Monrepos, February 1st.
Carin girl:
So you are to be at Lee for the spring vacation. What fun! Of course I shall try to get there. I feel as if I must see you. And do you really mean to tell me that you want me to go to Europe with you, Carin? How wonderful that would be. But I couldn’t, could I? If I go at all I must go with Uncle David and Aunt Lorena. So that’s settled.
What do you think Miss Ravanel and I have been doing? Making dresses. She needed some and there didn’t seem to be anybody at hand to make them, and so I said to please letme try. At first she thought I would make a botch of them. But not at all. Mother McBirney taught me to be very particular, and I have a sort of a “touch” as you and Annie Laurie always said. The dresses, which are for spring, are really very nice. She said she never had any that really suited her so well.
While we sewed, she told me many things about her life. I was quite right; she did love my Uncle David when she was a girl and he was a young man, but when Aunt Lorena came back from boarding school, he fell terribly in love with her and went to Miss Ravanel and told her, and she bade him do whatever his heart prompted.
“You’re not going to hate me, are you, Delight?” he asked her.
“Hate you?” she said. “Why should I hate you? I want you to be very happy and mean to be happy myself.”
“You will marry someone much more worthy of you than I am,” he assured her. She said that was as might be. She hoped she would love someone again. But she never did, Carin. All of her life she has had to see her kin leaving her, either to go to some other partof the country, or into the family vault, and never once has she met anyone she could care for. But she says she has been quite happy after all.
“I love life,” she told me. “I like to watch the seasons roll around, and I enjoy each one as it comes. I am never tired of walking about my woods and my garden, and it amuses me to care for my old house. I enjoy my books, my music and my thoughts. Sometimes I am glad that I never married. I have fallen into very quiet ways, and it would disturb me to have anyone about, except someone like yourself, Azalea.”
When I see her, so shy and dainty and content, going about her little duties and hospitalities, I am glad, too, that she did not marry. She is like a little domestic nun. I like her the way she is.
Uncle and Aunt Lorena called this morning to ask me when I was coming home, and I told them I would come any time they liked, and they wanted me to go with them at once, but Miss Ravanel begged that I might stay over one Sunday more. She wants to teach me to make Washington pie, and we both want tofinish “Lorna Doone.” So I am staying. I’m much happier. This is just a line to tell you.
Your own
Azalea.
Mallowbanks, February 10.
Dearest Carin:
We are getting ready to go to England. Aunt Lorena is having a charming outfit made for me. Now that she and I really understand each other, we are getting along together beautifully. You see, she is a frank, straight-forward, fair-minded woman and she couldn’t enjoy herself while she thought I was not being fairly treated. But now that I know everything, and that she sees I have the courage to make my choice, she feels better about it all.
I wish you could see my new clothes. They are delightful, and so becoming! They are very practical too. We are not going to take quantities of things, because it would only bother us. But I have my traveling suit of Scotch cloth in a small blue and green plaid, and a hat of blue silk braid trimmed with green, and a steamer rug and coat that lookwell with it; and then two little silks for dinner, nights when we are stopping at any rather fashionable places—one of old rose, and the other of dove color. The pink will be for gay moods, the dove color for pensive ones. Then there is my street suit of tan with shoes and gloves to suit, and the cleverest hat you ever saw, with two big tawny chrysanthemums on it. I don’t seem to be very good at describing clothes, but really, as I said at the beginning, these things are charming.
Then to think of seeing England! Me, Azalea! I don’t believe it. I cannot bring myself to see that it can possibly be true.
Carin, that reminds me: Why don’t you ask Annie Laurie to go abroad with you? Do you know, I think she would do it. I remember hearing your mother say to her, years and years ago, that some day she and Annie Laurie would be together in Europe, listening to great music. And why not? Annie Laurie could easily afford it. Sam Disbrow is through with school now, and he could look after Annie Laurie’s dairy. Propose it, do. Perhaps we could all meet over there.
I must run down to see Mother McBirneybefore I go. Father McBirney is almost well and hopes to reach home in March to do the plowing. He will get someone to help him of course, for Jim is to stay on at school. I have placed a certain sum in the bank for Jim—enough to last him till he has graduated if he is careful. And Jimiscareful. I made up my mind that whatever happened, I was going to see that Jim got what he wanted in the way of an education. He really is wonderfully bright and learns so fast that I don’t see how he can remember all that he crams into his head.
