CHAPTER VII.
“Youwill wonder at seeing this letter from me,” Glenn wrote to Esther, “for it will not be a usual one—not at all the sort of letter you have been accustomed to receiving from me. Perhaps it is that I have changed—greatly changed from that old self you knew—most of all changed from what I used to be to you. I can see you now as you looked to me that afternoon at Indian Well, when I first spoke to you. You touched me so closely then—so nearly—and you were such a child.
“All through that first year I think you could never have guessed how much the blossoming of that little wild heart of yours meant to me. I watched it from day to day, from month tomonth, so closely. Maybe I watered it some, and pulled some of the weeds that might have crowded its roots. I hope so. You were a child then and I a man, yet I had been a man without a passion. I thought much in those days, and dreamed that I knew myself. Achievement was my god. I told myself that my interest in you was the interest of the philosopher—the master—and I watched your mind unfold with a curious delight. I know now, dear, that it was a far different feeling from that—one that went far deeper and meant much more to me, even when I would not admit it to myself. It is to his own heart last of all that a man admits his own error. And yet, as I look back at it now, I think that I meant to be honest with myself. When you came to the city and I saw the wondrous woman that had grown—when I saw your flower heart—still the heart of the child in all that was sweet and innocent—turning more and more towards me for its sun—it waked something new within me. I saw the problem. I felt your dependencegrow each day stronger. You leaned upon me so that I thought sometimes I could feel every throb of your heart. You were achieving. Your art was growing. Your genius was lifting. You were coming nearer and nearer to the ideal that I had imagined for you. When such a development has become the great and absorbing passion of a man’s life, I cannot express to you how haunting becomes the fear of disappointment, how terrible the jealousy of circumstance that may step between him and its fulfillment. You had beautiful ideals—such as I have had—and they had grown a part of you. To lose them would have ashed the ember; it would have deadened the quick sensibilities and wounded that soul-instinct of yours in which your music lived. And when I saw these ideals dependent upon me—upon my presence—upon the sympathy of mine, which I could not have denied if I had tried—I stood by them and you. Dear, the soul of a woman is a wonderful thing. It will not bear experiment. Yours was like a sensitiveplant that cannot bear the light, and sheds its loveliest perfume in the dark. So I tried to give it the darkness—to cloud the glare of hollowness that was in our world—to let the light in slowly and only when the leaves were strong enough to bear it. All this time I could not help but see that when I went from you the shock would be great. My philosophy taught me the penalty of emotion, and I thought I had much to do in the world. I dreamed of work that would absorb me utterly—that would take the best that was in me, of feeling and of effort. All my life I had denied myself the passion that my eyes told me was growing in you. I had grown to consider myself apart from others—a mental solitary who had locked the door of his heart because he had work to do. It had not occurred to me that the Juggernaut whose rumbling wheels I would not hear might crush you. It was the concert at the Metropolitan that opened my eyes. I knew then that your art and your heart had twined together so intimately that if one were cut, the other wouldbleed. I knew then that I must either go or stay, that if I became a stronger part of you my going would be fatal to your own achievement and to mine. Dear, it was not all selfishness—this resolve of mine. You will never know what it meant to me to tear up the roots that had grown in spite of me: it was like tearing the flesh and leaving it quivering. But that I could have borne if it left you better able to go on. I did not know then what I know now. I blame myself that I did not read truer. The news of your breakdown and the giving up of your music came to me like a blow in the dark. In showing me yours, it has shown me my own heart. The depths of my self-condemnation have taught me myself. It has taught me that achievement is a pitiful thing compared with a woman’s love—that your happiness means more to me—a thousand times more—than success: that I love you—I love you—utterly and wholly—and that I want you to be my wife. The future is impossible to me without you. Each day since I sawyou, your step has been in every sound. Each night your face has been my vision. Here from my window I can see a little knoll on which is a cross, where the peasants go to pray to the patron saint of the village. It is ugly, and battered, and old, but it has come to be beautiful to me, for I know now what they are praying for. The hills are gold with the grain, and a little winding path runs down toward my eyrie. I can almost imagine you coming down it now to meet me, with your dear face raised to my window—”
As Glenn finished the page, the boy tapped at the little door with the daily mail, and he reached out an indifferent hand to take it. A familiar flourish caught his eye, and, recognizing Richmond Briarley’s penmanship, he opened a bulky envelope. A card, closely written, and a small book met his gaze.