New York, October 4th.Dear Lady of the Unlavender Scented Memories:Please send that picture. You have moved to the very last seat in the car and I have picked up my traps and followed you. Will you send it, or are you going to move into the Pullman?Yours as ever,B.H.
New York, October 4th.
Dear Lady of the Unlavender Scented Memories:
Please send that picture. You have moved to the very last seat in the car and I have picked up my traps and followed you. Will you send it, or are you going to move into the Pullman?
Yours as ever,B.H.
October 7th.Saturday. In the Garden. Sunset.
I was up with the day this morning. At sunrise I had breakfasted and was in the lumbering old hack bumping over the miles that end with the trolley that carries us these days into our mountain city and metropolis twenty miles away from this little town. I went in to do my fall shopping, hat and coat suit and some other needed little things. There’s a new woman’s outfitter that has stimulated shopping marvellously. I saw some stunning things, and I bought—a white silk evening gown, very modern, very clinging, verybeautiful. There’s a cunning little fringe of crystal beads on the short sleeves. The dear little skimpy sash-ends have the crystal fringe, too. When I moved about in it and tried it on, the funny little waves of happiness ran up and down my spine and thrilled my knees just as if I really had my hand on the doorknob of that Magic Palace I first divined that day at Edna Kennedy’s. Something pagan stirred in me with the tinkle of my barbaric finery. I bought white silk stockings and white satin slippers, too. I spent every penny of three months’ hard work, and I borrowed my fare on the trolley from our butcher. If he had not been on I suppose I would have asked the conductor for a loan. The Bible says take no thought of the morrow. I did not. But to-morrow, when icy winds blow, with what shall I be clothed? I shan’t worry now. It is too warm and lovely. If I should spend my winter in the state asylum, and I do seem headed that way, my old suit will be quite stylish enough.
There are some La France roses blooming, as lovely ones as I have ever had. I get up from the garden seat and catch their pink satin faces to me and bury my face in their fragrant hearts. I whisper to them: “My poor foolish darlings, why do you bloom so late? Do you not know that all this wonderfulness of warmth, this semblance of summer, is a deception? Do you not know that winter is at hand? What is this absurdthing blooming in my heart as satiny pink and perfumed as they? The amethyst light has gone from the hills; gray and quiet they wrap their night robes of mist about them and wait for the morning. And the sky, still tender, waits for the stars. And I—for what do I wait?”
October 8th.Sunday. Garden. Sunset.
The day has been hot. It has rained somewhere and there is a superb sunset display. It seems that all the golds and crimsons and purples in the world have been pounded and mixed in a vast mortar and flung in one magnificent wave of colour on the western sky. The mountains are wine drenched. The garden riots in colour. Everywhere colour, warmth, perfume. The glory fades, but the warmth remains. Oh, the moon! Big as a wagon wheel it wavers on the hill, hesitating about its plunge into space. I must go in. Mammy is calling me to supper. Yes, blessed old coloured lady, I am coming! Her eyes are dim. She could not have seen that it was my bedroom rug I put under the cherry tree.
Midnight.
Was it I who put the rug under the cherry tree? Was it I who crept down the stairs in such delicious stealth? And did it all happen just two hours ago whenJohn’s light went out? I had dressed in my tinkling finery, with my hair done like hers on page 131, and I went down to see myself full length in the big old mirror brought from the childhood home. I did not mean to go outside, but the moonlight lay in silver splashes on the portico, and as I stepped into it it swept over me in one great delirious wave, not just ordinary moonlight—sorcery. Standing there in my shimmering gown and satin shoes, I lost all sense of the real me. Drawn by that compelling light that lay on the world beyond the door in a still white flood, I stepped into the fragrant night and sped to the big old cherry tree. No, not I—a red-lipped, shining-eyed, radiant young creature that bore only a physical resemblance to me. Not a leaf dropped to fret the stillness. Nothing stirred, and yet the whole world seemed afloat. I heard the gate’s click as it opened. The man’s soft felt hat was pulled down low on his brow, shading the features, but I knew him—that is, I divined who it was. Just for a moment I thought him a vision breathed into the night by its magic and my desire to have him there. Just for a moment the solid earth, the misty hills lost foundation. He did not see me so still in the shadow of the cherry tree. Halfway up the walk he stopped, perhaps with the realization that the house was dark, for I had blown out the lamp I carried down. He stood there very still. When heturned he walked rapidly down the walk and out the gate. I made a swift little rush from under the tree, a swift little rush that sent out a myriad of tiny sounds—that pagan thing in me alive, clamouring for its woman’s birthright. I think the gate’s sharp click drowned the tinkling call of my finery. He did not glance back. After what seemed an æon of time I heard voices—the faint roll of wheels.
Perhaps I would think the whole fantastic thing a dream were it not for the wicked glitter of the baubles on my poor little frock that lies in a neglected heap there in the moonlight where I stepped out of it.
October 26th.
Twenty days since I wrote those last words—twenty warm, still, sun-drenched days as like one to another as peas in a pod. The oldest inhabitant fails to remember such another October. But this morning, without the warning of a frost, it has come. The sun floods my desolated and blackened garden. It always hurts me to give up my flower children. I should hear only the pleasantest things at breakfast the morning of a freeze, but this morning after John had gone mammy brought my hot cakes in and told me that Lucius Blake was the author of a story that was spreading over the village like fire. Lucius saidthat he had driven the finest sort of a dude down to our house Sunday night, October 8th. Lucius said he came inside the gate, stood there like a stone, and that when he came back to the buggy he said: “I should have warned my friends of my arrival. I suspect from the darkened house that they are absent at Grand Opera.” He then offered Lucius ten dollars to drive him to town, and they rode through the night in silence. I should think the silence would have killed Lucius, but he has lived to tell the tale. I am not in the least comforted that mammy, on the pretense that we need sugar, has hurried up to the village to tell everybody that Lucius is a liar—in the language of the mountains a master liar. I am not in the least comforted with anything. Fate, you are a cruel jade to let me put the light out, and I hate you. I have snatched the poor innocent-of-offence gown from its hanger, if it is innocent—I remember that night it twinkled so wickedly—and I have flung it into the fire. I feel wildly happy that Bobby’s book smoulders on it. But I have turned my eyes away as a wicked, yellowish-red, forked tongued flame leaps at the wavy lock of hair that always I know escapes Bobby’s brushes because it likes to lie on his broad, thoughtful brow.
How odd the room feels without the picture. I’ve got in the way of looking for the greeting from thosewatchful eyes, in the way of seeing the mocking smile on those pictured lips, the minute I open my door. No simple maiden in her charm for you, Mr. Robert Haralson! Do I see you this minute motoring down your brilliant Avenue? And do I see her, the pride of your Avenue? Our uplands do not breed such exotics.
November 15th.
The days drift by like dull-hued birds. There’s not a song in the throat of a single one. Dull-hued is the word, for the rains have washed the colour from the hills. And like a giant graystone prison wall the mountains, desolate, rattlesnaky things, stand against the sky. Jack the Giant Killer himself couldn’t scale them. Mammy watches me anxiously. She says I am sick. I am—sick for a bigger life. Teaching is routine after twelve years. I haven’t any worry. Dicky since her “Personal” escapade is being good, unless some mischief is brewing she has not yet got into trouble over. Some day—not this dull-eyed day—I mean to put to myself the question, “Why have you never said one word to Robert Haralson about Dicky—poor, cooped-up, lonely little Dicky?” And I mean to get an honest answer.
Friday. December 21st.
The gods on Mount Olympus, if it be they that control gray, heavy-lidded days like these, had compassionon me and let to-day be Friday. I’d have killed all the children in another day, and now I have until Monday to get back to something akin to normal. I must have looked my mood when I came in, for poor old mammy had brought me hot toast and tea and delicious peach jam. I received it with gratitude, but when she began the recital of that well-known story in which she stood and received my great aunt’s false teeth in her last hour, when she launched into my great uncle’s handing them to her with the words, “Give these into the hands of this faithful servant,” I leaped up so abruptly that I frightened her. I wonder if I really meant to pitch the dear, faithful old soul out the window? I am developing temperament, or is it temper? Perhaps it is all due to the outside world. The snow sifts bleakly from a bleak sky. What am I to do with these walled-round-by-winter days? What am I to do with this woman whose outward appearance is mine? She terrifies me. For thirty years I’ve tended my little garden plot of life in placid content; cheerfully I’ve hoed my bean and cabbage rows. Now I want to dynamite these homely plants. Where the cabbages stand in rows I want red roses; I can’t abide beans a minute longer, and in their stead I would like purple orchids. And there’s something else I want: I want to cry and cry on a broad man shoulder—not John’s shoulder. Half timidly I glance over my own shoulderas I write it. My own mother never kissed my father until after they were married, and my grandmother all her life long dressed and undressed behind the shelter of the door of the great wardrobe that is here in my room this very minute, but no reproachful ghosts are gazing at me. And if all the spinsters in this broad land with their battle cry of freedom and suffrage (I’ve got freedom and I’m willing for suffrage) had had the sort of day I’ve had with the children—it’s been a wild beast of a day and its sharp claws have drawn blood—when twilight came they would do just what I am doing now. They would whisper into the firelit gloom which invites reckless confidences, as I am whispering, “Eve, Eve, you want your Paradise, don’t you?” I do solemnly believe that soon or late this moment comes to every woman; I do solemnly believe that she can no more escape this dominant reaching out of her heart, this dominant yearning for that other one in the world of two outside of which the rest of humanity is excluded. Since when have you believed this, Caroline Howard? Honest now. Face Dicky’s letter—aren’t you the daughter of a soldier?
