POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 27.
Our engagement has only made him more determined. He persists in visiting me. His loyalty is touching. Suppose the next time he comes I arrange for you to come. Your meeting him here might have the desired effect.
POLLY BOLES.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
June 28.
It would certainly have the desired effect, but perhaps not exactly the effect he desires. Madam, would you wish to see the nerve filaments of your fond specialist scattered over your carpet as his life's deplorable arcana? No, Polly, not that!
Make this suggestion to him: that in order to give him a chance to be near you—but not too near—you do offer him for the first year after our marriage—only one year, mind you—you do offer him, with my consent and at a good salary, the position of our furnace-man, since he so loves to warm himself with our fires. It would enable him to keep up his habit of getting down on his knees and puffing for you.
BEN.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
July 14.
DEAR POLLY:
It occurs to me just at the moment that not for some days have I heard you speak of your racked—or wrecked—nerve specialist. Has he learned to control his microscopic attachment? Has he found an antidote for the bacillus of his anaemic love?
Polly, my woman, if he is still bothering you, let me know at once. It has been my joy hitherto to share your troubles; henceforth it is my privilege to take them on two uncrushable shoulders.
At the drop of your hat I'll even meet him in your flat any night you say, and we'll all compete for the consequences.
I. s. y. s. r. r. (You have long since learned what that means.)
Your man,BEN D.
POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
July 15.
DEAREST BEN:
You need not give another thought to Dr. Mullen. He does not annoy me any more. He can drop finally out of our correspondence.
Not an hour these days but my thoughts hover about you. Never so vividly as now does there rise before me the whole picture of our past—of all these years together. And I am ever thinking of the day to which we both look forward as the one on which our paths promise to blend and our lives are pledged to meet.
Your devotedPOLLY.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
July 16.
DEAR SIRS:
Yesterday while walking along the street I found my attention most favourably drawn to the appearance of your business establishment: to the tubs of plants at the entrance, the vines and flowers in the windows, and the classic Italian statuary properly mildewed. Therefore I venture to write.
Do you know anything about ferns, especially Kentucky ferns? Do you ever collect them and ship them? I wish to place an order for some Kentucky ferns to be sent to England. I had a list of those I desired, but this has been mislaid, and I should have to rely upon the shipper to make, out of his knowledge, a collection that would represent the best of the Kentucky flora. Could you do this?
One more question, and you will please reply clearly and honestly. I notice that your firm speak of themselves as landscape architects. This leads me to inquire whether you have ever had any connection with Botany. You may not understand the question and you are not required to understand it: I simply request you to answer it.
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
July 17.
DEAR SIR:
Your esteemed favour to hand. We gather and ship ferns and other plants, subject to order, to any address, native or foreign, with the least possible delay, and we shall be pleased to execute any commission which you may entrust to us.
With reference to your other inquiry, we ask leave to state that we have never had the slightest connection with any other concern doing business in the city under the firm-name of Botany. We do not even find them in the telephone directory.
Awaiting your courteous order, we are
Very truly yours,JUDD & JUDD.Per Q.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO "JUDD & JUDD, PER Q."
July 18.
DEAR SIRS:
I am greatly pleased to hear that you have no connection with any other house doing business under the firm-name of Botany, and I accordingly feel willing to risk giving you the following order: That you will make a collection of the most highly prized varieties of Kentucky ferns and ship them, expenses prepaid, to this address, namely: Mr. Edward Blackthorne, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England.
As a guaranty of good faith and as the means to simplify matters without further correspondence, I take pleasure in enclosing my cheque for $25.
You will please advise me when the ferns are ready to be shipped, as I wish to come down and see to it myself that they actually do get off.
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,July 18.
DEAR SIR:
I met with the melancholy misfortune a few weeks ago of losing my great father. Since his death I have been slowly going over his papers. He left a large mass of them in disorder, for his was too active a mind to pause long enough to put things in order.
In a bundle of notes I have come across a letter to him from Burns & Bruce with the list of ferns in it that they sent him and that had been misplaced. My dear father was a very absent-minded scholar, as is natural. He had penciled a query regarding one of the ferns on the list, and I suppose, while looking up the doubtful point, he had laid the list down to pursue some other idea that suddenly attracted him and then forgot what he had been doing. My father worked over many ideas and moved with perfect ease from one to another, being equally at home with everything great—a mental giant.
I send the list back to you that it may remind you what a trouble and affliction you have been. Do not acknowledge the receipt of it, for I do not wish to hear from you.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
July 21.
DEAR SIRS:
I wish to take up immediately my commission placed a few days ago. I referred in my first letter to a mislaid list of ferns. This has just turned up and is herewith enclosed, and I now wish you to make a collection of the ferns called for on this list.
Please advise me at once whether you will do this.
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
July 22.
DEAR SIR:
Your letter to hand, with the list of ferns enclosed. We shall be pleased to cancel the original order, part of which we advise you had already been filled. It does not comprise the plants called for on the list.
This will involve some slight additional expense, and if agreeable, we shall be pleased to have you enclose your cheque for the slight extra amount as per enclosed bill.
Very truly yours,JUDD & JUDD.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
July 23.
DEAR SIRS:
I have your letter and I take the greatest possible pleasure in enclosing my cheque to cover the additional expense, as you kindly suggest.
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
October 30.
DEAR BEN:
They are gone! They're off! They have weighed anchor! They have sailed; they have departed!
I went down and watched the steamer out of sight. Packed around me at the end of the pier were people, waving hats and handkerchiefs, some laughing, some with tears on their cheeks, some with farewells quivering on their dumb mouths. But everybody forgot his joy or his trouble to look at me: I out-waved, out-shouted them all. An old New York Harbour gull, which is the last creature in the world to be surprised at anything, flew up and glanced at me with a jaded eye.