Keefe doesn’t write. That was a part of the bargain that he made with Uncle David—that he was not to write.
But I write to him.
Is that terribly bold?
But you wouldn’t think so if you could see the letters. Anyway, sometimes they aren’t letters. They are just envelopes with little poems in them that I find in the magazines or newspapers and the like. Of course, sometimes I write a poem, too. About daffodils, you know, or sunsets, or rainy days. Never anything sentimental. Not at all. Or personal. I wouldn’t be personal. I merelyremind Keefe that I am alive. A couple of violets in a blank sheet of paper will do that nicely. Aunt Lorena knows. She doesn’t approve. Not quite, that is. She says it is foolish. So since then I’ve only been sending little drawings—pictures of people who call, and one of the Grévy’s parrot, and another of some geese I saw flying north. They are such bad drawings that they are quite sure to annoy Keefe. I pointed out their badness to Aunt Lorena.
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to annoy him?” I asked. “Now just look at this sketch of a cat which I mean to send him. That cat will make him furious. I tried to foreshorten it, but I seem to have performed a surgical operation on it instead.”
“He’ll have you arrested for cruelty to animals,” she agreed. “But really, Azalea, I wish you would keep perfectly silent. This young man does not write to you. Are you doing what is dignified?”
“Aunt Lorena,” I said, shaking my finger at her, “my own private opinion is that he is writing to me every night of his life, and filing the letters away for future reference.”
Aunt Lorena lifted her eyebrows very, very high. I smiled.
“What are you laughing at, Azalea?” she asked sharply.
“At your Gothic eyebrows, dearest Auntie,” I said. Then I kissed her.
“Don’t ask me to be too dignified,” I begged. “I’m only Azalea.”
“Azalea Knox is a very pleasing and interesting young woman of a good deal of importance in the world, if she would only realize it,” she said.
I looked at her a moment.
“She’s not so very, very happy,” I said. The tears came in her eyes, and her eyebrows were not pointed at all. Really, Aunt Lorena is a dear. You just have to break through her crust. The only trouble is that the crust grows over, and you have to keep breaking through. It makes you feel a little like an Eskimo, fishing.
“I am truly sorry,” she said. “But I think if she is a really obedient and patient girl that some day she will be very happy, and that she will thank the friends who now seem to her to be afflicting her.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
Then I ventured:
“Then you really think I ought not to send anything to Keefe? Not even this terrible drawing of a cat? Not even to make him laugh and—and hold me in contempt?”
She laughed at that.
“Not for any reason at all,” she said.
“Then, Aunt Lorena, let me send word just once more—only once. It will be the end.”
“The end?”
“I will never direct another envelope of any sort to him till he writes to me. If he has given his word, he will not do that until—”
“Until?” Her eyebrows were Gothic arches again.
“Until we find, beyond all question, that we cannot live apart.”
“Piffle,” she said. “One can live without anyone. It is a mere question of making up one’s mind.”
I sent Keefe the terrible little picture of the cat.
“Keefe,” I wrote him, “please excuse me for being a bold-faced minx. I must be one, or I wouldn’t have sent you poems and violets and things. Kindly observe this drawing of a cat.It is a cat, I don’t care what you say. She looks as I feel, somewhat cramped. But she is a good cat, and I am a good, obedient girl. I shall waste no more stamps on you. I am going to England, and I am commanded to be very happy. So, since I am obedient, pray think of me as being not only happy but gay.”
I signed my name to it—just “Azalea”—and sent it off. Now I shall write no more.
Farewell,
Azalea.
P.S. I wish you could see my traveling veil. It looks like a peacock’s breast. Clothes are nice, aren’t they? I never realized before how nice they are.
London! London! London!April tenth.
