I am,
Sincerely yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
P.S.—Can you pardon the informality of a postscript?
As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy situation, marriage is denied me on account of the whole unhappy history of woman—which is pretty hard. But a good many American ladies—the one I woo among them—are indignant just now that they are being crowded out of their destinies by husbands—or even possibly by bachelors. These ladies deliver lectures to one another with discontented eloquence and rouse their auditresses to feministic frenzy by reminding them that for ages woman has walked in the shadow of man and that the time has come for the worm [the woman] to turn on the shadow or to crawl out of it.
My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly say that the only two shadows I could ever think of casting on the woman I married would be that of my umbrella whenever it rained, and that of her parasol whenever the sun shone. But I do maintain that if there is not enough sunshine for the men and women in the world, if there has to be some casting of shadows in the competition and the crowding, I do maintain that the casting of the shadow would better be left to the man. He has had long training, terrific experience, in this mortal business of casting the shadow, has learned how to moderate it and to hold it steady! The woman at least knows where it is to be found, should she wish to avail herself of it. But what would be the state of a man in his need of his spouse's penumbra? He would be out of breath with running to keep up with the penumbra or to find where it was for the time being!
I have seen some of these husbands who live—or have gradually died out—in the shadow of their wives; they are nature's subdued farewell to men and gentlemen.
DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS
June 16.
A remarkable thing has lately happened to me.
One of my Kentucky novels, upon being republished in London some months ago, fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. This critic's praise later made its way to the stately library of Edward Blackthorne. What especially induced the latter to read the book, I infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer from my description of a woodland scene with ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, is himself interested in ferns. He consequently wrote to some other English authors and critics, calling attention to my work, and he sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns for his garden.
This recognition in England hilariously affected my friends over here. Tilly, whose mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair of golden balances for weighing delight against delight (always her most vital affair), when this honour for me fell into the scales, found them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as I have often thought, that she has long been holding on to me merely until she could take sure hold of someone else of more splendid worldly consequence, she suddenly at least tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, solid Polly, wholesome and dependable as a well-browned whole-wheat baker's loaf weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she heard of it, gave me a Bohemian supper in her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a few undersized people, inasmuch as she and Ben, the chief personages of the entertainment, took up most of the room. We were so packed in, that literally it was a night in Bohemiaaux sardines.
Since the good news from England came over, Ben, with his big, round, clean-shaven, ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, which makes him look like a thirty-five-year-old Bacchus who had never drunk a drop—even Ben has beamed on me like a mellower orb. He is as ashamed as ever of my books, but is beginning to feel proud that so many more people are being fooled by them. Several times lately I have caught his eyes resting on me with an expression of affectionate doubt as to whether after all he might be mistaken in not having thought more of me. But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a human refrigerator containing a mental thermometer, which rises or falls toward like or dislike over a background for book-sales, got wind of the matter and promptly invited me to one of his thermometric club-lunches—always an occasion for acute gastritis.
Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, where, of course, the leading English reviews are kept on file. Some of the members must have seen the favourable criticisms. One night I became aware as I passed through the rooms that club heroes seated here and there threw glances of fresh interest toward me and exchanged auspicious words. The president—who for so long a time has styled himself the Nestor of the club that he now believes it is the members who do this, the garrulous old president, whose weaknesses have made holes in him through which his virtues sometimes leak out and get away, met me under the main chandelier and congratulated me in tones so intentionally audible that they violated the rules but were not punishable under his personal privileges.
There was a sinister incident: two members whom Ben and I wish to kick because they have had the audacity to make the acquaintance of Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise also because they are fashionable charlatans in their profession—these two with dark looks saw the president congratulate me.
More good fortune yet to come! The ferns which I am sending Mr. Blackthorne will soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious man has many visitors; he leads them, if he likes, to his fern bank. "These," he will some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. These are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. These were sent me by Turgenieff. And these," he will add, turning to his guests, "these came from a young American novelist, a Kentuckian, whose work I greatly respect: you must read his books." The guests separate to their homes to pursue the subject. Spreading fame—may it spread! Last of all, the stirring effect of this on me, who now run toward glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran toward Venus—with both feet and wings.
The ironic fact about all this commotion affecting so many solid, substantial people—the ironic fact is this:
There was no woodland scene and there were no ferns.
Here I reach the curious part of my story.
When I was a country lad of some seventeen years in Kentucky, one August afternoon I was on my way home from a tramp of several miles. My course lay through patches of woods—last scant vestiges of the primeval forest—and through fields garnered of summer grain or green with the crops of coming autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence and crossed an old woods-pasture where stock grazed.
The August sky was clear and the sun beat down with terrific heat. I had been walking for hours and parching thirst came upon me.
This led me to remember how once these rich uplands had been the vast rolling forest that stretched from far-off eastern mountains to far-off western rivers, and how under its shade, out of the rock, everywhere bubbled crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams diamond bright, drinking places of the bold game.
The sun beat down on me in the treeless open field. My feet struck into a path. It, too, became a reminder: it had once been a trail of the wild animals of that verdurous wilderness. I followed its windings—a sort of gully—down a long, gentle slope. The windings had no meaning now: the path could better have been straight; it was devious because the feet that first marked it off had threaded their way crookedly hither and thither past the thick-set trees.