I have felt ever since as if the steamer's anchor had been taken from around my neck. I have become as human cork which no storm, no leaden weight, could ever sink. Come what will to me now from Nature's unkinder powers! Let my next pair of shoes be made of briers, my next waistcoat of rag weed! Fasten every morning around my neck a collar of the scaly-bark hickory! See to it that my undershirts be made of the honey-locust! For olives serve me green persimmons; if I must be poulticed, swab me in poultices of pawpaws! But for the rest of my days may the Maker of the world in His occasional benevolence save me from the things on it that look frail and harmless like ferns.
Come up to dinner! Come, all there is of you! We'll open the friendly door of some friendly place and I'll dine you on everything commensurate with your simplicity. I'll open a magnum or a magnissimum. I'll open a new subway and roll down into it for joy.
They are gone to him, his emblems of fidelity. I don't care what he does with them. They will for the rest of his days admonish him that in his letter to me he sinned against the highest law of his own gloriously endowed nature:
Le Génie Oblige
Accept this phrase, framed by me for your pilgrim's script of wayside French sayings. Accept it and translate it to mean that he who has genius, no matter what the world may do to him, no matter what ruin Nature may work in him, that he who has genius, is under obligation so long as he lives to do nothing mean and to do nothing meanly.
BEVERLEY.
ANNE RAEBURN TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE IN ITALY
King Alfred's Wood,Warwickshire, England,November 30.
MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
I continue my chronicles of an English country-place during the absence of its master, with the hope that the reading of the chronicles may cause him to hasten his return.
An amusing, perhaps a rather grave, matter passed under my observation yesterday. The afternoon was clear and mild and I had taken my work out into the garden. From where I sat I could see Hodge at work with his spade some distance away. Quite unconsciously, I suppose, I lifted my eyes at intervals to look toward him, for by degrees I became aware that Hodge at intervals was looking toward me. I noticed that he was red in the face, which is always a sign of his anger; apparently he wavered as to whether he should or should not do a debatable thing. Finally lifting his spade high and bringing it down with such force that he sent it deep into the mould where it stood upright, he started toward me.
You know how, as he approaches anyone, he loosens his cap from his forehead and scrapes the back of his neck with the back of his thumb. As he stood before me he did this now. Then he made the following announcement in the voice of an aggrieved bully:
"TheScolopendium vulgareput up two new shoots after he went away, mum. Bishop's crooks he calls 'em, mum."
I replied that I was glad to hear the ferns were thrifty. He, jerking his thumb toward the fern bank, added still more resentfully:
"TheAdiantum nigrumput up some, mum."
I replied that I should announce to you the good news.
Plainly this was not what he had come to tell me, for he stood embarrassed but not budging, his eyes blazing with a kind of stupid fury. At last he brought out his trouble.
It seems that one day last week a hamper of ferns arrived for you from New York, with only the names of the shippers, charges prepaid. I was not at home, having that day gone to the Vicar's with some marmalade; so Hodge took it upon himself to receive the hamper. By his confession he unwrapped the package and discovering the contents to be a collection of fern-roots, with the list of the Latin names attached, he re-wrapped them and re-shipped them to the forwarding agents—charges to be collected in New York.
This is now Hodge's plight: he is uncertain whether the plants were some you had ordered, or were a gift to you from some friend, or merely a gratuitous advertisement by an American nurseryman. Whether yours or another's, of much value to you or none, he resolved that they should not enter the garden. There was no place for them in the garden without there being a place for their Latin names in his head, and his head would hold no more. At least his temper is the same that has incited all English rebellion: human nature need not stand for it!
The skies are wistful some days with blue that is always brushed over by clouds: England's same still blue beyond her changing vapours. The evenings are cosy with lamps and November fires and with new books that no hand opens. A few late flowers still bloom, loyal to youth in a world that asks of them now only their old age. The birds sit silent with ruffled feathers and look sturdy and established on the bare shrubs: liberals in spring, conservatives in autumn, wise in season. The larger trees strip their summer flippancies from them garment by garment and stand in their noble nakedness, a challenge to the cold.
The dogs began to wait for you the day you left. They wait still, resolved at any cost to show that they can be patient; that is, well-bred. The one of them who has the higher intelligence! The other evening I filled and lighted your pipe and held it out to him as I have often seen you do. He struck the floor softly with the tip of his tail and smiled with his eyes very tenderly at me, as saying: "You want to see whether I remember thathedid that; of course I remember." Then, with a sudden suspicion that he was possibly being very stupid, with quick, gruff bark he ran out of the room to make sure. Back he came, his face in broad silent laughter at himself and his eyes announcing to me—"Not yet."
Do not all these things touch you with homesickness amid the desolation of the Grand Canal—with the shallow Venetian songs that patter upon the ear but do not reach down into strong Northern English hearts?
I have already written this morning to Mrs. Blackthorne. As each of you hands my letters to the other, these petty chronicles, sent out divided here in England, become united in a foreign land.
I am, dear Mr. Blackthorne,
Respectfully yours,ANNE RAEBURN.
JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
December 27.
DEAR SIR:
We have to report that the ferns recently shipped to a designated address in England in accordance with your instructions have been returned with charges for return shipment to be collected at our office. We enclose our bill for these charges and ask your attention to it at your early convenience. The ferns are ruined and worthless to us.
Very truly yours,JUDD & JUDD.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
December 30.
DEAR SIRS:
I am very much obliged to you for your letter and I take the greatest pleasure imaginable in enclosing my cheque to cover the charges of the return shipment.
Very truly yours,BEVERLEY SANDS.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
December 28.
DEAR BEN:
The ferns have come back to me from England!
