I won't write more now, because fifty children are writing thank-you letters, and poor Aunt Judy will be buried beneath her mail when this week's steamer gets in.My love to the Pendletons.S. McB.P.S. Singapore sends his love to Togo, and is sorry he bit him on the ear.JOHN GRIER HOME,December 30.O DEAR, Gordon, I have been reading the most upsetting book!I tried to talk some French the other day, and not making out very well, decided that I had better take my French in hand if I didn't want to lose it entirely. That Scotch doctor of ours has mercifully abandoned my scientific education, so I have a little time at my own disposal. By some unlucky chance I began with "Numa Roumestan," by Daudet. It is a terribly disturbing book for a girl to read who is engaged to a politician. Read it, Gordon dear, and assiduously train your character away from Numa's. It's the story of a politician who is disquietingly fascinating (like you). Who is adored by all who know him (like you). Who has a most persuasive way of talking and makes wonderful speeches (again like you). He is worshiped by everybody, and they all say to his wife, "What a happy life you must lead, knowing so intimately that wonderful man!"But he wasn't very wonderful when he came home to her—only when he had an audience and applause. He would drink with every casual acquaintance, and be gay and bubbling and expansive; and then return morose and sullen and down. "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," is the burden of the book.I read it till twelve last night, and honestly I didn't sleep for being scared. I know you'll be angry, but really and truly, Gordon dear, there's just a touch too much truth in it for my entire amusement. I didn't mean ever to refer again to that unhappy matter of August 20,—we talked it all out at the time,—but you know perfectly that you need a bit of watching. And I don't like the idea. I want to have a feeling of absolute confidence and stability about the man I marry. I never could live in a state of anxious waiting for him to come home.Read "Numa" for yourself, and you'll see the woman's point of view. I'm not patient or meek or long-suffering in any way, and I'm a little afraid of what I'm capable of doing if I have the provocation. My heart has to be in a thing in order to make it work, and, oh, I do so want our marriage to work!Please forgive me for writing all this. I don't mean that I really think you'll be a "joy of the street, and sorrow of the home." It's just that I didn't sleep last night, and I feel sort of hollow behind the eyes.May the year that's coming bring good counsel and happiness and tranquillity to both of us!As ever,S.January 1.Dear Judy:Something terribly sort of queer has happened, and positively I don't know whether it did happen or whether I dreamed it. I'll tell you from the beginning, and I think it might be as well if you burned this letter; it's not quite proper for Jervis's eyes.You remember my telling you the case of Thomas Kehoe, whom we placed out last June? He had an alcoholic heredity on both sides, and as a baby seems to have been fattened on beer instead of milk. He entered the John Grier at the age of nine, and twice, according to his record in the Doomsday Book, he managed to get himself intoxicated, once on beer stolen from some workmen, and once (and thoroughly) on cooking brandy. You can see with what misgivings we placed him out. But we warned the family (hard-working temperate farming people) and hoped for the best.Yesterday the family telegraphed that they could keep him no longer. Would I please meet him on the six o'clock train? Turnfelt met the six o'clock train. No boy. I sent a night message telling of his non-arrival and asking for particulars.I stayed up later than usual last night putting my desk in order and—sort of making up my mind to face the New Year. Toward twelve I suddenly realized that the hour was late and that I was very tired. I had begun getting ready for bed when I was startled by a banging on the front door. I stuck my head out of the window and demanded who was there."Tommy Kehoe," said a very shaky voice.I went down and opened the door, and that lad, sixteen years old, tumbled in, dead drunk. Thank Heaven! Percy Witherspoon was within call, and not away off in the Indian camp.I roused him, and together we conveyed Thomas to our guest room, the only decently isolated spot in the building. Then I telephoned for the doctor, who, I am afraid, had already had a long day. He came, and we put in a pretty terrible night. It developed afterward that the boy had brought along with his luggage a bottle of liniment belonging to his employer. It was made half of alcohol and half of witch hazel; and Thomas had refreshed his journey with this!He was in such shape that positively I didn't think we'd pull him through—and I hoped we wouldn't. If I were a physician, I'd let such cases gently slip away for the good of society; but you should have seen Sandy work! That terrible lifesaving instinct of his was aroused, and he fought with every inch of energy he possessed.I made black coffee, and helped all I could, but the details were pretty messy, and I left the two men to deal with him alone and went back to my room. But I didn't attempt to go to bed; I was afraid they might be wanting me again. Toward four o'clock Sandy came to my library with word that the boy was asleep and that Percy had moved up a cot and would sleep in his room the rest of the night. Poor Sandy looked sort of ashen and haggard and done with life. As I looked at him, I thought about how desperately he worked to save others, and never saved himself, and about that dismal home of his, with never a touch of cheer, and the horrible tragedy in the background of his life. All the rancor I've been saving up seemed to vanish, and a wave of sympathy swept over me. I stretched my hand out to him; he stretched his out to me. And suddenly—I don't know—something electric happened. In another moment we were in each other's arms. He loosened my hands, and put me down in the big armchair."My God! Sallie, do you think I'm made of iron?" he said and walked out. I went to sleep in the chair, and when I woke the sun was shining in my eyes and Jane was standing over me in amazed consternation.This morning at eleven he came back, looked me coldly in the eye without so much as the flicker of an eyelash, and told me that Thomas was to have hot milk every two hours and that the spots in Maggie Peters's throat must be watched.Here we are back on our old standing, and positively I don't know but what I dreamed that one minute in the night!But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I should discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a perfectly good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance in Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down to a few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other respectable engaged girl.I repeat very firmly that this letter isn't for Jervis's consumption. Tear it into little pieces and scatter them in the Caribbean.S.January 3.Dear Gordon:You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my style is not up to standard. But you know already—you have known a long time—that I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a lot of such things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My dear boy, I only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely true. You don't fill all my thoughts; 107 orphans do that. And I really am quite comfortably alive whether you are here or not. I have to be natural. You surely don't want me to pretend more desolation than I feel. But I do love to see you,—you know that perfectly,—and I am disappointed when you can't come. I fully appreciate all your charming qualities, but, my dear boy, I CAN'T be sentimental on paper. I am always thinking about the hotel chambermaid who reads the letters you casually leave on your bureau. You needn't expostulate that you carry them next your heart, for I know perfectly well that you don't.Forgive me for that last letter if it hurt your feelings. Since I came to this asylum I am extremely touchy on the subject of drink. You would be, too, if you had seen what I have seen. Several of my chicks are the sad result of alcoholic parents, and they are never going to have a fair chance all their lives. You can't look about a place like this without "aye keeping up a terrible thinking."You are right, I am afraid, about its being a woman's trick to make a great show of forgiving a man, and then never letting him hear the end of it. Well, Gordon, I positively don't know what the word "forgiving" means. It can't include "forgetting," for that is a physiological process, and does not result from an act of the will. We all have a collection of memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are just the ones that insist upon sticking. If "forgiving" means promising never to speak of a thing again, I can doubtless manage that. But it isn't always the wisest way to shut an unpleasant memory inside you. It grows and grows, and runs all through you like a poison.Oh dear! I really didn't mean to be saying all this. I try to be the cheerful, carefree (and somewhat light-headed) Sallie you like best; but I've come in touch with a great deal of REALNESS during this last year, and I'm afraid I've grown into a very different person from the girl you fell in love with. I'm no longer a gay young thing playing with life. I know it pretty thoroughly now, and that means that I can't be always laughing.I know this is another beastly uncheerful letter,—as bad as the last, and maybe worse,—but if you knew what we've just been through! A boy—sixteen—of unspeakable heredity has nearly poisoned himself with a disgusting mixture of alcohol and witch hazel. We have been working three days over him, and are just sure now that he is going to recuperate sufficiently to do it again! "It's a gude warld, but they're ill that's in 't."Please excuse that Scotch—it slipped out. Please excuse everything.SALLIE.January 11.Dear Judy:I hope my two cablegrams didn't give you too terrible a shock. I would have waited to let the first news come by letter, with a chance for details, but I was so afraid you might hear it in some indirect way. The whole thing is dreadful enough, but no lives were lost, and only one serious accident. We can't help shuddering at the thought of how much worse it might have been, with over a hundred sleeping children in this firetrap of a building. That new fire escape was absolutely useless. The wind was blowing toward it, and the flames simply enveloped it. We saved them all by the center stairs—but I'll begin at the beginning, and tell the whole story.It had rained all day Friday, thanks to a merciful Providence, and the roofs were thoroughly soaked. Toward night it began to freeze, and the rain turned to sleet. By ten o'clock, when I went to bed the wind was blowing a terrible gale from the northwest, and everything loose about the building was banging and rattling. About two o'clock I suddenly started wide awake, with a bright light in my eyes. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The carriage house was a mass of flames, and a shower of sparks was sweeping over our eastern wing. I ran to the bathroom and leaned out of the window. I could see that the roof over the nursery was already blazing in half a dozen places.Well, my dear, my heart just simply didn't beat for as much as a minute. I thought of those seventeen babies up under that roof, and I couldn't swallow. I finally managed to get my shaking knees to work again, and I dashed back to the hall, grabbing my automobile coat as I ran.I drummed on Betsy's and Miss Matthews' and Miss Snaith's doors, just as Mr. Witherspoon, who had also been wakened by the light, came tumbling upstairs three steps at a time, struggling into an overcoat as he ran."Get all the children down to the dining room, babies first," I gasped. "I'll turn in the alarm."He dashed on up to the third floor while I ran to the telephone—and oh, I thought I'd never get Central! She was sound asleep."The John Grier Home is burning! Turn in the fire alarm and rouse the village. Give me 505," I said.In one second I had the doctor. Maybe I wasn't glad to hear his cool, unexcited voice!"We're on fire!" I cried. "Come quick, and bring all the men you can!""I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Fill the bathtubs with water and put in blankets." And he hung up.I dashed back to the hall. Betsy was ringing our fire bell, and Percy had already routed out his Indian tribes in dormitories B and C.Our first thought was not to stop the fire, but to get the children to a place of safety. We began in G, and went from crib to crib, snatching a baby and a blanket, and rushing them to the door, and handing them out to the Indians, who lugged them downstairs. Both G and F were full of smoke, and the children so dead asleep that we couldn't rouse them to a walking state.Many times during the next hour did I thank Providence—and Percy Witherspoon—for those vociferous fire drills we have suffered weekly. The twenty-four oldest boys, under his direction, never lost their heads for a second. They divided into four tribes, and sprang to their posts like little soldiers.Two tribes helped in the work of clearing the dormitories and keeping the terrified children in order. One tribe worked the hose from the cupola tank until the firemen came, and the rest devoted themselves to salvage. They spread sheets on the floor, dumped the contents of lockers and bureau drawers into them, and bundled them down the stairs. All of the extra clothes were saved except those the children had actually been wearing the day before, and most of the staff's things. But clothes, bedding—everything belonging to G and F went. The rooms were too full of smoke to make it safe to enter after we had got out the last child.By the time the doctor arrived with Luellen and two neighbors he had picked up, we