returned to my home full of high
Ideals, only to see them crushed beneath the heal of domestic tyranny.
Necessity is the argument of tyrants;
it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt.
How true are these immortal words.
It was with a firm countenance but a sinking heart that I saw Hannah
leave the room. I had come home inspired with lofty Ambition, and it
had ended thus. Heart-broken, I wandered to the bedside, and let my eyes
fall on the Suitcase, the container of all my woe.
Well, I was surprised, all right. It was not and never had been mine.
Instead of my blue serge sailor suit and my ROBE DE NUIT and kimona
etc., it contained a checked gentleman's suit, a mussed shirt and a cap.
At first I was merely astonished. Then a sense of loss overpowered me.
I suffered. I was prostrated with grief. Not that I cared a Rap for
the clothes I'd lost, being most of them to small and patched here and
there. But I had lost the plot of my Play. My Career was gone.
I was undone.
It may be asked what has this Recitle to do with the account of meeting
a Celebrity. I reply that it has a great deal to do with it. A bare
recitle of a meeting may be News, but it is not Art.
A theme consists of Introduction, Body and Conclusion.
This is still the Introduction.
When I was at last revived enough to think I knew what had happened. The
young man who took the Cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside
me, which I consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like
Flirting, and he had brought his Suitcase over, and they had got mixed
up. But I knew the Familey would call it Flirting, and not listen to a
word I said.
A madness siezed me. Now that everything is over, I realize that it was
madness. But "there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc." It was to
be. It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is. It was written in
the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generaly
ruin everything.
I locked the door behind Hannah, and stood with tradgic feet, "where the
brook and river meet." What was I to do? How hide this evadence of
my (presumed) duplicaty? I was inocent, but I looked gilty. This, as
everyone knows, is worse than gilt.
I unpacked the Suitcase as fast as I could, therfore, and being just
about destracted, I bundled the things up and put them all together in
the toy Closet, where all Sis's dolls and mine are, mine being mostly
pretty badly gone, as I was always h
|