Miss Marlowe

“ It was great fun to move to the farm, and once the girls had the scare of their lives. And they attended a great “vendue” too.
“I just had to write that story—I couldn’t help it,” said Miss Marlowe, when she handed in the manuscript. “I knew just such a farm when I was a little girl, and oh! what fun I had there! And there was a mystery about that place, too!”
Published, like all the Marlowe books, by Grosset & Dunlap, New York, and for sale wherever good books are sold.
A LITTLE MISS NOBODY
“Oh, she’s only a little nobody! ”

“ It was in the fall of 1888 that the American public began generally to be aware of the presence on its stage of a new and beautiful actress. Mr. Fred Stinson was now made Miss Marlowe’s manager. He was more adroit than his predecessors, and engaged for her support an excellent company that included Charles Barron, who had been leading man at the Boston Museum, William Owen, an excellent Shakespearean comedian, Robert Taber (who later became Miss Marlowe’s husband) , and Mary Shaw. A week was spent in Washington, and then another week in Brooklyn. ”

“ He wondered with surprising objectivity if a hundred other names, a hundred other women were not in a hundred other minds while everyone stared at the crescent Earth hanging serenely in space—with each name and each woman as dear as Stephanie, with the same combination of fire and gentle femininity stirring the blood but saddening the heart. ”

“ In the morning, when she awoke, she knew that what she had been trying to hide—what she must 85hide, indeed—was the knowledge that she was “Miss Nobody” from all these eager, inquisitive, perhaps heartless girls.
Nancy had been in the habit of rising early, and she was up and dressed before rising bell at seven. When Cora rolled over sleepily and blinked about the sun-flooded room, she saw Nancy tying her hair-ribbon, being otherwise completely dressed, and she whined:
“Well! I sha’n’t like you, Miss. I can see that, plainly. You don’t know enough to lie abed and let a fellow sleep.” ”

“ Fair Cynthia wished his arms might be her sphere;
Grief makes her pale, because she moves not there.
His body was as straight as Circe’s wand;
Jove might have sipped out nectar from his hand.
Even as delicious meat is to the taste,
So was his neck in touching, and surpassed
The white of Pelop’s shoulder. I could tell ye
How smooth his breast was and how white his belly;
And whose immortal fingers did imprint
That heavenly path with many a curious dint
That runs along his back, but my rude pen
Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men,
Much less of powerful gods. ”

“ Then came his almost curt note announcing his departure for Chicago. She was angry—“he’s treating his wife as he wouldn’t treat a girl he’d been merely attentive to.” But, worse than angry, she was wounded, in the mortal spot in her love for him—her unquestioning confidence in him.
This might be called her introduction to the real Marlowe, the beginning of her acquaintance with the man she had married after a look at the outside of him and a distorted glimpse of such parts of [128] the inside man as are shown by one bent upon making the most favourable impression. ”

“ But this morning—yes, I've just received it, she tells me of Miss Marlowe's engagement to you. She does not say "to you," and apparently hasn't the slightest recollection of the name, but she calls you by [Pg 216] name and mentions you as being in Jersey, in fact——'
'But how—where is the connection? I don't understand this. Do you know Miss Marlowe?' said Danby, unable any longer to remain silent.
'I do,' said Ambrose. 'She was here the other day. She came to call upon us the day after she arrived in the Islands with her friends. She had told Anna she would, and my father was greatly pleased. ”

“ Marlowe stands with his back to the window, one foot on a chair, shouting out a song as the curtain rises.
Marlowe [singing] . If Luck and I should meet I’ll catch her to me crying, ‘To trip with you were sweet, Have done with your denying!’ Hey, lass! Ho, lass! Heel and toe, lass! Who’ll have a dance with me? All Together. Hey, Luck! Ho, Luck! Ne’er say no, Luck! I’ll have a dance with thee!
A Man [hammering the table] . Again! Again!
Landlord [at the door] . Sir, sir, there’s without a young gentleman hot with riding—
Marlowe. Does the hot young gentleman give no name? ”