I reached the spring—a dry spot under the hot sun; no tree overshadowing it, no vegetation around it, not a blade of grass; only dust in which were footprints of the stock which could not break the habit of coming to it but quenched their thirst elsewhere. The bulged front of some limestone rock showed where the ancient mouth of the spring had been. Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a few clods. Hovering over these, rising and sinking, a little quivering jet of gold, a flock of butterflies. The grey stalk of a single dead weed projected across the choked orifice of the fountain and one long, brown grasshopper—spirit of summer dryness—had crawled out to the edge and sat motionless.
A few yards away a young sycamore had sprung up from some wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest—my eyes fixed on the forest ruin.
Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers.
I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me out of ferns that never grew?
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
King Alfred's Wood,Warwickshire, England,May 1, 1911.
DEAR SIR:
It is the first of the faithful leafy May again. I sit at my windows as on this day a year ago and look out with thankfulness upon what a man may call the honour of the vegetable world.
A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of yours or by some books—for I believe I read more than one of them—I, betrayed by the phrase that when we touch a book we touch a man, overstepped the boundaries of caution as to having any dealings with glib, plausible strangers and wrote you a letter. I made a request of you in that letter. I thought the request bore with it a suitable reward: that I should be grateful if you would undertake to have some ferns sent to me for my collection.
Your sleek reply led me still further astray and I wrote again. I drew my English cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the ground for you to step on. I threw open to you the doors of my hospitality, good-fellowship.
That was last May. Now it is May again. And now I know to a certainty what for months I have been coming to realise always with deeper shame: that you gave me your word and did not keep your word; doubtless never meant to keep it.
Why, then, write you about this act of dishonour now? How justify a letter to a man I feel obliged to describe as I describe you?
The reason is this, if you can appreciate such a reason. My nature refuses to let go a half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood I came upon a partly chopped-down tree, and I must needs go far and fetch an axe and finish the job. What I have begun to build I must build at till the pattern is wrought out. Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the stamina of resolution. The upright moral skeleton within me would decay and crumble and I should sink down and flop like a human frog.
Since, then, you dropped the matter in your way—without so much as a thought of a man's obligation to himself—I dismiss it in my way—with the few words necessary to enable me to rid my mind of it and of such a character.
I wish merely to say, then, that I despise as I despise nothing else the ragged edge of a man's behaviour. I put your conduct before you in this way: do you happen to know of a common cabbage in anybody's truck patch? Observe that not even a common cabbage starts out to do a thing and fails to do it if it can. You must have some kind of perception of an oak tree. Think what would become of human beings in houses if builders were deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound oak? Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how it takes hold and will not be shaken loose by the capricious compelling winds. In your country have you the plover? Think what would be the plover's fate, if it did not steer straight through time and space to a distant shore. Why, some day pick up merely a piece of common quartz. Study its powers of crystallisation. And reflect that a man ranks high or low in the scale of character according to his possession or his lack of the powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his mind can assume fixity around an idea, if they can adjust themselves unalterably about a plan, expect something of him. If they run through his hours like water, if memory is a millstream, if remembrance floats forever away, expect nothing.
Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted for themselves the characters of familiar plants about them. Do you know what to them the fern stood for? The fern stood for Fidelity. Those true, constant souls would have said that you had been unfaithful even with nature's emblems of Fidelity.
The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight falls in a white radiance on my plants. I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a certain spot in the garden; I dislike to look at it. There is a shadow on the place where your books once stood on my library shelves. Your specious books!—your cleverly manufactured books!—but there are successful scamps in every profession.
I am,
Very truly yours,EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
Cathedral Heights,May 10, 1911.
DEAR SIR:
I wish to inform you that I have just received from you a letter in which you attack my character. I wish in reply further to inform you that I have never felt called upon to defend my character. Nor will I, even with this letter of yours as evidence, attack your character.
I am,
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
May 13, 1911.
DEAR BEN:
I ask your attention to the enclosed letter from Mr. Edward Blackthorne. By way of contrast and also of reminder, lest you may have forgotten, I send you two other letters received from him last year. I shared with you at the time the agreeable purport of these earlier letters. This last letter came three days ago and for three days I have been trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write to you about it. At last I am able to do so.
You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has never received the ferns. Then where have they been all this time? I took it for granted that they had been shipped. The order was last spring placed with the Louisville firm recommended by you. They guaranteed the execution of the order. I forwarded to them my cheque. They cashed my cheque. The voucher was duly returned to me cancelled through my bank. I could not suppose they would take my cheque unless they had shipped the plants. They even wrote me again in the Autumn of their own accord, stating that the ferns were about to be sent on—Autumn being the most favourable season. Then where are the ferns?
I felt so sure of their having reached Mr. Blackthorne that I harboured a certain grievance and confess that I tried to make generous allowance for him as a genius in his never having acknowledged their arrival.
I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an immediate explanation. As soon as they reply I shall let you hear further. The fault may be with them; in the slipshod Southern way they may have been negligent. My cheque may even have gone as a bridal present to some junior member of the firm or to help pay the funeral expenses of the senior member.
