When I got back, Gramp was looking at the Author with the love of a pawn broker for his windowful of fiddles.
“Yes, you're the man for it. Mind, unlike most Americans you're no fool… an artist, a creative artist like you, has a right to happiness in his own way….”
“Well, now.”
“We'll wink at convention. You take these two charming ladies to Italy. I'll fix up some cock-and-bull story for your publisher… gathering material.”
“Oh, my publisher must not… I mean!”
“Now, don't worry… I want you three to be happy. Just watch Fran…. She's a—well, why not be frank? We're taking her to Europe because they caught her stealing silk stockings at Wanamaker's. It's an illness of hers. No harm in it… just pay for the stuff and go on as if nothing had happened. After all, she is beautiful, isn't she?”
“Yes, but!!”
“Just don't get arrested, since the papers will smear it wide and handsome. And another thing. Don't spend too much money on them. Frankly…” Gramp looked around… “frankly, keep a whip hand on them. They'll adore you for it. If they step out of bounds”… Gramp lit a fresh stogie and looked at the floor… “well, between us, just slap them around a little—do you a world of good—keep you fit. When do you start for Italy with them, you lucky dog?”
A great many years have passed since then. The Author is deader than his books. Mama's European trip is a set of scrapbooks and old postal cards. The ship is long since sunk. Fran, Mama, Gramp… well, it was long ago… but if I live to be as old as Bernard Shaw would like to be, I shall never forget the Author standing up as if shot to his feet by powerful springs. He looked the most shocked man in the world.
“You foul, filthy-minded old man! How can you talk this way about such things?… to me, a married man with two children… a son at Yale, a daughter at Sarah Lawrence…. How can you suggest… how can you!”
Gramp reached for the brandy. “I gather your answer is no.”
The Author threw his pride around his shoulders like a cape and went out, puffing like a blowfish on shore. Overhead the great siren broke and blew, and everyone said, “England!”
Mama was in the card room putting spears into her hat before a dulled Venetian mirror. Aunt Fran was on deck breathing in the land smell….
Gramp gathered the two ladies in his arms. “There it is… the England of vegetarian cookery, where they boil their potatoes to death in living steam, and their soups are tepid seas of dead animal life. But we shall see Simpson's, where the beef is rare.”
“And,” said Mama, “I want Stevie to see the interior of St. Magnus the Martyr near London Bridge….”
“And,” said Aunt Fran, “that shop we heard of at Savile Row, where the hand-made lace comes from….”
“Hell in a hack!” said Gramp. “I want to see the Tate Gallery again, and Stevie, wait until I dig up those Turner water colors, and….”
“Oh, dear!” said Mama… “here comes the Author!”
The Author, wearing a Sherlock Holmes cap and followed by stewards under pig-skin-clad baggage, passed us by without a bow.
Gramp said to him:
“As for myself, I walk abroad of nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls. Sometimes I go And poison wells!”
The Author did not lift his head.
Mama said, “How rude…! But there, we're in… land!”
Aunt Fran inhaled and closed her eyes, and took Mama's hand at the idea of standing soon on dry, firm land. “Sara, I forgive you!”
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