BEVERLEY.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
December 29.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
I am with you, brother, to the last root. But don't send any more ferns to anybody—don't try to, for God's sake! I'm with you!J'y suis, J'y reste. (French forever!Boutez en avant, monFrench!)
By the way, our advice is that you drop the suit against Phillips & Faulds. They are engaged in a lawsuit and as we look over the distant Louisville battlefield, we can see only the wounded and the dying—and the poor. Would you squeeze a druggist's sponge for live tadpoles? Whatever you got, you wouldn't get tadpoles, not live ones.
Our fee is $50; hadn't you better stop at $50 and think yourself lucky?Monsieur a bien tombé.
Any more fern letters? Don't forget them.
BEN DOOLITTLE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
December 30.
DEAR BEN:
I take your advice, of course, about dropping the suit against Phillips & Faulds, and I take pleasure in enclosing you my cheque for $50—damn them. That's $75—damn them. And if anybody else anywhere around hasn't received a cheque from me for nothing, let him or her rise, and him or her will get one.
No more letters yet. But I feel a disturbance in the marrow of my bones and doubtless others are on the way, as one more spell of bad weather—another storm for me.
BEVERLEY.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,December 25.
SIR:
This is Christmas Day, when every one is thinking of peace and good will on earth. It makes me think of you. I cannot forget you, my feeling is too bitter for oblivion, for it was you who were instrumental in bringing about my father's death. One damp night I heard him get up and then I heard him fall, and rushing to him to see what was the matter, I found that he had stumbled down the three steps which led from his bedroom to his library, and had rolled over on the floor, with his candle burning on the carpet beside him. I lifted him up and asked him what he was doing out of bed and he said he had some kind of recollection about a list of ferns; it worried him and he could not sleep.
The fall was a great shock to his nervous system and to mine, and a few days after that he contracted pneumonia from the cold, being already troubled with lumbago.
My father's life-work, which will never be finished now, was to be called "Approximations to Consciousness in Plants." He believed that bushes knew a great deal of what is going on around them, and that trees sometimes have queer notions which cause them to grow crooked, and that ferns are most intelligent beings. It was while thus engaged, in a weakened condition with this work on "Consciousness in Plants," that he suddenly lost consciousness himself and did not afterwards regain it as an earthly creature.
I shall always remember you for having been instrumental in his death. This is the kind of Christmas Day you have presented to me.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,January 7.
DEAR SIR:
Necessity knows no law, and I have become a sad victim of necessity, hence this appeal to you.
My wonderful father left me in our proud social position without means. I was thrown by his death upon my own resources, and I have none but my natural faculties and my wonderful experience as his secretary.
With these I had to make my way to a livelihood and deep as was the humiliation of a proud, sensitive daughter of the South and of such a father, I have been forced to come down to a position I never expected to occupy. I have accepted a menial engagement in a small florist establishment of young Mr. Andy Peters, of this place.
Mr. Andy Peters was one of my father's students of Botany. He sometimes stayed to supper, though, of course, my father did not look upon him as our social equal, and cautioned me against receiving his attentions, not that I needed the caution, for I repeatedly watched them sitting together and they were most uncongenial. My father's acquaintance with him made it easier for me to enter his establishment. I am to be his secretary and aid him with my knowledge of plants and especially to bring the influence of my social position to bear on his business.
Since you were the instrument of my father's death, you should be willing to aid me in my efforts to improve my condition in life. I write to say that it would be as little as you could do to place your future commissions for ferns with Mr. Andy Peters. He has just gone into the florist's business and these would help him and be a recommendation to me for bringing in custom. He might raise my salary, which is so small that it is galling.
While father remained on earth and roved the campus, he filled my life completely. I have nothing to fill me now but orders for Mr. Andy Peters.
Hoping for an early reply,
A proud daughter of the Southland,CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
January 10.
DEAR BEN:
The tumult in my bones was a well-advised monitor. More fern letterswereon the way: I enclose them.
You will discover from the earlier of these two documents that during a late unconscious scrimmage in North Carolina I murdered an aged botanist of international reputation. At least one wish of my life is gratified: that if I ever had to kill anybody, it would be some one who was great. You will gather from this letter that, all unaware of what I was doing, I tripped him up, rolled him downstairs, knocked his candle out of his hand and, as he lay on his back all learned and amazed, I attacked him with pneumonia, while lumbago undid him from below.
You will likewise observe that his daughter seems to be an American relative of Hamlet—she has a "harp" in her head: she harps on the father.
One thing I cannot get out ofmyhead: have you noticed anything wrong at the Club? Two or three evenings, as we have gone in to dinner, have you noticed anything wrong? Those two charlatans put their heads together last night: their two heads put together do not make one complete head—that may be the trouble; beware of less than one good full-weight head. Something is wrong and I believe they are the dark forces: have you observed anything?
BEVERLEY.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
January 11.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
The letters are filed away with their predecessors.
If I am any judge of human nature, you will receive others from this daughter of the South in the same strain.
If her great father (local meaning, old dad) is really dead, he probably sawed his head off against a tight clothes-line in the back-yard some dark night, while on his way to their gooseberry bushes to see if they had any sense.
More likely he hurled himself headlong into eternity to get rid of her—rolled down the steps with sheer delight and reached for pneumonia with a glad hand to escape his own offspring and her endless society.
The most terrifying thing to me about this new Clara is her Great Desert dryness; no drop of humour ever bedewed her mind. I believe those eminent gentlemen who call themselves biologists have recently discovered that the human system, if deprived of water, will convert part of its dry food into water.
I wish these gentlemen would study the contrariwise case of Clara: she would convert a drink of water into a mouthful of sawdust.
