Part 23 (1/2)

3.--Mowgy must have her own way entirely and in all things. It makes her ill to be contended with. Besides, her way is usually the best in the end. Save trouble and take it first.

4.--Mowgy can never be questioned. The slightest interrogation irritates her beyond expression. Let her alone. She is too frank for comfort. She will tell you everything sooner or later, and you will wish she hadn't.

5.--Mowgy never remembers anything you ask her to do, unless it is vital or concerns animals. Don't expect it. On the plane where she lives, trifles do not exist. She forgets her own requirements. How can she remember yours?

6.--Mowgy is no housekeeper. Her intentions, not the results, are excellent. If she remembers to order meals be thankful. If she doesn't, be thankful that she is as she is. Keep accounts at the nearest restaurants and shut up.

7.--Mowgy is truthful. Don't ask her a question unless you want the unvarnished truth. It is better to take it varnished.

8.--Mowgy never picks up anything. Absent-mindedness only. Look carefully under chairs and tables before leaving a place. Gold bags, money, jewelry or important papers may be on the floor. She will drop you if you are not on the alert to avoid it.

9.--Mowgy does not live on this plane. Understand that clearly. She cannot be made to conform to the image and likeness of others. Don't try. You would not like her if you could make her over. Let well enough alone.

10.--The foregoing are Mowgy's limitations from the normal viewpoint. You must be abnormal or this will not apply to you. If she takes you it will be to make you over. The process is crucifying but curative. You will wonder how you ever managed to live without her. She has a world of her own, and it is the best world I know of to live in. If you have a chance to get there, make a fight for it. She is the only one of her kind on earth. My blessing, E. S.

Such a doc.u.ment! Though written in jest, there was an undercurrent of seriousness about it. One could not read it unmoved. From that paper alone a psychologist could rebuild Edgar Saltus as he was. To me it is the most characteristic bit of writing he left behind him.

CHAPTER XVIII

The ma.n.u.script of ”The Ghost Girl” finished, one might have supposed Mr.

Saltus would take a rest, particularly as his heart became worse so rapidly that nitroglycerin was necessary most of the time. Carl Van Vechten had written of him so charmingly in The Merry-Go-Round, and with so much insight, that Mr. Saltus was encouraged to keep on working, as it was the only way in which he could lose himself for the time.

Sending the ma.n.u.script of ”The Ghost Girl” to a typist at Columbia, he suffered another periodical cleaning of his ”kennel” and started in on the outline of another novel. That also was an enlarged and amplified rendering of an earlier book, torn to pieces and baked en ca.s.serole with an occult sauce, to its enormous and entire benefit. He was not reminded of the fact that the central situation had been used before. He was borrowing from himself, to be sure, and it was quite permissible, but in other circ.u.mstances I would have urged him to let his original creation stand. As it was I was glad to see him begin it as soon as ”The Ghost Girl” was off his hands, realizing that he must have mental food and constant distraction.

The lease on our apartment bothered Mr. Saltus. During the years ”things”

had become relative to both of us. They had not only lost all value but they had become transformed into fetters. To get rid of the enc.u.mbrance of ”things,” and be free to pack a suitcase and go at will, was an intriguing idea to him. In discussing it, and the process of elimination necessary to reach the desired results, we agreed to get rid of all but two articles,--the carved olive-wood table at which he had written most of his books, and the arm-chair in which our little Toto had died. Mr. Saltus did not live to see it, but ”things”--all the things we wanted to get rid of and forget,--are scattered now to the winds in every direction,--all but the table and the chair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE SALTUS

Sitting at the Table on which her Husband wrote his Books, burning Incense before a Siamese Buddha and meditating on a Stanza from the Bhagavad Gita.

From a Painting by Hope Bryson, 1925.]

That chair, were it endowed with speech, could tell volumes. The same insight which expressed itself throughout so understandingly in regard to my devotion to Toto did so again, and in so touching a way, that it is the most vivid and enduring memory I have of Mr. Saltus.

The attacks of heart irregularity increasing, it became necessary for me to feel his pulse at intervals and give him the tablets of nitroglycerin. As soon as he felt one coming on he struggled through the hall into my room, to sink into that arm-chair and put his hand out.

”Quick,--quick,--_Mowgy_. _Feel_ my pulse,” he said, many and many a time.

”I think I'm sinking. Shall I take my medsy?” as he always called his medicine.

It was a serious responsibility for a novice. Night or day, whenever he felt an attack coming on, he went over the same route, and sank into the same chair. It seemed such a waste of effort, when with a word he could have called me to him. When I suggested as much he smiled, but continued the slow and painful journey through the hall to my room. Upon one occasion the effort to get there was such, that his hands were like ice and his lips blue when he reached me. Sinking into the chair he looked at me, but the hand he extended was not for me to feel his pulse, but to take in mine.

There was no need for words to tell me that he thought he was dying, having used, as he believed, his last ounce of strength to reach his goal. With the touch of his hand came the consciousness, clear as clairvoyance, that it was his intention to die in that particular chair--if he could; and the significance of it brought the tears to my eyes. He was determined that the poignant memories of Toto, a.s.sociated with the chair, should be so interwoven with his own, that her chair as well as her ashes should become indissolubly a part of himself. No touching act of his whole life so stretched out and reached the inner recesses of my being as that one. It wiped out a mult.i.tude of lesser things as the sun obliterates candle light.

With unerring intuition, he knew how this would penetrate more and more with the years, till it would become indelibly stamped on my heart.

This, and one other incident, small in itself yet colossal in its significance, and showing the sweet and sympathetic side of his nature, stand in relief against his subsidiary weaknesses. Shortly before his death, my father had, at Mr. Saltus' request, given him a small canvas, a daub of daisies painted by me at the age of seven, and, crude as it was, retained by an unusually devoted parent. Mr. Saltus was particularly attached to it, and it hung in the room beside his bed. Over and over I begged him to let me destroy the hideous thing, but he was up in arms at the suggestion, replying every time:--

”After a while you can, for no one but Snipps shall have those daisies.