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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-27 12:07:09 -0800 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-27 12:07:09 -0800 |
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diff --git a/60435-0.txt b/60435-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fee50f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/60435-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5429 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60435 *** + + THE EMBLEMS OF + FIDELITY + + A Comedy in Letters + + BY + + JAMES LANE ALLEN + + AUTHOR OF + "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL," + "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC. + + + There is nothing so ill-bred as audible + laughter.... I am sure that since I have + had the full use of my reason nobody has + ever heard me laugh. + --Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. + + + + GARDEN CITY NEW YORK + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + 1919 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF + TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, + INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN + + + + + To + THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY + + INCOMPARABLE ALLY + OF VICTORY + + + + +LIST OF CHARACTERS + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE...............Famous elderly English novelist + +BEVERLEY SANDS....................Rising young American novelist + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE....Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands + +GEORGE MARIGOLD............................Fashionable physician + +CLAUDE MULLEN............Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of + George Marigold + +RUFUS KENT.......................Long-winded president of a club + +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN......Very learned, very absent-minded professor + +PHILLIPS AND FAULDS.....................................Florists + +BURNS AND BRUCE.........................................Florists + +JUDD AND JUDD...........................................Florists + +ANDY PETERS..............................................Florist + +HODGE......................Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne + +TILLY SNOWDEN.............Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands + +POLLY BOLES..........Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, + friend of Tilly Snowden + +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN......Very devoted, very proud sensitive + daughter of Noah Chamberlain + +ANNE RAEBURN..........Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne + + + + +CONTENTS + +PART SECOND + +PART THIRD + + + + +THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + May 1, 1910._ + +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: + +I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the +outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows +with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much +of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, +rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden. + +You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact, +however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very +natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for +you probably agree with me that the writing of novels--not, of +course, the mere odious manufacture of novels--results in the making +of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that +we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not +do at all as fellow-creatures. + +I shall not loiter at the threshold of this letter to fatigue your +ear with particulars regarding the several parts of your story most +enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough to say that no admirable +human being has ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears by any +such desirable procedure. In England, and I presume in the United +States, novelists have long noses for incense [poets, too, though of +course only in their inferior way]. I repeat that we English +novelists are a species of greyhound for running down on the most +distant horizon any scampering, half-terrified rabbit of a +compliment. But I freely confess that nature loaded me beyond the +tendency of being a mere greyhound. I am a veritable elephant in the +matter, being marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible proboscis +which is not only adapted to admit praise but is quite capable of +actively reaching around in every direction to procure it. Even the +greyhound cannot run forever; but an elephant, if he once possess it, +will wave such a proboscis till he dies. + +There are likely to be in any very readable book a few pages which +the reader feels tempted to tear out for the contrary reason, +perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his tenderness. Some +haunting picture of the book-gallery that he would cut from the +frame. Should you be displeased by the discrimination, I shall trust +that you may be pleased nevertheless by the avowal that there is a +scene in your novel which has peculiarly ensnared my affections. + +At this point I think I can see you throw down my letter with more +insight into human nature than patience with its foibles. You toss +it aside and exclaim: "What does this Englishman drive at? Why does +he not at once say what he wants?" You are right. My letter is +perhaps no better than strangers' letters commonly are: coins, one +side of which is stamped with your image and the other side with +their image, especially theirs. + +I might as well, therefore, present to you my side of the coin with +the selfish image. Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, you +are the horse in an open pasture and I am the stableman who schemes +to catch you: to do this, I approach, calling to you affectionately +and shaking a bundle of oats behind which is coiled a halter. You +are thinking that if I once clutch you by the mane you will get no +oats. But, my dear sir, you have from the very first word of this +letter already been nibbling the oats. And now you are my animal! + +There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday +woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands--a cool, +moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare, +beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can _see_ the ferns! I can see the +sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now, +as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade +and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They +are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock +of daffodils; for they have been collected out of England's best and +from other countries. + +Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: Will you send me +the root-stocks of some of those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on +my Warwickshire fern bank? + +Do not suppose that my garden is on a small scale a public park or +exhibition, made as we have created Kensington Gardens. Everything +in it is, on the contrary, enriched with some personal association. +I began it when a young man in the following way: + +At that period I was much under the influence of the Barbizon +painters, and I sometimes entertained myself in the forests where +masters of that school had worked by hunting up what I supposed were +the scenes of some of Corot's masterpieces. + +Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted trees as though he were +looking at enormous ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and some +rise higher than others as trees; his trees descend through the air +and are lost lower down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot ferns +for my good Warwickshire loam. Another winter Christine Nilsson was +singing at Covent Garden. I spent several evenings with her. When I +bade her good-bye, I asked her to send me some ferns from Norway in +memory of Balzac and _Seraphita_. Yet another winter, being still a +young man and he, alas! a much older one, I passed an evening in +Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in talking about his novels +and I remember quoting these lines from one of them: "It was a +splendid clear morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hung like snipe in the +clear pale azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves and grass +and glistened like silver on the spiders' webs; the moist dark earth +seemed still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the songs of +larks showered down from all over the sky." + +He sat looking at me in surprised, touched silence. + +"But you left out something!" I suggested, with the bumptiousness of +a beginner in letters. He laughed slightly to himself--and perhaps +more at me--as he replied: "I must have left out a great deal"--he, +fiction's greatest master of compression. After a moment he inquired +with a kind of vast patient condescension: "What is it that you +definitely missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns were growing +thereabouts." He smiled reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, +smiling reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot was," I said, "I +should travel to it for some ferns." A mystical look came into his +eyes as he muttered rather to himself than for my ear: "That spot! +Where is that spot? That spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the +whole of Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, one pain, one +passion. Sometime afterwards there reached me at home a hamper of +Russian fern-roots with Turgenieff's card. + +I tell you all this as I make the request, which is the body of this +letter and, I hope, its wings, in order that you may intimately +understand. I desire the ferns not only because you have interested +me in your Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, but +because I have become interested in your art and in you. While I +read your book I believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously at +work, creating where no hand had created before; or if on its chosen +scene it found a ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality from +that ruin. But to create where no hand has created before, or to +create them again where human things lie in decay--that to me is the +true energy of literature. + +I should not omit to tell you that some of our most tight-islanded, +hard-headed reviewers have been praising your work as of the best +that reaches us from America. It was one such reviewer that first +guided me to your latest book. Now I myself have written to some of +our critics and have thrown my influence in favour of your fresh, +beautiful art, which can only come from a fresh, beautiful nature. + +Should you decide to bestow any notice upon this rather amazing +letter, you will bear in mind of course that there will be pounds +sterling for plants. Whatever character my deed or misdeed may later +assume, it must first and at least have the nature of a transaction +of the market-place. + +So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all, + +I am, + + Gratefully yours, + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + May 12, 1910._ + +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: + +Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, in some modern Æsop's +Fables, read how a whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had taken +the trouble to turn entirely round to encourage a puffing young +porpoise; or of how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, had on +some fine spring day looked down and complimented a small dogwood +tree upon its size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, while +thus unreal, your letter is in its way the most encouragingly real +thing that has ever come into my life. Before I go further I should +like to say that I have read every book you have written and have +bought your books and given them away with such zeal and zest that +your American publishers should feel more interest in me than can +possibly be felt by the gentlemen who publish mine. + +It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, in bad taste. A +man's praise of another may not follow upon that man's praise of him. +Our virtues have their hour. If they do not act then, they are not +like clocks which may be set forward but resemble fruits which lose +their flavour when they pass into ripeness. Still, what I have said +is honest. You may remember that I am yet moving amid life's +uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk in quietness the world's +highway of a great career. My praise could have borne little to you; +yours brings everything to me. And you must reflect also that it is +just a little easier for any Englishman to write to an American in +this way. The American could but fear that his letter might +seriously disturb the repose of a gentleman who was reclining with +his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and Shakespeare's entire bosom in +this regard, as you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in England. + +It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange for the shipment of the +ferns. A good many years have passed since I lived in Kentucky and I +am no longer in close touch with people and things down there. But +without doubt the matter can be managed through correspondence and +all that I await from you now is express instructions. The ferns +described in my book are not known to me by name. I have procured +and have mailed to you along with this, lest you may not have any, +some illustrated catalogues of American ferns, Kentucky ferns +included. You have but to send me a list of those you want. With +that in hand I shall know exactly how to proceed. + +You cannot possibly understand how happy I am that my work has the +approval of the English reviews, which still remain the best in the +world. To know that my Kentucky stories are liked in +England--England which, remaining true to so many great traditions, +holds fast to the classic tradition in her literature. + +The putting forth of your own personal influence in my behalf is a +source of joy and pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns growing +in your garden in token of me is the most inspiring event yet to mark +my life. + +I am, + + Sincerely yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + May 22, 1910._ + +MY DEAR SANDS: + +Your letter was brought out to me as I was hanging an old gate in a +clover-field canopied with skylarks. When I cannot make headway +against some obstruction in the development of a story, for instance, +putting the hinges of the narrative where the reader will not see any +hinges, I let the book alone and go out and do some piece of work, +surrounded by the creatures which succeed in all they undertake +through zest and joy. By the time I get back, the hinges of the book +have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence +the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we +climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it. + +It is splendid news that I am to get the Kentucky ferns. Thank you +for the catalogues. A list of those I most covet is enclosed. The +cost, shipping expenses included, will not, I fear, exceed five +pounds. Of course it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but I +suppose I must restrict myself to the despicable market price. +Shamefully cheap many of the dearest things in this world are; and +what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless! + +A draft will be forwarded in advance upon receipt of the American +shipper's address. Or I could send it forthwith to you. Meantime +from now on I shall be remembering with impatience how many miles it +is across the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace American +ferns travel. These will be awaited like guests whom one goes to the +gate to meet. + +You do not know the names of those you describe so wonderfully! I am +glad. I abhor the names of my own. Of course, as they are bought, +memoranda must be depended upon by which to buy them. These data, +verified by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs as fern +headstones. When each fern is planted, into the soil beside it is +stuck its headstone, which, like that for a human being, tells the +name, not the nature, of what it memorialises. + +Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns according to the slabs. It +is time you should know Hodge by his slab. No such being can yet be +found in the United States: your civilisation is too young. Hodge is +my British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out for every +birthday much as for any total solar eclipse of the year--with a kind +of growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday should finally, as +it passes, bowl him over for good--he announced to me with visible +relief the other day that he had successfully passed another total +natal eclipse; that he was fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight +years old. The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 and Hodge +without knowing it was beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For +Hodge is English landscape gardening in human shape. He is the +benevolent spirit of the English turf, a malign spirit to English +weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, a wheelbarrow of +spring manure, a pile of autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant +future mythology of our English rural life he will perhaps rank where +he belongs--as a luminary next in importance to the sun: a two-legged +god be-earthed in old clothes, with a stiff back, a stiff temper, the +jaw of the mastiff and the eye of a prophet. + +It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would not allow anything to come +into the garden without mastering that thing. For the sake of his +own authority he must subdue as much of the Latin language as invades +his territory along with the ferns. But I think nothing comparable +to such a struggle against overwhelming odds--Hodge's brain pitted +against the Latin names of the ferns--nothing comparable to the dull +fury of that onset is to be found in the history of man unless it be +England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. England did conquer +Napoleon and finally shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and +Hodge has finally conquered the names of the ferns and shut them up +in a desolate, rocky place--his skull, his personal promontory. + +Nowadays you should see him meet me in a garden path when I come down +early some morning. You should see him plant himself before me and, +taking off his cap and scratching the back of his neck with the back +of his muddy thumb, make this announcement: "The _Asplenium +filix-faemina_ put up two new shoots last night, sir. Bishop's +crooks, I believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a farmer and +my shepherd should notify me that one of the ewes had dropped twin +lambs at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: the honour of the +shoots--a questionable honour--goes to Hodge as their botanical sire! + +When I receive visitors by reason of my books--and strangers do +sometimes make pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of "Black +Oaks"--if the day is pleasant, we have tea in the garden. While the +strangers drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known proboscis over +the company for any praise they may have brought along. Should this +seem adequate, I later reward them with a stroll. That is Hodge's +hour and opportunity. Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but +invariably, he steps out from some bush and takes his place behind me +as we move. + +When we reach the fern bank, the visitors regularly begin to inquire: +"What is the name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to Hodge much as +a drum-major, if asked by a by-stander what the music was that the +band had just been playing, might wheel in dismay to the nearest +horn. Hodge steps forward: now comes the reward of all his toil. +"That is the _Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum_, sir." "And what is +this one?" "That is the _Polypodium elegantissimum_, mum." Then you +would understand what it sometimes means to attain scholarship +without Oxford or Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman +orator and a garden ass. + +You will be wondering why I am telling you this about Hodge. For the +very particular reason that Hodge will play a part, I know not what +part, in the pleasant business that has come up between us. He looms +as the danger between me and the American ferns after the ferns shall +have arrived here. It is a fact that very few foreign ferns have +ever done well in my garden, watch over them as closely as I may: +especially those planted in more recent years. Could you believe it +possible of human nature to refuse to water a fern, to deny a little +earth to the root of a fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from +it when there was nobody near to observe the deed, to jab at it with +a sharp trowel? I shall not press the matter further, for I +instinctively turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has within +himself some incomprehensible little terrible spot and I feel that +this is Hodge's spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he will +kill what he hates, if he dares. I have been so aroused to defend +his faithful character that I have devised two pleadings: first, +Hodge is the essence of British parliaments, the sum total of British +institutions; therefore he patriotically believes that things British +should be good enough for the British--of course, their own ferns. +At other times I am rather inclined to surmise that his malice and +murderous resentment are due to his inability to take on any more +Latin, least of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt now defends +himself against any more Latin as a man with his back to the wall +fights for his life: the personal promontory will hold no more. + +You have written me an irresistible letter, though frankly I made no +effort to resist it. Your praise of my books instantly endeared you +to me. + +Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has already brought results so +agreeable and surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to plunge a +second time and more deeply. + +Is there--how could there help being!--a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands? Mrs. +Blackthorne wishes to know. I read your letter to Mrs. Blackthorne. +Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed +with _you_. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. And Mr. and Mrs. +Blackthorne would like to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands +and, if so, whether she and you will not some time follow the ferns +and come and take possession for a while of our English garden. + +You and I can go off to ourselves and discuss our "dogwoods" and +"black oaks"; and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at their tea +across the garden, can exchange copies of their highly illuminated +and privately circulated little masterpieces about their husbands. +(The husbands should always edit the masterpieces!) + +Both of you, will you come? + +Finally, as to your generous propaganda in behalf of my books and as +to the favourable reports which my publishers send me from time to +time in the guise of New World royalties, you may think of the +proboscis as now being leveled straight and rigid like a gun-barrel +toward the shores of the United States, whence blow gales scented +with so glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that Columbus was not +mistaken: America is turning out to be a place worth while. + + Your deeply interested, + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 3._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +Crown me with some kind of chaplet--nothing classic, nothing +sentimental, but something American and practical--say with twigs of +Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the leaves of that forest +favourite which in boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with +its inner bark--entwine me, O Tilly, with a garland of slippery elm +for the virtue of always making haste to share with you my slippery +pleasures! I write at full speed now to empty into your lap, a +wonderfully receptive lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has ever +come to me as your favourite author--and favourite young husband to +be. + +The great English novelist Blackthorne, many of whose books we have +read together (whenever you listened), recently stumbled over one of +my obstructive tales; one of my awkwardly placed literary hurdles on +the world's race-course of readers. As a result of his fall he got +up, dusted himself thoroughly of his surprise, and actually +despatched to me an acknowledgment of his thanks for the happy +accident. I replied with a volley of my own thanks, with salvos of +praise for him. Now he has written again, throwing wide open his +house and his heart, both of which appear to be large and admirably +suited to entertain suitable guests. + +At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart--can +you find where it is?--and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the +novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr. +Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands. +If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!--he +invites her, invites _us_, _Mrs._ Blackthorne invites _us_, should we +sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed +country-house in Warwickshire. If, then, our often postponed +marriage, our despairingly postponed marriage, should be arranged to +madden me and gladden the rest of mankind before next summer, we +could, with our arms around one another's necks, be conveyed by steam +and electricity on our wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance +and be there deposited, still oblivious of everything but ourselves. + +Think what it would mean to you to be launched upon the rosy sea of +English social life amid the orisons and benisons of such illustrious +literary personages. Think of those lovely English lawns, raked and +rolled for centuries, and of many-coloured _fêtes_ on them; of the +national tea and the national sandwiches; of national strawberries +and clotted cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's flunkies still +flunkying and Queen Anne's fads yet fadding; of week-ends without +end--as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself growing more and more a +celebrity, as the English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers +gradually brought into public appreciation the vague potentialities, +not necessarily the bare actualities, of modest young Sands himself. +Eventually, no doubt, there would be a day for you at Sandringham +with the royal ladies. They would drive you over--I have not the +least idea how great the distance is--to drink tea at Stonehenge. +Imagine yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy English +afternoon, imagine yourself seated under a heavy black-silk English +umbrella on a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, tearing at +an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest strain and surrounded by male and +female admirers, all under heavy black-silk umbrellas--Spitalsfield, +I suppose--as Mrs. Beverley Sands. + +Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign triumph, this career of +glory, comes to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, it is +inaccessible. Look upon it as in part the property that I am to +settle upon you at the time of our union--my honours. You have +already understood from me that my entire estate, both my real estate +and my unreal estate, consists of future honours. Those I have just +described are an early payment on the marriage contract--foreign +exchange! + +What reply, then, in your behalf am I to send to the lofty and +benevolent Blackthornes? As matters halt between us--he also loves +who only writes and waits--I can merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that +there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists in remaining a +Miss Snowden. With this realisation of what you will lose as Miss +Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you not think it wise--and +wise you are, Tilly--any longer to persist in your persistence? You +once, in a moment of weakness, confessed to me--think of your having +a moment of weakness!--you once confessed to me, though you may deny +it now (Balzac defines woman as the angel or devil who denies +everything when it suits her), you once confessed to me that you +feared your life would be taken up with two protracted pleasures, +each of which curtailed the other: the pleasure of being engaged to +me a long time and the pleasure of being married to me a long time. +Nerve yourself to shortening the first in order to enter upon the +compensations of the second. + +Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect of obliterating from the +world one whom I first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. Where +will Tilly Snowden be when only Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where +will be that wild rose in a snow bank--the rose which was truly wild, +the snow bank which was not cold (or was it?)? I think I should +easily become reconciled to your being known, say, as Madame Snowden, +so that you might still stand out in your own right and wild-rose +individuality. We could visit England as the rising American author, +Beverley Sands, and his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. Everybody +would then be asking who the mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I +should relate that she was a retired opera singer--having retired +before she advanced. + +By the way, you confided to me some time ago that you were not very +well. You always _look_ well, mighty well to _me_, Tilly. Perfectly +well to _me_. Can your indisposition be imaginary? Or is it merely +fashionable? Or--is it something else? What of late has sickened me +is an idea of yours that you might sometime consult Doctor G. M. +Tilly! Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me when I think of +that charlatan's door being closed behind you as a patient of his! + +Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the beautiful Blackthornes! + +Your easy and your uneasy + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _"Slippery Elm" Apartments, + June 4._ + +I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown you with slippery elm--you +seem to think I keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it--if it is the +leaf you sigh for. But please do not try to crown me with a wig of +your creative hair; that is, with your literary honours. + +How wonderfully the impressions of childhood disappear from memory +like breaths on a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to their +shapes if the glass be coldly breathed upon! As I read your letter, +at least as I read the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your letter, +I remembered, probably for the first time in years, a friend of my +mother's. + +She had been inveigled to become the wife, that is, the legally +installed life-assistant, of an exceedingly popular minister; and +when I was a little girl, but not too little to understand--was I +ever too little to understand?--she used to slip across the street to +our house and in confidence to my mother pour out her sense of humour +at the part assigned her by the hired wedding march and evangelical +housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, always +half-whispered, confidences--for how often in life one feels guilty +when telling the truth and innocent when lying! + +On this particular morning she and my mother laughed till they were +weary, while I danced round them with delight at the idea of having +even the tip of my small but very active finger in any pie that +savoured of mischief. She had been telling my mother that if, some +Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a sermon which brought +people into the church, she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If +he made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she might possibly look +out for a pair of ducks. Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be +merely a strip of worthless territory lying alongside the land of +Canaan; people simply walked over her, tramped across her, on their +way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful things to Canaan, her +husband. + +That childish nonsense comes back to me strangely, and yet not +strangely as I think of your funny letter, your very, very funny +letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to me because I am not +myself but am possibly a Mrs.--well, _some_ Mrs. Sands. The English +scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it is Canaan and his strip +all over again--there on the English lawns; a great many heavy +English people are tramping heavily over me on their way to Canaan. +The fabulous tea at Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at +Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that at last choked to death +the ill-fated Tilly Snowden. + +In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, then, begs that you +will thank the Blackthornes, Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for their +invitation; as best she can she thanks you; but for the present, and +for how much of the future she does not know, she prefers to remain +what is very necessary to her independence and therefore to her +happiness; and also what is quite pleasing to her ear--the wild rose +in the snow bank (cold or not cold, according to the sun). + +In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true that I have more than +once postponed the date of our marriage. I have never said why; +perhaps I myself have never known just why. But at least do not +expect me to shorten the engagement in order that I may secure some +share of your literary honours. As a little girl I always despised +queens who were crowned with their husbands. It seemed to me that +the queen was crowned with what was left over and was merely allowed +to sit on the corner of the throne as the poor connection. + + +P.S.--Still, I _would_ like to go to England. I mean, of course, I +wish _we_ could go on our wedding journey! If I got ready, could I +rely upon _you_? I have always wished to visit England without being +debarred from its social life. Seriously, the invitation of the +Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity and an advantage not to +be thrown away. Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am wise! + +It is true that I have not been feeling very well. And it is true +that I have consulted Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. That +dreaded door has closed behind me! I have been alone with him! The +diagnosis at least was delightful. He made it appear like opening a +golden door upon a charming landscape. I had but to step outdoors +and look around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, Health, my +former friend, how do you do! Why did you go back on me?" He tells +me my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. I said to him +that _must_ be the disease; namely, that it was _mild_. Never in my +life had I had anything that was mild! Disease from my birth up had +attacked me only in its most virulent form: so had health. I had +always enjoyed--and suffered from--virulent health. I am going to +take the Bulgar bacillus. + +Why do _you_ dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular physicians are naturally +hated by unpopular physicians. But how does _he_ run against or run +over you? + +Which of your books was it the condescending Englishman liked? +Suppose you send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of each of your +books? Those you gave me as they came out seem to have disappeared. + +The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful +of the Balkan bacillus. + +More trouble with the Balkans! + + TILLY + + (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise + intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least + for _that_!). + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 3._ + +DEAR BEN: + +A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a +benign fulmination from an Olympian. + +To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I +received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward +Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books +and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't--score heavily for the aforesaid +illustrious Eddy. + +Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or +illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that +you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a +lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own +opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information +how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading +"Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle +which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off +a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the +impenetrable roof of his own back. + +For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other +human being in this world, do you know what I think of you as most +truly being? The very finest possible specimen of the highest order +of human land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives under a +shovel turned upside down over it, called its back; and a human +land-turtle is a fellow who thrives under the roof of the five senses +and the practical. Never does a turtle get from under his carapace, +and never does the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his five +senses. Of course you realise that not during our friendship have I +paid you so extravagant a compliment. For the human race has to be +largely made up of millions of land-turtles. They cause the world to +go slowly, and it is the admirable stability of their lives neither +to soar nor to sink. You are a land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, +Esquire; you live under the shell of the practical; that is, you have +no imagination; that is, you do not read fiction; that is, you do not +read Me! Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but cherish +all the confidence and love in the world for you. But, mind you, +only as an unparalleled creeping thing. + +To get on with the business of this letter: the English novelist laid +aside his enthusiasm for my work long enough to make a request: he +asked me to send him some Kentucky ferns for his garden. Owing to my +long absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch with people and +things down there. But you left that better land only a few years +ago. I recollect that of old you manifested a weakness for sending +flowers to womankind--another evidence, by the way, of lack of +imagination. Such conduct shows a mere botanical estimate of the +grand passion. The only true lovers, the only real lovers, that +women ever have are men of imagination. Why should these men send a +common florist's flowers! They grow and offer their own--the roses +of Elysium! + +To pass on, you must still have clinging to your memory, like bats to +a darkened, disused wall, the addresses of various Louisville +florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no light at all, were +the former emissaries of your folly and your fickleness. Will you +send me at once the address of a firm in whose hands I could safely +entrust this very high-minded international piece of business? + +Inasmuch as you are now a New York lawyer and inasmuch as New York +lawyers charge for everything--concentration of mind, if they have +any mind, tax on memory and tax on income, their powers of locomotion +and of prevarication, club dues and death dues, time and tumult, +strikes and strokes, and all other items of haste and waste, you are +authorised to regard this letter a professional demand and to let me +have a reasonable bill at a not too early date. Charge for whatever +you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for your friendship. +"Naught that makes life most worth while can be had for gold." +(Rather elegant extract from one of my novels which you disdain to +read!) + +I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me have an immediate reply. + + BEVERLEY. + + +How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending to quarrel? And do +you still keep up the pretence? + +Predestined magpies! + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _150 Broad Street, + June 5._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +Your highly complimentary and philosophical missive is before my eyes. + +You understand French, not I. But I have accumulated a few +quotations which I sometimes venture to use in writing, never in my +proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to the French the French with +which I am familiar, the French themselves would drive their own +vernacular out of their land--over into Germany! Here is one of +those fond inaudible phrases: + + _A chaque oiseau + Son nid est beau._ + + +That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes prefers his own tub. + +The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club dinner the other +night. One of the speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the +blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping around the heads of the +guests without finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing about +the edges of a pond, trying in vain to strike a place to land. But +everybody cheered uproariously, made happy by the discovery that +someone actually could say something at a New York dinner that nobody +had heard before. One man next to the speaker (of course coached +beforehand) passed a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made its +way down the table to me at the other end and I, in the New York way, +laid it up for future use at a dinner in some other city. Meantime I +use it now on you. + +It is true that I arrived in New York from Kentucky some years ago. +It is likewise undeniable that for some years previous thereto I had +dealings with Louisville florists. But I affirm now, and all these +variegated gentlemen, if they _are_ gentlemen, would gladly come on +to New York as my witnesses and bear me out in the joyful affidavit, +that whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked my behaviour, +never once did I commit the futility, the imbecility, of trafficking +in ferns. + +A great English novelist--ferns! A rising young American +novelist--ferns! Frogstools, mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't +you ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? Or if they should +be too gross for his delicate soul, a birdcage containing a pair of +warbling young bluegrass moonbeams? + +I am a _land_-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank God! If I have no +imagination, thank God! If I live and move and have my being under +the shovel of the five senses and of the practical, thank God! But, +my good fellow, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other +man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I think of you as most truly +being? + +A poor, harmless tinker. + +You, with your pastime of fabricating novels, dwell in a little +workshop of the imagination; you tinker with what you are pleased to +call human lives, reality, truth. On your shop door should hang a +sign to catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, splendid +tinkering. No matter who you are, what your past career or present +extremity, come in and let the owner of this shop make your +acquaintance and he will work you over into something finer than you +have ever been or in this world will ever be. For he will make you +into an unfallen original or into a perfected final. If you have +never had a chance to do your best in life, he will give you that +chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the broken-down, especially +welcome. Everybody made over to be as everybody should be by +Beverley Sands." + +But, brother, the sole thing with which you, the tinker, do business +is the sole thing with which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, +as a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, actuality, truth. During +the years that I have been an attorney never have I had a case in +court without first of all things looking for the element of +imagination in it and trying to stamp that element out of the case +and kick it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, that +indefatigable mischief-maker, your beautiful and beloved patron +power--imagination. + +Going on to testify out of my experience as a land-turtle, I depose +the following, having kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the +turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the tracks of most of the +other animal creatures and gets to know them and their ways. But +there is one path of one creature marked for unique renown among +nose-bearing men: that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white +piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence--surnamed the polecat. + +Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably disposed, may in +your profession be the harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged +thing you will that soars innocently toward bright skies; but, once +unkindly disposed, it is in my profession, and in every other, the +polecat of the human faculties. When it has testified against you, +it vanishes from the scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with its +testimony. + +Hence it is that I go gunning first for this same little animal whose +common den is the lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though you never +seem to have encountered him in your work and walks. If you should +do so, if you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile +imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may the land-turtle be able to +crawl to you and stand by you in that hour! + +But--the tinker to his work, the turtle to his! _A chaque oiseau_! +Diogenes, your tub! + +As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. I paid for the +flowers, _she_ got them. Anybody can receive money for blossoms, but +only a statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can fill an order for +flowers with equity and fresh buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & +Faulds. You could reasonably rely upon them to fill any order that +you might place in their hands, however nonsensical-comical, +billy-goatian-satirical it may be. They'd send your Englishman an +opossum with a pouch full of blooming hyacinths if that would quiet +his longing and make him happy. I should think it might. + +We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle, + + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + +How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? Are you still cooing? + +Uncertain doves! + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + + _150 Broad Street, + June 5._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +I send you some red roses to go with your black hair and your black +eyes, never so black as when black with temper. When may I come to +see you? Why not to-morrow night? + +Another matter, not so vital but still important: a few years before +we left Louisville to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New +York, I at different times employed divers common carriers known as +florists to convey to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions that +could not be depicted in writing fluid. In other words, I hired +those mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in terms of +their costliest, most sensational merchandise. You should be +prepared to say which of these florists struck you as the best +business agent. + +Would you send me the address of that man or of that firm? +Immediately you will want to know why. Always suspicious! Let the +suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. Some +foggy-headed Englishman has besought him to ship him (the foggy one) +some Kentucky vegetation all the way across the broad Atlantic to his +wet domain--interlocking literary idiots! Beverley appeals to me, I +to you, the highest court in everything. + +Are you still enjoying the umbrageous society of that giraffe-headed +jackass, Doctor Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his +unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? _He_ a nerve +specialist! The only nerve in his practice is _his_ nerve. Doesn't +my love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? Isn't it the right +kind? Will it ever give out? + +Your reply, then, will cover four points: to thank me for the red +roses; to say when I may come to see you; to send me the address of +the Louisville florist who became most favourably known to you +through a reckless devotion; and to explain your patience with that +unhappy fool. + +Thy sworn and thy swain, + + BEN DOOLITTLE. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _The Franklin Flats, + June 6._ + +MY DEAR BEN: + +Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville florist is one of +your flimsiest subterfuges. What you wished to receive from me was a +letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable on your last visit and +you have since been concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards. +Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my aid as indispensable. +That is like you men! If one of you can but make a woman forget, if +he can but lead her to forgive him, by flattering her with the idea +that she is indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her figure +standing on the long road of time: dumbly, patiently standing there, +waiting for some male to pass along and permit her to accompany him +as his indispensable fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good +humour by being honoured with your request that I supply you with the +name of a florist. + +Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply you. All the Louisville +florists, as I thought at the time, carried out their instructions +faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally received flowers not +fresh. Did it occur to me to blame the florists? Never! I did what +a woman always does: she thinks less of--well, she doesn't think less +of the _florist_! + +Be this as it may, Beverley might try Phillips & Faulds for whatever +he is to export. As nearly as I now remember they sent the biggest +boxes of whatever you ordered! + +I have an appointment for to-morrow night, but I think I can arrange +to divide the evening, giving you the later half. It shall be for +you to say whether the best half was _yours_. That will depend upon +_you_. + +I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of Dr. Claude Mullen because +he loves me and I do not love him. The fascination of his presence +lies in my indifference. Perhaps women are so seldom safe with the +men who love them, that any one of us feels herself entitled to make +the most of a rare chance! I am not only safe, I am entertained. As +I go down into the parlour, I almost feel that I ought to buy a +ticket to a performance in my own private theatre. + +Ben, dear, are you going to commit the folly of being jealous? If I +had to marry _him_, do you know what my first wifely present would +be? A liberal transfusion of my own blood! As soon as I enter the +room, what fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which hold little +cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am always expecting the little pools +to run over: then there would be tears. The night he goes for +good--perhaps they will be tears that night. + +If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about him, still encourage +his visits, I have simply to say that I don't know. When it comes to +what a woman will "receive" in such cases, the ground she walks on is +very uncertain to her own feet. It may be that the one thing she +forever craves and forever fears not to get is absolute certainty, +certainty that some day love for her will not be over, everything be +not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's love is pitiful, and as +long as a man's love is pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it. +Therefore he is irresistible--as my guest! + +The roses are glorious. I bury my face in them down to the thorns. +And then I come over and sign my name as the indispensable + + POLLY BOLES. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 6._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +I have had a note from Beverley, asking whether he could come this +evening. I have written that I have an appointment, but I did not +enlighten him as to the appointment being with you. Why not let him +suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards. I told him that I could +perhaps arrange to divide the evening; would you mind? And would you +mind coming early? I will do as much for you some time, and _I +suspect I couldn't do more_! + + +P.S.--Rather than come for the first half of the evening perhaps you +would prefer to _postpone_ your visit _altogether_. It would suit me +just as well; _better_ in fact. There really was something very +_particular_, Tilly dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about to-night. + +I shall not look for you at all _this_ evening, _best_ of friends. + + POLLY BOLES. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 6._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +The very particular something to talk to Ben about to-night is the +identical something for every other night. And nothing could be more +characteristic of you, as soon as you heard that my visit would clash +with one of his, than your eagerness to push me partly out of the +house in a hurried letter and then push me completely out in a quiet +postscript. Being a woman, I understand your temptation and your +tactics. I fully sympathise with you. + +Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted intimate. I shall not drop +in to interrupt you and Ben--both not so young as you once were and +both getting stout--heavy Polly, heavy Ben--as you sit side by side +in your little Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always suggests +to me an enormous turnip hollowed out square: with no windows; with a +hole on one side to come in and a hole on the other side to go out; +upholstered in enormous bunches of beets and horse-radish, and +lighted with a wilted electric sunflower. There you two will sit +to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben, suffocating for fresh air and +murmuring to each other as you have murmured for years: + +"I do! I do!" + +"I do! I do!" + +One sentence in your letter, Polly dear, takes your photograph like a +camera; the result is a striking likeness. That sentence is this: + +"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards." + +That is exactly what you will do, what you would always do: explain +afterwards. In other words, you plot to make Ben jealous but fear to +make him too jealous lest he desert you. If on the evening of this +visit you should forget "to explain," and if during the night you +should remember, you would, if need were, walk barefoot through the +streets in your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter, if you could +reach it, and say: "Ben, that appointment wasn't with any other man; +it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I had told you!" + +That is, you have already disposed of yourself, breath and soul, to +Ben; and while you are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you have +espoused in his behalf what you consider your best and strongest +trait--loyalty. Under the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a +few years after marriage, have devoured all there is of Ben alive and +will have taken your seat beside what are virtually his bones. As +the years pass, the more ravenously you will preside over the bones. +Never shall the world say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever +was left of her dear Ben Doolittle! + +_Your loyalty_! I believe the first I saw of it was years ago one +night in Louisville when you and I were planning to come to New York +to live. Naturally we were much concerned by the difficulties of +choosing our respective New York residences and we had written on and +had received thumb-nailed libraries of romance about different +places. As you looked over the recommendations of each, you came +upon one called The Franklin Flats. The circular contained +appropriate quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I remember how +your face brightened as you said: "This ought to be the very thing." +One of the quotations on the circular ran somewhat thus: "Beware of +meat twice boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So they must have a +good restaurant!" + +In other words, you believed that a house named after Franklin could +but resemble Franklin. A building put up in New York by a Tammany +contractor, if named after Benjamin Franklin and advertised with +quotations from Franklin's works, would embody the traits of that +remote national hero! To your mind--not to your imagination, for you +haven't any--to your mind, and you have a great deal of mind, the +bell-boys, the superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids, the +flunkied knave who stands at the front door--all these were loyally +congregated as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still in the +Franklin Flats! I know what you have long suffered there; but move +away! Not Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building as long as +the building stands by the contractor and the contractor stands by +profits and losses. + +While on the subject of loyalty, not your loyalty but woman's +loyalty, I mean to finish with it. And I shall go on to say that +occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass window in some Fifth +Avenue shop and have studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised +loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes effect in those +processions that now and then sweep up the Avenue as though they were +Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The marchers try first not to look +self-conscious; all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the cause." +But beneath all other expressions and differences of expression I +have always seen one reigning look as plainly as though it were +printed in enormous letters on a banner flying over their heads: + +"Strictly Monogamous Women." + +At such times I have felt a wild desire, when I should hear of the +next parade, to organise a company of unenthralled young girls who +with unfettered natures and unfettered features should tramp up the +Avenue under their own colours. If the women before them--those +loyal ones--would actually carry, as they should, a banner with the +legend I have described, then my company of girls should unfurl to +the breeze their flag with the truth blazoned on it: + +"Not Necessarily Monogamous!" + +The honest human crowd, watching and applauding us, would pack the +Avenue from sidewalks to roofs. + +Between you and me everything seems to be summed up in one +difference: all my life I have wanted to go barefoot and all your +life, no matter what the weather, you have been solicitous to put on +goloshes. + +My very nature is rooted in rebellion that in a world alive and +running over with irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to find +her chief happiness in just one! The heart going out to so many in +succession, and the hand held by one; year after year your hand held +by the first man who impulsively got possession of it. Every +instinct of my nature would be to jerk my hand away and be free! To +give it again and again. + +This subject weighs crushingly on me as I struggle with this letter +because I have tidings for you about myself. I am to write words +which I have long doubted I should ever write, life's most iron-bound +words. Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at last. Of course +it is Beverley. Not without waverings, not without misgivings. But +I'd feel those, be the man whoever he might. Why I feel thus I do +not know, but I know I feel. I tell you this first because it was +you who brought Beverley and me together, who have always believed in +his career. (Though I think that of late you have believed more in +him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning to believe in his career. +He has lately ascertained that his work is making a splendid +impression in England. If he succeeds in England, he will succeed in +this country. He has received an invitation to visit some delightful +and very influential people in England and "to bring me along!" +Think of anybody bringing _me_ along! If we should be entertained by +these people [they are the Blackthornes], such is English social +life, that we should also get to know the white Thornes and the red +Thornes--the whole social forest. The iron rule of my childhood was +economy; and the influence of that iron rule over me is inexorable +still: I cannot even contemplate such prodigal wastage in life as not +to accept this invitation and gather in its wealth of consequences. + +More news of me, very, very important: _at last_ I have made the +acquaintance of George Marigold. I have become one of his patients. + +Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from him. You need not +return it. I shall not answer it. I shall leave things to his +imagination and his imagination will give him no rest. + +If Ben hurled at _you_ a jealous letter about Dr. Mullen, you would +immediately write to remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule +Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's eyes. That is, you would +do an abominable thing, never doubting that Ben would admire you the +more. And you would be right; for as Ben observed you tear Dr. +Mullen to pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back in his chair +and chuckle within himself: "Glorious, staunch old Polly!" + +And what you would do in this instance you will do all your life: you +will practise disloyalty to every other human being, as in this +letter you have practised it with me, for the sake of loyalty to Ben: +your most pronounced, most horrible trait. + + TILLY SNOWDEN. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 7._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +I return Beverley's letter. Without comment, since I did not read +it. You know how I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him. I +have a feeling for him unlike that for any other human being, not +even Ben; I look upon him as set apart and sacred because he has +genius and belongs to the world. + +As for his faults, those that I have not already noticed I prefer to +find out for myself. I have never cared to discover any human +being's failings through a third person. Instead of getting +acquainted with the pardonable traits of the abused, I might really +be introduced to the _abominable traits of the abuser_. + +_Once more_, you think you are going to marry Beverley! I shall +reserve my congratulations for the _event itself_. + +Thank you for surrendering your claim on my friendship and society +last night. Ben and I had a most satisfactory evening, and when not +suffocating we murmured "I do" to our hearts' content. + +Next time, should your visits clash, I'll push _him_ out. Yet I feel +in honour bound to say that this is only my present state of mind. I +might weaken at the last moment--even in the Franklin Flats. + +As to some things in your letter, I have long since learned not to +bestow too much attention upon anything you say. You court a kind of +irresponsibility in language. With your inborn and over-indulged +willfulness you love to break through the actual and to revel in the +imaginary. I have become rather used to this as one of your growing +traits and I am therefore not surprised that in this letter you say +things which, if seriously spoken, would insult your sex and would +make them recoil from you--or make them wish to burn you at the +stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue with your company of girls in +that kind of procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: you will +be tramping through the slums where you belong. + +All this, I repeat, is merely your way--to take things out in +talking. But we can make words our playthings in life's shallows +until words wreck us as their playthings in life's deeps. + +Still, in return for your compliments to me, _which, of course, you +really mean_, I paid you one the other night when thinking of you +quite by myself. It was this: nature seems to leave something out of +each of us, but we presently discover that she perversely put it +where it does not belong. + +What she left out of you, my dear, was the domestic tea-kettle. +There isn't even any place for one. But she made up for lack of the +kettle _by rather overdoing the stove_! + + Your _discreet_ friend, + POLLY BOLES. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + June 7, 1900._ + +GENTLEMEN: + +A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin Doolittle, has suggested +your firm as reliable agents to carry out an important commission, +which I herewith describe: + +I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire you to make a +collection of these ferns and to ship them, expenses prepaid, to +Edward Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, +England. The cost is not to exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish +you the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid unnecessary +correspondence, I herewith enclose, payable to your order, my check +for that amount. + +Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating whether you will +undertake this commission and see it through? + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Louisville, Ky., + June 10, 1900._ + +DEAR SIR: + +Your valued letter with check for $25 received. We handle most of +the ferns on the list, and know the others and can easily get them. + +You may rely upon your valued order receiving the best attention. +Thanking you for the same, + + Yours very truly, + PHILLIPS & FAULDS. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + June 15, 1910._ + +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: + +Your second letter came into the port of my life like an argosy from +a rich land. I think you must have sent it with some remembrance of +your own youth, or out of your mature knowledge of youth itself; how +too often it walks the shore of its rocky world, cutting its bare +feet on sharp stones, as it strains its eyes toward things far beyond +its horizon but not beyond its faith and hope. Some day its ship +comes in and it sets sail toward the distant ideal. How much the +opening of the door of your friendship, of your life, means to me! A +new consecration envelops the world that I am to be the guest of a +great man. If words do not say more, it is because words say so +little. + +Delay has been unavoidable in any mere formal acknowledgment of your +letter. You spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My silence has +been due to the arrangement of hinges for the shipment of the ferns. +I wished to insure their safe transoceanic passage and some inquiries +had to be made in Kentucky. + +You may rely upon it that the matter will receive the best attention. +In good time the ferns, having reached the end of their journey, will +find themselves put down in your garden as helpless immigrants. From +what outlook I can obtain upon the scene of their reception, they +should lack only hands to reach confidingly to you and lack only feet +to run with all their might away from Hodge. + +I acknowledge--with the utmost thanks--the unusual and beautiful +courtesy of Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife, if I +have one, and to me. It is the dilemma of my life, at the age of +twenty-seven, to be obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands +exists, but that nevertheless there is no such person. + +Can you imagine a man's stretching out his hand to pluck a peach and +just before he touched the peach, finding only the bough of the tree? +Then, as from disappointment he was about to break off the offensive +bough, seeing again the dangling peach? Can you imagine this +situation to be of long continuance, during which he could neither +take hold of the peach nor let go of the tree--nor go away? If you +can, you will understand what I mean when I say that my bride +persists in remaining unwed and I persist in wooing. I do not know +why; she protests that she does not know; but we do know that life is +short, love shorter, that time flies, and we are not husband and wife. + +If she remains undecided when Summer returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne +and you will let me come alone. + +Thus I can thank you with certainty for one with the hope that I may +yet thank you for two. + +I am, + + Sincerely yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + +P.S.--Can you pardon the informality of a postscript? + +As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy situation, marriage is +denied me on account of the whole unhappy history of woman--which is +pretty hard. But a good many American ladies--the one I woo among +them--are indignant just now that they are being crowded out of their +destinies by husbands--or even possibly by bachelors. These ladies +deliver lectures to one another with discontented eloquence and rouse +their auditresses to feministic frenzy by reminding them that for +ages woman has walked in the shadow of man and that the time has come +for the worm [the woman] to turn on the shadow or to crawl out of it. + +My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly say that the only two shadows +I could ever think of casting on the woman I married would be that of +my umbrella whenever it rained, and that of her parasol whenever the +sun shone. But I do maintain that if there is not enough sunshine +for the men and women in the world, if there has to be some casting +of shadows in the competition and the crowding, I do maintain that +the casting of the shadow would better be left to the man. He has +had long training, terrific experience, in this mortal business of +casting the shadow, has learned how to moderate it and to hold it +steady! The woman at least knows where it is to be found, should she +wish to avail herself of it. But what would be the state of a man in +his need of his spouse's penumbra? He would be out of breath with +running to keep up with the penumbra or to find where it was for the +time being! + +I have seen some of these husbands who live--or have gradually died +out--in the shadow of their wives; they are nature's subdued farewell +to men and gentlemen. + + + + +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 16._ + +A remarkable thing has lately happened to me. + +One of my Kentucky novels, upon being republished in London some +months ago, fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. This +critic's praise later made its way to the stately library of Edward +Blackthorne. What especially induced the latter to read the book, I +infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer from my description of a +woodland scene with ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, +is himself interested in ferns. He consequently wrote to some other +English authors and critics, calling attention to my work, and he +sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns for his garden. + +This recognition in England hilariously affected my friends over +here. Tilly, whose mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair of +golden balances for weighing delight against delight (always her most +vital affair), when this honour for me fell into the scales, found +them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as I have often thought, +that she has long been holding on to me merely until she could take +sure hold of someone else of more splendid worldly consequence, she +suddenly at least tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, solid +Polly, wholesome and dependable as a well-browned whole-wheat baker's +loaf weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she heard of it, gave +me a Bohemian supper in her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a +few undersized people, inasmuch as she and Ben, the chief personages +of the entertainment, took up most of the room. We were so packed +in, that literally it was a night in Bohemia _aux sardines_. + +Since the good news from England came over, Ben, with his big, round, +clean-shaven, ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, which makes +him look like a thirty-five-year-old Bacchus who had never drunk a +drop--even Ben has beamed on me like a mellower orb. He is as +ashamed as ever of my books, but is beginning to feel proud that so +many more people are being fooled by them. Several times lately I +have caught his eyes resting on me with an expression of affectionate +doubt as to whether after all he might be mistaken in not having +thought more of me. But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a human +refrigerator containing a mental thermometer, which rises or falls +toward like or dislike over a background for book-sales, got wind of +the matter and promptly invited me to one of his thermometric +club-lunches--always an occasion for acute gastritis. + +Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, where, of course, the +leading English reviews are kept on file. Some of the members must +have seen the favourable criticisms. One night I became aware as I +passed through the rooms that club heroes seated here and there threw +glances of fresh interest toward me and exchanged auspicious words. +The president--who for so long a time has styled himself the Nestor +of the club that he now believes it is the members who do this, the +garrulous old president, whose weaknesses have made holes in him +through which his virtues sometimes leak out and get away, met me +under the main chandelier and congratulated me in tones so +intentionally audible that they violated the rules but were not +punishable under his personal privileges. + +There was a sinister incident: two members whom Ben and I wish to +kick because they have had the audacity to make the acquaintance of +Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise also because they are +fashionable charlatans in their profession--these two with dark looks +saw the president congratulate me. + +More good fortune yet to come! The ferns which I am sending Mr. +Blackthorne will soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious man +has many visitors; he leads them, if he likes, to his fern bank. +"These," he will some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. These +are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. These were sent me by +Turgenieff. And these," he will add, turning to his guests, "these +came from a young American novelist, a Kentuckian, whose work I +greatly respect: you must read his books." The guests separate to +their homes to pursue the subject. Spreading fame--may it spread! +Last of all, the stirring effect of this on me, who now run toward +glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran toward Venus--with both feet and +wings. + +The ironic fact about all this commotion affecting so many solid, +substantial people--the ironic fact is this: + +_There was no woodland scene and there were no ferns._ + +Here I reach the curious part of my story. + +When I was a country lad of some seventeen years in Kentucky, one +August afternoon I was on my way home from a tramp of several miles. +My course lay through patches of woods--last scant vestiges of the +primeval forest--and through fields garnered of summer grain or green +with the crops of coming autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence and +crossed an old woods-pasture where stock grazed. + +The August sky was clear and the sun beat down with terrific heat. I +had been walking for hours and parching thirst came upon me. + +This led me to remember how once these rich uplands had been the vast +rolling forest that stretched from far-off eastern mountains to +far-off western rivers, and how under its shade, out of the rock, +everywhere bubbled crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams +diamond bright, drinking places of the bold game. + +The sun beat down on me in the treeless open field. My feet struck +into a path. It, too, became a reminder: it had once been a trail of +the wild animals of that verdurous wilderness. I followed its +windings--a sort of gully--down a long, gentle slope. The windings +had no meaning now: the path could better have been straight; it was +devious because the feet that first marked it off had threaded their +way crookedly hither and thither past the thick-set trees. + +I reached the spring--a dry spot under the hot sun; no tree +overshadowing it, no vegetation around it, not a blade of grass; only +dust in which were footprints of the stock which could not break the +habit of coming to it but quenched their thirst elsewhere. The +bulged front of some limestone rock showed where the ancient mouth of +the spring had been. Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a +few clods. Hovering over these, rising and sinking, a little +quivering jet of gold, a flock of butterflies. The grey stalk of a +single dead weed projected across the choked orifice of the fountain +and one long, brown grasshopper--spirit of summer dryness--had +crawled out to the edge and sat motionless. + +A few yards away a young sycamore had sprung up from some +wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow +on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest--my +eyes fixed on the forest ruin. + +Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart +set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon +Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot +August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the +scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers. + +I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate +in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me +out of ferns that never grew? + + + + +PART SECOND + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + May 1, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +It is the first of the faithful leafy May again. I sit at my windows +as on this day a year ago and look out with thankfulness upon what a +man may call the honour of the vegetable world. + +A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of yours or by some books--for +I believe I read more than one of them--I, betrayed by the phrase +that when we touch a book we touch a man, overstepped the boundaries +of caution as to having any dealings with glib, plausible strangers +and wrote you a letter. I made a request of you in that letter. I +thought the request bore with it a suitable reward: that I should be +grateful if you would undertake to have some ferns sent to me for my +collection. + +Your sleek reply led me still further astray and I wrote again. I +drew my English cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the ground +for you to step on. I threw open to you the doors of my hospitality, +good-fellowship. + +That was last May. Now it is May again. And now I know to a +certainty what for months I have been coming to realise always with +deeper shame: that you gave me your word and did not keep your word; +doubtless never meant to keep it. + +Why, then, write you about this act of dishonour now? How justify a +letter to a man I feel obliged to describe as I describe you? + +The reason is this, if you can appreciate such a reason. My nature +refuses to let go a half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an +abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood I came upon a partly +chopped-down tree, and I must needs go far and fetch an axe and +finish the job. What I have begun to build I must build at till the +pattern is wrought out. Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the +stamina of resolution. The upright moral skeleton within me would +decay and crumble and I should sink down and flop like a human frog. + +Since, then, you dropped the matter in your way--without so much as a +thought of a man's obligation to himself--I dismiss it in my +way--with the few words necessary to enable me to rid my mind of it +and of such a character. + +I wish merely to say, then, that I despise as I despise nothing else +the ragged edge of a man's behaviour. I put your conduct before you +in this way: do you happen to know of a common cabbage in anybody's +truck patch? Observe that not even a common cabbage starts out to do +a thing and fails to do it if it can. You must have some kind of +perception of an oak tree. Think what would become of human beings +in houses if builders were deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound +oak? Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how it takes hold and +will not be shaken loose by the capricious compelling winds. In your +country have you the plover? Think what would be the plover's fate, +if it did not steer straight through time and space to a distant +shore. Why, some day pick up merely a piece of common quartz. Study +its powers of crystallisation. And reflect that a man ranks high or +low in the scale of character according to his possession or his lack +of the powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his mind can +assume fixity around an idea, if they can adjust themselves +unalterably about a plan, expect something of him. If they run +through his hours like water, if memory is a millstream, if +remembrance floats forever away, expect nothing. + +Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted for themselves the +characters of familiar plants about them. Do you know what to them +the fern stood for? The fern stood for Fidelity. Those true, +constant souls would have said that you had been unfaithful even with +nature's emblems of Fidelity. + +The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight falls in a white +radiance on my plants. I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on +honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a certain spot in the +garden; I dislike to look at it. There is a shadow on the place +where your books once stood on my library shelves. Your specious +books!--your cleverly manufactured books!--but there are successful +scamps in every profession. + +I am, + + Very truly yours, + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE + + _Cathedral Heights, + May 10, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +I wish to inform you that I have just received from you a letter in +which you attack my character. I wish in reply further to inform you +that I have never felt called upon to defend my character. Nor will +I, even with this letter of yours as evidence, attack your character. + +I am, + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _May 13, 1911._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I ask your attention to the enclosed letter from Mr. Edward +Blackthorne. By way of contrast and also of reminder, lest you may +have forgotten, I send you two other letters received from him last +year. I shared with you at the time the agreeable purport of these +earlier letters. This last letter came three days ago and for three +days I have been trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write to +you about it. At last I am able to do so. + +You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has never received the ferns. Then +where have they been all this time? I took it for granted that they +had been shipped. The order was last spring placed with the +Louisville firm recommended by you. They guaranteed the execution of +the order. I forwarded to them my cheque. They cashed my cheque. +The voucher was duly returned to me cancelled through my bank. I +could not suppose they would take my cheque unless they had shipped +the plants. They even wrote me again in the Autumn of their own +accord, stating that the ferns were about to be sent on--Autumn being +the most favourable season. Then where are the ferns? + +I felt so sure of their having reached Mr. Blackthorne that I +harboured a certain grievance and confess that I tried to make +generous allowance for him as a genius in his never having +acknowledged their arrival. + +I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an immediate explanation. As +soon as they reply I shall let you hear further. The fault may be +with them; in the slipshod Southern way they may have been negligent. +My cheque may even have gone as a bridal present to some junior +member of the firm or to help pay the funeral expenses of the senior +member. + +There is trouble somewhere behind and I think there is trouble ahead. + +Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine ladies; but if some +lady will kindly lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit that +I have it and on the strength of it--or the weakness--declare my +belief that the mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some curious +and funny things. + +As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: after these days of +turbulence, I have come to see my way clear to interpret it thus: a +great man, holding a great place in the world, offered his best to a +stranger and the stranger, as the great man believes, turned his back +on it. That is the grievance, the insult. If anything could be +worse, it is my seeming discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the +invitation came also from her. In a word, here is a genius who +strove to advance my work and me, and he feels himself outraged in +his kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and his family--in all +his best. + +But of course that is the hardest of all human things to stand. Men +who have treated each other but fairly well or even badly in ordinary +matters often in time become friends. But who of us ever forgives +the person that slights our best? Out of a rebuff like that arises +such life-long unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ +itself doubtless for this very reason took pains to issue its +warning--no pearls before swine! And perhaps of all known pearls a +great native British pearl is the most prized by its British +possessor! + +The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's best has been his worst: +if I did not merit his best, I deserve his worst; hence his last +letter. God have mercy on the man who deserved that letter! You +will have observed that his leading trait as revealed in all his +letters is enormous self-love. That's because he is a genius. +Genius _has_ to have enormous self-love. Beware the person who has +none! Without self-love no one ever wins any other's love. + +Thus the mighty English archer with his mighty bow shot his mighty +arrow--but at an innocent person. + +Still the arrow of this letter, though it misses me, kills my plans. +The first trouble will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally fixed +for June, and our plans embraced a wedding journey to England and the +acceptance of the invitation of the Blackthornes. The prospect of +this wonderful English summer--I might as well admit it--was one +thing that finally steadied all her wavering as to marriage. + +Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, no English celebrities to +greet us as American celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no +lawns, no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely two unknown, +impoverished young Yankee tourists, trying to get out of chilly +England what can be gotten by anybody with a few, a very few, dollars. + +But Tilly dreads disappointment as she dreads disease. To her +disappointment is a disease in the character of the person who +inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to get you to read one of +Balzac's masterpieces, _The Magic Skin_. I told you enough about it +to enable you to understand what I now say: that ever since I became +engaged to Tilly I have been to her as a magic skin which, as she +cautiously watches it, has always shrunk a little whenever I have +encountered a defeat or brought her a disappointment. No later +success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the shrunken skin: it +remains shrunken where each latest disappointment has left it. + +Now when I tell her of my downfall and the collapse of the gorgeous +summer plans! + + BEVERLEY + (the Expanding Scamp and the + Shrinking Skin). + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _May 14th._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +I have duly pondered the letters you send. + + "Fie, fee, fo, fum, + I smell the blood of an Englishman!" + +If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents from him in my +possession. And suppose you send me all later letters, whether from +him or from anyone else, that bear on this matter. It begins to grow +interesting and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, then, as +your lawyer, the custodian of all pertinent and impertinent papers. +They can go into the locker where I keep your immortal but +impecunious Will. Some day I might have to appear in court, I with +my shovel and five senses and no imagination, to plead _une cause +célèbre_ (a little more of my scant intimate French). + +The explanation I give of this gratuitously insulting letter is that +at last you have run into a hostile human imagination in the person +of an old literary polecat, an aged book-skunk. Of course if I could +decorate my style after the manner of your highly creative gentlemen, +I might say that you had unwarily crossed the nocturnal path of his +touchy moonlit mephitic highness. + +I am not surprised, of course, that this letter has caused you to +think still more highly of its writer. I tell you that is your +profession--to tinker--to turn reality into something better than +reality. + +Some day I expect to see you emerge from your shop with a fish story. +Intending buyers will find that you have entered deeply into the +ideals and difficulties of the man-eating shark: how he could not +swim freely for whales in his track and could not breathe freely for +minnows in his mouth; how he got pinched from behind by the malice of +the lobster and got shocked on each side by the eccentricities of the +eel. The other fish did not appreciate him and he grew +embittered--and then only began to bite. You will make over the +actual shark and exhibit him to your reader as the ideal shark--a +kind of beloved disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish. + +Anything imaginative that you might make out of a shark would be a +minor achievement compared with what you have done for this +Englishman. Might the day come, the avenging day, when Benjamin +Doolittle could get a chance to write him just one letter! May the +god of battles somehow bring about a meeting between the middle-aged +land-turtle and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars somebody's fur +will have to fly and it will not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any. + +You speak of a trouble that looms up in your love affair: let it +loom. The nearer it looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly +warned you that you have bound your life and happiness to the wrong +person, and the person is constantly becoming worse. Detach your +apparatus of dreams at last from her. Take off your glorious rainbow +world-goggles and see the truth before it is too late. Do not fail, +unless you object, to send me all letters incoming about the +ferns--those now celebrated bushes. + + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + + + + +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _May 13, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +We acknowledge receipt of your letter of May 10 relative to an order +for ferns. + +It is decidedly rough. The senior member of our firm who formerly +had charge of this branch of our business has been seriously ill for +several months, and it was only after we had communicated with him at +home in bed that we were able to extract from him anything at all +concerning your esteemed order. + +He informs us that he turned the order over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce, +native fern collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that they would +gather the ferns and forward them to the designated address. He +likewise informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns & Bruce, as we +know only too well, has long been indebted to this firm for a +considerable amount, he calculated that they would willingly ship the +ferns in partial liquidation of our old claims. + +It seems, as he tells us, that they did actually gather the ferns and +get them ready for shipment, but at the last minute changed their +mind and called on our firm for payment. There the matter was +unexpectedly dropped owing to the sudden illness of the aforesaid +member of our house, and we knew nothing at all of what had +transpired until your letter led us to obtain from him at his bedside +the statements above detailed. + +An additional embarrassment to the unusually prosperous course of our +business was occasioned by the marriage of a junior member of the +firm and his consequent absence for a considerable time, which +resulted in an augmentation of the expenses of our establishment and +an unfortunate diminution of our profits. + +In view of the illness of the senior member of our house and in view +of the marriage of a junior member and in view of the losses and +expenses consequent thereon, and in view of the subsequent withdrawal +of both from active participation in the conduct of the affairs of +our firm, and in view also of a disagreement which arose between both +members and the other members as to the financial basis of a +settlement on which the withdrawal could take place, our affairs have +of necessity been thrown into court in litigation and are still in +litigation up to this date. + +Regretting that you should have been seemingly inconvenienced in the +slightest degree by the apparent neglect of a former member of our +firm, we desire to add that as soon as matters can be taken out of +court our firm will be reorganised and that we shall continue to +give, as heretofore, the most scrupulous attention to all orders +received. + +But we repeat that your letter is pretty rough. + + Very truly yours, + PHILLIPS & FAULDS. + + + + +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Dunkirk, Tenn., + May 20, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds gave us the order for the +ferns. Owing to extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered earlier +than usual and it was unsafe to ship at that time; in the Winter the +weather was so severe that even in February we were unable to make +any digging, as the frost had not disappeared. When at last we got +the ferns ready, we called on them for payment and they wouldn't pay. +Phillips & Faulds are not good paying bills and we could not put +ourselves to expense filling their new order for ferns, not wishing +to take more risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, and could +not afford to ship more. proved very unsatisfactory and had to drop +them entirely. + +Are already out of pocket the cost of the ferns, worthless to us when +Phillips & Faulds dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we owed them +because they won't pay their bills. If you do not wish to have any +further dealings with them you might write to Noah Chamberlain at +Seminole, North Carolina, just over the state line, not far from +here, an authority on American ferns. We have sometimes collected +rare ferns for him to ship to England and other European countries. +Vouch for him as an honest man. Always paid his bills, old accounts +against Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them entirely. + + Very truly yours, + BURNS & BRUCE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _May 24._ + +DEAR BEN: + +You requested me to send you for possible future reference all +incoming letters upon the subject of the ferns. Here are two more +that have just fluttered down from the blue heaven of the unexpected +or been thrust up from the lower regions through a crack in the +earth's surface. + +Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling eloquence of Messrs. +Phillips & Faulds. When the eloquence has ceased to ripple and +settles down to stay, their letter has the cold purity of a +whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. They and another firm of florists +have a law-suit as to which owes the other, and they meantime compel +me, an innocent bystander, to deliver to them my pocketbook. + +Will you please immediately bring suit against Phillips & Faulds on +behalf of my valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable indignation? +Bring suit against and bring your boot against them if you can. My +ducats! Have my ducats out of them or their peace by day and night. + +The other letter seems of an unhewn probity that wins my confidence. +That is to say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure me that I +ought to believe, and with all my heart I do now believe, in the +existence, just over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of good +character and a business head. Thus I now press on over the +Tennessee state line into North Carolina. + +For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; more than ever they +must go to him now. Not the entire British army drawn up on the +white cliffs of Dover could keep me from landing them on the British +Isle. Even if I had to cross over to England, travel to his home, +put the ferns down before him or throw them at his head and walk out +of his house without a word. + +I told you I had a borrowed premonition that there would be trouble +ahead: now it is not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. I +have grown to stand in dread of all florists, and I approach this +third one with my hat in my hand (also with my other hand on my +pocketbook). + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + May 25, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +You have been recommended to me by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk, +Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied upon to keep his word +and to carry out his business obligations. + +Accepting at its face value their high testimonial as to your +trustworthiness, I desire to place with you the following order: + +Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my request, have forwarded to you +a list of rare Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these ferns +and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, Esq., King Alfred's Wood, +Warwickshire, England. As a guaranty of good faith on my part, I +enclose in payment my check for twenty-five dollars. Will you have +the kindness to let me know at once whether you will undertake this +commission and give it the strictest attention? + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Seminole, North Carolina, + May 29._ + +SIR: + +I have received your letter with your check in it. + +You are the first person that ever offered me money as a florist. I +am not a florist, if I must take time to inform you. I had supposed +it to be generally known throughout the United States and in Europe +that I am professor of botany in this college, and have been for the +past fifteen years. If Burns & Bruce really told you I am a +florist--and I doubt it--they must be greater ignoramuses than I took +them to be. I always knew that they did not have much sense, but I +thought they had a little. It is true that they have at different +times gathered specimens of ferns for me, and more than once have +shipped them to Europe. But I never imagined they were fools enough +to think this made me a florist. My collection of ferns embraces +dried specimens for study in my classrooms and specimens growing on +the college grounds. The ferns I have shipped to Europe have been +sent to friends and correspondents. The President of the Royal +Botanical Society of Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I have +sent him some and I have also sent some to friends in Norway and +Sweden and to other scientific students of botany. + +It only shows that your next-door neighbour may know nothing about +you, especially if you are a little over your neighbour's head. + +My daughter, who is my secretary, will return your check, but I +thought I had better write and tell you myself that I am not a +florist. + + Yours truly, + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D. + + + + +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Seminole, North Carolina, + May 29._ + +SIR: + +I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's +only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my +distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had +supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American +public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana +and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt. + +People of our means and social position in the South do not peddle +bulbs. We do not reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn our +bread by making funeral wreaths and crosses. + +You must be some kind of nonentity. + +Your cheque is pinned to this letter. + + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN + + _June 3._ + +DEAR SIR: + +I am deeply mortified at having believed Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be +well-informed and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that it is no +longer safe for me to believe anybody--not about nurserymen. I am +not sure now that I should believe you. You say you are a famous +botanist, but you may be merely a famous liar, known as such to +various learned bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is +necessary, and you must admit that your letter does not furnish me +with that proof. + +Still I am going to believe you and I renew the assurance of my +mortification that I have innocently caused you the chagrin of +discovering that you are not so well known, at least in this country, +as you supposed. I suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; it +is the tie that binds: blest be the tie. + +I shall be extremely obliged if you will have the kindness to return +to me the list of ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, +and for that purpose you will please to find enclosed an envelope +addressed and stamped. + +I acknowledge the return of my cheque, which occasions me some +surprise and not a little pleasure. + +Allow me once more to regret that through my incurable habit of +believing strangers, believing everybody, I was misled into taking +the lower view of you as a florist instead of the higher view as a +botanist. But you must admit that I was right in classification and +wrong only in elevation. + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely). + + + + +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 8._ + +SIR: + +I know nothing about any list of ferns. Stop writing to me. + + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN. + + + + +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 8._ + +SIR: + +It is excruciating the way you continue to persecute my great father. +What is wrong with you? What started you to begin on us in this way? +We never heard of _you_. Would you let my dear father alone? + +He is a very deep student and it is intolerable for me to see his +priceless attention drawn from his work at critical moments when he +might be on the point of making profound discoveries. My father is a +very absent-minded man, as great scholars usually are, and when he is +interrupted he may even forget what he has just been thinking about. + +Your letter was a very serious shock to him, and after reading it he +could not even drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. Time +and again he put his cup down and said to me in a trembling voice: +"Think of his calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up from the +table without eating anything and left the room. He turned at the +door and said to me, with a confused expression: "I _may_, once in my +life--but _he_ didn't know anything about _that_." + +He shut his door and stayed in his library all evening, thinking +without nourishment. + +What a viper you are to call my great father a liar. + + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 12._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I knew I was in for it! I send another installment of incredible +letters from unbelievable people. + +In my wanderings over the earth after the ferns I have innocently +brought my foot against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called the +head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist, and the whole hill +is frantic with fury. As far as heard from, there are only two ants +in the hill, but the two make a lively many in their letters. It's a +Southern vendetta and my end may draw nigh. + +Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly is at hand. She has been +out of town for a house-party somewhere and is to return to-morrow. +When Tilly came to New York a few years ago she had not an +acquaintance; now I marvel at the world of people she knows. It is +the result of her never declining an invitation. Once I derided her +about this, and with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed the +reason: that no one ever knew what an acquaintanceship might lead to. +This principle, or lack of principle, has led her far. And wherever +she goes, she is welcomed afterwards. It is her mystery, her charm. +I often ask myself what is her charm. At least her charm, as all +charm, is victory. You are defeated by her, chained and dragged +along. Of course, I expect all this to be reversed after Tilly +marries me. Then I am to have my turn--she is to be led around, +dragged helpless by _my_ charm. Magnificent outlook! + +To-morrow she is to return, and I shall have to tell her that it is +all over--our wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the whole +vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud, carrying with it the bright +raindrops of her hopes. + +I have never, by the way, mentioned to Tilly this matter of the +ferns. My first idea was to surprise her: as some day we strolled +through the Blackthorne garden he would point to the Kentucky +specimens flourishing there in honour of me. I have always observed +that any unexpected pleasure flushes her face with a new light, with +an effulgence of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment makes her +suddenly look old and rather ugly. + +This was the first reason. Now I do not intend to tell her at all. +Disappointment will bring out her demand to know why she is +disappointed--naturally. But how am I to tell on the threshold of +marriage that it is all due to a misunderstanding about a handful of +ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would never believe +me--naturally. She would infer that I was keeping back the real +reason, as being too serious to be told. + +Here, then, I am. But where am I? + + BEVERLEY (complete and final + disappearance of the Magic Skin). + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + +_June 13._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly about the ferns. Here I +come in: there must always be things that a man must refuse to tell a +woman. As soon as he tells her everything, she puts her foot on his +neck. I have always refused even to tell Polly some things, not that +they might not be told, but that Polly must not be told them; not for +the things' sake, but for Polly's good--and for a man's peaceful +control of his own life. + +For whatever else a woman marries in a man, one thing in him she must +marry: a rock. Times will come when she will storm and rage around +that rock; but the storms cannot last forever, and when they are +over, the rock will be there. By degrees there will be less storm. +Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take possession of my +whole life; to enter into all my affairs. I am to her a house, no +closet of which must remain locked. Thus there are certain closets +which she repeatedly tries to open. I can tell by her very +expression when she is going to try once more. Were they opened, she +would not find much; but it is much to be guarded that she shall not +open them. + +The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly as fact and too +important as principle. + +Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me anything about the ferns! +When I am with Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of the fields. + +Let me hear at once how the trouble turns out with Tilly. + +I must not close without making a profound obeisance to your new +acquaintances--the Chamberlains. + + BEN. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 15._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +Something extremely disagreeable has come up between Beverley and me. +He tells me we're not to go to England on our wedding journey as +anyone's guests: we travel as ordinary American tourists unknown to +all England. + +You can well understand what this means to me: you have watched all +along how I have pinched on my small income to get ready for this +beautiful summer. There has been a quarrel of some kind between Mr. +Blackthorne and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me the nature of +the quarrel. I insisted that it was my right to know and he insisted +that it is a man's affair with another man and not any woman's +business. Think of a woman marrying a man who lays it down as a law +that his affairs are none of her business! + +I gave Beverley to understand that our marriage was deferred for the +summer. He broke off the engagement. + +I had not meant to tell you anything, since I am coming to-night. I +have merely wished you to understand how truly anxious I am to see +you, even forgetting your last letter--no, not forgetting it, but +overlooking it. Remember you _then_ broke an appointment with me; +_this_ time keep your appointment--being loyal! The messenger will +wait for your reply, stating whether the way is clear for me to come. + + TILLY. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 15._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me for to-night, but I have +written to excuse myself, and I shall be waiting most impatiently. +The coast will be clear and I hope the night will be. + +"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; "the horse-radish" and +"the beets" will be still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will shed +its usual ray on our heads. No breeze will disturb us, for there +will be no fresh air. We shall have the long evening to ourselves, +and you can tell me just how it is that you two, _not_ heavy Tilly, +_not_ heavy Beverley, sat on opposite sides of the room and declared +to each other: + +"I will not." + +"I will not." + +Since I have broken an engagement for you, be sure not to let any +later temptation elsewhere keep you away. + + POLLY. + + +[Later in the day] + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 13._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected final flare-up. +Yesterday he wrote, asking me to come up as soon as I was through +with business. I spent last night with him. + +We drew our chairs up to his opened window, turned out the lights, +got our cigars, and with our feet on the window-sills and our eyes on +the stars across the sky talked the long, quiet hours through. + +He talked, not I. Little could I have said to him about the woman +who has played fast and loose with him while using him for her +convenience. He made it known at the outset that not a word was to +be spoken against her. + +He just lay back in his big easy chair, with his feet on his +window-sill and his eyes on the stars, and built up his defence of +Tilly. All night he worked to repair wreckage. + +As the grey of morning crept over the city his work was well done: +Tilly was restored to more than she had ever been. Silence fell upon +him as he sat there with his eyes on the reddening east; and it may +be that he saw her--now about to leave him at last--as some white, +angelic shape growing fainter and fainter as it vanished in the flush +of a new day. + +You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. If there were any wings +anywhere around, it was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar with +an early start to bring down some other victim: the angel-aeroplane +out after more prey. I think we both know who the prey will be. + +The solemn influence of the night has rested on me. Were it +possible, I should feel even a higher respect for Beverley; there is +something in him that fills me with awe. He suffers. He could mend +Tilly but he cannot mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him. + +Their quarrel brings me with an aching heart closer to you. I must +come to-night. The messenger will wait for a word that I may. And a +sudden strange chill of desolation as to life's brittle ties +frightens me into sending you some roses. + +Your lover through many close and constant years, + + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + + +[Still later in the day] + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 15._ + +DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY: + +An incredible thing has happened. Ben has just written that he +wishes to see me to-night. Will you, after all, wait until to-morrow +evening? My dear, I _have_ to ask this of you because there is +something very particular that Ben desires to talk to me about. + +_To-morrow night_, then, without fail, you and I! + + POLLY BOLES. + + + + + POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO + BEVERLEY SANDS + +[Late at night of the same day] + + _June 15._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +We have talked the matter over and send you our conjoined +congratulations that your engagement is broken off and your immediate +peril ended. But our immediate caution is that the end of the +betrothal will not necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the +tempter will at once turn away from you in pursuit of another man. +She will begin to weave her web about _him_. But if possible she +will still hold _you_ to that web by a single thread. Now, more than +ever, you will need to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible +to such a nature as yours. + +Not until obliged will she ever let you go completely. She hath a +devil--perhaps the most famous devil in all the world--the love +devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, are poor quitters. + + (Signed) + POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle. + BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles. + (His handwriting; her ideas + and language.) + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +This is the third time within the past several months that I have +requested you to let me have your bill for professional services. I +shall not suppose that you have relied upon my willingness to remain +under an obligation of this kind; nor do I like to think I have +counted for so little among your many patients that you have not +cared whether I paid you or not. If your motive has been kindness, I +must plainly tell you that I do not desire such kindness; and if +there has been no motive at all, but simply indifference, I must +remind you that this indifference means disrespect and that I resent +it. + +The things you have indirectly done for me in other ways--the songs, +the books and magazines, the flowers--these I accept with warm +responsive hands and a lavish mind. + +And with words not yet uttered, perhaps never to be uttered. + + Yours sincerely, + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June the Seventeenth._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +I have your bill and I make the due remittance with all due thanks. + +Your note pleasantly reassures me how greatly you are obliged that I +could put you in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins about the +purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. It was a pleasure; in fact, a +matter of some pride to do this, and I am delighted that they could +furnish you a horse you approve. + +While taking my customary walk in the Park yesterday morning, I had a +chance to see you and your new mount making acquaintance with one +another. I can pay you no higher compliment than to say that you +ride like a Kentuckian. + +Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a habit of mine to choose the +footways through the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn to them +by my childhood habit and girlish love of riding. Even to see from +day to day what one once had but no longer has is to keep alive hope +that one may some day have it again. + +You should some time go to Kentucky and ride there. My cousins will +look to that. + + Yours sincerely, + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June the Eighteenth._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +I was passing this morning and witnessed the accident, and I must +express my condolences for what might have been and congratulations +upon what was. + +You certainly fell well--not unlike a Kentuckian! + +I feel sure that my cousins could not have known the horse was +tricky. Any horse is tricky to the end of his days and the end of +his road. He may not show any tricks at home, but becomes tricky in +new places. (Can this be the reason that he is called the most human +of beasts?) + +You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly to my mind that of late +you have expressed growing interest in Kentucky. More than once, +also (since you have begun to visit me), you have asked me to tell +you about my life there. Frankly, this is because I am something of +a mystery and you would like to have the mystery cleared up. You +wish to find out, without letting me know you are finding out, +whether there is not something _wrong_ about me, some _risk_ for you +in visiting me. That is because you have never known anybody like +me. I frighten you because I am not afraid of people, not afraid of +life. You are used to people who are afraid, especially to women who +are afraid. You yourself are horribly afraid of nearly everything. + +Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, though it may not +greatly explain why I am without fear; still, the land and the people +might mean something; they ought to mean much. + +I was born of not very poor and immensely respectable parents in a +poor and not very respectable county of Kentucky. The first thing I +remember about life, my first social consciousness, was the discovery +that I was entangled in a series of sisters: there were six of us. I +was as nearly as possible at the middle of the procession--with three +older and two younger, so that I was crowded both by what was before +and by what was behind. I early learned to fight for the +present--against both the past and the future--learned to seize what +I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by +hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's +insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the +world. + +Why my mother bore only daughters will have to be referred to the new +science which takes as its field the forces and the mysteries that +are sovereign between the nuptials and the cradle. But the reason, +as openly laughed about in the family when the family grew old enough +to laugh, as laughed about in the neighbourhood, was this: + +Even before marriage my father and my mother had waged a violent +discussion about woman's suffrage. You may not know that in Kentucky +from the first the cause of female suffrage has been upheld by a +strong minority of strong women, a true pioneer movement toward the +nation's future now near. It seems that my father, who was a +brilliant lawyer, always browbeat my mother in argument, overwhelmed +her, crushed her. Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly +rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked deep into the coals. +But regularly when the time came she replied to all his arguments by +presenting him with another suffragette! Throughout her life she +declined even to bear him a son to continue the argument! Her six +daughters--she would gladly have had twelve if she could--were her +triumphant squad for the armies of the great rebellion. + +Does this help to explain me to you? + +What next I relate about my early life is something that you perhaps +have never given a thought to--children's pets and playthings: it +explains a great deal. Have you ever thought of a vital difference +between country children and town children? Country children more +quickly throw away their dolls, if they have them, and attach their +sympathies to living objects. A child's love of a doll is at best a +sham: a little master-drama of the child's imagination trying to fill +two roles--its own and the role of something which cannot respond. +But a child's love of a living creature, which it chooses as the +object of its love and play and protection, is stimulating, healthful +and kicking with reality: because it is vitalised by reciprocity in +the playmate, now affectionate and now hostile, but always +representing something intensely alive--which is the whole main thing. + +We are just beginning to find out that the dramas of childhood are +the playgrounds of life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the +others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll without any return, +will cling to a rag husband without any return. A child's loyalty to +an automaton prepares a woman for endurance of an automaton. Dolls +have been the undoing and the death of many wives. + +A multitude of dolls would have been needed to supply the six +destructive little girls of my mother's household. We soon broke our +china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one another's. For whatever +reason, all lifeless pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the +house and the little scattering herd of us turned our restless and +insatiate natures loose upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted +nearly everything on the farm. My father was a director of the +County Fair, and I remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we +roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize exhibition of our +favourites that year. They comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a +calf, a lamb and a puppy. + +Sooner or later our living playthings outgrew us or died or were sold +or made their sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we disconsolate? +Not a bit. Did we go down to the branch and gather there under an +old weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our hearts thrived on death +and destruction, annihilation released us from old ties, change gave +us another chance, and we provided substitutes and continued our +devotion. + +And I think this explains a good deal. And these two experiences of +my childhood, taken together, explain me better than anything else I +know. Competition first taught me to seize what I wanted before +anyone else could seize it. Natural changes next taught me to be +prepared at any moment to give that up without vain regret and to +seize something else. Thus I seemed to learn life's lesson as I +learned to walk: that what you love will not last long, and that long +love is possible only when you love often. + +So many women know this; how few admit it! + + Sincerely yours, + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June the Nineteenth._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go away for the summer: first to +some friends, then further away to other friends, then still further +away to other friends: a summer pageant of brilliant changes. + +There is no reason why I should write to you. Your stateroom will be +filled with flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; friends +will wave to you from the pier. My letter may be lost among the +others, but at least it will have been written, and writing it is its +pleasure to me. + +I was to go to England this summer, was to go as a bride. A few +nights since I decided not to go because I did not approve of the +bridegroom. + +We marvel at life's coincidences: one evening, not long ago, while +speaking of your expected summer in England, you mentioned that you +planned to make a pilgrimage to see Edward Blackthorne. You were to +join some American friends over there and take them with you. That +is the coincidence: _I_ was to visit the Blackthornes this very +summer, not as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited guest--with the +groom whom I have rejected. + +It is like scattering words before the obvious to say that I wish you +a pleasant summer. Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, some +night on the passage across, lean far over and look down at the +phosphorescent couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of the deep, +remember that the Venus of modern life is the American woman. + +Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing else, brings you home--see +you not at all or seldom or often? + +At least this will remind you that I merely say _au revoir_. + +Adrift for the summer rather than be an unwilling bride. + + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June twenty-first._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 21._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +Since life separated us the other night I have not heard from you. I +have not expected a letter, nor do you expect one from me. But I am +going away to-morrow for the summer and my heart has a few words for +you which must be spoken. + +It was not disappointment about the summer in England, not even your +refusal to explain why you disappointed me, that held the main reason +of my drawing back. I am in the mood to-night to tell you some +things very frankly: + +Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to be married and twice as the +wedding drew near I drew away from it. It is an old, old feeling of +mine, though I am so young, that if married I should not long be +happy. Of course I should be happy for a while. But _afterwards_! +The interminable, intolerable _afterwards_! The same person year in +and year out--I should be stifled. Each of the men to whom I was +engaged had given me before marriage all that he had to give: the +rest I did not care for; after marriage with either I foresaw only +staleness, his limitations, monotony. + +Believe this, then: there are things in you that I cling to, other +things in you that do not draw me at all. And I cling more to life +than to you, more than to any one person. How can any one person +ever be all to me, all that I am meant for, and _I will live_! + +Why should we women be forced to spend our lives beside the first +spring where one happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! Why be +doomed to die in old age at the same spring! With all my soul I +believe that the world which has slowly thrown off so many tyrannies +is about to throw off other tyrannies. It has been so harsh toward +happiness, so compassionate toward misery and wrong. Yet happiness +is life's finest victory: for ages we have been trying to defeat our +one best victory--our natural happiness! + +A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning--then to go thirsty for +the rest of the long, hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet at +spring after spring--there are so many springs! And thirst is so +eager for them! + +Come to see me in the autumn. For I will not, cannot, give you up. +And when you come, do not seek to renew the engagement. Let that go +whither it has gone. But come to see me. + +For I love you. + + TILLY. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 21._ + +POLLY BOLES: + +This is good-bye to you for the summer and, better than that, it is +good-bye to you for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth that +we have long hated each other and have used our acquaintanceship and +our letters to express our hatred? How could there ever have been +any friendship between you and me? + +Let me tell you of the detestable little signs that I have noticed in +you for years. Are you aware that all the time you have occupied +your apartment, you have never changed the arrangement of your +furniture? As soon as your guests are gone, you push every chair +where it was before. For years your one seat has been the same end +of the same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted your disquietude +if any guest happened to sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere. +For years you have worn the same breast-pin, though you have several. +The idea of your being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride +yourself in such externals of faithfulness. + +You soul of perfidy! + +I leave you undisturbed to innumerable appointments with Ben, and +with the same particular something to talk about, falsest woman I +have ever known. + +Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the fact that you are secretly +receiving almost constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will you tell +him? _Or shall I?_ + + TILLY SNOWDEN. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 23rd._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I am worried. + +I begin to feel doubtful as to what course I should pursue with Dr. +Claude Mullen. Of late he has been coming too often. He has been +writing to me too often. He appears to be losing control of himself. +Things cannot go on as they are and they must not get worse. What I +could not foresee is his determination to hold _me_ responsible for +his being in love with me! He insists that _I_ encouraged him and am +now unfair--_me_ unfair! Of course I have _never_ encouraged his +visits; out of simple goodness of heart I have _tolerated_ them. Now +the reward of my _kindness_ is that he holds me responsible and +guilty. He is trying, in other words, to take advantage of my +_sympathy_ for him. I _do_ feel sorry for him! + +I have not been cruel enough to dismiss him. His last letter is +enclosed: it will give you some idea----! + +Can you advise me what to do? I have always relied upon _your_ +judgment in everything. + + Faithfully yours, + POLLY. + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + +[Penciled in Court Room] + + _June 24th._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: tell him to take a cab and +drive straight to the nearest institution for the weak-minded, engage +a room, lock himself in and pray God to give him some sense. Tell +him to stay secluded there until that prayer is answered. The +Almighty himself couldn't answer his prayer until after his death, +and by that time he'd be out of the way anyhow and you wouldn't mind. + +I return his funeral oration unread, since I did not wish to attract +attention to myself as moved to tears in open court. + + BEN. + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + +[Evening of the same day] + +POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN: + +This is a night I have long waited for and worked for. + +You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to +set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for +me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You +know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for +two--and for more than two--for our little ones. When I married you, +I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats. + +But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of +this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength. +I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and +I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your +lover. + +Name the day when I can be both. + +Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my +own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day +of next Spring, then--so far away but nearer than any other Spring +during these impatient years. + +Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover, + + BEN DOOLITTLE. + +Roses to you. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 24._ + +Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN! + +My heart answers you. It leaps forward to the day. I have set the +day in my heart and sealed it on my lips. Come and break that seal. +To-night I shall tear two of the rosebuds apart and mingle their +petals on my pillow. + + POLLY. + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + +_June 26._ + +It occurs to me that our engagement might furnish you the means of +getting rid of your prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to come +to see you: tell him you have some joyful news that must be imparted +at once. When he arrives announce to him that you have named the day +of your marriage to me. To _me_, tell him! Then let him take +himself off. You say he complains that all this is getting on his +nerves. Anything that could sit on his nerves would be a mighty +small animal. + + BEN. + + + + +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 devoted + POLLY. + + + + +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: + +"The _Scolopendium vulgare_ put 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: + +"The _Adiantum nigrum_ put 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 that _he_ did 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, mon_ French!) + +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 letters +_were_ on 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 of _my_ head: 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. I _will_ add, 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. + + + + +PART THIRD + + + +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 I _was_ in 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 as _my_ secretary! 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 be _your_ secretary, 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 you _can't_ +imagine, _can't_ imagine, _can't_ imagine! + + 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 their _backs_. If history speaks truly, quite +a few notorious ones have come to grief--but _you_ will 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 that _his_ duty 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. + +I have observed that there is danger in many people causing any one +person to think himself a superior person unless he _is_ a superior +person. If he really is what is thought of him, no harm is done him. +But if he is widely regarded a superior person and is not a superior +person, harm may result to him. For whenever any person is praised +beyond his deserts, he is not lifted up by such praise any more than +the stature of a man is increased by thickening the heels of his +shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to be lowered by over-praise. +For, prodded by adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary image and +assume, as far as he can, the guise of some inferior creature which +more glaringly expresses what he is--as the peacock, the owl, the +porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, the ass. I have seen all these. I +have seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, speechless owl +novelist, the fretful porcupine novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, +the ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred ass novelist. +And many others. + +You may begin to wonder why I am led into these reflections in this +letter. The reason is, I have been wondering into what kind of +inferior creature your fame--your over-praise--has lowered _you_. +Frankly, I perfectly know; I will not name the animal. But I feel +sure that he is a highly offensive small beast. + +If you feel disposed to read further, I shall explain. + +I have in my legal possession three letters of yours. They were +written to a young gentleman whom I have known now for a good many +years, whose character I know about as well as any one man can know +another's, and for whom increasing knowledge has always led me to +feel increasing respect. The young man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You +may now realise what I am coming to. + +The first of these letters of yours reveals you as a stranger seeking +the acquaintance of Mr. Sands--to a certain limit: you asked of him a +courtesy and you offered courtesies in exchange. That is common +enough and natural, and fair, and human. But what I have noticed is +your doing this with the air of the superior person. Mr. Sands, +being a novelist, is of course a superior person. Therefore, you +felt called upon to introduce yourself to him as a _more_ superior +person. That is, you condescended to be gracious. You made it a +virtue in you to ask a favour of him. You expected him to be +delighted that you allowed him to serve you. + +In the second letter you go further. He wafted some incense toward +you and you got on your knees to this incense. You get up and offer +him more courtesies--all courtesies. Because he praised you, you +even wish him to visit you. + +Now the third letter. The favour you asked of Mr. Sands was that he +send you some ferns. By no fault of his except too much confidence +in the agents he employed (he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted +you), by no other fault of his the ferns were not sent. You waited, +time passed, you grew impatient, you grew suspicious of Mr. Sands, +you felt slighted, you became piqued in your vanity, wounded in your +self-love, you became resentful, you became furious, you became +revengeful, you became abusive. You told him that he had never meant +to keep his word, that you had kicked his books out of your library, +that he might profitably study the moral sensitiveness of a head of +cabbage. + +During the summer American tourists visited you--pilgrims of your +fame. You took advantage of their visit to promulgate mysteriously +your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by one explicit word, you +understand. Your exalted imagination merely lied on him, and you +entrusted to other imaginations the duty of scattering broadcast your +noble lie. They did this--some of them happening not to be friends +of Mr. Sands--and as a result of the false light you threw upon his +character, he now in the minds of many persons rests under a cloud. +And that cloud is never going to be dispelled. + +Enclosed you will please find copies of these three letters of yours; +would you mind reading them over? And you will find also a packet of +letters which will enable you to understand why the ferns never +reached you and the whole entanglement of the case. And finally, you +will find enclosed a brief with which, were I to appear in Court +against you, as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up to public +view as what you are. + +I shall merely add that I have often met you in the courtroom as the +kind of criminal who believes without evidence and who distrusts +without reason; who is, therefore, ready to blast a character upon +suspicion. If he dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence +against him, he draws upon the dark traits of his own nature to +furnish the evidence. + +I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands. + +I am, as to you, + + Merely, + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + June 21, 1912._ + + Benjamin Doolittle, + 150 Wall Street, + New York City. + +MY DEAR SIR: + +You state in your letter, which I have just laid down, that you are a +stranger to me. There is no conceivable reason why I should wish to +offer you the slightest rudeness--even that of crossing your +word--yet may I say, that I know you perfectly? If you had +unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, you might have +found, scattered here and there, everything that you have said in +your letter, and almost in your very words. That is, I have two or +three times drawn your portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus +while you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel bound to say +that you are an old acquaintance in nature. + +You cannot for a moment imagine--however, you despise imagination and +I withdraw the offensive word--you cannot for a moment suppose that I +can have any motive in being discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go +on to say, but only with your permission, that the first time I +attempted to sketch you, was in a very early piece of work; I was a +youthful novelist, at the outset of my career. I projected a story +entitled: "_The Married Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens._" I +feel bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly remind me of the +_Sal Blivvens_ of my story. In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was +this: as twenty-one human shillings he never made an exact human +guinea--his shillings ran a few pence over, or they fell a few pence +short. That is, Ned never did just enough of anything, or said just +enough, but either too much or too little to suit _Sal_. He never +had just one idea about any one thing, but two or three ideas; he +never felt in just one way about any one thing, but had mixed +feelings, a variety of feelings. He was not a yard measure or a pint +measure or a pound measure; he overflowed or he didn't fill, and any +one thing in him always ran into other things in him. + +Being a young novelist I was not satisfied to offer _Sal_ to the +world on her own account, but I must try to make her more credible +and formidable by following her into the next generation, and giving +her a son who inherited her traits. Thus I had _Tommy Blivvens_. +When Tommy was old enough to receive his first allowance of Christmas +pudding, he proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He picked out +all the raisins and made a little pile of them. And made a little +separate pile of the currants, and another pile of the almonds, and +another of the citron, or of whatever else there was to separate. +Then in profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, as a +philosopher of the sure. + +Thus--and I insist I mean no disrespect--your letter does revive for +me a little innocent laughter at my early literary vision of a human +baggage--friend of my youthful days and artistic enthusiasm--_Sal +Blivvens_. I arranged that when _Ned_ died, his neighbours all felt +sorry and wished him a green turf for his grave. _Sal_, I felt sure, +survived him as one who all her life walks past every human heart and +enters none--being always dead-sure, always dead-right; for the human +heart rejects perfection in any human being. + +I recognise you as belonging to the large tough family of the human +cocksures. _Sal Blivvens_ belonged to it--dead-sure, dead-right, +every time. We have many of the cocksures in England, you must have +many of them in the United States. The cocksures are people who have +no dim borderland around their minds, no twilight between day and +darkness. They see everything as they see a highly coloured rug on a +well-lighted floor. There is either rug or no rug, either floor or +no floor. No part of the floor could possibly be rug and no part of +the rug could possibly be floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the +natural prosecuting attorney of human nature's natural misgivings and +wiser doubts and nobler errors. How the American cocksures of their +day despised the man Washington, who often prayed for guidance; with +what contempt they blasted the character of your Abraham Lincoln, +whose patient soul inhabited the border of a divine disquietude and +whose public life was the patient study of hesitation. + +I have taken notice of the peculiarly American character of your +cocksureness: it magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile, +to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the ton. Do you happen +to know Michael Angelo's _Moses_? I always think of an American +cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's _Moses_--colossal +law-giver, a hyper-stupendous fellow. And I have often thought that +a regiment of American cocksures would be the most terrific spectacle +on a battlefield that the rest of the human race could ever face. +Just now it has occurred to me that it was your great Emerson who +spoke best on the weakness of the superlative--the cocksure is the +human superlative. + +As to your letter: You declare you know nothing about novels, but +your arraignment of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure that +you are perfectly right about me. Your arraignment of me is exact. +You are conscious of no more moral perturbation as to justice than +exists in a monkey wrench. But that is the nature of the +cocksure--his conclusions have to him the validity of a hardware +store. + +This, however, is nothing. I clear it away in order to tell you that +I am filled with admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and of +the savage ferocity with which you attack me as his enemy. That +makes you a friend worth having, and I wish you were to be numbered +among mine; there are none too many such in this world. Next, I wish +to assure you that I have studied your brief against me and confess +that you have made out the case. I fell into a grave mistake, I +wronged your friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it was a +poor, sorry, shabby business. I am about to write to Mr. Sands. If +he is what you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive +me--though you never may. I shall ask him, as I could not have asked +him before, whether he will not come to visit me. My house, my +hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, shall be his. I +shall take every step possible to undo what I thoughtlessly, +impulsively did. I shall write to the President of his Club. + +One exception is filed to a specification in your brief: no such +things took place in my garden upon the visit of the American +tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate any mysterious +hostility to Mr. Sands. You tell me that among those tourists were +persons hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile persons who +misinterpreted and exaggerated whatever took place. You knew these +persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then you accepted their +testimony as true--being a cocksure. + +A final word to you. Your whole character and happiness rests upon +the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the +fellow-beings whom you know. Those _you_ doubt ought to be doubted +and those _you_ trust ought to be trusted! Now I have travelled far +enough on life's road to have passed its many human figures--perhaps +all the human types that straggle along it in their many ways. No +figures on that road have been more noticeable to me than here and +there a man in whom I have discerned a broken cocksure. + +You say you like biography: do you like to read the Life of Robert +Burns? And I wonder whether these words of his have ever guided you +in your outlook upon life: + + "_Then gently scan your brother man_ + * * * * * + _To step aside is human._" + + +I thank you again. I wish you well. And I hope that no experience, +striking at you out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave you one +of those noticeable men--a broken cocksure. + +Your deeply obliged and very grateful, + + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 30, 1912._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +About a month ago I took it upon myself to write the one letter that +had long been raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. And I sent +him all the fern letters. And then I drew up the whole case and +prosecuted him as your lawyer. + +Of course I meant my letter to be an infernal machine that would blow +him to pieces. He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and inserted +a crank, and turned it into a music-box to grind out his praises. + +And then the kind of music he ground out for me. + +All day I have been ashamed to stand up and I've been ashamed to sit +down. He told me that my letter reminded him of a character in his +first novel--a woman called _Sal Blivvens_. ME--_Sal Blivvens!_ + +But of what use is it for us poor, common-clay, rough, ordinary men +who have no imagination--of what use is it for us to attack you +superior fellows who have it, have imagination? You are the Russians +of the human mind, and when attacked on your frontiers, you merely +retreat into a vast, unknown, uninvadable country. The further you +retire toward the interior of your mysterious kingdom, the nearer you +seem to approach the fortresses of your strength. + +I am wiser--if no better. If ever again I feel like attacking any +stranger with a letter, I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether +he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. If he is a genius, I am +going to let him alone. + +Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to see your man Blackthorne +now. Ask him some time whether a short visit from Benjamin Doolittle +could be arranged on any terms of international agreement. + +Now for something on my level of ordinary life! A day or two ago I +was waiting in front of the residence of one of my uptown clients, a +few doors from the residence of your friend Dr. Marigold. While I +waited, he came out on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I drove +past, I leaned far out and made them a magnificent sweeping bow: one +can afford to be forgiving and magnanimous after he settled things to +his satisfaction. They did not return the bow but exchanged quiet +smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. They seemed like saying: +he bows best who bows last. + +You are the best thing in New York to me since Polly went away. +Without you both it would come near to being one vast solitude. + + BEN (alias _Sal Blivvens_). + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE + + _July 1, 1912._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I wrote you this morning upon receipt of your letter telling me of +your own terrific letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless +arraignment of him. Let me say again that I wish to pour out my +gratitude to you for your motives and also, well, also my regret at +your action. Somehow I have been reminded of Voltaire's saying: he +had a brother who was such a fool that he started out to be perfect; +as a consequence the world knows nothing of Voltaire's brother: it +knows very well Voltaire with his faults. + +The mail of yesterday which brought you Mr. Blackthorne's reply to +your arraignment brought me also a letter: he must have written to us +both instantly. His letter is the only one that I cannot send you; +you would not desire to read it. You are too big and generous, too +warmly human, too exuberantly vital, to care to lend ear to a great +man's chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. You are not +Cassius to carp at Caesar. + +Now this afternoon a second letter comes from Mr. Blackthorne and +that I enclose: it will do you good to read it--it is not a black +passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight. + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne] + +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: + +I follow up my letter of yesterday with the unexpected tidings of +to-day. I am willing to believe that these will interest you as +associated with your coming visit. + +Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final natal eclipse, has +bowled him over and left him darkened for good. He can trouble us no +more, but will now do his part as mould for the rose of York and the +rose of Lancaster. He will help to make a mound for some other +Englishman's ferns. When you come--and I know you will come--we +shall drink a cup of tea in the garden to his peaceful memory--and to +his troubled memory for Latin. + +I am now waiting for you. Come, out of your younger world and with +your youth to an older world and to an older man. And let each of us +find in our meeting some presage of an alliance which ought to grow +always closer in the literatures of the two nations. Their +literatures hold their ideals; and if their ideals touch and mingle, +then nothing practical can long keep them far apart. If two oak +trees reach one another with their branches, they must meet in their +roots; for the branches are aerial roots and the roots are +underground branches. + +Come. In the eagerness of my letter of yesterday to put myself not +in the right but less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the very +matter with which the right and the wrong originated. + +_Will you, after all, send the ferns?_ + +The whole garden waits for them; a white light falls on the vacant +spot; a white light falls on your books in my library; a white light +falls on you, + +I wait for you, both hands outstretched. + + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + +(Note penciled on the margin of the letter by Beverley Sands to Ben +Doolittle: "You will see that I am back where the whole thing +started; I have to begin all over again with the ferns. And now the +florists will be after me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow +of my bones, and my bones by this time are a wireless station on this +subject.") + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS + +DEAR SIR: + +We take pleasure in enclosing our new catalogue for the coming +autumn, and should be pleased to receive any further commissions for +the European trade. + +We repeat that we have no connection whatever with any house doing +business in the city under the name of Botany. + + Respectfully yours, + JUDD & JUDD, + Per Q. + + + + +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Louisville, Kentucky, + July 4th, 1912._ + + +DEAR SIR: + +Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory for the approaching +autumn season, in view of having been honoured upon a previous +occasion with your flattering patronage, and reasoning that our past +transactions have been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves of +this opportunity of reviving the conjunction heretofore existing +between us as most gratifying and thank you sincerely for past +favours. We hope to continue our pleasant relations and desire to +say that if you should contemplate arranging for the shipments of +plants of any description, we could afford you surprised satisfaction. + + Respectfully yours, + PHILLIPS & FAULDS. + + + + +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Dunkirk, Tennessee, + July 6, 1912._ + +DEAR SIR: + +We are prepared to supply you with anything you need. Could ship +ferns to any country in Europe, having done so for the late Noah +Chamberlin, the well-known florist just across the State line, who +was a customer of ours. + +old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet paid, had to drop them +entirely. + + Very truly yours, + BURNS & BRUCE. + +If you need any forest trees, we could supply you with all the forest +trees you want, plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty of +walnuts, etc. + + + + +ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Seminole, North Carolina, + July 7th, 1912._ + +DEAR SIR: + +I have lately enlarged my business and will be able to handle any +orders you may give me. The orders which Miss Clara Louise +Chamberlain said you were to send have not yet turned up. I write to +you, because I have heard about you a great deal through Miss Clara +Louise, since her return from her visit to New York. She succeeded +in getting two or three donations of books for our library, and they +have now given her a place there. I was sorry to part with Miss +Clara Louise, but I had just married, and after the first few weeks I +expected my wife to become my assistant. I am not saying anything +against Miss Clara Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet violets, +especially on a Sunday, having the run of the flowers. She and Alice +didn't get along very well together, and I did have a bad set-back +with my violets while she was here. + +Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make a speciality of seedlins. +If you want any seedlins, will you call on me? I am young and just +married and anxious to please, and I wish you would call on me when +you want anything green. Nothing dried. + + Yours respectfully, + ANDY PETERS. + + + + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _July 7th, 1912._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +It makes me a little sad to write. I suppose you saw in this +morning's paper the announcement of Tilly's marriage next week to Dr. +Marigold. Nevertheless--congratulations! You have lost years of +youth and happiness with some lovely woman on account of your +dalliance with her. + +Now at last, you will let her alone, and you will soon find--Nature +will quickly drive you to find--the one you deserve to marry. + +It looks selfish at such a moment to set my happiness over against +your unhappiness, but I've just had news, that at last, after +lingering so long and a little mysteriously in Louisville, Polly is +coming. Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. We long ago +decided to have no wedding. All that we have long wished is to marry +one another. Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, Polly is +another cocksure. We shall jog along as a perfectly satisfied couple +of cocksures on the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly will never +find out that she married _Sal Blivvens_.) + +Dear fellow, truest of comrades among men, it is inevitable that I +reluctantly leave you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as the +friend who marries. + +One awful thought freezes me to my chair this hot July day. You have +never said a word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, since the day +of my hypothetical charge to the jury. Can it be possible that you +followed her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? I have often +warned you against Tilly, as inconstant. But, my dear fellow, +remember there is a worse extreme than in inconstancy--Clara Louise +would be sealing wax. You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of +sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in conversation, she'd seal +you the tighter. + +Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. + + BEN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _July 8._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I saw the announcement in the morning paper about Tilly. + +It wouldn't be worth while to write how I feel. + +It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, homeless in New York. And +I saw her. As to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, that is +solely a question of my royalties. Royalties are human gratitude; +why should not the dews of gratitude fall on one so parched? +Besides, I don't owe you anything, gentleman. + +Yes, I feel you're going--you're passing on to Polly. I append a +trifle which explains itself, and am, making the best of everything, +the same + + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + + _A Meditation in Verse_ + (_Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing his + favourite weakness_) + + _How can I mind the law's delay, + Or what a jury thinks it knows, + Or what some fool of a judge may say? + Polly comes with the wedding clothes._ + + _Time, who cheated me so long, + Kept me waiting mid life's snows, + I forgive and forget your wrong: + Polly comes with the wedding clothes._ + + _Winter's lonely sky is gone, + July blazes with the rose, + All the world looks smiling on + At Polly in her wedding clothes._ + + + + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + +[A hurried letter by messenger] + + _July 10, 1912._ + +Polly reached New York two days ago. I went up that night. She had +gone out--alone. She did not return that night. I found this out +when I went up yesterday morning and asked for her. She has not been +there since she left. They know nothing about her. I have +telegraphed Louisville. They have sent me no word. Come down at +once. + +BEN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + +[Hurried letter by messenger] + + _July 10, 1912._ + +DEAR BEN: + +Is anything wrong about Polly? + +I met her on the street yesterday. She tried to pass without +speaking. I called to her but she walked on. I called again and she +turned, hesitatingly, then came back very slowly to meet me half-way. +You know how composed her manner always is. But she could not +control her emotion: she was deeply, visibly troubled. Strange as it +may seem, while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, I could but +notice a trifle, as at such moments one often does: she was +beautifully dressed: a new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over +her as for some impending ceremony. We have always thought of Polly +as one of the women who are above dress. Such disregard was in a way +a verification of her character, the adornment of her sincerity. Now +she was beautifully dressed. + +"But what is the meaning of all this?" I asked, frankly mystified. + +Something in her manner checked the question, forced back my words. + +"You will hear," she said, with quivering lips. She looked me +searchingly all over the face as for the sake of dear old times now +ended. Then she turned off abruptly. I watched her in sheer +amazement till she disappeared. + +I have been waiting to hear from you, but cannot wait any longer. +What does it mean? Why don't you tell me? + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE + + _July 11._ + +I have with incredible eyes this instant read this cutting from the +morning paper: + +Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the City Hall in Jersey City to +Dr. Claude Mullen. + +She must have been on her way when I saw her. + +I have read the announcement without being able to believe it--with +some kind of death in life at my heart. + +Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am coming at once. + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS + + _July 18._ + +The ferns have had their ironic way with us and have wrought out +their bitter comedy to its end. The little group of us who were the +unsuspecting players are henceforth scattered, to come together in +the human playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the curtain waits +to descend, and I, who innocently brought the drama on, am left the +solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, depart to go my +separate road. + +This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful the morning is for her! +The whole sky is one exquisite blue--no sign of any storm-plan far or +near. The July air blows as cool as early May. I sit at my window +writing and it flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances of the +green park below my window enter my room and encircle me like living +human tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, Tilly is dressing for +her wedding, and I--God knows why--am thinking of old-time Kentucky +gardens in one of which she played as a child. Tilly, a little girl +romping in her mother's garden--Tilly before she was old enough to +know anything of the world--anything of love--now, as she dresses for +her wedding--I cannot shut out that vision of early purity. + +Yesterday a note came from her. I had had no word since the day I +openly ridiculed the man she is to marry. But yesterday she sent me +this message: + +"Come to-night and say good-bye." + +She was not in her rooms to greet me. I waited. Moments passed, +long moments of intense expectancy. She did not enter. I fixed my +eyes on her door. Once I saw it pushed open a little way, then +closed. Again it was opened and again it was held as though for lack +of will or through quickly changing impulses. Then it was opened and +she entered and came toward me, not looking at me, but with her face +turned aside. She advanced a few paces and with some swift, +imperious rebellion, she turned and passed out of the room and then +came quickly back. She had caught up her bridal veil. She held the +wreath in her hand and as she approached me, I know not with what +sudden emotion she threw a corner of the veil over her head and face +and shoulders. And she stood before me with I know not what struggle +tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper she said: + +"Lift my veil." + +I lifted her veil and laid it back over her forehead. She closed her +eyes as tears welled out of them. + +"Kiss me," she said. + +I would have taken her in my arms as mine at that moment for all +time, but she stepped back and turned away, fading from me rather +than walking, with her veil pressed like a handkerchief to her eyes. +The door closed on her. + +I waited. She did not come again. + +Now she is dressing for the marriage ceremony. A friend gives her a +house wedding. The company of guests will be restricted, everything +will be exquisite, there will be youth and beauty and distinction. +There will be no love. She marries as one who steps through a +beautiful arch further along one's path. + +Whither that path leads, I do not know; from what may lie at the end +of it I turn away and shudder. + +My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning is of one exiled from +happiness because nature withheld from her the one thing needed to +make her all but perfect: that needful thing was just a little more +constancy. It is her doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a +brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to her lips it drops from +her hand. Forever her hand stretched out toward joy and forever joy +shattered at her feet. + +American scientists have lately discovered or seem about to discover, +some new fact in Nature--the butterfly migrates. What we have +thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant of a single summer in a +single zone follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells in a +summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the psyche of life's fields, +then she seeks perpetual summer as the law of her own being. All our +lives move along old, old paths. There is no new path for any of us. +If Tilly's fate is the butterfly path, who can judge her harshly? +Not I. + +They sail away at once on their wedding journey. He has wealth and +social influence of the fashionable sort which overflows into the +social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: the papers found space for +their plans of travel: England and Scotland, France and Switzerland, +Austria and Germany, Bohemia and Poland, Russia, Italy and +Sicily--home. The great world-path of the human butterfly, seeking +summer with insatiate quest. + +Home to his practice with that still fluttering psyche! And then the +path--the domestic path--stretching straight onward across the fields +of life--what of his psyche then? Will she fold her wings on a +bed-post--year after year slowly opening and unfolding those +brilliant wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?... + +I cannot write of human life unless I can forgive life. How forgive +unless I can understand? I have wrought with all that is within me +to understand Polly--her treachery up to the last moment, her +betrayal of Ben's devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly, +doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems built upon one trait, +one virtue--loyalty. She was disloyal to Ben because she had come to +believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign excellence. There were +things in his life which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps +every day there were mere trifles which he did not share with +her--why should he? On a certain memorable morning she discovered +that for years he had been keeping from her some affairs of mine: +that was his loyalty to me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her. + +I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I think that was the rift +in the lute. Still a man must not surrender himself wholly into the +keeping of the woman he loves; let him, and he becomes anything in +her life but a man. + +Meantime Polly found near by another suitor who offered her all he +was--what little there was of him--one of those man-climbers who must +run over the sheltering wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified +in Polly her one passion for marrying--that she should possess a pet. +Now she possesses one, owns him, can turn him round and round, can +turn him inside out, can see all there is of him as she sees her +pocket-handkerchief, her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any little +familiar piece of property which she can become more and more +attached to as the years go by for the reason that it will never +surprise her, never puzzle her, never change except by wearing out. + +This will be the end of the friendship between Drs. Marigold and +Mullen: their wives will see to that. So much the better: scattered +impostors do least harm. + +I have struggled to understand the mystery of her choice as to how +she should be married. Surely marriage, in the existence of any one, +is the hour when romance buds on the most prosaic stalk. It budded +for Polly and she eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her +heavy mind without the wings of imagination. She got as far as the +nearest City Hall. Instead of a minister she chose to be married by +a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been unjust, she would be married by +the figure of Justice as a penal ceremony executed over Ben: she +mailed him a paper and left him to understand that she had fled from +him to Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry! + +A line in an evening paper lets me know that she and the Doctor have +gone for their honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly first came North +to live and the first summer came round she decided to spend it at +Ocean Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would get a grove and +an ocean with one railway ticket, without having to change; she could +settle in a grove with an ocean and in an ocean with a grove. What +her disappointment was I do not know, but every summer she has gone +back to Ocean Grove--the Franklin Flats by the sea.... + +Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had spent part of every evening +with him since Polly's marriage--silent, empty evenings--a quiet, +stunned man. Confidence in himself blasted out of him, confidence in +human nature, in the world. With no imagination in him to deal with +the reasons of Polly's desertion--just a passive acceptance of it as +a wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball. + +Her name was never called. A stunned, silent man. Clear, joyous +steady light in his eyes gone--an uncertain look in them. Strangest +of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And courtesy for bluff +warm confidence--courtesy as of one who stumblingly reflects that he +must begin to be careful with everybody. + +His active nature meantime kept on. Life swept him forward--nature +did--whether he would or not. I went down late one evening. +Evidently he had been working in his room all day; the things Polly +must have sent him during all those years were gone. He had on new +slippers, a fresh robe, taking the place of the slippers and the robe +she had made for him. Often I have seen him tuck the robe in about +his neck as a man might reach for the arms of a woman to draw them +about his throat as she leans over him from behind. + +During our talk that evening he began strangely to speak of things +that had taken place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, on the +farm; did I remember this in Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind +had gone back to old certainties. It was like his walking away from +present ruins toward things still unharmed--never to be harmed. + +Early next morning he surprised me by coming up, dressed for travel, +holding a grip. + +"I am going to Kentucky," he said. + +I went to the train with him. His reserve deepened on the way; if he +had plans, he did not share them with me. + +What I make out of it is that he will come back married. No +engagement this time, no waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage +will sadly bring him. I think she will be young--this time. But she +will be, as nearly as possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman +now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted man for life. He +thinks he will be getting some one to take Polly's place. In reality +it will be his second attempt to marry Polly. + +I am bidding farewell the little group of us. Some one else will +have to write of me. How can I write of myself? This I will say: +that I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to leave a little of +his wool on every bramble. + +I sail next week for England to make my visit to Mr. Blackthorne--at +last. Another letter has come from him. He has thrown himself into +the generous work of seeing that my visit to him shall make me known. +He tells me there will be a house party, a week-end; some of the +great critics will be there, some writers. "You must be found out in +England widely and at once," he writes. + +My heart swells as one who feels himself climbing toward a height. +There is kindled in me that strangest of all the flames that burn in +the human heart, the shining thought that my life is destined to be +more than mine, that my work will make its way into other minds and +mingle with the better, happier impulses of other lives. + +The ironic ferns have had their way with us. But after all has it +not been for the best? Have they not even in their irony been the +emblems of fidelity? + +They have found us out, they have played upon our weaknesses, they +have exaggerated our virtues until these became vices, they have +separated us and set us going our diverging ways. + +But while we human beings are moving in every direction over the +earth, the earth without our being conscious of it is carrying us in +one same direction. So as we follow the different pathways of our +lives which appear to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, may +it not be true that to the Power which sets us all in motion and +drives us whither it will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity? + + +THE END + + + + + THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS + GARDEN CITY, N. Y. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60435 *** diff --git a/60435-h/60435-h.htm b/60435-h/60435-h.htm index 47c3a07..3c6a970 100644 --- a/60435-h/60435-h.htm +++ b/60435-h/60435-h.htm @@ -1,9738 +1,9324 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen
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-Title: The Emblems of Fidelity
- A Comedy in Letters
-
-Author: James Lane Allen
-
-Release Date: October 5, 2019 [EBook #60435]
-
-Language: English
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-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY ***
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-Produced by Al Haines
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-
-
-<h1>
-<br /><br />
- THE EMBLEMS OF<br />
- FIDELITY<br />
-</h1>
-
-<p class="t3b">
- A Comedy in Letters<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
- BY<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3b">
- JAMES LANE ALLEN<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="t4">
- AUTHOR OF<br />
- "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL,"<br />
- "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
- There is nothing so ill-bred as audible<br />
- laughter.... I am sure that since I have<br />
- had the full use of my reason nobody has<br />
- ever heard me laugh.<br />
- —Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
- GARDEN CITY NEW YORK<br />
- DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br />
- 1919<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t4">
- COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY<br />
- DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br />
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br />
- TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br />
- INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
- To<br />
- THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY<br />
-<br />
- INCOMPARABLE ALLY<br />
- OF VICTORY<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-LIST OF CHARACTERS
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE . . . Famous elderly English novelist
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-BEVERLEY SANDS . . . Rising young American novelist
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE . . . Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-GEORGE MARIGOLD . . . Fashionable physician
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-CLAUDE MULLEN . . . Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of George Marigold<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-RUFUS KENT . . . Long-winded president of a club
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-NOAH CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very learned, very absent-minded professor
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-PHILLIPS AND FAULDS . . . Florists
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-BURNS AND BRUCE . . . Florists
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-JUDD AND JUDD . . . Florists
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-ANDY PETERS . . . Florist
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-HODGE . . . Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-TILLY SNOWDEN . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-POLLY BOLES . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, friend of Tilly Snowden<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very devoted, very proud sensitive daughter of Noah Chamberlain<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-ANNE RAEBURN . . . Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3b">
-CONTENTS
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<a href="#chap02">PART SECOND</a>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<a href="#chap03">PART THIRD</a>
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap01"></a></p>
-
-<h2>
-THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY
-</h2>
-
-<p><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br />
- Warwickshire, England,<br />
- May 1, 1910.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have just read to the end of your latest
-novel and under the outdoor influence of that
-Kentucky story have sat here at my windows
-with my eyes on the English landscape of the
-first of May: on as much of the landscape, at
-least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled,
-rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old
-Warwickshire garden.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You may or you may not know that I, too,
-am a novelist. The fact, however negligible
-otherwise, may help to disarm you of some
-very natural hostility at the approach of this
-letter from a stranger; for you probably agree
-with me that the writing of novels—not, of
-course, the mere odious manufacture of
-novels—results in the making of friendly, brotherly
-men across the barriers of nations, and that
-we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we
-could do less well or not do at all as
-fellow-creatures.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I shall not loiter at the threshold of this
-letter to fatigue your ear with particulars
-regarding the several parts of your story most
-enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough
-to say that no admirable human being has
-ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears
-by any such desirable procedure. In
-England, and I presume in the United States,
-novelists have long noses for incense [poets,
-too, though of course only in their inferior
-way]. I repeat that we English novelists are
-a species of greyhound for running down on
-the most distant horizon any scampering,
-half-terrified rabbit of a compliment. But I
-freely confess that nature loaded me beyond
-the tendency of being a mere greyhound. I
-am a veritable elephant in the matter, being
-marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible
-proboscis which is not only adapted to admit
-praise but is quite capable of actively
-reaching around in every direction to procure it.
-Even the greyhound cannot run forever; but
-an elephant, if he once possess it, will wave
-such a proboscis till he dies.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There are likely to be in any very readable
-book a few pages which the reader feels
-tempted to tear out for the contrary reason,
-perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his
-tenderness. Some haunting picture of the
-book-gallery that he would cut from the frame.
-Should you be displeased by the discrimination,
-I shall trust that you may be pleased
-nevertheless by the avowal that there is a
-scene in your novel which has peculiarly
-ensnared my affections.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At this point I think I can see you throw
-down my letter with more insight into human
-nature than patience with its foibles. You
-toss it aside and exclaim: "What does this
-Englishman drive at? Why does he not at
-once say what he wants?" You are right.
-My letter is perhaps no better than strangers'
-letters commonly are: coins, one side of which
-is stamped with your image and the other
-side with their image, especially theirs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I might as well, therefore, present to you
-my side of the coin with the selfish image.
-Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life,
-you are the horse in an open pasture and I
-am the stableman who schemes to catch you:
-to do this, I approach, calling to you
-affectionately and shaking a bundle of oats behind
-which is coiled a halter. You are thinking
-that if I once clutch you by the mane you
-will get no oats. But, my dear sir, you have
-from the very first word of this letter already
-been nibbling the oats. And now you are my
-animal!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is, then, in your novel a remarkable
-description of a noonday woodland scene
-somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky
-uplands—a cool, moist forest spot. Into this
-scene you introduced some rare, beautiful
-Kentucky ferns. I can <i>see</i> the ferns! I can
-see the sunlight striking through the waving
-treetops down upon them! Now, as it
-happens, in the old garden under my windows,
-loving the shade and moisture of its trees
-and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They are
-a marvelous company, in their way as good
-as Wordsworth's flock of daffodils; for they
-have been collected out of England's best
-and from other countries.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here, then, is literally the root of this letter:
-Will you send me the root-stocks of some of
-those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on
-my Warwickshire fern bank?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Do not suppose that my garden is on a
-small scale a public park or exhibition, made
-as we have created Kensington Gardens.
-Everything in it is, on the contrary, enriched
-with some personal association. I began it
-when a young man in the following way:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At that period I was much under the
-influence of the Barbizon painters, and I
-sometimes entertained myself in the forests where
-masters of that school had worked by hunting
-up what I supposed were the scenes of
-some of Corot's masterpieces.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted
-trees as though he were looking at enormous
-ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and
-some rise higher than others as trees; his trees
-descend through the air and are lost lower
-down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot
-ferns for my good Warwickshire loam. Another
-winter Christine Nilsson was singing at
-Covent Garden. I spent several evenings
-with her. When I bade her good-bye, I asked
-her to send me some ferns from Norway in
-memory of Balzac and <i>Seraphita</i>. Yet
-another winter, being still a young man and he,
-alas! a much older one, I passed an evening
-in Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in
-talking about his novels and I remember
-quoting these lines from one of them: "It
-was a splendid clear morning; tiny mottled
-cloudlets hung like snipe in the clear pale
-azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves
-and grass and glistened like silver on the
-spiders' webs; the moist dark earth seemed
-still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the
-songs of larks showered down from all over
-the sky."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He sat looking at me in surprised, touched
-silence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"But you left out something!" I suggested,
-with the bumptiousness of a beginner in
-letters. He laughed slightly to himself—and
-perhaps more at me—as he replied: "I must
-have left out a great deal"—he, fiction's
-greatest master of compression. After a
-moment he inquired with a kind of vast patient
-condescension: "What is it that you definitely
-missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns
-were growing thereabouts." He smiled
-reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, smiling
-reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot
-was," I said, "I should travel to it for some
-ferns." A mystical look came into his eyes as
-he muttered rather to himself than for my
-ear: "That spot! Where is that spot? That
-spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the whole of
-Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland,
-one pain, one passion. Sometime afterwards
-there reached me at home a hamper of Russian
-fern-roots with Turgenieff's card.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I tell you all this as I make the request,
-which is the body of this letter and, I hope,
-its wings, in order that you may intimately
-understand. I desire the ferns not only
-because you have interested me in your
-Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality,
-but because I have become interested in your
-art and in you. While I read your book I
-believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously
-at work, creating where no hand had created
-before; or if on its chosen scene it found a
-ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality
-from that ruin. But to create where no hand
-has created before, or to create them again
-where human things lie in decay—that to me
-is the true energy of literature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I should not omit to tell you that some of
-our most tight-islanded, hard-headed
-reviewers have been praising your work as of
-the best that reaches us from America. It
-was one such reviewer that first guided me to
-your latest book. Now I myself have written
-to some of our critics and have thrown my
-influence in favour of your fresh, beautiful art,
-which can only come from a fresh, beautiful
-nature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Should you decide to bestow any notice
-upon this rather amazing letter, you will bear
-in mind of course that there will be pounds
-sterling for plants. Whatever character my
-deed or misdeed may later assume, it must
-first and at least have the nature of a
-transaction of the market-place.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all,
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Gratefully yours,<br />
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br />
- May 12, 1910.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had,
-in some modern Æsop's Fables, read how a
-whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had
-taken the trouble to turn entirely round to
-encourage a puffing young porpoise; or of
-how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest,
-had on some fine spring day looked down and
-complimented a small dogwood tree upon its
-size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet,
-while thus unreal, your letter is in its way the
-most encouragingly real thing that has ever
-come into my life. Before I go further I
-should like to say that I have read every book
-you have written and have bought your books
-and given them away with such zeal and zest
-that your American publishers should feel
-more interest in me than can possibly be felt
-by the gentlemen who publish mine.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is too late to tell you this now. Too late,
-in bad taste. A man's praise of another may
-not follow upon that man's praise of him.
-Our virtues have their hour. If they do not
-act then, they are not like clocks which may
-be set forward but resemble fruits which lose
-their flavour when they pass into ripeness.
-Still, what I have said is honest. You may
-remember that I am yet moving amid life's
-uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk
-in quietness the world's highway of a great
-career. My praise could have borne little to
-you; yours brings everything to me. And
-you must reflect also that it is just a little
-easier for any Englishman to write to an
-American in this way. The American could
-but fear that his letter might seriously disturb
-the repose of a gentleman who was reclining
-with his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and
-Shakespeare's entire bosom in this regard, as
-you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in
-England.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange
-for the shipment of the ferns. A good many
-years have passed since I lived in Kentucky
-and I am no longer in close touch with people
-and things down there. But without doubt
-the matter can be managed through
-correspondence and all that I await from you
-now is express instructions. The ferns
-described in my book are not known to me by
-name. I have procured and have mailed to
-you along with this, lest you may not have
-any, some illustrated catalogues of American
-ferns, Kentucky ferns included. You have
-but to send me a list of those you want. With
-that in hand I shall know exactly how to
-proceed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You cannot possibly understand how happy
-I am that my work has the approval of the
-English reviews, which still remain the best
-in the world. To know that my Kentucky
-stories are liked in England—England which,
-remaining true to so many great traditions,
-holds fast to the classic tradition in her
-literature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The putting forth of your own personal
-influence in my behalf is a source of joy and
-pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns
-growing in your garden in token of me is the
-most inspiring event yet to mark my life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Sincerely yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br />
- Warwickshire, England,<br />
- May 22, 1910.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your letter was brought out to me as I was
-hanging an old gate in a clover-field canopied
-with skylarks. When I cannot make headway
-against some obstruction in the development
-of a story, for instance, putting the hinges of
-the narrative where the reader will not see
-any hinges, I let the book alone and go out
-and do some piece of work, surrounded by
-the creatures which succeed in all they
-undertake through zest and joy. By the time I get
-back, the hinges of the book have usually
-hung themselves without my knowing when
-or how. Hence the paradox: we achieve the
-impossible by doing the possible; we climb
-our mountain of troubles by walking away
-from it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is splendid news that I am to get the
-Kentucky ferns. Thank you for the
-catalogues. A list of those I most covet is
-enclosed. The cost, shipping expenses included,
-will not, I fear, exceed five pounds. Of course
-it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but
-I suppose I must restrict myself to the
-despicable market price. Shamefully cheap many
-of the dearest things in this world are; and
-what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A draft will be forwarded in advance upon
-receipt of the American shipper's address.
-Or I could send it forthwith to you.
-Meantime from now on I shall be remembering
-with impatience how many miles it is across
-the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace
-American ferns travel. These will be awaited
-like guests whom one goes to the gate to meet.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You do not know the names of those you
-describe so wonderfully! I am glad. I abhor
-the names of my own. Of course, as they are
-bought, memoranda must be depended upon
-by which to buy them. These data, verified
-by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs
-as fern headstones. When each fern is planted,
-into the soil beside it is stuck its headstone,
-which, like that for a human being, tells the
-name, not the nature, of what it memorialises.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns
-according to the slabs. It is time you should
-know Hodge by his slab. No such being can
-yet be found in the United States: your
-civilisation is too young. Hodge is my
-British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out
-for every birthday much as for any total
-solar eclipse of the year—with a kind of
-growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday
-should finally, as it passes, bowl him over for
-good—he announced to me with visible relief
-the other day that he had successfully passed
-another total natal eclipse; that he was
-fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight years
-old. The battle of Hastings was fought in
-1066 and Hodge without knowing it was
-beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For
-Hodge is English landscape gardening in
-human shape. He is the benevolent spirit of
-the English turf, a malign spirit to English
-weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake,
-a wheelbarrow of spring manure, a pile of
-autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant future
-mythology of our English rural life he will
-perhaps rank where he belongs—as a
-luminary next in importance to the sun: a
-two-legged god be-earthed in old clothes, with a
-stiff back, a stiff temper, the jaw of the
-mastiff and the eye of a prophet.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would
-not allow anything to come into the garden
-without mastering that thing. For the sake
-of his own authority he must subdue as much
-of the Latin language as invades his territory
-along with the ferns. But I think nothing
-comparable to such a struggle against
-overwhelming odds—Hodge's brain pitted against
-the Latin names of the ferns—nothing
-comparable to the dull fury of that onset is to be
-found in the history of man unless it be
-England's war on Napoleon for twenty years.
-England did conquer Napoleon and finally
-shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and
-Hodge has finally conquered the names of
-the ferns and shut them up in a desolate,
-rocky place—his skull, his personal promontory.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Nowadays you should see him meet me in
-a garden path when I come down early some
-morning. You should see him plant himself
-before me and, taking off his cap and scratching
-the back of his neck with the back of his
-muddy thumb, make this announcement:
-"The <i>Asplenium filix-faemina</i> put up two new
-shoots last night, sir. Bishop's crooks, I
-believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a
-farmer and my shepherd should notify me
-that one of the ewes had dropped twin lambs
-at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet:
-the honour of the shoots—a questionable
-honour—goes to Hodge as their botanical sire!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When I receive visitors by reason of my
-books—and strangers do sometimes make
-pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of
-"Black Oaks"—if the day is pleasant, we
-have tea in the garden. While the strangers
-drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known
-proboscis over the company for any praise
-they may have brought along. Should this
-seem adequate, I later reward them with a
-stroll. That is Hodge's hour and opportunity.
-Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but
-invariably, he steps out from some bush and
-takes his place behind me as we move.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When we reach the fern bank, the visitors
-regularly begin to inquire: "What is the
-name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to
-Hodge much as a drum-major, if asked by a
-by-stander what the music was that the band
-had just been playing, might wheel in dismay
-to the nearest horn. Hodge steps forward:
-now comes the reward of all his toil. "That
-is the <i>Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum</i>,
-sir." "And what is this one?" "That is the
-<i>Polypodium elegantissimum</i>, mum." Then you
-would understand what it sometimes means
-to attain scholarship without Oxford or
-Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman
-orator and a garden ass.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You will be wondering why I am telling
-you this about Hodge. For the very particular
-reason that Hodge will play a part, I know
-not what part, in the pleasant business that
-has come up between us. He looms as the
-danger between me and the American ferns
-after the ferns shall have arrived here. It is
-a fact that very few foreign ferns have ever
-done well in my garden, watch over them as
-closely as I may: especially those planted in
-more recent years. Could you believe it
-possible of human nature to refuse to water a
-fern, to deny a little earth to the root of a
-fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from
-it when there was nobody near to observe the
-deed, to jab at it with a sharp trowel? I shall
-not press the matter further, for I instinctively
-turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has
-within himself some incomprehensible little
-terrible spot and I feel that this is Hodge's
-spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he
-will kill what he hates, if he dares. I have
-been so aroused to defend his faithful
-character that I have devised two pleadings:
-first, Hodge is the essence of British
-parliaments, the sum total of British institutions;
-therefore he patriotically believes that things
-British should be good enough for the British—of
-course, their own ferns. At other times
-I am rather inclined to surmise that his
-malice and murderous resentment are due to
-his inability to take on any more Latin, least
-of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt
-now defends himself against any more Latin
-as a man with his back to the wall fights for
-his life: the personal promontory will hold no
-more.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You have written me an irresistible letter,
-though frankly I made no effort to resist it.
-Your praise of my books instantly endeared
-you to me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has
-already brought results so agreeable and
-surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to
-plunge a second time and more deeply.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Is there—how could there help being!—a
-<i>Mrs.</i> Beverley Sands? Mrs. Blackthorne
-wishes to know. I read your letter to
-Mrs. Blackthorne. Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed
-with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed with
-<i>you</i>. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you.
-And Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorne would like to
-know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands
-and, if so, whether she and you will not some
-time follow the ferns and come and take
-possession for a while of our English garden.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You and I can go off to ourselves and
-discuss our "dogwoods" and "black oaks";
-and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at
-their tea across the garden, can exchange
-copies of their highly illuminated and
-privately circulated little masterpieces about
-their husbands. (The husbands should always
-edit the masterpieces!)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Both of you, will you come?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Finally, as to your generous propaganda
-in behalf of my books and as to the favourable
-reports which my publishers send me from
-time to time in the guise of New World
-royalties, you may think of the proboscis as
-now being leveled straight and rigid like a
-gun-barrel toward the shores of the United
-States, whence blow gales scented with so
-glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that
-Columbus was not mistaken: America is
-turning out to be a place worth while.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Your deeply interested,<br />
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 3.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR TILLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Crown me with some kind of chaplet—nothing
-classic, nothing sentimental, but something
-American and practical—say with twigs
-of Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the
-leaves of that forest favourite which in
-boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with
-its inner bark—entwine me, O Tilly, with a
-garland of slippery elm for the virtue of
-always making haste to share with you my
-slippery pleasures! I write at full speed now
-to empty into your lap, a wonderfully receptive
-lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has
-ever come to me as your favourite author—and
-favourite young husband to be.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The great English novelist Blackthorne,
-many of whose books we have read together
-(whenever you listened), recently stumbled
-over one of my obstructive tales; one of my
-awkwardly placed literary hurdles on the
-world's race-course of readers. As a result of
-his fall he got up, dusted himself thoroughly
-of his surprise, and actually despatched to me
-an acknowledgment of his thanks for the
-happy accident. I replied with a volley of
-my own thanks, with salvos of praise for him.
-Now he has written again, throwing wide
-open his house and his heart, both of which
-appear to be large and admirably suited to
-entertain suitable guests.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At this crisis place your careful hands over
-your careful heart—can you find where it
-is?—and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the
-novelist's conventional breath for the excited
-heroine. Mr. Blackthorne wishes to know
-whether there is a <i>Mrs.</i> Beverley Sands. If
-there is, and he feels sure there must be,
-far-sighted man!—he invites her, invites <i>us</i>,
-<i>Mrs.</i> Blackthorne invites <i>us</i>, should we sometime
-be in England, to visit them at their beautiful,
-far-famed country-house in Warwickshire.
-If, then, our often postponed marriage, our
-despairingly postponed marriage, should be
-arranged to madden me and gladden the rest
-of mankind before next summer, we could,
-with our arms around one another's necks, be
-conveyed by steam and electricity on our
-wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance
-and be there deposited, still oblivious of
-everything but ourselves.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Think what it would mean to you to be
-launched upon the rosy sea of English social
-life amid the orisons and benisons of such
-illustrious literary personages. Think of those
-lovely English lawns, raked and rolled for
-centuries, and of many-coloured <i>fêtes</i> on them;
-of the national tea and the national sandwiches;
-of national strawberries and clotted
-cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's
-flunkies still flunkying and Queen Anne's
-fads yet fadding; of week-ends without
-end—as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself
-growing more and more a celebrity, as the
-English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers
-gradually brought into public appreciation
-the vague potentialities, not necessarily the
-bare actualities, of modest young Sands
-himself. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a
-day for you at Sandringham with the royal
-ladies. They would drive you over—I have
-not the least idea how great the distance
-is—to drink tea at Stonehenge. Imagine
-yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy
-English afternoon, imagine yourself seated
-under a heavy black-silk English umbrella on
-a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England,
-tearing at an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest
-strain and surrounded by male and female
-admirers, all under heavy black-silk
-umbrellas—Spitalsfield, I suppose—as Mrs. Beverley
-Sands.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign
-triumph, this career of glory, comes
-to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself,
-it is inaccessible. Look upon it as in
-part the property that I am to settle upon
-you at the time of our union—my honours.
-You have already understood from me that
-my entire estate, both my real estate and my
-unreal estate, consists of future honours.
-Those I have just described are an early
-payment on the marriage contract—foreign
-exchange!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What reply, then, in your behalf am I to
-send to the lofty and benevolent
-Blackthornes? As matters halt between us—he
-also loves who only writes and waits—I can
-merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that there is
-a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists
-in remaining a Miss Snowden. With this
-realisation of what you will lose as Miss
-Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you
-not think it wise—and wise you are, Tilly—any
-longer to persist in your persistence?
-You once, in a moment of weakness, confessed
-to me—think of your having a moment of
-weakness!—you once confessed to me, though
-you may deny it now (Balzac defines woman
-as the angel or devil who denies everything
-when it suits her), you once confessed to me
-that you feared your life would be taken up
-with two protracted pleasures, each of which
-curtailed the other: the pleasure of being
-engaged to me a long time and the pleasure of
-being married to me a long time. Nerve
-yourself to shortening the first in order to
-enter upon the compensations of the second.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect
-of obliterating from the world one whom I
-first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden.
-Where will Tilly Snowden be when only
-Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where will be that
-wild rose in a snow bank—the rose which was
-truly wild, the snow bank which was not cold
-(or was it?)? I think I should easily become
-reconciled to your being known, say, as
-Madame Snowden, so that you might still
-stand out in your own right and wild-rose
-individuality. We could visit England as the
-rising American author, Beverley Sands, and
-his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden.
-Everybody would then be asking who the
-mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I
-should relate that she was a retired opera
-singer—having retired before she advanced.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-By the way, you confided to me some time
-ago that you were not very well. You always
-<i>look</i> well, mighty well to <i>me</i>, Tilly. Perfectly
-well to <i>me</i>. Can your indisposition be
-imaginary? Or is it merely fashionable?
-Or—is it something else? What of late has
-sickened me is an idea of yours that you
-might sometime consult Doctor G. M. Tilly!
-Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me
-when I think of that charlatan's door being
-closed behind you as a patient of his!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the
-beautiful Blackthornes!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your easy and your uneasy
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>"Slippery Elm" Apartments,<br />
- June 4.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown
-you with slippery elm—you seem to think I
-keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it—if it
-is the leaf you sigh for. But please do not
-try to crown me with a wig of your creative
-hair; that is, with your literary honours.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-How wonderfully the impressions of childhood
-disappear from memory like breaths on
-a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to
-their shapes if the glass be coldly breathed
-upon! As I read your letter, at least as I read
-the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your
-letter, I remembered, probably for the first
-time in years, a friend of my mother's.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She had been inveigled to become the wife,
-that is, the legally installed life-assistant, of
-an exceedingly popular minister; and when I
-was a little girl, but not too little to
-understand—was I ever too little to understand?—she
-used to slip across the street to our house
-and in confidence to my mother pour out her
-sense of humour at the part assigned her by
-the hired wedding march and evangelical
-housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered,
-always half-whispered, confidences—for
-how often in life one feels guilty when
-telling the truth and innocent when lying!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-On this particular morning she and my
-mother laughed till they were weary, while I
-danced round them with delight at the idea
-of having even the tip of my small but very
-active finger in any pie that savoured of mischief.
-She had been telling my mother that if, some
-Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a
-sermon which brought people into the church,
-she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If he
-made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she
-might possibly look out for a pair of ducks.
-Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be
-merely a strip of worthless territory lying
-alongside the land of Canaan; people simply
-walked over her, tramped across her, on their
-way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful
-things to Canaan, her husband.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That childish nonsense comes back to me
-strangely, and yet not strangely as I think of
-your funny letter, your very, very funny
-letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to
-me because I am not myself but am possibly
-a Mrs.—well, <i>some</i> Mrs. Sands. The English
-scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it
-is Canaan and his strip all over again—there
-on the English lawns; a great many heavy
-English people are tramping heavily over me
-on their way to Canaan. The fabulous tea at
-Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at
-Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that
-at last choked to death the ill-fated Tilly
-Snowden.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden,
-then, begs that you will thank the Blackthornes,
-Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for
-their invitation; as best she can she thanks
-you; but for the present, and for how much of
-the future she does not know, she prefers to
-remain what is very necessary to her
-independence and therefore to her happiness; and
-also what is quite pleasing to her ear—the
-wild rose in the snow bank (cold or not cold,
-according to the sun).
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true
-that I have more than once postponed the
-date of our marriage. I have never said why;
-perhaps I myself have never known just why.
-But at least do not expect me to shorten the
-engagement in order that I may secure some
-share of your literary honours. As a little
-girl I always despised queens who were
-crowned with their husbands. It seemed to
-me that the queen was crowned with what
-was left over and was merely allowed to sit
-on the corner of the throne as the poor
-connection.
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-P.S.—Still, I <i>would</i> like to go to England.
-I mean, of course, I wish <i>we</i> could go on our
-wedding journey! If I got ready, could I
-rely upon <i>you</i>? I have always wished to visit
-England without being debarred from its
-social life. Seriously, the invitation of the
-Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity
-and an advantage not to be thrown away.
-Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am
-wise!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is true that I have not been feeling very
-well. And it is true that I have consulted
-Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his.
-That dreaded door has closed behind me! I
-have been alone with him! The diagnosis at
-least was delightful. He made it appear like
-opening a golden door upon a charming
-landscape. I had but to step outdoors and look
-around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why,
-Health, my former friend, how do you do!
-Why did you go back on me?" He tells me
-my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication.
-I said to him that <i>must</i> be the disease;
-namely, that it was <i>mild</i>. Never in my life
-had I had anything that was mild! Disease
-from my birth up had attacked me only in its
-most virulent form: so had health. I had
-always enjoyed—and suffered from—virulent
-health. I am going to take the Bulgar bacillus.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Why do <i>you</i> dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular
-physicians are naturally hated by unpopular
-physicians. But how does <i>he</i> run against or
-run over you?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Which of your books was it the condescending
-Englishman liked? Suppose you
-send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of
-each of your books? Those you gave me as
-they came out seem to have disappeared.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The wild rose is now going to pour down
-her graceful stalk a tubeful of the Balkan
-bacillus.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-More trouble with the Balkans!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
- (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise<br />
- intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least<br />
- for <i>that</i>!).<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 3.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A bolt of divine lightning has struck me
-out of the smiling blue, a benign fulmination
-from an Olympian.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To descend the long slope of Olympus to
-you. A few days ago I received a letter from
-the great English novelist, Edward Blackthorne,
-in praise of my work. The great
-Edward reads my books and the great Ben
-Doolittle doesn't—score heavily for the
-aforesaid illustrious Eddy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of course I have for years known that you
-do not cast your legal or illegal eyes on fiction,
-though not long ago I heard you admit that
-you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On
-the ground, that it is a lawyer's novel: which is
-no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My
-own opinion of why you read it is that you
-were in search of information how to make
-the ten thousand! As a literary performance
-your reading "Ten Thousand a Year" may
-be likened to the movement of a land-turtle
-which has crossed to the opposite side of his
-dusty road to bite off a new kind of weed,
-waddling along his slow way under the
-impenetrable roof of his own back.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust
-as I love and trust no other human being in
-this world, do you know what I think of you
-as most truly being? The very finest possible
-specimen of the highest order of human
-land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives
-under a shovel turned upside down over it,
-called its back; and a human land-turtle is a
-fellow who thrives under the roof of the five
-senses and the practical. Never does a turtle
-get from under his carapace, and never does
-the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his
-five senses. Of course you realise that not
-during our friendship have I paid you so
-extravagant a compliment. For the human race
-has to be largely made up of millions of
-land-turtles. They cause the world to go slowly,
-and it is the admirable stability of their lives
-neither to soar nor to sink. You are a
-land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, Esquire; you live
-under the shell of the practical; that is, you
-have no imagination; that is, you do not read
-fiction; that is, you do not read Me!
-Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but
-cherish all the confidence and love in the
-world for you. But, mind you, only as an
-unparalleled creeping thing.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To get on with the business of this letter:
-the English novelist laid aside his enthusiasm
-for my work long enough to make a request:
-he asked me to send him some Kentucky
-ferns for his garden. Owing to my long
-absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch
-with people and things down there. But you
-left that better land only a few years ago. I
-recollect that of old you manifested a
-weakness for sending flowers to womankind—another
-evidence, by the way, of lack of
-imagination. Such conduct shows a mere
-botanical estimate of the grand passion. The
-only true lovers, the only real lovers, that
-women ever have are men of imagination.
-Why should these men send a common
-florist's flowers! They grow and offer their
-own—the roses of Elysium!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To pass on, you must still have clinging to
-your memory, like bats to a darkened, disused
-wall, the addresses of various Louisville
-florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no
-light at all, were the former emissaries of your
-folly and your fickleness. Will you send me
-at once the address of a firm in whose hands
-I could safely entrust this very high-minded
-international piece of business?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Inasmuch as you are now a New York
-lawyer and inasmuch as New York lawyers
-charge for everything—concentration of mind,
-if they have any mind, tax on memory and
-tax on income, their powers of locomotion and
-of prevarication, club dues and death dues,
-time and tumult, strikes and strokes, and all
-other items of haste and waste, you are
-authorised to regard this letter a professional
-demand and to let me have a reasonable bill
-at a not too early date. Charge for whatever
-you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for
-your friendship. "Naught that makes life
-most worth while can be had for gold." (Rather
-elegant extract from one of my
-novels which you disdain to read!)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me
-have an immediate reply.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending
-to quarrel? And do you still keep up the
-pretence?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Predestined magpies!
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>150 Broad Street,<br />
- June 5.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your highly complimentary and
-philosophical missive is before my eyes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You understand French, not I. But I have
-accumulated a few quotations which I
-sometimes venture to use in writing, never in
-my proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to
-the French the French with which I am
-familiar, the French themselves would drive
-their own vernacular out of their land—over
-into Germany! Here is one of those fond
-inaudible phrases:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
- <i>A chaque oiseau<br />
- Son nid est beau.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes
-prefers his own tub.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club
-dinner the other night. One of the
-speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the
-blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping
-around the heads of the guests without
-finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing
-about the edges of a pond, trying in vain to
-strike a place to land. But everybody
-cheered uproariously, made happy by the
-discovery that someone actually could say
-something at a New York dinner that nobody
-had heard before. One man next to the
-speaker (of course coached beforehand) passed
-a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made
-its way down the table to me at the other end
-and I, in the New York way, laid it up for
-future use at a dinner in some other city.
-Meantime I use it now on you.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is true that I arrived in New York from
-Kentucky some years ago. It is likewise
-undeniable that for some years previous thereto
-I had dealings with Louisville florists. But I
-affirm now, and all these variegated
-gentlemen, if they <i>are</i> gentlemen, would gladly
-come on to New York as my witnesses and
-bear me out in the joyful affidavit, that
-whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked
-my behaviour, never once did I commit the
-futility, the imbecility, of trafficking in ferns.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A great English novelist—ferns! A rising
-young American novelist—ferns! Frogstools,
-mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't you
-ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs?
-Or if they should be too gross for his delicate
-soul, a birdcage containing a pair of warbling
-young bluegrass moonbeams?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am a <i>land</i>-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank
-God! If I have no imagination, thank God!
-If I live and move and have my being under
-the shovel of the five senses and of the
-practical, thank God! But, my good fellow, whom
-I love and trust as I love and trust no other
-man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I
-think of you as most truly being?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A poor, harmless tinker.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You, with your pastime of fabricating
-novels, dwell in a little workshop of the
-imagination; you tinker with what you are
-pleased to call human lives, reality, truth.
-On your shop door should hang a sign to
-catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble,
-splendid tinkering. No matter who you are,
-what your past career or present extremity,
-come in and let the owner of this shop make
-your acquaintance and he will work you over
-into something finer than you have ever been
-or in this world will ever be. For he will make
-you into an unfallen original or into a
-perfected final. If you have never had a chance
-to do your best in life, he will give you that
-chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the
-broken-down, especially welcome. Everybody
-made over to be as everybody should be by
-Beverley Sands."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But, brother, the sole thing with which you,
-the tinker, do business is the sole thing with
-which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, as
-a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life,
-actuality, truth. During the years that I
-have been an attorney never have I had a
-case in court without first of all things looking
-for the element of imagination in it and trying
-to stamp that element out of the case and kick
-it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel,
-that indefatigable mischief-maker, your
-beautiful and beloved patron power—imagination.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Going on to testify out of my experience as
-a land-turtle, I depose the following, having
-kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the
-turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the
-tracks of most of the other animal creatures
-and gets to know them and their ways. But
-there is one path of one creature marked for
-unique renown among nose-bearing men:
-that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white
-piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence—surnamed
-the polecat.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably
-disposed, may in your profession be the
-harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged
-thing you will that soars innocently toward
-bright skies; but, once unkindly disposed, it
-is in my profession, and in every other, the
-polecat of the human faculties. When it has
-testified against you, it vanishes from the
-scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with
-its testimony.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Hence it is that I go gunning first for this
-same little animal whose common den is the
-lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though
-you never seem to have encountered him in
-your work and walks. If you should do so, if
-you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile
-imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may
-the land-turtle be able to crawl to you and
-stand by you in that hour!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But—the tinker to his work, the turtle to
-his! <i>A chaque oiseau</i>! Diogenes, your tub!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly.
-I paid for the flowers, <i>she</i> got them. Anybody
-can receive money for blossoms, but only a
-statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can
-fill an order for flowers with equity and fresh
-buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & Faulds.
-You could reasonably rely upon them to fill
-any order that you might place in their hands,
-however nonsensical-comical, billy-goatian-satirical
-it may be. They'd send your Englishman
-an opossum with a pouch full of
-blooming hyacinths if that would quiet his
-longing and make him happy. I should think
-it might.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing?
-Are you still cooing?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Uncertain doves!
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap01b"></a></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>150 Broad Street,<br />
- June 5.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I send you some red roses to go with your
-black hair and your black eyes, never so
-black as when black with temper. When
-may I come to see you? Why not to-morrow
-night?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Another matter, not so vital but still
-important: a few years before we left Louisville
-to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New
-York, I at different times employed divers
-common carriers known as florists to convey
-to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions
-that could not be depicted in writing
-fluid. In other words, I hired those
-mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in
-terms of their costliest, most sensational
-merchandise. You should be prepared to say
-which of these florists struck you as the best
-business agent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Would you send me the address of that man
-or of that firm? Immediately you will want
-to know why. Always suspicious! Let the
-suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley.
-Some foggy-headed Englishman has besought
-him to ship him (the foggy one) some
-Kentucky vegetation all the way across the
-broad Atlantic to his wet domain—interlocking
-literary idiots! Beverley appeals to
-me, I to you, the highest court in everything.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Are you still enjoying the umbrageous
-society of that giraffe-headed jackass, Doctor
-Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his
-unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations?
-<i>He</i> a nerve specialist! The only nerve
-in his practice is <i>his</i> nerve. Doesn't my
-love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it?
-Isn't it the right kind? Will it ever give
-out?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your reply, then, will cover four points:
-to thank me for the red roses; to say when I
-may come to see you; to send me the address
-of the Louisville florist who became most
-favourably known to you through a reckless
-devotion; and to explain your patience with
-that unhappy fool.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thy sworn and thy swain,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>The Franklin Flats,<br />
- June 6.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville
-florist is one of your flimsiest subterfuges.
-What you wished to receive from me was a
-letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable
-on your last visit and you have since been
-concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards.
-Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my
-aid as indispensable. That is like you men!
-If one of you can but make a woman forget,
-if he can but lead her to forgive him, by
-flattering her with the idea that she is
-indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her
-figure standing on the long road of time:
-dumbly, patiently standing there, waiting for
-some male to pass along and permit her to
-accompany him as his indispensable
-fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good
-humour by being honoured with your request
-that I supply you with the name of a florist.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply
-you. All the Louisville florists, as I thought
-at the time, carried out their instructions
-faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally
-received flowers not fresh. Did it occur to
-me to blame the florists? Never! I did what
-a woman always does: she thinks less of—well,
-she doesn't think less of the <i>florist</i>!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Be this as it may, Beverley might try
-Phillips & Faulds for whatever he is to export.
-As nearly as I now remember they sent the
-biggest boxes of whatever you ordered!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have an appointment for to-morrow night,
-but I think I can arrange to divide the evening,
-giving you the later half. It shall be for
-you to say whether the best half was <i>yours</i>.
-That will depend upon <i>you</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of
-Dr. Claude Mullen because he loves me and
-I do not love him. The fascination of his
-presence lies in my indifference. Perhaps
-women are so seldom safe with the men who
-love them, that any one of us feels herself
-entitled to make the most of a rare chance!
-I am not only safe, I am entertained. As I
-go down into the parlour, I almost feel that
-I ought to buy a ticket to a performance in
-my own private theatre.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ben, dear, are you going to commit the
-folly of being jealous? If I had to marry <i>him</i>,
-do you know what my first wifely present
-would be? A liberal transfusion of my own
-blood! As soon as I enter the room, what
-fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which
-hold little cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am
-always expecting the little pools to run over:
-then there would be tears. The night he goes
-for good—perhaps they will be tears that
-night.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about
-him, still encourage his visits, I have simply
-to say that I don't know. When it comes to
-what a woman will "receive" in such cases,
-the ground she walks on is very uncertain to
-her own feet. It may be that the one thing
-she forever craves and forever fears not to
-get is absolute certainty, certainty that some
-day love for her will not be over, everything be
-not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's
-love is pitiful, and as long as a man's love is
-pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it.
-Therefore he is irresistible—as my guest!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The roses are glorious. I bury my face in
-them down to the thorns. And then I come
-over and sign my name as the indispensable
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 6.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR TILLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have had a note from Beverley, asking
-whether he could come this evening. I have
-written that I have an appointment, but I did
-not enlighten him as to the appointment being
-with you. Why not let him suffer awhile? I
-will explain afterwards. I told him that I
-could perhaps arrange to divide the evening;
-would you mind? And would you mind coming
-early? I will do as much for you some
-time, and <i>I suspect I couldn't do more</i>!
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-P.S.—Rather than come for the first half
-of the evening perhaps you would prefer to
-<i>postpone</i> your visit <i>altogether</i>. It would
-suit me just as well; <i>better</i> in fact. There
-really was something very <i>particular</i>, Tilly
-dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about
-to-night.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I shall not look for you at all <i>this</i> evening,
-<i>best</i> of friends.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 6.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The very particular something to talk to
-Ben about to-night is the identical something
-for every other night. And nothing could be
-more characteristic of you, as soon as you
-heard that my visit would clash with one of
-his, than your eagerness to push me partly
-out of the house in a hurried letter and then
-push me completely out in a quiet postscript.
-Being a woman, I understand your temptation
-and your tactics. I fully sympathise
-with you.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted
-intimate. I shall not drop in to interrupt you
-and Ben—both not so young as you once were
-and both getting stout—heavy Polly, heavy
-Ben—as you sit side by side in your little
-Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always
-suggests to me an enormous turnip hollowed
-out square: with no windows; with a hole on
-one side to come in and a hole on the other
-side to go out; upholstered in enormous
-bunches of beets and horse-radish, and lighted
-with a wilted electric sunflower. There you
-two will sit to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben,
-suffocating for fresh air and murmuring to
-each other as you have murmured for years:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"I do! I do!"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"I do! I do!"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One sentence in your letter, Polly dear,
-takes your photograph like a camera; the result
-is a striking likeness. That sentence is this:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will
-explain afterwards."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That is exactly what you will do, what you
-would always do: explain afterwards. In
-other words, you plot to make Ben jealous
-but fear to make him too jealous lest he desert
-you. If on the evening of this visit you should
-forget "to explain," and if during the night
-you should remember, you would, if need
-were, walk barefoot through the streets in
-your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter,
-if you could reach it, and say: "Ben,
-that appointment wasn't with any other man;
-it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I
-had told you!"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That is, you have already disposed of
-yourself, breath and soul, to Ben; and while you
-are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you
-have espoused in his behalf what you consider
-your best and strongest trait—loyalty. Under
-the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a
-few years after marriage, have devoured all
-there is of Ben alive and will have taken your
-seat beside what are virtually his bones. As
-the years pass, the more ravenously you will
-preside over the bones. Never shall the world
-say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever
-was left of her dear Ben Doolittle!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>Your loyalty</i>! I believe the first I saw of it
-was years ago one night in Louisville when
-you and I were planning to come to New York
-to live. Naturally we were much concerned
-by the difficulties of choosing our respective
-New York residences and we had written on
-and had received thumb-nailed libraries of
-romance about different places. As you
-looked over the recommendations of each, you
-came upon one called The Franklin Flats.
-The circular contained appropriate
-quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I
-remember how your face brightened as you
-said: "This ought to be the very thing." One
-of the quotations on the circular ran
-somewhat thus: "Beware of meat twice
-boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So
-they must have a good restaurant!"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In other words, you believed that a house
-named after Franklin could but resemble
-Franklin. A building put up in New York
-by a Tammany contractor, if named after
-Benjamin Franklin and advertised with
-quotations from Franklin's works, would embody
-the traits of that remote national hero! To
-your mind—not to your imagination, for you
-haven't any—to your mind, and you have a
-great deal of mind, the bell-boys, the
-superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids,
-the flunkied knave who stands at the
-front door—all these were loyally congregated
-as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still
-in the Franklin Flats! I know what you have
-long suffered there; but move away! Not
-Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building
-as long as the building stands by the
-contractor and the contractor stands by profits
-and losses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-While on the subject of loyalty, not your
-loyalty but woman's loyalty, I mean to
-finish with it. And I shall go on to say that
-occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass
-window in some Fifth Avenue shop and have
-studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised
-loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes
-effect in those processions that now and
-then sweep up the Avenue as though they
-were Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The
-marchers try first not to look self-conscious;
-all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the
-cause." But beneath all other expressions
-and differences of expression I have always
-seen one reigning look as plainly as though it
-were printed in enormous letters on a banner
-flying over their heads:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"Strictly Monogamous Women."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At such times I have felt a wild desire, when
-I should hear of the next parade, to organise
-a company of unenthralled young girls who
-with unfettered natures and unfettered
-features should tramp up the Avenue under their
-own colours. If the women before them—those
-loyal ones—would actually carry, as
-they should, a banner with the legend I have
-described, then my company of girls should
-unfurl to the breeze their flag with the truth
-blazoned on it:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"Not Necessarily Monogamous!"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The honest human crowd, watching and
-applauding us, would pack the Avenue from
-sidewalks to roofs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Between you and me everything seems to
-be summed up in one difference: all my life
-I have wanted to go barefoot and all your life,
-no matter what the weather, you have been
-solicitous to put on goloshes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My very nature is rooted in rebellion that
-in a world alive and running over with
-irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to
-find her chief happiness in just one! The
-heart going out to so many in succession, and
-the hand held by one; year after year your
-hand held by the first man who impulsively
-got possession of it. Every instinct of my
-nature would be to jerk my hand away and
-be free! To give it again and again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This subject weighs crushingly on me as I
-struggle with this letter because I have
-tidings for you about myself. I am to write
-words which I have long doubted I should
-ever write, life's most iron-bound words.
-Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at
-last. Of course it is Beverley. Not without
-waverings, not without misgivings. But I'd
-feel those, be the man whoever he might.
-Why I feel thus I do not know, but I know I
-feel. I tell you this first because it was you
-who brought Beverley and me together, who
-have always believed in his career. (Though
-I think that of late you have believed more
-in him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning
-to believe in his career. He has lately
-ascertained that his work is making a splendid
-impression in England. If he succeeds in
-England, he will succeed in this country. He has
-received an invitation to visit some delightful
-and very influential people in England and
-"to bring me along!" Think of anybody
-bringing <i>me</i> along! If we should be
-entertained by these people [they are the
-Blackthornes], such is English social life, that we
-should also get to know the white Thornes
-and the red Thornes—the whole social forest.
-The iron rule of my childhood was economy;
-and the influence of that iron rule over me is
-inexorable still: I cannot even contemplate
-such prodigal wastage in life as not to accept
-this invitation and gather in its wealth of
-consequences.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-More news of me, very, very important: <i>at
-last</i> I have made the acquaintance of George
-Marigold. I have become one of his patients.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from
-him. You need not return it. I shall not
-answer it. I shall leave things to his imagination
-and his imagination will give him no rest.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If Ben hurled at <i>you</i> a jealous letter about
-Dr. Mullen, you would immediately write to
-remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule
-Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's
-eyes. That is, you would do an abominable
-thing, never doubting that Ben would admire
-you the more. And you would be right; for
-as Ben observed you tear Dr. Mullen to
-pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back
-in his chair and chuckle within himself:
-"Glorious, staunch old Polly!"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And what you would do in this instance you
-will do all your life: you will practise disloyalty
-to every other human being, as in this letter
-you have practised it with me, for the sake
-of loyalty to Ben: your most pronounced,
-most horrible trait.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 7.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR TILLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I return Beverley's letter. Without comment,
-since I did not read it. You know how
-I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him.
-I have a feeling for him unlike that for any
-other human being, not even Ben; I look upon
-him as set apart and sacred because he has
-genius and belongs to the world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As for his faults, those that I have not
-already noticed I prefer to find out for
-myself. I have never cared to discover any
-human being's failings through a third person.
-Instead of getting acquainted with the
-pardonable traits of the abused, I might really
-be introduced to the <i>abominable traits of the
-abuser</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>Once more</i>, you think you are going to marry
-Beverley! I shall reserve my congratulations
-for the <i>event itself</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thank you for surrendering your claim on
-my friendship and society last night. Ben
-and I had a most satisfactory evening, and
-when not suffocating we murmured "I do"
-to our hearts' content.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Next time, should your visits clash, I'll
-push <i>him</i> out. Yet I feel in honour bound to
-say that this is only my present state of mind.
-I might weaken at the last moment—even in
-the Franklin Flats.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As to some things in your letter, I have long
-since learned not to bestow too much
-attention upon anything you say. You court a
-kind of irresponsibility in language. With
-your inborn and over-indulged willfulness you
-love to break through the actual and to revel
-in the imaginary. I have become rather used
-to this as one of your growing traits and I am
-therefore not surprised that in this letter you
-say things which, if seriously spoken, would
-insult your sex and would make them recoil
-from you—or make them wish to burn you at
-the stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue
-with your company of girls in that kind of
-procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue:
-you will be tramping through the slums where
-you belong.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All this, I repeat, is merely your way—to
-take things out in talking. But we can make
-words our playthings in life's shallows until
-words wreck us as their playthings in life's
-deeps.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Still, in return for your compliments to me,
-<i>which, of course, you really mean</i>, I paid you
-one the other night when thinking of you
-quite by myself. It was this: nature seems
-to leave something out of each of us, but we
-presently discover that she perversely put it
-where it does not belong.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What she left out of you, my dear, was the
-domestic tea-kettle. There isn't even any
-place for one. But she made up for lack of
-the kettle <i>by rather overdoing the stove</i>!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Your <i>discreet</i> friend,<br />
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br />
- June 7, 1900.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-GENTLEMEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin
-Doolittle, has suggested your firm as reliable
-agents to carry out an important commission,
-which I herewith describe:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire
-you to make a collection of these ferns and to
-ship them, expenses prepaid, to Edward
-Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood,
-Warwickshire, England. The cost is not to
-exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish you
-the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid
-unnecessary correspondence, I herewith enclose,
-payable to your order, my check for that
-amount.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating
-whether you will undertake this commission
-and see it through?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Louisville, Ky.,<br />
- June 10, 1900.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your valued letter with check for $25
-received. We handle most of the ferns on the
-list, and know the others and can easily get
-them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You may rely upon your valued order
-receiving the best attention. Thanking you for
-the same,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Yours very truly,<br />
- PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br />
- June 15, 1910.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your second letter came into the port of
-my life like an argosy from a rich land. I
-think you must have sent it with some
-remembrance of your own youth, or out of your
-mature knowledge of youth itself; how too
-often it walks the shore of its rocky world,
-cutting its bare feet on sharp stones, as it
-strains its eyes toward things far beyond its
-horizon but not beyond its faith and hope.
-Some day its ship comes in and it sets sail
-toward the distant ideal. How much the opening
-of the door of your friendship, of your life,
-means to me! A new consecration envelops
-the world that I am to be the guest of a great
-man. If words do not say more, it is because
-words say so little.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Delay has been unavoidable in any mere
-formal acknowledgment of your letter. You
-spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My
-silence has been due to the arrangement of
-hinges for the shipment of the ferns. I
-wished to insure their safe transoceanic
-passage and some inquiries had to be made in
-Kentucky.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You may rely upon it that the matter will
-receive the best attention. In good time the
-ferns, having reached the end of their journey,
-will find themselves put down in your garden
-as helpless immigrants. From what outlook
-I can obtain upon the scene of their reception,
-they should lack only hands to reach
-confidingly to you and lack only feet to run with
-all their might away from Hodge.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I acknowledge—with the utmost thanks—the
-unusual and beautiful courtesy of
-Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife,
-if I have one, and to me. It is the dilemma
-of my life, at the age of twenty-seven, to be
-obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands
-exists, but that nevertheless there is no
-such person.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Can you imagine a man's stretching out his
-hand to pluck a peach and just before he
-touched the peach, finding only the bough of
-the tree? Then, as from disappointment he
-was about to break off the offensive bough,
-seeing again the dangling peach? Can you
-imagine this situation to be of long
-continuance, during which he could neither take
-hold of the peach nor let go of the tree—nor
-go away? If you can, you will understand
-what I mean when I say that my bride
-persists in remaining unwed and I persist in
-wooing. I do not know why; she protests
-that she does not know; but we do know that
-life is short, love shorter, that time flies, and
-we are not husband and wife.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If she remains undecided when Summer
-returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne and you will
-let me come alone.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thus I can thank you with certainty for
-one with the hope that I may yet thank you
-for two.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Sincerely yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-P.S.—Can you pardon the informality of
-a postscript?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy
-situation, marriage is denied me on account
-of the whole unhappy history of
-woman—which is pretty hard. But a good many
-American ladies—the one I woo among them—are
-indignant just now that they are being
-crowded out of their destinies by husbands—or
-even possibly by bachelors. These ladies
-deliver lectures to one another with discontented
-eloquence and rouse their auditresses
-to feministic frenzy by reminding them that
-for ages woman has walked in the shadow of
-man and that the time has come for the worm
-[the woman] to turn on the shadow or to
-crawl out of it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly
-say that the only two shadows I could ever
-think of casting on the woman I married
-would be that of my umbrella whenever it
-rained, and that of her parasol whenever the
-sun shone. But I do maintain that if there
-is not enough sunshine for the men and women
-in the world, if there has to be some casting
-of shadows in the competition and the crowding,
-I do maintain that the casting of the
-shadow would better be left to the man. He
-has had long training, terrific experience, in
-this mortal business of casting the shadow,
-has learned how to moderate it and to hold
-it steady! The woman at least knows where
-it is to be found, should she wish to avail
-herself of it. But what would be the state of a
-man in his need of his spouse's penumbra?
-He would be out of breath with running to
-keep up with the penumbra or to find where
-it was for the time being!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have seen some of these husbands who
-live—or have gradually died out—in the
-shadow of their wives; they are nature's
-subdued farewell to men and gentlemen.
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap01c"></a></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 16.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A remarkable thing has lately happened to
-me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One of my Kentucky novels, upon being
-republished in London some months ago,
-fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer.
-This critic's praise later made its way to the
-stately library of Edward Blackthorne. What
-especially induced the latter to read the book,
-I infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer
-from my description of a woodland scene with
-ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens,
-is himself interested in ferns. He consequently
-wrote to some other English authors
-and critics, calling attention to my work, and
-he sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns
-for his garden.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This recognition in England hilariously
-affected my friends over here. Tilly, whose
-mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair
-of golden balances for weighing delight against
-delight (always her most vital affair), when
-this honour for me fell into the scales, found
-them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as
-I have often thought, that she has long been
-holding on to me merely until she could take
-sure hold of someone else of more splendid
-worldly consequence, she suddenly at least
-tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good,
-solid Polly, wholesome and dependable as a
-well-browned whole-wheat baker's loaf
-weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she
-heard of it, gave me a Bohemian supper in
-her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a
-few undersized people, inasmuch as she and
-Ben, the chief personages of the entertainment,
-took up most of the room. We were
-so packed in, that literally it was a night in
-Bohemia <i>aux sardines</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since the good news from England came
-over, Ben, with his big, round, clean-shaven,
-ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair,
-which makes him look like a thirty-five-year-old
-Bacchus who had never drunk a drop—even
-Ben has beamed on me like a mellower
-orb. He is as ashamed as ever of my books,
-but is beginning to feel proud that so many
-more people are being fooled by them.
-Several times lately I have caught his eyes
-resting on me with an expression of affectionate
-doubt as to whether after all he might be
-mistaken in not having thought more of me.
-But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a
-human refrigerator containing a mental
-thermometer, which rises or falls toward like or
-dislike over a background for book-sales, got
-wind of the matter and promptly invited me
-to one of his thermometric club-lunches—always
-an occasion for acute gastritis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Rumour of my fame has permeated my club,
-where, of course, the leading English reviews
-are kept on file. Some of the members must
-have seen the favourable criticisms. One
-night I became aware as I passed through the
-rooms that club heroes seated here and there
-threw glances of fresh interest toward me and
-exchanged auspicious words. The president—who
-for so long a time has styled himself the
-Nestor of the club that he now believes it is
-the members who do this, the garrulous old
-president, whose weaknesses have made holes
-in him through which his virtues sometimes
-leak out and get away, met me under the
-main chandelier and congratulated me in
-tones so intentionally audible that they
-violated the rules but were not punishable under
-his personal privileges.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a sinister incident: two members
-whom Ben and I wish to kick because they
-have had the audacity to make the acquaintance
-of Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise
-also because they are fashionable charlatans
-in their profession—these two with dark looks
-saw the president congratulate me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-More good fortune yet to come! The ferns
-which I am sending Mr. Blackthorne will
-soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious
-man has many visitors; he leads them,
-if he likes, to his fern bank. "These," he will
-some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson.
-These are from Barbizon in memory of Corot.
-These were sent me by Turgenieff. And
-these," he will add, turning to his guests,
-"these came from a young American novelist,
-a Kentuckian, whose work I greatly respect:
-you must read his books." The guests
-separate to their homes to pursue the subject.
-Spreading fame—may it spread! Last of all,
-the stirring effect of this on me, who now run
-toward glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran
-toward Venus—with both feet and wings.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The ironic fact about all this commotion
-affecting so many solid, substantial people—the
-ironic fact is this:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>There was no woodland scene and there were
-no ferns.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here I reach the curious part of my
-story.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When I was a country lad of some seventeen
-years in Kentucky, one August afternoon
-I was on my way home from a tramp of
-several miles. My course lay through patches
-of woods—last scant vestiges of the primeval
-forest—and through fields garnered of summer
-grain or green with the crops of coming
-autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence
-and crossed an old woods-pasture where stock
-grazed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The August sky was clear and the sun beat
-down with terrific heat. I had been walking
-for hours and parching thirst came upon me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This led me to remember how once these
-rich uplands had been the vast rolling forest
-that stretched from far-off eastern mountains
-to far-off western rivers, and how under its
-shade, out of the rock, everywhere bubbled
-crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams
-diamond bright, drinking places of the bold
-game.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The sun beat down on me in the treeless
-open field. My feet struck into a path. It,
-too, became a reminder: it had once been a
-trail of the wild animals of that verdurous
-wilderness. I followed its windings—a sort of
-gully—down a long, gentle slope. The
-windings had no meaning now: the path could
-better have been straight; it was devious
-because the feet that first marked it off had
-threaded their way crookedly hither and
-thither past the thick-set trees.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I reached the spring—a dry spot under the
-hot sun; no tree overshadowing it, no vegetation
-around it, not a blade of grass; only dust
-in which were footprints of the stock which
-could not break the habit of coming to it but
-quenched their thirst elsewhere. The bulged
-front of some limestone rock showed where
-the ancient mouth of the spring had been.
-Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a
-few clods. Hovering over these, rising and
-sinking, a little quivering jet of gold, a flock
-of butterflies. The grey stalk of a single dead
-weed projected across the choked orifice of
-the fountain and one long, brown grasshopper—spirit
-of summer dryness—had crawled out
-to the edge and sat motionless.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A few yards away a young sycamore had
-sprung up from some wind-carried seed. Its
-grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow
-on the dry grass and I went over and lay
-down under it to rest—my eyes fixed on the
-forest ruin.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Years followed with their changes. I being
-in New York with my heart set on building
-whatever share I could of American literature
-upon Kentucky foundations, I at work on a
-novel, remembered that hot August afternoon,
-the dry spring, and in imagination restored
-the scene as it had been in the Kentucky
-of the pioneers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I now await with eagerness all further
-felicities that may originate in a woodland
-scene that did not exist. What else will grow
-for me out of ferns that never grew?
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap02"></a></p>
-
-<h3>
-PART SECOND
-</h3>
-
-<p><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br />
- Warwickshire, England,<br />
- May 1, 1911.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is the first of the faithful leafy May
-again. I sit at my windows as on this day a
-year ago and look out with thankfulness upon
-what a man may call the honour of the
-vegetable world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of
-yours or by some books—for I believe I read
-more than one of them—I, betrayed by the
-phrase that when we touch a book we touch
-a man, overstepped the boundaries of caution
-as to having any dealings with glib, plausible
-strangers and wrote you a letter. I made a
-request of you in that letter. I thought the
-request bore with it a suitable reward: that
-I should be grateful if you would undertake
-to have some ferns sent to me for my collection.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your sleek reply led me still further astray
-and I wrote again. I drew my English cloak
-from my shoulders and spread it on the ground
-for you to step on. I threw open to you the
-doors of my hospitality, good-fellowship.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That was last May. Now it is May again.
-And now I know to a certainty what for
-months I have been coming to realise always
-with deeper shame: that you gave me your
-word and did not keep your word; doubtless
-never meant to keep it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Why, then, write you about this act of
-dishonour now? How justify a letter to a man
-I feel obliged to describe as I describe you?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The reason is this, if you can appreciate
-such a reason. My nature refuses to let go a
-half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an
-abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood
-I came upon a partly chopped-down tree, and
-I must needs go far and fetch an axe and
-finish the job. What I have begun to build I
-must build at till the pattern is wrought out.
-Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the
-stamina of resolution. The upright moral
-skeleton within me would decay and crumble and
-I should sink down and flop like a human frog.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since, then, you dropped the matter in
-your way—without so much as a thought of
-a man's obligation to himself—I dismiss it in
-my way—with the few words necessary to
-enable me to rid my mind of it and of such a
-character.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I wish merely to say, then, that I despise
-as I despise nothing else the ragged edge of a
-man's behaviour. I put your conduct before
-you in this way: do you happen to know of a
-common cabbage in anybody's truck patch?
-Observe that not even a common cabbage
-starts out to do a thing and fails to do it if it
-can. You must have some kind of perception
-of an oak tree. Think what would become of
-human beings in houses if builders were
-deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound oak?
-Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how
-it takes hold and will not be shaken loose by
-the capricious compelling winds. In your
-country have you the plover? Think what
-would be the plover's fate, if it did not steer
-straight through time and space to a distant
-shore. Why, some day pick up merely a
-piece of common quartz. Study its powers
-of crystallisation. And reflect that a man
-ranks high or low in the scale of character
-according to his possession or his lack of the
-powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his
-mind can assume fixity around an idea, if
-they can adjust themselves unalterably about
-a plan, expect something of him. If they run
-through his hours like water, if memory is
-a millstream, if remembrance floats forever
-away, expect nothing.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted
-for themselves the characters of familiar
-plants about them. Do you know what to
-them the fern stood for? The fern stood for
-Fidelity. Those true, constant souls would
-have said that you had been unfaithful even
-with nature's emblems of Fidelity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight
-falls in a white radiance on my plants.
-I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on
-honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a
-certain spot in the garden; I dislike to look
-at it. There is a shadow on the place where
-your books once stood on my library shelves.
-Your specious books!—your cleverly
-manufactured books!—but there are successful
-scamps in every profession.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Cathedral Heights,<br />
- May 10, 1911.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I wish to inform you that I have just
-received from you a letter in which you attack
-my character. I wish in reply further to
-inform you that I have never felt called upon
-to defend my character. Nor will I, even
-with this letter of yours as evidence, attack
-your character.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 13, 1911.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I ask your attention to the enclosed letter
-from Mr. Edward Blackthorne. By way of
-contrast and also of reminder, lest you may
-have forgotten, I send you two other letters
-received from him last year. I shared with
-you at the time the agreeable purport of these
-earlier letters. This last letter came three
-days ago and for three days I have been
-trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write
-to you about it. At last I am able to do so.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has
-never received the ferns. Then where have
-they been all this time? I took it for granted
-that they had been shipped. The order was
-last spring placed with the Louisville firm
-recommended by you. They guaranteed the
-execution of the order. I forwarded to them
-my cheque. They cashed my cheque. The
-voucher was duly returned to me cancelled
-through my bank. I could not suppose they
-would take my cheque unless they had
-shipped the plants. They even wrote me
-again in the Autumn of their own accord,
-stating that the ferns were about to be sent
-on—Autumn being the most favourable season.
-Then where are the ferns?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I felt so sure of their having reached
-Mr. Blackthorne that I harboured a certain
-grievance and confess that I tried to make generous
-allowance for him as a genius in his never
-having acknowledged their arrival.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an
-immediate explanation. As soon as they reply
-I shall let you hear further. The fault may
-be with them; in the slipshod Southern way
-they may have been negligent. My cheque
-may even have gone as a bridal present to
-some junior member of the firm or to help
-pay the funeral expenses of the senior member.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is trouble somewhere behind and I
-think there is trouble ahead.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine
-ladies; but if some lady will kindly
-lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit
-that I have it and on the strength of it—or
-the weakness—declare my belief that the
-mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some
-curious and funny things.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter:
-after these days of turbulence, I have come to
-see my way clear to interpret it thus: a great
-man, holding a great place in the world,
-offered his best to a stranger and the stranger,
-as the great man believes, turned his back on
-it. That is the grievance, the insult. If
-anything could be worse, it is my seeming
-discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the
-invitation came also from her. In a word, here
-is a genius who strove to advance my work
-and me, and he feels himself outraged in his
-kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and
-his family—in all his best.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But of course that is the hardest of all
-human things to stand. Men who have
-treated each other but fairly well or even
-badly in ordinary matters often in time
-become friends. But who of us ever forgives
-the person that slights our best? Out of a
-rebuff like that arises such life-long
-unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ
-itself doubtless for this very reason took pains
-to issue its warning—no pearls before swine!
-And perhaps of all known pearls a great native
-British pearl is the most prized by its British
-possessor!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's
-best has been his worst: if I did not merit his
-best, I deserve his worst; hence his last letter.
-God have mercy on the man who deserved
-that letter! You will have observed that his
-leading trait as revealed in all his letters is
-enormous self-love. That's because he is a
-genius. Genius <i>has</i> to have enormous
-self-love. Beware the person who has none!
-Without self-love no one ever wins any other's
-love.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thus the mighty English archer with his
-mighty bow shot his mighty arrow—but at
-an innocent person.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Still the arrow of this letter, though it
-misses me, kills my plans. The first trouble
-will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally
-fixed for June, and our plans embraced a
-wedding journey to England and the acceptance
-of the invitation of the Blackthornes.
-The prospect of this wonderful English
-summer—I might as well admit it—was one thing
-that finally steadied all her wavering as to
-marriage.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes,
-no English celebrities to greet us as American
-celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no lawns,
-no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely
-two unknown, impoverished young Yankee
-tourists, trying to get out of chilly England
-what can be gotten by anybody with a few,
-a very few, dollars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Tilly dreads disappointment as she
-dreads disease. To her disappointment is a
-disease in the character of the person who
-inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to
-get you to read one of Balzac's masterpieces,
-<i>The Magic Skin</i>. I told you enough about it
-to enable you to understand what I now say:
-that ever since I became engaged to Tilly I
-have been to her as a magic skin which, as
-she cautiously watches it, has always shrunk
-a little whenever I have encountered a defeat
-or brought her a disappointment. No later
-success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the
-shrunken skin: it remains shrunken where
-each latest disappointment has left it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now when I tell her of my downfall and the
-collapse of the gorgeous summer plans!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY<br />
- (the Expanding Scamp and the<br />
- Shrinking Skin).<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 14th.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have duly pondered the letters you send.
-</p>
-
-<p>
- "Fie, fee, fo, fum,<br />
- I smell the blood of an Englishman!"<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents
-from him in my possession. And suppose
-you send me all later letters, whether
-from him or from anyone else, that bear on
-this matter. It begins to grow interesting
-and I believe it will bear watching. Make me,
-then, as your lawyer, the custodian of all
-pertinent and impertinent papers. They can go
-into the locker where I keep your immortal
-but impecunious Will. Some day I might
-have to appear in court, I with my shovel and
-five senses and no imagination, to plead <i>une
-cause célèbre</i> (a little more of my scant
-intimate French).
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The explanation I give of this gratuitously
-insulting letter is that at last you have run
-into a hostile human imagination in the
-person of an old literary polecat, an aged
-book-skunk. Of course if I could decorate my style
-after the manner of your highly creative
-gentlemen, I might say that you had unwarily
-crossed the nocturnal path of his touchy
-moonlit mephitic highness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am not surprised, of course, that this
-letter has caused you to think still more
-highly of its writer. I tell you that is your
-profession—to tinker—to turn reality into
-something better than reality.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Some day I expect to see you emerge from
-your shop with a fish story. Intending buyers
-will find that you have entered deeply into
-the ideals and difficulties of the man-eating
-shark: how he could not swim freely for
-whales in his track and could not breathe
-freely for minnows in his mouth; how he got
-pinched from behind by the malice of the
-lobster and got shocked on each side by the
-eccentricities of the eel. The other fish did
-not appreciate him and he grew embittered—and
-then only began to bite. You will make
-over the actual shark and exhibit him to your
-reader as the ideal shark—a kind of beloved
-disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Anything imaginative that you might make
-out of a shark would be a minor achievement
-compared with what you have done for this
-Englishman. Might the day come, the
-avenging day, when Benjamin Doolittle could get
-a chance to write him just one letter! May
-the god of battles somehow bring about a
-meeting between the middle-aged land-turtle
-and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars
-somebody's fur will have to fly and it will
-not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You speak of a trouble that looms up in
-your love affair: let it loom. The nearer it
-looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly
-warned you that you have bound your life
-and happiness to the wrong person, and the
-person is constantly becoming worse.
-Detach your apparatus of dreams at last from
-her. Take off your glorious rainbow world-goggles
-and see the truth before it is too late.
-Do not fail, unless you object, to send me
-all letters incoming about the ferns—those
-now celebrated bushes.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 13, 1911.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We acknowledge receipt of your letter of
-May 10 relative to an order for ferns.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is decidedly rough. The senior member
-of our firm who formerly had charge of this
-branch of our business has been seriously ill
-for several months, and it was only after we
-had communicated with him at home in bed
-that we were able to extract from him
-anything at all concerning your esteemed order.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He informs us that he turned the order
-over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce, native fern
-collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that
-they would gather the ferns and forward them
-to the designated address. He likewise
-informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns
-& Bruce, as we know only too well, has long
-been indebted to this firm for a considerable
-amount, he calculated that they would willingly
-ship the ferns in partial liquidation of
-our old claims.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It seems, as he tells us, that they did
-actually gather the ferns and get them ready
-for shipment, but at the last minute changed
-their mind and called on our firm for
-payment. There the matter was unexpectedly
-dropped owing to the sudden illness of the
-aforesaid member of our house, and we knew
-nothing at all of what had transpired until
-your letter led us to obtain from him at his
-bedside the statements above detailed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An additional embarrassment to the unusually
-prosperous course of our business was
-occasioned by the marriage of a junior member
-of the firm and his consequent absence for a
-considerable time, which resulted in an
-augmentation of the expenses of our establishment
-and an unfortunate diminution of our
-profits.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In view of the illness of the senior member
-of our house and in view of the marriage of a
-junior member and in view of the losses and
-expenses consequent thereon, and in view of
-the subsequent withdrawal of both from
-active participation in the conduct of the
-affairs of our firm, and in view also of a
-disagreement which arose between both members
-and the other members as to the financial
-basis of a settlement on which the withdrawal
-could take place, our affairs have of necessity
-been thrown into court in litigation and are
-still in litigation up to this date.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Regretting that you should have been
-seemingly inconvenienced in the slightest
-degree by the apparent neglect of a former
-member of our firm, we desire to add that as
-soon as matters can be taken out of court our
-firm will be reorganised and that we shall
-continue to give, as heretofore, the most
-scrupulous attention to all orders received.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But we repeat that your letter is pretty
-rough.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Dunkirk, Tenn.,<br />
- May 20, 1911.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds
-gave us the order for the ferns. Owing to
-extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered
-earlier than usual and it was unsafe to ship
-at that time; in the Winter the weather was
-so severe that even in February we were
-unable to make any digging, as the frost had
-not disappeared. When at last we got the
-ferns ready, we called on them for payment
-and they wouldn't pay. Phillips & Faulds
-are not good paying bills and we could not
-put ourselves to expense filling their new
-order for ferns, not wishing to take more
-risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid,
-and could not afford to ship more. proved
-very unsatisfactory and had to drop them
-entirely.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Are already out of pocket the cost of the
-ferns, worthless to us when Phillips & Faulds
-dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we
-owed them because they won't pay their bills.
-If you do not wish to have any further
-dealings with them you might write to Noah
-Chamberlain at Seminole, North Carolina,
-just over the state line, not far from here, an
-authority on American ferns. We have
-sometimes collected rare ferns for him to
-ship to England and other European
-countries. Vouch for him as an honest man.
-Always paid his bills, old accounts against
-Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them
-entirely.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BURNS & BRUCE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 24.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You requested me to send you for possible
-future reference all incoming letters upon the
-subject of the ferns. Here are two more that
-have just fluttered down from the blue
-heaven of the unexpected or been thrust up
-from the lower regions through a crack in
-the earth's surface.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling
-eloquence of Messrs. Phillips & Faulds. When
-the eloquence has ceased to ripple and settles
-down to stay, their letter has the cold purity
-of a whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence.
-They and another firm of florists have a
-law-suit as to which owes the other, and they
-meantime compel me, an innocent bystander,
-to deliver to them my pocketbook.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Will you please immediately bring suit
-against Phillips & Faulds on behalf of my
-valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable
-indignation? Bring suit against and bring
-your boot against them if you can. My
-ducats! Have my ducats out of them or
-their peace by day and night.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other letter seems of an unhewn
-probity that wins my confidence. That is to
-say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure
-me that I ought to believe, and with all my
-heart I do now believe, in the existence, just
-over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of
-good character and a business head. Thus I
-now press on over the Tennessee state line
-into North Carolina.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne;
-more than ever they must go to him
-now. Not the entire British army drawn up
-on the white cliffs of Dover could keep me
-from landing them on the British Isle. Even
-if I had to cross over to England, travel to
-his home, put the ferns down before him or
-throw them at his head and walk out of his
-house without a word.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I told you I had a borrowed premonition
-that there would be trouble ahead: now it is
-not a premonition, it is my belief and terror.
-I have grown to stand in dread of all florists,
-and I approach this third one with my hat in
-my hand (also with my other hand on my
-pocketbook).
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br />
- May 25, 1911.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You have been recommended to me by
-Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk,
-Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied
-upon to keep his word and to carry out his
-business obligations.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Accepting at its face value their high
-testimonial as to your trustworthiness, I desire
-to place with you the following order:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my
-request, have forwarded to you a list of rare
-Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these
-ferns and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne,
-Esq., King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire,
-England. As a guaranty of good faith
-on my part, I enclose in payment my check
-for twenty-five dollars. Will you have the
-kindness to let me know at once whether you
-will undertake this commission and give it
-the strictest attention?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- May 29.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have received your letter with your check
-in it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You are the first person that ever offered
-me money as a florist. I am not a florist, if
-I must take time to inform you. I had
-supposed it to be generally known throughout
-the United States and in Europe that I am
-professor of botany in this college, and have
-been for the past fifteen years. If Burns &
-Bruce really told you I am a florist—and I
-doubt it—they must be greater ignoramuses
-than I took them to be. I always knew that
-they did not have much sense, but I thought
-they had a little. It is true that they have
-at different times gathered specimens of ferns
-for me, and more than once have shipped
-them to Europe. But I never imagined they
-were fools enough to think this made me a
-florist. My collection of ferns embraces dried
-specimens for study in my classrooms and
-specimens growing on the college grounds.
-The ferns I have shipped to Europe have
-been sent to friends and correspondents. The
-President of the Royal Botanical Society of
-Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I
-have sent him some and I have also sent some
-to friends in Norway and Sweden and to
-other scientific students of botany.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It only shows that your next-door neighbour
-may know nothing about you, especially
-if you are a little over your neighbour's head.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My daughter, who is my secretary, will
-return your check, but I thought I had better
-write and tell you myself that I am not a
-florist.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Yours truly,<br />
- NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- May 29.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I can but express my intense indignation,
-as Professor Chamberlain's only daughter,
-that you should send a sum of money to my
-distinguished father to hire his services as a
-nurseryman. I had supposed that my father
-was known to the entire intelligent American
-public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked
-with such men as Dana and Gray and
-Alexander von Humboldt.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-People of our means and social position in
-the South do not peddle bulbs. We do not
-reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn
-our bread by making funeral wreaths and
-crosses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You must be some kind of nonentity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your cheque is pinned to this letter.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 3.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am deeply mortified at having believed
-Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be well-informed
-and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that
-it is no longer safe for me to believe
-anybody—not about nurserymen. I am not sure now
-that I should believe you. You say you are a
-famous botanist, but you may be merely a
-famous liar, known as such to various learned
-bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is
-necessary, and you must admit that your
-letter does not furnish me with that proof.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Still I am going to believe you and I renew
-the assurance of my mortification that I have
-innocently caused you the chagrin of
-discovering that you are not so well known, at
-least in this country, as you supposed. I
-suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do;
-it is the tie that binds: blest be the tie.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I shall be extremely obliged if you will
-have the kindness to return to me the list of
-ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns &
-Bruce, and for that purpose you will please
-to find enclosed an envelope addressed and
-stamped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I acknowledge the return of my cheque,
-which occasions me some surprise and not a
-little pleasure.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Allow me once more to regret that through
-my incurable habit of believing strangers,
-believing everybody, I was misled into taking
-the lower view of you as a florist instead of
-the higher view as a botanist. But you must
-admit that I was right in classification and
-wrong only in elevation.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely).<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 8.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I know nothing about any list of ferns.
-Stop writing to me.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- NOAH CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 8.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is excruciating the way you continue to
-persecute my great father. What is wrong
-with you? What started you to begin on us
-in this way? We never heard of <i>you</i>. Would
-you let my dear father alone?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He is a very deep student and it is intolerable
-for me to see his priceless attention
-drawn from his work at critical moments
-when he might be on the point of making
-profound discoveries. My father is a very
-absent-minded man, as great scholars usually
-are, and when he is interrupted he may even
-forget what he has just been thinking about.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your letter was a very serious shock to
-him, and after reading it he could not even
-drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham.
-Time and again he put his cup down and said
-to me in a trembling voice: "Think of his
-calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up
-from the table without eating anything and
-left the room. He turned at the door and
-said to me, with a confused expression: "I
-<i>may</i>, once in my life—but <i>he</i> didn't know
-anything about <i>that</i>."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He shut his door and stayed in his library
-all evening, thinking without nourishment.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What a viper you are to call my great father
-a liar.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 12.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I knew I was in for it! I send another
-installment of incredible letters from
-unbelievable people.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In my wanderings over the earth after the
-ferns I have innocently brought my foot
-against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called
-the head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist,
-and the whole hill is frantic with fury.
-As far as heard from, there are only two ants
-in the hill, but the two make a lively many
-in their letters. It's a Southern vendetta
-and my end may draw nigh.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly
-is at hand. She has been out of town for a
-house-party somewhere and is to return
-to-morrow. When Tilly came to New York a
-few years ago she had not an acquaintance;
-now I marvel at the world of people she knows.
-It is the result of her never declining an
-invitation. Once I derided her about this, and
-with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed
-the reason: that no one ever knew what an
-acquaintanceship might lead to. This
-principle, or lack of principle, has led her far.
-And wherever she goes, she is welcomed afterwards.
-It is her mystery, her charm. I often
-ask myself what is her charm. At least her
-charm, as all charm, is victory. You are
-defeated by her, chained and dragged along.
-Of course, I expect all this to be reversed
-after Tilly marries me. Then I am to have
-my turn—she is to be led around, dragged
-helpless by <i>my</i> charm. Magnificent outlook!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To-morrow she is to return, and I shall
-have to tell her that it is all over—our
-wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the
-whole vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud,
-carrying with it the bright raindrops of her
-hopes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have never, by the way, mentioned to
-Tilly this matter of the ferns. My first idea
-was to surprise her: as some day we strolled
-through the Blackthorne garden he would
-point to the Kentucky specimens flourishing
-there in honour of me. I have always observed
-that any unexpected pleasure flushes
-her face with a new light, with an effulgence
-of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment
-makes her suddenly look old and rather ugly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was the first reason. Now I do not
-intend to tell her at all. Disappointment will
-bring out her demand to know why she is
-disappointed—naturally. But how am I to tell
-on the threshold of marriage that it is all due
-to a misunderstanding about a handful of
-ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would
-never believe me—naturally. She would
-infer that I was keeping back the real reason,
-as being too serious to be told.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here, then, I am. But where am I?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY (complete and final<br />
- disappearance of the Magic Skin).<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
-<i>June 13.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly
-about the ferns. Here I come in: there must
-always be things that a man must refuse to
-tell a woman. As soon as he tells her everything,
-she puts her foot on his neck. I have
-always refused even to tell Polly some things,
-not that they might not be told, but that
-Polly must not be told them; not for the
-things' sake, but for Polly's good—and for a
-man's peaceful control of his own life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For whatever else a woman marries in a
-man, one thing in him she must marry: a rock.
-Times will come when she will storm and rage
-around that rock; but the storms cannot last
-forever, and when they are over, the rock will
-be there. By degrees there will be less storm.
-Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take
-possession of my whole life; to enter into all
-my affairs. I am to her a house, no closet of
-which must remain locked. Thus there are
-certain closets which she repeatedly tries to
-open. I can tell by her very expression when
-she is going to try once more. Were they
-opened, she would not find much; but it is
-much to be guarded that she shall not open
-them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly
-as fact and too important as principle.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me
-anything about the ferns! When I am with
-Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of
-the fields.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Let me hear at once how the trouble turns
-out with Tilly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I must not close without making a profound
-obeisance to your new acquaintances—the
-Chamberlains.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 15.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Something extremely disagreeable has come
-up between Beverley and me. He tells me
-we're not to go to England on our wedding
-journey as anyone's guests: we travel as
-ordinary American tourists unknown to all
-England.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You can well understand what this means
-to me: you have watched all along how I have
-pinched on my small income to get ready for
-this beautiful summer. There has been a
-quarrel of some kind between Mr. Blackthorne
-and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me
-the nature of the quarrel. I insisted that it
-was my right to know and he insisted that it
-is a man's affair with another man and not
-any woman's business. Think of a woman
-marrying a man who lays it down as a law
-that his affairs are none of her business!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I gave Beverley to understand that our
-marriage was deferred for the summer. He
-broke off the engagement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I had not meant to tell you anything, since
-I am coming to-night. I have merely wished
-you to understand how truly anxious I am to
-see you, even forgetting your last letter—no,
-not forgetting it, but overlooking it. Remember
-you <i>then</i> broke an appointment with me;
-<i>this</i> time keep your appointment—being loyal!
-The messenger will wait for your reply, stating
-whether the way is clear for me to come.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 15.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR TILLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me
-for to-night, but I have written to excuse
-myself, and I shall be waiting most
-impatiently. The coast will be clear and I hope
-the night will be.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty;
-"the horse-radish" and "the beets" will be
-still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will
-shed its usual ray on our heads. No breeze
-will disturb us, for there will be no fresh air.
-We shall have the long evening to ourselves,
-and you can tell me just how it is that you
-two, <i>not</i> heavy Tilly, <i>not</i> heavy Beverley,
-sat on opposite sides of the room and
-declared to each other:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"I will not."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"I will not."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since I have broken an engagement for
-you, be sure not to let any later temptation
-elsewhere keep you away.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Later in the day]
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 13.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected
-final flare-up. Yesterday he wrote,
-asking me to come up as soon as I was through
-with business. I spent last night with him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We drew our chairs up to his opened window,
-turned out the lights, got our cigars, and
-with our feet on the window-sills and our
-eyes on the stars across the sky talked the
-long, quiet hours through.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He talked, not I. Little could I have said
-to him about the woman who has played fast
-and loose with him while using him for her
-convenience. He made it known at the
-outset that not a word was to be spoken against
-her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He just lay back in his big easy chair,
-with his feet on his window-sill and his eyes
-on the stars, and built up his defence of Tilly.
-All night he worked to repair wreckage.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As the grey of morning crept over the city
-his work was well done: Tilly was restored to
-more than she had ever been. Silence fell
-upon him as he sat there with his eyes on the
-reddening east; and it may be that he saw
-her—now about to leave him at last—as some
-white, angelic shape growing fainter and
-fainter as it vanished in the flush of a new
-day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You know what I think of this Tilly-angel.
-If there were any wings anywhere around, it
-was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar
-with an early start to bring down some other
-victim: the angel-aeroplane out after more
-prey. I think we both know who the prey
-will be.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The solemn influence of the night has
-rested on me. Were it possible, I should feel
-even a higher respect for Beverley; there is
-something in him that fills me with awe. He
-suffers. He could mend Tilly but he cannot
-mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Their quarrel brings me with an aching
-heart closer to you. I must come to-night.
-The messenger will wait for a word that I
-may. And a sudden strange chill of desolation
-as to life's brittle ties frightens me into
-sending you some roses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your lover through many close and constant years,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Still later in the day]
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 15.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An incredible thing has happened. Ben
-has just written that he wishes to see me
-to-night. Will you, after all, wait until
-to-morrow evening? My dear, I <i>have</i> to ask this
-of you because there is something very
-particular that Ben desires to talk to me about.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>To-morrow night</i>, then, without fail, you
-and I!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
- POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Late at night of the same day]
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 15.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We have talked the matter over and send
-you our conjoined congratulations that your
-engagement is broken off and your immediate
-peril ended. But our immediate caution is
-that the end of the betrothal will not
-necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the
-tempter will at once turn away from you in
-pursuit of another man. She will begin to
-weave her web about <i>him</i>. But if possible
-she will still hold <i>you</i> to that web by a single
-thread. Now, more than ever, you will need
-to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible
-to such a nature as yours.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Not until obliged will she ever let you go
-completely. She hath a devil—perhaps the
-most famous devil in all the world—the love
-devil. And all devils, famous or not famous,
-are poor quitters.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- (Signed)<br />
- POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle.<br />
- BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles.<br />
- (His handwriting; her ideas<br />
- and language.)<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This is the third time within the past
-several months that I have requested you to
-let me have your bill for professional services.
-I shall not suppose that you have relied upon
-my willingness to remain under an obligation
-of this kind; nor do I like to think I have
-counted for so little among your many
-patients that you have not cared whether I
-paid you or not. If your motive has been
-kindness, I must plainly tell you that I do
-not desire such kindness; and if there has
-been no motive at all, but simply indifference,
-I must remind you that this indifference means
-disrespect and that I resent it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The things you have indirectly done for
-me in other ways—the songs, the books and
-magazines, the flowers—these I accept with
-warm responsive hands and a lavish mind.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And with words not yet uttered, perhaps
-never to be uttered.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Yours sincerely,<br />
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<i>June the Seventeenth.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have your bill and I make the due
-remittance with all due thanks.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your note pleasantly reassures me how
-greatly you are obliged that I could put you
-in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins
-about the purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse.
-It was a pleasure; in fact, a matter of
-some pride to do this, and I am delighted that
-they could furnish you a horse you approve.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-While taking my customary walk in the
-Park yesterday morning, I had a chance to
-see you and your new mount making
-acquaintance with one another. I can pay you no
-higher compliment than to say that you ride
-like a Kentuckian.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a
-habit of mine to choose the footways through
-the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn
-to them by my childhood habit and girlish
-love of riding. Even to see from day to day
-what one once had but no longer has is to
-keep alive hope that one may some day have
-it again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You should some time go to Kentucky and
-ride there. My cousins will look to that.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Yours sincerely,<br />
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<i>June the Eighteenth.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I was passing this morning and witnessed
-the accident, and I must express my
-condolences for what might have been and
-congratulations upon what was.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You certainly fell well—not unlike a
-Kentuckian!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I feel sure that my cousins could not have
-known the horse was tricky. Any horse is
-tricky to the end of his days and the end of
-his road. He may not show any tricks at
-home, but becomes tricky in new places.
-(Can this be the reason that he is called the
-most human of beasts?)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly
-to my mind that of late you have expressed
-growing interest in Kentucky. More than
-once, also (since you have begun to visit me),
-you have asked me to tell you about my life
-there. Frankly, this is because I am something
-of a mystery and you would like to
-have the mystery cleared up. You wish to
-find out, without letting me know you are
-finding out, whether there is not something
-<i>wrong</i> about me, some <i>risk</i> for you in visiting
-me. That is because you have never known
-anybody like me. I frighten you because I
-am not afraid of people, not afraid of life.
-You are used to people who are afraid,
-especially to women who are afraid. You
-yourself are horribly afraid of nearly
-everything.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Suppose I do tell you a little about my life,
-though it may not greatly explain why I am
-without fear; still, the land and the people
-might mean something; they ought to mean
-much.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I was born of not very poor and immensely
-respectable parents in a poor and not very
-respectable county of Kentucky. The first
-thing I remember about life, my first social
-consciousness, was the discovery that I was
-entangled in a series of sisters: there were six
-of us. I was as nearly as possible at the
-middle of the procession—with three older
-and two younger, so that I was crowded both
-by what was before and by what was behind.
-I early learned to fight for the present—against
-both the past and the future—learned
-to seize what I could, lest it be seized either
-by hands reaching backward or by hands
-reaching forward. Literally, I opened my
-eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I
-began to practise at home the game of the
-world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Why my mother bore only daughters will
-have to be referred to the new science which
-takes as its field the forces and the mysteries
-that are sovereign between the nuptials and
-the cradle. But the reason, as openly laughed
-about in the family when the family grew old
-enough to laugh, as laughed about in the
-neighbourhood, was this:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Even before marriage my father and my
-mother had waged a violent discussion about
-woman's suffrage. You may not know that
-in Kentucky from the first the cause of female
-suffrage has been upheld by a strong minority
-of strong women, a true pioneer movement
-toward the nation's future now near. It
-seems that my father, who was a brilliant
-lawyer, always browbeat my mother in
-argument, overwhelmed her, crushed her.
-Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly
-rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked
-deep into the coals. But regularly when the
-time came she replied to all his arguments by
-presenting him with another suffragette!
-Throughout her life she declined even to
-bear him a son to continue the argument!
-Her six daughters—she would gladly have had
-twelve if she could—were her triumphant
-squad for the armies of the great rebellion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Does this help to explain me to you?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What next I relate about my early life is
-something that you perhaps have never given
-a thought to—children's pets and playthings:
-it explains a great deal. Have you ever
-thought of a vital difference between country
-children and town children? Country children
-more quickly throw away their dolls, if they
-have them, and attach their sympathies to
-living objects. A child's love of a doll is at
-best a sham: a little master-drama of the
-child's imagination trying to fill two roles—its
-own and the role of something which cannot
-respond. But a child's love of a living
-creature, which it chooses as the object of its
-love and play and protection, is stimulating,
-healthful and kicking with reality: because
-it is vitalised by reciprocity in the playmate,
-now affectionate and now hostile, but always
-representing something intensely alive—which
-is the whole main thing.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We are just beginning to find out that the
-dramas of childhood are the playgrounds of
-life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the
-others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll
-without any return, will cling to a rag husband
-without any return. A child's loyalty to an
-automaton prepares a woman for endurance
-of an automaton. Dolls have been the
-undoing and the death of many wives.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A multitude of dolls would have been needed
-to supply the six destructive little girls of my
-mother's household. We soon broke our
-china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one
-another's. For whatever reason, all lifeless
-pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the
-house and the little scattering herd of us
-turned our restless and insatiate natures loose
-upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted
-nearly everything on the farm. My father
-was a director of the County Fair, and I
-remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we
-roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize
-exhibition of our favourites that year. They
-comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a calf, a
-lamb and a puppy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Sooner or later our living playthings
-outgrew us or died or were sold or made their
-sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we
-disconsolate? Not a bit. Did we go down to
-the branch and gather there under an old
-weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our
-hearts thrived on death and destruction,
-annihilation released us from old ties, change
-gave us another chance, and we provided
-substitutes and continued our devotion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And I think this explains a good deal.
-And these two experiences of my childhood,
-taken together, explain me better than
-anything else I know. Competition first taught
-me to seize what I wanted before anyone else
-could seize it. Natural changes next taught
-me to be prepared at any moment to give
-that up without vain regret and to seize
-something else. Thus I seemed to learn
-life's lesson as I learned to walk: that what
-you love will not last long, and that long
-love is possible only when you love often.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So many women know this; how few admit
-it!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Sincerely yours,<br />
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<i>June the Nineteenth.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go
-away for the summer: first to some friends,
-then further away to other friends, then still
-further away to other friends: a summer
-pageant of brilliant changes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is no reason why I should write to
-you. Your stateroom will be filled with
-flowers; you will have letters and telegrams;
-friends will wave to you from the pier. My
-letter may be lost among the others, but at
-least it will have been written, and writing it
-is its pleasure to me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I was to go to England this summer, was
-to go as a bride. A few nights since I
-decided not to go because I did not approve of
-the bridegroom.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We marvel at life's coincidences: one
-evening, not long ago, while speaking of your
-expected summer in England, you mentioned
-that you planned to make a pilgrimage to see
-Edward Blackthorne. You were to join some
-American friends over there and take them
-with you. That is the coincidence: <i>I</i> was to
-visit the Blackthornes this very summer, not
-as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited
-guest—with the groom whom I have rejected.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is like scattering words before the
-obvious to say that I wish you a pleasant summer.
-Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you,
-some night on the passage across, lean far
-over and look down at the phosphorescent
-couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of
-the deep, remember that the Venus of modern
-life is the American woman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing
-else, brings you home—see you not at all or
-seldom or often?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At least this will remind you that I merely
-say <i>au revoir</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Adrift for the summer rather than be an
-unwilling bride.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<i>June twenty-first.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 21.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since life separated us the other night I
-have not heard from you. I have not
-expected a letter, nor do you expect one from
-me. But I am going away to-morrow for the
-summer and my heart has a few words for
-you which must be spoken.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was not disappointment about the summer
-in England, not even your refusal to
-explain why you disappointed me, that held the
-main reason of my drawing back. I am in the
-mood to-night to tell you some things very
-frankly:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to
-be married and twice as the wedding drew
-near I drew away from it. It is an old, old
-feeling of mine, though I am so young, that
-if married I should not long be happy. Of
-course I should be happy for a while. But
-<i>afterwards</i>! The interminable, intolerable
-<i>afterwards</i>! The same person year in and
-year out—I should be stifled. Each of the
-men to whom I was engaged had given me
-before marriage all that he had to give: the
-rest I did not care for; after marriage with
-either I foresaw only staleness, his limitations,
-monotony.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Believe this, then: there are things in you
-that I cling to, other things in you that do
-not draw me at all. And I cling more to life
-than to you, more than to any one person.
-How can any one person ever be all to me, all
-that I am meant for, and <i>I will live</i>!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Why should we women be forced to spend
-our lives beside the first spring where one
-happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn!
-Why be doomed to die in old age at the same
-spring! With all my soul I believe that the
-world which has slowly thrown off so many
-tyrannies is about to throw off other tyrannies.
-It has been so harsh toward happiness,
-so compassionate toward misery and wrong.
-Yet happiness is life's finest victory: for ages
-we have been trying to defeat our one best
-victory—our natural happiness!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning—then
-to go thirsty for the rest of the long,
-hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet
-at spring after spring—there are so many
-springs! And thirst is so eager for them!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Come to see me in the autumn. For I will
-not, cannot, give you up. And when you
-come, do not seek to renew the engagement.
-Let that go whither it has gone. But come
-to see me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For I love you.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 21.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-POLLY BOLES:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This is good-bye to you for the summer
-and, better than that, it is good-bye to you
-for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth
-that we have long hated each other and have
-used our acquaintanceship and our letters to
-express our hatred? How could there ever
-have been any friendship between you and me?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Let me tell you of the detestable little
-signs that I have noticed in you for years.
-Are you aware that all the time you have
-occupied your apartment, you have never
-changed the arrangement of your furniture?
-As soon as your guests are gone, you push
-every chair where it was before. For years
-your one seat has been the same end of the
-same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted
-your disquietude if any guest happened to
-sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere.
-For years you have worn the same breast-pin,
-though you have several. The idea of your
-being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride
-yourself in such externals of faithfulness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You soul of perfidy!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I leave you undisturbed to innumerable
-appointments with Ben, and with the same
-particular something to talk about, falsest
-woman I have ever known.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the
-fact that you are secretly receiving almost
-constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will
-you tell him? <i>Or shall I?</i>
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap02b"></a></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 23rd.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am worried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I begin to feel doubtful as to what course
-I should pursue with Dr. Claude Mullen.
-Of late he has been coming too often. He
-has been writing to me too often. He appears
-to be losing control of himself. Things cannot
-go on as they are and they must not get worse.
-What I could not foresee is his determination
-to hold <i>me</i> responsible for his being in love
-with me! He insists that <i>I</i> encouraged him
-and am now unfair—<i>me</i> unfair! Of course I
-have <i>never</i> encouraged his visits; out of simple
-goodness of heart I have <i>tolerated</i> them. Now
-the reward of my <i>kindness</i> is that he holds me
-responsible and guilty. He is trying, in other
-words, to take advantage of my <i>sympathy</i> for
-him. I <i>do</i> feel sorry for him!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have not been cruel enough to dismiss
-him. His last letter is enclosed: it will give
-you some idea——!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Can you advise me what to do? I have
-always relied upon <i>your</i> judgment in everything.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Faithfully yours,<br />
- POLLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Penciled in Court Room]
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 24th.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Certainly I can advise you. My advice is:
-tell him to take a cab and drive straight to
-the nearest institution for the weak-minded,
-engage a room, lock himself in and pray God
-to give him some sense. Tell him to stay
-secluded there until that prayer is answered.
-The Almighty himself couldn't answer his
-prayer until after his death, and by that time
-he'd be out of the way anyhow and you
-wouldn't mind.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I return his funeral oration unread, since I
-did not wish to attract attention to myself
-as moved to tears in open court.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Evening of the same day]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This is a night I have long waited for and
-worked for.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You have understood why during these
-years I have never asked you to set a day
-for our marriage. It has been a long, hard
-struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a
-living and a practice and a name. You know
-I have had as my goal not a living for one
-but a living for two—and for more than
-two—for our little ones. When I married you, I
-meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats,
-all flats.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But with these two hands of mine I have
-laid hold of the affairs of this world and
-shaken them until they have heeded me and
-my strength. I have won, I am independent,
-I am my own man and my own master, and
-I am ready to be your husband as through it
-all I have been your lover.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Name the day when I can be both.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave
-this firm and establish my own and I want
-that done first. Some months must yet pass.
-Any day of next Spring, then—so far away
-but nearer than any other Spring during these
-impatient years.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Polly, constant one, I am your constant
-lover,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Roses to you.
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 24.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My heart answers you. It leaps forward
-to the day. I have set the day in my heart
-and sealed it on my lips. Come and break
-that seal. To-night I shall tear two of the
-rosebuds apart and mingle their petals on my
-pillow.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
-<i>June 26.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It occurs to me that our engagement might
-furnish you the means of getting rid of your
-prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to
-come to see you: tell him you have some joyful
-news that must be imparted at once. When
-he arrives announce to him that you have
-named the day of your marriage to me. To
-<i>me</i>, tell him! Then let him take himself off.
-You say he complains that all this is getting
-on his nerves. Anything that could sit on
-his nerves would be a mighty small animal.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 27.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
-<i>June 28.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 14.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I. s. y. s. r. r. (You have long since learned
-what that means.)
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Your man,<br />
- BEN D.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 15.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAREST BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You need not give another thought to
-Dr. Mullen. He does not annoy me any
-more. He can drop finally out of our
-correspondence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Your devoted<br />
- POLLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 16.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIRS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 17.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Awaiting your courteous order, we are
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- JUDD & JUDD.<br />
- Per Q.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO "JUDD & JUDD, PER Q."
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 18.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIRS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- July 18.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 21.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIRS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Please advise me at once whether you will
-do this.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 22.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- JUDD & JUDD.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 23.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIRS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have your letter and I take the greatest
-possible pleasure in enclosing my cheque to
-cover the additional expense, as you kindly
-suggest.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>October 30.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They are gone! They're off! They have
-weighed anchor! They have sailed; they have
-departed!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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:
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-<i>Le Génie Oblige</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-ANNE RAEBURN TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE IN ITALY
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br />
- Warwickshire, England,<br />
- November 30.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"The <i>Scolopendium vulgare</i> put up two new
-shoots after he went away, mum. Bishop's
-crooks he calls 'em, mum."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I replied that I was glad to hear the ferns
-were thrifty. He, jerking his thumb toward
-the fern bank, added still more resentfully:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"The <i>Adiantum nigrum</i> put up some, mum."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I replied that I should announce to you the
-good news.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 that
-<i>he</i> did 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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am, dear Mr. Blackthorne,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Respectfully yours,<br />
- ANNE RAEBURN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>December 27.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- JUDD & JUDD.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>December 30.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIRS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>December 28.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>The ferns have come back to me from England!</i>
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>December 29.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-<i>J'y suis, J'y reste</i>. (French forever! <i>Boutez
-en avant, mon</i> French!)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Our fee is $50; hadn't you better stop at
-$50 and think yourself lucky? <i>Monsieur a
-bien tombé</i>.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Any more fern letters? Don't forget them.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>December 30.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- December 25.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I shall always remember you for having
-been instrumental in his death. This is the
-kind of Christmas Day you have presented
-to me.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- January 7.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Necessity knows no law, and I have become
-a sad victim of necessity, hence this
-appeal to you.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Hoping for an early reply,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- A proud daughter of the Southland,<br />
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>January 10.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The tumult in my bones was a well-advised
-monitor. More fern letters <i>were</i> on the way:
-I enclose them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One thing I cannot get out of <i>my</i> head:
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>January 11.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The letters are filed away with their
-predecessors.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If I am any judge of human nature, you
-will receive others from this daughter of the
-South in the same strain.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I wish these gentlemen would study the
-contrariwise case of Clara: she would convert
-a drink of water into a mouthful of sawdust.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-RUFUS KENT TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>The Great Dipper,<br />
- January 12.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.) ...
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I now come to the subject of your letter,
-and this is what I have ascertained:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"That," he said, "was once reserved for
-some ferns which your young American
-novelist promised to send me."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The whole company gathered curiously
-about the spot and all naturally asked, "But
-where are the ferns?"
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Blackthorne without a word and with
-an air of regret that even so little had escaped
-him, led the party further away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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. I <i>will</i> add, 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....
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Faithfully yours,<br />
- RUFUS KENT.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap03"></a></p>
-
-<h2>
-PART THIRD
-</h2>
-
-<p><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- May 1, 1912</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Respectfully yours,<br />
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 10, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- A proud daughter of the Southland,<br />
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 17, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have received your cheque and I think
-what you have done is most appropriate.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If my grey-haired father, who is now beyond
-the blue skies, were only back in North
-Carolina!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- CLARA LOUISE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 21, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Andy Peters is a confirmed rascal.
-I almost feel that I shall have to do
-something desperate if I am to succeed.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 24, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Clara Louise Chamberlain is in New York!
-God Almighty!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 I <i>was</i> in a way
-"instrumental" in bringing about the great
-botanist's demise.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But I can't have that woman as <i>my</i> secretary!
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Let her be <i>your</i> secretary, 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 25, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR MADAM:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 27, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then I asked her to receive the dictation
-of the address, which was as follows:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"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."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This morning she did not come. I called
-up her address; she had left there. Nothing
-was known of her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your obedient counsel and turtle,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 28, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 you <i>can't</i>
-imagine, <i>can't</i> imagine, <i>can't</i> imagine!
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 29, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Your respectful erring servant,<br />
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>May 30, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-POLLY BOLES:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As a sign of my displeasure I carried the
-flowers across the room to the mantelpiece.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I now come to the incident which explains
-why I think my letter should be sent to Ben
-Doolittle.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Act as you think best. And remember,
-please, under what stress of feeling I must be
-to write another letter to you. <i>To you!</i>
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[A second letter enclosed in the preceding one]
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again I leave the matter to Ben and you.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- TILLY SNOWDEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 2, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-TILLY SNOWDEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 their
-<i>backs</i>. If history speaks truly, quite a few
-notorious ones have come to grief—but <i>you</i>
-will understand.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 2, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Are you going to write to me every day
-while I am gone?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- POLLY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 4, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIRS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If the stems of your roses do not happen to
-be long, make them long. (You know the
-wires.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Very truly yours,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 4, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I happen to hold the key to Beverley's
-comic behaviour in Tilly's parlour.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Oh, but why did you go away without
-good-bye?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 5, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR POLLY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I go on where I left off yesterday.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I explained to Beverley, and we went out
-and bought a dictograph, and he concealed
-it where, of course, he could not find it!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I sent Beverley to Brooklyn for the day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But all this is nothing, nothing, nothing!
-I am lost without you.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-POLLY BOLES TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Louisville, Kentucky,<br />
- June 9, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dr. Marigold will want revenge on Beverley,
-and he will have his revenge—in some
-way.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My mother joins me in love to you.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Sincerely yours,<br />
- POLLY BOLES.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>150 Wall Street, New York,<br />
- June 10, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- Edward Blackthorne, Esq.,<br />
- King Alfred's Wood,<br />
- Warwickshire, England.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-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 that
-<i>his</i> duty 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have observed that there is danger in
-many people causing any one person to think
-himself a superior person unless he <i>is</i> a
-superior person. If he really is what is
-thought of him, no harm is done him. But
-if he is widely regarded a superior person
-and is not a superior person, harm may
-result to him. For whenever any person is
-praised beyond his deserts, he is not lifted
-up by such praise any more than the stature
-of a man is increased by thickening the heels
-of his shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to
-be lowered by over-praise. For, prodded by
-adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary
-image and assume, as far as he can, the guise
-of some inferior creature which more
-glaringly expresses what he is—as the peacock,
-the owl, the porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog,
-the ass. I have seen all these. I have
-seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn,
-speechless owl novelist, the fretful porcupine
-novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, the
-ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred
-ass novelist. And many others.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You may begin to wonder why I am led
-into these reflections in this letter. The
-reason is, I have been wondering into what
-kind of inferior creature your fame—your
-over-praise—has lowered <i>you</i>. Frankly, I
-perfectly know; I will not name the animal.
-But I feel sure that he is a highly offensive
-small beast.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If you feel disposed to read further, I shall
-explain.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have in my legal possession three letters
-of yours. They were written to a young
-gentleman whom I have known now for a good many
-years, whose character I know about as well
-as any one man can know another's, and for
-whom increasing knowledge has always led
-me to feel increasing respect. The young
-man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You may now
-realise what I am coming to.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The first of these letters of yours reveals
-you as a stranger seeking the acquaintance
-of Mr. Sands—to a certain limit: you asked
-of him a courtesy and you offered courtesies
-in exchange. That is common enough and
-natural, and fair, and human. But what I
-have noticed is your doing this with the air
-of the superior person. Mr. Sands, being a
-novelist, is of course a superior person.
-Therefore, you felt called upon to introduce
-yourself to him as a <i>more</i> superior person.
-That is, you condescended to be gracious.
-You made it a virtue in you to ask a favour
-of him. You expected him to be delighted
-that you allowed him to serve you.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the second letter you go further. He
-wafted some incense toward you and you
-got on your knees to this incense. You get
-up and offer him more courtesies—all
-courtesies. Because he praised you, you even
-wish him to visit you.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now the third letter. The favour you
-asked of Mr. Sands was that he send you
-some ferns. By no fault of his except too
-much confidence in the agents he employed
-(he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted
-you), by no other fault of his the ferns were
-not sent. You waited, time passed, you
-grew impatient, you grew suspicious of
-Mr. Sands, you felt slighted, you became piqued
-in your vanity, wounded in your self-love,
-you became resentful, you became furious,
-you became revengeful, you became abusive.
-You told him that he had never meant to
-keep his word, that you had kicked his books
-out of your library, that he might profitably
-study the moral sensitiveness of a head of
-cabbage.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-During the summer American tourists
-visited you—pilgrims of your fame. You took
-advantage of their visit to promulgate
-mysteriously your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by
-one explicit word, you understand. Your
-exalted imagination merely lied on him, and
-you entrusted to other imaginations the duty
-of scattering broadcast your noble lie. They
-did this—some of them happening not to be
-friends of Mr. Sands—and as a result of the
-false light you threw upon his character, he
-now in the minds of many persons rests under
-a cloud. And that cloud is never going to be
-dispelled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Enclosed you will please find copies of these
-three letters of yours; would you mind reading
-them over? And you will find also a
-packet of letters which will enable you to
-understand why the ferns never reached you
-and the whole entanglement of the case.
-And finally, you will find enclosed a brief with
-which, were I to appear in Court against you,
-as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up
-to public view as what you are.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I shall merely add that I have often met
-you in the courtroom as the kind of criminal
-who believes without evidence and who
-distrusts without reason; who is, therefore, ready
-to blast a character upon suspicion. If he
-dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence
-against him, he draws upon the dark traits
-of his own nature to furnish the evidence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am, as to you,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Merely,<br />
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br />
- Warwickshire, England,<br />
- June 21, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
- Benjamin Doolittle,<br />
- 150 Wall Street,<br />
- New York City.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You state in your letter, which I have just
-laid down, that you are a stranger to me.
-There is no conceivable reason why I should
-wish to offer you the slightest rudeness—even
-that of crossing your word—yet may I say,
-that I know you perfectly? If you had
-unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels,
-you might have found, scattered here and
-there, everything that you have said in your
-letter, and almost in your very words. That
-is, I have two or three times drawn your
-portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus while
-you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel
-bound to say that you are an old acquaintance
-in nature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You cannot for a moment imagine—however,
-you despise imagination and I withdraw
-the offensive word—you cannot for a moment
-suppose that I can have any motive in being
-discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go on to
-say, but only with your permission, that the
-first time I attempted to sketch you, was in a
-very early piece of work; I was a youthful
-novelist, at the outset of my career. I
-projected a story entitled: "<i>The Married
-Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens.</i>" I feel
-bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly
-remind me of the <i>Sal Blivvens</i> of my story.
-In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was this: as
-twenty-one human shillings he never made an
-exact human guinea—his shillings ran a few
-pence over, or they fell a few pence short.
-That is, Ned never did just enough of
-anything, or said just enough, but either too much
-or too little to suit <i>Sal</i>. He never had just one
-idea about any one thing, but two or three
-ideas; he never felt in just one way about any
-one thing, but had mixed feelings, a variety
-of feelings. He was not a yard measure or
-a pint measure or a pound measure; he overflowed
-or he didn't fill, and any one thing in
-him always ran into other things in him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Being a young novelist I was not satisfied
-to offer <i>Sal</i> to the world on her own account,
-but I must try to make her more credible and
-formidable by following her into the next
-generation, and giving her a son who inherited
-her traits. Thus I had <i>Tommy Blivvens</i>.
-When Tommy was old enough to receive his
-first allowance of Christmas pudding, he
-proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He
-picked out all the raisins and made a little
-pile of them. And made a little separate pile
-of the currants, and another pile of the
-almonds, and another of the citron, or of
-whatever else there was to separate. Then in
-profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile,
-as a philosopher of the sure.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thus—and I insist I mean no disrespect—your
-letter does revive for me a little innocent
-laughter at my early literary vision of a
-human baggage—friend of my youthful days
-and artistic enthusiasm—<i>Sal Blivvens</i>. I
-arranged that when <i>Ned</i> died, his neighbours all
-felt sorry and wished him a green turf for his
-grave. <i>Sal</i>, I felt sure, survived him as one
-who all her life walks past every human heart
-and enters none—being always dead-sure,
-always dead-right; for the human heart
-rejects perfection in any human being.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I recognise you as belonging to the large
-tough family of the human cocksures. <i>Sal
-Blivvens</i> belonged to it—dead-sure,
-dead-right, every time. We have many of the
-cocksures in England, you must have many of
-them in the United States. The cocksures are
-people who have no dim borderland around
-their minds, no twilight between day and
-darkness. They see everything as they see a
-highly coloured rug on a well-lighted floor.
-There is either rug or no rug, either floor or no
-floor. No part of the floor could possibly be
-rug and no part of the rug could possibly be
-floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the natural
-prosecuting attorney of human nature's
-natural misgivings and wiser doubts and nobler
-errors. How the American cocksures of their
-day despised the man Washington, who often
-prayed for guidance; with what contempt
-they blasted the character of your Abraham
-Lincoln, whose patient soul inhabited the
-border of a divine disquietude and whose
-public life was the patient study of hesitation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have taken notice of the peculiarly
-American character of your cocksureness: it
-magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile,
-to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the
-ton. Do you happen to know Michael
-Angelo's <i>Moses</i>? I always think of an American
-cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's
-<i>Moses</i>—colossal law-giver, a hyper-stupendous
-fellow. And I have often thought that a
-regiment of American cocksures would be the
-most terrific spectacle on a battlefield that the
-rest of the human race could ever face. Just
-now it has occurred to me that it was your
-great Emerson who spoke best on the weakness
-of the superlative—the cocksure is the
-human superlative.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As to your letter: You declare you know
-nothing about novels, but your arraignment
-of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure
-that you are perfectly right about me. Your
-arraignment of me is exact. You are
-conscious of no more moral perturbation as to
-justice than exists in a monkey wrench. But
-that is the nature of the cocksure—his
-conclusions have to him the validity of a
-hardware store.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This, however, is nothing. I clear it away
-in order to tell you that I am filled with
-admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and
-of the savage ferocity with which you attack
-me as his enemy. That makes you a friend
-worth having, and I wish you were to be
-numbered among mine; there are none too many
-such in this world. Next, I wish to assure
-you that I have studied your brief against me
-and confess that you have made out the case.
-I fell into a grave mistake, I wronged your
-friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it
-was a poor, sorry, shabby business. I am
-about to write to Mr. Sands. If he is what
-you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive
-me—though you never may. I shall ask him,
-as I could not have asked him before, whether
-he will not come to visit me. My house, my
-hospitality, all that I have and all that I am,
-shall be his. I shall take every step possible
-to undo what I thoughtlessly, impulsively did.
-I shall write to the President of his Club.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One exception is filed to a specification in
-your brief: no such things took place in my
-garden upon the visit of the American
-tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate
-any mysterious hostility to Mr. Sands. You
-tell me that among those tourists were persons
-hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile
-persons who misinterpreted and exaggerated
-whatever took place. You knew these
-persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then
-you accepted their testimony as true—being
-a cocksure.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A final word to you. Your whole character
-and happiness rests upon the belief that
-you see life clearly and judge rightly the
-fellow-beings whom you know. Those <i>you</i>
-doubt ought to be doubted and those <i>you</i>
-trust ought to be trusted! Now I have
-travelled far enough on life's road to have
-passed its many human figures—perhaps all
-the human types that straggle along it in
-their many ways. No figures on that road
-have been more noticeable to me than here
-and there a man in whom I have discerned a
-broken cocksure.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You say you like biography: do you like
-to read the Life of Robert Burns? And I
-wonder whether these words of his have ever
-guided you in your outlook upon life:
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
- "<i>Then gently scan your brother man</i><br />
- * * * * *<br />
- <i>To step aside is human.</i>"<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-I thank you again. I wish you well. And
-I hope that no experience, striking at you
-out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave
-you one of those noticeable men—a broken
-cocksure.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Your deeply obliged and very grateful,
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>June 30, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-About a month ago I took it upon myself
-to write the one letter that had long been
-raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne.
-And I sent him all the fern letters. And then
-I drew up the whole case and prosecuted him
-as your lawyer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of course I meant my letter to be an
-infernal machine that would blow him to pieces.
-He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and
-inserted a crank, and turned it into a
-music-box to grind out his praises.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then the kind of music he ground out
-for me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All day I have been ashamed to stand up
-and I've been ashamed to sit down. He told
-me that my letter reminded him of a character
-in his first novel—a woman called <i>Sal
-Blivvens</i>. ME—<i>Sal Blivvens!</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But of what use is it for us poor,
-common-clay, rough, ordinary men who have no
-imagination—of what use is it for us to
-attack you superior fellows who have it, have
-imagination? You are the Russians of the
-human mind, and when attacked on your
-frontiers, you merely retreat into a vast,
-unknown, uninvadable country. The further
-you retire toward the interior of your
-mysterious kingdom, the nearer you seem to
-approach the fortresses of your strength.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am wiser—if no better. If ever again I
-feel like attacking any stranger with a letter,
-I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether
-he is an ordinary man like me or a genius.
-If he is a genius, I am going to let him alone.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to
-see your man Blackthorne now. Ask him
-some time whether a short visit from
-Benjamin Doolittle could be arranged on any
-terms of international agreement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now for something on my level of ordinary
-life! A day or two ago I was waiting in front
-of the residence of one of my uptown clients,
-a few doors from the residence of your friend
-Dr. Marigold. While I waited, he came out
-on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I
-drove past, I leaned far out and made them
-a magnificent sweeping bow: one can afford
-to be forgiving and magnanimous after he
-settled things to his satisfaction. They did
-not return the bow but exchanged quiet
-smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled.
-They seemed like saying: he bows best who
-bows last.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-You are the best thing in New York to me
-since Polly went away. Without you both
-it would come near to being one vast solitude.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEN (alias <i>Sal Blivvens</i>).<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 1, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I wrote you this morning upon receipt of
-your letter telling me of your own terrific
-letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless
-arraignment of him. Let me say again
-that I wish to pour out my gratitude to you
-for your motives and also, well, also my regret
-at your action. Somehow I have been
-reminded of Voltaire's saying: he had a brother
-who was such a fool that he started out to be
-perfect; as a consequence the world knows
-nothing of Voltaire's brother: it knows very
-well Voltaire with his faults.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The mail of yesterday which brought you
-Mr. Blackthorne's reply to your arraignment
-brought me also a letter: he must have written
-to us both instantly. His letter is the only
-one that I cannot send you; you would not
-desire to read it. You are too big and
-generous, too warmly human, too exuberantly
-vital, to care to lend ear to a great man's
-chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake.
-You are not Cassius to carp at Caesar.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now this afternoon a second letter comes
-from Mr. Blackthorne and that I enclose: it
-will do you good to read it—it is not a black
-passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p><a id="chap03b"></a></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I follow up my letter of yesterday with the
-unexpected tidings of to-day. I am willing
-to believe that these will interest you as
-associated with your coming visit.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final
-natal eclipse, has bowled him over and left
-him darkened for good. He can trouble us
-no more, but will now do his part as mould
-for the rose of York and the rose of Lancaster.
-He will help to make a mound for some other
-Englishman's ferns. When you come—and
-I know you will come—we shall drink a cup
-of tea in the garden to his peaceful
-memory—and to his troubled memory for Latin.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am now waiting for you. Come, out of
-your younger world and with your youth to
-an older world and to an older man. And let
-each of us find in our meeting some presage
-of an alliance which ought to grow always
-closer in the literatures of the two nations.
-Their literatures hold their ideals; and if their
-ideals touch and mingle, then nothing practical
-can long keep them far apart. If two oak
-trees reach one another with their branches,
-they must meet in their roots; for the branches
-are aerial roots and the roots are underground
-branches.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Come. In the eagerness of my letter of
-yesterday to put myself not in the right but
-less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the
-very matter with which the right and the
-wrong originated.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>Will you, after all, send the ferns?</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The whole garden waits for them; a white
-light falls on the vacant spot; a white light
-falls on your books in my library; a white
-light falls on you,
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I wait for you, both hands outstretched.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p>
-(Note penciled on the margin of the letter
-by Beverley Sands to Ben Doolittle: "You
-will see that I am back where the whole thing
-started; I have to begin all over again with
-the ferns. And now the florists will be after
-me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow
-of my bones, and my bones by this time are a
-wireless station on this subject.")
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We take pleasure in enclosing our new
-catalogue for the coming autumn, and should
-be pleased to receive any further commissions
-for the European trade.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We repeat that we have no connection
-whatever with any house doing business in
-the city under the name of Botany.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Respectfully yours,<br />
- JUDD & JUDD,<br />
- Per Q.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Louisville, Kentucky,<br />
- July 4th, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory
-for the approaching autumn season, in view of
-having been honoured upon a previous
-occasion with your flattering patronage, and
-reasoning that our past transactions have
-been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves
-of this opportunity of reviving the
-conjunction heretofore existing between us as most
-gratifying and thank you sincerely for past
-favours. We hope to continue our pleasant
-relations and desire to say that if you should
-contemplate arranging for the shipments of
-plants of any description, we could afford you
-surprised satisfaction.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Respectfully yours,<br />
- PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Dunkirk, Tennessee,<br />
- July 6, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We are prepared to supply you with
-anything you need. Could ship ferns to any
-country in Europe, having done so for the
-late Noah Chamberlin, the well-known florist
-just across the State line, who was a customer
-of ours.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet
-paid, had to drop them entirely.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Very truly yours,<br />
- BURNS & BRUCE.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If you need any forest trees, we could
-supply you with all the forest trees you want,
-plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty
-of walnuts, etc.
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br />
- July 7th, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR SIR:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have lately enlarged my business and will
-be able to handle any orders you may give me.
-The orders which Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain
-said you were to send have not yet turned
-up. I write to you, because I have heard
-about you a great deal through Miss Clara
-Louise, since her return from her visit to New
-York. She succeeded in getting two or three
-donations of books for our library, and they
-have now given her a place there. I was
-sorry to part with Miss Clara Louise, but I
-had just married, and after the first few weeks
-I expected my wife to become my assistant.
-I am not saying anything against Miss Clara
-Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet
-violets, especially on a Sunday, having the
-run of the flowers. She and Alice didn't get
-along very well together, and I did have a
-bad set-back with my violets while she was
-here.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make
-a speciality of seedlins. If you want any
-seedlins, will you call on me? I am young
-and just married and anxious to please, and
-I wish you would call on me when you want
-anything green. Nothing dried.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- Yours respectfully,<br />
- ANDY PETERS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 7th, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It makes me a little sad to write. I
-suppose you saw in this morning's paper the
-announcement of Tilly's marriage next week
-to Dr. Marigold. Nevertheless—congratulations!
-You have lost years of youth and
-happiness with some lovely woman on account
-of your dalliance with her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now at last, you will let her alone, and
-you will soon find—Nature will quickly
-drive you to find—the one you deserve to
-marry.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It looks selfish at such a moment to set my
-happiness over against your unhappiness,
-but I've just had news, that at last, after
-lingering so long and a little mysteriously in
-Louisville, Polly is coming. Polly is coming
-with her wedding clothes. We long ago
-decided to have no wedding. All that we have
-long wished is to marry one another.
-Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well,
-Polly is another cocksure. We shall jog along
-as a perfectly satisfied couple of cocksures on
-the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly
-will never find out that she married <i>Sal
-Blivvens</i>.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dear fellow, truest of comrades among
-men, it is inevitable that I reluctantly leave
-you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as
-the friend who marries.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One awful thought freezes me to my chair
-this hot July day. You have never said a
-word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain,
-since the day of my hypothetical charge to the
-jury. Can it be possible that you followed
-her up? Did you feed her any more cheques?
-I have often warned you against Tilly, as
-inconstant. But, my dear fellow, remember
-there is a worse extreme than in
-inconstancy—Clara Louise would be sealing wax.
-You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of
-sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in
-conversation, she'd seal you the tighter.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Polly is coming with her wedding clothes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
- BEN.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 8.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I saw the announcement in the morning
-paper about Tilly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It wouldn't be worth while to write how I
-feel.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain,
-homeless in New York. And I saw her. As
-to whether I have been feeding cheques to her,
-that is solely a question of my royalties.
-Royalties are human gratitude; why should
-not the dews of gratitude fall on one so
-parched? Besides, I don't owe you anything,
-gentleman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yes, I feel you're going—you're passing on
-to Polly. I append a trifle which explains
-itself, and am, making the best of everything,
-the same
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY SANDS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
- <i>A Meditation in Verse</i><br />
- (<i>Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing his<br />
- favourite weakness</i>)<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
- <i>How can I mind the law's delay,<br />
- Or what a jury thinks it knows,<br />
- Or what some fool of a judge may say?<br />
- Polly comes with the wedding clothes.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
- <i>Time, who cheated me so long,<br />
- Kept me waiting mid life's snows,<br />
- I forgive and forget your wrong:<br />
- Polly comes with the wedding clothes.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
- <i>Winter's lonely sky is gone,<br />
- July blazes with the rose,<br />
- All the world looks smiling on<br />
- At Polly in her wedding clothes.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[A hurried letter by messenger]
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 10, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Polly reached New York two days ago. I
-went up that night. She had gone out—alone.
-She did not return that night. I
-found this out when I went up yesterday
-morning and asked for her. She has not
-been there since she left. They know nothing
-about her. I have telegraphed Louisville.
-They have sent me no word. Come down
-at once.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
-BEN.
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-[Hurried letter by messenger]
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 10, 1912.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-DEAR BEN:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Is anything wrong about Polly?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I met her on the street yesterday. She
-tried to pass without speaking. I called to
-her but she walked on. I called again and
-she turned, hesitatingly, then came back very
-slowly to meet me half-way. You know how
-composed her manner always is. But she
-could not control her emotion: she was deeply,
-visibly troubled. Strange as it may seem,
-while I thought of the mystery of her trouble,
-I could but notice a trifle, as at such moments
-one often does: she was beautifully dressed: a
-new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over
-her as for some impending ceremony. We
-have always thought of Polly as one of the
-women who are above dress. Such disregard
-was in a way a verification of her character,
-the adornment of her sincerity. Now she was
-beautifully dressed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"But what is the meaning of all this?" I
-asked, frankly mystified.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Something in her manner checked the
-question, forced back my words.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"You will hear," she said, with quivering
-lips. She looked me searchingly all over
-the face as for the sake of dear old times
-now ended. Then she turned off abruptly.
-I watched her in sheer amazement till she
-disappeared.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have been waiting to hear from you, but
-cannot wait any longer. What does it mean?
-Why don't you tell me?
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 11.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have with incredible eyes this instant read
-this cutting from the morning paper:
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the
-City Hall in Jersey City to Dr. Claude Mullen.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She must have been on her way when I saw
-her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have read the announcement without being
-able to believe it—with some kind of death
-in life at my heart.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am
-coming at once.
-</p>
-
-<p class="closing">
- BEVERLEY.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS
-</p>
-
-<p class="salutation">
- <i>July 18.</i><br />
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The ferns have had their ironic way with
-us and have wrought out their bitter comedy
-to its end. The little group of us who were
-the unsuspecting players are henceforth
-scattered, to come together in the human
-playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the
-curtain waits to descend, and I, who
-innocently brought the drama on, am left the
-solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too,
-depart to go my separate road.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful
-the morning is for her! The whole sky is one
-exquisite blue—no sign of any storm-plan far
-or near. The July air blows as cool as early
-May. I sit at my window writing and it
-flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances
-of the green park below my window enter
-my room and encircle me like living human
-tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose,
-Tilly is dressing for her wedding, and
-I—God knows why—am thinking of old-time
-Kentucky gardens in one of which she played
-as a child. Tilly, a little girl romping in her
-mother's garden—Tilly before she was old
-enough to know anything of the world—anything
-of love—now, as she dresses for her
-wedding—I cannot shut out that vision of
-early purity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yesterday a note came from her. I had
-had no word since the day I openly ridiculed
-the man she is to marry. But yesterday she
-sent me this message:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"Come to-night and say good-bye."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She was not in her rooms to greet me. I
-waited. Moments passed, long moments of
-intense expectancy. She did not enter. I
-fixed my eyes on her door. Once I saw it
-pushed open a little way, then closed. Again
-it was opened and again it was held as though
-for lack of will or through quickly changing
-impulses. Then it was opened and she
-entered and came toward me, not looking at
-me, but with her face turned aside. She
-advanced a few paces and with some
-swift, imperious rebellion, she turned and
-passed out of the room and then came quickly
-back. She had caught up her bridal veil.