This time it’s a big, blond young German—a baron. A slight accident to his hand brought about the acquaintance. Always, Dicky “did” his hand for him. The acquaintance progressed to the point that he knew her afternoon off. “Of course,” Dicky writes, “itflattered me to find him waiting outside the hospital—and with a taxi.”
It seems they had the gayest of drives, but when they turned in at the Pennsylvania Station Dicky demanded the meaning of it. The baron was ready with an answer. He told her that they were going away to an ideal life where they would always be together and always alone. Dicky objected. Her protest was smothered in the depths of the baron’s hat, flung quick as magic over her face.
“How I ever emerged from the embrace of that hat with a smiling face I don’t know. I must thank a year’s training at the hospital for that. I came out game—cool on the outside, at any rate. I said: ‘We can’t go away together without baggage—think of the scandal of it.’ From the depths of the cab he produced a big black bag. But I said, ‘That won’t help me.’ It didn’t work. He said in Washington we would buy enough clothes to last me forever. I fell in gayly with his plans. Inside the station he bought tickets to Washington. I tried to get near the ticket window, but he flanked the move. There seemed to be no people in the station. The few that were there were miles apart in isolated little groups. Just before our train was called, standing together as alone as if we were already on the desert to which he said we would go when we left Washington, a stream of incoming people surgedup from the left wing of the station. I felt sure one of the men was Bobby Haralson—he or his double. I asked the baron to let me say good-bye to an old friend, as we were never coming back. He agreed.
“‘Aren’t you Mr. Haralson?’ I gasped. ‘If you are, don’t you remember the little gypsy girl who answered your ad?’
“‘Sure Mike, I do,’ he said, and swung his bag into his left hand and gave me a hearty right hand. My face must have shown that something was wrong, for he drew me out of the crowd, put down his travelling bag, and asked me, oh, so quietly, what was wrong. His quiet manner calmed me. As briefly as I could I told him. He grasped the situation in a lightning-like flash. ‘Go back to him,’ he said. ‘Keep cool. I’m on to the job.’ Had I been on to my job I’d never have got in that cab. The morning paper says he’s a baron all right. It says he’s a lunatic all right, too. And he has been sent to a private asylum.
“He took his arrest quietly. It was so unexpected it dazed him. I was so limp after it was all over that Bobby Haralson took me over to the Waldorf and made me drink a milk punch. Then he brought me home. We had a heavenly time, and I promised not to be naughty again.
“At the door, he didn’t come in; he said good-bye with that smile that lights and warms up his face—youremember I told you how reticent and sort of impersonal he is—and he said next time I wanted an adventure just send out a wireless and he would answer. I didn’t tell him about you, Caroline. You have tried so hard to make a hoyden into a lady that I did not reveal my identity.”
December 8th.
What an odd, spoiled Bobby! I have a letter from him. Last fall—the afternoon I went to town and came back with the ill-fated gown—I sent him the picture. The P. M. (Particularly Mean) letter was the little note that demanded its return after we failed to meet in our promenade down in our yard. Bobby expects an answer by return mail—it is in every confident line of his letter. Mr. Robert Haralson, spoiled darling of your town, once an old lady of my acquaintance sent her husband across the mountain to get some “camfire” for her. The gum was dissolved in whiskey. He drank it and was very sick. I was present when, convalescent, he humbly asked for chicken soup. The old lady, with uplifted forefinger said, “Nary a chicken will ye git.”
See, Mr. Robert Haralson? as you New Yorkers say.
Bobby’s confident letter says:
As I write, at my left hand is a basket of letters. I have just taken from the basket the last nice one youwrote me and the awfully mean one you wrote afterward. The others run back a month or two and none are answered yet. My right arm is resting on a cushion, and I am writing with three fingers.I have been away. In my accumulated mail there were a couple of letters from you, and the photo you sent in the lot. The next morning after I got back I had to send for a doctor. I had got a knock on my blamed old elbow and she swelled up as big as a prize beet at the Roseboro County Fair.Well, old doc said it was cellulitis, which didn’t sound very reassuring. It comes from having the cellular tissues hurt. And every day he done that arm up in plaster and eight miles of bandages. And three or four times he brung along his knives and lancets and was going to carving at it, but I wouldn’t let him. I haven’t been able to write any more than a rabbit. I’m getting so I can use a small quantity of my fingers now, and this is the first answer to any letter in the basket.And that is why I haven’t written to thank you for the photo, which I appreciate highly, and shall not return as you suggest in your P. M. (Particularly Mean) letter. What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me. I can’t suggest any improvement in it. It has lots of your old expression in it, and although the fool photographer did all he could to spoil it by making you turn your head as if you were looking to see if your dress was buttoned all down the back, it’s a ripping nice picture, and you needn’t want to be “any better to look at than the picture.” (Can’t you say the mean things when you want to!)Now, I wish you’d behave, and take your finger out of your mouth and stand right there—turn your toes out—and say you are sorry.Lemme see!—there was another dig—oh, yes—if I “had been a pauper or a millionaire.”You bet I’m a pauper now, Miss Carrie. Blowed all my money in on my trip, and ain’t made any to speak of since except what doc would carry away with him every day.Getting along all right again, though, now. How’s your writing coming on?Now will you shake hands again, although it’s my left one this time?Yours as ever,R. H.
As I write, at my left hand is a basket of letters. I have just taken from the basket the last nice one youwrote me and the awfully mean one you wrote afterward. The others run back a month or two and none are answered yet. My right arm is resting on a cushion, and I am writing with three fingers.
I have been away. In my accumulated mail there were a couple of letters from you, and the photo you sent in the lot. The next morning after I got back I had to send for a doctor. I had got a knock on my blamed old elbow and she swelled up as big as a prize beet at the Roseboro County Fair.
Well, old doc said it was cellulitis, which didn’t sound very reassuring. It comes from having the cellular tissues hurt. And every day he done that arm up in plaster and eight miles of bandages. And three or four times he brung along his knives and lancets and was going to carving at it, but I wouldn’t let him. I haven’t been able to write any more than a rabbit. I’m getting so I can use a small quantity of my fingers now, and this is the first answer to any letter in the basket.
And that is why I haven’t written to thank you for the photo, which I appreciate highly, and shall not return as you suggest in your P. M. (Particularly Mean) letter. What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me. I can’t suggest any improvement in it. It has lots of your old expression in it, and although the fool photographer did all he could to spoil it by making you turn your head as if you were looking to see if your dress was buttoned all down the back, it’s a ripping nice picture, and you needn’t want to be “any better to look at than the picture.” (Can’t you say the mean things when you want to!)
Now, I wish you’d behave, and take your finger out of your mouth and stand right there—turn your toes out—and say you are sorry.
Lemme see!—there was another dig—oh, yes—if I “had been a pauper or a millionaire.”
You bet I’m a pauper now, Miss Carrie. Blowed all my money in on my trip, and ain’t made any to speak of since except what doc would carry away with him every day.
Getting along all right again, though, now. How’s your writing coming on?
Now will you shake hands again, although it’s my left one this time?
Yours as ever,R. H.
December 20th.
I have another letter from Bobby. And I didn’t answer his last letter. As I read it a wicked little joy steals in on me and grows andgrows.