There is trouble somewhere behind and I think there is trouble ahead.
Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine ladies; but if some lady will kindly lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit that I have it and on the strength of it—or the weakness—declare my belief that the mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some curious and funny things.
As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: after these days of turbulence, I have come to see my way clear to interpret it thus: a great man, holding a great place in the world, offered his best to a stranger and the stranger, as the great man believes, turned his back on it. That is the grievance, the insult. If anything could be worse, it is my seeming discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the invitation came also from her. In a word, here is a genius who strove to advance my work and me, and he feels himself outraged in his kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and his family—in all his best.
But of course that is the hardest of all human things to stand. Men who have treated each other but fairly well or even badly in ordinary matters often in time become friends. But who of us ever forgives the person that slights our best? Out of a rebuff like that arises such life-long unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ itself doubtless for this very reason took pains to issue its warning—no pearls before swine! And perhaps of all known pearls a great native British pearl is the most prized by its British possessor!
The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's best has been his worst: if I did not merit his best, I deserve his worst; hence his last letter. God have mercy on the man who deserved that letter! You will have observed that his leading trait as revealed in all his letters is enormous self-love. That's because he is a genius. Geniushasto have enormous self-love. Beware the person who has none! Without self-love no one ever wins any other's love.
Thus the mighty English archer with his mighty bow shot his mighty arrow—but at an innocent person.
Still the arrow of this letter, though it misses me, kills my plans. The first trouble will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally fixed for June, and our plans embraced a wedding journey to England and the acceptance of the invitation of the Blackthornes. The prospect of this wonderful English summer—I might as well admit it—was one thing that finally steadied all her wavering as to marriage.
Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, no English celebrities to greet us as American celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no lawns, no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely two unknown, impoverished young Yankee tourists, trying to get out of chilly England what can be gotten by anybody with a few, a very few, dollars.
But Tilly dreads disappointment as she dreads disease. To her disappointment is a disease in the character of the person who inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to get you to read one of Balzac's masterpieces,The Magic Skin. I told you enough about it to enable you to understand what I now say: that ever since I became engaged to Tilly I have been to her as a magic skin which, as she cautiously watches it, has always shrunk a little whenever I have encountered a defeat or brought her a disappointment. No later success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the shrunken skin: it remains shrunken where each latest disappointment has left it.
Now when I tell her of my downfall and the collapse of the gorgeous summer plans!
BEVERLEY(the Expanding Scamp and theShrinking Skin).
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 14th.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
I have duly pondered the letters you send.
"Fie, fee, fo, fum,I smell the blood of an Englishman!"
If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents from him in my possession. And suppose you send me all later letters, whether from him or from anyone else, that bear on this matter. It begins to grow interesting and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, then, as your lawyer, the custodian of all pertinent and impertinent papers. They can go into the locker where I keep your immortal but impecunious Will. Some day I might have to appear in court, I with my shovel and five senses and no imagination, to pleadune cause célèbre(a little more of my scant intimate French).
The explanation I give of this gratuitously insulting letter is that at last you have run into a hostile human imagination in the person of an old literary polecat, an aged book-skunk. Of course if I could decorate my style after the manner of your highly creative gentlemen, I might say that you had unwarily crossed the nocturnal path of his touchy moonlit mephitic highness.
I am not surprised, of course, that this letter has caused you to think still more highly of its writer. I tell you that is your profession—to tinker—to turn reality into something better than reality.
Some day I expect to see you emerge from your shop with a fish story. Intending buyers will find that you have entered deeply into the ideals and difficulties of the man-eating shark: how he could not swim freely for whales in his track and could not breathe freely for minnows in his mouth; how he got pinched from behind by the malice of the lobster and got shocked on each side by the eccentricities of the eel. The other fish did not appreciate him and he grew embittered—and then only began to bite. You will make over the actual shark and exhibit him to your reader as the ideal shark—a kind of beloved disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish.
Anything imaginative that you might make out of a shark would be a minor achievement compared with what you have done for this Englishman. Might the day come, the avenging day, when Benjamin Doolittle could get a chance to write him just one letter! May the god of battles somehow bring about a meeting between the middle-aged land-turtle and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars somebody's fur will have to fly and it will not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any.
You speak of a trouble that looms up in your love affair: let it loom. The nearer it looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly warned you that you have bound your life and happiness to the wrong person, and the person is constantly becoming worse. Detach your apparatus of dreams at last from her. Take off your glorious rainbow world-goggles and see the truth before it is too late. Do not fail, unless you object, to send me all letters incoming about the ferns—those now celebrated bushes.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 13, 1911.
DEAR SIR:
We acknowledge receipt of your letter of May 10 relative to an order for ferns.
It is decidedly rough. The senior member of our firm who formerly had charge of this branch of our business has been seriously ill for several months, and it was only after we had communicated with him at home in bed that we were able to extract from him anything at all concerning your esteemed order.
He informs us that he turned the order over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce, native fern collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that they would gather the ferns and forward them to the designated address. He likewise informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns & Bruce, as we know only too well, has long been indebted to this firm for a considerable amount, he calculated that they would willingly ship the ferns in partial liquidation of our old claims.
