Oftentimes Thurley felt she must stop playing a part—mischievous young person!—and say to these misguided rebel-dolls that they were fortunate in having just plain folks, to have any one really belonging to them—a vista of forbidden joys would open before her blue eyes as these “hysterical hikers,” as Bliss Hobart had named them, told her of how they had come away from the sordid, uninteresting atmosphere which strangled their inner selves and they were willing to go hungry—all the great ones had gone hungry—to deny the fleshpots if they might only achieve—might win the laurel! After the large flow of language when called upon to demonstrate their abilities, they would warble in a reedy soprano:
The vi-o-let loves the pans-y
FOR—the robin told me so-o-o—
Or else they would use a coal-bin contralto to inform Thurley all about the Lost Chord and ask if they did not remind her of Clara Butts!
It was a merry life, because Thurley had not reached the stage of acknowledging that she had nerves. She revelled in this court of appeals from which the others fled.
Caleb had reached the neurasthenic stage where he wanted a periscope attached to his porch so he could spot approaching authors laden with a manuscript. Every time a young author did brave the portcullis and obtain an audience, only to ask Caleb if there really was not everything in a name—editors were so mean, anyhow, and every one said so, and if Caleb would permit his novel, which every one said was the American novel, too, to be printed under Caleb’s name and thus play a roaring joke on these haughty and unfair editors, why, he would go fifty-fifty on the royalties—every time this happened to Caleb, he promptly disappeared on a champagne debauch and refused to express any penitence whatsoever concerning it!
Or if Collin was held up by a young woman with a badly powdered nose and a thatch of flaxen hair hiding all her features save the nose and was asked if she could not be his inspiration, Collin lost no time in rewarding himself for the ordeal. His bags were packed, and his motor was at the gate, even if the president of a steel trust was due for a portrait sitting. Away he flew over hill and dale like a startled rabbit, reaching some rural inn where art consisted of framed lithographs, and here he lay in hiding until his disposition had sufficiently recovered to allow his return as a smiling, bow-tie-waving artist, brush poised for action!
Therefore the family regarded Thurley’s liking for the onslaught of hysterical hikers as a sort of puppy soap-chewing-and-distemper stage.
“Let it run its course, they all do,” Hobart said when it was reported to him. “She’ll grow weary of autographing photographs and of having every would-be genius from the wilds of Oregon try to crowd into a basket and land on her doorstep—a songbird foundling cuckooing its misunderstood little life!”
There was something about these women which faintly roused the reformer in Thurley. They were simply out of step, she insisted, her own little feet always marching to the bandwagon without question. They needed to be shown the inspiration which can be gained from mediocrity. Although they were humorous and a trifle pathetic, they were dangerous, to Thurley’s mind.