I have observed that there is danger in many people causing any one person to think himself a superior person unless heisa superior person. If he really is what is thought of him, no harm is done him. But if he is widely regarded a superior person and is not a superior person, harm may result to him. For whenever any person is praised beyond his deserts, he is not lifted up by such praise any more than the stature of a man is increased by thickening the heels of his shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to be lowered by over-praise. For, prodded by adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary image and assume, as far as he can, the guise of some inferior creature which more glaringly expresses what he is—as the peacock, the owl, the porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, the ass. I have seen all these. I have seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, speechless owl novelist, the fretful porcupine novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, the ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred ass novelist. And many others.
You may begin to wonder why I am led into these reflections in this letter. The reason is, I have been wondering into what kind of inferior creature your fame—your over-praise—has loweredyou. Frankly, I perfectly know; I will not name the animal. But I feel sure that he is a highly offensive small beast.
If you feel disposed to read further, I shall explain.
I have in my legal possession three letters of yours. They were written to a young gentleman whom I have known now for a good many years, whose character I know about as well as any one man can know another's, and for whom increasing knowledge has always led me to feel increasing respect. The young man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You may now realise what I am coming to.
The first of these letters of yours reveals you as a stranger seeking the acquaintance of Mr. Sands—to a certain limit: you asked of him a courtesy and you offered courtesies in exchange. That is common enough and natural, and fair, and human. But what I have noticed is your doing this with the air of the superior person. Mr. Sands, being a novelist, is of course a superior person. Therefore, you felt called upon to introduce yourself to him as amoresuperior person. That is, you condescended to be gracious. You made it a virtue in you to ask a favour of him. You expected him to be delighted that you allowed him to serve you.
In the second letter you go further. He wafted some incense toward you and you got on your knees to this incense. You get up and offer him more courtesies—all courtesies. Because he praised you, you even wish him to visit you.
Now the third letter. The favour you asked of Mr. Sands was that he send you some ferns. By no fault of his except too much confidence in the agents he employed (he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted you), by no other fault of his the ferns were not sent. You waited, time passed, you grew impatient, you grew suspicious of Mr. Sands, you felt slighted, you became piqued in your vanity, wounded in your self-love, you became resentful, you became furious, you became revengeful, you became abusive. You told him that he had never meant to keep his word, that you had kicked his books out of your library, that he might profitably study the moral sensitiveness of a head of cabbage.
During the summer American tourists visited you—pilgrims of your fame. You took advantage of their visit to promulgate mysteriously your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by one explicit word, you understand. Your exalted imagination merely lied on him, and you entrusted to other imaginations the duty of scattering broadcast your noble lie. They did this—some of them happening not to be friends of Mr. Sands—and as a result of the false light you threw upon his character, he now in the minds of many persons rests under a cloud. And that cloud is never going to be dispelled.
Enclosed you will please find copies of these three letters of yours; would you mind reading them over? And you will find also a packet of letters which will enable you to understand why the ferns never reached you and the whole entanglement of the case. And finally, you will find enclosed a brief with which, were I to appear in Court against you, as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up to public view as what you are.
I shall merely add that I have often met you in the courtroom as the kind of criminal who believes without evidence and who distrusts without reason; who is, therefore, ready to blast a character upon suspicion. If he dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence against him, he draws upon the dark traits of his own nature to furnish the evidence.
I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands.
I am, as to you,
Merely,BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
King Alfred's Wood,Warwickshire, England,June 21, 1912.
Benjamin Doolittle,150 Wall Street,New York City.
MY DEAR SIR:
You state in your letter, which I have just laid down, that you are a stranger to me. There is no conceivable reason why I should wish to offer you the slightest rudeness—even that of crossing your word—yet may I say, that I know you perfectly? If you had unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, you might have found, scattered here and there, everything that you have said in your letter, and almost in your very words. That is, I have two or three times drawn your portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus while you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel bound to say that you are an old acquaintance in nature.
You cannot for a moment imagine—however, you despise imagination and I withdraw the offensive word—you cannot for a moment suppose that I can have any motive in being discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go on to say, but only with your permission, that the first time I attempted to sketch you, was in a very early piece of work; I was a youthful novelist, at the outset of my career. I projected a story entitled: "The Married Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens." I feel bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly remind me of theSal Blivvensof my story. In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was this: as twenty-one human shillings he never made an exact human guinea—his shillings ran a few pence over, or they fell a few pence short. That is, Ned never did just enough of anything, or said just enough, but either too much or too little to suitSal. He never had just one idea about any one thing, but two or three ideas; he never felt in just one way about any one thing, but had mixed feelings, a variety of feelings. He was not a yard measure or a pint measure or a pound measure; he overflowed or he didn't fill, and any one thing in him always ran into other things in him.