It seems, as he tells us, that they did actually gather the ferns and get them ready for shipment, but at the last minute changed their mind and called on our firm for payment. There the matter was unexpectedly dropped owing to the sudden illness of the aforesaid member of our house, and we knew nothing at all of what had transpired until your letter led us to obtain from him at his bedside the statements above detailed.
An additional embarrassment to the unusually prosperous course of our business was occasioned by the marriage of a junior member of the firm and his consequent absence for a considerable time, which resulted in an augmentation of the expenses of our establishment and an unfortunate diminution of our profits.
In view of the illness of the senior member of our house and in view of the marriage of a junior member and in view of the losses and expenses consequent thereon, and in view of the subsequent withdrawal of both from active participation in the conduct of the affairs of our firm, and in view also of a disagreement which arose between both members and the other members as to the financial basis of a settlement on which the withdrawal could take place, our affairs have of necessity been thrown into court in litigation and are still in litigation up to this date.
Regretting that you should have been seemingly inconvenienced in the slightest degree by the apparent neglect of a former member of our firm, we desire to add that as soon as matters can be taken out of court our firm will be reorganised and that we shall continue to give, as heretofore, the most scrupulous attention to all orders received.
But we repeat that your letter is pretty rough.
Very truly yours,PHILLIPS & FAULDS.
BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Dunkirk, Tenn.,May 20, 1911.
DEAR SIR:
Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds gave us the order for the ferns. Owing to extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered earlier than usual and it was unsafe to ship at that time; in the Winter the weather was so severe that even in February we were unable to make any digging, as the frost had not disappeared. When at last we got the ferns ready, we called on them for payment and they wouldn't pay. Phillips & Faulds are not good paying bills and we could not put ourselves to expense filling their new order for ferns, not wishing to take more risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, and could not afford to ship more. proved very unsatisfactory and had to drop them entirely.
Are already out of pocket the cost of the ferns, worthless to us when Phillips & Faulds dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we owed them because they won't pay their bills. If you do not wish to have any further dealings with them you might write to Noah Chamberlain at Seminole, North Carolina, just over the state line, not far from here, an authority on American ferns. We have sometimes collected rare ferns for him to ship to England and other European countries. Vouch for him as an honest man. Always paid his bills, old accounts against Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them entirely.
Very truly yours,BURNS & BRUCE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
May 24.
DEAR BEN:
You requested me to send you for possible future reference all incoming letters upon the subject of the ferns. Here are two more that have just fluttered down from the blue heaven of the unexpected or been thrust up from the lower regions through a crack in the earth's surface.
Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling eloquence of Messrs. Phillips & Faulds. When the eloquence has ceased to ripple and settles down to stay, their letter has the cold purity of a whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. They and another firm of florists have a law-suit as to which owes the other, and they meantime compel me, an innocent bystander, to deliver to them my pocketbook.
Will you please immediately bring suit against Phillips & Faulds on behalf of my valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable indignation? Bring suit against and bring your boot against them if you can. My ducats! Have my ducats out of them or their peace by day and night.
The other letter seems of an unhewn probity that wins my confidence. That is to say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure me that I ought to believe, and with all my heart I do now believe, in the existence, just over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of good character and a business head. Thus I now press on over the Tennessee state line into North Carolina.
For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; more than ever they must go to him now. Not the entire British army drawn up on the white cliffs of Dover could keep me from landing them on the British Isle. Even if I had to cross over to England, travel to his home, put the ferns down before him or throw them at his head and walk out of his house without a word.
I told you I had a borrowed premonition that there would be trouble ahead: now it is not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. I have grown to stand in dread of all florists, and I approach this third one with my hat in my hand (also with my other hand on my pocketbook).
BEVERLEY.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
Cathedral Heights, New York,May 25, 1911.
DEAR SIR:
You have been recommended to me by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk, Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied upon to keep his word and to carry out his business obligations.
Accepting at its face value their high testimonial as to your trustworthiness, I desire to place with you the following order:
Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my request, have forwarded to you a list of rare Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these ferns and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, Esq., King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England. As a guaranty of good faith on my part, I enclose in payment my check for twenty-five dollars. Will you have the kindness to let me know at once whether you will undertake this commission and give it the strictest attention?
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,May 29.
SIR:
I have received your letter with your check in it.
You are the first person that ever offered me money as a florist. I am not a florist, if I must take time to inform you. I had supposed it to be generally known throughout the United States and in Europe that I am professor of botany in this college, and have been for the past fifteen years. If Burns & Bruce really told you I am a florist—and I doubt it—they must be greater ignoramuses than I took them to be. I always knew that they did not have much sense, but I thought they had a little. It is true that they have at different times gathered specimens of ferns for me, and more than once have shipped them to Europe. But I never imagined they were fools enough to think this made me a florist. My collection of ferns embraces dried specimens for study in my classrooms and specimens growing on the college grounds. The ferns I have shipped to Europe have been sent to friends and correspondents. The President of the Royal Botanical Society of Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I have sent him some and I have also sent some to friends in Norway and Sweden and to other scientific students of botany.
It only shows that your next-door neighbour may know nothing about you, especially if you are a little over your neighbour's head.
