“But there's one thing I remember with more of anger than any other. He used to make me kneel down and pray every night before I went to bed, in his presence; and sometimes he would pray with me. He was a deacon in the church. There are plenty of them on the square—likely most of them are. But this one was the kind you used to see in the old-fashioned melodramas. Truly rural stuff, Jack. He used to be quite a shark at prayer himself, Uncle Ezra did. I can remember how he looked when he prayed, with his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and the sound whining through his nose.
“The only person that was ever human to me was a woman I called Aunt Lizzie. I don't know really what relation she wras to me; a distant cousin of Uncle Ezra's, I think. She was half blind and she was deaf, and he bullied her and made her do all the housework. She was bent nearly double with drudgery. He had given her a home, too. She didn't dare be very good to me. He might find it out, and then we both would catch it. She baked me some apple dumplings once on one of my birthdays. I was nine years old. And he said she had stolen the apples and flour from him; that he had not ordered her to make any apple dumplings, and it was theft; and he made me pray for her, and made her pray for herself, and he prayed for both of us in family prayers every day for a week.
“I was nearly eighteen when I ran away. I might have done it sooner, but I was small for my age, and I was cowed. I didn't dare to call my soul my own, and I had a reputation for being queer, too. For I used to grin and laugh at things no one else thought were funny—when Uncle Ezra wasn't round. I suppose people in that town thought it was odd that I could laugh at all. No one could understand how I had a laugh left in me. But when I was alone I used to laugh. I used to laugh at myself sometimes because I was so little and so queer. When I was seventeen I wasn't much bigger than a thirteen-year-old kid should be. I packed a lot of growing into the years between seventeen and twenty-one.
“When I ran away Aunt Lizzie gave me eighty-seven cents, all in nickels and pennies, and there were two or three of those old-fashioned two-cent pieces in it, too, that she had had for God knows how long. It was all she had. I don't suppose he ever paid her anything at all, and the wonder was she had that much. I told her that when I got out into the world and made good I would come and get her, but she shivered all over with fright at the idea of daring to leave. I have sent her things from time to time in the last ten years—money, and dresses I have bought for her, and little things I thought she would like. But I don't know whether he let her have them or not I never got any letter from her at all. I don't even know whether she can write, to tell the truth, and she wouldn't dare get one of the neighbors to write for her. But if I ever make any real money, Jack, I am going to go and get her, whether she dares to come away or not.
“Well, when I left, the thing I wanted to do was go to school. Uncle Ezra hadn't given me time to go to school much. But I tramped to a town where there was a little fresh-water college that had its own prep school attached, and I did the whole seven years of prep school and college in five years. You see, I had a lot of bounce in me. The minute I got away from Uncle Ezra the whole world brightened up for me. The clouds rolled by and life looked like one grand long joke, and I turned into a kid. I romped through that prep school and that college, and made my own living while I was doing it, and laughed all the time and loved the world and everything in it, and it came as easy to me as water comes to a duck. I came on down here to New York and was lucky enough to get a chance as a reporter, and I've been romping ever since.
“I don't want to do anything but romp. Of course, I want to write some good stuff some day, but I want to keep romping while I write it, and I want it to be stuff that has a romp in it, too. You say I romp so much I'm never serious. Well, I do have some serious moments, too. I have a dream that keeps coming to me. I dream that I'm back in that little town, and that I'm Uncle Ezra's slave again, and that I can't get away.
“Sometimes the dream takes the form of Uncle Ezra coming here to New York to get me, and I know that I've got to go back with him to that place, and I wake up sweating and crying like an eight-year-old kid. If he ever really came it would put a crimp into me, Jack.
“You say I'm a butterfly. And I say, yes, Jack, thank God I am! I used to be a grubworm, and now I'm a butterfly, praise heaven!
“Well, that's the guy I hold the grudge against, and that's why I'm fool enough to rush into every pleasure I can find. I don't know that I'll ever change. And as for the man, I don't ever want to see him. I don't know that I'd ever do anything to him if I did—beat him to death with a butterfly's wing, or blow him up with a soap bubble, as you suggested. Let him alone. He'll punish himself. He is punished by being what he is. I wouldn't put a breath into the scale one way or the other—not even a puff of cigarette smoke.”
He blew a breath of cigarette smoke luxuriously out of his nose as he finished, and then he remarked, “Let's go somewhere and dance.”