Being a young novelist I was not satisfied to offerSalto the world on her own account, but I must try to make her more credible and formidable by following her into the next generation, and giving her a son who inherited her traits. Thus I hadTommy Blivvens. When Tommy was old enough to receive his first allowance of Christmas pudding, he proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He picked out all the raisins and made a little pile of them. And made a little separate pile of the currants, and another pile of the almonds, and another of the citron, or of whatever else there was to separate. Then in profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, as a philosopher of the sure.
Thus—and I insist I mean no disrespect—your letter does revive for me a little innocent laughter at my early literary vision of a human baggage—friend of my youthful days and artistic enthusiasm—Sal Blivvens. I arranged that whenNeddied, his neighbours all felt sorry and wished him a green turf for his grave.Sal, I felt sure, survived him as one who all her life walks past every human heart and enters none—being always dead-sure, always dead-right; for the human heart rejects perfection in any human being.
I recognise you as belonging to the large tough family of the human cocksures.Sal Blivvensbelonged to it—dead-sure, dead-right, every time. We have many of the cocksures in England, you must have many of them in the United States. The cocksures are people who have no dim borderland around their minds, no twilight between day and darkness. They see everything as they see a highly coloured rug on a well-lighted floor. There is either rug or no rug, either floor or no floor. No part of the floor could possibly be rug and no part of the rug could possibly be floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the natural prosecuting attorney of human nature's natural misgivings and wiser doubts and nobler errors. How the American cocksures of their day despised the man Washington, who often prayed for guidance; with what contempt they blasted the character of your Abraham Lincoln, whose patient soul inhabited the border of a divine disquietude and whose public life was the patient study of hesitation.
I have taken notice of the peculiarly American character of your cocksureness: it magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile, to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the ton. Do you happen to know Michael Angelo'sMoses? I always think of an American cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo'sMoses—colossal law-giver, a hyper-stupendous fellow. And I have often thought that a regiment of American cocksures would be the most terrific spectacle on a battlefield that the rest of the human race could ever face. Just now it has occurred to me that it was your great Emerson who spoke best on the weakness of the superlative—the cocksure is the human superlative.
As to your letter: You declare you know nothing about novels, but your arraignment of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure that you are perfectly right about me. Your arraignment of me is exact. You are conscious of no more moral perturbation as to justice than exists in a monkey wrench. But that is the nature of the cocksure—his conclusions have to him the validity of a hardware store.
This, however, is nothing. I clear it away in order to tell you that I am filled with admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and of the savage ferocity with which you attack me as his enemy. That makes you a friend worth having, and I wish you were to be numbered among mine; there are none too many such in this world. Next, I wish to assure you that I have studied your brief against me and confess that you have made out the case. I fell into a grave mistake, I wronged your friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it was a poor, sorry, shabby business. I am about to write to Mr. Sands. If he is what you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive me—though you never may. I shall ask him, as I could not have asked him before, whether he will not come to visit me. My house, my hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, shall be his. I shall take every step possible to undo what I thoughtlessly, impulsively did. I shall write to the President of his Club.
One exception is filed to a specification in your brief: no such things took place in my garden upon the visit of the American tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate any mysterious hostility to Mr. Sands. You tell me that among those tourists were persons hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile persons who misinterpreted and exaggerated whatever took place. You knew these persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then you accepted their testimony as true—being a cocksure.
A final word to you. Your whole character and happiness rests upon the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the fellow-beings whom you know. Thoseyoudoubt ought to be doubted and thoseyoutrust ought to be trusted! Now I have travelled far enough on life's road to have passed its many human figures—perhaps all the human types that straggle along it in their many ways. No figures on that road have been more noticeable to me than here and there a man in whom I have discerned a broken cocksure.
You say you like biography: do you like to read the Life of Robert Burns? And I wonder whether these words of his have ever guided you in your outlook upon life:
"Then gently scan your brother man* * * * *To step aside is human."
I thank you again. I wish you well. And I hope that no experience, striking at you out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave you one of those noticeable men—a broken cocksure.
Your deeply obliged and very grateful,
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
June 30, 1912.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
About a month ago I took it upon myself to write the one letter that had long been raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. And I sent him all the fern letters. And then I drew up the whole case and prosecuted him as your lawyer.