My daughter, who is my secretary, will return your check, but I thought I had better write and tell you myself that I am not a florist.
Yours truly,NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,May 29.
SIR:
I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt.
People of our means and social position in the South do not peddle bulbs. We do not reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn our bread by making funeral wreaths and crosses.
You must be some kind of nonentity.
Your cheque is pinned to this letter.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
June 3.
DEAR SIR:
I am deeply mortified at having believed Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be well-informed and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that it is no longer safe for me to believe anybody—not about nurserymen. I am not sure now that I should believe you. You say you are a famous botanist, but you may be merely a famous liar, known as such to various learned bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is necessary, and you must admit that your letter does not furnish me with that proof.
Still I am going to believe you and I renew the assurance of my mortification that I have innocently caused you the chagrin of discovering that you are not so well known, at least in this country, as you supposed. I suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; it is the tie that binds: blest be the tie.
I shall be extremely obliged if you will have the kindness to return to me the list of ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, and for that purpose you will please to find enclosed an envelope addressed and stamped.
I acknowledge the return of my cheque, which occasions me some surprise and not a little pleasure.
Allow me once more to regret that through my incurable habit of believing strangers, believing everybody, I was misled into taking the lower view of you as a florist instead of the higher view as a botanist. But you must admit that I was right in classification and wrong only in elevation.
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely).
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
June 8.
SIR:
I know nothing about any list of ferns. Stop writing to me.
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
June 8.
SIR:
It is excruciating the way you continue to persecute my great father. What is wrong with you? What started you to begin on us in this way? We never heard ofyou. Would you let my dear father alone?
He is a very deep student and it is intolerable for me to see his priceless attention drawn from his work at critical moments when he might be on the point of making profound discoveries. My father is a very absent-minded man, as great scholars usually are, and when he is interrupted he may even forget what he has just been thinking about.
Your letter was a very serious shock to him, and after reading it he could not even drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. Time and again he put his cup down and said to me in a trembling voice: "Think of his calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up from the table without eating anything and left the room. He turned at the door and said to me, with a confused expression: "Imay, once in my life—buthedidn't know anything aboutthat."
He shut his door and stayed in his library all evening, thinking without nourishment.
What a viper you are to call my great father a liar.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 12.
DEAR BEN:
I knew I was in for it! I send another installment of incredible letters from unbelievable people.
In my wanderings over the earth after the ferns I have innocently brought my foot against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called the head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist, and the whole hill is frantic with fury. As far as heard from, there are only two ants in the hill, but the two make a lively many in their letters. It's a Southern vendetta and my end may draw nigh.
Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly is at hand. She has been out of town for a house-party somewhere and is to return to-morrow. When Tilly came to New York a few years ago she had not an acquaintance; now I marvel at the world of people she knows. It is the result of her never declining an invitation. Once I derided her about this, and with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed the reason: that no one ever knew what an acquaintanceship might lead to. This principle, or lack of principle, has led her far. And wherever she goes, she is welcomed afterwards. It is her mystery, her charm. I often ask myself what is her charm. At least her charm, as all charm, is victory. You are defeated by her, chained and dragged along. Of course, I expect all this to be reversed after Tilly marries me. Then I am to have my turn—she is to be led around, dragged helpless bymycharm. Magnificent outlook!
To-morrow she is to return, and I shall have to tell her that it is all over—our wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the whole vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud, carrying with it the bright raindrops of her hopes.
I have never, by the way, mentioned to Tilly this matter of the ferns. My first idea was to surprise her: as some day we strolled through the Blackthorne garden he would point to the Kentucky specimens flourishing there in honour of me. I have always observed that any unexpected pleasure flushes her face with a new light, with an effulgence of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment makes her suddenly look old and rather ugly.
This was the first reason. Now I do not intend to tell her at all. Disappointment will bring out her demand to know why she is disappointed—naturally. But how am I to tell on the threshold of marriage that it is all due to a misunderstanding about a handful of ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would never believe me—naturally. She would infer that I was keeping back the real reason, as being too serious to be told.
Here, then, I am. But where am I?
BEVERLEY (complete and finaldisappearance of the Magic Skin).
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
June 13.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly about the ferns. Here I come in: there must always be things that a man must refuse to tell a woman. As soon as he tells her everything, she puts her foot on his neck. I have always refused even to tell Polly some things, not that they might not be told, but that Polly must not be told them; not for the things' sake, but for Polly's good—and for a man's peaceful control of his own life.
For whatever else a woman marries in a man, one thing in him she must marry: a rock. Times will come when she will storm and rage around that rock; but the storms cannot last forever, and when they are over, the rock will be there. By degrees there will be less storm. Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take possession of my whole life; to enter into all my affairs. I am to her a house, no closet of which must remain locked. Thus there are certain closets which she repeatedly tries to open. I can tell by her very expression when she is going to try once more. Were they opened, she would not find much; but it is much to be guarded that she shall not open them.
The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly as fact and too important as principle.
Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me anything about the ferns! When I am with Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of the fields.
Let me hear at once how the trouble turns out with Tilly.
I must not close without making a profound obeisance to your new acquaintances—the Chamberlains.
BEN.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
June 15.