Humour has long been codified by me as one of nature's most solemn gifts. I divide all witnesses into two classes: those who, while giving testimony or being examined or cross-examined, cause laughter in the courtroom at others. The second class turn all laughter against themselves. That is why the gift of humour is so grave—it keeps us from making ourselves ridiculous. A Frenchman (still my French) has recently pointed out that the reason we laugh is to drive things out of the world, to jolly them out of existence and have a good time as we do it. Therefore not to be laughed at is to survive.
Beware of this new Clara! War breeds two kinds of people: heroes and shams—the heroic and the mock heroic. You and I know the Civil War bred two kinds of burlesque Southerner: the post-bellum Colonel and the spurious proud daughter of the Southland. Proud, sensitive Southern people do not go around proclaiming that they are proud and sensitive. And that word—Southland! Hang the word and shoot the man who made it. There are no proud daughters of the Westland or of the Northland. Beware of this new Clara! This breath of the Desert!
Yes, I have noticed something wrong in the Club. I have hesitated about speaking to you of it. I do not know what it means, but my suspicions lie where yours lie—with those two wallpaper doctors.
BEN.
RUFUS KENT TO BEVERLEY SANDS
The Great Dipper,January 12.
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I have been President of this Club so long—they have refused to have any other president during my lifetime and call me its Nestor—that whenever I am present my visits are apt to consist of interruptions. To-night it is raining and not many members are scattered through the rooms. I shall be at leisure to answer your very grave letter. (I see, however, that I am going to be interrupted.) ...
My dear Mr. Sands, you are a comparatively new member and much allowance must be made for your lack of experience with the traditions of this Club. You ask: "What is this gossip about? Who started it; what did he start it with?"
My dear Mr. Sands, there is no gossip in this Club. It would not be tolerated. We have here only the criticism of life. This Club is The Great Dipper. The origin of the name has now become obscure. It may first have been adopted to mean that the members would constitute a star-system—a human constellation; it may be otherwise interpreted as the wit of some one of the founders who wished to declare in advance that the Club would be a big, long-handled spoon; with which any member could dip into the ocean of human affairs and ladle out what he required for an evening's conversation.
No gossip here, then. The criticism of life only. What is said in the Club would embrace many volumes. In fact I myself have perhaps discoursed to the vast extent of whole shelves full. Probably had the Club undertaken to bind its conversation, the clubhouse would not hold the books. But not a word of gossip.
I now come to the subject of your letter, and this is what I have ascertained:
During the past summer one of the members of the Club (no name, of course, can be called) was travelling in England. Three or four American tourists joined him at one place or another, and these, finding themselves in one of those enchanted regions of England to which nearly all tourists go and which in our time is made more famous by the novels of Edward Blackthorne—whom I met in England and many of whose works are read here in the Club by admirers of his genius—this group of American tourists naturally went to call on him at his home. They were very hospitably received; there was a great deal of praise of him and praise everywhere in the world is hospitably received, so I hear. It was a pleasant afternoon; the American visitors had tea with Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorne in their garden. Afterwards Mr. Blackthorne took them for a stroll.
There had been some discussion, as it seems, of English and of American fiction, of the younger men coming on in the two literatures. One of the visitors innocently inquired of Mr. Blackthorne whether he knew of your work. Instantly all noticed a change in his manner: plainly the subject was distasteful, and he put it away from him with some vague rejoinder in a curt undertone. At once some one of the visitors conceived the idea of getting at the reason for Mr. Blackthorne's unaccountable hostility. But his evident resolve was not to be drawn out.
As they strolled through the garden, they paused to admire his collection of ferns, and he impulsively turned to the American who had been questioning him and pointed to a little spot.
"That," he said, "was once reserved for some ferns which your young American novelist promised to send me."
The whole company gathered curiously about the spot and all naturally asked, "But where are the ferns?"
Mr. Blackthorne without a word and with an air of regret that even so little had escaped him, led the party further away.
That is all. Perhaps that is what you hear in the Club: the hum of the hive that a member should have acted in some disagreeable, unaccountable way toward a very great man whose work so many of us revere. You have merely run into the universal instinct of human nature to think evil of human nature. Emerson had about as good an opinion of it as any man that ever lived, and he called it a scoundrel. It is one of the greatest of mysteries that we are born with a poor opinion of one another and begin to show it as babies. If you do not think that babies despise one another, put a lot of them together for a few hours and see how much good opinion is left.
I feel bound to say that your letter is most unbridled. There cannot be many things with which the people of Kentucky are more familiar than the bridle, yet they always impress outsiders as the most unbridled of Americans. Iwilladd, however, that patrician blood, ancestral blood, is always unbridled. Otherwise I might not now be styled the Nestor of this Club. Only some kind of youthful Hector in this world ever makes one of its aged Nestors. I am interrupted again....
I must conclude my letter rather abruptly. My advice to you is not to pay the slightest attention to all this miserable gossip in the Club. I am too used to that sort of thing here to notice it myself. And will you not at an early date give me the pleasure of your company at dinner?
Faithfully yours,RUFUS KENT.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,May 1, 1912
MY DEAR SIR:
This small greenhouse of Mr. Andy Peters is a stifling, lonesome place. His acquaintances are not the class of people who buy flowers unless there is a death in the family. He has no social position, and receives very few orders in that way. I do what I can for him through my social connections. Time hangs heavily on my hands and I have little to do but think of my lot.
When Mr. Peters and I are not busy, I do not find him companionable. He does not possess the requisite attainments. We have a small library in this town, and I thought I would take up reading. I have always felt so much at home with all literature. I asked the librarian to suggest something new in fiction and she urged me to read a novel by young Mr. Beverley Sands, the Kentucky novelist. I write now to inquire whether you are the Mr. Beverley Sands who wrote the novel. If you are, I wish to tell you how glad I am that I have long had the pleasure of your acquaintance. Your story comes quite close to me. You understand what it means to be a proud daughter of the Southland who is thrown upon her own resources. Your heroine and I are most alike. There is a wonderful description in your book of a woodland scene with ferns in it.