Of course I meant my letter to be an infernal machine that would blow him to pieces. He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and inserted a crank, and turned it into a music-box to grind out his praises.
And then the kind of music he ground out for me.
All day I have been ashamed to stand up and I've been ashamed to sit down. He told me that my letter reminded him of a character in his first novel—a woman calledSal Blivvens. ME—Sal Blivvens!
But of what use is it for us poor, common-clay, rough, ordinary men who have no imagination—of what use is it for us to attack you superior fellows who have it, have imagination? You are the Russians of the human mind, and when attacked on your frontiers, you merely retreat into a vast, unknown, uninvadable country. The further you retire toward the interior of your mysterious kingdom, the nearer you seem to approach the fortresses of your strength.
I am wiser—if no better. If ever again I feel like attacking any stranger with a letter, I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. If he is a genius, I am going to let him alone.
Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to see your man Blackthorne now. Ask him some time whether a short visit from Benjamin Doolittle could be arranged on any terms of international agreement.
Now for something on my level of ordinary life! A day or two ago I was waiting in front of the residence of one of my uptown clients, a few doors from the residence of your friend Dr. Marigold. While I waited, he came out on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I drove past, I leaned far out and made them a magnificent sweeping bow: one can afford to be forgiving and magnanimous after he settled things to his satisfaction. They did not return the bow but exchanged quiet smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. They seemed like saying: he bows best who bows last.
You are the best thing in New York to me since Polly went away. Without you both it would come near to being one vast solitude.
BEN (aliasSal Blivvens).
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
July 1, 1912.
DEAR BEN:
I wrote you this morning upon receipt of your letter telling me of your own terrific letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless arraignment of him. Let me say again that I wish to pour out my gratitude to you for your motives and also, well, also my regret at your action. Somehow I have been reminded of Voltaire's saying: he had a brother who was such a fool that he started out to be perfect; as a consequence the world knows nothing of Voltaire's brother: it knows very well Voltaire with his faults.
The mail of yesterday which brought you Mr. Blackthorne's reply to your arraignment brought me also a letter: he must have written to us both instantly. His letter is the only one that I cannot send you; you would not desire to read it. You are too big and generous, too warmly human, too exuberantly vital, to care to lend ear to a great man's chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. You are not Cassius to carp at Caesar.
Now this afternoon a second letter comes from Mr. Blackthorne and that I enclose: it will do you good to read it—it is not a black passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight.
BEVERLEY.
[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne]
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I follow up my letter of yesterday with the unexpected tidings of to-day. I am willing to believe that these will interest you as associated with your coming visit.
Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final natal eclipse, has bowled him over and left him darkened for good. He can trouble us no more, but will now do his part as mould for the rose of York and the rose of Lancaster. He will help to make a mound for some other Englishman's ferns. When you come—and I know you will come—we shall drink a cup of tea in the garden to his peaceful memory—and to his troubled memory for Latin.
I am now waiting for you. Come, out of your younger world and with your youth to an older world and to an older man. And let each of us find in our meeting some presage of an alliance which ought to grow always closer in the literatures of the two nations. Their literatures hold their ideals; and if their ideals touch and mingle, then nothing practical can long keep them far apart. If two oak trees reach one another with their branches, they must meet in their roots; for the branches are aerial roots and the roots are underground branches.
Come. In the eagerness of my letter of yesterday to put myself not in the right but less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the very matter with which the right and the wrong originated.
Will you, after all, send the ferns?
The whole garden waits for them; a white light falls on the vacant spot; a white light falls on your books in my library; a white light falls on you,
I wait for you, both hands outstretched.
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
(Note penciled on the margin of the letter by Beverley Sands to Ben Doolittle: "You will see that I am back where the whole thing started; I have to begin all over again with the ferns. And now the florists will be after me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow of my bones, and my bones by this time are a wireless station on this subject.")
BEVERLEY.
JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
DEAR SIR:
We take pleasure in enclosing our new catalogue for the coming autumn, and should be pleased to receive any further commissions for the European trade.
We repeat that we have no connection whatever with any house doing business in the city under the name of Botany.
Respectfully yours,JUDD & JUDD,Per Q.
PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Louisville, Kentucky,July 4th, 1912.
DEAR SIR:
Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory for the approaching autumn season, in view of having been honoured upon a previous occasion with your flattering patronage, and reasoning that our past transactions have been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves of this opportunity of reviving the conjunction heretofore existing between us as most gratifying and thank you sincerely for past favours. We hope to continue our pleasant relations and desire to say that if you should contemplate arranging for the shipments of plants of any description, we could afford you surprised satisfaction.