were marching the last dormitory down to the kitchen, the most remote corner from the fire. The poor chicks were mainly barefooted and wrapped in blankets. We told them to bring their clothes when we wakened them, but in their fright they thought only of getting out.By this time the halls were so full of smoke we could scarcely breathe. It looked as though the whole building would go, though the wind was blowing away from my west wing.Another automobile full of retainers from Knowltop came up almost immediately, and they all fell to fighting the fire. The regular fire department didn't come for ten minutes after that. You see, they have only horses, and we are three miles out, and the roads pretty bad. It was a dreadful night, cold and sleety, and such a wind blowing that you could scarcely stand up. The men climbed out on the roof, and worked in their stocking feet to keep from slipping off. They beat out the sparks with wet blankets, and chopped, and squirted that tankful of water, and behaved like heroes.The doctor meanwhile took charge of the children. Our first thought was to get them away to a place of safety, for if the whole building should go, we couldn't march them out of doors into that awful wind, with only their night clothes and blankets for protection. By this time several more automobiles full of men had come, and we requisitioned the cars.Knowltop had providentially been opened for the week end in order to entertain a house party in honor of the old gentleman's sixty-seventh birthday. He was one of the first to arrive, and he put his entire place at our disposal. It was the nearest refuge, and we accepted it instantaneously. We bundled our twenty littlest tots into cars, and ran them down to the house. The guests, who were excitedly dressing in order to come to the fire, received the chicks and tucked them away into their own beds. This pretty well filled up all the available house room, but Mr. Reimer (Mr. Knowltop's family name) has just built a big new stucco barn, with a garage hitched to it, all nicely heated, and ready for us.After the babies were disposed of in the house, those helpful guests got to work and fixed the barn to receive the next older kiddies. They covered the floor with hay, and spread blankets and carriage robes over it, and bedded down thirty of the children in rows like little calves. Miss Matthews and a nurse went with them, administered hot milk all around, and within half an hour the tots were sleeping as peacefully as in their little cribs.But meanwhile we at the house were having sensations. The doctor's first question upon arrival had been:"You've counted the children? You know they're all here?""We've made certain that every dormitory was empty before we left it," I replied.You see, they couldn't be counted in that confusion. Twenty or so of the boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon to save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over bushels of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were running about underfoot and wailing dismally.Well, after we had loaded and despatched about seven car loads of children, the doctor suddenly called out:"Where's Allegra?"There was a horrified silence. No one had seen her. And then Miss Snaith stood up and SHRIEKED. Betsy took her by the shoulders, and shook her into coherence.It seems that she had thought Allegra was coming down with a cough, and in order to get her out of the cold, had moved her crib from the fresh air nursery into the store room—and then forgotten it.Well, my dear, you know where the store room is! We simply stared at one another with white faces. By this time the whole east wing was gutted and the third-floor stairs in flames. There didn't seem a chance that the child was still alive. The doctor was the first to move. He snatched up a wet blanket that was lying in a soppy pile on the floor of the hall and sprang for the stairs. We yelled to him to come back. It simply looked like suicide; but he kept on, and disappeared into the smoke. I dashed outside and shouted to the firemen on the roof. The store room window was too little for a man to go through, and they hadn't opened it for fear of creating a draft.I can't describe what happened in the next agonizing ten minutes. The third-floor stairs fell in with a crash and a burst of flame about five seconds after the doctor passed over them. We had given him up for lost when a shout went up from the crowd on the lawn, and he appeared for an instant at one of those dormer windows in the attic, and called for the firemen to put up a ladder. Then he disappeared, and it seemed to us that they'd never get that ladder in place; but they finally did, and two men went up. The opening of the window had created a draft, and they were almost overpowered by the volume of smoke that burst out at the top. After an eternity the doctor appeared again with a white bundle in his arms. He passed it out to the men, and then he staggered back and dropped out of sight!I don't know what happened for the next few minutes; I turned away and shut my eyes. Somehow or other they got him out and halfway down the ladder, and then they let him slip. You see, he was unconscious from all the smoke he'd swallowed, and the ladder was slippery with ice and terribly wobbly. Anyway, when I looked again he was lying in a heap on the ground, with the crowd all running, and somebody yelling to give him air. They thought at first he was dead. But Dr. Metcalf from the village examined him, and said his leg was broken, and two ribs, and that aside from that he seemed whole. He was still unconscious when they put him on two of the baby mattresses that had been thrown out of the windows and laid him in the wagon that brought the ladders and started him home.And the rest of us, left behind, kept right on with the work as though nothing had happened. The queer thing about a calamity like this is that there is so much to be done on every side that you don't have a moment to think, and you don't get any of your values straightened out until afterward. The doctor, without a moment's hesitation, had risked his life to save Allegra. It was the bravest thing I ever saw, and yet the whole business occupied only fifteen minutes out of that dreadful night. At the time, it was just an incident.And he saved Allegra. She came out of that blanket with rumpled hair and a look of pleased surprise at the new game of peek-a-boo. She was smiling! The child's escape was little short of a miracle. The fire had started within three feet of her wall, but owing to the direction of the wind, it had worked away from her. If Miss Snaith had believed a little more in fresh air and had left the window open, the fire would have eaten back. But fortunately Miss Snaith does not believe in fresh air, and no such thing happened. If Allegra had gone, I never should have forgiven myself for not letting the Bretlands take her, and I know that Sandy wouldn't.Despite all the loss, I can't be anything but happy when I think of the two horrible tragedies that have been averted. For seven minutes, while the doctor was penned in that blazing third floor, I lived through the agony of believing them both gone, and I start awake in the night trembling with horror.But I'll try to tell you the rest. The firemen and the volunteers—particularly the chauffeur and stablemen from Knowltop—worked all night in an absolute frenzy. Our newest negro cook, who is a heroine in her own right, went out and started the laundry fire and made up a boilerful of coffee. It was her own idea. The non-combatants served it to the firemen when they relieved one another for a few minutes' rest, and it helped.We got the remainder of the children off to various hospitable houses, except the older boys, who worked all night as well as any one. It was absolutely inspiring to see the way this entire township turned out and helped. People who haven't appeared to know that the asylum existed came in the middle of the night and put their whole houses at our disposal. They took the children in, gave them hot baths and hot soup, and tucked them into bed. And so far as I can make out, not one of my one hundred and seven chicks is any the worse for hopping about on drenched floors in their bare feet, not even the whooping cough cases.It was broad daylight before the fire was sufficiently under control to let us know just what we had saved. I will report that my wing is entirely intact, though a little smoky, and the main corridor is pretty nearly all right up to the center staircase; after that everything is charred and drenched. The east wing is a blackened, roofless shell. Your hated Ward F, dear Judy, is gone forever. I wish that you could obliterate it from your mind as absolutely as it is obliterated from the earth. Both in substance and in spirit the old John Grier is done for.I must tell you something funny. I never saw so many funny things in my life as happened through that night. When everybody there was in extreme negligee, most of the men in pajamas and ulsters, and all of them without collars, the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff put in a tardy appearance, arrayed as for an afternoon tea. He wore a pearl scarf pin and white spats! But he really was extremely helpful. He put his entire house at our disposal, and I turned over to him Miss Snaith in a state of hysterics; and her nerves so fully occupied him that he didn't get in our way the whole night through.I can't write any more details now; I've never been so rushed in the whole of my life. I'll just assure you that there's no slightest reason for you to cut your trip short. Five trustees were on the spot early Saturday morning, and we are all working like mad to get affairs into some semblance of order. Our asylum at the present moment is scattered over the entire township; but don't be unduly anxious. We know where all the children are. None of them is permanently mislaid. I didn't know that perfect strangers could be so kind. My opinion of the human race has gone up.I haven't seen the doctor. They telegraphed to New York for a surgeon, who set his leg. The break was pretty bad, and will take time. They don't think there are any internal injuries, though he is awfully battered up. As soon as we are allowed to see him I will send more detailed particulars. I really must stop if I am to catch tomorrow's steamer.Good-by. Don't worry. There are a dozen silver linings to this cloud that I'll write about tomorrow.SALLIE.Good heavens! here comes an automobile with J. F. Bretland in it!THE JOHN GRIER HOME,January 14.Dear Judy:Listen to this! J. F. Bretland read about our fire in a New York paper (I will say that the metropolitan press made the most of details), and he posted up here in a twitter of anxiety. His first question as he tumbled across our blackened threshold was,"Is Allegra safe?""Yes," said I."Thank God!" he cried, and dropped into a chair. "This is no place for children," he said severely, "and I have come to take her home. I want the boys, too," he added hastily before I had a chance to speak. "My wife and I have talked it over, and we have decided that since we are going to the trouble of starting a nursery, we might as well run it for three as for one."I led him up to my library, where our little family has been domiciled since the fire, and ten minutes later, when I was called down to confer with the trustees, I left J. F. Bretland with his new daughter on his knee and a son leaning against each arm, the proudest father in the United States.So, you see, our fire has accomplished one thing: those three children are settled for life. It is almost worth the loss.But I don't believe I told you how the fire started. There are so many things I haven't told you that my arm aches at the thought of writing them all. Sterry, we have since discovered, was spending the week end as our guest. After a bibulous evening passed at "Jack's Place," he returned to our carriage house, climbed in through a window, lighted a candle, made himself comfortable, and dropped asleep. He must have forgotten to put out the candle; anyway, the fire happened, and Sterry just escaped with his life. He is now in the town hospital, bathed in sweet oil, and painfully regretting his share in our troubles.I am pleased to learn that our insurance was pretty adequate, so the money loss won't be so tremendous, after all. As for other kinds of loss, there aren't any! Actually, nothing but gain so far as I can make out, barring, of course, our poor smashed-up doctor. Everybody has been wonderful; I didn't know that so much charity and kindness existed in the human race. Did I ever say anything against trustees? I take it back. Four of them posted up from New York the morning after the fire, and all of the local people have been wonderful. Even the Hon. Cy has been so occupied in remaking the morals of the five orphans quartered upon him that he hasn't caused any trouble at all.The fire occurred early Saturday morning, and Sunday the ministers in all the churches called for volunteers to accept in their houses one or two children as guests for three weeks, until the asylum could get its plant into working order again.It was inspiring to see the response. Every child was disposed of within half an hour. And consider what that means for the future: every one of those families is going to take a personal interest in this asylum from now on. Also, consider what it means for the children. They are finding out how a real family lives, and this is the first time that dozens of them have ever crossed the threshold of a private house.As for more permanent plans to take us through the winter, listen to all this. The country club has a caddies' clubhouse which they don't use in winter and which they have politely put at our disposal. It joins our land on the back, and we are fitting it up for fourteen children, with Miss Matthews in charge. Our dining room and kitchen still being intact, they will come here for meals and school, returning home at