Carin,my dear:
I haven’t been writing to you because I haven’t thought best. I didn’t want to put myself on record. I have been keeping my thoughts to myself, and I never could have done that successfully if I had been gossiping to you, could I? Anyway, I knew you were particularly happy and busy. You were down to Lee for the spring vacation I suppose and opened up the Shoals, and had your own Vance Grévy there, and delightful people to meet him and all that. Then you went back to Vassar. And in two months you will be graduating, and then you and your people will come over to Europe, bringing, I hope, Annie Laurie with you. I believe you agreed with me that it would be a fine thing for both of you if she would join you.
As for me, I have been living in two worlds at once: this mellow, storied world of England, and my own little secret world of memories and dreams. We have had unusual opportunities for seeing the real English life. Both Aunt Lorena and Uncle David have relatives and friends here, and we have been entertained in a number of homes very graciously indeed.
I like the English people. They are not always fizzing and bubbling like Americans. There is a repose about them and a quietness of character that rests me. It even rests me from my fizzly and bubbly self.
But deep down, Carin, beneath all the effervescence, there is something very quiet and peaceful in me. When I am alone, after the day of sight-seeing and chattering and laughing and admiring, I and this Still Soul of mine sit down together and commune.
Then I am no longer foolish. I am something that—how shall I put it? Something that forever strives! Is that it? I want to do well with my little life, Carin. I want to spin my silver web very beautifully, so that when I am old, and the web is all but done, I can look it over and be satisfied with it.
I have been keeping a diary, and in it are descriptions of all the places I have seen and the record of what I have done each day. When we get together again I shall show this to you, and then you can read all about what has been happening to me. But having written those descriptions once, I don’t at all feel like doing it again.
Anyway, what is the use? You have seen all of these places. They were an old story to you before I so much as thought of coming over here. But I do love London! Uncle and auntie have seen it before, and they get tired of wandering, so I am put in the care of an excellent Englishwoman who knows everything, apparently, and who is paid to pass on as much of her information to me as she possibly can. Her voice is very monotonous, unfortunately, so that I find myself nodding right on the busses, in the midst of her discourses, and I am afraid I am not learning one-tenth of what I ought.
But at odd moments I catch sight of things that enchant me.
The other day she and I were going to the Tate Gallery together, and after leaving thebus we came out on the Embankment by means of a curious little street, and suddenly, Carin, we were face to face with some sort of a ship wrecking place. It looked as if it had been there for hundreds of years. The great enclosure was heaped up with parts of ships, with the giant beams and the masts, and hulls, and, more interesting than all the rest, with countless figureheads.
Of course I knew that nearly every ship carries its figure at its bow. It was for such a purpose that the beautifulVictory of Samothracewas built, wasn’t it? But not until I had seen these great wooden creatures, made to represent Neptune and Boreas and Victory and Venus and mermaids and angels, and heaven knows what, did I have any idea what care the ship builders put on these figures.
Miss Sheepshanks, my chaperon, of course didn’t want me to stop to look at them. She was telling about the pictures waiting for us at the gallery, and reminding me of the closing hour, et cetera, et cetera, but for once I was determined to have my way. So I pleaded with her until she allowed me to go in. There was a white-headed old man in charge, whose facesimply shone when I told him I would like to walk around and look at his figureheads. So we went side by side, Miss Sheepshanks following, looking as grieved as she could, and that darling old man told me stories about the ships these figures had come from.
I swear to you they literally smelled of the seven seas! Ah, such strange, weird creatures as some of them were, and their battered forms told their own story of the storms they had weathered and the sights they had seen.
“What a heap of stories you must know,” I said to him.
“Stories?” he repeated looking at me with his old, bright eyes. “Every ship could tell as many stories as would make an Arabian Nights. If I started in, miss, telling the stories I know, I should never be done till the day of my death.”
“I do wish I lived near here,” I couldn’t help saying; “then I could come over and listen when you were not busy. That is, if you would be willing to tell some of your stories to me.”
“It would put life into my old age,” he said earnestly. “Now, miss, I’m something of areader in my way. There is a library near that I get my books from, for thripence a day. Not bad, is it? Even a poor man can afford that, miss. But when I read the tales, I think to myself: ‘Why don’t some of you writing fellows come around here and ask the old man a few questions? He could tell you tales of the salt seas that would make men’s hair bristle.’”
