It was Craig’s practice to sit in the very back of a hall, where she would be inconspicuous and if possible unrecognized. But Mrs. Jones wouldn’t have it that way. She took me by an arm and Craig by an arm, and marched us straight down the center aisle to the front seats in the hall so that everybody would know who had brought us. I have had a number of experiences like that with the very rich, and they have encouraged me to realize that democracy is a real force in America.

XIV

So everything seemed lovely at Ashton Hall, until one tragic day when the roof fell in on us—the moral and spiritual roof. My former wife saw fit to come to Gulfport and bring a lawsuit for the custody of our son. I cannot shirk the telling of this story because it played an enormous part in my life and Craig’s; but I tell it as briefly and tactfully as possible. I don’t think the lady actually wanted David, but the grandmother did. My former wife is still living, has been married twice, and has children and grandchildren whom I have no desire to hurt. Suffice it to say that her coming created a scandal in Gulfport—one that not even the wife of Captain Jones could mitigate.

David was with us at the time, and I had a secretary, a young man from the North, who considered it a great lark to carry the lad off into the woods and hide him from the courts of Mississippi for a few days. There was a trial with plenty of publicity; the court, presided over by a Catholic judge, awarded six months’ custody to me and six months’ to his mother. To make the painful story short, I took David to California for the first six months; and when the time came for his mother to come and get him, I heard nothing from her—then or afterward.

Judge Kimbrough had made Craig an offer promising her Ashton Hall if she would live there. It was said to be worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and with the development that has come in the past thirty or forty years, the lot alone is probably worth that now. But we couldn’t be happy there. A friend had told me about the wonders of southern California, where there were no mosquitoes. I begged Craig to come, and I went ahead to find a home.

10
West to California

I

It was November of 1915. I wanted to be warm so I went as far south as possible, to Coronado; but it proved not to be so warm. Cold winds blew off the wide Pacific, and the little cottage I rented leaked both wind and rain. I pasted newspapers inside to keep out the wind—which was not very ornamental.

Craig was wretchedly unhappy over the humiliation she had brought to her family, and only time could heal that wound. She told me long afterward that she hadn’t been sure she would follow me to California; but her father, who had labored so hard to keep us apart, now kept us together. He said, “Daughter, you must go to your husband.” She came, and we had a hard time because George P. Brett of Macmillan rejected King Coal. It was a painful, a terrible subject, and I had failed to make the characters convincing. Craig, who agreed with him, wrote to him telling him her ideas and offering to make me revise the manuscript accordingly. Brett said he would read the manuscript again after she had finished.