night all the better for half a mile walk. "The Pavilion on the Links" we are calling it.Then that nice motherly Mrs. Wilson, next door to the doctor's,—she who has been so efficient with our little Loretta,—has agreed to take in five more at four dollars a week each. I am leaving with her some of the most promising older girls who have shown housekeeping instincts, and would like to learn cooking on a decently small scale. Mrs. Wilson and her husband are such a wonderful couple, thrifty and industrious and simple and loving, I think it would do the girls good to observe them. A training class in wifehood!I told you about the Knowltop people on the east of us, who took in forty-seven youngsters the night of the fire, and how their entire house party turned themselves into emergency nursemaids? We relieved them of thirty-six the next day, but they still have eleven. Did I ever call Mr. Knowltop a crusty old curmudgeon? I take it back. I beg his pardon. He's a sweet lamb. Now, in the time of our need, what do you think that blessed man has done? He has fitted up an empty tenant house on the estate for our babies, has himself engaged an English trained baby nurse to take charge, and furnishes them with the superior milk from his own model dairy. He says he has been wondering for years what to do with that milk. He can't afford to sell it, because he loses four cents on every quart!The twelve older girls from dormitory A I am putting into the farmer's new cottage. The poor Turnfelts, who had occupied it just two days, are being shoved on into the village. But they wouldn't be any good in looking after the children, and I need their room. Three or four of these girls have been returned from foster homes as intractable, and they require pretty efficient supervision. So what do you think I've done? Telegraphed to Helen Brooks to chuck the publishers and take charge of my girls instead. You know she will be wonderful with them. She accepted provisionally. Poor Helen has had enough of this irrevocable contract business; she wants everything in life to be on trial!For the older boys something particularly nice has happened; we have received a gift of gratitude from J. F. Bretland. He went down to thank the doctor for Allegra. They had a long talk about the needs of the institution, and J. F. B. came back and gave me a check for $3000 to build the Indian camps on a substantial scale. He and Percy and the village architect have drawn up plans, and in two weeks, we hope, the tribes will move into winter quarters.What does it matter if my one hundred and seven children have been burned out, since they live in such a kind-hearted world as this?Friday.I suppose you are wondering why I don't vouchsafe some details about the doctor's condition. I can't give any first-hand information, since he won't see me. However, he has seen everybody except me—Betsy, Allegra, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Bretland, Percy, various trustees. They all report that he is progressing as comfortably as could be expected with two broken ribs and a fractured fibula. That, I believe, is the professional name of the particular leg bone he broke. He doesn't like to have a fuss made over him, and he won't pose gracefully as a hero. I myself, as grateful head of this institution, called on several different occasions to present my official thanks, but I was invariably met at the door with word that he was sleeping and did not wish to be disturbed. The first two times I believed Mrs. McGurk; after that—well, I know our doctor! So when it came time to send our little maid to prattle her unconscious good-bys to the man who had saved her life, I despatched her in charge of Betsy.I haven't an idea what is the matter with the man. He was friendly enough last week, but now, if I want an opinion from him, I have to send Percy to extract it. I do think that he might see me as the superintendent of the asylum, even if he doesn't wish our acquaintance to be on a personal basis. There is no doubt about it, our Sandy is Scotch!LATER.It is going to require a fortune in stamps to get this letter to Jamaica, but I do want you to know all the news, and we have never had so many exhilarating things happen since 1876, when we were founded. This fire has given us such a shock that we are going to be more alive for years to come. I believe that every institution ought to be burned to the ground every twenty-five years in order to get rid of old-fashioned equipment and obsolete ideas. I am superlatively glad now that we didn't spend Jervis's money last summer; it would have been intensively tragic to have had that burn. I don't mind so much about John Grier's, since he made it in a patent medicine which, I hear, contained opium.As to the remnant of us that the fire left behind, it is already boarded up and covered with tar-paper, and we are living along quite comfortably in our portion of a house. It affords sufficient room for the staff and the children's dining room and kitchen, and more permanent plans can be made later.Do you perceive what has happened to us? The good Lord has heard my prayer, and the John Grier Home is a cottage institution!I am,The busiest person north of the equator,S. McBRIDE.THE JOHN GRIER HOME,January 16.Dear Gordon:Please, please behave yourself, and don't make things harder than they are. It's absolutely out of the question for me to give up the asylum this instant. You ought to realize that I can't abandon my chicks just when they are so terribly in need of me. Neither am I ready to drop this blasted philanthropy. (You can see how your language looks in my handwriting!)You have no cause to worry. I am not overworking. I am enjoying it; never was so busy and happy in my life. The papers made the fire out much more lurid than it really was. That picture of me leaping from the roof with a baby under each arm was overdrawn. One or two of the children have sore throats, and our poor doctor is in a plaster cast. But we're all alive, thank Heaven! and are going to pull through without permanent scars.I can't write details now; I'm simply rushed to death. And don't come—please! Later, when things have settled just a little, you and I must have a talk about you and me, but I want time to think about it first.S.January 21.Dear Judy:Helen Brooks is taking hold of those fourteen fractious girls in a most masterly fashion. The job is quite the toughest I had to offer, and she likes it. I think she is going to be a valuable addition to our staff.And I forgot to tell you about Punch. When the fire occurred, those two nice women who kept him all summer were on the point of catching a train for California—and they simply tucked him under their arms, along with their luggage, and carried him off. So Punch spends the winter in Pasadena and I rather fancy he is theirs for good. Do you wonder that I am in an exalted mood over all these happenings?LATER.Poor bereaved Percy has just been spending the evening with me, because I am supposed to understand his troubles. Why must I be supposed to understand everybody's troubles? It's awfully wearing to be pouring out sympathy from an empty heart. The poor boy at present is pretty low, but I rather suspect—with Betsy's aid—that he will pull through. He is just on the edge of falling in love with Betsy, but he doesn't know it. He's in the stage now where he's sort of enjoying his troubles. He feels himself a tragic hero, a man who has suffered deeply. But I notice that when Betsy is about, he offers cheerful assistance in whatever work is toward.Gordon telegraphed today that he is coming tomorrow. I am dreading the interview, for I know we are going to have an altercation. He wrote the day after the fire and begged me to "chuck the asylum" and get married immediately, and now he's coming to argue it out. I can't make him understand that a job involving the happiness of one hundred or so children can't be chucked with such charming insouciance. I tried my best to keep him away, but, like the rest of his sex, he's stubborn. Oh dear, I don't know what's ahead of us! I wish I could glance into next year for a moment.The doctor is still in his plaster cast, but I hear is doing well, after a grumbly fashion. He is able to sit up a little every day and to receive a carefully selected list of visitors. Mrs. McGurk sorts them out at the door, and repudiates the ones she doesn't like.Good-by. I'd write some more, but I'm so sleepy that my eyes are shutting on me. (The idiom is Sadie Kate's.) I must go to bed and get some sleep against the one hundred and seven troubles of tomorrow.With love to the Pendletons,S. McB.January 22.Dear Judy:This letter has nothing to do with the John Grier Home. It's merely from Sallie McBride.Do you remember when we read Huxley's letters our senior year? That book contained a phrase which has stuck in my memory ever since: "There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks oneself on." It's terribly true; and the trouble is that you can't always recognize your Cape Horn when you see it. The sailing is sometimes pretty foggy, and you're wrecked before you know it.I've been realizing of late that I have reached the Cape Horn of my own life. I entered upon my engagement to Gordon honestly and hopefully, but little by little I've grown doubtful of the outcome. The girl he loves is not the ME I want to be. It's the ME I've been trying to grow away from all this last year. I'm not sure she ever really existed. Gordon just imagined she did. Anyway, she doesn't exist any more, and the only fair course both to him and to myself was to end it.We no longer have any interests in common; we are not friends. He doesn't comprehend it; he thinks that I am making it up, that all I have to do is to take an interest in his life, and everything will turn out happily. Of course I do take an interest when he's with me. I talk about the things he wants to talk about, and he doesn't know that there's a whole part of me—the biggest part of me—that simply doesn't meet him at any point. I pretend when I am with him. I am not myself, and if we were to live together in constant daily intercourse, I'd have to keep on pretending all my life. He wants me to watch his face and smile when he smiles and frown when he frowns. He can't realize that I'm an individual just as much as he is.I have social accomplishments. I dress well, I'm spectacular, I would be an ideal hostess in a politician's household—and that's why he likes me.Anyway, I suddenly saw with awful distinctness that if I kept on I'd be in a few years where Helen Brooks is. She's a far better model of married life for me to contemplate just this moment than you, dear Judy. I think that such a spectacle as you and Jervis is a menace to society. You look so happy and peaceful and companionable that you induce a defenseless onlooker to rush off and snap up the first man she meets—and he's always the wrong man.Anyway, Gordon and I have quarreled definitely and finally. I should rather have ended without a quarrel, but considering his temperament,—and mine, too, I must confess,—we had to go off in a big smoky explosion. He came yesterday afternoon, after I'd written him not to come, and we went walking over Knowltop. For three and a half hours we paced back and forth over that windy moor and discussed ourselves to the bottommost recesses of our beings. No one can ever say the break came through misunderstanding each other!It ended by Gordon's going, never to return. As I stood there at the end and watched him drop out of sight over the brow of the hill, and realized that I was free and alone and my own master well, Judy, such a sense of joyous relief, of freedom, swept over me! I can't tell you; I don't believe any happily married person could ever realize how wonderfully, beautifully ALONE I felt. I wanted to throw my arms out and embrace the whole waiting world that belonged suddenly to me. Oh, it is such a relief to have it settled! I faced the truth the night of the fire when I saw the old John Grier go, and realized that a new John Grier would be built in its place and that I wouldn't be here to do it. A horrible jealousy clutched at my heart. I couldn't give it up, and during those agonizing moments while I thought we had lost our doctor, I realized what his life meant, and how much more significant than Gordon's. And I knew then that I couldn't desert him. I had to go on and carry out all of the plans we made together.I don't seem to be telling you anything but a mess of words, I am so full of such a mess of crowding emotions. I want to talk and talk and talk myself into coherence. But, anyway, I stood alone in the winter twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free.And then I ran and leaped and skipped down the hill and across the pastures toward our iron confines, and I sang to myself. Oh, it was a scandalous proceeding, when, according to all precedent, I should have gone trailing home with a broken wing. I never gave one thought to poor Gordon, who was carrying a broken, bruised, betrayed heart to the railroad station.As I entered the house I was greeted by the joyous clatter of the children trooping to their supper. They were suddenly MINE, and lately, as my doom became more and more imminent, they had seemed fading away into little strangers. I seized the three nearest and hugged them hard. I have suddenly found such new life and exuberance, I feel as though I had been released from prison and were free. I feel,—oh, I'll stop,—I just want you to know the truth. Don't show Jervis this letter, but tell him what's in it in a decently subdued and mournful fashion.It's midnight now, and I'm going to try to go to sleep. It's wonderful not to be going to marry some one you don't want to marry. I'm glad of all these children's needs, I'm glad of Helen Brooks, and, yes, of the fire, and everything that has made me see clearly. There's never been a divorce in my family, and they would have hated it.I know I'm horribly egotistical and selfish; I ought to be thinking of poor Gordon's