Miss Sheepshanks seemed to think this was terribly strong language for me to hear, and she tried to hasten me away, but I wouldn’t go till I had told him the story of Samuel Bings and had a wonderful story from him in return. I noted it all down in my diary, and you shall read that, too. We went to the Gallery after that, and saw some beautiful pictures, but I am such a silly that my mind kept going back to that old man and the stories he could tell, and when we came out I insisted on going by his place again, and we could see him inside his little office, making his own tea. So the next day, without telling anyone, I sent him a pound of tea in a queer Chinese cannister, just saying it was from the girl who liked stories.
Well, well, I shan’t see him again. They hedge me around in every way. A maid or a chaperon must be with me every minute. How I wish I were free to go about and get acquainted with people! They—I mean Aunt Lorena and all the powers of propriety—seem to think that if I did I would have some awful mishap. But do you know, Carin, I don’t think that would be the case. I feel as if right at my hand there may be someone I ought to be knowing and who ought to be knowing me.
That reminds me of what I so long dreamed of doing down in Lee. Not only was I going to take charge of the Industries and help the mountain people as they never were helped before, but I was going to have a home which should be open to every passer-by. Before it was to be a spring of water—I know the very spring—where people could stop for a cold drink, and beside the spring would be seats where they could rest. Not far down the road there would be a trough for horses and another for dogs; and in my cupboard would always be something for whomever was hungry. It would not matter how poor or soiled or strange any passer-by might be, he or she shouldcome in and sit beside my hearth and have of my best. Even very wicked people could come in. And men on the chain gang, mending the road—how I would like to take them out a fine dinner and let them know I believed in them. Perhaps they would let me eat with them, and then maybe I could find out what they were really thinking.
Carin, that is what I want more than anything, I believe, to know what other people are really thinking. I can’t tell you how it interests, nay, absorbs me!
But in the sort of life that I lead now, no one speaks out and says what he thinks. We are endlessly polite. We all say the same thing. We all do the same things. At times, it is true, I see someone looking at me with the eyes of true friendship, but we are parted by the people about us, and we do not really become acquainted. So I am very lonely, in spite of all that is interesting and beautiful about me, and I wish you and I and Annie Laurie were sitting together up in your little studio-room, with the world far from us, and just we three opening our hearts to each other.
I have been out to-day selecting somepresents for friends back at home, and I enjoyed that very much. Do you know, I couldn’t resist getting something for those two lonely women, the Wixons, up on Hebron mountain—the ones whose soup I ate uninvited. If ever I get back to Lee, I shall ride up and get acquainted with those women. Isn’t it curious how people draw you and draw you, even people you have never met, but know only by report? As for those you do know, they can draw you half around the world. Yes, out of the millions and millions of human beings on this old globe, there will be but two or three, perhaps, who are verily your own, and those you must have.
A young man called on uncle yesterday, bearing a letter of introduction. He lives, I believe, in Baltimore, and his name is Gerald Hargreaves. His father was a friend of uncle’s, and some mutual friend who knew that uncle was over here, gave him the letter. I don’t think he was very keen about presenting it, but we are glad he did, for he seems a delightful young man. Uncle David took to him at once, and so, for the matter of that, did Aunt Lorena and I. He is an athletic young personwith a general blond appearance and a nice voice. He seems modest, too, and genial. He finished college last year and has been traveling around Europe, but he means to go back home soon and settle down. He is to follow the custom of his family and go into the railroad business. Naturally, we talked about railroads a good deal, and the methods of home and foreign travel. He turned to me and said:
“What is your favorite means of travel, Miss Knox?” And before I thought how it would sound I replied:
“Oh, nag travel.”
Aunt Lorena looked rather embarrassed, but Uncle David roared.
“My niece is a true Southern mountaineer,” he said, “and she isn’t afraid of anything in the way of horseflesh.”
“Though I have been thrown,” I admitted, looking at Uncle David and thinking of the fateful day that Paprika scampered up the mountain away from Uncle David’s machine.
“Fortunately,” said Uncle David, and left the young man to figure out what that might mean.