Respectfully yours,PHILLIPS & FAULDS.
BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Dunkirk, Tennessee,July 6, 1912.
DEAR SIR:
We are prepared to supply you with anything you need. Could ship ferns to any country in Europe, having done so for the late Noah Chamberlin, the well-known florist just across the State line, who was a customer of ours.
old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet paid, had to drop them entirely.
Very truly yours,BURNS & BRUCE.
If you need any forest trees, we could supply you with all the forest trees you want, plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty of walnuts, etc.
ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,July 7th, 1912.
DEAR SIR:
I have lately enlarged my business and will be able to handle any orders you may give me. The orders which Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain said you were to send have not yet turned up. I write to you, because I have heard about you a great deal through Miss Clara Louise, since her return from her visit to New York. She succeeded in getting two or three donations of books for our library, and they have now given her a place there. I was sorry to part with Miss Clara Louise, but I had just married, and after the first few weeks I expected my wife to become my assistant. I am not saying anything against Miss Clara Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet violets, especially on a Sunday, having the run of the flowers. She and Alice didn't get along very well together, and I did have a bad set-back with my violets while she was here.
Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make a speciality of seedlins. If you want any seedlins, will you call on me? I am young and just married and anxious to please, and I wish you would call on me when you want anything green. Nothing dried.
Yours respectfully,ANDY PETERS.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
July 7th, 1912.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
It makes me a little sad to write. I suppose you saw in this morning's paper the announcement of Tilly's marriage next week to Dr. Marigold. Nevertheless—congratulations! You have lost years of youth and happiness with some lovely woman on account of your dalliance with her.
Now at last, you will let her alone, and you will soon find—Nature will quickly drive you to find—the one you deserve to marry.
It looks selfish at such a moment to set my happiness over against your unhappiness, but I've just had news, that at last, after lingering so long and a little mysteriously in Louisville, Polly is coming. Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. We long ago decided to have no wedding. All that we have long wished is to marry one another. Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, Polly is another cocksure. We shall jog along as a perfectly satisfied couple of cocksures on the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly will never find out that she marriedSal Blivvens.)
Dear fellow, truest of comrades among men, it is inevitable that I reluctantly leave you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as the friend who marries.
One awful thought freezes me to my chair this hot July day. You have never said a word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, since the day of my hypothetical charge to the jury. Can it be possible that you followed her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? I have often warned you against Tilly, as inconstant. But, my dear fellow, remember there is a worse extreme than in inconstancy—Clara Louise would be sealing wax. You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in conversation, she'd seal you the tighter.
Polly is coming with her wedding clothes.
BEN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
July 8.
DEAR BEN:
I saw the announcement in the morning paper about Tilly.
It wouldn't be worth while to write how I feel.
It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, homeless in New York. And I saw her. As to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, that is solely a question of my royalties. Royalties are human gratitude; why should not the dews of gratitude fall on one so parched? Besides, I don't owe you anything, gentleman.
Yes, I feel you're going—you're passing on to Polly. I append a trifle which explains itself, and am, making the best of everything, the same
BEVERLEY SANDS.
A Meditation in Verse(Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing hisfavourite weakness)
How can I mind the law's delay,Or what a jury thinks it knows,Or what some fool of a judge may say?Polly comes with the wedding clothes.
Time, who cheated me so long,Kept me waiting mid life's snows,I forgive and forget your wrong:Polly comes with the wedding clothes.
Winter's lonely sky is gone,July blazes with the rose,All the world looks smiling onAt Polly in her wedding clothes.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
[A hurried letter by messenger]
July 10, 1912.
Polly reached New York two days ago. I went up that night. She had gone out—alone. She did not return that night. I found this out when I went up yesterday morning and asked for her. She has not been there since she left. They know nothing about her. I have telegraphed Louisville. They have sent me no word. Come down at once.
BEN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
[Hurried letter by messenger]
July 10, 1912.
DEAR BEN:
Is anything wrong about Polly?
I met her on the street yesterday. She tried to pass without speaking. I called to her but she walked on. I called again and she turned, hesitatingly, then came back very slowly to meet me half-way. You know how composed her manner always is. But she could not control her emotion: she was deeply, visibly troubled. Strange as it may seem, while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, I could but notice a trifle, as at such moments one often does: she was beautifully dressed: a new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over her as for some impending ceremony. We have always thought of Polly as one of the women who are above dress. Such disregard was in a way a verification of her character, the adornment of her sincerity. Now she was beautifully dressed.
