  CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS Seminole, North Carolina, MY DEAR SIR: This small greenhouse of Mr. Andy Peters is a stifling, lonesome place. His acquaintances are not the class of people who buy flowers unless there is a death in the family. He has no social position, and receives very few orders in that way. I do what I can for him through my social connections. Time hangs heavily on my hands and I have little to do but think of my lot. When Mr. Peters and I are not busy, I do not find him companionable. He does not possess the requisite attainments. We have a small library in this town, and I thought I would take up reading. I have always felt so much at home with all literature. I asked the librarian to suggest something new in fiction and she urged me to read a novel by young Mr. Beverley Sands, the Kentucky novelist. I write now to inquire whether you are the Mr. Beverley Sands who wrote the novel. If you are, I wish to tell you how glad I am that I have long had the pleasure of your acquaintance. Your story comes quite close to me. You understand what it means to be a proud daughter of the Southland who is thrown upon her own resources. Your heroine and I are most alike. There is a wonderful description in your book of a woodland scene with ferns in it. Would you mind my sending you my own copy of your book, to have you write in it some little inscription such as the following: "For Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain with the compliments of Beverley Sands." Your story gives me a different feeling from what I have hitherto entertained toward you. You may not have understood my first letters to you. The poor and proud and sensitive are so often misunderstood. You have so truly appreciated me in drawing the heroine of your book that I feel as much attracted to you now as I was repelled from you formerly. Respectfully yours, CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS May 10, 1912. MY DEAR MR. SANDS: I wish to thank you for putting your name in my copy of your story. Your kindness encourages me to believe that you are all that your readers would naturally think you to be. And I feel that I can reach out to you for sympathy. The longer I remain in this place, the more out of place I feel. But my main trouble is that I have never been able to meet the whole expense of my father's funeral, though no one knows this but the undertaker, unless he has told it. He is quite capable of doing such a thing. The other day he passed me, sitting on his hearse, and he gave me a look that was meant to remind me of my debt and that was most uncomplimentary. And yet I was not extravagant. Any ignorant observer of the procession would never have supposed that my father was a thinker of any consequence. The faculty of the college attended, but they did not make as much of a show as at Commencement. They never do at funerals. Far be it from me to place myself under obligation to anyone, least of all to a stranger, by receiving aid. I do not ask it. I now wish that I had never spoken to you of your having been instrumental in my father's death. A proud daughter of the Southland, CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS May 17, 1912. MY DEAR MR. SANDS: I have received your cheque and I think what you have done is most appropriate. Since I wrote you last, my position in this establishment has become still more embarrassing. Mr. Andy Peters has begun to offer me his attentions. I have done nothing to bring about this infatuation for me and I regard it as most inopportune. I should like to leave here and take a position in New York. If I could find a situation there as secretary to some gentleman, my experience as my great father's secretary would of course qualify me to succeed as his. You may not have cordially responded to my first letters, but you cannot deny that they were well written. If the gentleman were a married man, I could assure the family beforehand that there would be no occasion for jealousy on his wife's part, as so often happens with secretaries, I have heard. If he should have lost his wife and should have little children, I do love little children. While not acting as his secretary, I could be acting with the children. If my grey-haired father, who is now beyond the blue skies, were only back in North Carolina! CLARA LOUISE. CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS May 21, 1912. MY DEAR MR. SANDS: I have been forced to leave forever the greenhouse of Mr. Andy Peters and am now thrown upon my own resources without a roof over my proud head. Mr. Andy Peters is a confirmed rascal. I almost feel that I shall have to do something desperate if I am to succeed. CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE May 24, 1912. DEAR BEN: Clara Louise Chamberlain is in New York! God Almighty! I have been so taken up lately with other things that I have forgotten to send you a little bundle of letters from her. You will discover from one of these that I gave her a cheque. I know you will say it was folly, perhaps criminal folly; but I was in a way "instrumental" in bringing about the great botanist's demise. If I had described no ferns, there would have been no fern trouble, no fern list. The old gentleman would not have forgotten the list, if I had not had it sent to him; hence he would not have gotten up at midnight to search for it, would not have fallen downstairs, might never have had pneumonia. I can never be acquitted of responsibility! Besides, she praised my novel (something you have never done!): that alone was worth nearly a hundred dollars to me! Now she is here and she writes, asking me to help her to find employment, as she is without means. But I can't have that woman as my secretary! I dictate my novels. Novels are matters of the emotions. The secretary of a novelist must not interfere with the flow of his emotions. If I were dictating to this woman, she would be like an organ-grinder, and I should be nothing but a little hollow-eyed monkey, wondering what next to do, and too terrified not to do something; my poor brain would be unable even to hesitate about an idea for fear she would think my ideas had given out. Besides she would be the living presence of this whole Pharaoh's plague of Nile Green ferns. Let her be your secretary, will you? In your mere lawyer's work, you do not have any emotions. Give her a job, for God's sake! And remember you have never refused me anything in your life. I enclose her address and please don't send it back to me. For I am sick, just sick! I am going to undress and get in bed and send for the doctor and stretch myself out under my bolster and die my innocent death. And God have mercy on all of you! But I already know, when I open my eyes in Eternity, what will be the first thing I'll see. O Lord, I wonder if there is anything but ferns in heaven and hell! BEVERLEY. BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN May 25, 1912. DEAR MADAM: Mr. Beverley Sands is very much indisposed just at the present time, and has been kind enough to write me with the request that I interest myself in securing for you a position as private secretary. Nothing permanent is before me this morning, but I write to say that I could give you some work to-morrow for the time at least, if you will kindly call at these offices at ten o'clock. Very truly yours, BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS May 27, 1912. DEAR BEVERLEY: If you keep on getting into trouble, some day you'll get in and never get out. You sent her a cheque! Didn't you know that in doing this you had sent her a blank cheque, which she could afterwards fill in at any cost to your peace? If you are going to distribute cheques to young ladies merely because their fathers die, I shall take steps to have you placed in my legal possession as an adult infant. Here's what I've done—I wrote to your ward, asking her to present herself at this office at ten o'clock yesterday morning. She was here punctually. I had left instructions that she should be shown at once into my private office. When she entered, I said good morning, and pointed to a typewriter and to some matter which I asked her to copy. Meantime I finished writing a hypothetical address to a hypothetical jury in a hypothetical case, at the same time making it as little like an actual address to a jury as possible and as little like law as possible. Then I asked her to receive the dictation of the address, which was as follows: "I beg you now to take a good look at this young woman—young, but old enough to know what she, is doing. You will not