The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection - James Branch Cabell

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"the exact high prize through desire of which we write".

      WILSON FOLLETT.

      CHESHIRE, CONNECTICUT

      _May, 1920_

      CONTENTS:

      THE PROLOGUE

      I HE SITS OUT A DANCE

      II HE LOVES EXTENSIVELY

      III HE EARNS A STICK-PIN

      IV HE TALKS WITH CHARTERIS

      V HE REVISITS FAIRHAVEN AND THE PLAY

      VI HE CHATS OVER A HEDGE

      VII HE GOES MAD IN A GARDEN

      VIII HE DUELS WITH A STUPID WOMAN

      IX HE PUTS HIS TONGUE IN HIS CHEEK

      X HE SAMPLES NEW EMOTIONS

      XI HE POSTURES AMONG CHIMNEY-POTS

      XII HE FACES HIMSELF AND REMEMBERS

      XIII HE BAITS UPON THE JOURNEY

      XIV HE PARTICIPATES IN A BRAVE JEST

      XV HE DECIDES TO AMUSE HIMSELF

      XVI HE SEEKS FOR COPY

      XVII HE PROVIDES COPY

      XVIII HE SPENDS AN AFTERNOON IN ARDEN

      XIX HE PLAYS THE IMPROVIDENT FOOL

      XX HE DINES OUT, IMPEDED BY SUPERSTITIONS

      XXI HE IS URGED TO DESERT HIS GALLEY

      XXII HE CLEANS THE SLATE

      XXIII HE REVILES DESTINY AND CLIMBS A WALL

      XXIV HE RECONCILES SENTIMENT AND REASON

      XXV HE ADVANCES IN THE ATTACK ON SELWOODE

      XXVI HE ASSISTS IN THE DIVERSION OF BIRDS

      XXVII HE CALLS, COUNSELS, AND CONSIDERS

      XXVIII HE PARTICIPATES IN SUNDRY CONFIDENCES

      XXIX HE ALLOWS THE MERITS OF IMPERFECTION

      XXX HE GILDS THE WEATHER-VANE

      THE EPILOGUE: WHICH SUGGESTS THAT SECOND THOUGHTS--

      THE PROLOGUE

      _"In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving, and could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played on him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey."_

      _The Prologue: Which Deals with the Essentials_

      _1--Writing_

      It appeared to me that my circumstances clamored for betterment, because never in my life have I been able to endure the contact of unhappiness. And my mother was always crying now, over (though I did not know it) the luckiest chance which had ever befallen her; and that made me cry too, without understanding exactly why.

      So the child, that then was I, procured a pencil and a bit of wrapping-paper, and began to write laboriously:

      "DEAR LORD

      "You know that Papa died and please comfort Mama and give Father a crown of Glory Ammen

      "Your lamb and very sincerely yours

      "ROBERT ETHERIDGE TOWNSEND."

      This appeared to the point as I re-read it, and of course God would understand that children were not expected to write quite as straight across the paper as grown people. The one problem was how to deliver this, my first letter, most expeditiously, because when your mother cried you always cried too, and couldn't stop, not even when you wanted to, not even when she promised you five cents, and it all made you horribly uncomfortable.

      I knew that the big Bible on the parlor table was God's book. Probably God read it very often, since anybody would be proud of having written a book as big as that and would want to look at it every day. So I tiptoed into the darkened parlor. I use the word advisedly, for there was not at this period any drawing-room in Lichfield, and besides, a drawing-room is an entirely different matter.

      Everywhere the room was cool, and, since the shades were down, the outlines of the room's contents were uncomfortably dubious; for just where the table stood had been, five days ago, a big and oddly-shaped black box with beautiful silver handles; and Uncle George had lifted me so that I could see through the pane of glass, which was a part of this funny box, while an infinity of decorous people rustled and whispered....

      I remember knowing they were "company" and thinking they coughed and sniffed because they were sorry that my father was dead. In the light of knowledge latterly acquired, I attribute these actions to the then prevalent weather, for even now I recall how stiflingly the room smelt of flowers--particularly of magnolia blossoms--and of rubber and of wet umbrellas. For my own part, I was not at all sorry, though of course I pretended to be, since I had always known that as a rule my father whipped me because he had just quarreled with my mother, and that he then enjoyed whipping me.

      I desired, in fine, that he should stay dead and possess his crown of glory in Heaven, which was reassuringly remote, and that my mother should stop crying. So I slipped my note into the Apocrypha....

      I felt that somewhere in the room was God and that God was watching me, but I was not afraid. Yet I entertained, in common with most children, a nebulous distrust of this mysterious Person, a distrust of which I was particularly conscious on winter nights when the gas had been turned down to a blue fleck, and the shadow of the mantelpiece flickered and plunged on the ceiling, and the clock ticked louder and louder, in prediction (I suspected) of some terrible event very close at hand.

      Then you remembered such unpleasant matters as Elisha and his bears, and those poor Egyptian children who had never even spoken to Moses, and that uncomfortably abstemious lady, in the fat blue-covered _Arabian Nights_, who ate nothing but rice, grain by grain--in the daytime.... And you called Mammy, and said you were very thirsty and wanted a glass of water, please.

      To-day, though, while acutely conscious of that awful inspection, and painstakingly careful not to look behind me, I was not, after all, precisely afraid. If God were a bit like other people I knew He would say, "What an odd child!" and I liked to have people say that. Still, there was sunlight in the hall, and lots of sunlight, not just long and dusty shreds of sunlight, and I felt more comfortable when I was back in the hall.

      2--_Reading_

      I lay flat upon my stomach, having found that posture most conformable to the practice of reading, and I considered the cover of this slim, green book; the name of John Charteris, stamped thereon in fat-bellied letters of gold, meant less to me than it was destined to signify thereafter.

      A deal of puzzling matter I found in this book, but in my memory, always, one fantastic passage clung as a burr to sheep's wool. That fable, too, meant less to me than it was destined to signify thereafter, when the author of it was used to declare that he had, unwittingly, written it about me. Then I read again this

      _Fable of the Foolish Prince_

      "As to all earlier happenings I choose in this place to be silent. Anterior adventures he had known of the right princely sort. But

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