Mrs. Penlust on the Damascus Road

I

ALTHOUGH my memory of Mrs. Amelia Penlust will never cease while I am here to cherish it, my actual acquaintance with her began and ended during a few brief weeks, tense and trying to us both. We met, forbore, and parted while we were studying the art, or technique, of short-story writing in an Extension Course offered by one of our largest universities, I as teacher, Mrs. Penlust as my aspiring and indefatigable pupil. She parted from me with unconcealed feelings of relief and triumph; I from her with — shall we say — mingled emotions.

No one in the least familiar with the ways and means by which our universities yearly ‘extend’ their blessings to the people at large would have called Mrs. Penlust herself extraordinary. She might, indeed, even have been termed fairly typical of those scores, yea hundreds, of middle-aged persons who long to recapture and renew a lost and fruitless youth; who perceive in themselves gifts thus far undiscovered by others; who, having accepted life for nearly half a century with a kind of negative patience, now yearn, paradoxically enough, to give back to life the power and the glory they have never been able to wrest from it. Encouraged by bulletins and radio announcements which skillfully remind them of neglected potentialities within themselves, they come at the beginning of the term or semester, each with Stevenson’s lantern gleaming dully at his belt, each looking for oil and wine — oil for unused lamps, new wine for old bottles.

Mrs. Penlust’s lantern was a desire — a passion, rather — to write short stories. In this likewise she was in no sense unique. Like many of her fellow extension students, the bookkeepers, the shoe clerks, the stenographers, the grade-school teachers, the nurses, she did not want to sit docilely in a lecture room and absorb dull facts concerning Greek civilization or Europe since the Congress of Vienna. She did not want to learn the rudiments of a language she would never use. What she wanted, what all of her sort wanted, was not absorption but expression, not the chance to ruminate on the causes of the World War, but the more thrilling chance to give birth to the experiences they might have had under other circumstances. What she dreamed of, what they all dreamed of, on their way to and from class after a hard day in the shop or office or kitchen or schoolroom, was seeing their own names in print — on a gay magazine cover — ‘Journeys End in Lovers’ Meetings’ by Nellie Thompson, or John Dodge, Henry Staples, or Amelia Penlust.

And, like them all, Mrs. Penlust had, or honestly thought she had, every reason to believe in the early fulfillment of her dream. For the advertising sections of dozens of magazines assured her she could write if she only would, and one really aristocratic periodical, to whose pages she hardly dared aspire, had repeatedly shown her the face of a middle-aged woman, surprisingly like herself, who had earned fifty dollars in a single evening by her pen!

No. Mrs. Amelia Penlust did not stand out from among her fellows because of her appearance, or her background, or her dreams. Not because of these things has she become an ineradicable portion of my mental and emotional life. Her individuality lay, first of all, either in her supreme obtuseness or in her superb power of resiliency; I was never able to determine which. Long after her companions of like inability had returned, sadder but wiser, to their ledgers and their shops, she remained. It was impossible to discourage her. The insanabile scribendi cacoethes of Juvenal was with her insanabilissime, and would brook no affronts. That she had hitched her wagon to an impossibly distant star, that her reach far exceeded her grasp, this she would not for a moment admit. Calmly she looked upon the tempests of my criticism and was never shaken.

No comfort for Mrs. Penlust in what she aspired to be but was not! No exaltation for her in what man would do! Like the prophet Isaiah, she set her face like a flint, and like him she was not confounded. She might have cried with Saint Paul, ‘This one thing I do,’ and, indeed, she did, for the major experience of his life, as you shall later hear, she deemed analogous to her own. And although his ‘prize’ was of a more exalted nature than hers, hers had one advantage over his in that its consummation was quite within the bounds of this world. Mrs. Penlust’s ‘one thing’ was to write a short story, to publish it, and to receive payment therefrom; this she never for a moment relinquished; and this in spite of my biting criticisms, in the face of my cruel prophesying, she accomplished.

And yet not alone by her own tenacity. Of that I must be positive. There was a curious Divinity that shaped Mrs. Penlust’s rough-hewn end; there was a fickle Destiny that guided her to her final triumph; there was a goddess — Hap or Chance or Fortune — that arranged those circumstances by which she was exalted and I was abased. This it was that raised her in interest above her fellows; this it was that probably explained her assurance which I had mistaken for stubbornness. Perhaps she had been born under a capricious star; perhaps some mischievous fallen angel did his one good deed with his tongue in his cheek.

Mrs. Penlust wrote her story alone and unaided, as every word bore witness. But in the marketing of it strange Powers were at work. Like Saint Paul on the Damascus road, Amelia Penlust had a vision to which, like him, she was not disobedient.