New York, December 18th.My Dear Miss Carrie:Now get mad if you want to, but couldn’t you agree to let somebody call you that? (Bobby has scratched out the “Miss.”) That’s the way I think of you, and if you insist on being called by your golf and automobile name of Carrie, why, tear up this letter and throw it out the kitchen window over the cliff.Why didn’t you answer my last letter? Rowing on the lake, I suppose, with the gent that comes to see you. I hope the lake will freeze. And I hope the gent—won’t freeze. So, there!I am looking over your last letter to-night, and it’s like the breath of a spring wind through a laurel thicket. I’m going to take it page by page and answer it.The first page contains a quotation from a letter to you from an insect known as a “literary agent.” DearCarrie, listen to the chirp of the crickets on the mountain, but don’t pay any attention to the noise of that tribe. I am fortunate enough not to know this particular duffer that has written such “piffle” (as they say in Chicago), but I’ve heard about him—and you cut him out. He’s an insufferable, measly kid, at the Sweet Caporal cigarette age, and his graft is to stuff you provincial writers (I’m speaking impersonally now) with his taffy so he can get your stuff to peddle around. Don’t you believe his trick; and you quit sending him your stuff. He’s trying to make you think you’ve got George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward beat to a batter, when you know yourself it ain’t so. Isn’t that a sage, oh, what a wonderfully sage remark when he says “you must write your best!”Don’t you believe “that the editors are asking about you constantly, and are more than anxious to see your work.” It’s not so.Now get mad again, and when thatold-timesmile comes back, read on further.Mein Gott! what a recollection you have of me! “A tall, slender lad with nice eyes—awfully quiet, and——Oh, I’ll admit the exceedingly fond.” Was it a mystery why? Well, I dunno, except because you were so sweet and devilish.To-day I am as slender as anybody five feet eight and weighing 175 pounds could be, and I’ve sharp, mean eyes. (I told Bobby that he had nice eyes because I couldn’t remember the colour.) I’ve been taken for a detective lots of times, but I haven’t changed so much inside, and if you were on the twentieth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria to-night, and had a string long enough, I’ll bet I’d have a magnolia or two and a box of candy to tie to the end of it.You speak of meeting old Tom in your letter. Well, just a few days afterward I got a letter from him talkingabout old days. Said he’d been in New York often and might be back. Lordy! I’d like to see him again. (Back in the old days at Roseboro Tom was one of the whistlers under my window the night I got the magnolias.)Well, now, Carrie, what doyoucare if Tom pays attention to somebody and likes her? Ain’t that the only thing there is that’s worth two cents? Doesn’t the gentleman that takes you out driving and boat riding ever—ever—talk about how nice the moon looks? Oh, Carrie, never get so you feel like running down such foolishness. After everything is added and subtracted,thatis the only remainder.On the next page I find the very wise remark of your friend Miss Baxter (whom I would be glad to consider mine—I mean mein freund!) that you can’t write a love story because you know nothing about it. Miss Baxter is altogether wrong but none the less charming. That led me to inclose you a little story of mine—a thing that is apparently egotistical to do—that settles the question beyond all controversy. Read it some time when you are up in the arbour about twilight when they are calling you to supper—but don’t go.On page three of your letter I observe a reference to your picture. Sure, Mike! I asked you for your picture. And I’ve got it, ain’t I? I’d like to see you get it back!Oh, Carrie, if you “knowed” how folks try to get letters from me and can’t, you’d appreciate the delightful toil I take in writing to you. Ordinarily it’s just like laying bricks for me to write even a business letter, but when I write to you—lemme see what to say—it’s like lifting the lightest feather from the breast of an eider duck and watching it float through the circumambient atmosphere. (That strike you hard enough?)I’ll tell you what, Carrie—(now don’t get mad,Caroline) I need a boss. For the last month I’ve been so no-account and lazy that I haven’t turned out a line. And yet, I don’t think it’s exactly my fault. I’ve felt kind of melancholy and dreamy and lonesome, and I don’t sleep well of nights. Once I dreamed that I had a magnolia for you and you turned up your nose at it and went away with Jeff—you remember Jeff?Everybody’s Magazinesent down the editor’s automobile and took me uptown to a distinguished nerve specialist, who decided that I had been working too hard, and advised me either to take a trip to Europe or some tablets he had in a box. I took the tablets. They didn’t taste bad, so I kept on taking ’em, and I ain’t a bit worse to-day.But none of ’em knew that what I needed was just somebody to fix a cushion for me on the sofa, and tell the man with the gas bill that I wasn’t in.You asked me what I get for short stories. I get ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty cents a word, and everything engaged long before it’s written.Now, I’ll tell you what to do: kick the mountains over and hurry to New York. It’s 50 per cent. of the game to see the editors in person. Right here is the only place on the American Continent where you can live. What are the mountains compared to it? Dear Carrie, kick the mountains over and take my advice. You are far enough advanced to make your way from the start. And I assure you, as I said, being on the ground is 50 per cent of the game.They call it a lonely city. Lonely! with every masterpiece of art, music, and beautiful things within a block of you! Say, Carrie, chop down the tomato vines and come on. I can get you into every editorial office in town (where you are not already appreciated), and you will make a success. Attend, oh, Princess of the Bluest Ridge, these are not the words of one D.Hudson the adolescent, but of Bob the Perspicacious, who has seen and who knows. If I didn’t think you had the genius to win the game I’d never advise you to try.There’s a line in your letter—“I couldn’t know what the boy had developed into.” I can only say into one surely no better, unsatisfied, and always remembering the little girl next door.Please, Carrie, write to me soon, and if you don’t like my letter say you condone it, for there ain’t nobody up here like you, and I’m awfully lonesome to-night. And so, may I sign myself,Yours as ever,Bob.P.S. I’m awfully glad to see by the weather reports that there’s a freeze coming. I hope the gent that rows you on the lake will have to buy tacks to put in his oars.P.P.S. I was in a thanksgiving party where we had a flashlight photo taken. I’ll send you one when they are printed.
New York, December 18th.
My Dear Miss Carrie:
Now get mad if you want to, but couldn’t you agree to let somebody call you that? (Bobby has scratched out the “Miss.”) That’s the way I think of you, and if you insist on being called by your golf and automobile name of Carrie, why, tear up this letter and throw it out the kitchen window over the cliff.
Why didn’t you answer my last letter? Rowing on the lake, I suppose, with the gent that comes to see you. I hope the lake will freeze. And I hope the gent—won’t freeze. So, there!
I am looking over your last letter to-night, and it’s like the breath of a spring wind through a laurel thicket. I’m going to take it page by page and answer it.
The first page contains a quotation from a letter to you from an insect known as a “literary agent.” DearCarrie, listen to the chirp of the crickets on the mountain, but don’t pay any attention to the noise of that tribe. I am fortunate enough not to know this particular duffer that has written such “piffle” (as they say in Chicago), but I’ve heard about him—and you cut him out. He’s an insufferable, measly kid, at the Sweet Caporal cigarette age, and his graft is to stuff you provincial writers (I’m speaking impersonally now) with his taffy so he can get your stuff to peddle around. Don’t you believe his trick; and you quit sending him your stuff. He’s trying to make you think you’ve got George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward beat to a batter, when you know yourself it ain’t so. Isn’t that a sage, oh, what a wonderfully sage remark when he says “you must write your best!”
Don’t you believe “that the editors are asking about you constantly, and are more than anxious to see your work.” It’s not so.
Now get mad again, and when thatold-timesmile comes back, read on further.
Mein Gott! what a recollection you have of me! “A tall, slender lad with nice eyes—awfully quiet, and——Oh, I’ll admit the exceedingly fond.” Was it a mystery why? Well, I dunno, except because you were so sweet and devilish.
To-day I am as slender as anybody five feet eight and weighing 175 pounds could be, and I’ve sharp, mean eyes. (I told Bobby that he had nice eyes because I couldn’t remember the colour.) I’ve been taken for a detective lots of times, but I haven’t changed so much inside, and if you were on the twentieth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria to-night, and had a string long enough, I’ll bet I’d have a magnolia or two and a box of candy to tie to the end of it.
You speak of meeting old Tom in your letter. Well, just a few days afterward I got a letter from him talkingabout old days. Said he’d been in New York often and might be back. Lordy! I’d like to see him again. (Back in the old days at Roseboro Tom was one of the whistlers under my window the night I got the magnolias.)
Well, now, Carrie, what doyoucare if Tom pays attention to somebody and likes her? Ain’t that the only thing there is that’s worth two cents? Doesn’t the gentleman that takes you out driving and boat riding ever—ever—talk about how nice the moon looks? Oh, Carrie, never get so you feel like running down such foolishness. After everything is added and subtracted,thatis the only remainder.
On the next page I find the very wise remark of your friend Miss Baxter (whom I would be glad to consider mine—I mean mein freund!) that you can’t write a love story because you know nothing about it. Miss Baxter is altogether wrong but none the less charming. That led me to inclose you a little story of mine—a thing that is apparently egotistical to do—that settles the question beyond all controversy. Read it some time when you are up in the arbour about twilight when they are calling you to supper—but don’t go.
On page three of your letter I observe a reference to your picture. Sure, Mike! I asked you for your picture. And I’ve got it, ain’t I? I’d like to see you get it back!