discover in her appearance, gentlemen, any marks of the adventuress. But you are men of too much experience not to know that the adventuress does not reveal her marks. As for my client, he is a perfectly innocent man. Worse than innocent; he is, on account of a certain inborn weakness, a rather helpless human being whenever his sympathies are appealed to, or if anyone looks at him pleasantly, or but speaks a kind word. In a moment of such weakness he yielded to this woman's appeal to his sympathies. At once she converted his generosity into a claim, and now she has begun to press that claim. But that is an old story: the greater your kindness to certain people, the more certain they become that your kindness is simply their due. The better you are, the worse you must have been. Your present virtues are your acknowledgment of former shortcomings. It has become the design of this adventuress—my client having once shown her unmerited kindness—it has now become her apparent design to force upon him the responsibility of her support and her welfare. "You know how often this is done in New York City, which is not only Babylon for the adventurer and adventuress, but their Garden of Eden, since here they are truly at large with the serpent. You are aware that the adventuress never operates, except in a large city, just as the charlatan of every profession operates in the large city. Little towns have no adventuresses and no charlatans; they are not to be found there because there they would be found out. What I ask is that you protect my client as you would have my client, were he a juryman, help to protect innocent men like you. I ask then that this woman be sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars and be further sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary for a term of one year. "No, I do not ask that. For this young woman is not yet a bad woman. But unless she stops right here in her career, she is likely to become a bad woman. I do ask that you sentence her to pay a few tears of penitence and to go home, and there be strictly confined to wiser, better thoughts." When I had dictated this, I asked her to read it over to me; she did so in faltering tones. Then I bade her good morning, said there was no more work for the day, instructed her that when she was through with copying the work already assigned, the head-clerk would receive it and pay for it, and requested her to return at ten o'clock this morning. This morning she did not come. I called up her address; she had left there. Nothing was known of her. If you ever write to her again—! And since you, without visible means of support, are so fond of sending cheques to everybody, why not send one to me! Am I to go on defending you for nothing? Your obedient counsel and turtle, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE May 28, 1912. DEAR BEN: What have you done, what have you done, what have you done! That green child turned loose in New York, not knowing a soul and not having a cent! Suppose anything happens to her—how shall I feel then! Of course, you meant well, but my dear fellow, wasn't it a terrible, an inhuman thing to do! Just imagine—but then you can't imagine, can't imagine, can't imagine! BEVERLEY. BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS May 29, 1912. MY DEAR BEVERLEY: I am sorry that my bungling efforts in your behalf should have proved such a miscalculation. But as you forgive everybody sooner or later perhaps you will in time pardon even me. Your respectful erring servant, TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES May 30, 1912. POLLY BOLES: The sight of a letter from me will cause a violent disturbance of your routine existence. Our "friendship" worked itself to an open and honourable end about the time I went away last summer and showed itself to be honest hatred. Since my return in the autumn I have been absorbed in many delightful ways and you, doubtless, have been loyally imbedded in the end of the same frayed sofa, with your furniture arranged as for years past, and with the same breastpin on your constant heart. Whenever we have met, you have let me know that the formidable back of Polly Boles was henceforth to be turned on me. I write because I will not come to see you. My only motive is that you will forward my letter to Ben Doolittle, whom you have so prejudiced against me, that I cannot even write to him. My letter concerns Beverley. You do not know that since our engagement was broken last summer he has regularly visited me: we have enjoyed one another in ways that are not fetters. Your friendship for Beverley of course has lasted with the constancy of a wooden pulpit curved behind the head and shoulders of a minister. Ben Doolittle's affection for him is as splendid a thing as one ever sees in life. I write for the sake of us all. Have you been with Beverley of late? If so, have you noticed anything peculiar? Has Ben seen him? Has Ben spoken to you of a change? I shall describe as if to you both what occurred to-night during Beverley's visit: he has just gone. As soon as I entered the parlours I discovered that he was not wholly himself and instantly recollected that he had not for some time seemed perfectly natural. Repeatedly within the last few months it has become increasingly plain that something preyed upon his mind. When I entered the rooms this evening, although he made a quick, clever effort to throw it off, he was in this same mood of peculiar brooding. Someone—I shall not say who—had sent me some flowers during the day. I took them down with me, as I often do. I think that Beverley, on account of his preoccupation, did not at first notice that I had brought any flowers; he remained unaware, I feel sure, that I placed the vase on the table near which we sat. But a few minutes later he caught sight of them—a handful of roses of the colour of the wild-rose, with some white spray and a few ferns. When his eyes fell upon the ferns our conversation snapped like a thread. Painful silence followed. The look with which one recognises some object that persistently annoys came into his eyes: it was the identical expression I had already remarked when he was gazing as on vacancy. He continued absorbed, disregardful of my presence, until his silence became discourteous. My inquiry for the reason of his strange action was evaded by a slight laugh. This evasion irritated me still more. You know I never trust or respect people who gloss. His rejoinder was gloss. He was taking it for granted that having exposed to me something he preferred to conceal, he would receive my aid to cover this up: I was to join him in the ceremony of gloss. As a sign of my displeasure I carried the flowers across the room to the mantelpiece. But the gaiety and carelessness of the evening were gone. When two people have known each other long and intimately, nothing so quickly separates them as the discovery by one that just beneath the surface of their intercourse the other keeps something hidden. The carelessness of the evening was gone, a sense of restraint followed which each of us recognised by periods of silence. To escape from this I soon afterward for a moment went up to my room. I now come to the incident which explains why I think my letter should be sent to Ben Doolittle. As I re-entered the parlours Beverley was standing before the vase of flowers on the mantelpiece. His back was turned toward me. He did not see me or hear me. I was about to speak when I discovered that he was muttering to himself and making gestures at the ferns. Fragments of expression straggled from him and the names of strange people. I shall not undertake to write down his incoherent mutterings, yet such was the stimulation of my memory due to shock that I recall many of these. You ought to know by this time that I am by nature fearless; yet something swifter and stranger than fear took possession of me and I slipped from the parlours and ran half-way up the stairs. Then, with a stronger dread of what otherwise might happen, I returned. Beverley was sitting where I had left him when I quitted the parlours first. He had the air of merely expecting my re-entrance. I think this is what shocked me most: that he could play two parts with such ready concealment, successful cunning. Now that he is gone and the whole evening becomes so vivid a memory, I am urged by a feeling of uneasiness to reach Ben Doolittle with this letter, since there is no one else to whom I can turn. Beverley left abruptly; my manner may have forced that. Certainly for the first time in all these years we separated with a sudden