II

She registered as Amelia May Penlust, and, as the blue card further demanded, she gave her occupation. She was, she inscribed, a ‘homemaker.’ The term was like Mrs. Penlust: deliberate, yet with a touch of elegance — a flare, so to speak. Her avocations, ‘those occupations bringing zest and pleasure to your life,’ she put down as, first, Sunday-school teaching, and, second, the raising of flowers.

She was obviously restive during the first few sessions of the class. We seemed to her to be getting nowhere and she was impatient to begin. She scorned alike the few brief rules I expounded and attempted to explain and the models I so carefully read from masters in the art. Now and then she looked quizzically at me as though wondering just when I was to be done with this nonsense, get down to business, be willing to share my own secret. For, in common with more than one of her companions, Mrs. Penlust cherished an odd notion: namely, that I, all undeserving, possessed a trick, a talisman, a magic charm, so to speak, by means of which I had succeeded where others had failed; and that, if I only wanted to sufficiently, I could invest them all with this Open Sesame.

Although she was disappointed in my lack of magnanimity, in my selfish determination to keep the key to the best things of this life, she was immensely gratified when we at last actually began to write. It was characteristic of her that she invariably attempted more than was required. If I assigned, let us say, the beginning of a mystery story, or an exercise in dialogue, or a certain sort of initial incident, Mrs. Penlust, apparently whetted beyond her power of control by her ambition, always wrote the complete story, or at least some narrative which in her mind approximated a complete story and in mine approximated nothing at all. For the world, since its children began to write, whether in the sand or on bits of stone or on rolls of papyrus or by pen and paper, has produced few worse narrators than Mrs. Amelia Penlust!

There are persons who create stories naturally, with plots well framed and motivated, and yet who, ironically enough, have no power over language, no sense of words or of form. There are others who know how to write and yet have nothing to say, whose minds are not keen to action or complication of any sort, whose imaginations seem untouched. In a class such as mine the students, roughly speaking and making all allowances for the deficiencies common to each group, belonged to one type or the other. Not so Mrs. Penlust, however; therein lay her distinction from the group. She had nothing to say, nor did she know how to say it. To her a story had no beginning, no middle, no end. She was fond of plunging into some strange media res of her own; but since, once in, she knew not how to go forward or backward, the result was chaos indescribable.

Not a whit daunted, nevertheless, by the slings and arrows of my constant criticism, still secure in some odd citadel of her tenacious mind, Mrs. Penlust essayed subject after subject. Her themes far exceeded in their diversity those of Herrick in the Argument to his Hesperides, and as to relative excitement there was no comparison. She wrote of aged and penniless mothers, wandering boys, and deathbed reconciliations; of jealous sweethearts, termagant wives, broken homes, and drunken husbands. Although she knew not the ways of war, she pictured battle fields, barrages, gas masks, and chaplains; although she knew not law or law courts, she created benevolent judges, impertinent lawyers, and nonchalant criminals, cynically smiling at the very jaws of death. She penetrated monasteries, Hudson Bay fur stations, prisons, and, with delicacy, houses of ill repute. Geography and topography meant nothing to her; she wrote of breadfruit trees in the South Sea Islands in as familiar a vein as she mishandled a Massachusetts snowstorm.

Hardly a week passed that Mrs. Penlust did not bring me at least three stories for my private delectation, in addition to the prescribed class assignment. And when they were returned to her with terse and curt comments, she remained, at least outwardly, as imperturbable, as determined, as assured as ever.

Before the semester was over, I became convinced that an understanding between Mrs. Penlust and me was inevitable. My conscience spurred on my befuddled and exasperated mind. Mrs. Penlust, in common with the other members of the class, was paying ten dollars for my instruction, and verily she was profiting nothing therefrom. Her shabby red hat which sat too high on her head either for the season or for her especial face, her taupe coat of worn broadcloth with its dowdy shawl collar, her frayed cotton gloves — these things touched my heart as well as my head. Reason and emotion together prompted me to have it out with Mrs. Penlust, and one November evening after class was dismissed I summoned her with dreadful embarrassment to my office.

But I might have spared myself the forebodings that had been gnawing at my peace. Mrs. Penlust was clothed in impregnable calm and remained so during the interview.

‘I’m just trying to make you see, Mrs. Penlust,’ said I for the tenth time at least, ‘that in my opinion you are wasting your money. It’s hard for me to say this, and I’m sure it’s hard for you to hear it, but — well, I fear you will never learn to write a story; in fact, I know it’s impossible.’