“I’m glad you think it was fortunate, dear,”I whispered to him. He gave my hand a little squeeze under the table—we were at tea—and I felt my heart warm up. When I think that Uncle David loves me it brightens up everything; but he is a quiet man and does not say much. He likes to go his own way and amuse himself after his own fashion, and he doesn’t wish to be bothered all of the time by paying attention to those around him. As for Aunt Lorena, she takes life as it comes. She is very philosophical and patient and proud, and she sinks back into her easy feminine place and doesn’t question anything. The trouble with me is that I’m nearly bursting with questions.
“Ought I to do this? Ought I to think that? Am I making the most of my opportunities? Am I being myself, Azalea, or am I imitating these others? Am I of any use or am I just consuming good oxygen and nice food and getting in the way generally?”
That’s how I keep at it. I don’t seem to be able to give myself any rest, but must always be badgering myself like that.
We are all going to the theater to-night to see “A Winter’s Tale.” Mr. Hargreaves goeswith us. I shall wear my white silk and my peach-blow silk jacket. They are charming together. I have a fillet of silver wheat for my hair. Yesterday I sewed little perfume bags—with violet powder in them—in all of my frocks. Violet is the pleasantest of the perfumes, I think. Though Aunt Lorena uses white rose. What is your favorite, Carin? I have forgotten. Or perhaps when you and I saw each other, I was not thinking much about perfumes.
Well, now I think about all such things. I have learned to approve of certain makes of gloves and to disapprove of others. I know what sort of laces an unmarried girl should wear, and what ones should be reserved for married ladies. I know—Oh, I know a thousand things! I hope little madam grandmother would approve of me. Though she is gone, I still try to please her. Sometimes, when I have tried particularly hard to be polite and gay the way she would like me to be, I fancy I feel her little jeweled hand on my head and that I hear her say:
“You are doing very well indeed, my dear. Really, I could ask nothing more of you.”
What a pity grandmother could not have passed on her charm as well as her money to me!
But I am thankful for the money, though money can never play a tremendously large part in my life, because it is so much less interesting than some other things. But as I said, I have been out shopping, and you ought to see what I bought Annie Laurie—a picture of the sea that I know she will love. And I got a watch for Paralee Panther—a wrist watch. She’s really a school-teacher at last, as I think I told you, so the watch will be useful. But I have presents for everybody. Buying these things for the people dear to me keeps me from feeling homesick.
Good night, Carin. It is time to dress for dinner. And after that comes the theater, and I am glad. I do love the theater! And best of all I enjoy the moment when the curtain begins to rise. It is such a throbbing moment. What will one see? What story is to be told? Will one forget that it is a play and believe it all to be true? Will one like life better for having seen it? Will one go out dancing or weeping?
Oh, it’s a great moment when the curtain begins to rise.
Azalea.
Como, August 13.
Oh,my dear neglected friend:
I meant to have sent you a dozen letters between my last one and this, but we have been so busy that I simply could not write. I thought I was a particularly strong person, but I give you my word, Carin, that at the end of a day of sight-seeing I am glad to eat my dinner and slip into my bed. However, there is usually something required of me between the eating of the dinner and the seeking of my couch, for we have been entertaining much, and have been much entertained.
We left London late in May and sailed to Genoa, and since then we have been seeing Italy. As it chanced, Aunt Lorena fell in with some old friends who have been living for years near Fiesole, and they decided to journey with us. This has given us the entrée to many homes which we should otherwise not have seen, and it has all been very gay and diverting.
Never have I loved any place as I do Italy. Such beauty, such pathos! I cannot express all I feel, though my diary shall some day show you that I have tried. But more of that some other time, dear girl. I insist that we must be together this winter for a while. Am I right in thinking you will go home for the winter, and that you are to have the delicious experience of preparing your trousseau there in your own dear old home? I want to help with that. I have hunted out a few little things that may find a place in it, and I want to use my needle in your service.
Mr. Hargreaves has been everywhere with us. I thought it odd of him to accompany us to Venice and to Rome, since he had been in both places only a few months ago. But it was his affair. There was nothing to keep him from visiting both places again if he chose. Of course he has added to my pleasure, being nearer my age than any of the others. Uncle and Aunt Lorena appear to have much satisfaction from his presence, too. They like him immensely and talk about him a great deal. They think him brilliant, but I am not sure that I do. His mind clings too long to onesubject. I like a little more agility. Weren’t you always amused at the way the minds of Mary Cecily and her brother danced from subject to subject? It was touch and go with them. All they needed was half a sentence—they understood the rest before it was spoken.