Would you mind my sending you my own copy of your book, to have you write in it some little inscription such as the following: "For Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain with the compliments of Beverley Sands."
Your story gives me a different feeling from what I have hitherto entertained toward you. You may not have understood my first letters to you. The poor and proud and sensitive are so often misunderstood. You have so truly appreciated me in drawing the heroine of your book that I feel as much attracted to you now as I was repelled from you formerly.
Respectfully yours,CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 10, 1912.
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I wish to thank you for putting your name in my copy of your story. Your kindness encourages me to believe that you are all that your readers would naturally think you to be. And I feel that I can reach out to you for sympathy.
The longer I remain in this place, the more out of place I feel. But my main trouble is that I have never been able to meet the whole expense of my father's funeral, though no one knows this but the undertaker, unless he has told it. He is quite capable of doing such a thing. The other day he passed me, sitting on his hearse, and he gave me a look that was meant to remind me of my debt and that was most uncomplimentary.
And yet I was not extravagant. Any ignorant observer of the procession would never have supposed that my father was a thinker of any consequence. The faculty of the college attended, but they did not make as much of a show as at Commencement. They never do at funerals.
Far be it from me to place myself under obligation to anyone, least of all to a stranger, by receiving aid. I do not ask it. I now wish that I had never spoken to you of your having been instrumental in my father's death.
A proud daughter of the Southland,CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 17, 1912.
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I have received your cheque and I think what you have done is most appropriate.
Since I wrote you last, my position in this establishment has become still more embarrassing. Mr. Andy Peters has begun to offer me his attentions. I have done nothing to bring about this infatuation for me and I regard it as most inopportune.
I should like to leave here and take a position in New York. If I could find a situation there as secretary to some gentleman, my experience as my great father's secretary would of course qualify me to succeed as his. You may not have cordially responded to my first letters, but you cannot deny that they were well written. If the gentleman were a married man, I could assure the family beforehand that there would be no occasion for jealousy on his wife's part, as so often happens with secretaries, I have heard. If he should have lost his wife and should have little children, I do love little children. While not acting as his secretary, I could be acting with the children.
If my grey-haired father, who is now beyond the blue skies, were only back in North Carolina!
CLARA LOUISE.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 21, 1912.
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I have been forced to leave forever the greenhouse of Mr. Andy Peters and am now thrown upon my own resources without a roof over my proud head.
Mr. Andy Peters is a confirmed rascal. I almost feel that I shall have to do something desperate if I am to succeed.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
May 24, 1912.
DEAR BEN:
Clara Louise Chamberlain is in New York! God Almighty!
I have been so taken up lately with other things that I have forgotten to send you a little bundle of letters from her. You will discover from one of these that I gave her a cheque. I know you will say it was folly, perhaps criminal folly; but Iwasin a way "instrumental" in bringing about the great botanist's demise.
If I had described no ferns, there would have been no fern trouble, no fern list. The old gentleman would not have forgotten the list, if I had not had it sent to him; hence he would not have gotten up at midnight to search for it, would not have fallen downstairs, might never have had pneumonia. I can never be acquitted of responsibility! Besides, she praised my novel (something you have never done!): that alone was worth nearly a hundred dollars to me! Now she is here and she writes, asking me to help her to find employment, as she is without means.
But I can't have that woman asmysecretary! I dictate my novels. Novels are matters of the emotions. The secretary of a novelist must not interfere with the flow of his emotions. If I were dictating to this woman, she would be like an organ-grinder, and I should be nothing but a little hollow-eyed monkey, wondering what next to do, and too terrified not to do something; my poor brain would be unable even to hesitate about an idea for fear she would think my ideas had given out. Besides she would be the living presence of this whole Pharaoh's plague of Nile Green ferns.
Let her beyoursecretary, will you? In your mere lawyer's work, you do not have any emotions. Give her a job, for God's sake! And remember you have never refused me anything in your life. I enclose her address and please don't send it back to me.
For I am sick, just sick! I am going to undress and get in bed and send for the doctor and stretch myself out under my bolster and die my innocent death. And God have mercy on all of you! But I already know, when I open my eyes in Eternity, what will be the first thing I'll see. O Lord, I wonder if there is anything but ferns in heaven and hell!
BEVERLEY.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN
May 25, 1912.
DEAR MADAM:
Mr. Beverley Sands is very much indisposed just at the present time, and has been kind enough to write me with the request that I interest myself in securing for you a position as private secretary. Nothing permanent is before me this morning, but I write to say that I could give you some work to-morrow for the time at least, if you will kindly call at these offices at ten o'clock.
Very truly yours,BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 27, 1912.
DEAR BEVERLEY:
If you keep on getting into trouble, some day you'll get in and never get out. You sent her a cheque! Didn't you know that in doing this you had sent her a blank cheque, which she could afterwards fill in at any cost to your peace? If you are going to distribute cheques to young ladies merely because their fathers die, I shall take steps to have you placed in my legal possession as an adult infant.
Here's what I've done—I wrote to your ward, asking her to present herself at this office at ten o'clock yesterday morning. She was here punctually. I had left instructions that she should be shown at once into my private office.
When she entered, I said good morning, and pointed to a typewriter and to some matter which I asked her to copy. Meantime I finished writing a hypothetical address to a hypothetical jury in a hypothetical case, at the same time making it as little like an actual address to a jury as possible and as little like law as possible.