DEAR POLLY:
Something extremely disagreeable has come up between Beverley and me. He tells me we're not to go to England on our wedding journey as anyone's guests: we travel as ordinary American tourists unknown to all England.
You can well understand what this means to me: you have watched all along how I have pinched on my small income to get ready for this beautiful summer. There has been a quarrel of some kind between Mr. Blackthorne and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me the nature of the quarrel. I insisted that it was my right to know and he insisted that it is a man's affair with another man and not any woman's business. Think of a woman marrying a man who lays it down as a law that his affairs are none of her business!
I gave Beverley to understand that our marriage was deferred for the summer. He broke off the engagement.
I had not meant to tell you anything, since I am coming to-night. I have merely wished you to understand how truly anxious I am to see you, even forgetting your last letter—no, not forgetting it, but overlooking it. Remember youthenbroke an appointment with me;thistime keep your appointment—being loyal! The messenger will wait for your reply, stating whether the way is clear for me to come.
TILLY.
POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
June 15.
DEAR TILLY:
Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me for to-night, but I have written to excuse myself, and I shall be waiting most impatiently. The coast will be clear and I hope the night will be.
"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; "the horse-radish" and "the beets" will be still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will shed its usual ray on our heads. No breeze will disturb us, for there will be no fresh air. We shall have the long evening to ourselves, and you can tell me just how it is that you two,notheavy Tilly,notheavy Beverley, sat on opposite sides of the room and declared to each other:
"I will not."
"I will not."
Since I have broken an engagement for you, be sure not to let any later temptation elsewhere keep you away.
POLLY.
[Later in the day]
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
June 13.
DEAR POLLY:
Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected final flare-up. Yesterday he wrote, asking me to come up as soon as I was through with business. I spent last night with him.
We drew our chairs up to his opened window, turned out the lights, got our cigars, and with our feet on the window-sills and our eyes on the stars across the sky talked the long, quiet hours through.
He talked, not I. Little could I have said to him about the woman who has played fast and loose with him while using him for her convenience. He made it known at the outset that not a word was to be spoken against her.
He just lay back in his big easy chair, with his feet on his window-sill and his eyes on the stars, and built up his defence of Tilly. All night he worked to repair wreckage.
As the grey of morning crept over the city his work was well done: Tilly was restored to more than she had ever been. Silence fell upon him as he sat there with his eyes on the reddening east; and it may be that he saw her—now about to leave him at last—as some white, angelic shape growing fainter and fainter as it vanished in the flush of a new day.
You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. If there were any wings anywhere around, it was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar with an early start to bring down some other victim: the angel-aeroplane out after more prey. I think we both know who the prey will be.
The solemn influence of the night has rested on me. Were it possible, I should feel even a higher respect for Beverley; there is something in him that fills me with awe. He suffers. He could mend Tilly but he cannot mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him.
Their quarrel brings me with an aching heart closer to you. I must come to-night. The messenger will wait for a word that I may. And a sudden strange chill of desolation as to life's brittle ties frightens me into sending you some roses.
Your lover through many close and constant years,
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
[Still later in the day]
POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
June 15.
DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY:
An incredible thing has happened. Ben has just written that he wishes to see me to-night. Will you, after all, wait until to-morrow evening? My dear, Ihaveto ask this of you because there is something very particular that Ben desires to talk to me about.
To-morrow night, then, without fail, you and I!
POLLY BOLES.
POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TOBEVERLEY SANDS
[Late at night of the same day]
June 15.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
We have talked the matter over and send you our conjoined congratulations that your engagement is broken off and your immediate peril ended. But our immediate caution is that the end of the betrothal will not necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the tempter will at once turn away from you in pursuit of another man. She will begin to weave her web abouthim. But if possible she will still holdyouto that web by a single thread. Now, more than ever, you will need to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible to such a nature as yours.
Not until obliged will she ever let you go completely. She hath a devil—perhaps the most famous devil in all the world—the love devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, are poor quitters.
(Signed)POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle.BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles.(His handwriting; her ideasand language.)
TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
This is the third time within the past several months that I have requested you to let me have your bill for professional services. I shall not suppose that you have relied upon my willingness to remain under an obligation of this kind; nor do I like to think I have counted for so little among your many patients that you have not cared whether I paid you or not. If your motive has been kindness, I must plainly tell you that I do not desire such kindness; and if there has been no motive at all, but simply indifference, I must remind you that this indifference means disrespect and that I resent it.
The things you have indirectly done for me in other ways—the songs, the books and magazines, the flowers—these I accept with warm responsive hands and a lavish mind.
And with words not yet uttered, perhaps never to be uttered.
Yours sincerely,TILLY SNOWDEN.
June the Seventeenth.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
I have your bill and I make the due remittance with all due thanks.
Your note pleasantly reassures me how greatly you are obliged that I could put you in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins about the purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. It was a pleasure; in fact, a matter of some pride to do this, and I am delighted that they could furnish you a horse you approve.
While taking my customary walk in the Park yesterday morning, I had a chance to see you and your new mount making acquaintance with one another. I can pay you no higher compliment than to say that you ride like a Kentuckian.
Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a habit of mine to choose the footways through the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn to them by my childhood habit and girlish love of riding. Even to see from day to day what one once had but no longer has is to keep alive hope that one may some day have it again.
You should some time go to Kentucky and ride there. My cousins will look to that.
Yours sincerely,TILLY SNOWDEN.
June the Eighteenth.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
I was passing this morning and witnessed the accident, and I must express my condolences for what might have been and congratulations upon what was.
You certainly fell well—not unlike a Kentuckian!
I feel sure that my cousins could not have known the horse was tricky. Any horse is tricky to the end of his days and the end of his road. He may not show any tricks at home, but becomes tricky in new places. (Can this be the reason that he is called the most human of beasts?)
You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly to my mind that of late you have expressed growing interest in Kentucky. More than once, also (since you have begun to visit me), you have asked me to tell you about my life there. Frankly, this is because I am something of a mystery and you would like to have the mystery cleared up. You wish to find out, without letting me know you are finding out, whether there is not somethingwrongabout me, someriskfor you in visiting me. That is because you have never known anybody like me. I frighten you because I am not afraid of people, not afraid of life. You are used to people who are afraid, especially to women who are afraid. You yourself are horribly afraid of nearly everything.
Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, though it may not greatly explain why I am without fear; still, the land and the people might mean something; they ought to mean much.
I was born of not very poor and immensely respectable parents in a poor and not very respectable county of Kentucky. The first thing I remember about life, my first social consciousness, was the discovery that I was entangled in a series of sisters: there were six of us. I was as nearly as possible at the middle of the procession—with three older and two younger, so that I was crowded both by what was before and by what was behind. I early learned to fight for the present—against both the past and the future—learned to seize what I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the world.
Why my mother bore only daughters will have to be referred to the new science which takes as its field the forces and the mysteries that are sovereign between the nuptials and the cradle. But the reason, as openly laughed about in the family when the family grew old enough to laugh, as laughed about in the neighbourhood, was this:
Even before marriage my father and my mother had waged a violent discussion about woman's suffrage. You may not know that in Kentucky from the first the cause of female suffrage has been upheld by a strong minority of strong women, a true pioneer movement toward the nation's future now near. It seems that my father, who was a brilliant lawyer, always browbeat my mother in argument, overwhelmed her, crushed her. Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked deep into the coals. But regularly when the time came she replied to all his arguments by presenting him with another suffragette! Throughout her life she declined even to bear him a son to continue the argument! Her six daughters—she would gladly have had twelve if she could—were her triumphant squad for the armies of the great rebellion.
Does this help to explain me to you?
What next I relate about my early life is something that you perhaps have never given a thought to—children's pets and playthings: it explains a great deal. Have you ever thought of a vital difference between country children and town children? Country children more quickly throw away their dolls, if they have them, and attach their sympathies to living objects. A child's love of a doll is at best a sham: a little master-drama of the child's imagination trying to fill two roles—its own and the role of something which cannot respond. But a child's love of a living creature, which it chooses as the object of its love and play and protection, is stimulating, healthful and kicking with reality: because it is vitalised by reciprocity in the playmate, now affectionate and now hostile, but always representing something intensely alive—which is the whole main thing.
We are just beginning to find out that the dramas of childhood are the playgrounds of life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll without any return, will cling to a rag husband without any return. A child's loyalty to an automaton prepares a woman for endurance of an automaton. Dolls have been the undoing and the death of many wives.
A multitude of dolls would have been needed to supply the six destructive little girls of my mother's household. We soon broke our china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one another's. For whatever reason, all lifeless pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the house and the little scattering herd of us turned our restless and insatiate natures loose upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted nearly everything on the farm. My father was a director of the County Fair, and I remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize exhibition of our favourites that year. They comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a calf, a lamb and a puppy.
Sooner or later our living playthings outgrew us or died or were sold or made their sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we disconsolate? Not a bit. Did we go down to the branch and gather there under an old weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our hearts thrived on death and destruction, annihilation released us from old ties, change gave us another chance, and we provided substitutes and continued our devotion.
And I think this explains a good deal. And these two experiences of my childhood, taken together, explain me better than anything else I know. Competition first taught me to seize what I wanted before anyone else could seize it. Natural changes next taught me to be prepared at any moment to give that up without vain regret and to seize something else. Thus I seemed to learn life's lesson as I learned to walk: that what you love will not last long, and that long love is possible only when you love often.
So many women know this; how few admit it!
Sincerely yours,TILLY SNOWDEN.
June the Nineteenth.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go away for the summer: first to some friends, then further away to other friends, then still further away to other friends: a summer pageant of brilliant changes.
There is no reason why I should write to you. Your stateroom will be filled with flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; friends will wave to you from the pier. My letter may be lost among the others, but at least it will have been written, and writing it is its pleasure to me.
I was to go to England this summer, was to go as a bride. A few nights since I decided not to go because I did not approve of the bridegroom.
We marvel at life's coincidences: one evening, not long ago, while speaking of your expected summer in England, you mentioned that you planned to make a pilgrimage to see Edward Blackthorne. You were to join some American friends over there and take them with you. That is the coincidence:Iwas to visit the Blackthornes this very summer, not as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited guest—with the groom whom I have rejected.