I think myself that no one ought to visit Venice except with her own true love. To float over those moonlit canals to the sound of music, between those regal, slumbering palaces in the company of mere casual acquaintances or elderly relatives is too much to ask of anyone.
We four, uncle, auntie, Mr. Hargreaves and I, were much in the gondolas, going now here, now there, seeing strange old things and dreaming old dreams. Not at all, I am sure, because he cares for me, but just because the surroundings were too much for him, Mr. Hargreaves was inclined to be—well, a trifle sentimental. But I couldn’t endure that. Having the wrong man make love is worse than going without—Oh, much! But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I took it all as a joke, and told him to hold Aunt Lorena’s hand; that she was a much more sentimental person than I.
He sent me flowers every morning, but I wouldn’t keep them. There was a sweet English girl there who was not well, and I made her take most of them. The rest I threw in the canal—not as an insult to the flowers or their giver, but because, when I was gondola riding, it gave me pleasure to throw out a rose now and then and see it drift with the tide. Aunt Lorena wasn’t sure that I was being kind to her friend, but I was, really. It wouldn’t have been at all kind to let him think I cared when I didn’t, would it, dear?
We met a bright young fellow the other day who had studied at the Academy of Design with Keefe, and he said he thought Keefe had decided to go into landscape work instead of portraits, after all, which seems rather odd considering what a success he was making with portraits. I said:
“Why do you think he changed?”
“Oh, it’s hard to say,” he answered. “Keefe doesn’t seem the fellow he used to be. You remember how jolly he was, and how he loved company? It is different with him now. He keeps much to himself and works beyond all reason. I believe in being industrious, butthere’s no use in being a fanatic about work.”
“But is he well? Does he look as he used?”
Suddenly I remembered that he had come south years ago because his lungs were not strong, and I turned cold at the thought that the trouble that had threatened him, might really have come back and fastened itself on him.
“Oh, he looks well enough,” the young man replied. “Only a little wild and queer. But O’Connor is queer, don’t you think so? A sign of genius, no doubt. He had a strange bringing up, hadn’t he? He’s a gentleman, of course; any one can see that; but he’s rather adventurous too; a strange mixture.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt I should betray myself if I talked about him any longer, so I only ventured:
“He has a charming sister. She is one of my best friends.”
“Really?” said the young man. “Well, I hear O’Connor is putting up a studio somewhere in the Blue Ridge and that he means to try his hand at interpreting the mountains, but I think myself, he had better have stuck to portraits.”
“Very likely,” said I.
I have heard many conversations during the last few weeks, Carin, but that is the only one I remember.
How good to be able to write you like this! I am so tired of keeping things to myself. We shall be starting for home some time in October, I believe. I shall hope to write you, but if I do not, think of me still, in spite of all silences, as
Your loving friend,
Azalea.
Mallowbanks, November 15.
Carin,always best and dearest:
Here I am, back again. Back from England, back from Italy. The first seemed to me like the great Mother of my Mind; the second like the eternal Mother of my Soul. Always, as long as I live, I shall dream of them.
And this is a good place for dreaming. Indeed, there is little else to do here. The old house lies in perpetual quiet. The garden is dead again. You will remember that I have only seen it when it was dead. I did not mean to do it, but by accident, when I was walking in it, I came on the little pool where my darling grandmother was drowned, and there were the three swans, aimlessly floating about, just as they did that terrible twilight.
But I don’t know that the swans go aboutany more aimlessly than we do here in the house. There is very little coming and going, for we are in mourning. Uncle does not take a daily paper. He says it frets him and that there is really no use. He says he can get all the essentials from theWeekly Eyrie. And so, I suppose, he can. But all this helps to keep us very quiet. It is as if we lived in an ivory tower. We might be enchanted, so little do we know of other lives than our own.
I said something like this to Aunt Lorena, and she replied:
“It is only the reaction after your journey. A person is likely to feel rather let down on first coming home from a tour. Can you not amuse yourself, Azalea, thinking over the places you have seen? Oughtn’t you to be taking up your French again? I think I had better arrange for Monsieur Angier to come from Charleston once a week to teach you.”