Oh, Carrie, if you “knowed” how folks try to get letters from me and can’t, you’d appreciate the delightful toil I take in writing to you. Ordinarily it’s just like laying bricks for me to write even a business letter, but when I write to you—lemme see what to say—it’s like lifting the lightest feather from the breast of an eider duck and watching it float through the circumambient atmosphere. (That strike you hard enough?)
I’ll tell you what, Carrie—(now don’t get mad,Caroline) I need a boss. For the last month I’ve been so no-account and lazy that I haven’t turned out a line. And yet, I don’t think it’s exactly my fault. I’ve felt kind of melancholy and dreamy and lonesome, and I don’t sleep well of nights. Once I dreamed that I had a magnolia for you and you turned up your nose at it and went away with Jeff—you remember Jeff?
Everybody’s Magazinesent down the editor’s automobile and took me uptown to a distinguished nerve specialist, who decided that I had been working too hard, and advised me either to take a trip to Europe or some tablets he had in a box. I took the tablets. They didn’t taste bad, so I kept on taking ’em, and I ain’t a bit worse to-day.
But none of ’em knew that what I needed was just somebody to fix a cushion for me on the sofa, and tell the man with the gas bill that I wasn’t in.
You asked me what I get for short stories. I get ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty cents a word, and everything engaged long before it’s written.
Now, I’ll tell you what to do: kick the mountains over and hurry to New York. It’s 50 per cent. of the game to see the editors in person. Right here is the only place on the American Continent where you can live. What are the mountains compared to it? Dear Carrie, kick the mountains over and take my advice. You are far enough advanced to make your way from the start. And I assure you, as I said, being on the ground is 50 per cent of the game.
They call it a lonely city. Lonely! with every masterpiece of art, music, and beautiful things within a block of you! Say, Carrie, chop down the tomato vines and come on. I can get you into every editorial office in town (where you are not already appreciated), and you will make a success. Attend, oh, Princess of the Bluest Ridge, these are not the words of one D.Hudson the adolescent, but of Bob the Perspicacious, who has seen and who knows. If I didn’t think you had the genius to win the game I’d never advise you to try.
There’s a line in your letter—“I couldn’t know what the boy had developed into.” I can only say into one surely no better, unsatisfied, and always remembering the little girl next door.
Please, Carrie, write to me soon, and if you don’t like my letter say you condone it, for there ain’t nobody up here like you, and I’m awfully lonesome to-night. And so, may I sign myself,
Yours as ever,Bob.
P.S. I’m awfully glad to see by the weather reports that there’s a freeze coming. I hope the gent that rows you on the lake will have to buy tacks to put in his oars.
P.P.S. I was in a thanksgiving party where we had a flashlight photo taken. I’ll send you one when they are printed.
Do I condone Bobby’s letter? The wicked, contraband little joy grows andgrows.
Christmas Eve.Midnight.
It is snowing—a real snow. The night outside my windows is one soft whirling blur. At dusk John came in from the twenty-mile-away town. He shook the snow from his clothes like the traditional Santa Claus, and he was just as full of bundles. Two express packages for me in the big, bold hand grown so familiarset my heart to beating and my cheeks to blushing furiously under John’s scalpel eyes.
Since nine o’clock, when John went to bed tired out with his hard day’s journey, I have sat here in my bedroom, dim save for the light of the leaping flames and silent save for the sift of the snow piling high and higher on the window-panes. Luxuriously I dive again into the most wonderful box of candy I ever dreamed of; luxuriously I sniff the perfume of the most exquisite flowers I ever saw, across the snow-filled air the village bells ring their faint, “Peace on earth, good-will to men.”
To-morrow when I wear my flowers to church, I’ll feel like a princess—orchids and lilies of the valley—your princess, Bobby.
Christmas Day. Afternoon.
When my eyes opened this morning the flaming beauty of the east took me to the window—such a marshalling of sunrise banners to do honour to the day. Not waiting for my fire, judging from the sounds in that direction that mammy was having a holiday nap, anyway, I dressed rapidly, high shoes, short skirt, coat and cap, and sallied forth. The landscape stretched before me like a vast white sea, its purity unbroken by footstep of man. It seemed to belong solely to me and a few noisy crows. I marched straight to the post-office.It was closed when John passed last night. I had a sneaking little hope—but it wasn’t there. I got a little note from Dicky, though. She writes that her gift is delayed. It is always. I could never teach Dicky timeliness—always, like Bobby Haralson, she has been superior to time.
The day that I began joyously has been a restless one. I have climbed to the hilltop. Below me the village lies, a crystal toy town in the lap of crystal hills. My eyes travel down the chain of glistening hills to Camel Back. Wise old comrade, I do believe he knows. Anyway, it is a relief to tell him. “Camel Back,” she writes, “A chance encounter at the theatre with Bobby Haralson in which I still conceal my identity.” Camel Back’s snowy hump twinkles as though he laughs; above him the clouds that have seemed to drift aimlessly form a fairy castle. Its turrets and dome glitter in the sunset’s dying fire. I can trace a door—a vast, closed portal. How ridiculous that a trick of the clouds could thrill me! Slowly the door has opened. I can’t explain the lovely magic of it, but there in the white stillness some words that Bobby wrote rolled over me in a great, mounting, singing wave.
“You have sympathy and a deep and true humanness.” If Bobby is not mistaken! If it could be! Almost solemnly I turn from my mountain, with its castle fading from the sky, and take my way home.
January 20th.
Every minute that I can spare from my school duties I work at my book in a fury of enthusiasm. Just as the snow made the village so beautiful on Christmas day, something within me no longer sees the frailties of the mountain people with whom my lot is cast. Their kindness through all the long years comes to me instead. So I call my little book “The Window.” I look out and see beauties I never saw before, and the sun pours in and warms me.
January 25th.
I am working at it night and day. It grows amazingly. “Child,” some one said to me yesterday, “I heard ye was writin’ a book. Ain’t plenty o’ books in the worl’, ’thout rackin’ yore pore brains to write anuther?”
Almost, I gave back indignant answer; but I have learned of my little book—of my little book that flows in my veins and runs down through my finger-tips, sometimes to laugh and exult, sometimes to sob and sigh.
February 15th.
My book is written. It was pure joy. It is very simple—just the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of this spot isolated from the big world by its wall of mountains. I owe much to my book. Winter still holds the world, but flowers bloom inside me. Not the orchids and roses I demanded of life when I wanted todynamite my garden plot, it is true, but some old-fashioned pinks that make these February days sweet and smelly ones.
March 1st.
Did it ever happen to anybody before? I have knocked and knocked at editors’ doors; I have waited months and got my stories back, too. Two weeks, and I hold in my hand a telegram from Bobby’s publishers: “Your little book is ours, and it’s love at first sight.”
April 1st.
It is advertised in the magazine section of theTimes. How it flashes out to meet my eyes: “The Window”—a certain simplicity of expression—a realism that touches with delicacy and pathos things that we feel are the actualities of life.
John comes in and brings Dicky’s letter: “Caroline Howard! And not to tell me! Such a peach of a heroine, Caroline. How’d a sedate old thing like you catch that spirit of youth? Your heroine flames like a red, red rose. And what do you know of love’s sweetness and its fierceness?”
What do I know? I go indoors and gaze soberly at the sedate old thing that is I. Then I go in search of mammy. “Mammy,” I call, “Imusthave somebody to talk to. They say you can look right into the shadowy interiors of the mountaineers’ cabins; thatyou can see the vague objects take shape in them because I’ve got the atmosphere so well.” Mammy is feeding the chickens. “What is atmosphere, honey?” she asks calmly. “Oh, feed your chickens,” I say, disgustedly, and, calmly, she obeys.
By some queer trick our publishers, Bobby’s and mine, have put us together—my little book by his big book. I have not heard from Bobby since Christmas. No doubt all his fingers are now out of commission.
Just after Christmas I was in town and I saw a big splendid picture of Bobby in a bookdealer’s window. I know the man, and, shamelessly, I told him Bobby was my first cousin—my favourite cousin. He gave me the picture. Bobby is in his old place on my mantel. And, as before, he dominates the room. There are times when I almost feel his presence, distinct, encompassing. My life has not many idle moments, but when these little lazy let-down minutes do come, when I sit by the fire at night, the school papers all corrected, just before I go to bed, I find awaiting me, giving me the feeling that it is always there, patiently abiding its moment, this nearness to Bobby. It draws near, not like an alien thing unsure of its welcome, but it comes as if in answer to a call. How well I know Bobby Haralson! Times spent together, when apart, how close they come. If disaster overwhelmed him he’d hide his hurt under a froth of gayety, his lipswould mock with smiles. Once my mother laughingly called my father to see the pretty picture a little sewing girl made as she slept—her beads of prayer in her hands. Smilingly my father shook his head. My mother loved my father for that chivalry to a little sleeping work girl. Bobby is like that—human enough to advertise through a newspaper for a girl “pal” and then too chivalrous to meet her. The subtle gradations that make a gentleman!
