Danger Signals For Readers

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Title:     Danger Signals For Readers
Author: Heywood Broun [More Titles by Broun]

By this time, of course, we ought to know the danger signals in a novel and realize the exact spot at which to come to a full stop. On page 54 of "The Next Corner," by Kate Jordan, we found the situation in which Robert, husband, came face to face with Elsie, wife, after a separation of three years. Mining interests had called him to Burma, and she, being given the world to choose from, had decided to live in Paris. He was punctual at the end of his three years in arriving at his wife's apartment, but she was not there. The maid informed him that she had gone to a tea at the home of the Countess Longueval. Without stopping to wait for an invitation John hurried after her. He entered the huge and garish reception room and there, yes there, was Elsie. But perhaps Miss Jordan had better tell it:

"The effect she produced on him, in her yellow gauze, that though fashioned for afternoon wear was so transparent it left a good deal of her body visible, with her face undisguisedly tricked out and her gleaming cigarette poised, was a harsh one--a marionette with whom fashion was an idolatry; an over-decorated, empty eggshell. She could feel this, and in a desperate way persisted in the affectation which sustained her, the more so that under Robert's earnest gaze a feeling of guilt made her hideously uncomfortable.

"'Throw that away,' Robert said quietly with a scant look at the cigarette."

It seemed strange to us that Robert had been so little influenced toward liberalism during his three years in Burma, for that was the spot where Kipling's soldier found the little Burmese girl "a smokin' of a whackin' big cheeroot."

Still, Robert carried his point. Elsie, our heroine, gave a laugh. What sort of a laugh, do you suppose? Quite so, "an empty laugh," and "she turned to flick it from her fingers"; that is, the cigarette. Perhaps we should add that she flicked it to "a table that held the smokers' service." Elsie, undoubtedly, had degenerated during Robert's absence, but she was still too much the lady to put ashes on the carpet. And yet she did use cosmetics. This was the second thing which Robert took up with her. In the cab he wanted to know why she put "all that stuff" on her face. Perhaps her answer was a little perplexing, for she said, "Embellishment, mon cher. Pour la beauté, pour la charme!"

"I'm quite of the world in my tolerance," he explained to her. "If you needed help of this sort and applied it delicately to your face I'd not mind. In fact, if delicately done, probably I'd not know of it."

This, of course, seems to us an immoral attitude. Things are right or wrong, whether one notices them or not. After all, the recording angel would know. Elsie could use paint and powder with such delicacy as to deceive him. However, we are interrupting Robert, who went on, and "His voice grew kinder, although his eyes remained sternly grave."

"It's been from the beginning of the world," he said, "and it is in the East, wherever there are women. But--and make a note of it--they are always women of a certain sort."

Seemingly, Robert got away with this statement, although it is not true. Manchu women of the highest degree paint a great scarlet circle on the side of their face in spite of the fact that there is a native proverb which, freely translated, may be rendered, "Discretion is the better part of pallor."

It is only fair to add that the indiscretions of Elsie went beyond powder and paint and even beyond smoking cigarettes. When her husband told her that he must make a brief business trip to England she asked to be excused from accompanying him on the ground that she would prefer to remain in Paris for a while. As a matter of fact, she planned to go to Spain. And she did. She went to a house party at the home of Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de Burgos. She had been told that it was to be a house party, but when she got to the isolated little castle on the top of the crag she found no one but Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de Burgos. No sooner had she arrived than a storm began to rage and the last mule coach went down the mountain. She must stay the night! Still, after her first wild pleadings that he allow her to clamber down the mountain alone at night until she could find a hotel, reasonable in price and respectable, she did not feel so lonely with Arturo. To be sure, he sounded a good deal like a house party all by himself, and more than that she loved him.

After dinner he began to make love and soon she joined him. He grew impassioned, and Elsie said that she would throw in her lot with his and never leave him. In a transport of joy, Arturo was about to bestow upon her one of those Spanish kisses which no novelist can round off in less than a page and a half. Elsie commanded him to be patient. First, she said, she must write a letter to her husband. In this moment Arturo was superb in his Latin restraint. He did not suggest a cablegram or even a special delivery stamp. Perhaps it would have meant death to go to the postoffice on such a night. Elsie wrote to Robert, painstakingly and frankly, confessing that she loved Arturo and was going to remain with him and that she would not be home at all any more. Then a sure footed serving man was intrusted with the letter and told to seek a post box on the mountain side.

No sooner was that out of the way than a Spanish peasant entered the house and shot Arturo. It seems that Arturo had betrayed his daughter. The shot killed Arturo and Elsie wished she had never sent the letter. Unfortunately, you can't make your confession and eat it too. No postscript was possible. Elsie staggered down the mountain side and a chapter later she woke up in a hospital in Bordeaux. The strain had been too great.

Nor could we stand it either. We sought out somebody else who had already read the book and he told us that Elsie went back to America and found her husband, and that for months and months she lived in an agony of shame, thinking he knew all about what had never happened. Finally she decided that he didn't, and then she lived months and months in an agony of fear that the letter was still on its way. She got up every morning, opening everything feverishly and finding only bills and advertisements. At this point the person who knew the story was interrupted in telling us about it, but we think we can supply the end.

After more months and months, in which first shame died and then fear, hope was born. And then came happiness. The old hunted look faded from the eyes of Elsie. She seemed a superbly normal woman, save in one respect. During the political campaign of 1920, when practically every visitor who came to the house would remark, at one time or other during the course of the evening, "Don't you think this man Burleson is a mess?" Elsie would look up with just the suggestion of a faint smile about her fine, sensitive mouth and answer, "Oh, I don't know."

[The end]
Heywood Broun's essay: Danger Signals For Readers

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