“ Half of the horribleness of the object was thus hidden, and viewing the profile she was again struck with its likeness to Marlowe’s.
“Look,” she said to her companion, who stood near her, “how like he is to thee.”
“So?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes, do you not see? Is there not a striking similarity in form? Is not the nose the same as thine? The face clean shaven; the hair of like color?” ”

“ From his place behind one wing of the stage, Shakespere looked out upon the tumult, and then his eyes wandered to the box wherein sat the unknown creator of the drama. Was the latter not impelled toward public recognition of the multitude’s applause?
He, Marlowe, was possessed with temporary 295 elation over the enthusiasm of the audience, and with the further knowledge that the one whom he loved was now beside him. In his ecstasy, it seemed that he mingled with the gods. The darkness in which he dwelt, and the mighty world, voiceless as to himself and his merit, were as naught. ”

“ She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and she did as she liked with them; very beautiful, well educated, very good at games – what they call a woman-athlete–and caring for nothing on earth but her own amusement. She was one of the most unprincipled flirts I ever knew, and quite the cleverest. Every one knew it, and Mr. Marlowe must have heard it; but she made a complete fool of him, brain and all. ”

“ And Marlowe, what of thyself?
In the train of these dark presentiments of what the material life promised, came now the heavy clouds wrought through consideration of the aspect of his ideal world. The treble darkness of night was about him. The dreams with which he had nursed his ambition vanished. And that ambition how deplorably annihilated. He who had written: “Virtue solely is the sum of glory,
And fashions men with true nobility,”
required no posthumous lines to point his place among the immortals. What dramas stood on the same eminence with Faustus and Edward the Second? ”

“ Jeanne-Marie stiffened and then relaxed for a moment, then stiffened again. She pushed him away gently, saying curtly, "Don't try that again."
"I can't figure you out," he said. "One minute you talk like a woman who's been around, the next like some dilly of a housewife from suburbia. What do you think I kissed you for? Just because you're beautiful? Hell, I've seen beautiful girls before. Plenty of them, and some as beautiful as you. Well, almost, anyway," he added, and they both smiled. "I kissed you because one of the cops drifted through. Listen, baby. Will you be my passport out of here?" ”

“ A wife has no business trying to hit her husband."
"Nuts," George said. "You just thought you could get away with it, that's all. Now that you know you can't, you're trying to say you're sorry. Nuts."
Then he looked at Arl fondly. Arl was to thank for all this. If it hadn't been for Arl, he would still be henpecked. Myra didn't look like the type that would henpeck her husband, but George smiled ruefully at this thought. She was the type, and she did it every chance she got. Only she wouldn't do it anymore. Arl had been that catalyst. "Arl," George said, "I could love you like a brother." ”

“ Say! nobody’s ever let me forget it since I could creep,” declared the boy. “I useter lick all the boys I could at Number Six school, an’ those that I couldn’t lick I throwed stones at. For calling my hair out o’ name, I mean.”
“I suppose being red-headed is hard,” commented Nancy.
“Say! bein’ an heiress without no folks ain’t in it with being a carrot-top,” said Scorch, grinning.
“Don’t you think so?”
“The folks in the office began getting fresh right away,” went on the boy, earnestly. “Some of the girls that run the typewriters was as bad as the Willy-boys, too. ”

“ Xlptl," I said, "shall we go?"
"I—I guess so. You were so strong! Even stronger than the real Martell. You were wonderful, really you were." She was small but very pretty. She had a funny look in her eyes. "That's what I like about Earthmen," she said. "They're so strong. They're so virile...."
She took my hand. We concentrated on getting out of there.
When I saw Mrs. Xlptl again, she wasn't little Sally. She was a shoulderless almost-human, penguin-like creature from somewhere. "So strong, so virile ..." ”

“ There is about Marlowe none of the overpowering sense of riding the whirlwind that has accompanied Bernhardt in her royal progresses about the planet; she has none of the picturesque ebullience of a Terry, nor even the specialized appeal of Maude Adams. She has been a happy “combination of the poetically ideal and the humanly real” that wins, for a beautiful and skillful actress, a position in the popular heart, even if it does not take her, because of more or less extraneous characteristics, into the front rank of “personages.” ”