‘I don’t,’ she returned. ‘I just lay down what you’ve said to a difference of opinion, and it don’t hurt me one mite. As I see it, I could n’t spend ten dollars better. I’m getting all kinds of practice by the lessons I assign myself, and even if I don’t agree with your remarks on my papers, I’m sure they ’re interesting. And it’s got so now I just see stories in everything I do and everywhere I go. So don’t you worry over me. The fact is, I’ve got one now that I’m sure you can’t help liking. It’s called “Bleeding Hearts.” It came to me in a queer way,’ — she hesitated, — ‘but there! I’m going to surprise you with it. What I’d like to ask now is what you mean by this comment on “His Dark-Skinned Bride.” It probably has some sense to it, but I can’t make it out.’

III

‘Bleeding Hearts’ brought matters to a head between Mrs. Penlust and me, caused our temporary alienation, and finally brought us again together, she triumphant, I in an emotional state perhaps best characterized as ‘a wild surmise.’ She wrote her story, if such it could be called, in time to present it to me at the meeting of the class immediately preceding the Christmas recess. It was presumably intended as a seasonal remembrance, since it was magnanimously, if not truthfully, dedicated ‘To One Who Makes My Pathway Brighter.’

Under those circumstances it seems ungracious of me to state that ‘Bleeding Hearts’ was, if anything, worse than its many predecessors. But I must be candid if there is to be any point in this presentation of Mrs. Penlust. I have read many bad stories in my time, written by myself and by others; I have read as a teacher, as a judge in contests, as the member of an editorial staff. I know too well how this lust for writing attacks and slays its thousands and its tens of thousands. But never in my varied experience have I read before or since so extraordinarily bad a story as ‘Bleeding Hearts’ by Mrs. Amelia Penlust.

Like most of its author’s work, it had no plan, no form, no beginning, and no end; it boasted of no point of view, it maintained no unity; in fact, had Mrs. Penlust set herself to break every canon of short-story construction, she could not have done better. And its would-be æsthetic qualities were worse than its technical. Mrs. Penlust had here given rein to her feelings, and her story in all respects fulfilled its mellow title.

It is impossible to give any adequate synopsis of ‘Bleeding Hearts,’ and yet an attempt is necessary if the reader is to appreciate fully its author’s triumph in marketing it. It was a brief narrative, Mrs. Penlust possessing an irritating penchant for the short-short-story genre. Its hero was called Norman Van Rensaellar; its heroine, his wife, Ruby. It opened on a morning in May, blithe, sun-kissed. Norman is glimpsed at the outset running down the white marble steps of a palatial suburban home. From his distraught manner, sleepless eyes, and disarranged attire we are to imagine him in a perturbed state of mind. He carries a suitcase, the articles in which Mrs. Penlust carefully enumerates and from which we are to gather that he contemplates an extended absence from home. Norman’s progress is just here somewhat arbitrarily interrupted by Mrs. Penlust’s careful explanation that Ruby is bathed in tears in the room upstairs, that room which has housed and nourished their happy married life. There has been, in the succinct words of the author, ‘some trouble between them.’

But — and here we sense an early if unprepared-for climax — as he nears the gate of his expensive and perfectly appointed house, Norman is halted by the ravishing sight of bleeding hearts in full flower. There they stand, glistening with dew and sunlight, the very emblem to Mrs. Penlust as to Norman of perfect married love. Norman drops his suitcase, careless of its contents, and pauses with bared head beside them. And as he gazes, a passage from the Scriptures leaps into his distressed mind, a passage chronicling another and weightier Revelation: ‘And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. ’

A bit over-fetched? Perhaps. But it satisfied Mrs. Penlust’s inherent piety, and it worked a miracle upon Norman. For, leaving his suitcase by the bleeding hearts, he rushes, still with bared head, up the broad driveway, up the marble steps, up the curved stairs, and — is reunited in new and deeper understanding with Ruby.

This, in brief, was ‘Bleeding Hearts,’ the consummation of Mrs. Penlust’s art, and, alas! the representation of the sum-total of my patient instruction.

IV

I well knew that a second and more final conference was imminent between Mrs. Penlust and me, and I steeled myself for it. It came on a cold January evening immediately following the reopening of the term. As Mrs. Penlust entered my office and I saw the increased shabbiness of her winter coat and hat, my heart smote my harassed mind and begged for leniency. But, I told myself, I must be firm, as kind as might be, but firm.

‘And now,’ she began, drawing a chair to my side, ‘am I right? Is n’t “Bleeding Hearts” out and away my best work to date?’

I stalled for time and courage.

‘Where,’ said I to Mrs. Penlust, ‘did you get the idea for this story?’

She visibly brightened through her gold-rimmed spectacles, and I cursed myself for cowardice.

