Chapter XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXIV

Arthur remained at the gate while Ruth climbed Maria's front steps.
She heard the rapid click of the type-writer, and when Martin let
her in, found him on the last page of a manuscript. She had come
to make certain whether or not he would be at their table for
Thanksgiving dinner; but before she could broach the subject Martin
plunged into the one with which he was full.

"Here, let me read you this," he cried, separating the carbon
copies and running the pages of manuscript into shape. "It's my
latest, and different from anything I've done. It is so altogether
different that I am almost afraid of it, and yet I've a sneaking
idea it is good. You be judge. It's an Hawaiian story. I've
called it 'Wiki-wiki.'"

His face was bright with the creative glow, though she shivered in
the cold room and had been struck by the coldness of his hands at
greeting. She listened closely while he read, and though he from
time to time had seen only disapprobation in her face, at the close
he asked:-

"Frankly, what do you think of it?"

"I - I don't know," she, answered. "Will it - do you think it will
sell?"

"I'm afraid not," was the confession. "It's too strong for the
magazines. But it's true, on my word it's true."

"But why do you persist in writing such things when you know they
won't sell?" she went on inexorably. "The reason for your writing
is to make a living, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right; but the miserable story got away with me. I
couldn't help writing it. It demanded to be written."

"But that character, that Wiki-Wiki, why do you make him talk so
roughly? Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is
why the editors are justified in refusing your work."

"Because the real Wiki-Wiki would have talked that way."

"But it is not good taste."

"It is life," he replied bluntly. "It is real. It is true. And I
must write life as I see it."

She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent. It
was because he loved her that he did not quite understand her, and
she could not understand him because he was so large that he bulked
beyond her horizon

"Well, I've collected from the TRANSCONTINENTAL," he said in an
effort to shift the conversation to a more comfortable subject.
The picture of the bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them,
mulcted of four dollars and ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made
him chuckle.

"Then you'll come!" she cried joyously. "That was what I came to
find out."

"Come?" he muttered absently. "Where?"

"Why, to dinner to-morrow. You know you said you'd recover your
suit if you got that money."

"I forgot all about it," he said humbly.