaction from Lucy; and all that evening and the next day I was assailed by keen-eyed callers, watchfully on their guard.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised. No, I always thought there was more in Deborah Brewster than appeared on the surface. But I’ve never said anything because it was none of my business.’

‘I know just when it was that Joel hurt his foot in her trap and she rode the horse bareback after the doctor. I’ve always wondered who it was went galloping by our house that night.’

‘You mean to say you’ve only just learned that she got lost two days and a night on the mountain? Yes — I heard tell of it.’

It availed nothing for me to protest, ‘But she did n’t, she was n’t; I tell you, I made the whole story up, it is none of it true.’ My neighbors only looked at me silently, and then glanced at one another. If I had not been so unhappy, it would have amused me to see how alert and suspicious they were, and how, through fear of betraying ignorance, each one egged on the others to believe the impossible. It was a masterly demonstration of the working of the village mind.

Meantime, poor Deborah: what of her? I knew that she took the Sunset and that she read it faithfully. No one had seen her about the village for the last two or three days; but she often stayed at home all the week, working in her garden. It was there I must seek her to learn the effect of my unfortunate story upon her and to beg her pardon. I was afraid, yet I wanted to go. On the third morning after the revelation I mustered up my courage.

She was busy with her hollyhocks as I entered the gate, and did not see me coming. That gave me a chance to stop and study her a moment. Her face, underneath her big straw hat, was as quiet and non-committal as ever; I could not make much out of it. But at least it was not distressed and resentful. In fact, as I watched her, it seemed to me that I could discover more than that mere negative reassurance. Was she not a little changed for the better? Had she always worn a ribbon about her hat? And her hair — I remembered it drawn back into a tight knot; now it lay loose about her face. Surely, she was different, she was — Then she looked up and saw me.

I do not know just what happened, except that a wave of shame went over me, and I stood paralyzed. But, in another moment, I found my hands held in a friendly grasp, and I was being led along to a chair on the front porch.

‘How did you know? How in the world did you know?’ Deborah was saying to me.

Now, I had supposed that I was prepared for every possible attitude on the part of my heroine. Resentment, grief, embarrassment, indifference, amusement, I stood ready for them all. But her actual question startled me so that my brain reeled, and I groped for the chair and sat down in it helplessly.

‘Know what?’ I stammered.

I suppose I looked idiotic. At any rate, Deborah laughed a little as she sat down near me and took off her hat.

‘You must know what I mean,’ she said succinctly. ‘ Your story, our story. Oh! of course we both understand that it did n’t really happen; but how did you know that it might, that I had it in me to ride horses bareback and to get lost on the mountain? Above all,’ — she hesitated, — ‘how did you know about Joel?’ she asked rather shyly.

Yes, certainly, I must have lost my wits; or else my brain was playing me one of its queer repetitious tricks; for, just as Deborah had amazed me by repeating Lucy’s first question to me — how did I know? — so now I heard myself reiterating my own exclamation, ‘ Joel! ’ In both cases, I was blinded by astonishment.

‘Because I did n’t know,’ Deborah went on slowly, too intent on her explanation to notice my stupefaction, or to repeat Lucy’s impatience with me. ‘I did n’t know anything at all until I read your story. Then—’ She spread out her hand in an eloquent gesture. ‘That certainly was the night of my life,’ she added literally.

I imposed a strong command on myself, and sat up and brought my attention to bear on the unexpected turn which this incalculable affair had taken. I could not understand it, but I saw that it was fraught with interest. As the mists cleared from my eyes, I observed that Deborah’s face was indeed changed. No need to hunt for the gleam and the curve in it now. They were dominant. She was watching me eagerly, longing to share her experience with me.

‘The night of my life,’ she repeated. ‘I wish I could tell you about it, but it won’t be easy. I always make a point of reading your things,’ — I proffered a humble gesture of acknowledgement, — ‘and, for a year or two, I’ve taken the Sunset Magazine for the sake of the Fieldsborough stories. Well, day before yesterday, when the new number came, and I saw that you had a story in it too, I was delighted. I hurried through supper, and lighted the lamp. Then I took the cat in my lap and began to read. I tell you — ’ She broke off and shook her head. ‘No, I can’t tell you,’ she said, regretfully. ‘It’s beyond words.

‘In five minutes, I’d put the cat down and gone to look at myself in a mirror. Yes, there I was, just as you had described me — hair and face and clothes and everything. You must have had me in mind. Yet what in the world—? Then I sat down again.

‘Another five minutes, and I was up once more, walking the room and reading at the same time. I felt as if I was going crazy; the place was too small for me. That horseback ride: I’ve never been on a horse in my life, yet I knew exactly how that woman felt as she rode through the midnight, and I wanted to go and take Silas Hapgood’s horse out of his barn and ride right away on it. That getting lost on the mountain: I’ve never been alone in the woods, but I wanted to climb West Mountain that minute, and never come back. That having a sweetheart — ’

Again she hesitated, and this time I was not sure that she was going on.

