"PARD! SHE LOVES ME--STILL?"

"WILS, HERS IS THE KIND THAT GROWS STRONGER WITH TIME, I KNOW." (Heart and an hour-gla.s.s intertwined.)

Let it be said right here, however, that Jack Belllounds, rough and villainous as he is, is the kind of cow-puncher who says to his father: "I still love you, dad, despite the cruel thing you did to me." No cow-puncher who says "despite" can be entirely bad. Neither can he be a cow-puncher.

It is later, after a thrilling series of physical encounters, that Columbine tells Jack Belllounds in so many words that she loves Wils Moore. "Then Wade saw the glory of her--saw her mother again in that proud, fierce uplift of face that flamed red and then blazed white--saw hate and pa.s.sion and love in all their primal nakedness.

"LOVE HIM! LOVE WILSON MOORE? YES, YOU FOOL! I LOVE HIM! YES! YES! YES!"

(Decorative heart, in which a little door slowly opens, showing the face of Columbine.)

But time is short and there is a Semon comedy to follow immediately after this. So all that we can divulge is that Jack has Wils Moore wrongly accused of cattle-rustling, bringing down on his own head the following chatty bit from his affianced bride:

"SO THAT'S YOUR REVENGE.... BUT YOU'RE TO RECKON WITH ME, JACK BELLLOUNDS! YOU VILLAIN! YOU DEVIL! YOU"--

It would be unfair to the millions of readers who will struggle for possession of the circulating-library copies of "The Mysterious Rider"

to tell just what happens after this. But need we hesitate to divulge that the final subt.i.tle will be:

"'I HAVE FAITH AND HOPE AND LOVE, FOR I AM HIS DAUGHTER.' A FAINT, COOL BREEZE STRAYED THROUGH THE ASPENS, RUSTLING THE LEAVES WHISPERINGLY, AND THE SLENDER COLUMBINES, GLEAMING PALE IN THE TWILIGHT LIFTED THEIR SWEET FACES." (Decorative bull.)

XLIV

SUPPRESSING "JURGEN"

Of course it was silly to suppress "Jurgen." That goes without saying.

But it seems equally silly, because of its being suppressed, to hail it as high art. It is simply Mr. James Branch Cabell's quaint way of telling a raw story and it isn't particularly his own way, either.

Personally, I like the modern method much better.

"Jurgen" is a frank imitation of the old-time p.o.r.nographers and although it is a very good imitation, it need not rank Mr. Cabell any higher than the maker of a plaster-of-paris copy of some Boeotian sculptural oddity.

The author, in defense of his fortunate book, lifts his eyebrows and says, "Honi soit." He claims, and quite rightly, that everything he has written has at least one decent meaning, and that anyone who reads anything indecent into it automatically convicts himself of being in a pathological condition. The question is, if Mr. Cabell had been convinced beforehand that nowhere in all this broad land would there be anyone who would read another meaning into his lily-white words, would he ever have bothered to write the book at all?

Mr. Cabell is admittedly a genealogist. He is an earnest student of the literature of past centuries. He has become so steeped in the phrases and literary mannerisms of the middle and upper-middle ages that, even in his book of modern essays "Beyond Life," he is constantly emitting strange words which were last used by the correspondents who covered the crusades. No man has to be as artificially obsolete as Mr. Cabell is. He likes to be.

In "Jurgen" he has simply let himself go. There is no pretense of writing like a modern. There is no pretense of writing in the style of even James Branch Cabell. It is frankly "in the manner of" those ancient authors whose works are sold surrept.i.tiously to college students by gentlemen who whisper their selling-talk behind a line of red sample bindings. And it is not in the manner of Rabelais, although Rabelais's name has been frequently used in describing "Jurgen." Rabelais seldom hid his thought behind two meanings. There was only one meaning, and you could take it or leave it. And Rabelais would never have said "Honi soit" by way of defense.

The general effect is one of Fielding or Sterne telling the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with their own embellishments, to the boys at the club.

If all that is necessary to produce a work of art is to take a drummer's story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell imitating Fielding imitating someone else.