"But what is the meaning of all this?" I asked, frankly mystified.
Something in her manner checked the question, forced back my words.
"You will hear," she said, with quivering lips. She looked me searchingly all over the face as for the sake of dear old times now ended. Then she turned off abruptly. I watched her in sheer amazement till she disappeared.
I have been waiting to hear from you, but cannot wait any longer. What does it mean? Why don't you tell me?
BEVERLEY.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
July 11.
I have with incredible eyes this instant read this cutting from the morning paper:
Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the City Hall in Jersey City to Dr. Claude Mullen.
She must have been on her way when I saw her.
I have read the announcement without being able to believe it—with some kind of death in life at my heart.
Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am coming at once.
BEVERLEY.
DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS
July 18.
The ferns have had their ironic way with us and have wrought out their bitter comedy to its end. The little group of us who were the unsuspecting players are henceforth scattered, to come together in the human playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the curtain waits to descend, and I, who innocently brought the drama on, am left the solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, depart to go my separate road.
This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful the morning is for her! The whole sky is one exquisite blue—no sign of any storm-plan far or near. The July air blows as cool as early May. I sit at my window writing and it flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances of the green park below my window enter my room and encircle me like living human tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, Tilly is dressing for her wedding, and I—God knows why—am thinking of old-time Kentucky gardens in one of which she played as a child. Tilly, a little girl romping in her mother's garden—Tilly before she was old enough to know anything of the world—anything of love—now, as she dresses for her wedding—I cannot shut out that vision of early purity.
Yesterday a note came from her. I had had no word since the day I openly ridiculed the man she is to marry. But yesterday she sent me this message:
"Come to-night and say good-bye."
She was not in her rooms to greet me. I waited. Moments passed, long moments of intense expectancy. She did not enter. I fixed my eyes on her door. Once I saw it pushed open a little way, then closed. Again it was opened and again it was held as though for lack of will or through quickly changing impulses. Then it was opened and she entered and came toward me, not looking at me, but with her face turned aside. She advanced a few paces and with some swift, imperious rebellion, she turned and passed out of the room and then came quickly back. She had caught up her bridal veil. She held the wreath in her hand and as she approached me, I know not with what sudden emotion she threw a corner of the veil over her head and face and shoulders. And she stood before me with I know not what struggle tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper she said:
"Lift my veil."
I lifted her veil and laid it back over her forehead. She closed her eyes as tears welled out of them.
"Kiss me," she said.
I would have taken her in my arms as mine at that moment for all time, but she stepped back and turned away, fading from me rather than walking, with her veil pressed like a handkerchief to her eyes. The door closed on her.
I waited. She did not come again.
Now she is dressing for the marriage ceremony. A friend gives her a house wedding. The company of guests will be restricted, everything will be exquisite, there will be youth and beauty and distinction. There will be no love. She marries as one who steps through a beautiful arch further along one's path.
Whither that path leads, I do not know; from what may lie at the end of it I turn away and shudder.
My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning is of one exiled from happiness because nature withheld from her the one thing needed to make her all but perfect: that needful thing was just a little more constancy. It is her doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to her lips it drops from her hand. Forever her hand stretched out toward joy and forever joy shattered at her feet.
American scientists have lately discovered or seem about to discover, some new fact in Nature—the butterfly migrates. What we have thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant of a single summer in a single zone follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells in a summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the psyche of life's fields, then she seeks perpetual summer as the law of her own being. All our lives move along old, old paths. There is no new path for any of us. If Tilly's fate is the butterfly path, who can judge her harshly? Not I.
They sail away at once on their wedding journey. He has wealth and social influence of the fashionable sort which overflows into the social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: the papers found space for their plans of travel: England and Scotland, France and Switzerland, Austria and Germany, Bohemia and Poland, Russia, Italy and Sicily—home. The great world-path of the human butterfly, seeking summer with insatiate quest.
Home to his practice with that still fluttering psyche! And then the path—the domestic path—stretching straight onward across the fields of life—what of his psyche then? Will she fold her wings on a bed-post—year after year slowly opening and unfolding those brilliant wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?...