Then I asked her to receive the dictation of the address, which was as follows:
"I beg you now to take a good look at this young woman—young, but old enough to know what she, is doing. You will not discover in her appearance, gentlemen, any marks of the adventuress. But you are men of too much experience not to know that the adventuress does not reveal her marks. As for my client, he is a perfectly innocent man. Worse than innocent; he is, on account of a certain inborn weakness, a rather helpless human being whenever his sympathies are appealed to, or if anyone looks at him pleasantly, or but speaks a kind word. In a moment of such weakness he yielded to this woman's appeal to his sympathies. At once she converted his generosity into a claim, and now she has begun to press that claim. But that is an old story: the greater your kindness to certain people, the more certain they become that your kindness is simply their due. The better you are, the worse you must have been. Your present virtues are your acknowledgment of former shortcomings. It has become the design of this adventuress—my client having once shown her unmerited kindness—it has now become her apparent design to force upon him the responsibility of her support and her welfare.
"You know how often this is done in New York City, which is not only Babylon for the adventurer and adventuress, but their Garden of Eden, since here they are truly at large with the serpent. You are aware that the adventuress never operates, except in a large city, just as the charlatan of every profession operates in the large city. Little towns have no adventuresses and no charlatans; they are not to be found there because there they would be found out. What I ask is that you protect my client as you would have my client, were he a juryman, help to protect innocent men like you. I ask then that this woman be sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars and be further sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary for a term of one year.
"No, I do not ask that. For this young woman is not yet a bad woman. But unless she stops right here in her career, she is likely to become a bad woman. I do ask that you sentence her to pay a few tears of penitence and to go home, and there be strictly confined to wiser, better thoughts."
When I had dictated this, I asked her to read it over to me; she did so in faltering tones. Then I bade her good morning, said there was no more work for the day, instructed her that when she was through with copying the work already assigned, the head-clerk would receive it and pay for it, and requested her to return at ten o'clock this morning.
This morning she did not come. I called up her address; she had left there. Nothing was known of her.
If you ever write to her again—! And since you, without visible means of support, are so fond of sending cheques to everybody, why not send one to me! Am I to go on defending you for nothing?
Your obedient counsel and turtle,
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
May 28, 1912.
DEAR BEN:
What have you done, what have you done, what have you done! That green child turned loose in New York, not knowing a soul and not having a cent! Suppose anything happens to her—how shall I feel then! Of course, you meant well, but my dear fellow, wasn't it a terrible, an inhuman thing to do! Just imagine—but then youcan'timagine,can'timagine,can'timagine!
BEVERLEY.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 29, 1912.
MY DEAR BEVERLEY:
I am sorry that my bungling efforts in your behalf should have proved such a miscalculation. But as you forgive everybody sooner or later perhaps you will in time pardon even me.
Your respectful erring servant,BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
May 30, 1912.
POLLY BOLES:
The sight of a letter from me will cause a violent disturbance of your routine existence. Our "friendship" worked itself to an open and honourable end about the time I went away last summer and showed itself to be honest hatred. Since my return in the autumn I have been absorbed in many delightful ways and you, doubtless, have been loyally imbedded in the end of the same frayed sofa, with your furniture arranged as for years past, and with the same breastpin on your constant heart. Whenever we have met, you have let me know that the formidable back of Polly Boles was henceforth to be turned on me.
I write because I will not come to see you. My only motive is that you will forward my letter to Ben Doolittle, whom you have so prejudiced against me, that I cannot even write to him.
My letter concerns Beverley. You do not know that since our engagement was broken last summer he has regularly visited me: we have enjoyed one another in ways that are not fetters. Your friendship for Beverley of course has lasted with the constancy of a wooden pulpit curved behind the head and shoulders of a minister. Ben Doolittle's affection for him is as splendid a thing as one ever sees in life. I write for the sake of us all.
Have you been with Beverley of late? If so, have you noticed anything peculiar? Has Ben seen him? Has Ben spoken to you of a change? I shall describe as if to you both what occurred to-night during Beverley's visit: he has just gone.
As soon as I entered the parlours I discovered that he was not wholly himself and instantly recollected that he had not for some time seemed perfectly natural. Repeatedly within the last few months it has become increasingly plain that something preyed upon his mind. When I entered the rooms this evening, although he made a quick, clever effort to throw it off, he was in this same mood of peculiar brooding.
Someone—I shall not say who—had sent me some flowers during the day. I took them down with me, as I often do. I think that Beverley, on account of his preoccupation, did not at first notice that I had brought any flowers; he remained unaware, I feel sure, that I placed the vase on the table near which we sat. But a few minutes later he caught sight of them—a handful of roses of the colour of the wild-rose, with some white spray and a few ferns.
When his eyes fell upon the ferns our conversation snapped like a thread. Painful silence followed. The look with which one recognises some object that persistently annoys came into his eyes: it was the identical expression I had already remarked when he was gazing as on vacancy. He continued absorbed, disregardful of my presence, until his silence became discourteous. My inquiry for the reason of his strange action was evaded by a slight laugh.
This evasion irritated me still more. You know I never trust or respect people who gloss. His rejoinder was gloss. He was taking it for granted that having exposed to me something he preferred to conceal, he would receive my aid to cover this up: I was to join him in the ceremony of gloss.
As a sign of my displeasure I carried the flowers across the room to the mantelpiece.
But the gaiety and carelessness of the evening were gone. When two people have known each other long and intimately, nothing so quickly separates them as the discovery by one that just beneath the surface of their intercourse the other keeps something hidden. The carelessness of the evening was gone, a sense of restraint followed which each of us recognised by periods of silence. To escape from this I soon afterward for a moment went up to my room.
I now come to the incident which explains why I think my letter should be sent to Ben Doolittle.
As I re-entered the parlours Beverley was standing before the vase of flowers on the mantelpiece. His back was turned toward me. He did not see me or hear me. I was about to speak when I discovered that he was muttering to himself and making gestures at the ferns. Fragments of expression straggled from him and the names of strange people. I shall not undertake to write down his incoherent mutterings, yet such was the stimulation of my memory due to shock that I recall many of these.
