CHAPTER FORTY-NINE




OF THE HALT CAUSED BY THE ABSENCE OF A NOVELISSIMATRIX; AND HOW THE LORD TOOK PITY UPON THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN.





   I am perfectly well aware, thank you, darling, that a month has slipped by, without my doing a line of the novelissim. You see, I hadn't time; for I had just taken up the work of The International. But I would have found time if I had had the One Thing Needful. And what's that, say you, Ambrosia? Natuer-lich -- a novelissimatrix. Gewiss. I'm really rather grateful to dear Maitland. He sent me to the Murray Hill Baths, where, by the Missing Section of Osiris, I met a Popular Movie Writer in the flesh. He calls hils films ``Shades and Shadows,'' ``Right or Wrong?'' and sich, and he talks as he writes. He spends a night of drunken orgie with a lady, and, on leaving, thanks her for a very pleasant evening. I didn't know that these things were! Then Maitland also told me of a Cingalese Joing, where I could get a really truly curry. And of course I ran right into my beloved Catherine. She was sitting in a little inner room, by the window, in the twilight. I could not see her clearly. But her magnetism drew me over to her. She was in a coarse white dress, smoking endless cigarettes, and drinking many an unfathomable seidel of beer. She looks a little like Soror Hilarion, and, a little like Frank Harris, and altogether like some kind of Chinese dog -- a barbarian brigand kind from beyond the Wall. So I shall call her Tchao, and that will be all right, won't it? I can lie about on the bed in our little room on Central Park West, while she wraps up the laundry in copies of the Evening Telegram, and write my nice novelissim. And, praise the pigs, I didn't have to appeal to the dollar; it was Father himself that gave me this dog. I'm telling you; it's a most amazing thing; the dear old boy is there with the goods from noon to noon. ``Everybody works but Father'' is no song for our little me'nage, by Wilkins! I'm a member of the Upper citcles, by Aaron's rod that budded! This is the Inner Life, all right, my dear old H. P. B.! She's a Pennsylvania Dutch girl, this Tchao, no Frankfurter about her; but she's the Original Hot Dog. Also, b'gosh, one of Nature's children; she has no acquired technique; it's all talent ab ovo. But what talent! No: it's pure genius; she doesn't know how, and she doesn't know why; but she gets there. She inscribes me among the lyric poets, and the rest follow as Horace once indicated. A Week-end in this house needs the very opposite kind; byt have no fear! In fact, your only dread be this, that I cannot find time to write Our Story.