‘It is original, is n’t it? Well, if you ask me that, all I can say is that it came to me as — well, as kind of a vision. That’s all I can call it. I was sitting one day — just doing nothing — in a kind of waiting state, I should say, when suddenly it came. Don’t ask me how. It’s one of those things one can’t explain. A light sort of broke in upon me — I declare it made me think of Paul on the road to Damascus — and, like him, I asked no questions. I just went and wrote as I was told to do.’

I summoned my fast-fleeing strength of mind and purpose.

‘I’m afraid, Mrs. Penlust,’ I said, trying vainly to temper the wind to the shorn lamb, ‘that — that, as a story, it’s pretty bad.’

She stared at me all uncomprehending, half angry, half careless of my judgment, obviously suspicious of my reverence for visions.

‘But,’ she cried, ‘poor stories don’t come that way — in a flash. It seems like you were almost doubting — well, God, if I must speak plainly.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Penlust,’ I began again. ‘I know I seem very hard to you. God, I’m sure, moves in mysterious ways; in fact, I’ve never been so sure as at this moment. But, if you’ll forgive me, I must think that in this matter my judgment is more to be depended on than your — vision, as you call it. Now I don’t know that I can tell you everything that is wrong with this story, but I ’ll do my best.’

Then Mrs. Penlust gathered together her gloves, her dog-eared old notebook, her fountain pen, before she rose with superlative dignity and calm.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I won’t trouble you. It would only be uncomfortable for us both, you see, since we’re both so sure we’re right. I’m going to sell “Bleeding Hearts.” I’m as sure of it as I’m sure I am standing here in this office. And you ’re sure I’m not. Is n’t that so?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but I never wras more sure of anything in all my life.’

Mrs. Penlust smiled, a benign, irritating smile which held within itself unmistakable pity.

‘I think I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I see I’m — on your nerves, so to speak. I’ve enjoyed your course. The only thing I wish is that you had more faith in what we might call inspiration. That’s what I’ve missed in you all along.’

I rose and extended my hand.

‘Is it good-bye for good, Mrs. Penlust? You’ve been very patient. I’m sorry I have n’t been able to do more for you.’

Again I was conscious of a patronage which diffused itself into every corner, of a self-confidence impervious to any kind of insult.

‘I will return,’ quoth Mrs. Penlust like an avenging Spirit in some ancient tale, ‘when I have sold “Bleeding Hearts.” So it’s not good-bye for good. It’s — I know — what the Germans say when they are to meet again. A friend told me. Auf Wiedersehen. I’m bound to see you again, so that’s what I’ll say. Auf Wiedersehen.’

V

I had not counted Mrs. Penlust’s return among the unpredictable things in my experience. In fact, I was so certain and so glad that she had gone for good that, beyond placing her in my mind as one of those incredible offerings of life and telling of her with glee to several congenial companions, I had quite ceased to think of her at all. Hence, when one evening just as the spring term was closing I saw through the opaque glass of my office door the unmistakable outline of her red hat, I was as one who attempts to recall an uncomfortable and chaotic dream. She entered in response to my dazed summons, holding in her hand a pink slip of paper and in her eyes a triumphant gleam.

‘I told you I should come,’ she said simply, and yet with what eloquence! ‘I have sold “Bleeding Hearts.”’

Then it was that I became conscious of strange Powers in my office, capricious forces that played havoc with all rules of the game, mischievous servants of Chance which, setting at naught her just deserts, had chosen in an odd moment to exalt Mrs. Penlust at my expense, sly spinners of the tangled web of Destiny. What chance had my sober judgments against their machinations? Mechanically I took the check which she handed to me. It was unmistakably made to her order. The amount was three dollars and fifty cents.

‘Where,’ I asked weakly, ‘did you sell it?’

‘To a seed catalogue,’ said Mrs. Penlust.

Then once again I knew that laws, moral and ethical, had been somehow set aside for the squat figure of Mrs. Amelia May Penlust in her red hat. It became suddenly necessary to believe in visions. For what else could possibly explain the inspiration of a seed catalogue as a market for ‘Bleeding Hearts ’ ?

‘I did not know,’ I said more weakly, ‘that seed catalogues published fiction.’

‘Nor did I,’ said Mrs. Penlust. ‘I think it’s very unusual. But they are using it to accompany their colored illustration of bleeding hearts. And they’re very enthusiastic about it; in fact, they’re giving it the place of honor.’

‘And how,’ I asked, ‘did you ever think of sending it there?’

There were both dignity and reproach in Mrs. Penlust’s voice and manner as she looked upon me sadly, for the last time.

‘I did n’t,’ she said. ’I did n’t think at all. The trouble with you is, if you ’ll excuse me, that you think too much. The seed catalogue was part of the vision, and, like Paul, I obeyed it.’