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Ebook has 2418 lines and 98159 words, and 49 pages

THE MAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1922

Published September, 1922 Reprinted September, 1922 Reprinted October, 1922

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY WIFE

Are there any women today, I wonder, like the girl wife of Jacopone da Todi, who are found in the midst of worldly brilliance wearing the hair shirt of piety and devotion over their spotless hearts?

I doubt it.

It is no wonder that Jacopone, that "smart" thirteenth-century Italian lawyer, became a great saint when he made that discovery, after his beautiful young wife's accidental death. It would make a saint of anybody.

I am quite sure Gertrude is not like that. But then Gertrude is not my wife--as yet. Nor am I Jacopone. I am nothing more, I fear, than a contented voluptuary of a bookworm. Like King James, I feel that were it my fate to be a captive, I should wish to be shut up in a great library consuming my days among my fellow-prisoners, the blessed books.

To distil the reading of a lifetime into a little wisdom for my poor wits, that has been all my aim and my ambition, if by any name so dynamic as ambition I may call it. An old young man is what I have been called, and Gertrude seems propelled by some potent urge to change me--God knows why.

I have just been talking with--I mean listening to--Gertrude.

We are to be married, she says, in three weeks.

That is what we have been discussing this gloomy afternoon in my snug little apartment before a garrulous fire. For Gertrude is not so absurd as to hesitate to call on me at my apartment any more than I would hesitate to call on her in Gramercy Park.

"But won't it be awkward," I ventured in mild speculation, "if after we are married we have to stay at an hotel together, or share a cabin on a ship--to be Miss Bayard and Mr. Byrd?"

"Don't be absurd, Ranny," retorted Gertrude, with her usual introductory phrase. "Awkward or not, do you think I should give up my name that I have lived under all my life, fought for and established?"

"Of course not," I hastily apologized. "I hadn't thought of that." I could not help wondering what she meant by having established her name. Except as regards one or two committees and vacation funds Gertrude's name is unknown to celebrity.

"You with your H.H.," she ran on briskly, with the triumph of having scored. "Surely you don't want to cling to the musty old formulas?"

"No, certainly not," I answered her readily. I am no match for Gertrude in argument. Of a sudden I became aware that despite the hissing fire in the grate there was no sparkle in the air this chill November afternoon. The H.H. to which Gertrude had alluded was the only thing resembling an emotion that betrayed any sign of smoldering life within me in that discussion of ours touching matrimony.

The H.H., I would better explain, stands for Horror of Home--for my profound repugnance toward anything resembling the fettering bonds of domesticity. A man, I feel, should be as free to do what he pleases and to go where he likes when and if married as when single. Otherwise who would assume the chains and slavery of that shadowed prison-house? To-morrow, my heart suddenly tells me, I must be off upon a journey of unknown duration.

Once again I would see the estraded gardens of the Riviera, the olive groves of Italy, the sacred parchments and incunabula of the Laurentian Library in Florence. I would wander anew in the wilderness of the Biblioth?que Nationale of Paris and on the left bank of the Seine, where once I collected the lore of Balzac and of Sainte-Beuve. And who dare prevent my setting off at a moment's notice for the ill-lighted rotunda of the British Museum or the cloister precincts of the Bodleian at Oxford? Even as Gertrude was speaking, I experienced an irresistible longing for all those places, for the turf walks and pleached alleys of Oxford and the beautiful "Backs" of the Cambridge Colleges. There is a manuscript at Trinity that I must see again, and I have long promised myself a month in Pepys's old library at Magdelene in Cambridge.

But Gertrude is not like other women.

"What I like about you, Ranny," she remarked, flicking the ash from her cigarette with unerring aim into the hearth, "is your reasonableness. You hate as I do to see two people handcuffed together like a pair of convicts for life. Might as well go back to the Stone Age or to the times of a dozen children in the house and the mother grilling herself all day before the kitchen fire. Ugh!" and she gave a shudder.

"No fear of that with you," I laughed.

"No, I should hope not," she puffed energetically.

"Well, anyway," I found myself reassuring her quickly, "even as it is, you have three weeks to think it over--to back out in. Three weeks is a good long time, Gertrude. Much can happen in three weeks."

On the table before me lay a new life of Leonardo da Vinci, just arrived from Paris that day. My fingers itched to open it and turn the pages. But that would have been rude, so I forebore.

"I am not like that," Gertrude murmured reflectively, "and you know it, Ranny."

"Of course not," I guiltily assented.

"I know," she tapped my cheek with a playful finger--Gertrude can be very charming if she thinks of it--"I know perfectly what I want to do. And when I make up my mind to do a thing I stick to it."

And so she does, the clever girl!

"I wish I were like you," I muttered. "I am a sort of drifter, I'm afraid."

"That's why you need a manager," laughed Gertrude. "Wait till you've got me. Then you won't be just running after books and telling yourself what you're going to do some day. You'll be doing, publishing, lecturing; you'll be known--famous."

"Oh my heavens!" I cried out in a terror, throwing up a defensive hand. "I think I'll run away."

"Too late," she smiled, with a cool archness. When Gertrude smiles she is exceedingly handsome. "I've ordered my trousseau. You wouldn't leave me waiting at the City Hall, would you?"

"I might," I answered, smiling back at her. "If there should happen to be a book auction that morning. And it's only a subway fare back to your flat."

"Now, this is the program," she announced, assuming her magisterial tone, which instantaneously reduces me to a spineless worm before her. "You will come to my flat on the twenty-fourth at ten o'clock. Then we shall drive down in a taxi to the City Hall and get the license--or whatever they call it--"

"Lucky you'll be there," I could not help murmuring. "I should probably get a dog license or a motor-car license instead of the correct one--"

"Then," went on Gertrude, very properly ignoring me, "we can have the alderman of the day sing the necessary song."

"He may want to sing an encore--or kiss the bride," I warned her.

"He won't want to kiss me when I look at him," answered Gertrude imperturbably. Nor will he! "Then," she added, "we can stop here at your place and pick up your hand luggage, and mine on the way to the Grand Central Station. You can send your trunk the day before and I'll send mine. No time lost, you see, no waste, no foolishness."

"Perfect efficiency, in short--"

"Yes," said Gertrude, "you'll probably forget some important detail in the arrangement, but there's time enough to drill you into it the next three weeks."

"Forget," I repeated, somewhat dazedly, I admit. "What is there to forget--except possibly my name, age or color?"

"You needn't worry," flashed Gertrude. "I'll remember those for you--when you need them. I meant," she explained, "about your trunk or railway tickets and so on. But anyway, it doesn't matter. I'll remind you of everything the day before."

I promised to tie a knot in my handkerchief.

"And may I ask," I ventured, "where we are going?"

"I haven't decided yet," Gertrude informed me. "I'll let you know later, Ranny dear."

There is something very wholesome and complete about Gertrude. That is the reason, I suppose, I have so long been fond of her. How she can put up with a dreamer like me is more than I can grasp. Without any picturesque or romantic significance to the phrase, I am a sort of beach comber, sunning myself in her cloudless energy on the indolent sands of life. Every one either tells me or implies that Gertrude is far too good for me. Nor do I doubt it. But I wish we could go on as we are without exposing her to the inconvenience of being married to me. But Gertrude knows best.

"Won't you stay and share my humble crust this evening?" I asked her as she rose to go.

"No, thanks, Ranny," she smiled, somewhat enigmatically, I thought. "We shall often dine together--afterwards."

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