feeling of positive anger. If he calls again, I shall be excused. Act as you think best. And remember, please, under what stress of feeling I must be to write another letter to you. To you! TILLY SNOWDEN. TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES [A second letter enclosed in the preceding one] My letter of last night was written from impulse. This morning I was so ill that I asked Dr. Marigold to come to see me. I had to explain. He looked grave and finally asked whether he might speak to Dr. Mullen: he thought it advisable; Dr. Mullen could better counsel what should be done. Later he called me up to inquire whether Dr. Mullen and he could call together. Dr. Mullen asked me to go over what had occurred the evening before. Dr. Marigold and he went across the room and consulted. Dr. Mullen then asked me who Beverley's physician was. I said I thought Beverley had never been ill in his life. He asked whether Ben Doolittle knew or had better not be told. Again I leave the matter to Ben and you. But I have thought it necessary to put down on a separate paper the questions which Dr. Mullen asked with my reply to each. For I do not wish Ben Doolittle to think I said anything about Beverley that I would be unwilling for him or for anyone else to know. TILLY SNOWDEN. POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN June 2, 1912. TILLY SNOWDEN: A telegram from Louisville has reached me this morning, announcing the dangerous illness of my mother, and I go to her by the earliest train. I have merely to say that I have sent your letters to Ben. I shall add, however, that the formidable back of Polly Boles seems to absorb a good deal of your attention. At least my formidable back is a safe back. It is not an uncontrollable back. It may be spoken of, but at least it is never publicly talked about. It does not lead me into temptation; it is not a scandal. On the whole, I console myself with the knowledge that very few women have gotten into trouble on account of their backs. If history speaks truly, quite a few notorious ones have come to grief—but you will understand. POLLY BOLES. POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE June 2, 1912. DEAR BEN: I find bad news does not come single. I have a telegram from Louisville with the news of my mother's illness and start by the first train. Just after receiving it I had a letter from Tilly, which I enclose. I, too, have noticed for some time that Beverley has been troubled. Have you seen him of late? Have you noticed anything wrong? What do you think of Tilly's letter? Write me at once. I should go to see him myself but for the news from Louisville. I have always thought Beverley health itself. Would it be possible for him to have a breakdown? I shall be wretched about him until I hear from you. What do you make out of the questions Dr. Mullen asked Tilly and her replies? Are you going to write to me every day while I am gone? POLLY. BEN DOOLITTLE TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS June 4, 1912. DEAR SIRS: I desire to recall myself to you as a former Louisville patron of your flourishing business and also as more recently the New York lawyer who brought unsuccessful suit against you on behalf of one of his clients. You will find enclosed my cheque, and you are requested to send the value of it in long-stemmed red roses to Miss Boles—the same address as in former years. If the stems of your roses do not happen to be long, make them long. (You know the wires.) Very truly yours, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES June 4, 1912. DEAR POLLY: You will have had my telegram of sympathy with you in your mother's illness, and of my unspeakable surprise that you could go away without letting me see you. Have I seen Beverley of late? I have seen him early and late. And I have read Tilly's much mystified and much-mistaken letters. If Beverley is crazy, a Kentucky cornfield is crazy, all roast beef is a lunatic, every Irish potato has a screw loose and the Atlantic Ocean is badly balanced. I happen to hold the key to Beverley's comic behaviour in Tilly's parlour. As to the questions put to Tilly by that dilution of all fools, Claude Mullen—your favourite nerve specialist and former suitor—I have just this to say: All these mutterings of Beverley—during one of the gambols in Tilly's parlours, which he naturally reserves for me—all these fragmentary expressions relate to real people and to actual things that you and Tilly have never known anything about. Men must not bother their women by telling them everything. That, by the way, has been an old bone of contention between you and me, Polly, my chosen rib—a silent bone, but still sometimes, I fear, a slightly rheumatic bone. But when will a woman learn that her heavenly charm to a man lies in the thought that he can place her and keep her in a world, into which his troubles cannot come. Thus he escapes from them himself. Let him once tell his troubles to her and she becomes the mirror of them—and possibly the worst kind of mirror. Beverley has told Tilly nothing of all this entanglement with ferns, I have not told you. All four of us have thereby been the happier. But through Tilly's misunderstanding those two mischief-making charlatans, Marigold and Mullen, have now come into the case; and it is of the utmost importance that I deal with these two gentlemen at once; to that end I cut this letter short and start after them. Oh, but why did you go away without good-bye? BEN. BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES June 5, 1912. DEAR POLLY: I go on where I left off yesterday. I did what I thought I should never do during my long and memorable life: I called on your esteemed ex-acquaintance, Dr. Claude Mullen. I explained how I came to do so, and I desired of him an opinion as to Beverley. He suggested that more evidence would be required before an opinion could be given. What evidence, I suggested, and how to be gotten? He thought the case was one that could best be further studied if the person were put under secret observation—since he revealed himself apparently only when alone. I urged him to take control of the matter, took upon myself, as Beverley's friend, authority to empower him to go on. He advised that a dictograph be installed in Beverley's room. It would be a good idea to send him a good big bunch of ferns also: the ferns, the dictograph, Beverley alone with them—a clear field. I explained to Beverley, and we went out and bought a dictograph, and he concealed it where, of course, he could not find it! In the evening we had a glorious dinner, returned to his rooms, and while I smoked in silence, he, in great peace of mind and profound satisfaction with the world in general, poured into the dictograph his long pent-up opinion of our two dear old friends, Marigold and Mullen. He roared it into the machine, shouted it, raved it, soliloquised it. I had in advance requested him to add my opinion of your former suitor. Each of us had long been waiting for so good a chance and he took full advantage of the opportunity. The next morning I notified Dr. Mullen that Beverley had raved during the night, and that the machine was full of his queer things. At the appointed hour this morning we assembled in Beverley's rooms. I had cleared away his big centre table, all the rubbish of papers amid which he lives, including some invaluable manuscripts of his worthless novels. I had taken the cylinders out of the dictograph and had put them in a dictophone, and there on the table lay that Pandora's box of information with a horn attached to it. Dr. Mullen arrived, bringing with him the truly great New York nerve specialist and scientist whom he relies upon to pilot him in difficult cases. Dr. Marigold had brought the truly great physician and scientist who pilots him. At Beverley's request, I had invited the president of his Club, and he had brought along two Club affinities; three gossips. I sent Beverley to Brooklyn for the day. We seated ourselves, and on the still air of the room that unearthly asthmatic horn began to deliver Beverley's opinion. Instantly there was an uproar. There was a scuffle. It was almost a general fight. Drs. Marigold and Mullen had jumped to their feet and shouted their furious protests. One of them started to leave the room. He couldn't, I had locked the door. One slammed at the machine—he was restrained—everybody else wanted to hear Beverley out. And amid the riot Beverley kept on his peaceful way, grinding out his healthy vituperation. That will do, Polly, my dear. You will never hear anything more of Beverley's