I thanked her, and went away to my room, presumably to do as she recommended and “think.” But thinking is not living, Carin, and I want to live. I don’t want to remember. I want to do! I’m tired of having other people do things for me; I’m tired of being treated asif I were better than other people; I’m tired of being cheated of my youth by being made to act as if I were seventy.
Yes, that is what it amounts to. I am being cheated of my youth. I am so strong and well, so restless and full of energy that I nearly expire in this soft house, where everyone goes quietly, and where we must not even pass things at the table lest we break rules.
Carin, I want to “reach” for the bread and to eat it with mountain honey, and I’m starving for one of Ma McBirney’s corn cakes, and I’d like better than anything to have some bacon and eggs fordinner—with just barely enough to go around.
I tell you, I’m eating too much, I’m sleeping too much. I’m moping too much! I wish I could get on Paprika’s back and go scurrying down the valley, whooping as I go.
Well, let’s talk of something else.
You say that Mrs. Kitchell is really going to marry the feed store man. That is fine. I must think what to send her for a wedding present. I shall make it something quite gorgeous—nothing sensible at all. She has had so much good sense in her life that she mustbe nearly dead of it. I think I’ll get her a table lamp with a rose-colored shade, and perhaps a rose silk table cover to go with it. Dear Anne Kitchell! I’m so glad some rose color is coming into her life.
What about the Mountain Industries? Is she going to give up the superintendence of them? If so, who is to take her place?
You say someone has bought the little bench on Mount Tennyson that I loved so much. Can it really be so? Of course I might have expected it, for it was the best building place on the whole mountain. But, Oh, my spring of sweet water, and my darling tulip trees—which it appears aren’t mine, after all, and now never will be.
That was where I was going to build my little shack and hold open house. Everyone who went by was to be at liberty to stop there, and I was going to share with them whatever I had, and to listen to their stories, and to give them comfort. Now I share nothing. No one tells me anything. I give comfort to no one.
But there I am, mooning again and making myself sound very ungrateful in the bargain.But I’ll tell you, Carin, Uncle David and Aunt Lorena do not really need me. They are as kind as they can be, and of course we have some very social and happy hours together, but the whole truth of it is that they are quite bound up in each other and do not really need anyone else at all in their lives. Never having had any children, and having found each other so satisfying, the presence of another person in the house is more of an interruption than a satisfaction to them. No, I know I am not needed here. That realization is growing on me. Perhaps it is my fault. Maybe I have not made myself needed. But at any rate, this is the rather melancholy truth.
Yetisit a melancholy truth? Why not cheerfully face the fact? Why not look the whole situation in the face?
For, Oh, Carin, there is a place where I am needed. It is at Lee, at the Mountain Industries. I know that no one else can look after them as well as I. Who else knows so many of the mountain people? With whom would they be as free and friendly as with Azalea McBirney, the waif-girl they saw grow up among them, the girl they taught to weave andsew and knit? And now that I have been so much with people of a different sort, I mean with the friends of my uncle and aunt, I am fairly well qualified to meet the other sort of people, too, the visitors to Lee, who are the patrons of the Industries. Yes, I should feel quite at ease with them now. I think I would know ways of bringing them and the mountain people together.
That introduces me to a perfectly beautiful thought! What is more, it is the first time I have reached it. I am glad I came across it when I was writing to you, because that lets you in at the find. It is this: All I have lived and experienced the last year has simply been a part of my preparation for doing what I always wanted to do. It has made me twice as fit as I was before, to be the friend and teacher of my dear mountain people. Isn’t that so, Sister Carin? Am I not ready now to come back to Lee and take my place there, and to spin my silver web? Oh, Carin, now, at last, I can be the woman your dear father and mother wanted me to be. I can serve the people toward whom I feel the greatest loyalty—the people of the mountains, to whom, forMother McBirney’s sake, I owe endless gratitude. But gratitude quite aside, I want to do it for myself. I want to be helped in helping them. I want to live in broadening their lives.
So I think I am going to make up my mind to come back to Lee.