broken heart. But really it would just be a pose if I pretended to be very sorrowful. He'll find some one else with just as conspicuous hair as mine, who will make just as effective a hostess, and who won't be bothered by any of these damned modern ideas about public service and woman's mission and all the rest of the tomfoolery the modern generation of women is addicted to. (I paraphrase, and soften our young man's heartbroken utterances.)Good-by, dear people. How I wish I could stand with you on your beach and look across the blue, blue sea! I salute the Spanish main.ADDIO! SALLIE.January 27.Dear Dr. MacRae:I wonder if this note will be so fortunate as to find you awake? Perhaps you are not aware that I have called four times to offer thanks and consolation in my best bed-side manner? I am touched by the news that Mrs. McGurk's time is entirely occupied in taking in flowers and jelly and chicken broth, donated by the adoring ladies of the parish to the ungracious hero in a plaster cast. I know that you find a cap of homespun more comfortable than a halo, but I really do think that you might have regarded me in a different light from the hysterical ladies in question. You and I used to be friends (intermittently), and though there are one or two details in our past intercourse that might better be expunged, still I don't see why we should let them upset our entire relationship. Can't we be sensible and expunge them?The fire has brought out such a lot of unexpected kindliness and charity, I wish it might bring out a little from you. You see, Sandy, I know you well. You may pose to the world as being gruff and curt and ungracious and scientific and inhuman and S C O T C H, but you can't fool me. My newly trained psychological eye has been upon you for ten months, and I have applied the Binet test. You are really kind and sympathetic and wise and forgiving and big, so please be at home the next time I come to see you, and we will perform a surgical operation upon Time and amputate five months.Do you remember the Sunday afternoon we ran away, and what a nice time we had? It is now the day after that.SALLIE McBRIDE.P.S. If I condescend to call upon you again, please condescend to see me, for I assure you I won't try more than once! Also, I assure you that I won't drip tears on your counterpane or try to kiss your hand, as I hear one admiring lady did.THE JOHN GRIER HOME,Thursday.Dear Enemy:You see, I'm feeling very friendly toward you this moment. When I call you "MacRae" I don't like you, and when I call you "Enemy" I do.Sadie Kate delivered your note (as an afterthought). And it's a very creditable production for a left-handed man; I thought at first glance it was from Punch.You may expect me tomorrow at four, and mind you're awake! I'm glad that you think we're friends. Really, I feel that I've got back something quite precious which I had carelessly mislaid.S. McB.P.S. Java caught cold the night of the fire and he has the toothache. He sits and holds his cheek like a poor little kiddie.Thursday, January 29.Dear Judy:Those must have been ten terribly incoherent pages I dashed off to you last week. Did you respect my command to destroy that letter? I should not care to have it appear in my collected correspondence. I know that my state of mind is disgraceful, shocking, scandalous, but one really can't help the way one feels. It is usually considered a pleasant sensation to be engaged, but, oh, it is nothing compared with the wonderful untrammeled, joyous, free sensation of being unengaged! I have had a terribly unstable feeling these last few months, and now at last I am settled. No one ever looked forward to spinsterhood more thankfully than I.Our fire, I have come to believe, was providential. It was sent from heaven to clear the way for a new John Grier. We are already deep in plans for cottages. I favor gray stucco, Betsy leans to brick, and Percy, half-timber. I don't know what our poor doctor would prefer; olive green with a mansard roof appears to be his taste.With ten different kitchens to practice in, won't our children learn how to cook! I am already looking about for ten loving house mothers to put in charge. I think, in fact, I'll search for eleven, in order to have one for Sandy. He's as pathetically in need of a little mothering as any of the chicks.It must be pretty dispiriting to come home every night to the ministrations of Mrs. McGur-rk.How I do not like that woman! She has with complacent firmness told me four different times that the dochther was ashleep and not wantin' to be disturbed. I haven't set eyes on him yet, and I have just about finished being polite. However, I waive judgment until tomorrow at four, when I am to pay a short, unexciting call of half an hour. He made the appointment himself, and if she tells me again that he is ashleep, I shall give her a gentle push and tip her over (she's very fat and unstable) and, planting a foot firmly on her stomach, pursue my way tranquilly in and up. Luellen, formerly chauffeur, chambermaid, and gardener, is now also trained nurse. I am eager to see how he looks in a white cap and apron.The mail has just come, with a letter from Mrs. Bretland, telling how happy they are to have the children. She inclosed their first photograph—all packed in a governess cart, with Clifford proudly holding the reins, and a groom at the pony's head. How is that for three late inmates of the John Grier Home?It's all very inspiring when I think of their futures, but a trifle sad when I remember their poor father, and how he worked himself to death for those three chicks who are going to forget him. The Bretlands will do their best to accomplish that. They are jealous of any outside influence and want to make the babies wholly theirs. After all, I think the natural way is best—for each family to produce its own children, and keep them.Friday.I saw the doctor today. He's a pathetic sight, consisting mostly of bandages. Somehow or other we got our misunderstandings all made up. Isn't it dreadful the way two human beings, both endowed with fair powers of speech, can manage to convey nothing of their psychological processes to each other?I haven't understood his mental attitude from the first, and he even yet doesn't understand mine. This grim reticence that we Northern people struggle so hard to maintain! I don't know after all but that the excitable Southern safety valve method is the best.But, Judy, such a dreadful thing—do you remember last year when he visited that psychopathic institution, and stayed ten days, and I made such a silly fuss about it? Oh, my dear, the impossible things I do! He went to attend his wife's funeral. She died there in the institution. Mrs. McGurk knew it all the time, and might have added it to the rest of her news, but she didn't.He told me all about her, very sweetly. The poor man for years and years has undergone a terrible strain, and I fancy her death is a blessed relief. He confesses that he knew at the time of his marriage that he ought not to marry her, he knew all about her nervous instability; but he thought, being a doctor, that he could overcome it, and she was beautiful! He gave up his city practice and came to the country on her account. And then after the little girl's birth she went all to pieces, and he had to "put her away," to use Mrs. McGurk's phrase. The child is six now, a sweet, lovely little thing to look at, but, I judge from what he said, quite abnormal. He has a trained nurse with her always. Just think of all that tragedy looming over our poor patient good doctor, for he is patient, despite being the most impatient man that ever lived!Thank Jervis for his letter. He's a dear man, and I'm glad to see him getting his deserts. What fun we are going to have when you get back to Shadywell, and we lay our plans for a new John Grier! I feel as though I had spent this past year learning, and am now just ready to begin. We'll turn this into the nicest orphan asylum that ever lived. I'm so absurdly happy at the prospect that I start in the morning with a spring, and go about my various businesses singing inside.The John Grier Home sends its blessing to the two best friends it ever had!ADDIO! SALLIE. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,Saturday at half-past six in the morning!My dearest Enemy:"Some day soon something nice is going to happen."Weren't you surprised when you woke up this morning and remembered the truth? I was! I couldn't think for about two minutes what made me so happy.It's not light yet, but I'm wide awake and excited and having to write to you. I shall despatch this note by the first to-be-trusted little orphan who appears, and it will go up on your breakfast tray along with your oatmeal.I shall follow VERY PROMPTLY at four o'clock this afternoon. Do you think Mrs. McGurk will ever countenance the scandal if I stay two hours, and no orphan for a chaperon?It was in all good faith, Sandy, that I promised not to kiss your hand or drip tears on the counterpane, but I'm afraid I did both—or worse! Positively, I didn't suspect how much I cared for you till I crossed the threshold and saw you propped up against the pillows, all covered with bandages, and your hair singed off. You are a sight! If I love you now, when fully one third of you is plaster of Paris and surgical dressing, you can imagine how I'm going to love you when it's all you!But my dear, dear Robin, what a foolish man you are! How should I ever have dreamed all those months that you were caring for me when you acted so abominably S C O T C H? With most men, behavior like yours would not be considered a mark of affection. I wish you had just given me a glimmering of an idea of the truth, and maybe you would have saved us both a few heartaches.But we mustn't be looking back; we must look forward and be grateful. The two happiest things in life are going to be ours, a FRIENDLY marriage and work that we love.Yesterday, after leaving you, I walked back to the asylum sort of dazed. I wanted to get by myself and THINK, but instead of being by myself, I had to have Betsy and Percy and Mrs. Livermore for dinner (already invited) and then go down and talk to the children. Friday night-social evening. They had a lot of new records for the victrola, given by Mrs. Livermore, and I had to sit politely and listen to them. And, my dear—you'll think this funny—the last thing they played was "John Anderson, my jo John," and suddenly I found myself crying! I had to snatch up the nearest orphan and hug her hard, with my head buried in her shoulder, to keep them all from seeing.John Anderson, my jo John,We clamb the hill thegither,And monie a canty day, John,We've had wi' ane anither;Now we maun totter down, John,But hand in hand we'll go,And sleep thegither at the foot,John Anderson, my jo.I wonder, when we are old and bent and tottery, can you and I look back, with no regrets, on monie a canty day we've had wi' ane anither? It's nice to look forward to, isn't it—a life of work and play and little daily adventures side by side with somebody you love? I'm not afraid of the future any more. I don't mind growing old with you, Sandy. "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."The reason I've grown to love these orphans is because they need me so, and that's the reason—at least one of the reasons—I've grown to love you. You're a pathetic figure of a man, my dear, and since you won't make yourself comfortable, you must be MADE comfortable.We'll build a house on the hillside just beyond the asylum—how does a yellow Italian villa strike you, or preferably a pink one? Anyway, it won't be green. And it won't have a mansard roof. And we'll have a big cheerful living room, all fireplace and windows and view, and no McGURK. Poor old thing! won't she be in a temper and cook you a dreadful dinner when she hears the news! But we won't tell her for a long, long time—or anybody else. It's too scandalous a proceeding right on top of my own broken engagement. I wrote to Judy last night, and with unprecedented self-control I never let fall so much as a hint. I'm growing Scotch mysel'!Perhaps I didn't tell you the exact truth, Sandy, when I said I hadn't known how much I cared. I think it came to me the night the John Grier burned. When you were up under that blazing roof, and for the half hour that followed, when we didn't know whether or not you would live, I can't tell you what agonies I went through. It seemed to me, if you did go, that I would never get over it all my life; that somehow to have let the best friend I ever had pass away with a dreadful chasm of misunderstanding between us—well—I couldn't wait for the moment when I should be allowed to see you and talk out all that I have been shutting inside me for five months. And then—you know that you gave strict orders to keep me out; and it hurt me dreadfully. How should I suspect that you really wanted to see me more than any of the others, and that it was just that terrible Scotch moral sense that was holding you back? You are a very good actor, Sandy. But, my dear, if ever in our lives again we have the tiniest little cloud of a misunderstanding, let's promise not to shut it up inside ourselves, but to TALK.Last night, after they all got off,—early, I am pleased to say, since the chicks no longer live at home,—I came upstairs and finished my letter to Judy, and then I looked at the telephone and struggled with temptation. I wanted to call up 505 and say good night to you. But I didn't dare. I'm still quite respectably bashful! So, as the next best thing to talking with you, I got out Burns and read him for an hour. I dropped asleep with all those Scotch love songs running in my head, and here I am at daybreak writing them to you.Good-by, Robin lad, I lo'e you weel.SALLIE.
I won't write more now, because fifty children are writing thank-you letters, and poor Aunt Judy will be buried beneath her mail when this week's steamer gets in.
My love to the Pendletons.
S. McB.
P.S. Singapore sends his love to Togo, and is sorry he bit him on the ear.