April 1st.
All the way from school this afternoon I kept telling myself there would be a letter from Bobby on the hall table, and then I would tell myself it was preposterous after this long silence that I should look for his letter. But there it was. And he has been sick. I feel his nerves in the letter.
If Bobby has been reading my last two letters, which he hopes I won’t make my two last, one was most certainly an old one. Of course I thanked him for the Christmas flowers and candy. It’s a bad sign, Mr. Book-writer, for a man to con over old letters. He’s either in his dotage, or he is in love. Is Bobby in love?
Here’s his letter:
West 20th Street.New York. April 1st.Dear, dear Carrie:(Dear, dear Carrie, indeed! And not a line from him since Christmas.)Here’s my right hand being held up:—Please listen!To-day for the first time in six weeks I’ve had my trunks unpacked and have sat down at my desk clothed in my ordinarily sane mind, and been able to find pen ’n ink ’n paper to write with and on. I’ve moved four times since I lived in Waverly Place; and have been driven from post-office to pillow by the—noise of elevated trains, waggons (notice the English two g’s), trams (also English), and cries of hucksters (mostly Dagoes). At last I have found a quiet haven; and the first thing I do (of course) is to dig your last two (please don’t make it “two last”) letters and read ’em some more.I have answered your letters and written you dozens in the spirit; but when it comes to spreading the ink, I know I’ve been as the old darky song goes, “A liar and a conjurer, too.” There are periods of time when the sight of a pen or an ink bottle strikes me to stone. Will it be some slight excuse for not having written to one of whom I have thought by every mail, if I assert that not for months have I written a line for publication except one little short 2,000-wordrottenstory? It be true.Oh, some sort of nervous condition—can’t sleep nor nothin’! Oh, yes, ma’am, thank you; feelin’ heaps better now. I live within a few doors of Broadway, but on such a quiet street that the little clock on my desk ticking sounds as loud as a cricket chirping under the honeysuckle vine on your porch on a fall night.Don’t you think you might come up this way some time? Ain’t there some of your folks that live around here? Seems to me there was. I’d rather see you than to have a bushel of diamonds. And if I can get a string on you I’ll tie more magnolias and gumdrops to it than Roseboro ever saw. Say—please come, won’t you? I do so long to see a human—a Heaven-sent,home-bred, ideal-owning, scrumptious, sweet, wholesome human with a heart such as I know you are—or, in the words of the poet, “one of whom you are which.” The folks up here are all right and lots of ’em are good to know, but—they ain’t got tar on their heels, Miss Carrie, ma’am.I’ve been thinking of running down to the Bluest Ridge for two or three weeks as soon as it gets warmer here. I want to go up somewhere in the mountings and have a quiet time with the sunrises and the squirrels, and I want to see some morning glories on a board fence. I’ve tried the dinky little hills they call mountains up here, and they ain’t no good. You can’t take forty steps in the wildwood without stumbling over a sardine box or a salmon can; and the quantity of Ikeys and Rebeccas that you scare up in the shady dells is sure something fierce.If I happen down in your range of mountings may I drop in and see you? I need to get away from town for a while, and I certainly would rather be there than anywhere I know of.Why don’t you cut loose and come to N. Y.? This is the only place to live. You can choose the kind of life you want and live it, and get all there is of existence. Come on and get in with the bunch! You can get a studio in a top story and raise tomatters on the roof if you must have ’em. I’ll help you tend to ’em. Come on and learn the beauty of a quiet life. Get away from the feverish round of gayeties that you’ve been accustomed to—men taking you out rowing (wasn’t he tall and dark, with a drooping moustache?) and men coming in the Pullman cars and sitting close by your side—oh, I haven’t forgotten about it! Often I’ve gotten out a couple of dozen sheets of paper and started to write to you, when I’d think: oh, what’s the use—she won’t want to hear from me—somebody’s ripping thebuttonholes out of his collar trying to pull up car windows for her, or pulling on the wrong oar and rowing the boat into a mud bank where they’ll sit for hours until some plowman plods along and drags them out.Please, dear Carrie, write to me some more. If you had saved all the letters I’ve written to you in the spirit you’d have a stack as high as the big sunflower by the garden gate. Write and tell me exactly what you think about when you take your hair down and sit on the rug at 11:30P. M.before the fireplace. And I’ll tell you what I think about when I set the bottle of Scotch on the table and light the last cigar at 2A. M., when the distant cars and cabs sound like the ripples of your mountain streams on a still summer night.I send the ghost of a magnolia up to your window.Yours as ever,Bob.
West 20th Street.New York. April 1st.
Dear, dear Carrie:
(Dear, dear Carrie, indeed! And not a line from him since Christmas.)
Here’s my right hand being held up:—Please listen!
To-day for the first time in six weeks I’ve had my trunks unpacked and have sat down at my desk clothed in my ordinarily sane mind, and been able to find pen ’n ink ’n paper to write with and on. I’ve moved four times since I lived in Waverly Place; and have been driven from post-office to pillow by the—noise of elevated trains, waggons (notice the English two g’s), trams (also English), and cries of hucksters (mostly Dagoes). At last I have found a quiet haven; and the first thing I do (of course) is to dig your last two (please don’t make it “two last”) letters and read ’em some more.
I have answered your letters and written you dozens in the spirit; but when it comes to spreading the ink, I know I’ve been as the old darky song goes, “A liar and a conjurer, too.” There are periods of time when the sight of a pen or an ink bottle strikes me to stone. Will it be some slight excuse for not having written to one of whom I have thought by every mail, if I assert that not for months have I written a line for publication except one little short 2,000-wordrottenstory? It be true.
Oh, some sort of nervous condition—can’t sleep nor nothin’! Oh, yes, ma’am, thank you; feelin’ heaps better now. I live within a few doors of Broadway, but on such a quiet street that the little clock on my desk ticking sounds as loud as a cricket chirping under the honeysuckle vine on your porch on a fall night.
Don’t you think you might come up this way some time? Ain’t there some of your folks that live around here? Seems to me there was. I’d rather see you than to have a bushel of diamonds. And if I can get a string on you I’ll tie more magnolias and gumdrops to it than Roseboro ever saw. Say—please come, won’t you? I do so long to see a human—a Heaven-sent,home-bred, ideal-owning, scrumptious, sweet, wholesome human with a heart such as I know you are—or, in the words of the poet, “one of whom you are which.” The folks up here are all right and lots of ’em are good to know, but—they ain’t got tar on their heels, Miss Carrie, ma’am.
I’ve been thinking of running down to the Bluest Ridge for two or three weeks as soon as it gets warmer here. I want to go up somewhere in the mountings and have a quiet time with the sunrises and the squirrels, and I want to see some morning glories on a board fence. I’ve tried the dinky little hills they call mountains up here, and they ain’t no good. You can’t take forty steps in the wildwood without stumbling over a sardine box or a salmon can; and the quantity of Ikeys and Rebeccas that you scare up in the shady dells is sure something fierce.
If I happen down in your range of mountings may I drop in and see you? I need to get away from town for a while, and I certainly would rather be there than anywhere I know of.
Why don’t you cut loose and come to N. Y.? This is the only place to live. You can choose the kind of life you want and live it, and get all there is of existence. Come on and get in with the bunch! You can get a studio in a top story and raise tomatters on the roof if you must have ’em. I’ll help you tend to ’em. Come on and learn the beauty of a quiet life. Get away from the feverish round of gayeties that you’ve been accustomed to—men taking you out rowing (wasn’t he tall and dark, with a drooping moustache?) and men coming in the Pullman cars and sitting close by your side—oh, I haven’t forgotten about it! Often I’ve gotten out a couple of dozen sheets of paper and started to write to you, when I’d think: oh, what’s the use—she won’t want to hear from me—somebody’s ripping thebuttonholes out of his collar trying to pull up car windows for her, or pulling on the wrong oar and rowing the boat into a mud bank where they’ll sit for hours until some plowman plods along and drags them out.
Please, dear Carrie, write to me some more. If you had saved all the letters I’ve written to you in the spirit you’d have a stack as high as the big sunflower by the garden gate. Write and tell me exactly what you think about when you take your hair down and sit on the rug at 11:30P. M.before the fireplace. And I’ll tell you what I think about when I set the bottle of Scotch on the table and light the last cigar at 2A. M., when the distant cars and cabs sound like the ripples of your mountain streams on a still summer night.
I send the ghost of a magnolia up to your window.
Yours as ever,Bob.
April 4th.
I find a P.S. from Bobby this afternoon and the ghost of a magnolia that failed to get in the other letter.
