"Well, I didn't know what he was when Mona casually dropped me beside him, but he loomed so big and black and bleak he frightened me—till my thoughts chattered! I rattled on—like this, Jimmy—only not because I wanted to, but because having madly started I didn't know how to stop. I made a fool of myself—utter; with the result that he detected a slightly different flavor in my folly, a possibly novel bouquet—let's call it the 'Birch Street bouquet.' At any rate, he finally silenced me to ask whether I could write as I talked, and I said I hoped not; and he looked bleaker and blacker than ever and said that was the worst of it, so few amusing young women could! It seemed to be one of the more annoying laws of Nature.
"The upshot was, I found out all about him and his ambitions for Whim; and the fantastic upshot of that was, I'm now doing a nonsense column a week for him—have been for the past five—and getting fifty dollars a week for my nonsense, too! I sign the thing "Dax"—a signature invented by shutting both eyes and punching at my typewriter three times, just to see what would happen. "Dax" happened, and I'm to be allowed to burble on as him—I think Dax is a him—for ten weeks; then, if my stuff goes, catches on, gets over—I'm to have a year's contract. And farewell to double-room-and-alcove for aye! Else, farewell Whim! So it must get over—I'm determined! I stick at nothing. I even test my burble on poor Sister every week before sending it in. If she smiles sadly, twice, I seal up the envelope and breathe again.
"That's my bird in the hand, Jimmy—a sort of crazily screaming jay—but I mustn't let it escape.
"There's another bird, though. A real bluebird, still in the bush—and oh, so shy! And he lures me into the second and beautifulest part of all Gaul——
"It's no use, I'm dished! Sister says no one ever wrote or read such a monstrous letter, and commands me to stop now and go to bed. There's a look in her eye—she means it. Good-night and good luck—I'll tell you about my other two parts of Gaul as soon as I can, unless you wire me—collect—'Cut it out!' Or unless you run down—you never have—and learn of them that way. Why not—soon?"
VII
Jimmy Kane took the hint, or obeyed the open request, in Susan's letter and went down to New York for the week-end; and on the following Monday Miss Goucher wrote her first considerable letter to me. It was a long letter, for her, written—recopied, I fancy—in precise script, though it would have been a mere note for Susan.
My dear Mr. Hunt: I promised to let you know from time to time the exact truth about our experiment. It is already a success financially. Susan is now earning from sixty to seventy dollars a week, with every prospect of earning substantially more in the near future. Her satirical paragraphs and verses in "Whim" are quoted and copied everywhere. They do not seem to me quite the Susan I love, but then, I am not a clever person; and it is undeniable that "Who is Dax?" is being asked now on every hand. If this interest continues, I am assured it can only mean fame and fortune. I am very proud of Susan, as you must be.
But, Mr. Hunt, there is another side to my picture. In alluding to it I feel a sense of guilt toward Susan; I know she would not wish me to do so. Yet I feel that I must. If I may say so to you, Susan has quickened in me many starved affections, and they all center in her. In this, may I not feel without offense that we are of one mind?
If I had Susan's pen I could tell you more clearly why I am troubled. I lack her gift, which is also yours, of expressing what I feel is going on secretly in another's mind. Mr. Phar and a Mr. Young, a writer, have been giving Susan some cause for annoyance lately; but that is not it. Mr. Hunt, she is deeply unhappy. She would deny it, even to you or me; but it is true.