It is a tale which they narrate in Nouveau Roch.e.l.le, saying: In the old days there came one night a traveling man to an inn, and the night was late, and he was sore beset, what with rag-tag-and-bob-tail. Eftsoons he made known his wants to the churl behind the desk, who was named Gogyrvan. And thus he spake:

"Any rooms?"

"Indeed, sir, no," was Gogyrvan's glose.

"Now but this is an deplorable thing, G.o.d wot," says the traveling man.

"Fie, brother, but you think awry. Come, don smart your thinking-cap and answer me again. An' you have forgot my query; it was: 'Any rooms, bo?'"

Whereat the churl behind the desk gat him down from his stool and closed one eye in a wink.

"There is one room," he says, and places his forefinger along the side of his nose, in the manner of a man who places his forefinger along the side of his nose.

But at this point I am stopped short by the warning pa.s.sage through the room of a cold, damp current of air as from the grave, and I know that it is one of Mr. Sumner's vice deputies flitting by on his rounds in defense of the public morals. So I can go no further, for public morals must be defended even at the cost of public morality (a statement which means nothing but which sounds rather well, I think. I shall try to work it in again some time).

But perhaps enough has been said to show that it is perfectly easy to write something that will sound cla.s.sic if you can only remember enough old words. When Mr. Cabell has learned the language, he ought to write a good book in modern English. There are lots of people who read it and they speak very highly of it as a means of expression.

But there are certain things that you cannot express in it without sounding cra.s.s, which would be a disadvantage in telling a story like "Jurgen."

XLV

ANTI-IBanEZ

While on the subject of books which we read because we think we ought to, and while Vicente Blasco Ibanez is on the ocean and can't hear what is being said, let's form a secret society.

I will be one of any three to meet behind a barn and admit that I would not give a good gosh darn if a fortune-teller were to tell me tomorrow that I should never, never have a chance to read another book by the great Spanish novelist.

Any of the American reading public who desire to join this secret society may do so without fear of publicity, as the names will not be given out. The only means of distinguishing a fellow-member will be a tiny gold emblem, to be worn in the lapel, representing the figure (couchant) of Spain's most touted animal. The motto will be "Nimmermehr," which is a German translation of the Spanish phrase "Not even once again."

Simply because I myself am not impressed by a book, I have no authority to brand anyone who does not like it as a poseur and say that he is only making believe that he likes it. And there must be a great many highly literary people who really and sincerely do think that Senor Blasco's books are the finest novels of the epoch.

It would therefore be presumptuous of me to say that Spain is now, for the first time since before 1898, in a position to kid the United States and, vicariously through watching her famous son count his royalties and gate receipts, to feel avenged for the loss of her islands. If America has found something superfine in Ibanez that his countrymen have missed, then America is of course to be congratulated and not kidded.

But probably no one was more surprised than Blasco when he suddenly found himself a lion in our literary arena instead of in his accustomed role of bull in his home ring. And those who know say that you could have knocked his compatriots over with a feather when the news came that old man Ibanez's son had made good in the United States to the extent of something like five hundred million pesetas.

For, like the prophet whom some one was telling about, Ibanez was not known at home as a particularly hot tamale. But, then, he never had such a persistent publisher in Spain, and book-advertising is not the art there that it is in America. When the final accounting of the great success of "The Four Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse" in this country is taken, honorable mention must be made of the man at the E.P. Dutton & Co. store who had charge of the advertising.

The great Spanish novelist was in the French propaganda service during the war. It was his job to make Germany unpopular in Spanish. "The Four Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse" is obviously propaganda, and not particularly subtle propaganda either. Certain chapters might have come direct from our own Creel committee, and one may still be true to the Allied cause and yet maintain that propaganda and literature do not mix with any degree of illusion.

There is no question, of course, that those chapters in the book which are descriptive of the advance and subsequent retreat of the German troops under the eye of Don Marcelo are masterpieces of descriptive reporting. But Philip Gibbs has given us a whole book of masterpieces of descriptive reporting which do not bear the stamp of approval of the official propaganda bureau. And, furthermore, Philip Gibbs does not wear a sport shirt open at the neck. At least, he never had his picture taken that way.