Ma Chérie Mlle. Carrie:Here’s a magnolia.I know you believe I am “without the pale” and “N. G.,” but I write again because I do not believe that I am.If you come to N. Y. this spring I reckon as how you won’t want to see me because you think I am short on etiquette. All right for youse! I’ll watch all the rubberneck coaches, and when I see a little pink-cheeked girl in a straw hat with daisies on it and a white dress with a pink sash, chewing sweetgum—(for shame,Bobby)—and making eyes at the Brooklyn Bridge, I’ll know who it is, and look at you all I please.So, au revoir, Miss Howard. I am still yours sincerely.R. H.
Ma Chérie Mlle. Carrie:
Here’s a magnolia.
I know you believe I am “without the pale” and “N. G.,” but I write again because I do not believe that I am.
If you come to N. Y. this spring I reckon as how you won’t want to see me because you think I am short on etiquette. All right for youse! I’ll watch all the rubberneck coaches, and when I see a little pink-cheeked girl in a straw hat with daisies on it and a white dress with a pink sash, chewing sweetgum—(for shame,Bobby)—and making eyes at the Brooklyn Bridge, I’ll know who it is, and look at you all I please.
So, au revoir, Miss Howard. I am still yours sincerely.
R. H.
April 5th.
This sweet spring afternoon I cannot stay indoors. In her joy the earth is like the mother of a new-born child. A light, restless wind has piled snowy, errant clouds above the mountain tops, the little green leaves are uncurling, the sun shining as it shines only in the spring and on an awakened world—and the birds——A lover bird, just the kind to capture a little lady bird’s heart, has been pouring out a passionate mating song for two whole days. He is in the cedar tree not far from my window. His little lady love answers from the willow in the pasture. He istryingto make her come to him, I feel sure. Will she?
April 6th.Saturday Afternoon.
My lover bird is gone from the cedar tree. Down in the willow’s cool depths, above the spring where the colts and cattle drink, there are such flutterings, such joyous little outbursts of song that I smile in sympathy. Wise, wise, little woman-bird. Since the coming of these last letters there’s been a stealthy fear followingat my heels—the fear that I might go to New York. I could make my book an excuse, and I have some money. I have spent very little since that extravagant outburst last fall. And I could make Dicky an excuse. Dear little Dicky, who is as joyous over my book as if she herself had written it.
I will not go! The fate that let me put the light out the night that Bobby came here is a wicked, wicked jade, but I defy her! I’ll stay right here!
That Bobby should remember a little girl’s hat through all the years! That day so far in the past, when I left Roseboro and Ernest Cold was on the train—Bobby said he was; I don’t remember—Bobby put a real daisy in my hat band when he came in the train to tell me good-bye, and he said——
That stealthy fear that I might go to New York is stealthy no longer. Boldly it has stalked out in front of me and clutched me by the throat.
April 15th.
This morning when I pushed up the shade in my berth I was greeted by the sun’s big, round, inquiring eye. “What are you doing here?” he seemed to be asking. I hastened to explain that my going to New York was in no way connected with Mr. Robert Haralson; that he is not to know I am there. Somewhat shamefacedly I explain to that red, watchful eye thatDicky is not to know I am there either. Dicky doesn’t need me now. Her last letter is as joyous as the lilt of a lark.
My publishers (how fine it sounds) want some little changes made in the book, and for that sole reason I am on a Pullman bound for New York.
So accustomed am I to space that I could not be boxed up in lower twelve last night, so I took the whole section. This morning as I stood on my bed reaching up for my skirt the train took a sharp curve that landed me in the aisle of the car. Visions of a hospital danced with a million stars before my eyes. A young, lovely girl helped me back into my berth. No one else, not even the porter, had witnessed my humiliation. In a little while, in spite of my aching head, I collected my senses sufficiently to get to the dressing-room. Making myself presentable was a clutching sort of experience. I have not spent the night in a train since I was eighteen, and I must have been more agile then. When I emerged from dressing I felt as a mountaineer’s baby must feel when it is being hushed to sleep. If you have ever seen one being flung from side to side of its rude little cradle, threshed about like a weaver’s shuttle, then you understand perfectly.
The girl was waiting for me; she proposed that we breakfast together. In the dining car, under the stimulus of the coffee, which stopped my headache, I toldthe girl about my little book and that I was going on for my first trip. Back in the coach we were the only passengers and we sat together; she told me about herself. She is going to New York, too. She is going to join the great army of workers. She is so sweet and young, so girlish and refined, so beautifully although simply dressed, that I think my face must have shown my astonishment and regret. That she should be adrift in a great city seemed too dreadful—one of its labourers, and on small wages, in desolate lodgings, isolated from all social life with her kind. I thought of the city’s temptations for a lonely, beautiful girl. And I said: “Child, go back to your family. Haven’t you somebody?”
“I have my little baby that lies in the cemetery.” Her young laugh rang bitter. “I am all alone. I left my husband—he didn’t love baby and me any longer. I mean he didn’t love me. He adored baby. She adored him, too. She used to say, ‘I’m des trazy ’bout my dear daddy.’” She looked from the window; I could see her chin quiver. When she turned back to me her voice was quite steady. “I want to be fair to him. When baby died it hurt him cruelly, and always when I place flowers in the little urn at the head of baby’s grave, I find beautiful ones in the urn at the foot. I know, although he does not love me any longer, that it hurts him for me to be a wage-earner. But Ican’t take his money. You—you don’t believe in divorce?” Her voice was half timid.
I was silent. It is something I am so ignorant of. The old Ducketts are the nearest approach to divorce that we have in our mountain world. Recently, without a word to any one, that poor old lady left her home and moved to a little house across the street. Our village has wondered and gossiped about this rupture after sixty years of life together. Poor old lady, she slips in the back door of his house when he is sitting at the front door, and does up the work she has done for sixty years; then she slips home again.
“A woman can’t judge”—the girl’s voice with a defiant note in it brought my thoughts with a start back from the Ducketts, and to her—“unless it is her own problem. She, the other woman, wanted him to leave baby and me. He dropped the letter on the floor and I picked it up and read it. I don’t know why I did it. I had perfect faith in him. She said all her happiness was at stake; she eliminated our happiness—baby’s and mine.”
“But, child”—my mind took a wider circle than it had ever had need of in Marsville—“any woman might fall in love with another woman’s husband and try to take him from her. I know a coloured woman whose husband beats her, and when I try to make her leave him and live on a nice little place we have and doour washing, she says she would leave her old man but that she might not find another, that husbands is so ‘scase.’ They must be from the way some women behave. Perhaps your husband was not at fault.”
The lovely colour mounted to her face, it quivered as she told me that he had acknowledged it. We were both silent then. But presently I asked if he had gone to the other woman. She murmured no.
“He says that he is penitent.” Her eyes were stormy. “He begs me to take him back. Upon what foundation would I build my faith in him again?”
I think my own answer surprised me. “Bodies sometimes sin when souls are clean,” I said. “It could have been a passing sin of the body that did not touch the spirit, which is still true to you. If the spirit sinned he would not want to come back—he would not be sorry. Oh, child, don’t you see?”
“I never—did see—it like—that.” The girl’s words trailed like broken winged birds, her face paled.
We were under the shed in Washington and a solitary passenger, travelling bag in hand, was coming down the aisle of our coach. At sight of her, for he did not know me, his face whitened, too. In one great throb of my heart I took in the situation. I knew that he was her husband, and that he loved her. I saw it in the flash of his face at sight of her—a blind man givenback his sight might look out on his restored world with a look like that.
In a lightning-like flash of time I had leaped to my feet, pushed him into the seat where I had been, and, without in the least knowing what I was saying, I heard myself say: “You foolish children. Go back to the little grave and put the two urns for flowers together. Then start life all over again.”
I left them staring into each other’s eyes in a sort of mesmerized trance, and went into the next coach. When my eyes cleared of tears I saw that the bright sunlight world beyond the car window was filled with yellow butterflies. In their circling they made a great golden wedding ring. The sweet prophecy seemed mine—not belonging to the people I had left back in the other coach. At lunch they asked me to come to their table, but I smilingly refused. When two people have just been caught up in a golden chariot and given passage direct to Paradise there is no room in the vehicle for outsiders.
I could not grind under the river and get out in the heart of the city, as the advertisements say. I had to see the skyline from the Jersey side. How wonderful it is as it glitters in the soft spring light—a proud wonder city that rests on great, tossing waters. And there lie the docks. I can read the names of the different lines on the dark little houses. And far down thestretch of moving water I see a gallant little tug assisting a great vessel out to sea. A sort of trembling seized me. Like a vision that fades, all thought of the life that lay behind me—John, mammy, the little mountain village—slipped away. As the boat drifts near and nearer to that white wonder city I want to fling the people huddled on the seats, apathetic as sheep, into the water. I want to cry aloud, “City, city, I am coming!” But they wake up at the dock. How alive they are! I am alive, too. I am over the mountain wall. At last I am part of the big, alive, throbbing world.