You ought to know by this time that I am by nature fearless; yet something swifter and stranger than fear took possession of me and I slipped from the parlours and ran half-way up the stairs. Then, with a stronger dread of what otherwise might happen, I returned.
Beverley was sitting where I had left him when I quitted the parlours first. He had the air of merely expecting my re-entrance. I think this is what shocked me most: that he could play two parts with such ready concealment, successful cunning.
Now that he is gone and the whole evening becomes so vivid a memory, I am urged by a feeling of uneasiness to reach Ben Doolittle with this letter, since there is no one else to whom I can turn.
Beverley left abruptly; my manner may have forced that. Certainly for the first time in all these years we separated with a sudden feeling of positive anger. If he calls again, I shall be excused.
Act as you think best. And remember, please, under what stress of feeling I must be to write another letter to you.To you!
TILLY SNOWDEN.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
[A second letter enclosed in the preceding one]
My letter of last night was written from impulse. This morning I was so ill that I asked Dr. Marigold to come to see me. I had to explain. He looked grave and finally asked whether he might speak to Dr. Mullen: he thought it advisable; Dr. Mullen could better counsel what should be done. Later he called me up to inquire whether Dr. Mullen and he could call together.
Dr. Mullen asked me to go over what had occurred the evening before. Dr. Marigold and he went across the room and consulted. Dr. Mullen then asked me who Beverley's physician was. I said I thought Beverley had never been ill in his life. He asked whether Ben Doolittle knew or had better not be told.
Again I leave the matter to Ben and you.
But I have thought it necessary to put down on a separate paper the questions which Dr. Mullen asked with my reply to each. For I do not wish Ben Doolittle to think I said anything about Beverley that I would be unwilling for him or for anyone else to know.
TILLY SNOWDEN.
POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
June 2, 1912.
TILLY SNOWDEN:
A telegram from Louisville has reached me this morning, announcing the dangerous illness of my mother, and I go to her by the earliest train. I have merely to say that I have sent your letters to Ben.
I shall add, however, that the formidable back of Polly Boles seems to absorb a good deal of your attention. At least my formidable back is a safe back. It is not an uncontrollable back. It may be spoken of, but at least it is never publicly talked about. It does not lead me into temptation; it is not a scandal. On the whole, I console myself with the knowledge that very few women have gotten into trouble on account of theirbacks. If history speaks truly, quite a few notorious ones have come to grief—butyouwill understand.
POLLY BOLES.
POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 2, 1912.
DEAR BEN:
I find bad news does not come single. I have a telegram from Louisville with the news of my mother's illness and start by the first train. Just after receiving it I had a letter from Tilly, which I enclose.
I, too, have noticed for some time that Beverley has been troubled. Have you seen him of late? Have you noticed anything wrong? What do you think of Tilly's letter? Write me at once. I should go to see him myself but for the news from Louisville. I have always thought Beverley health itself. Would it be possible for him to have a breakdown? I shall be wretched about him until I hear from you. What do you make out of the questions Dr. Mullen asked Tilly and her replies?
Are you going to write to me every day while I am gone?
POLLY.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS
June 4, 1912.
DEAR SIRS:
I desire to recall myself to you as a former Louisville patron of your flourishing business and also as more recently the New York lawyer who brought unsuccessful suit against you on behalf of one of his clients.
You will find enclosed my cheque, and you are requested to send the value of it in long-stemmed red roses to Miss Boles—the same address as in former years.
If the stems of your roses do not happen to be long, make them long. (You know the wires.)
Very truly yours,
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
June 4, 1912.
DEAR POLLY:
You will have had my telegram of sympathy with you in your mother's illness, and of my unspeakable surprise that you could go away without letting me see you.
Have I seen Beverley of late? I have seen him early and late. And I have read Tilly's much mystified and much-mistaken letters. If Beverley is crazy, a Kentucky cornfield is crazy, all roast beef is a lunatic, every Irish potato has a screw loose and the Atlantic Ocean is badly balanced.
I happen to hold the key to Beverley's comic behaviour in Tilly's parlour.
As to the questions put to Tilly by that dilution of all fools, Claude Mullen—your favourite nerve specialist and former suitor—I have just this to say:
All these mutterings of Beverley—during one of the gambols in Tilly's parlours, which he naturally reserves for me—all these fragmentary expressions relate to real people and to actual things that you and Tilly have never known anything about.
Men must not bother their women by telling them everything. That, by the way, has been an old bone of contention between you and me, Polly, my chosen rib—a silent bone, but still sometimes, I fear, a slightly rheumatic bone. But when will a woman learn that her heavenly charm to a man lies in the thought that he can place her and keep her in a world, into which his troubles cannot come. Thus he escapes from them himself. Let him once tell his troubles to her and she becomes the mirror of them—and possibly the worst kind of mirror.
Beverley has told Tilly nothing of all this entanglement with ferns, I have not told you. All four of us have thereby been the happier.
But through Tilly's misunderstanding those two mischief-making charlatans, Marigold and Mullen, have now come into the case; and it is of the utmost importance that I deal with these two gentlemen at once; to that end I cut this letter short and start after them.
Oh, but why did you go away without good-bye?
BEN.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
June 5, 1912.
DEAR POLLY:
I go on where I left off yesterday.
I did what I thought I should never do during my long and memorable life: I called on your esteemed ex-acquaintance, Dr. Claude Mullen. I explained how I came to do so, and I desired of him an opinion as to Beverley. He suggested that more evidence would be required before an opinion could be given. What evidence, I suggested, and how to be gotten? He thought the case was one that could best be further studied if the person were put under secret observation—since he revealed himself apparently only when alone. I urged him to take control of the matter, took upon myself, as Beverley's friend, authority to empower him to go on. He advised that a dictograph be installed in Beverley's room. It would be a good idea to send him a good big bunch of ferns also: the ferns, the dictograph, Beverley alone with them—a clear field.