Yes, I think I am.
. . .
I can feel myself making up my mind!
. . .
It is made up!
I am going over to Delight Ravanel’s to tell her about it. She will object, and then I can listen to my own arguments and make myself sure I am doing right. Then I shall come home and let Uncle David and Aunt Lorena know.
How excited I am!
I have just rung for young James to saddle Bess. Now I shall put on my riding habit.
Carin, don’t you wish you were going to be along?
Hastily and happily,
Azalea.
Monrepos, one hour later.
Carin, Miss Ravanel understands everything.She says she will stand by me. She quite agrees that I must do something, and that I have a right to live my life in my own way, just so it is not a selfish way. Now, giving up a fortune for the sake of liberty can’t be selfish, can it? Maybe it can. That is another thing I’ll have to think about.
Because, you understand, do you not, that going back to Lee will mean going back to freedom? I shall claim my privilege of giving up the money grandmother left me, and of framing my life as seems to suit my conscience and desire—my deep heart’s desire—the best. That was where I stood before I went to Europe, and it is where, after all this time, I still stand. I have tried to see things as my relatives wished me to, but I have not succeeded. I want to be myself, to make my own choice in matters that concern my happiness, and to be free to use my own powers.
Dear Carin, while I was merely considering in a vague, abstract way whether or not I should be able to marry the man of Uncle David’s choice, it was not so hard. He might, by some possibility, choose the right man. But that young man I wrote you of when I wasabroad, is expected here soon. His father and Uncle David went to the University of Virginia together, and he is all that Uncle David thinks a man should be. He is a fine fellow, too, Gerald Hargreaves is. I concede that. I want him to be happy—with someone else. He is cultivated, handsome, rich, gracious and good-tempered. This recommends him. But it does not make me love him. It might, only—
You know of what myonlyconsists. I cannot forget Keefe. I never hear from him. I no longer even write to Mary Cecily, his sister. She stopped writing me, first, and I inferred that Keefe had, in his pride and sadness, asked her to do so. He would not have any roundabout communications. He would hear from me straight or not at all. So of course I stopped writing.
Yet I feel that he remembers. Oh, Carin, I feel that he does. But whether he does or not really makes no difference. I must be true to my own heart, and that will not let me say “I love you” to any man save Keefe.
If I were the old-fashioned sort of a girl, I suppose I should not be writing in this way, sofrankly and unashamed. But what have I to be ashamed of? I cannot think it is wrong to love Keefe. It seems the rightest thing in the world to me. I feel no confusion of any sort about it. I know my own mind. I can look in it as if it were a nice clean mirror, and I see Keefe there every time.
I have just told Delight Ravanel all this. And what do you think she did? She kissed me! I had looked for a sharp scolding.
So I am going back home greatly cheered and strengthened. Yet I realize that it is a hard task I have before me—the hardest that ever has come to me. How I do hope I shall prove myself brave. I want to be brave more than anything. I mustn’t cry! I won’t cry! It is too important a matter to cry about.
Miss Ravanel says she will come to Lee to visit me. She hasn’t been anywhere for twelve years, except to Charleston now and then, and sometimes to a distant neighbor’s. I want her to come and show my mountain women how to make blue and white work. It is a kind of embroidery and lace combined, made on a linen base. She says she will. Isn’t she a dear? I hope you’ll not mind her wrinklesand think her old. She looks a little old, but she’s really very young, judged by the things that count.
Well, she has given me encouragement and tea and sponge cake and this beautiful promise to come and visit me in what she calls my exile. Exile! In Lee! Near you and all the others I love best. The only drawback to the whole thing will be seeing somebody else’s house go up on my treasured building site. I do hope to goodness that whoever is building it will put up a charming house. I couldn’t stand it to see an ugly one there.
I’m writing this while Miss Delight is down contracting with a man for six live turkeys. I can’t imagine what she is going to do with them. How could she eat them all by herself, or even with her servants to help? There are only two and neither has any teeth to speak of. Perhaps she likes to hear turkeys gobble. I agree with her that it is a cheerful sound.
Well, she is returning. Farewell. I will have Miss Ravanel’s man mail this letter for me.
Excitedly and rather fearfully,
Azalea.