It is like scattering words before the obvious to say that I wish you a pleasant summer. Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, some night on the passage across, lean far over and look down at the phosphorescent couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of the deep, remember that the Venus of modern life is the American woman.
Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing else, brings you home—see you not at all or seldom or often?
At least this will remind you that I merely sayau revoir.
Adrift for the summer rather than be an unwilling bride.
TILLY SNOWDEN.
June twenty-first.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
June 21.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
Since life separated us the other night I have not heard from you. I have not expected a letter, nor do you expect one from me. But I am going away to-morrow for the summer and my heart has a few words for you which must be spoken.
It was not disappointment about the summer in England, not even your refusal to explain why you disappointed me, that held the main reason of my drawing back. I am in the mood to-night to tell you some things very frankly:
Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to be married and twice as the wedding drew near I drew away from it. It is an old, old feeling of mine, though I am so young, that if married I should not long be happy. Of course I should be happy for a while. Butafterwards! The interminable, intolerableafterwards! The same person year in and year out—I should be stifled. Each of the men to whom I was engaged had given me before marriage all that he had to give: the rest I did not care for; after marriage with either I foresaw only staleness, his limitations, monotony.
Believe this, then: there are things in you that I cling to, other things in you that do not draw me at all. And I cling more to life than to you, more than to any one person. How can any one person ever be all to me, all that I am meant for, andI will live!
Why should we women be forced to spend our lives beside the first spring where one happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! Why be doomed to die in old age at the same spring! With all my soul I believe that the world which has slowly thrown off so many tyrannies is about to throw off other tyrannies. It has been so harsh toward happiness, so compassionate toward misery and wrong. Yet happiness is life's finest victory: for ages we have been trying to defeat our one best victory—our natural happiness!
A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning—then to go thirsty for the rest of the long, hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet at spring after spring—there are so many springs! And thirst is so eager for them!
Come to see me in the autumn. For I will not, cannot, give you up. And when you come, do not seek to renew the engagement. Let that go whither it has gone. But come to see me.
For I love you.
TILLY.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
June 21.
POLLY BOLES:
This is good-bye to you for the summer and, better than that, it is good-bye to you for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth that we have long hated each other and have used our acquaintanceship and our letters to express our hatred? How could there ever have been any friendship between you and me?
Let me tell you of the detestable little signs that I have noticed in you for years. Are you aware that all the time you have occupied your apartment, you have never changed the arrangement of your furniture? As soon as your guests are gone, you push every chair where it was before. For years your one seat has been the same end of the same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted your disquietude if any guest happened to sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere. For years you have worn the same breast-pin, though you have several. The idea of your being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride yourself in such externals of faithfulness.
You soul of perfidy!
I leave you undisturbed to innumerable appointments with Ben, and with the same particular something to talk about, falsest woman I have ever known.
Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the fact that you are secretly receiving almost constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will you tell him?Or shall I?
TILLY SNOWDEN.
POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 23rd.
DEAR BEN:
I am worried.
I begin to feel doubtful as to what course I should pursue with Dr. Claude Mullen. Of late he has been coming too often. He has been writing to me too often. He appears to be losing control of himself. Things cannot go on as they are and they must not get worse. What I could not foresee is his determination to holdmeresponsible for his being in love with me! He insists thatIencouraged him and am now unfair—meunfair! Of course I haveneverencouraged his visits; out of simple goodness of heart I havetoleratedthem. Now the reward of mykindnessis that he holds me responsible and guilty. He is trying, in other words, to take advantage of mysympathyfor him. Idofeel sorry for him!
I have not been cruel enough to dismiss him. His last letter is enclosed: it will give you some idea——!
Can you advise me what to do? I have always relied uponyourjudgment in everything.
Faithfully yours,POLLY.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
[Penciled in Court Room]
June 24th.
DEAR POLLY:
Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: tell him to take a cab and drive straight to the nearest institution for the weak-minded, engage a room, lock himself in and pray God to give him some sense. Tell him to stay secluded there until that prayer is answered. The Almighty himself couldn't answer his prayer until after his death, and by that time he'd be out of the way anyhow and you wouldn't mind.
I return his funeral oration unread, since I did not wish to attract attention to myself as moved to tears in open court.
BEN.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
[Evening of the same day]
POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN:
This is a night I have long waited for and worked for.
You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for two—and for more than two—for our little ones. When I married you, I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats.
But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength. I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your lover.
Name the day when I can be both.
Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day of next Spring, then—so far away but nearer than any other Spring during these impatient years.
Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover,
BEN DOOLITTLE.
Roses to you.
POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 24.
Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN!
My heart answers you. It leaps forward to the day. I have set the day in my heart and sealed it on my lips. Come and break that seal. To-night I shall tear two of the rosebuds apart and mingle their petals on my pillow.
POLLY.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
June 26.
It occurs to me that our engagement might furnish you the means of getting rid of your prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to come to see you: tell him you have some joyful news that must be imparted at once. When he arrives announce to him that you have named the day of your marriage to me. Tome, tell him! Then let him take himself off. You say he complains that all this is getting on his nerves. Anything that could sit on his nerves would be a mighty small animal.
BEN.