JOHN GRIER HOME,
December 30.
O DEAR, Gordon, I have been reading the most upsetting book!
I tried to talk some French the other day, and not making out very well, decided that I had better take my French in hand if I didn't want to lose it entirely. That Scotch doctor of ours has mercifully abandoned my scientific education, so I have a little time at my own disposal. By some unlucky chance I began with "Numa Roumestan," by Daudet. It is a terribly disturbing book for a girl to read who is engaged to a politician. Read it, Gordon dear, and assiduously train your character away from Numa's. It's the story of a politician who is disquietingly fascinating (like you). Who is adored by all who know him (like you). Who has a most persuasive way of talking and makes wonderful speeches (again like you). He is worshiped by everybody, and they all say to his wife, "What a happy life you must lead, knowing so intimately that wonderful man!"
But he wasn't very wonderful when he came home to her—only when he had an audience and applause. He would drink with every casual acquaintance, and be gay and bubbling and expansive; and then return morose and sullen and down. "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," is the burden of the book.
I read it till twelve last night, and honestly I didn't sleep for being scared. I know you'll be angry, but really and truly, Gordon dear, there's just a touch too much truth in it for my entire amusement. I didn't mean ever to refer again to that unhappy matter of August 20,—we talked it all out at the time,—but you know perfectly that you need a bit of watching. And I don't like the idea. I want to have a feeling of absolute confidence and stability about the man I marry. I never could live in a state of anxious waiting for him to come home.
Read "Numa" for yourself, and you'll see the woman's point of view. I'm not patient or meek or long-suffering in any way, and I'm a little afraid of what I'm capable of doing if I have the provocation. My heart has to be in a thing in order to make it work, and, oh, I do so want our marriage to work!
Please forgive me for writing all this. I don't mean that I really think you'll be a "joy of the street, and sorrow of the home." It's just that I didn't sleep last night, and I feel sort of hollow behind the eyes.
May the year that's coming bring good counsel and happiness and tranquillity to both of us!
As ever,
S.
January 1.
Dear Judy:
Something terribly sort of queer has happened, and positively I don't know whether it did happen or whether I dreamed it. I'll tell you from the beginning, and I think it might be as well if you burned this letter; it's not quite proper for Jervis's eyes.
You remember my telling you the case of Thomas Kehoe, whom we placed out last June? He had an alcoholic heredity on both sides, and as a baby seems to have been fattened on beer instead of milk. He entered the John Grier at the age of nine, and twice, according to his record in the Doomsday Book, he managed to get himself intoxicated, once on beer stolen from some workmen, and once (and thoroughly) on cooking brandy. You can see with what misgivings we placed him out. But we warned the family (hard-working temperate farming people) and hoped for the best.
Yesterday the family telegraphed that they could keep him no longer. Would I please meet him on the six o'clock train? Turnfelt met the six o'clock train. No boy. I sent a night message telling of his non-arrival and asking for particulars.
I stayed up later than usual last night putting my desk in order and—sort of making up my mind to face the New Year. Toward twelve I suddenly realized that the hour was late and that I was very tired. I had begun getting ready for bed when I was startled by a banging on the front door. I stuck my head out of the window and demanded who was there.
"Tommy Kehoe," said a very shaky voice.
I went down and opened the door, and that lad, sixteen years old, tumbled in, dead drunk. Thank Heaven! Percy Witherspoon was within call, and not away off in the Indian camp.
I roused him, and together we conveyed Thomas to our guest room, the only decently isolated spot in the building. Then I telephoned for the doctor, who, I am afraid, had already had a long day. He came, and we put in a pretty terrible night. It developed afterward that the boy had brought along with his luggage a bottle of liniment belonging to his employer. It was made half of alcohol and half of witch hazel; and Thomas had refreshed his journey with this!
He was in such shape that positively I didn't think we'd pull him through—and I hoped we wouldn't. If I were a physician, I'd let such cases gently slip away for the good of society; but you should have seen Sandy work! That terrible lifesaving instinct of his was aroused, and he fought with every inch of energy he possessed.
I made black coffee, and helped all I could, but the details were pretty messy, and I left the two men to deal with him alone and went back to my room. But I didn't attempt to go to bed; I was afraid they might be wanting me again. Toward four o'clock Sandy came to my library with word that the boy was asleep and that Percy had moved up a cot and would sleep in his room the rest of the night. Poor Sandy looked sort of ashen and haggard and done with life. As I looked at him, I thought about how desperately he worked to save others, and never saved himself, and about that dismal home of his, with never a touch of cheer, and the horrible tragedy in the background of his life. All the rancor I've been saving up seemed to vanish, and a wave of sympathy swept over me. I stretched my hand out to him; he stretched his out to me. And suddenly—I don't know—something electric happened. In another moment we were in each other's arms. He loosened my hands, and put me down in the big armchair.
"My God! Sallie, do you think I'm made of iron?" he said and walked out. I went to sleep in the chair, and when I woke the sun was shining in my eyes and Jane was standing over me in amazed consternation.
This morning at eleven he came back, looked me coldly in the eye without so much as the flicker of an eyelash, and told me that Thomas was to have hot milk every two hours and that the spots in Maggie Peters's throat must be watched.
Here we are back on our old standing, and positively I don't know but what I dreamed that one minute in the night!
But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I should discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a perfectly good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance in Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down to a few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other respectable engaged girl.
I repeat very firmly that this letter isn't for Jervis's consumption. Tear it into little pieces and scatter them in the Caribbean.
S.
January 3.
Dear Gordon:
You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my style is not up to standard. But you know already—you have known a long time—that I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a lot of such things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My dear boy, I only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely true. You don't fill all my thoughts; 107 orphans do that. And I really am quite comfortably alive whether you are here or not. I have to be natural. You surely don't want me to pretend more desolation than I feel. But I do love to see you,—you know that perfectly,—and I am disappointed when you can't come. I fully appreciate all your charming qualities, but, my dear boy, I CAN'T be sentimental on paper. I am always thinking about the hotel chambermaid who reads the letters you casually leave on your bureau. You needn't expostulate that you carry them next your heart, for I know perfectly well that you don't.
Forgive me for that last letter if it hurt your feelings. Since I came to this asylum I am extremely touchy on the subject of drink. You would be, too, if you had seen what I have seen. Several of my chicks are the sad result of alcoholic parents, and they are never going to have a fair chance all their lives. You can't look about a place like this without "aye keeping up a terrible thinking."
You are right, I am afraid, about its being a woman's trick to make a great show of forgiving a man, and then never letting him hear the end of it. Well, Gordon, I positively don't know what the word "forgiving" means. It can't include "forgetting," for that is a physiological process, and does not result from an act of the will. We all have a collection of memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are just the ones that insist upon sticking. If "forgiving" means promising never to speak of a thing again, I can doubtless manage that. But it isn't always the wisest way to shut an unpleasant memory inside you. It grows and grows, and runs all through you like a poison.
Oh dear! I really didn't mean to be saying all this. I try to be the cheerful, carefree (and somewhat light-headed) Sallie you like best; but I've come in touch with a great deal of REALNESS during this last year, and I'm afraid I've grown into a very different person from the girl you fell in love with. I'm no longer a gay young thing playing with life. I know it pretty thoroughly now, and that means that I can't be always laughing.
I know this is another beastly uncheerful letter,—as bad as the last, and maybe worse,—but if you knew what we've just been through! A boy—sixteen—of unspeakable heredity has nearly poisoned himself with a disgusting mixture of alcohol and witch hazel. We have been working three days over him, and are just sure now that he is going to recuperate sufficiently to do it again! "It's a gude warld, but they're ill that's in 't."
Please excuse that Scotch—it slipped out. Please excuse everything.
SALLIE.
January 11.
Dear Judy:
I hope my two cablegrams didn't give you too terrible a shock. I would have waited to let the first news come by letter, with a chance for details, but I was so afraid you might hear it in some indirect way. The whole thing is dreadful enough, but no lives were lost, and only one serious accident. We can't help shuddering at the thought of how much worse it might have been, with over a hundred sleeping children in this firetrap of a building. That new fire escape was absolutely useless. The wind was blowing toward it, and the flames simply enveloped it. We saved them all by the center stairs—but I'll begin at the beginning, and tell the whole story.
It had rained all day Friday, thanks to a merciful Providence, and the roofs were thoroughly soaked. Toward night it began to freeze, and the rain turned to sleet. By ten o'clock, when I went to bed the wind was blowing a terrible gale from the northwest, and everything loose about the building was banging and rattling. About two o'clock I suddenly started wide awake, with a bright light in my eyes. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The carriage house was a mass of flames, and a shower of sparks was sweeping over our eastern wing. I ran to the bathroom and leaned out of the window. I could see that the roof over the nursery was already blazing in half a dozen places.
Well, my dear, my heart just simply didn't beat for as much as a minute. I thought of those seventeen babies up under that roof, and I couldn't swallow. I finally managed to get my shaking knees to work again, and I dashed back to the hall, grabbing my automobile coat as I ran.
I drummed on Betsy's and Miss Matthews' and Miss Snaith's doors, just as Mr. Witherspoon, who had also been wakened by the light, came tumbling upstairs three steps at a time, struggling into an overcoat as he ran.
"Get all the children down to the dining room, babies first," I gasped. "I'll turn in the alarm."
He dashed on up to the third floor while I ran to the telephone—and oh, I thought I'd never get Central! She was sound asleep.
"The John Grier Home is burning! Turn in the fire alarm and rouse the village. Give me 505," I said.
In one second I had the doctor. Maybe I wasn't glad to hear his cool, unexcited voice!
"We're on fire!" I cried. "Come quick, and bring all the men you can!"
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Fill the bathtubs with water and put in blankets." And he hung up.
I dashed back to the hall. Betsy was ringing our fire bell, and Percy had already routed out his Indian tribes in dormitories B and C.
Our first thought was not to stop the fire, but to get the children to a place of safety. We began in G, and went from crib to crib, snatching a baby and a blanket, and rushing them to the door, and handing them out to the Indians, who lugged them downstairs. Both G and F were full of smoke, and the children so dead asleep that we couldn't rouse them to a walking state.
Many times during the next hour did I thank Providence—and Percy Witherspoon—for those vociferous fire drills we have suffered weekly. The twenty-four oldest boys, under his direction, never lost their heads for a second. They divided into four tribes, and sprang to their posts like little soldiers.
Two tribes helped in the work of clearing the dormitories and keeping the terrified children in order. One tribe worked the hose from the cupola tank until the firemen came, and the rest devoted themselves to salvage. They spread sheets on the floor, dumped the contents of lockers and bureau drawers into them, and bundled them down the stairs. All of the extra clothes were saved except those the children had actually been wearing the day before, and most of the staff's things. But clothes, bedding—everything belonging to G and F went. The rooms were too full of smoke to make it safe to enter after we had got out the last child.
By the time the doctor arrived with Luellen and two neighbors he had picked up, we were marching the last dormitory down to the kitchen, the most remote corner from the fire. The poor chicks were mainly barefooted and wrapped in blankets. We told them to bring their clothes when we wakened them, but in their fright they thought only of getting out.