April 16th.12P. M.
Late yesterday afternoon when I ran up the steps of 30 West Twentieth Street and the door opened and closed on me, my one sensation was relief. I had taken a cab at the ferry and I had marvelled at the dexterity with which the cabby turned and twisted through the dingy streets. Safe, not kidnapped, money still in my bag, the wonderful adventure of getting to my destination without adventure accomplished, I stepped from that cab. The cabby took my trunk from the top of his hansom, banged it on the sidewalk, accepted the dollar we had agreed upon, and waited. I waited, too, politely. Suddenly he turned very red and climbed to his perch, swearing roundly.
As I followed Miss Jackson up the stairs to the third floor I asked her why he did that. She answered vaguely that they were rude.
I came to Miss Jackson’s because her mother and my mother knew each other, and because it is eminently respectable. As we climbed the dark stairs my elation dropped from me. The hall needs the winds of heaven to blow through it. Coming back to dinner, I fairly groped through the dimness. But the dining-room was bright and cheerful. All the people seemed young. They were very gay. At dinner the whole talk was of the theatre. As I have not been to a play since I was eighteen, I sat stupidly quiet. Everybody went out after dinner—most of them to the theatre. Miss Jackson went, too. Up in my room I leaned from the window and tried to realize the wonderfulness of being in New York. Below me the street was dark, but far away across the housetops I saw a glow that I took to be the lights of Broadway. After a long time I stole down the dim, depressing stairs. I opened the door, let in the sweet, cool April air. I don’t know how long I stood there looking out at the dark, deserted street. I thought of it as a siren of the sea, calling, luring to it the youth of our wide, free land. My mind went to my little room up two dark flights of stairs. I was paying ten dollars a week for a room just about the size of the rug in front of my fireplace at home. Whatwas the size of the working girl’s room who paid five dollars a week? How many flights of dark stairs did she have to climb? I seemed to feel the city—the city that I have not yet seen. I seemed to feel its immensity—stretching away, street after street, in overpowering sameness the length of the island. I thought of the overcrowded East Side and the foreigners herded like cattle, overflowing into the streets, and then I thought of Bobby—or had I been thinking of him through all my thoughts?—jostling in the crowded streets, loitering, listening, feeling the beat of the city’s great heart.
When I closed the door and came down the hall I saw the telephone in spite of the dimness. Almost before I knew it I had found the number I sought, my hand was on the receiver. But I did not take it down. The memory of a bright-eyed little lady bird who waited for her lover to come to her restrained me. I must be as wise as she.
I ran up to my room. A fog had crept in from the sea. The river must be near. The calls of whistles and horns came shrill and often. They seemed to give anxious warning. The cityisa siren. It wrapped itself closer in this white fog sheet of mystery and it called to me. Hastily I donned coat and hat, ran down the stairs and out on the street. I did not hesitate—to hesitate was to go back. In front of me, not far away, another street opened. I reached it, stoodstill for a moment; a wraithlike little figure hurried past. “What street is this?” I asked. Wraithlike he sped on without a reply. I hurried after him, caught him by the arm. “What street is this?” I insisted. “And which is up and which down?”
“Whut’s de matter wid y’nut?”
Humbly, I told him that I was a stranger; that I lived near and had just walked out for a little glimpse of the city. He told me to keep straight ahead until I came to Twenty-third Street, and stand there a while till the hayseeds fell off me. I gave him a dime. He graciously allowed me to accompany him. The city street widens beautifully at Twenty-third. It had seemed like one of our narrow mountain gulches. I gave my little lad another dime. I wanted to be told so much. The open space, vague in the fog, is Madison Square; the street that rolled away into the gloom, the Avenue, and the white, white foggy flare of light, Broadway.
Some weight of the city’s loneliness fell on me as I retraced my steps alone. The fog seemed denser—it might have been because the light lay behind. A few blocks down, as I turned into my own street, my own audacious thoughts brought me to a standstill. If I kept straight on I would come to Washington Square. An old schoolmate lived there.
I had no difficulty in recognizing the Arch, the crosson the church, the light that burns always. I found the number. I would have thought I had made a mistake, but I have written it so often. I went up the bare, worn steps, rang a jangly bell. A slatternly woman came to the door. Back of her I could see a dingy hall lighted by a blinking gas jet. She called my friend loudly. There was no reply. She said her work was heavier in the spring, that she was often very late.
I had pictured my artist friend in her studio home surrounded with comfort. “Hasn’t she a studio?” I stammered. The woman laughed loudly. “Her room, third floor back, ain’t no bigger ’n yo’ hand. She paints an’ sews an’ cooks, eats an’ lives an’ sleeps there, ’cept when she got jobs out.”
I turned and fled. I was trembling so I could hardly stand. Such a fragile, lovely creature—my friend back in my school-girl days. A joyous young creature, fashioned for joy. I did not want to see her; I knew instinctively that she did not want to see me.
On the street again, out of the foggy darkness, a shadow lurched toward me. I shrank against the building I was passing. It bent and looked into my face, laughed drunkenly, and passed on. I tried to move. My limbs had taken root. As I stood there flattened against that wall I heard cautious, descending footsteps, whispering voices. Some people were comingdown nearby steps, and I was glad. I would follow close behind them. After what was to me a very long time, as they did not pass, I went in the direction of their voices, until I stumbled over a dark mass that lay in my path. Something told me. The slow, cautious steps, the whispering voices—I dropped to my knees on the pavement. The face I lifted and looked into was a young girl’s. She was unconscious. I sprang up. There was movement in my limbs now. I ran, breathless, into a man. I caught him by the arm, pleading with him to hurry; I dragged him to the girl on the pavement. I gasped out all I knew.
He took a flashlight from somewhere about him, knelt, looked at the girl, and I—I looked at the pool of blood widening on the pavement. I had not seen it before. She was dying. I dropped down by her, too. “Oh, poor little girl,” I cried, “why did you come to this city of Gomorrha? Why didn’t you stay at home?”
“See here”—the light flashed full in my own face, the low, cold voice bit into my spirit as a bullet of steel might have burrowed in my flesh—“how do I know that what you’ve told me is on the level?”
Stupidly I stared at him. Whose face was this—as familiar as my own viewed in the looking-glass?
The eyes looking into mine were suddenly confused, the apology he gave murmured. He stared as thoughI bewildered him. He pushed his hat back. I hadn’t recognized Bobby Haralson, but I knew that lock of hair on his brow. Had I not once watched a flame devour it? Head and heart awhirl, I smiled at him. “Mr. Haralson,” I said, and I laughed outright. “I am on the level.”
There was the sound of approaching footsteps. He flashed the light out. “So you know me?” he said.
“Who does not?” I answered. “But you do not know me, honest, now.”
“I do—and I don’t,” he said.
Not far away a figure loomed; it brought us back to the poor little girl that lay there so quietly between us.
“You must get away, quickly. Officer!” he called. His voice has a carrying quality if it is so low, for soon an answering hail came through the fog.
“Will you go? Go!” he commanded. “I’ll see this through.”
“I can’t,” I said, and I suddenly knew that I spoke out of a vast content. “I’m lost. It’s no use to tell me west. I don’t know west.”
“West what?” Again his words bit into me like they were steel.
“Twenty.” The officer was only a few steps away and Bobby fairly forced it from me.
“The Arch, the Avenue, Twentieth Street, then to your left.”
Obediently, I did it all. I am safe at Miss Jackson’s. But, oh, will I ever sleep again? When I close my eyes I see the girl’s fair little face, that widening pool of blood; and then I see Bobby’s eyes—the puzzled stir of memory in them.
April 17th.
I fell asleep at daylight this morning. When I waked the breeze was tossing the curtains, the sun shining, there was a sense of joyousness in the morning. I shopped with an agent—I could not have shopped without one. We lunched at a cunning tearoom just off the Avenue. I ordered just about what mammy would have for a guest of ours: soup, broiled chicken, two vegetables, a salad, a sweet, and coffee. I nearly fainted when I saw my bill. And then the tip! I would not have given it, but I saw it offered at a nearby table. I was confused to give it, but the pretty, refined looking girl did not seem to mind accepting it.
This afternoon, by appointment, I met Mr. Elliott. Mr. Elliott is a member of the firm. He is young, tall, slender. Somehow I thought all publishers were middle-aged, stocky as to build, and with close-cut white moustaches.
Mr. Elliott asked me if I had ever dined at Mouquin’s. His face was a compliment when I told him that like a little mountain boy of my acquaintance Ihad never “ben nowhar nur seen nothin’.” Ido likeMr. Elliott. My heart is almost leaping out of me! I drove straight to Mrs. Christopher again. She told me all the literary people go to Mouquin’s. If Bobby should be there to-night! If we should meet!