being in bad health—not from those two rear-admirals of diagnosis—away in the rear. Another happy result; it saves him at last from Tilly. Her act was one that he will never forgive. His act she will never forgive. The last tie between them is severed now. But all this is nothing, nothing, nothing! I am lost without you. BEN. P.S. Now that I have disposed of two of Beverley's detractors, in a day or two I am going to demolish the third one—an Englishman over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I have long waited for the chance to write him just one letter: he's the chief calumniator. POLLY BOLES TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE Louisville, Kentucky, DEAR BEN: I cannot tell you what a relief it brought me to hear that Beverley is well. Of course it was all bound to be a mistake. At the same time your letters have made me very unhappy. Was it quite fair? Was it open? Was it quite what anyone would have expected of Beverley and you? Nothing leaves me so undone as what I am not used to in people. I do not like surprises and I do not like changes. I feel helpless unless I can foresee what my friends will do and can know what to expect of them. Frankly, your letters have been a painful shock to me. I foresee one thing: this will bring Tilly and Dr. Marigold more closely together. She will feel sorry for him, and a woman's sense of fair play will carry her over to his side. You men do not know what fair play is or, if you do, you don't care. Only a woman knows and cares. Please don't keep after Dr. Mullen on my account. Why should you persecute him because he loved me? Dr. Marigold will want revenge on Beverley, and he will have his revenge—in some way. Your letters have left me wretched. If you surprise me in this way, how might you not surprise me still further? Oh, if we could only understand everybody perfectly, and if everything would only settle and stay settled! My mother is much improved and she has urged me—the doctor says her recovery, though sure, will be gradual—to spend at least a month with her. To-day I have decided to do so. It will be of so much interest to her if I have my wedding clothes made here. You know how few they will be. My dresses last so long, and I dislike changes. I have found my same dear old mantua-maker and she is delighted and proud. But she insists that since I went to New York I have dropped behind and that I will not do even for Louisville. On my way to her I so enjoy looking at old Louisville houses, left among the new ones. They seem so faithful! My dear old mantua-maker and the dear old houses—they are the real Louisville. My mother joins me in love to you. Sincerely yours, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE 150 Wall Street, New York, Edward Blackthorne, Esq., MY DEAR SIR: I am a stranger to you. I should have been content to remain a stranger. A grave matter which I have had no hand in shaping causes me to write you this one letter—there being no discoverable likelihood that I shall ever feel painfully obliged to write you a second. You are a stranger to me. But you are, I have heard, a great man. That, of course, means that you are a famous man, otherwise I should never have heard that you are a great one. You hold a very distinguished place in your country, in the world; people go on pilgrimages to you. The thing that has made you famous and that attracts pilgrims are your novels. I do not read novels. They contain, I understand, the lives of imaginary people. I am satisfied to read the lives of actual people and I do read much biography. One of the Lives I like to study is that of Samuel Johnson, and I recall just here some words of his to the effect that he did not feel bound to honour a man who clapped a hump on his shoulder and another hump on his leg and shouted he was Richard the Third. I take the liberty of saying that I share Dr. Johnson's opinion as to puppets, either on the stage or in fiction. The life of the actual Richard interests me, but the life of Shakespeare's Richard doesn't. I should have liked to read the actual life of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I have never been able to get a clear idea what a novelist is. The novelists that I superficially encounter seem to have no clear idea what they are themselves. No two of them agree. But each of them agrees that his duty and business in life is to imagine things and then notify people that those things are true and that they—people—should buy those things and be grateful for them and look up to the superior person who concocted them and wrote them down. I have observed that there is danger in many people causing any one person to think himself a superior person unless he is a superior person. If he really is what is thought of him, no harm is done him. But if he is widely regarded a superior person and is not a superior person, harm may result to him. For whenever any person is praised beyond his deserts, he is not lifted up by such praise any more than the stature of a man is increased by thickening the heels of his shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to be lowered by over-praise. For, prodded by adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary image and assume, as far as he can, the guise of some inferior creature which more glaringly expresses what he is—as the peacock, the owl, the porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, the ass. I have seen all these. I have seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, speechless owl novelist, the fretful porcupine novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, the ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred ass novelist. And many others. You may begin to wonder why I am led into these reflections in this letter. The reason is, I have been wondering into what kind of inferior creature your fame—your over-praise—has lowered you. Frankly, I perfectly know; I will not name the animal. But I feel sure that he is a highly offensive small beast. If you feel disposed to read further, I shall explain. I have in my legal possession three letters of yours. They were written to a young gentleman whom I have known now for a good many years, whose character I know about as well as any one man can know another's, and for whom increasing knowledge has always led me to feel increasing respect. The young man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You may now realise what I am coming to. The first of these letters of yours reveals you as a stranger seeking the acquaintance of Mr. Sands—to a certain limit: you asked of him a courtesy and you offered courtesies in exchange. That is common enough and natural, and fair, and human. But what I have noticed is your doing this with the air of the superior person. Mr. Sands, being a novelist, is of course a superior person. Therefore, you felt called upon to introduce yourself to him as a more superior person. That is, you condescended to be gracious. You made it a virtue in you to ask a favour of him. You expected him to be delighted that you allowed him to serve you. In the second letter you go further. He wafted some incense toward you and you got on your knees to this incense. You get up and offer him more courtesies—all courtesies. Because he praised you, you even wish him to visit you. Now the third letter. The favour you asked of Mr. Sands was that he send you some ferns. By no fault of his except too much confidence in the agents he employed (he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted you), by no other fault of his the ferns were not sent. You waited, time passed, you grew impatient, you grew suspicious of Mr. Sands, you felt slighted, you became piqued in your vanity, wounded in your self-love, you became resentful, you became furious, you became revengeful, you became abusive. You told him that he had never meant to keep his word, that you had kicked his books out of your library, that he might profitably study the moral sensitiveness of a head of cabbage. During the summer American tourists visited you—pilgrims of your fame. You took advantage of their visit to promulgate mysteriously your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by one explicit word, you understand. Your exalted imagination merely lied on him, and you entrusted to other imaginations the duty of scattering broadcast your noble lie. They did this—some of them happening not to be friends of Mr. Sands—and as a result of the false light you threw upon his character, he now in the minds of many persons rests under a cloud. And that cloud is never going to