By this time the halls were so full of smoke we could scarcely breathe. It looked as though the whole building would go, though the wind was blowing away from my west wing.
Another automobile full of retainers from Knowltop came up almost immediately, and they all fell to fighting the fire. The regular fire department didn't come for ten minutes after that. You see, they have only horses, and we are three miles out, and the roads pretty bad. It was a dreadful night, cold and sleety, and such a wind blowing that you could scarcely stand up. The men climbed out on the roof, and worked in their stocking feet to keep from slipping off. They beat out the sparks with wet blankets, and chopped, and squirted that tankful of water, and behaved like heroes.
The doctor meanwhile took charge of the children. Our first thought was to get them away to a place of safety, for if the whole building should go, we couldn't march them out of doors into that awful wind, with only their night clothes and blankets for protection. By this time several more automobiles full of men had come, and we requisitioned the cars.
Knowltop had providentially been opened for the week end in order to entertain a house party in honor of the old gentleman's sixty-seventh birthday. He was one of the first to arrive, and he put his entire place at our disposal. It was the nearest refuge, and we accepted it instantaneously. We bundled our twenty littlest tots into cars, and ran them down to the house. The guests, who were excitedly dressing in order to come to the fire, received the chicks and tucked them away into their own beds. This pretty well filled up all the available house room, but Mr. Reimer (Mr. Knowltop's family name) has just built a big new stucco barn, with a garage hitched to it, all nicely heated, and ready for us.
After the babies were disposed of in the house, those helpful guests got to work and fixed the barn to receive the next older kiddies. They covered the floor with hay, and spread blankets and carriage robes over it, and bedded down thirty of the children in rows like little calves. Miss Matthews and a nurse went with them, administered hot milk all around, and within half an hour the tots were sleeping as peacefully as in their little cribs.
But meanwhile we at the house were having sensations. The doctor's first question upon arrival had been:
"You've counted the children? You know they're all here?"
"We've made certain that every dormitory was empty before we left it," I replied.
You see, they couldn't be counted in that confusion. Twenty or so of the boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon to save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over bushels of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were running about underfoot and wailing dismally.
Well, after we had loaded and despatched about seven car loads of children, the doctor suddenly called out:
"Where's Allegra?"
There was a horrified silence. No one had seen her. And then Miss Snaith stood up and SHRIEKED. Betsy took her by the shoulders, and shook her into coherence.
It seems that she had thought Allegra was coming down with a cough, and in order to get her out of the cold, had moved her crib from the fresh air nursery into the store room—and then forgotten it.
Well, my dear, you know where the store room is! We simply stared at one another with white faces. By this time the whole east wing was gutted and the third-floor stairs in flames. There didn't seem a chance that the child was still alive. The doctor was the first to move. He snatched up a wet blanket that was lying in a soppy pile on the floor of the hall and sprang for the stairs. We yelled to him to come back. It simply looked like suicide; but he kept on, and disappeared into the smoke. I dashed outside and shouted to the firemen on the roof. The store room window was too little for a man to go through, and they hadn't opened it for fear of creating a draft.
I can't describe what happened in the next agonizing ten minutes. The third-floor stairs fell in with a crash and a burst of flame about five seconds after the doctor passed over them. We had given him up for lost when a shout went up from the crowd on the lawn, and he appeared for an instant at one of those dormer windows in the attic, and called for the firemen to put up a ladder. Then he disappeared, and it seemed to us that they'd never get that ladder in place; but they finally did, and two men went up. The opening of the window had created a draft, and they were almost overpowered by the volume of smoke that burst out at the top. After an eternity the doctor appeared again with a white bundle in his arms. He passed it out to the men, and then he staggered back and dropped out of sight!
I don't know what happened for the next few minutes; I turned away and shut my eyes. Somehow or other they got him out and halfway down the ladder, and then they let him slip. You see, he was unconscious from all the smoke he'd swallowed, and the ladder was slippery with ice and terribly wobbly. Anyway, when I looked again he was lying in a heap on the ground, with the crowd all running, and somebody yelling to give him air. They thought at first he was dead. But Dr. Metcalf from the village examined him, and said his leg was broken, and two ribs, and that aside from that he seemed whole. He was still unconscious when they put him on two of the baby mattresses that had been thrown out of the windows and laid him in the wagon that brought the ladders and started him home.
And the rest of us, left behind, kept right on with the work as though nothing had happened. The queer thing about a calamity like this is that there is so much to be done on every side that you don't have a moment to think, and you don't get any of your values straightened out until afterward. The doctor, without a moment's hesitation, had risked his life to save Allegra. It was the bravest thing I ever saw, and yet the whole business occupied only fifteen minutes out of that dreadful night. At the time, it was just an incident.
And he saved Allegra. She came out of that blanket with rumpled hair and a look of pleased surprise at the new game of peek-a-boo. She was smiling! The child's escape was little short of a miracle. The fire had started within three feet of her wall, but owing to the direction of the wind, it had worked away from her. If Miss Snaith had believed a little more in fresh air and had left the window open, the fire would have eaten back. But fortunately Miss Snaith does not believe in fresh air, and no such thing happened. If Allegra had gone, I never should have forgiven myself for not letting the Bretlands take her, and I know that Sandy wouldn't.
Despite all the loss, I can't be anything but happy when I think of the two horrible tragedies that have been averted. For seven minutes, while the doctor was penned in that blazing third floor, I lived through the agony of believing them both gone, and I start awake in the night trembling with horror.
But I'll try to tell you the rest. The firemen and the volunteers—particularly the chauffeur and stablemen from Knowltop—worked all night in an absolute frenzy. Our newest negro cook, who is a heroine in her own right, went out and started the laundry fire and made up a boilerful of coffee. It was her own idea. The non-combatants served it to the firemen when they relieved one another for a few minutes' rest, and it helped.
We got the remainder of the children off to various hospitable houses, except the older boys, who worked all night as well as any one. It was absolutely inspiring to see the way this entire township turned out and helped. People who haven't appeared to know that the asylum existed came in the middle of the night and put their whole houses at our disposal. They took the children in, gave them hot baths and hot soup, and tucked them into bed. And so far as I can make out, not one of my one hundred and seven chicks is any the worse for hopping about on drenched floors in their bare feet, not even the whooping cough cases.
It was broad daylight before the fire was sufficiently under control to let us know just what we had saved. I will report that my wing is entirely intact, though a little smoky, and the main corridor is pretty nearly all right up to the center staircase; after that everything is charred and drenched. The east wing is a blackened, roofless shell. Your hated Ward F, dear Judy, is gone forever. I wish that you could obliterate it from your mind as absolutely as it is obliterated from the earth. Both in substance and in spirit the old John Grier is done for.
I must tell you something funny. I never saw so many funny things in my life as happened through that night. When everybody there was in extreme negligee, most of the men in pajamas and ulsters, and all of them without collars, the Hon. Cyrus Wykoff put in a tardy appearance, arrayed as for an afternoon tea. He wore a pearl scarf pin and white spats! But he really was extremely helpful. He put his entire house at our disposal, and I turned over to him Miss Snaith in a state of hysterics; and her nerves so fully occupied him that he didn't get in our way the whole night through.
I can't write any more details now; I've never been so rushed in the whole of my life. I'll just assure you that there's no slightest reason for you to cut your trip short. Five trustees were on the spot early Saturday morning, and we are all working like mad to get affairs into some semblance of order. Our asylum at the present moment is scattered over the entire township; but don't be unduly anxious. We know where all the children are. None of them is permanently mislaid. I didn't know that perfect strangers could be so kind. My opinion of the human race has gone up.
I haven't seen the doctor. They telegraphed to New York for a surgeon, who set his leg. The break was pretty bad, and will take time. They don't think there are any internal injuries, though he is awfully battered up. As soon as we are allowed to see him I will send more detailed particulars. I really must stop if I am to catch tomorrow's steamer.
Good-by. Don't worry. There are a dozen silver linings to this cloud that I'll write about tomorrow.
SALLIE.
Good heavens! here comes an automobile with J. F. Bretland in it!
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
January 14.
Dear Judy:
Listen to this! J. F. Bretland read about our fire in a New York paper (I will say that the metropolitan press made the most of details), and he posted up here in a twitter of anxiety. His first question as he tumbled across our blackened threshold was,
"Is Allegra safe?"
"Yes," said I.
"Thank God!" he cried, and dropped into a chair. "This is no place for children," he said severely, "and I have come to take her home. I want the boys, too," he added hastily before I had a chance to speak. "My wife and I have talked it over, and we have decided that since we are going to the trouble of starting a nursery, we might as well run it for three as for one."
I led him up to my library, where our little family has been domiciled since the fire, and ten minutes later, when I was called down to confer with the trustees, I left J. F. Bretland with his new daughter on his knee and a son leaning against each arm, the proudest father in the United States.
So, you see, our fire has accomplished one thing: those three children are settled for life. It is almost worth the loss.
But I don't believe I told you how the fire started. There are so many things I haven't told you that my arm aches at the thought of writing them all. Sterry, we have since discovered, was spending the week end as our guest. After a bibulous evening passed at "Jack's Place," he returned to our carriage house, climbed in through a window, lighted a candle, made himself comfortable, and dropped asleep. He must have forgotten to put out the candle; anyway, the fire happened, and Sterry just escaped with his life. He is now in the town hospital, bathed in sweet oil, and painfully regretting his share in our troubles.
I am pleased to learn that our insurance was pretty adequate, so the money loss won't be so tremendous, after all. As for other kinds of loss, there aren't any! Actually, nothing but gain so far as I can make out, barring, of course, our poor smashed-up doctor. Everybody has been wonderful; I didn't know that so much charity and kindness existed in the human race. Did I ever say anything against trustees? I take it back. Four of them posted up from New York the morning after the fire, and all of the local people have been wonderful. Even the Hon. Cy has been so occupied in remaking the morals of the five orphans quartered upon him that he hasn't caused any trouble at all.
The fire occurred early Saturday morning, and Sunday the ministers in all the churches called for volunteers to accept in their houses one or two children as guests for three weeks, until the asylum could get its plant into working order again.
It was inspiring to see the response. Every child was disposed of within half an hour. And consider what that means for the future: every one of those families is going to take a personal interest in this asylum from now on. Also, consider what it means for the children. They are finding out how a real family lives, and this is the first time that dozens of them have ever crossed the threshold of a private house.
As for more permanent plans to take us through the winter, listen to all this. The country club has a caddies' clubhouse which they don't use in winter and which they have politely put at our disposal. It joins our land on the back, and we are fitting it up for fourteen children, with Miss Matthews in charge. Our dining room and kitchen still being intact, they will come here for meals and school, returning home at night all the better for half a mile walk. "The Pavilion on the Links" we are calling it.
Then that nice motherly Mrs. Wilson, next door to the doctor's,—she who has been so efficient with our little Loretta,—has agreed to take in five more at four dollars a week each. I am leaving with her some of the most promising older girls who have shown housekeeping instincts, and would like to learn cooking on a decently small scale. Mrs. Wilson and her husband are such a wonderful couple, thrifty and industrious and simple and loving, I think it would do the girls good to observe them. A training class in wifehood!