I cannot write of human life unless I can forgive life. How forgive unless I can understand? I have wrought with all that is within me to understand Polly—her treachery up to the last moment, her betrayal of Ben's devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly, doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems built upon one trait, one virtue—loyalty. She was disloyal to Ben because she had come to believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign excellence. There were things in his life which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps every day there were mere trifles which he did not share with her—why should he? On a certain memorable morning she discovered that for years he had been keeping from her some affairs of mine: that was his loyalty to me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her.
I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I think that was the rift in the lute. Still a man must not surrender himself wholly into the keeping of the woman he loves; let him, and he becomes anything in her life but a man.
Meantime Polly found near by another suitor who offered her all he was—what little there was of him—one of those man-climbers who must run over the sheltering wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified in Polly her one passion for marrying—that she should possess a pet. Now she possesses one, owns him, can turn him round and round, can turn him inside out, can see all there is of him as she sees her pocket-handkerchief, her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any little familiar piece of property which she can become more and more attached to as the years go by for the reason that it will never surprise her, never puzzle her, never change except by wearing out.
This will be the end of the friendship between Drs. Marigold and Mullen: their wives will see to that. So much the better: scattered impostors do least harm.
I have struggled to understand the mystery of her choice as to how she should be married. Surely marriage, in the existence of any one, is the hour when romance buds on the most prosaic stalk. It budded for Polly and she eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her heavy mind without the wings of imagination. She got as far as the nearest City Hall. Instead of a minister she chose to be married by a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been unjust, she would be married by the figure of Justice as a penal ceremony executed over Ben: she mailed him a paper and left him to understand that she had fled from him to Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry!
A line in an evening paper lets me know that she and the Doctor have gone for their honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly first came North to live and the first summer came round she decided to spend it at Ocean Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would get a grove and an ocean with one railway ticket, without having to change; she could settle in a grove with an ocean and in an ocean with a grove. What her disappointment was I do not know, but every summer she has gone back to Ocean Grove—the Franklin Flats by the sea....
Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had spent part of every evening with him since Polly's marriage—silent, empty evenings—a quiet, stunned man. Confidence in himself blasted out of him, confidence in human nature, in the world. With no imagination in him to deal with the reasons of Polly's desertion—just a passive acceptance of it as a wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball.
Her name was never called. A stunned, silent man. Clear, joyous steady light in his eyes gone—an uncertain look in them. Strangest of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And courtesy for bluff warm confidence—courtesy as of one who stumblingly reflects that he must begin to be careful with everybody.
His active nature meantime kept on. Life swept him forward—nature did—whether he would or not. I went down late one evening. Evidently he had been working in his room all day; the things Polly must have sent him during all those years were gone. He had on new slippers, a fresh robe, taking the place of the slippers and the robe she had made for him. Often I have seen him tuck the robe in about his neck as a man might reach for the arms of a woman to draw them about his throat as she leans over him from behind.
During our talk that evening he began strangely to speak of things that had taken place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, on the farm; did I remember this in Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind had gone back to old certainties. It was like his walking away from present ruins toward things still unharmed—never to be harmed.
Early next morning he surprised me by coming up, dressed for travel, holding a grip.
"I am going to Kentucky," he said.
I went to the train with him. His reserve deepened on the way; if he had plans, he did not share them with me.
What I make out of it is that he will come back married. No engagement this time, no waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage will sadly bring him. I think she will be young—this time. But she will be, as nearly as possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted man for life. He thinks he will be getting some one to take Polly's place. In reality it will be his second attempt to marry Polly.
I am bidding farewell the little group of us. Some one else will have to write of me. How can I write of myself? This I will say: that I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to leave a little of his wool on every bramble.
I sail next week for England to make my visit to Mr. Blackthorne—at last. Another letter has come from him. He has thrown himself into the generous work of seeing that my visit to him shall make me known. He tells me there will be a house party, a week-end; some of the great critics will be there, some writers. "You must be found out in England widely and at once," he writes.
My heart swells as one who feels himself climbing toward a height. There is kindled in me that strangest of all the flames that burn in the human heart, the shining thought that my life is destined to be more than mine, that my work will make its way into other minds and mingle with the better, happier impulses of other lives.
The ironic ferns have had their way with us. But after all has it not been for the best? Have they not even in their irony been the emblems of fidelity?
They have found us out, they have played upon our weaknesses, they have exaggerated our virtues until these became vices, they have separated us and set us going our diverging ways.
But while we human beings are moving in every direction over the earth, the earth without our being conscious of it is carrying us in one same direction. So as we follow the different pathways of our lives which appear to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, may it not be true that to the Power which sets us all in motion and drives us whither it will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity?
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESSGARDEN CITY, N. Y.