be dispelled. Enclosed you will please find copies of these three letters of yours; would you mind reading them over? And you will find also a packet of letters which will enable you to understand why the ferns never reached you and the whole entanglement of the case. And finally, you will find enclosed a brief with which, were I to appear in Court against you, as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up to public view as what you are. I shall merely add that I have often met you in the courtroom as the kind of criminal who believes without evidence and who distrusts without reason; who is, therefore, ready to blast a character upon suspicion. If he dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence against him, he draws upon the dark traits of his own nature to furnish the evidence. I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands. I am, as to you, Merely, EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE King Alfred's Wood, Benjamin Doolittle, MY DEAR SIR: You state in your letter, which I have just laid down, that you are a stranger to me. There is no conceivable reason why I should wish to offer you the slightest rudeness—even that of crossing your word—yet may I say, that I know you perfectly? If you had unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, you might have found, scattered here and there, everything that you have said in your letter, and almost in your very words. That is, I have two or three times drawn your portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus while you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel bound to say that you are an old acquaintance in nature. You cannot for a moment imagine—however, you despise imagination and I withdraw the offensive word—you cannot for a moment suppose that I can have any motive in being discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go on to say, but only with your permission, that the first time I attempted to sketch you, was in a very early piece of work; I was a youthful novelist, at the outset of my career. I projected a story entitled: "The Married Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens." I feel bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly remind me of the Sal Blivvens of my story. In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was this: as twenty-one human shillings he never made an exact human guinea—his shillings ran a few pence over, or they fell a few pence short. That is, Ned never did just enough of anything, or said just enough, but either too much or too little to suit Sal. He never had just one idea about any one thing, but two or three ideas; he never felt in just one way about any one thing, but had mixed feelings, a variety of feelings. He was not a yard measure or a pint measure or a pound measure; he overflowed or he didn't fill, and any one thing in him always ran into other things in him. Being a young novelist I was not satisfied to offer Sal to the world on her own account, but I must try to make her more credible and formidable by following her into the next generation, and giving her a son who inherited her traits. Thus I had Tommy Blivvens. When Tommy was old enough to receive his first allowance of Christmas pudding, he proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He picked out all the raisins and made a little pile of them. And made a little separate pile of the currants, and another pile of the almonds, and another of the citron, or of whatever else there was to separate. Then in profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, as a philosopher of the sure. Thus—and I insist I mean no disrespect—your letter does revive for me a little innocent laughter at my early literary vision of a human baggage—friend of my youthful days and artistic enthusiasm—Sal Blivvens. I arranged that when Ned died, his neighbours all felt sorry and wished him a green turf for his grave. Sal, I felt sure, survived him as one who all her life walks past every human heart and enters none—being always dead-sure, always dead-right; for the human heart rejects perfection in any human being. I recognise you as belonging to the large tough family of the human cocksures. Sal Blivvens belonged to it—dead-sure, dead-right, every time. We have many of the cocksures in England, you must have many of them in the United States. The cocksures are people who have no dim borderland around their minds, no twilight between day and darkness. They see everything as they see a highly coloured rug on a well-lighted floor. There is either rug or no rug, either floor or no floor. No part of the floor could possibly be rug and no part of the rug could possibly be floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the natural prosecuting attorney of human nature's natural misgivings and wiser doubts and nobler errors. How the American cocksures of their day despised the man Washington, who often prayed for guidance; with what contempt they blasted the character of your Abraham Lincoln, whose patient soul inhabited the border of a divine disquietude and whose public life was the patient study of hesitation. I have taken notice of the peculiarly American character of your cocksureness: it magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile, to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the ton. Do you happen to know Michael Angelo's Moses? I always think of an American cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's Moses—colossal law-giver, a hyper-stupendous fellow. And I have often thought that a regiment of American cocksures would be the most terrific spectacle on a battlefield that the rest of the human race could ever face. Just now it has occurred to me that it was your great Emerson who spoke best on the weakness of the superlative—the cocksure is the human superlative. As to your letter: You declare you know nothing about novels, but your arraignment of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure that you are perfectly right about me. Your arraignment of me is exact. You are conscious of no more moral perturbation as to justice than exists in a monkey wrench. But that is the nature of the cocksure—his conclusions have to him the validity of a hardware store. This, however, is nothing. I clear it away in order to tell you that I am filled with admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and of the savage ferocity with which you attack me as his enemy. That makes you a friend worth having, and I wish you were to be numbered among mine; there are none too many such in this world. Next, I wish to assure you that I have studied your brief against me and confess that you have made out the case. I fell into a grave mistake, I wronged your friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it was a poor, sorry, shabby business. I am about to write to Mr. Sands. If he is what you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive me—though you never may. I shall ask him, as I could not have asked him before, whether he will not come to visit me. My house, my hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, shall be his. I shall take every step possible to undo what I thoughtlessly, impulsively did. I shall write to the President of his Club. One exception is filed to a specification in your brief: no such things took place in my garden upon the visit of the American tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate any mysterious hostility to Mr. Sands. You tell me that among those tourists were persons hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile persons who misinterpreted and exaggerated whatever took place. You knew these persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then you accepted their testimony as true—being a cocksure. A final word to you. Your whole character and happiness rests upon the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the fellow-beings whom you know. Those you doubt ought to be doubted and those you trust ought to be trusted! Now I have travelled far enough on life's road to have passed its many human figures—perhaps all the human types that straggle along it in their many ways. No figures on that road have been more noticeable to me than here and there a man in whom I have discerned a broken cocksure. You say you like biography: do you like to read the Life of Robert Burns? And I wonder whether these words of his have ever guided you in your outlook upon life: "Then gently scan your brother man I thank you again. I wish you well. And I hope that no experience, striking at you