‘If you knew all along that Joel liked me,’ she brought out at length, speaking, for the first time, with a certain note of accusation, ‘I think you ought to have let me know long before this, and in not quite such a public manner.’

‘But I did n’t, I did n’t! Dear Deborah,’ — I seized the chance which she gave me, and spoke as rapidly as I could, my pleading words crowding one another. I sat on the edge of my chair, and held her by the apron hem. ‘I did n’t know anything; you must believe me. I did n’t even know that you might have done all these things. And I never so much as dreamed of Joel. I simply wanted to write a story, and it seemed to me that, if I made it all up, you probably would n’t mind my using you for a heroine. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Can you ever forgive me?’

She gazed at me silently, her honest eyes struggling with an incredulity which was almost too much for her. Then she relieved me unspeakably by laying her hand on mine.

‘Well, that beats all!’ she murmured. ‘Oh! you don’t have to ask me to forgive you. I guess I’m rather obliged to you. I’m glad to know that the Lord did n’t make me quite so dull as I’ve always thought myself; and—yes, I’m real glad to know what Joel Potter used to mean by looking at me in church. I’m only sorry’ — she smiled wistfully — ‘that I did n’t know before.

‘You see,’ she went on, when my perplexity and unhappiness kept me dumb, ‘I’ve always been tied down and have n’t had any chance to make experiments. Father did n’t think much of me; he used to tell me I was as homely as a rail-fence. I’m not very spunky by nature and I took his word for it. Anyway, you know how it is,’ — she appealed to the instinctive fatalism which is so strong in all us New Englanders, — ‘things just are as they are; it does n’t come natural to question them or to try to change them.’

I nodded soberly.

‘And so I’ve lived on, never dreaming. And now it’s too late.’

‘Is it?’

My question startled us both. I saw it drive the gleam out of her eyes, leaving only a blank consternation there.

‘Why, Milly, I’m forty years old!’ she quavered dubiously.

‘Well,’ I insisted, ‘that’s no great age. Of course, you would n’t ride horses bareback now, but —’

She stopped me abruptly by shaking her head. ‘No,’ she declared; ‘I’m too old, it’s too late, I’m too settled in my ways. Maybe I should n’t even want it — it would be too hard work. Don’t let’s talk about it any more. It rather frightens me.’

She pushed my hand away, and got up, and started to go into the house for a soothing pan of potatoes to prepare for dinner. Her manner was that of one who definitely turns her back on an illusion. But she had not taken two steps before we were both arrested by an apparition in the gateway which caused my maidenly blood to run cold.

It was Joel Potter. He said not a word; and, for a minute, he did not move. He simply stood with a hand on either gate-post and looked at Deborah. I had never seen any one look like that. I wanted to hide, to run away; but I could not move a muscle, — and, anyway, he blocked the only exit. Moreover, my terrified remnants of wits told me that I had brought this situation on Deborah and that it behooved me to see her through.

But when I mustered courage to look at her, I caught my breath in the shock of the culminating surprise of this momentous day. She was the most triumphantly transfigured person I had ever seen. Poised for departure, she looked back at Joel; and at least ten years fled out of her face and from her slender figure. Her eyes were all gleam, her mouth was all a sweetly mocking curve, and her hand caressed the front doorknob in a maddening fashion.

Not that Joel needed to be maddened. I had always thought him a placid, self-contained person; now I saw that he was a kindled fire. He glared at Deborah, glared at her; and a copy of the Sunset Magazine stuck out of his coat-pocket.

I wondered if the electric silence was going to last forever.

‘You’re a pretty person!’ he said finally, speaking so thickly that I should never have recognized his voice. ‘Are n’t you ashamed of yourself?’

The first part of his accusation was true. With her head held high and her cheeks aglow, Deborah certainly was, for perhaps the first time in her life, a pretty person. But his denouncing question flew wide of its mark. She was not in the least ashamed of herself.

‘Who is he?’ He entered the gate, and took a step nearer her. ‘Tell me at once: who is this lover of yours?’

What could she say — poor Deborah? Not, ‘Why, you, Joel!’ So she said nothing at all.

‘Deborah!’

His cry was so piercing, so eloquent of all sorts of things which I had no business to be overhearing, that, panicstricken, I slipped out of my chair and dropped off the porch, and made for the now open gateway, my heart pounding in my ears. I never looked back once. I ran and ran and ran.

That is all that I know about the events of the morning. I got away just in time. But the results were known to the whole village in less than a month. Joel and Deborah were married in the little village church, and I was the only person they asked to stand up with them.

I suppose I shall never know at what conclusion the villagers arrived concerning the matter. Perhaps they never have arrived, but prefer to keep the particularly delectable subject open for perpetual discussion. It is a bad sign that, from the day of the announcement of Deborah’s engagement, they have none of them made any further comments to me. But I try not to care. I have only to look at Deborah’s happy face to go home and salute my pen with an awed respect. It’s a dangerous business to write stories, but sometimes it is worth while.