OneA. M.
Out of gratitude to Mrs. Christopher I must acknowledge that the girl who looked back at me from the mirror to-night was a stranger to me. Mr. Elliott did not know her, either. As I came down the boarding-house stairs—the parlours at present are occupied by people from the South and the stuffy hall is the only reception-room—I flushed under his gaze. It is most bewildering to emerge from a Marsville spinster to a New York belle.
Mouquin’s. A confused memory of a flight of steps, a clutter of tables, a sea of faces.
“Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you like your oysters? It is a trifle late for them.”
We were seated. I knew that. It was Mr. Elliott’s voice. I knew that, too. I was glad, although he seemed so far away, that I had not lost him. The plate that was rising, falling, lurchingly, drunkenly, held oysters——
“Drink your cocktail.” Out of the blur of things he pushed it toward me. Obediently I drank it. I sawthat the oysters numbered six, that their shells were as pink and polished as a lady’s finger-nails. Obediently I ate them—the oysters, not the shells.
“What makes you so quiet to-night? But maybe you aren’t having a good time?”
With the help of the wine that sparkled and bubbled at my right hand, blessed little helper in time of need, I did not have to give account of my appetite again; I was making quite respectable headway with my chicken. Feverishly I assured Mr. Elliott that I was having the loveliest time but one I’d ever had in my life.
Mr. Elliott beamed. “Will you tell me about that time?” he asked.
But women have their little reserves. The lovely time to which I had reference was a mountain storm I once survived, on Craggy, six thousand feet above sea level, separated from my party, having followed a cattle path by mistake, and—alone. This time was just as lovely as that. Then, after a terrified scurrying here and there, I had gone back to the mountain top to wait. Out of what had seemed an innocent sky an electric storm broke. Lashing his steeds with whips of fire, Apollo drove them across the boiling heavens. At each ear-crashing report of thunder the earth threatened to crumble, hurling me down through bottomless space. With the sharp hissings of snakes the lightningfell about me. Rain-drenched, storm-torn, but too terrified to brave the electric fires darting across the mountain’s top to what seemed safety under the big rock where a flock of frightened sheep huddled, I took the storm in the open. When it had rolled away the sheep no longer huddled—I was indeed alone—they lay still.
“Does it meet your approval?” Mr. Elliott put the direct question to me, and somehow I knew it had been asked before. I looked down at my plate helplessly—we had reached the salad course—I tried to rouse my laggard brain. Approval of what, and what was approval?
“It gets my goat!” The words came from my lips. My ears heard them. And the fright of the foolish words cleared my brain.
“What!” There was astonishment, there was amusement, there was also a puzzled intentness in the eyes that looked into mine, and I stammered that the girl who sat at the next table—the girl who looked so cultured and smartly got up—had just said it, and that it was new to me, but it sounded like an idiom of the street.
With that careless, satiated New York glance Mr.Elliott’seyes swept the girl. “Beef to the heel,” he said heartlessly.
“Beef to the heel!” That puzzled me, too.
We had drained our coffee cups when two people who sat at a table behind us passed—a man and a woman—Bobby Haralson and Dicky. I recognized Bobby as I came in; the lovely droop of Dicky’s back is not unfamiliar to me, either.
“That’s Bob Haralson—you’ve heard of him—one of our biggest men, and his biggest work is still in him. He’s the nicest, most lovable, queerest fellow you ever did see. He has hosts of friends, but mostly, he lives to himself. He’d give his last dollar to a friend and go hungry himself; and once I knew him to refuse to be introduced to a rich fellow of power in the literary world because that man belonged soul and body to a corporation—had been bought. That’s Bob Haralson! I often see him here, but I never saw him here with a woman before. Come to think of it, I never saw him anywhere before with a woman—not much in his line, women. But they seemed to be having a corking time. I never saw him so animated. That little witch—pretty, wasn’t she?—has got him going. I’d have asked him over to be introduced had he been alone.”
As we left the restaurant Mr. Elliott asked me to go with him to a little theatre where the one-act plays were all thrills. I couldn’t tell him that if I had any more thrills he’d probably have to call an ambulance and send me to a hospital; I couldn’t explain that asfar as I was concerned the play was done, curtain down, and lights out.
We went. We sat in darkness. The darkness was a great relief. Mr. Elliott could not see me. I sat there with tightly shut eyes until, at a stir among the people about me, I heard some one say a man had fainted. “It gets my goat!” I murmured. Fortunately there was quite a little stir about us and Mr. Elliott did not hear me.
April 18th.
Some hours ago, when I left New York, having decided to run up to Plymouth and finish up the work on the book by the sea, Mr. Elliott put me in the coach, having showered me with books, flowers, and magazines. I opened the flowers in the cab, and I stared at them and at him.
“Don’t you like them?”
Did I like orchids and lilies of the valley? Bobby’s Christmas gift to me? I pulled up. I wasn’t going to be beef to the heel. I joined the New York procession—and I think I made good.
There’s a little slit of a mirror in the coach, right here by my chair, and I take a peep at myself. Blessings on Mrs. Christopher, I don’t look like a spinster, and from Marsville. And then—then I bury my face in nice Mr. Elliott’s flowers, drinking in their perfume,and splashing them with some very big and salty tears.
April 25th.
I have spent the morning in Plymouth’s quaint old graveyard—such a soft, sunny, springlike morning. I have looked at the dim old slabs that bear testimony to the virtue of departed wives. I am sitting on the grave of a virtuous wife now, looking past the stones, past the big rock the nimble Pilgrims leaped on when they landed on free soil, far out to where sea and sky meet. Had I been a Puritan maid I would have said to my lover when we climbed to this hill soft days like this and looked to sea: “Dear boy, with my heart I give you all that women who are like me give to one man—the thoughts I have kept for you, the lips I have kept for you. If you had a great searchlight and should throw it back over the road of my life there’s not a single little bend that it would shame me for your eyes to see; but when I’m dead, don’t put my virtue on a tombstone.”
April 26th.
This has been a heavenly day. Mr. Elliott came to Boston on business and ran down to Duxbury to see some friends of his, and all of them motored over to Plymouth and got me. I lunched at the loveliest home in Duxbury. The sea was almost in the back porch. Mr. Elliott came back in the machine with meand took the train for Boston. When he left he held my hands in a mighty close friendly clasp, and he said—never mind what he said. It is lovely of Mr. Elliott to be so good to me, and it’s comforting down to my toes. For some idiotic reason I want to cry again. I won’t cry! And I won’t sit here. (I have climbed to the old graveyard, and seated myself on the slab of a virtuous spouse.) I need all my nerve force. It must sparkle in the changes I’ve got to put in my book. And I know why I’m nervous, and I know why I want to cry. It’s always satisfactory when you can chase an emotion to its lair——I was taken to the graveyard when I was very little—mammy used to take me with her when she went to put flowers on my great-aunt’s grave, the lady whose false teeth fell into mammy’s care; and she (mammy) was always so solemn on these occasions—it was before the day of Christian Science—there was death then, and hell, and a devil. I feel quite cheerful since I have analyzed the teary feeling.
April 26th.Night.
A letter from Dicky forwarded to New York and on here. It lilts like the song of the happy little wren that was singing in the big cedar tree at the garden gate the day I left home.
“Oh, Caroline,” Dicky says, “I want to go out underthe stars to-night at home and bury my face in the pansies that always riot in your April garden. With their soft little faces close, close to mine, I want to tell them a secret. I want to tell it to you, too, Caroline. But not yet—not yet.”
I go out under the stars, through the quiet streets, and down to the quiet sea. The night is poignantly sweet and beautiful. Dicky, little sister, child of my love, keep your secret. I could not bear to hear it yet—not yet.
April 27th.
A telegram from Bobby. He wants to come to Plymouth. He has something to tell me. It is Bobby’s chivalry that makes him feel he should go through the form of asking me for Dicky. I have wired no. There’s a little kodak of him that I cut from a magazine and put in my little silver frame. I can reach out my hand and touch it here where I sit, and, vaguely, it comforts me.
I have faced it. I love Bobby. To love—it is to give. Bobby’s wife must give. The hands that take into their keeping that precious thing—his genius—what tender, comprehending hands they must be. There’ll be times, lots of ’em, when Bobby’s wife will have to do all the loving for two. There’ll be times when he will thrust her out, and if she sits whimperingon the doorstep that it’s cold out there, heaven help her—how he’ll hate her. There’ll be times when the work presses, when he’s distrait—knows she’s there just as he knows thehouse furnishingsare there, bed near centre of room, bureau against west wall, light above——If she gets frightened at the wilted leaves and jerks his love for her out of his body to look at the roots too often, then heaven help you, Robert Haralson.