out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave you one of those noticeable men—a broken cocksure. Your deeply obliged and very grateful, EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS June 30, 1912. DEAR BEVERLEY: About a month ago I took it upon myself to write the one letter that had long been raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. And I sent him all the fern letters. And then I drew up the whole case and prosecuted him as your lawyer. Of course I meant my letter to be an infernal machine that would blow him to pieces. He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and inserted a crank, and turned it into a music-box to grind out his praises. And then the kind of music he ground out for me. All day I have been ashamed to stand up and I've been ashamed to sit down. He told me that my letter reminded him of a character in his first novel—a woman called Sal Blivvens. ME—Sal Blivvens! But of what use is it for us poor, common-clay, rough, ordinary men who have no imagination—of what use is it for us to attack you superior fellows who have it, have imagination? You are the Russians of the human mind, and when attacked on your frontiers, you merely retreat into a vast, unknown, uninvadable country. The further you retire toward the interior of your mysterious kingdom, the nearer you seem to approach the fortresses of your strength. I am wiser—if no better. If ever again I feel like attacking any stranger with a letter, I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. If he is a genius, I am going to let him alone. Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to see your man Blackthorne now. Ask him some time whether a short visit from Benjamin Doolittle could be arranged on any terms of international agreement. Now for something on my level of ordinary life! A day or two ago I was waiting in front of the residence of one of my uptown clients, a few doors from the residence of your friend Dr. Marigold. While I waited, he came out on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I drove past, I leaned far out and made them a magnificent sweeping bow: one can afford to be forgiving and magnanimous after he settled things to his satisfaction. They did not return the bow but exchanged quiet smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. They seemed like saying: he bows best who bows last. You are the best thing in New York to me since Polly went away. Without you both it would come near to being one vast solitude. BEN (alias Sal Blivvens). BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE July 1, 1912. DEAR BEN: I wrote you this morning upon receipt of your letter telling me of your own terrific letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless arraignment of him. Let me say again that I wish to pour out my gratitude to you for your motives and also, well, also my regret at your action. Somehow I have been reminded of Voltaire's saying: he had a brother who was such a fool that he started out to be perfect; as a consequence the world knows nothing of Voltaire's brother: it knows very well Voltaire with his faults. The mail of yesterday which brought you Mr. Blackthorne's reply to your arraignment brought me also a letter: he must have written to us both instantly. His letter is the only one that I cannot send you; you would not desire to read it. You are too big and generous, too warmly human, too exuberantly vital, to care to lend ear to a great man's chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. You are not Cassius to carp at Caesar. Now this afternoon a second letter comes from Mr. Blackthorne and that I enclose: it will do you good to read it—it is not a black passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight. BEVERLEY. [Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne] MY DEAR MR. SANDS: I follow up my letter of yesterday with the unexpected tidings of to-day. I am willing to believe that these will interest you as associated with your coming visit. Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final natal eclipse, has bowled him over and left him darkened for good. He can trouble us no more, but will now do his part as mould for the rose of York and the rose of Lancaster. He will help to make a mound for some other Englishman's ferns. When you come—and I know you will come—we shall drink a cup of tea in the garden to his peaceful memory—and to his troubled memory for Latin. I am now waiting for you. Come, out of your younger world and with your youth to an older world and to an older man. And let each of us find in our meeting some presage of an alliance which ought to grow always closer in the literatures of the two nations. Their literatures hold their ideals; and if their ideals touch and mingle, then nothing practical can long keep them far apart. If two oak trees reach one another with their branches, they must meet in their roots; for the branches are aerial roots and the roots are underground branches. Come. In the eagerness of my letter of yesterday to put myself not in the right but less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the very matter with which the right and the wrong originated. Will you, after all, send the ferns? The whole garden waits for them; a white light falls on the vacant spot; a white light falls on your books in my library; a white light falls on you, I wait for you, both hands outstretched. EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. (Note penciled on the margin of the letter by Beverley Sands to Ben Doolittle: "You will see that I am back where the whole thing started; I have to begin all over again with the ferns. And now the florists will be after me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow of my bones, and my bones by this time are a wireless station on this subject.") BEVERLEY. JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS DEAR SIR: We take pleasure in enclosing our new catalogue for the coming autumn, and should be pleased to receive any further commissions for the European trade. We repeat that we have no connection whatever with any house doing business in the city under the name of Botany. Respectfully yours, PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS Louisville, Kentucky, DEAR SIR: Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory for the approaching autumn season, in view of having been honoured upon a previous occasion with your flattering patronage, and reasoning that our past transactions have been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves of this opportunity of reviving the conjunction heretofore existing between us as most gratifying and thank you sincerely for past favours. We hope to continue our pleasant relations and desire to say that if you should contemplate arranging for the shipments of plants of any description, we could afford you surprised satisfaction. Respectfully yours, BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS Dunkirk, Tennessee, DEAR SIR: We are prepared to supply you with anything you need. Could ship ferns to any country in Europe, having done so for the late Noah Chamberlin, the well-known florist just across the State line, who was a customer of ours. old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet paid, had to drop them entirely. Very truly yours, If you need any forest trees, we could supply you with all the forest trees you want, plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty of walnuts, etc. ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS Seminole, North Carolina, DEAR SIR: I have lately enlarged my business and will be able to handle any orders you may give me. The orders which Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain said you were to send have not yet turned up. I write to you, because I have heard about you a great deal through Miss Clara Louise, since her return from her visit to New York. She succeeded in getting two or three donations of books for our library, and they have now given her a place there. I was sorry to part with Miss Clara Louise, but I had just married, and after the first few weeks I expected my wife to become my assistant. I am not saying anything against Miss Clara Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet violets, especially on a Sunday, having the run of the flowers. She and Alice didn't get along very well together, and I did have a bad set-back with my violets while she was here. Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make a speciality of seedlins. If you want any seedlins, will you call on me? I am young and just married and anxious to please, and I wish you would call on me when you want anything green. Nothing dried. Yours respectfully, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS July 7th, 1912. DEAR BEVERLEY: It makes me a little sad to write. I suppose you saw in this morning's paper the announcement of Tilly's marriage next week to Dr. Marigold. Nevertheless—congratulations! You have lost years of youth and happiness with some lovely woman on account of your dalliance with her. Now at last, you will let her alone, and you will soon find—Nature will quickly drive you to find—the one you deserve to marry. It looks selfish at such a moment to set my happiness over against your unhappiness, but I've just had news, that at last, after lingering so long and a little mysteriously in Louisville, Polly is coming. Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. We long ago decided to have no wedding. All that we have long wished is to marry one another. Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, Polly is another cocksure. We shall jog along as a perfectly satisfied couple of cocksures on the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly will never find out that she married Sal Blivvens.) Dear fellow, truest of comrades among men, it is inevitable that I reluctantly leave you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as the friend who marries. One awful thought freezes me to my chair this hot July day. You have never said a word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, since the day of my hypothetical charge to the jury. Can it be possible that you followed her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? I have often warned you against Tilly, as inconstant. But, my dear fellow, remember there is a worse extreme than in inconstancy—Clara Louise would be sealing wax. You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in conversation, she'd seal you the tighter. Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. BEN. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE July 8. DEAR BEN: I saw the announcement in the morning paper about Tilly. It wouldn't be worth while to write how I feel. It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, homeless in New York. And I saw her. As to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, that is solely a question of my royalties. Royalties are human gratitude; why should not the dews of gratitude fall on one so parched? Besides, I don't owe you anything, gentleman. Yes, I feel you're going—you're passing on to Polly. I append a trifle which explains itself, and am, making the best of everything, the same BEVERLEY SANDS. A Meditation in Verse How can I mind the law's delay, Time, who cheated me so long, Winter's lonely sky is gone, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS [A hurried letter by messenger] July 10, 1912. Polly reached New York two days ago. I went up that night. She had gone out—alone. She did not return that night. I found this out when I went up yesterday morning and asked for her. She has not been there since she left. They know nothing about her. I have telegraphed Louisville. They have sent me no word. Come down at once. BEN. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE [Hurried letter by messenger] July 10, 1912. DEAR BEN: Is anything wrong about Polly? I met her on the street yesterday. She tried to pass without speaking. I called to her but she walked on. I called again and she turned, hesitatingly, then came back very slowly to meet me half-way. You know how composed her manner always is. But she could not control her emotion: she was deeply, visibly troubled. Strange as it may seem, while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, I could but notice a trifle, as at such moments one often does: she was beautifully dressed: a new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over her as for some impending ceremony. We have always thought of Polly as one of the women who are above dress. Such disregard was in a way a verification of her character, the adornment of her sincerity. Now she was beautifully dressed. "But what is the meaning of all this?" I asked, frankly mystified. Something in her manner checked the question, forced back my words. "You will hear," she said, with quivering lips. She looked me searchingly all over the face as for the sake of dear old times now ended. Then she turned off abruptly. I watched her in sheer amazement till she disappeared. I have been waiting to hear from you, but cannot wait any longer. What does it mean? Why don't you tell me? BEVERLEY. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE July 11. I have with incredible eyes this instant read this cutting from the morning paper: Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the City Hall in Jersey City to Dr. Claude Mullen. She must have been on her way when I saw her. I have read the announcement without being able to believe it—with some kind of death in life at my heart. Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am coming at once. BEVERLEY. DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS July 18. The ferns have had their ironic way with us and have wrought out their bitter comedy to its end. The little group of us who were the unsuspecting players are henceforth scattered, to come together in the human playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the curtain waits to descend, and I, who innocently brought the drama on, am left the solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, depart to go my separate road. This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful the morning is for her! The whole sky is one exquisite blue—no sign of any storm-plan far or near. The July air blows as cool as early May. I sit at my window writing and it flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances of the green park below my window enter my room and encircle me like living human tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, Tilly is dressing for her wedding, and I—God knows why—am thinking of old-time Kentucky gardens in one of which she played as a child. Tilly, a little girl romping in her mother's garden—Tilly before she was old enough to know anything of the world—anything of love—now, as she dresses for her wedding—I cannot shut out that vision of early purity. Yesterday a note came from her. I had had no word since the day I openly ridiculed the man she is to marry. But yesterday she sent me this message: "Come to-night and say good-bye." She was not in her rooms to greet me. I waited. Moments passed, long moments of intense expectancy. She did not enter. I fixed my eyes on her door. Once I saw it pushed open a little way, then closed. Again it was opened and again it was held as though for lack of will or through quickly changing impulses. Then it was opened and she entered and came toward me, not looking at me, but with her face turned aside. She advanced a few paces and with some swift, imperious rebellion, she turned and passed out of the room and then came quickly back. She had caught up her bridal veil. She held the wreath in her hand and as she approached me, I know not with what sudden emotion she threw a corner of the veil over her head and face and shoulders. And she stood before me with I know not what struggle tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper she said: "Lift my veil." I lifted her veil and laid it back over her forehead. She closed her eyes as tears welled out of them. "Kiss me," she said. I would have taken her in my arms as mine at that moment for all time, but she stepped back and turned away, fading from me rather than walking, with her veil pressed like a handkerchief to her eyes. The door closed on her. I waited. She did not come again. Now she is dressing for the marriage ceremony. A friend gives her a house wedding. The company of guests will be restricted, everything will be exquisite, there will be youth and beauty and distinction. There will be no love. She marries as one who steps through a beautiful arch further along one's path. Whither that path leads, I do not know; from what may lie at the end of it I turn away and shudder. My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning is of one exiled from happiness because nature withheld from her the one thing needed to make her all but perfect: that needful thing was just a little more constancy. It is her doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to her lips it drops from her hand. Forever her hand stretched out toward joy and forever joy shattered