I told you about the Knowltop people on the east of us, who took in forty-seven youngsters the night of the fire, and how their entire house party turned themselves into emergency nursemaids? We relieved them of thirty-six the next day, but they still have eleven. Did I ever call Mr. Knowltop a crusty old curmudgeon? I take it back. I beg his pardon. He's a sweet lamb. Now, in the time of our need, what do you think that blessed man has done? He has fitted up an empty tenant house on the estate for our babies, has himself engaged an English trained baby nurse to take charge, and furnishes them with the superior milk from his own model dairy. He says he has been wondering for years what to do with that milk. He can't afford to sell it, because he loses four cents on every quart!
The twelve older girls from dormitory A I am putting into the farmer's new cottage. The poor Turnfelts, who had occupied it just two days, are being shoved on into the village. But they wouldn't be any good in looking after the children, and I need their room. Three or four of these girls have been returned from foster homes as intractable, and they require pretty efficient supervision. So what do you think I've done? Telegraphed to Helen Brooks to chuck the publishers and take charge of my girls instead. You know she will be wonderful with them. She accepted provisionally. Poor Helen has had enough of this irrevocable contract business; she wants everything in life to be on trial!
For the older boys something particularly nice has happened; we have received a gift of gratitude from J. F. Bretland. He went down to thank the doctor for Allegra. They had a long talk about the needs of the institution, and J. F. B. came back and gave me a check for $3000 to build the Indian camps on a substantial scale. He and Percy and the village architect have drawn up plans, and in two weeks, we hope, the tribes will move into winter quarters.
What does it matter if my one hundred and seven children have been burned out, since they live in such a kind-hearted world as this?
Friday.
I suppose you are wondering why I don't vouchsafe some details about the doctor's condition. I can't give any first-hand information, since he won't see me. However, he has seen everybody except me—Betsy, Allegra, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Bretland, Percy, various trustees. They all report that he is progressing as comfortably as could be expected with two broken ribs and a fractured fibula. That, I believe, is the professional name of the particular leg bone he broke. He doesn't like to have a fuss made over him, and he won't pose gracefully as a hero. I myself, as grateful head of this institution, called on several different occasions to present my official thanks, but I was invariably met at the door with word that he was sleeping and did not wish to be disturbed. The first two times I believed Mrs. McGurk; after that—well, I know our doctor! So when it came time to send our little maid to prattle her unconscious good-bys to the man who had saved her life, I despatched her in charge of Betsy.
I haven't an idea what is the matter with the man. He was friendly enough last week, but now, if I want an opinion from him, I have to send Percy to extract it. I do think that he might see me as the superintendent of the asylum, even if he doesn't wish our acquaintance to be on a personal basis. There is no doubt about it, our Sandy is Scotch!
LATER.
It is going to require a fortune in stamps to get this letter to Jamaica, but I do want you to know all the news, and we have never had so many exhilarating things happen since 1876, when we were founded. This fire has given us such a shock that we are going to be more alive for years to come. I believe that every institution ought to be burned to the ground every twenty-five years in order to get rid of old-fashioned equipment and obsolete ideas. I am superlatively glad now that we didn't spend Jervis's money last summer; it would have been intensively tragic to have had that burn. I don't mind so much about John Grier's, since he made it in a patent medicine which, I hear, contained opium.
As to the remnant of us that the fire left behind, it is already boarded up and covered with tar-paper, and we are living along quite comfortably in our portion of a house. It affords sufficient room for the staff and the children's dining room and kitchen, and more permanent plans can be made later.
Do you perceive what has happened to us? The good Lord has heard my prayer, and the John Grier Home is a cottage institution!
I am,
The busiest person north of the equator,
S. McBRIDE.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
January 16.
Dear Gordon:
Please, please behave yourself, and don't make things harder than they are. It's absolutely out of the question for me to give up the asylum this instant. You ought to realize that I can't abandon my chicks just when they are so terribly in need of me. Neither am I ready to drop this blasted philanthropy. (You can see how your language looks in my handwriting!)
You have no cause to worry. I am not overworking. I am enjoying it; never was so busy and happy in my life. The papers made the fire out much more lurid than it really was. That picture of me leaping from the roof with a baby under each arm was overdrawn. One or two of the children have sore throats, and our poor doctor is in a plaster cast. But we're all alive, thank Heaven! and are going to pull through without permanent scars.
I can't write details now; I'm simply rushed to death. And don't come—please! Later, when things have settled just a little, you and I must have a talk about you and me, but I want time to think about it first.
S.
January 21.
Dear Judy:
Helen Brooks is taking hold of those fourteen fractious girls in a most masterly fashion. The job is quite the toughest I had to offer, and she likes it. I think she is going to be a valuable addition to our staff.
And I forgot to tell you about Punch. When the fire occurred, those two nice women who kept him all summer were on the point of catching a train for California—and they simply tucked him under their arms, along with their luggage, and carried him off. So Punch spends the winter in Pasadena and I rather fancy he is theirs for good. Do you wonder that I am in an exalted mood over all these happenings?
LATER.
Poor bereaved Percy has just been spending the evening with me, because I am supposed to understand his troubles. Why must I be supposed to understand everybody's troubles? It's awfully wearing to be pouring out sympathy from an empty heart. The poor boy at present is pretty low, but I rather suspect—with Betsy's aid—that he will pull through. He is just on the edge of falling in love with Betsy, but he doesn't know it. He's in the stage now where he's sort of enjoying his troubles. He feels himself a tragic hero, a man who has suffered deeply. But I notice that when Betsy is about, he offers cheerful assistance in whatever work is toward.
Gordon telegraphed today that he is coming tomorrow. I am dreading the interview, for I know we are going to have an altercation. He wrote the day after the fire and begged me to "chuck the asylum" and get married immediately, and now he's coming to argue it out. I can't make him understand that a job involving the happiness of one hundred or so children can't be chucked with such charming insouciance. I tried my best to keep him away, but, like the rest of his sex, he's stubborn. Oh dear, I don't know what's ahead of us! I wish I could glance into next year for a moment.
The doctor is still in his plaster cast, but I hear is doing well, after a grumbly fashion. He is able to sit up a little every day and to receive a carefully selected list of visitors. Mrs. McGurk sorts them out at the door, and repudiates the ones she doesn't like.
Good-by. I'd write some more, but I'm so sleepy that my eyes are shutting on me. (The idiom is Sadie Kate's.) I must go to bed and get some sleep against the one hundred and seven troubles of tomorrow.
With love to the Pendletons,
S. McB.
January 22.
Dear Judy:
This letter has nothing to do with the John Grier Home. It's merely from Sallie McBride.
Do you remember when we read Huxley's letters our senior year? That book contained a phrase which has stuck in my memory ever since: "There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks oneself on." It's terribly true; and the trouble is that you can't always recognize your Cape Horn when you see it. The sailing is sometimes pretty foggy, and you're wrecked before you know it.
I've been realizing of late that I have reached the Cape Horn of my own life. I entered upon my engagement to Gordon honestly and hopefully, but little by little I've grown doubtful of the outcome. The girl he loves is not the ME I want to be. It's the ME I've been trying to grow away from all this last year. I'm not sure she ever really existed. Gordon just imagined she did. Anyway, she doesn't exist any more, and the only fair course both to him and to myself was to end it.
We no longer have any interests in common; we are not friends. He doesn't comprehend it; he thinks that I am making it up, that all I have to do is to take an interest in his life, and everything will turn out happily. Of course I do take an interest when he's with me. I talk about the things he wants to talk about, and he doesn't know that there's a whole part of me—the biggest part of me—that simply doesn't meet him at any point. I pretend when I am with him. I am not myself, and if we were to live together in constant daily intercourse, I'd have to keep on pretending all my life. He wants me to watch his face and smile when he smiles and frown when he frowns. He can't realize that I'm an individual just as much as he is.
I have social accomplishments. I dress well, I'm spectacular, I would be an ideal hostess in a politician's household—and that's why he likes me.
Anyway, I suddenly saw with awful distinctness that if I kept on I'd be in a few years where Helen Brooks is. She's a far better model of married life for me to contemplate just this moment than you, dear Judy. I think that such a spectacle as you and Jervis is a menace to society. You look so happy and peaceful and companionable that you induce a defenseless onlooker to rush off and snap up the first man she meets—and he's always the wrong man.
Anyway, Gordon and I have quarreled definitely and finally. I should rather have ended without a quarrel, but considering his temperament,—and mine, too, I must confess,—we had to go off in a big smoky explosion. He came yesterday afternoon, after I'd written him not to come, and we went walking over Knowltop. For three and a half hours we paced back and forth over that windy moor and discussed ourselves to the bottommost recesses of our beings. No one can ever say the break came through misunderstanding each other!
It ended by Gordon's going, never to return. As I stood there at the end and watched him drop out of sight over the brow of the hill, and realized that I was free and alone and my own master well, Judy, such a sense of joyous relief, of freedom, swept over me! I can't tell you; I don't believe any happily married person could ever realize how wonderfully, beautifully ALONE I felt. I wanted to throw my arms out and embrace the whole waiting world that belonged suddenly to me. Oh, it is such a relief to have it settled! I faced the truth the night of the fire when I saw the old John Grier go, and realized that a new John Grier would be built in its place and that I wouldn't be here to do it. A horrible jealousy clutched at my heart. I couldn't give it up, and during those agonizing moments while I thought we had lost our doctor, I realized what his life meant, and how much more significant than Gordon's. And I knew then that I couldn't desert him. I had to go on and carry out all of the plans we made together.
I don't seem to be telling you anything but a mess of words, I am so full of such a mess of crowding emotions. I want to talk and talk and talk myself into coherence. But, anyway, I stood alone in the winter twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free.
And then I ran and leaped and skipped down the hill and across the pastures toward our iron confines, and I sang to myself. Oh, it was a scandalous proceeding, when, according to all precedent, I should have gone trailing home with a broken wing. I never gave one thought to poor Gordon, who was carrying a broken, bruised, betrayed heart to the railroad station.
As I entered the house I was greeted by the joyous clatter of the children trooping to their supper. They were suddenly MINE, and lately, as my doom became more and more imminent, they had seemed fading away into little strangers. I seized the three nearest and hugged them hard. I have suddenly found such new life and exuberance, I feel as though I had been released from prison and were free. I feel,—oh, I'll stop,—I just want you to know the truth. Don't show Jervis this letter, but tell him what's in it in a decently subdued and mournful fashion.
It's midnight now, and I'm going to try to go to sleep. It's wonderful not to be going to marry some one you don't want to marry. I'm glad of all these children's needs, I'm glad of Helen Brooks, and, yes, of the fire, and everything that has made me see clearly. There's never been a divorce in my family, and they would have hated it.
I know I'm horribly egotistical and selfish; I ought to be thinking of poor Gordon's broken heart. But really it would just be a pose if I pretended to be very sorrowful. He'll find some one else with just as conspicuous hair as mine, who will make just as effective a hostess, and who won't be bothered by any of these damned modern ideas about public service and woman's mission and all the rest of the tomfoolery the modern generation of women is addicted to. (I paraphrase, and soften our young man's heartbroken utterances.)