I explained to Beverley, and we went out and bought a dictograph, and he concealed it where, of course, he could not find it!
In the evening we had a glorious dinner, returned to his rooms, and while I smoked in silence, he, in great peace of mind and profound satisfaction with the world in general, poured into the dictograph his long pent-up opinion of our two dear old friends, Marigold and Mullen. He roared it into the machine, shouted it, raved it, soliloquised it. I had in advance requested him to add my opinion of your former suitor. Each of us had long been waiting for so good a chance and he took full advantage of the opportunity. The next morning I notified Dr. Mullen that Beverley had raved during the night, and that the machine was full of his queer things.
At the appointed hour this morning we assembled in Beverley's rooms. I had cleared away his big centre table, all the rubbish of papers amid which he lives, including some invaluable manuscripts of his worthless novels. I had taken the cylinders out of the dictograph and had put them in a dictophone, and there on the table lay that Pandora's box of information with a horn attached to it.
Dr. Mullen arrived, bringing with him the truly great New York nerve specialist and scientist whom he relies upon to pilot him in difficult cases. Dr. Marigold had brought the truly great physician and scientist who pilots him. At Beverley's request, I had invited the president of his Club, and he had brought along two Club affinities; three gossips.
I sent Beverley to Brooklyn for the day.
We seated ourselves, and on the still air of the room that unearthly asthmatic horn began to deliver Beverley's opinion. Instantly there was an uproar. There was a scuffle. It was almost a general fight. Drs. Marigold and Mullen had jumped to their feet and shouted their furious protests. One of them started to leave the room. He couldn't, I had locked the door. One slammed at the machine—he was restrained—everybody else wanted to hear Beverley out. And amid the riot Beverley kept on his peaceful way, grinding out his healthy vituperation.
That will do, Polly, my dear. You will never hear anything more of Beverley's being in bad health—not from those two rear-admirals of diagnosis—away in the rear. Another happy result; it saves him at last from Tilly. Her act was one that he will never forgive. His act she will never forgive. The last tie between them is severed now.
But all this is nothing, nothing, nothing! I am lost without you.
BEN.
P.S. Now that I have disposed of two of Beverley's detractors, in a day or two I am going to demolish the third one—an Englishman over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I have long waited for the chance to write him just one letter: he's the chief calumniator.
POLLY BOLES TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
Louisville, Kentucky,June 9, 1912.
DEAR BEN:
I cannot tell you what a relief it brought me to hear that Beverley is well. Of course it was all bound to be a mistake.
At the same time your letters have made me very unhappy. Was it quite fair? Was it open? Was it quite what anyone would have expected of Beverley and you?
Nothing leaves me so undone as what I am not used to in people. I do not like surprises and I do not like changes. I feel helpless unless I can foresee what my friends will do and can know what to expect of them. Frankly, your letters have been a painful shock to me.
I foresee one thing: this will bring Tilly and Dr. Marigold more closely together. She will feel sorry for him, and a woman's sense of fair play will carry her over to his side. You men do not know what fair play is or, if you do, you don't care. Only a woman knows and cares. Please don't keep after Dr. Mullen on my account. Why should you persecute him because he loved me?
Dr. Marigold will want revenge on Beverley, and he will have his revenge—in some way.
Your letters have left me wretched. If you surprise me in this way, how might you not surprise me still further? Oh, if we could only understand everybody perfectly, and if everything would only settle and stay settled!
My mother is much improved and she has urged me—the doctor says her recovery, though sure, will be gradual—to spend at least a month with her. To-day I have decided to do so. It will be of so much interest to her if I have my wedding clothes made here. You know how few they will be. My dresses last so long, and I dislike changes. I have found my same dear old mantua-maker and she is delighted and proud. But she insists that since I went to New York I have dropped behind and that I will not do even for Louisville.
On my way to her I so enjoy looking at old Louisville houses, left among the new ones. They seem so faithful! My dear old mantua-maker and the dear old houses—they are the real Louisville.
My mother joins me in love to you.
Sincerely yours,POLLY BOLES.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
150 Wall Street, New York,June 10, 1912.
Edward Blackthorne, Esq.,King Alfred's Wood,Warwickshire, England.
MY DEAR SIR:
I am a stranger to you. I should have been content to remain a stranger. A grave matter which I have had no hand in shaping causes me to write you this one letter—there being no discoverable likelihood that I shall ever feel painfully obliged to write you a second.
You are a stranger to me. But you are, I have heard, a great man. That, of course, means that you are a famous man, otherwise I should never have heard that you are a great one. You hold a very distinguished place in your country, in the world; people go on pilgrimages to you. The thing that has made you famous and that attracts pilgrims are your novels.
I do not read novels. They contain, I understand, the lives of imaginary people. I am satisfied to read the lives of actual people and I do read much biography. One of the Lives I like to study is that of Samuel Johnson, and I recall just here some words of his to the effect that he did not feel bound to honour a man who clapped a hump on his shoulder and another hump on his leg and shouted he was Richard the Third. I take the liberty of saying that I share Dr. Johnson's opinion as to puppets, either on the stage or in fiction. The life of the actual Richard interests me, but the life of Shakespeare's Richard doesn't. I should have liked to read the actual life of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
I have never been able to get a clear idea what a novelist is. The novelists that I superficially encounter seem to have no clear idea what they are themselves. No two of them agree. But each of them agrees thathisduty and business in life is to imagine things and then notify people that those things are true and that they—people—should buy those things and be grateful for them and look up to the superior person who concocted them and wrote them down.