at her feet. American scientists have lately discovered or seem about to discover, some new fact in Nature—the butterfly migrates. What we have thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant of a single summer in a single zone follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells in a summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the psyche of life's fields, then she seeks perpetual summer as the law of her own being. All our lives move along old, old paths. There is no new path for any of us. If Tilly's fate is the butterfly path, who can judge her harshly? Not I. They sail away at once on their wedding journey. He has wealth and social influence of the fashionable sort which overflows into the social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: the papers found space for their plans of travel: England and Scotland, France and Switzerland, Austria and Germany, Bohemia and Poland, Russia, Italy and Sicily—home. The great world-path of the human butterfly, seeking summer with insatiate quest. Home to his practice with that still fluttering psyche! And then the path—the domestic path—stretching straight onward across the fields of life—what of his psyche then? Will she fold her wings on a bed-post—year after year slowly opening and unfolding those brilliant wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?... I cannot write of human life unless I can forgive life. How forgive unless I can understand? I have wrought with all that is within me to understand Polly—her treachery up to the last moment, her betrayal of Ben's devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly, doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems built upon one trait, one virtue—loyalty. She was disloyal to Ben because she had come to believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign excellence. There were things in his life which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps every day there were mere trifles which he did not share with her—why should he? On a certain memorable morning she discovered that for years he had been keeping from her some affairs of mine: that was his loyalty to me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her. I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I think that was the rift in the lute. Still a man must not surrender himself wholly into the keeping of the woman he loves; let him, and he becomes anything in her life but a man. Meantime Polly found near by another suitor who offered her all he was—what little there was of him—one of those man-climbers who must run over the sheltering wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified in Polly her one passion for marrying—that she should possess a pet. Now she possesses one, owns him, can turn him round and round, can turn him inside out, can see all there is of him as she sees her pocket-handkerchief, her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any little familiar piece of property which she can become more and more attached to as the years go by for the reason that it will never surprise her, never puzzle her, never change except by wearing out. This will be the end of the friendship between Drs. Marigold and Mullen: their wives will see to that. So much the better: scattered impostors do least harm. I have struggled to understand the mystery of her choice as to how she should be married. Surely marriage, in the existence of any one, is the hour when romance buds on the most prosaic stalk. It budded for Polly and she eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her heavy mind without the wings of imagination. She got as far as the nearest City Hall. Instead of a minister she chose to be married by a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been unjust, she would be married by the figure of Justice as a penal ceremony executed over Ben: she mailed him a paper and left him to understand that she had fled from him to Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry! A line in an evening paper lets me know that she and the Doctor have gone for their honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly first came North to live and the first summer came round she decided to spend it at Ocean Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would get a grove and an ocean with one railway ticket, without having to change; she could settle in a grove with an ocean and in an ocean with a grove. What her disappointment was I do not know, but every summer she has gone back to Ocean Grove—the Franklin Flats by the sea.... Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had spent part of every evening with him since Polly's marriage—silent, empty evenings—a quiet, stunned man. Confidence in himself blasted out of him, confidence in human nature, in the world. With no imagination in him to deal with the reasons of Polly's desertion—just a passive acceptance of it as a wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball. Her name was never called. A stunned, silent man. Clear, joyous steady light in his eyes gone—an uncertain look in them. Strangest of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And courtesy for bluff warm confidence—courtesy as of one who stumblingly reflects that he must begin to be careful with everybody. His active nature meantime kept on. Life swept him forward—nature did—whether he would or not. I went down late one evening. Evidently he had been working in his room all day; the things Polly must have sent him during all those years were gone. He had on new slippers, a fresh robe, taking the place of the slippers and the robe she had made for him. Often I have seen him tuck the robe in about his neck as a man might reach for the arms of a woman to draw them about his throat as she leans over him from behind. During our talk that evening he began strangely to speak of things that had taken place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, on the farm; did I remember this in Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind had gone back to old certainties. It was like his walking away from present ruins toward things still unharmed—never to be harmed. Early next morning he surprised me by coming up, dressed for travel, holding a grip. "I am going to Kentucky," he said. I went to the train with him. His reserve deepened on the way; if he had plans, he did not share them with me. What I make out of it is that he will come back married. No engagement this time, no waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage will sadly bring him. I think she will be young—this time. But she will be, as nearly as possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted man for life. He thinks he will be getting some one to take Polly's place. In reality it will be his second attempt to marry Polly. I am bidding farewell the little group of us. Some one else will have to write of me. How can I write of myself? This I will say: that I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to leave a little of his wool on every bramble. I sail next week for England to make my visit to Mr. Blackthorne—at last. Another letter has come from him. He has thrown himself into the generous work of seeing that my visit to him shall make me known. He tells me there will be a house party, a week-end; some of the great critics will be there, some writers. "You must be found out in England widely and at once," he writes. My heart swells as one who feels himself climbing toward a height. There is kindled in me that strangest of all the flames that burn in the human heart, the shining thought that my life is destined to be more than mine, that my work will make its way into other minds and mingle with the better, happier impulses of other lives. The ironic ferns have had their way with us. But after all has it not been for the best? Have they not even in their irony been the emblems of fidelity? They have found us out, they have played upon our weaknesses, they have exaggerated our virtues until these became vices, they have separated us and set us going our diverging ways. But while we human beings are moving in every direction over the earth, the earth without our being conscious of it is carrying us in one same direction. So as we follow the different pathways of our lives which appear to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, may it not be true that to the Power which sets us all in motion and drives us whither it will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity? THE END THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
|
|