Good-by, dear people. How I wish I could stand with you on your beach and look across the blue, blue sea! I salute the Spanish main.
ADDIO! SALLIE.
January 27.
Dear Dr. MacRae:
I wonder if this note will be so fortunate as to find you awake? Perhaps you are not aware that I have called four times to offer thanks and consolation in my best bed-side manner? I am touched by the news that Mrs. McGurk's time is entirely occupied in taking in flowers and jelly and chicken broth, donated by the adoring ladies of the parish to the ungracious hero in a plaster cast. I know that you find a cap of homespun more comfortable than a halo, but I really do think that you might have regarded me in a different light from the hysterical ladies in question. You and I used to be friends (intermittently), and though there are one or two details in our past intercourse that might better be expunged, still I don't see why we should let them upset our entire relationship. Can't we be sensible and expunge them?
The fire has brought out such a lot of unexpected kindliness and charity, I wish it might bring out a little from you. You see, Sandy, I know you well. You may pose to the world as being gruff and curt and ungracious and scientific and inhuman and S C O T C H, but you can't fool me. My newly trained psychological eye has been upon you for ten months, and I have applied the Binet test. You are really kind and sympathetic and wise and forgiving and big, so please be at home the next time I come to see you, and we will perform a surgical operation upon Time and amputate five months.
Do you remember the Sunday afternoon we ran away, and what a nice time we had? It is now the day after that.
SALLIE McBRIDE.
P.S. If I condescend to call upon you again, please condescend to see me, for I assure you I won't try more than once! Also, I assure you that I won't drip tears on your counterpane or try to kiss your hand, as I hear one admiring lady did.
THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
Thursday.
Dear Enemy:
You see, I'm feeling very friendly toward you this moment. When I call you "MacRae" I don't like you, and when I call you "Enemy" I do.
Sadie Kate delivered your note (as an afterthought). And it's a very creditable production for a left-handed man; I thought at first glance it was from Punch.
You may expect me tomorrow at four, and mind you're awake! I'm glad that you think we're friends. Really, I feel that I've got back something quite precious which I had carelessly mislaid.
S. McB.
P.S. Java caught cold the night of the fire and he has the toothache. He sits and holds his cheek like a poor little kiddie.
Thursday, January 29.
Dear Judy:
Those must have been ten terribly incoherent pages I dashed off to you last week. Did you respect my command to destroy that letter? I should not care to have it appear in my collected correspondence. I know that my state of mind is disgraceful, shocking, scandalous, but one really can't help the way one feels. It is usually considered a pleasant sensation to be engaged, but, oh, it is nothing compared with the wonderful untrammeled, joyous, free sensation of being unengaged! I have had a terribly unstable feeling these last few months, and now at last I am settled. No one ever looked forward to spinsterhood more thankfully than I.
Our fire, I have come to believe, was providential. It was sent from heaven to clear the way for a new John Grier. We are already deep in plans for cottages. I favor gray stucco, Betsy leans to brick, and Percy, half-timber. I don't know what our poor doctor would prefer; olive green with a mansard roof appears to be his taste.
With ten different kitchens to practice in, won't our children learn how to cook! I am already looking about for ten loving house mothers to put in charge. I think, in fact, I'll search for eleven, in order to have one for Sandy. He's as pathetically in need of a little mothering as any of the chicks.
It must be pretty dispiriting to come home every night to the ministrations of Mrs. McGur-rk.
How I do not like that woman! She has with complacent firmness told me four different times that the dochther was ashleep and not wantin' to be disturbed. I haven't set eyes on him yet, and I have just about finished being polite. However, I waive judgment until tomorrow at four, when I am to pay a short, unexciting call of half an hour. He made the appointment himself, and if she tells me again that he is ashleep, I shall give her a gentle push and tip her over (she's very fat and unstable) and, planting a foot firmly on her stomach, pursue my way tranquilly in and up. Luellen, formerly chauffeur, chambermaid, and gardener, is now also trained nurse. I am eager to see how he looks in a white cap and apron.
The mail has just come, with a letter from Mrs. Bretland, telling how happy they are to have the children. She inclosed their first photograph—all packed in a governess cart, with Clifford proudly holding the reins, and a groom at the pony's head. How is that for three late inmates of the John Grier Home?
It's all very inspiring when I think of their futures, but a trifle sad when I remember their poor father, and how he worked himself to death for those three chicks who are going to forget him. The Bretlands will do their best to accomplish that. They are jealous of any outside influence and want to make the babies wholly theirs. After all, I think the natural way is best—for each family to produce its own children, and keep them.
Friday.
I saw the doctor today. He's a pathetic sight, consisting mostly of bandages. Somehow or other we got our misunderstandings all made up. Isn't it dreadful the way two human beings, both endowed with fair powers of speech, can manage to convey nothing of their psychological processes to each other?
I haven't understood his mental attitude from the first, and he even yet doesn't understand mine. This grim reticence that we Northern people struggle so hard to maintain! I don't know after all but that the excitable Southern safety valve method is the best.
But, Judy, such a dreadful thing—do you remember last year when he visited that psychopathic institution, and stayed ten days, and I made such a silly fuss about it? Oh, my dear, the impossible things I do! He went to attend his wife's funeral. She died there in the institution. Mrs. McGurk knew it all the time, and might have added it to the rest of her news, but she didn't.
He told me all about her, very sweetly. The poor man for years and years has undergone a terrible strain, and I fancy her death is a blessed relief. He confesses that he knew at the time of his marriage that he ought not to marry her, he knew all about her nervous instability; but he thought, being a doctor, that he could overcome it, and she was beautiful! He gave up his city practice and came to the country on her account. And then after the little girl's birth she went all to pieces, and he had to "put her away," to use Mrs. McGurk's phrase. The child is six now, a sweet, lovely little thing to look at, but, I judge from what he said, quite abnormal. He has a trained nurse with her always. Just think of all that tragedy looming over our poor patient good doctor, for he is patient, despite being the most impatient man that ever lived!
Thank Jervis for his letter. He's a dear man, and I'm glad to see him getting his deserts. What fun we are going to have when you get back to Shadywell, and we lay our plans for a new John Grier! I feel as though I had spent this past year learning, and am now just ready to begin. We'll turn this into the nicest orphan asylum that ever lived. I'm so absurdly happy at the prospect that I start in the morning with a spring, and go about my various businesses singing inside.
The John Grier Home sends its blessing to the two best friends it ever had!
ADDIO! SALLIE. THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
Saturday at half-past six in the morning!
My dearest Enemy:
"Some day soon something nice is going to happen."
Weren't you surprised when you woke up this morning and remembered the truth? I was! I couldn't think for about two minutes what made me so happy.
It's not light yet, but I'm wide awake and excited and having to write to you. I shall despatch this note by the first to-be-trusted little orphan who appears, and it will go up on your breakfast tray along with your oatmeal.
I shall follow VERY PROMPTLY at four o'clock this afternoon. Do you think Mrs. McGurk will ever countenance the scandal if I stay two hours, and no orphan for a chaperon?
It was in all good faith, Sandy, that I promised not to kiss your hand or drip tears on the counterpane, but I'm afraid I did both—or worse! Positively, I didn't suspect how much I cared for you till I crossed the threshold and saw you propped up against the pillows, all covered with bandages, and your hair singed off. You are a sight! If I love you now, when fully one third of you is plaster of Paris and surgical dressing, you can imagine how I'm going to love you when it's all you!
But my dear, dear Robin, what a foolish man you are! How should I ever have dreamed all those months that you were caring for me when you acted so abominably S C O T C H? With most men, behavior like yours would not be considered a mark of affection. I wish you had just given me a glimmering of an idea of the truth, and maybe you would have saved us both a few heartaches.
But we mustn't be looking back; we must look forward and be grateful. The two happiest things in life are going to be ours, a FRIENDLY marriage and work that we love.
Yesterday, after leaving you, I walked back to the asylum sort of dazed. I wanted to get by myself and THINK, but instead of being by myself, I had to have Betsy and Percy and Mrs. Livermore for dinner (already invited) and then go down and talk to the children. Friday night-social evening. They had a lot of new records for the victrola, given by Mrs. Livermore, and I had to sit politely and listen to them. And, my dear—you'll think this funny—the last thing they played was "John Anderson, my jo John," and suddenly I found myself crying! I had to snatch up the nearest orphan and hug her hard, with my head buried in her shoulder, to keep them all from seeing.
John Anderson, my jo John,We clamb the hill thegither,And monie a canty day, John,We've had wi' ane anither;Now we maun totter down, John,But hand in hand we'll go,And sleep thegither at the foot,John Anderson, my jo.
I wonder, when we are old and bent and tottery, can you and I look back, with no regrets, on monie a canty day we've had wi' ane anither? It's nice to look forward to, isn't it—a life of work and play and little daily adventures side by side with somebody you love? I'm not afraid of the future any more. I don't mind growing old with you, Sandy. "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."
The reason I've grown to love these orphans is because they need me so, and that's the reason—at least one of the reasons—I've grown to love you. You're a pathetic figure of a man, my dear, and since you won't make yourself comfortable, you must be MADE comfortable.
We'll build a house on the hillside just beyond the asylum—how does a yellow Italian villa strike you, or preferably a pink one? Anyway, it won't be green. And it won't have a mansard roof. And we'll have a big cheerful living room, all fireplace and windows and view, and no McGURK. Poor old thing! won't she be in a temper and cook you a dreadful dinner when she hears the news! But we won't tell her for a long, long time—or anybody else. It's too scandalous a proceeding right on top of my own broken engagement. I wrote to Judy last night, and with unprecedented self-control I never let fall so much as a hint. I'm growing Scotch mysel'!
Perhaps I didn't tell you the exact truth, Sandy, when I said I hadn't known how much I cared. I think it came to me the night the John Grier burned. When you were up under that blazing roof, and for the half hour that followed, when we didn't know whether or not you would live, I can't tell you what agonies I went through. It seemed to me, if you did go, that I would never get over it all my life; that somehow to have let the best friend I ever had pass away with a dreadful chasm of misunderstanding between us—well—I couldn't wait for the moment when I should be allowed to see you and talk out all that I have been shutting inside me for five months. And then—you know that you gave strict orders to keep me out; and it hurt me dreadfully. How should I suspect that you really wanted to see me more than any of the others, and that it was just that terrible Scotch moral sense that was holding you back? You are a very good actor, Sandy. But, my dear, if ever in our lives again we have the tiniest little cloud of a misunderstanding, let's promise not to shut it up inside ourselves, but to TALK.
Last night, after they all got off,—early, I am pleased to say, since the chicks no longer live at home,—I came upstairs and finished my letter to Judy, and then I looked at the telephone and struggled with temptation. I wanted to call up 505 and say good night to you. But I didn't dare. I'm still quite respectably bashful! So, as the next best thing to talking with you, I got out Burns and read him for an hour. I dropped asleep with all those Scotch love songs running in my head, and here I am at daybreak writing them to you.
Good-by, Robin lad, I lo'e you weel.
SALLIE.