“ Some girls had whole trays full of gay banners, pictures, photographs, and the other “litter” that delight the heart of a boarding-school miss when she can decorate her dressing-case and wall. Of 92course, the freshies only had their home pictures and little silver or glass keepsakes and toilet sets.
“Now, my plump little pigeon,” said Jessie Pease to Nancy, as she laid out the school dresses which Miss Prentice had bought for her with the money Mr. Gordon had supplied, “you seem nicely fixed for wearing apparel—and such plain, serviceable things, too. ”

“ The gulf between the work of the two men is still very great. In Marlowe there is none of that benign humanity that clings to even [109] the grimmest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Marlowe’s characters are bleak in nature and massive in outline; enormous and majestical, but forbidding and almost inhuman. His style has the same qualities: glowing with a volcanic energy, capable of a mighty soaring line and phrase (“Marlowe’s mighty line,” as Ben Jonson called it) , but diffuse, truculent, exaggerated, and bombastic. ”

“ I felt pretty good now, as if the tricks learned by Martell had gone into the storehouse of his muscular knowledge, along with walking and running and talking and how to hold a spoon, and were coming out now for my own use.
"Don't forget," the manager pleaded. "You promised before the fight. Gee, this wouldn't be the first one you dumped for money."
Martell, I thought. You're some athlete. Suddenly I didn't like the body I was occupying. But I liked the man across the ring even less.
It was a fast and furious round. Magoon came out swinging from the bell. I felt my legs go wobbly. ”

“ Marlowe was not so tall, but his personality seemed to her as vivid and sincere as Demorest’s seemed colourless and false. He had the self-possession of one who is well acquainted [51] with the human race. His eyes were gray-green, keen, rather small and too restless—Emily did not like them. He spoke swiftly yet distinctly. Demorest seemed a man of the world, Marlowe a citizen of the world.
They got into Demorest’s open automobile, Marlowe and Emily in the back seat, and set out for Clairmont. For the first time in nearly two years Emily was experiencing a sensation akin to happiness. ”

“ Marlowe was absent on my entering the family, nor durst I ask when he was expected. My health and spirits gradually declined from my close confinement. When allowed, as I have before said, of a chance time to go out, instead of enjoying the fresh air, I have sat down to weep over scenes of former happiness. I dined constantly with the old housekeeper. She informed me, one day, that Mr. Marlowe, her master’s young heir, who had been absent some time on a visit, was expected home on the ensuing day. Fortunately, the good dame was too busily employed to notice my agitation. ”

“ Her heart was pounding.
"You called, madam?" the little old man demanded in a chirp of a voice. Chirp was the only word Mary-Jean could think of. The little old man sounded just like a bird.
"Called?" Mary-Jean said in some confusion as the rotund peddler brought his enormous suitcase into the living room and unsnapped it on the sofa before Mary-Jean could stop him. There was an iron-clad, if unwritten rule, in Mary-Jean's household: nothing unclean ever visited that sofa. And the little peddler's bag looked as if it had spent time in every sooty waiting room from here to—Shalimar, Kashmir. ”

“ Then the fire of the period of ambition filled him, and he saw his home, the deserted bench at which he once labored, the patient face of his wife and then the figure of Marlowe as he appeared to him under the blazing lights of the chantry. Ah! was it he? Yes. “And are not the charges false?” rises the question from a thousand voices.
He recognizes them all, and he attempts to say, “Yes, and let it be so recorded!” but he finds himself without voice. There is a darkness that is never to be lifted about him. He has a faint comprehension of the reason, but it grows into no verity. ”

“ You haven't put it on since we got married, that's all."
"We can't scare the Earth people off with a lot of tunics and coveralls."
"Better get dressed," said Marsden, chuckling with grim amusement as Marie struggled with the unfamiliar garment. Marsden's own starched collar threatened to choke him, but the women of Earth would expect it.
"What's so funny, Harry?"
"There must be an easier way to climb into that thing. You look so funny."
Marie's back was toward him. She took the dress off and threw it across the bed. "All right, I won't wear it. I won't wear anything. I'm not going." ”