-She held the wreath in her hand and as she
-approached me, I know not with what sudden
-emotion she threw a corner of the veil over
-her head and face and shoulders. And she
-stood before me with I know not what struggle
-tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper
-she said:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"Lift my veil."
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I lifted her veil and laid it back over her
-forehead. She closed her eyes as tears welled
-out of them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"Kiss me," she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I would have taken her in my arms as mine
-at that moment for all time, but she stepped
-back and turned away, fading from me
-rather than walking, with her veil pressed
-like a handkerchief to her eyes. The door
-closed on her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I waited. She did not come again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now she is dressing for the marriage
-ceremony. A friend gives her a house wedding.
-The company of guests will be restricted,
-everything will be exquisite, there will be
-youth and beauty and distinction. There
-will be no love. She marries as one who steps
-through a beautiful arch further along one's
-path.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whither that path leads, I do not know;
-from what may lie at the end of it I turn away
-and shudder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning
-is of one exiled from happiness because
-nature withheld from her the one thing needed
-to make her all but perfect: that needful thing
-was just a little more constancy. It is her
-doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a
-brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to
-her lips it drops from her hand. Forever her
-hand stretched out toward joy and forever
-joy shattered at her feet.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-American scientists have lately discovered
-or seem about to discover, some new fact in
-Nature—the butterfly migrates. What we
-have thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant
-of a single summer in a single zone
-follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells
-in a summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the
-psyche of life's fields, then she seeks perpetual
-summer as the law of her own being. All our
-lives move along old, old paths. There is no
-new path for any of us. If Tilly's fate is the
-butterfly path, who can judge her harshly?
-Not I.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They sail away at once on their wedding
-journey. He has wealth and social influence
-of the fashionable sort which overflows into
-the social mirrors of metropolitan journalism:
-the papers found space for their plans of
-travel: England and Scotland, France and
-Switzerland, Austria and Germany, Bohemia
-and Poland, Russia, Italy and Sicily—home.
-The great world-path of the human butterfly,
-seeking summer with insatiate quest.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Home to his practice with that still fluttering
-psyche! And then the path—the domestic
-path—stretching straight onward across the
-fields of life—what of his psyche then? Will she
-fold her wings on a bed-post—year after year
-slowly opening and unfolding those brilliant
-wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?...
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I cannot write of human life unless I can
-forgive life. How forgive unless I can understand?
-I have wrought with all that is within
-me to understand Polly—her treachery up to
-the last moment, her betrayal of Ben's
-devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly,
-doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems
-built upon one trait, one virtue—loyalty.
-She was disloyal to Ben because she had come
-to believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign
-excellence. There were things in his life
-which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps
-every day there were mere trifles which he did
-not share with her—why should he? On a
-certain memorable morning she discovered
-that for years he had been keeping from her
-some affairs of mine: that was his loyalty to
-me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I
-think that was the rift in the lute. Still a
-man must not surrender himself wholly into
-the keeping of the woman he loves; let him,
-and he becomes anything in her life but a
-man.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Meantime Polly found near by another
-suitor who offered her all he was—what
-little there was of him—one of those
-man-climbers who must run over the sheltering
-wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified
-in Polly her one passion for marrying—that
-she should possess a pet. Now she possesses
-one, owns him, can turn him round and
-round, can turn him inside out, can see all
-there is of him as she sees her pocket-handkerchief,
-her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any
-little familiar piece of property which she can
-become more and more attached to as the
-years go by for the reason that it will never
-surprise her, never puzzle her, never change
-except by wearing out.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This will be the end of the friendship
-between Drs. Marigold and Mullen: their wives
-will see to that. So much the better: scattered
-impostors do least harm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have struggled to understand the mystery
-of her choice as to how she should be married.
-Surely marriage, in the existence of any one,
-is the hour when romance buds on the most
-prosaic stalk. It budded for Polly and she
-eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her
-heavy mind without the wings of imagination.
-She got as far as the nearest City Hall.
-Instead of a minister she chose to be married
-by a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been
-unjust, she would be married by the figure of
-Justice as a penal ceremony executed over
-Ben: she mailed him a paper and left him to
-understand that she had fled from him to
-Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A line in an evening paper lets me know
-that she and the Doctor have gone for their
-honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly
-first came North to live and the first summer
-came round she decided to spend it at Ocean
-Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would
-get a grove and an ocean with one railway
-ticket, without having to change; she could
-settle in a grove with an ocean and in an
-ocean with a grove. What her disappointment
-was I do not know, but every summer she has
-gone back to Ocean Grove—the Franklin
-Flats by the sea....
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had
-spent part of every evening with him since
-Polly's marriage—silent, empty evenings—a
-quiet, stunned man. Confidence in himself
-blasted out of him, confidence in human
-nature, in the world. With no imagination
-in him to deal with the reasons of Polly's
-desertion—just a passive acceptance of it as a
-wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her name was never called. A stunned, silent
-man. Clear, joyous steady light in his eyes
-gone—an uncertain look in them. Strangest
-of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And
-courtesy for bluff warm confidence—courtesy
-as of one who stumblingly reflects that he
-must begin to be careful with everybody.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-His active nature meantime kept on. Life
-swept him forward—nature did—whether he
-would or not. I went down late one
-evening. Evidently he had been working in his
-room all day; the things Polly must have
-sent him during all those years were gone.
-He had on new slippers, a fresh robe, taking
-the place of the slippers and the robe she
-had made for him. Often I have seen him
-tuck the robe in about his neck as a man
-might reach for the arms of a woman to
-draw them about his throat as she leans over
-him from behind.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-During our talk that evening he began
-strangely to speak of things that had taken
-place years before in Kentucky, in his youth,
-on the farm; did I remember this in
-Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind had
-gone back to old certainties. It was like his
-walking away from present ruins toward
-things still unharmed—never to be harmed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Early next morning he surprised me by
-coming up, dressed for travel, holding a grip.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-"I am going to Kentucky," he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I went to the train with him. His reserve
-deepened on the way; if he had plans, he did
-not share them with me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What I make out of it is that he will come
-back married. No engagement this time, no
-waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage
-will sadly bring him. I think she will be
-young—this time. But she will be, as nearly as
-possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman
-now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted
-man for life. He thinks he will be getting
-some one to take Polly's place. In reality it
-will be his second attempt to marry Polly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am bidding farewell the little group of us.
-Some one else will have to write of me. How
-can I write of myself? This I will say: that
-I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to
-leave a little of his wool on every bramble.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I sail next week for England to make my
-visit to Mr. Blackthorne—at last. Another
-letter has come from him. He has thrown
-himself into the generous work of seeing that
-my visit to him shall make me known. He
-tells me there will be a house party, a
-week-end; some of the great critics will be there,
-some writers. "You must be found out in
-England widely and at once," he writes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-My heart swells as one who feels himself
-climbing toward a height. There is kindled
-in me that strangest of all the flames that burn
-in the human heart, the shining thought that
-my life is destined to be more than mine, that
-my work will make its way into other minds
-and mingle with the better, happier impulses
-of other lives.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The ironic ferns have had their way with
-us. But after all has it not been for the best?
-Have they not even in their irony been the
-emblems of fidelity?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They have found us out, they have played
-upon our weaknesses, they have exaggerated
-our virtues until these became vices, they have
-separated us and set us going our diverging
-ways.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But while we human beings are moving
-in every direction over the earth, the earth
-without our being conscious of it is carrying
-us in one same direction. So as we follow the
-different pathways of our lives which appear
-to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another,
-may it not be true that to the Power which
-sets us all in motion and drives us whither it
-will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity?
-</p>
-
-<p><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t3">
-THE END
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /></p>
-
-<p class="t4">
- THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br />
- GARDEN CITY, N. Y.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> + +<head> + +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/img-cover.jpg" /> + +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> + +<title> +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Emblems of Fidelity, +by James Lane Allen +</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +body { color: black; + background: white; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +p {text-indent: 4% } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.t1 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 200%; + text-align: center } + +p.t2 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 150%; + text-align: center } + +p.t2b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 150%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t3 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: center } + +p.t3b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 100%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t4 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + text-align: center } + +p.t4b {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + font-weight: bold; + text-align: center } + +p.t5 {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 60%; + text-align: center } + +h1 { text-align: center } +h2 { text-align: center } +h3 { text-align: center } +h4 { text-align: center } +h5 { text-align: center } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; } + +p.thought {text-indent: 0% ; + letter-spacing: 4em ; + text-align: center } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +p.salutation {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 50% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.closing {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.footnote {text-indent: 0% ; + font-size: 80%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +.smcap { font-variant: small-caps } + +p.transnote {text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +p.intro {font-size: 90% ; + text-indent: -5% ; + margin-left: 5% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.quote {text-indent: 4% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +p.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60435 ***</div> + +<h1> +<br /><br /> + THE EMBLEMS OF<br /> + FIDELITY<br /> +</h1> + +<p class="t3b"> + A Comedy in Letters<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t3"> + BY<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t3b"> + JAMES LANE ALLEN<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t4"> + AUTHOR OF<br /> + "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL,"<br /> + "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="noindent"> + There is nothing so ill-bred as audible<br /> + laughter.... I am sure that since I have<br /> + had the full use of my reason nobody has<br /> + ever heard me laugh.<br /> + —Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + GARDEN CITY NEW YORK<br /> + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> + 1919<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t4"> + COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY<br /> + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br /> + TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br /> + INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + To<br /> + THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY<br /> +<br /> + INCOMPARABLE ALLY<br /> + OF VICTORY<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +LIST OF CHARACTERS +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE . . . Famous elderly English novelist +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +BEVERLEY SANDS . . . Rising young American novelist +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE . . . Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +GEORGE MARIGOLD . . . Fashionable physician +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +CLAUDE MULLEN . . . Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of George Marigold<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +RUFUS KENT . . . Long-winded president of a club +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very learned, very absent-minded professor +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +PHILLIPS AND FAULDS . . . Florists +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +BURNS AND BRUCE . . . Florists +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +JUDD AND JUDD . . . Florists +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +ANDY PETERS . . . Florist +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +HODGE . . . Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +TILLY SNOWDEN . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY BOLES . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, friend of Tilly Snowden<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very devoted, very proud sensitive daughter of Noah Chamberlain<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +ANNE RAEBURN . . . Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3b"> +CONTENTS +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chap02">PART SECOND</a> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chap03">PART THIRD</a> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01"></a></p> + +<h2> +THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY +</h2> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + May 1, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +I have just read to the end of your latest +novel and under the outdoor influence of that +Kentucky story have sat here at my windows +with my eyes on the English landscape of the +first of May: on as much of the landscape, at +least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, +rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old +Warwickshire garden. +</p> + +<p> +You may or you may not know that I, too, +am a novelist. The fact, however negligible +otherwise, may help to disarm you of some +very natural hostility at the approach of this +letter from a stranger; for you probably agree +with me that the writing of novels—not, of +course, the mere odious manufacture of +novels—results in the making of friendly, brotherly +men across the barriers of nations, and that +we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we +could do less well or not do at all as +fellow-creatures. +</p> + +<p> +I shall not loiter at the threshold of this +letter to fatigue your ear with particulars +regarding the several parts of your story most +enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough +to say that no admirable human being has +ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears +by any such desirable procedure. In +England, and I presume in the United States, +novelists have long noses for incense [poets, +too, though of course only in their inferior +way]. I repeat that we English novelists are +a species of greyhound for running down on +the most distant horizon any scampering, +half-terrified rabbit of a compliment. But I +freely confess that nature loaded me beyond +the tendency of being a mere greyhound. I +am a veritable elephant in the matter, being +marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible +proboscis which is not only adapted to admit +praise but is quite capable of actively +reaching around in every direction to procure it. +Even the greyhound cannot run forever; but +an elephant, if he once possess it, will wave +such a proboscis till he dies. +</p> + +<p> +There are likely to be in any very readable +book a few pages which the reader feels +tempted to tear out for the contrary reason, +perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his +tenderness. Some haunting picture of the +book-gallery that he would cut from the frame. +Should you be displeased by the discrimination, +I shall trust that you may be pleased +nevertheless by the avowal that there is a +scene in your novel which has peculiarly +ensnared my affections. +</p> + +<p> +At this point I think I can see you throw +down my letter with more insight into human +nature than patience with its foibles. You +toss it aside and exclaim: "What does this +Englishman drive at? Why does he not at +once say what he wants?" You are right. +My letter is perhaps no better than strangers' +letters commonly are: coins, one side of which +is stamped with your image and the other +side with their image, especially theirs. +</p> + +<p> +I might as well, therefore, present to you +my side of the coin with the selfish image. +Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, +you are the horse in an open pasture and I +am the stableman who schemes to catch you: +to do this, I approach, calling to you +affectionately and shaking a bundle of oats behind +which is coiled a halter. You are thinking +that if I once clutch you by the mane you +will get no oats. But, my dear sir, you have +from the very first word of this letter already +been nibbling the oats. And now you are my +animal! +</p> + +<p> +There is, then, in your novel a remarkable +description of a noonday woodland scene +somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky +uplands—a cool, moist forest spot. Into this +scene you introduced some rare, beautiful +Kentucky ferns. I can <i>see</i> the ferns! I can +see the sunlight striking through the waving +treetops down upon them! Now, as it +happens, in the old garden under my windows, +loving the shade and moisture of its trees +and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They are +a marvelous company, in their way as good +as Wordsworth's flock of daffodils; for they +have been collected out of England's best +and from other countries. +</p> + +<p> +Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: +Will you send me the root-stocks of some of +those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on +my Warwickshire fern bank? +</p> + +<p> +Do not suppose that my garden is on a +small scale a public park or exhibition, made +as we have created Kensington Gardens. +Everything in it is, on the contrary, enriched +with some personal association. I began it +when a young man in the following way: +</p> + +<p> +At that period I was much under the +influence of the Barbizon painters, and I +sometimes entertained myself in the forests where +masters of that school had worked by hunting +up what I supposed were the scenes of +some of Corot's masterpieces. +</p> + +<p> +Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted +trees as though he were looking at enormous +ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and +some rise higher than others as trees; his trees +descend through the air and are lost lower +down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot +ferns for my good Warwickshire loam. Another +winter Christine Nilsson was singing at +Covent Garden. I spent several evenings +with her. When I bade her good-bye, I asked +her to send me some ferns from Norway in +memory of Balzac and <i>Seraphita</i>. Yet +another winter, being still a young man and he, +alas! a much older one, I passed an evening +in Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in +talking about his novels and I remember +quoting these lines from one of them: "It +was a splendid clear morning; tiny mottled +cloudlets hung like snipe in the clear pale +azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves +and grass and glistened like silver on the +spiders' webs; the moist dark earth seemed +still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the +songs of larks showered down from all over +the sky." +</p> + +<p> +He sat looking at me in surprised, touched +silence. +</p> + +<p> +"But you left out something!" I suggested, +with the bumptiousness of a beginner in +letters. He laughed slightly to himself—and +perhaps more at me—as he replied: "I must +have left out a great deal"—he, fiction's +greatest master of compression. After a +moment he inquired with a kind of vast patient +condescension: "What is it that you definitely +missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns +were growing thereabouts." He smiled +reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, smiling +reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot +was," I said, "I should travel to it for some +ferns." A mystical look came into his eyes as +he muttered rather to himself than for my +ear: "That spot! Where is that spot? That +spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the whole of +Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, +one pain, one passion. Sometime afterwards +there reached me at home a hamper of Russian +fern-roots with Turgenieff's card. +</p> + +<p> +I tell you all this as I make the request, +which is the body of this letter and, I hope, +its wings, in order that you may intimately +understand. I desire the ferns not only +because you have interested me in your +Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, +but because I have become interested in your +art and in you. While I read your book I +believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously +at work, creating where no hand had created +before; or if on its chosen scene it found a +ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality +from that ruin. But to create where no hand +has created before, or to create them again +where human things lie in decay—that to me +is the true energy of literature. +</p> + +<p> +I should not omit to tell you that some of +our most tight-islanded, hard-headed +reviewers have been praising your work as of +the best that reaches us from America. It +was one such reviewer that first guided me to +your latest book. Now I myself have written +to some of our critics and have thrown my +influence in favour of your fresh, beautiful art, +which can only come from a fresh, beautiful +nature. +</p> + +<p> +Should you decide to bestow any notice +upon this rather amazing letter, you will bear +in mind of course that there will be pounds +sterling for plants. Whatever character my +deed or misdeed may later assume, it must +first and at least have the nature of a +transaction of the market-place. +</p> + +<p> +So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all, +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Gratefully yours,<br /> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + May 12, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: +</p> + +<p> +Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, +in some modern Æsop's Fables, read how a +whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had +taken the trouble to turn entirely round to +encourage a puffing young porpoise; or of +how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, +had on some fine spring day looked down and +complimented a small dogwood tree upon its +size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, +while thus unreal, your letter is in its way the +most encouragingly real thing that has ever +come into my life. Before I go further I +should like to say that I have read every book +you have written and have bought your books +and given them away with such zeal and zest +that your American publishers should feel +more interest in me than can possibly be felt +by the gentlemen who publish mine. +</p> + +<p> +It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, +in bad taste. A man's praise of another may +not follow upon that man's praise of him. +Our virtues have their hour. If they do not +act then, they are not like clocks which may +be set forward but resemble fruits which lose +their flavour when they pass into ripeness. +Still, what I have said is honest. You may +remember that I am yet moving amid life's +uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk +in quietness the world's highway of a great +career. My praise could have borne little to +you; yours brings everything to me. And +you must reflect also that it is just a little +easier for any Englishman to write to an +American in this way. The American could +but fear that his letter might seriously disturb +the repose of a gentleman who was reclining +with his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and +Shakespeare's entire bosom in this regard, as +you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in +England. +</p> + +<p> +It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange +for the shipment of the ferns. A good many +years have passed since I lived in Kentucky +and I am no longer in close touch with people +and things down there. But without doubt +the matter can be managed through +correspondence and all that I await from you +now is express instructions. The ferns +described in my book are not known to me by +name. I have procured and have mailed to +you along with this, lest you may not have +any, some illustrated catalogues of American +ferns, Kentucky ferns included. You have +but to send me a list of those you want. With +that in hand I shall know exactly how to +proceed. +</p> + +<p> +You cannot possibly understand how happy +I am that my work has the approval of the +English reviews, which still remain the best +in the world. To know that my Kentucky +stories are liked in England—England which, +remaining true to so many great traditions, +holds fast to the classic tradition in her +literature. +</p> + +<p> +The putting forth of your own personal +influence in my behalf is a source of joy and +pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns +growing in your garden in token of me is the +most inspiring event yet to mark my life. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + May 22, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +Your letter was brought out to me as I was +hanging an old gate in a clover-field canopied +with skylarks. When I cannot make headway +against some obstruction in the development +of a story, for instance, putting the hinges of +the narrative where the reader will not see +any hinges, I let the book alone and go out +and do some piece of work, surrounded by +the creatures which succeed in all they +undertake through zest and joy. By the time I get +back, the hinges of the book have usually +hung themselves without my knowing when +or how. Hence the paradox: we achieve the +impossible by doing the possible; we climb +our mountain of troubles by walking away +from it. +</p> + +<p> +It is splendid news that I am to get the +Kentucky ferns. Thank you for the +catalogues. A list of those I most covet is +enclosed. The cost, shipping expenses included, +will not, I fear, exceed five pounds. Of course +it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but +I suppose I must restrict myself to the +despicable market price. Shamefully cheap many +of the dearest things in this world are; and +what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless! +</p> + +<p> +A draft will be forwarded in advance upon +receipt of the American shipper's address. +Or I could send it forthwith to you. +Meantime from now on I shall be remembering +with impatience how many miles it is across +the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace +American ferns travel. These will be awaited +like guests whom one goes to the gate to meet. +</p> + +<p> +You do not know the names of those you +describe so wonderfully! I am glad. I abhor +the names of my own. Of course, as they are +bought, memoranda must be depended upon +by which to buy them. These data, verified +by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs +as fern headstones. When each fern is planted, +into the soil beside it is stuck its headstone, +which, like that for a human being, tells the +name, not the nature, of what it memorialises. +</p> + +<p> +Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns +according to the slabs. It is time you should +know Hodge by his slab. No such being can +yet be found in the United States: your +civilisation is too young. Hodge is my +British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out +for every birthday much as for any total +solar eclipse of the year—with a kind of +growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday +should finally, as it passes, bowl him over for +good—he announced to me with visible relief +the other day that he had successfully passed +another total natal eclipse; that he was +fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight years +old. The battle of Hastings was fought in +1066 and Hodge without knowing it was +beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For +Hodge is English landscape gardening in +human shape. He is the benevolent spirit of +the English turf, a malign spirit to English +weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, +a wheelbarrow of spring manure, a pile of +autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant future +mythology of our English rural life he will +perhaps rank where he belongs—as a +luminary next in importance to the sun: a +two-legged god be-earthed in old clothes, with a +stiff back, a stiff temper, the jaw of the +mastiff and the eye of a prophet. +</p> + +<p> +It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would +not allow anything to come into the garden +without mastering that thing. For the sake +of his own authority he must subdue as much +of the Latin language as invades his territory +along with the ferns. But I think nothing +comparable to such a struggle against +overwhelming odds—Hodge's brain pitted against +the Latin names of the ferns—nothing +comparable to the dull fury of that onset is to be +found in the history of man unless it be +England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. +England did conquer Napoleon and finally +shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and +Hodge has finally conquered the names of +the ferns and shut them up in a desolate, +rocky place—his skull, his personal promontory. +</p> + +<p> +Nowadays you should see him meet me in +a garden path when I come down early some +morning. You should see him plant himself +before me and, taking off his cap and scratching +the back of his neck with the back of his +muddy thumb, make this announcement: +"The <i>Asplenium filix-faemina</i> put up two new +shoots last night, sir. Bishop's crooks, I +believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a +farmer and my shepherd should notify me +that one of the ewes had dropped twin lambs +at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: +the honour of the shoots—a questionable +honour—goes to Hodge as their botanical sire! +</p> + +<p> +When I receive visitors by reason of my +books—and strangers do sometimes make +pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of +"Black Oaks"—if the day is pleasant, we +have tea in the garden. While the strangers +drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known +proboscis over the company for any praise +they may have brought along. Should this +seem adequate, I later reward them with a +stroll. That is Hodge's hour and opportunity. +Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but +invariably, he steps out from some bush and +takes his place behind me as we move. +</p> + +<p> +When we reach the fern bank, the visitors +regularly begin to inquire: "What is the +name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to +Hodge much as a drum-major, if asked by a +by-stander what the music was that the band +had just been playing, might wheel in dismay +to the nearest horn. Hodge steps forward: +now comes the reward of all his toil. "That +is the <i>Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum</i>, +sir." "And what is this one?" "That is the +<i>Polypodium elegantissimum</i>, mum." Then you +would understand what it sometimes means +to attain scholarship without Oxford or +Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman +orator and a garden ass. +</p> + +<p> +You will be wondering why I am telling +you this about Hodge. For the very particular +reason that Hodge will play a part, I know +not what part, in the pleasant business that +has come up between us. He looms as the +danger between me and the American ferns +after the ferns shall have arrived here. It is +a fact that very few foreign ferns have ever +done well in my garden, watch over them as +closely as I may: especially those planted in +more recent years. Could you believe it +possible of human nature to refuse to water a +fern, to deny a little earth to the root of a +fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from +it when there was nobody near to observe the +deed, to jab at it with a sharp trowel? I shall +not press the matter further, for I instinctively +turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has +within himself some incomprehensible little +terrible spot and I feel that this is Hodge's +spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he +will kill what he hates, if he dares. I have +been so aroused to defend his faithful +character that I have devised two pleadings: +first, Hodge is the essence of British +parliaments, the sum total of British institutions; +therefore he patriotically believes that things +British should be good enough for the British—of +course, their own ferns. At other times +I am rather inclined to surmise that his +malice and murderous resentment are due to +his inability to take on any more Latin, least +of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt +now defends himself against any more Latin +as a man with his back to the wall fights for +his life: the personal promontory will hold no +more. +</p> + +<p> +You have written me an irresistible letter, +though frankly I made no effort to resist it. +Your praise of my books instantly endeared +you to me. +</p> + +<p> +Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has +already brought results so agreeable and +surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to +plunge a second time and more deeply. +</p> + +<p> +Is there—how could there help being!—a +<i>Mrs.</i> Beverley Sands? Mrs. Blackthorne +wishes to know. I read your letter to +Mrs. Blackthorne. Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed +with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed with +<i>you</i>. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. +And Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorne would like to +know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands +and, if so, whether she and you will not some +time follow the ferns and come and take +possession for a while of our English garden. +</p> + +<p> +You and I can go off to ourselves and +discuss our "dogwoods" and "black oaks"; +and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at +their tea across the garden, can exchange +copies of their highly illuminated and +privately circulated little masterpieces about +their husbands. (The husbands should always +edit the masterpieces!) +</p> + +<p> +Both of you, will you come? +</p> + +<p> +Finally, as to your generous propaganda +in behalf of my books and as to the favourable +reports which my publishers send me from +time to time in the guise of New World +royalties, you may think of the proboscis as +now being leveled straight and rigid like a +gun-barrel toward the shores of the United +States, whence blow gales scented with so +glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that +Columbus was not mistaken: America is +turning out to be a place worth while. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your deeply interested,<br /> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 3.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +Crown me with some kind of chaplet—nothing +classic, nothing sentimental, but something +American and practical—say with twigs +of Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the +leaves of that forest favourite which in +boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with +its inner bark—entwine me, O Tilly, with a +garland of slippery elm for the virtue of +always making haste to share with you my +slippery pleasures! I write at full speed now +to empty into your lap, a wonderfully receptive +lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has +ever come to me as your favourite author—and +favourite young husband to be. +</p> + +<p> +The great English novelist Blackthorne, +many of whose books we have read together +(whenever you listened), recently stumbled +over one of my obstructive tales; one of my +awkwardly placed literary hurdles on the +world's race-course of readers. As a result of +his fall he got up, dusted himself thoroughly +of his surprise, and actually despatched to me +an acknowledgment of his thanks for the +happy accident. I replied with a volley of +my own thanks, with salvos of praise for him. +Now he has written again, throwing wide +open his house and his heart, both of which +appear to be large and admirably suited to +entertain suitable guests. +</p> + +<p> +At this crisis place your careful hands over +your careful heart—can you find where it +is?—and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the +novelist's conventional breath for the excited +heroine. Mr. Blackthorne wishes to know +whether there is a <i>Mrs.</i> Beverley Sands. If +there is, and he feels sure there must be, +far-sighted man!—he invites her, invites <i>us</i>, +<i>Mrs.</i> Blackthorne invites <i>us</i>, should we sometime +be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, +far-famed country-house in Warwickshire. +If, then, our often postponed marriage, our +despairingly postponed marriage, should be +arranged to madden me and gladden the rest +of mankind before next summer, we could, +with our arms around one another's necks, be +conveyed by steam and electricity on our +wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance +and be there deposited, still oblivious of +everything but ourselves. +</p> + +<p> +Think what it would mean to you to be +launched upon the rosy sea of English social +life amid the orisons and benisons of such +illustrious literary personages. Think of those +lovely English lawns, raked and rolled for +centuries, and of many-coloured <i>fêtes</i> on them; +of the national tea and the national sandwiches; +of national strawberries and clotted +cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's +flunkies still flunkying and Queen Anne's +fads yet fadding; of week-ends without +end—as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself +growing more and more a celebrity, as the +English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers +gradually brought into public appreciation +the vague potentialities, not necessarily the +bare actualities, of modest young Sands +himself. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a +day for you at Sandringham with the royal +ladies. They would drive you over—I have +not the least idea how great the distance +is—to drink tea at Stonehenge. Imagine +yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy +English afternoon, imagine yourself seated +under a heavy black-silk English umbrella on +a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, +tearing at an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest +strain and surrounded by male and female +admirers, all under heavy black-silk +umbrellas—Spitalsfield, I suppose—as Mrs. Beverley +Sands. +</p> + +<p> +Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign +triumph, this career of glory, comes +to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, +it is inaccessible. Look upon it as in +part the property that I am to settle upon +you at the time of our union—my honours. +You have already understood from me that +my entire estate, both my real estate and my +unreal estate, consists of future honours. +Those I have just described are an early +payment on the marriage contract—foreign +exchange! +</p> + +<p> +What reply, then, in your behalf am I to +send to the lofty and benevolent +Blackthornes? As matters halt between us—he +also loves who only writes and waits—I can +merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that there is +a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists +in remaining a Miss Snowden. With this +realisation of what you will lose as Miss +Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you +not think it wise—and wise you are, Tilly—any +longer to persist in your persistence? +You once, in a moment of weakness, confessed +to me—think of your having a moment of +weakness!—you once confessed to me, though +you may deny it now (Balzac defines woman +as the angel or devil who denies everything +when it suits her), you once confessed to me +that you feared your life would be taken up +with two protracted pleasures, each of which +curtailed the other: the pleasure of being +engaged to me a long time and the pleasure of +being married to me a long time. Nerve +yourself to shortening the first in order to +enter upon the compensations of the second. +</p> + +<p> +Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect +of obliterating from the world one whom I +first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. +Where will Tilly Snowden be when only +Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where will be that +wild rose in a snow bank—the rose which was +truly wild, the snow bank which was not cold +(or was it?)? I think I should easily become +reconciled to your being known, say, as +Madame Snowden, so that you might still +stand out in your own right and wild-rose +individuality. We could visit England as the +rising American author, Beverley Sands, and +his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. +Everybody would then be asking who the +mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I +should relate that she was a retired opera +singer—having retired before she advanced. +</p> + +<p> +By the way, you confided to me some time +ago that you were not very well. You always +<i>look</i> well, mighty well to <i>me</i>, Tilly. Perfectly +well to <i>me</i>. Can your indisposition be +imaginary? Or is it merely fashionable? +Or—is it something else? What of late has +sickened me is an idea of yours that you +might sometime consult Doctor G. M. Tilly! +Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me +when I think of that charlatan's door being +closed behind you as a patient of his! +</p> + +<p> +Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the +beautiful Blackthornes! +</p> + +<p> +Your easy and your uneasy +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>"Slippery Elm" Apartments,<br /> + June 4.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown +you with slippery elm—you seem to think I +keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it—if it +is the leaf you sigh for. But please do not +try to crown me with a wig of your creative +hair; that is, with your literary honours. +</p> + +<p> +How wonderfully the impressions of childhood +disappear from memory like breaths on +a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to +their shapes if the glass be coldly breathed +upon! As I read your letter, at least as I read +the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your +letter, I remembered, probably for the first +time in years, a friend of my mother's. +</p> + +<p> +She had been inveigled to become the wife, +that is, the legally installed life-assistant, of +an exceedingly popular minister; and when I +was a little girl, but not too little to +understand—was I ever too little to understand?—she +used to slip across the street to our house +and in confidence to my mother pour out her +sense of humour at the part assigned her by +the hired wedding march and evangelical +housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, +always half-whispered, confidences—for +how often in life one feels guilty when +telling the truth and innocent when lying! +</p> + +<p> +On this particular morning she and my +mother laughed till they were weary, while I +danced round them with delight at the idea +of having even the tip of my small but very +active finger in any pie that savoured of mischief. +She had been telling my mother that if, some +Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a +sermon which brought people into the church, +she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If he +made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she +might possibly look out for a pair of ducks. +Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be +merely a strip of worthless territory lying +alongside the land of Canaan; people simply +walked over her, tramped across her, on their +way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful +things to Canaan, her husband. +</p> + +<p> +That childish nonsense comes back to me +strangely, and yet not strangely as I think of +your funny letter, your very, very funny +letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to +me because I am not myself but am possibly +a Mrs.—well, <i>some</i> Mrs. Sands. The English +scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it +is Canaan and his strip all over again—there +on the English lawns; a great many heavy +English people are tramping heavily over me +on their way to Canaan. The fabulous tea at +Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at +Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that +at last choked to death the ill-fated Tilly +Snowden. +</p> + +<p> +In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, +then, begs that you will thank the Blackthornes, +Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for +their invitation; as best she can she thanks +you; but for the present, and for how much of +the future she does not know, she prefers to +remain what is very necessary to her +independence and therefore to her happiness; and +also what is quite pleasing to her ear—the +wild rose in the snow bank (cold or not cold, +according to the sun). +</p> + +<p> +In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true +that I have more than once postponed the +date of our marriage. I have never said why; +perhaps I myself have never known just why. +But at least do not expect me to shorten the +engagement in order that I may secure some +share of your literary honours. As a little +girl I always despised queens who were +crowned with their husbands. It seemed to +me that the queen was crowned with what +was left over and was merely allowed to sit +on the corner of the throne as the poor +connection. +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +P.S.—Still, I <i>would</i> like to go to England. +I mean, of course, I wish <i>we</i> could go on our +wedding journey! If I got ready, could I +rely upon <i>you</i>? I have always wished to visit +England without being debarred from its +social life. Seriously, the invitation of the +Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity +and an advantage not to be thrown away. +Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am +wise! +</p> + +<p> +It is true that I have not been feeling very +well. And it is true that I have consulted +Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. +That dreaded door has closed behind me! I +have been alone with him! The diagnosis at +least was delightful. He made it appear like +opening a golden door upon a charming +landscape. I had but to step outdoors and look +around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, +Health, my former friend, how do you do! +Why did you go back on me?" He tells me +my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. +I said to him that <i>must</i> be the disease; +namely, that it was <i>mild</i>. Never in my life +had I had anything that was mild! Disease +from my birth up had attacked me only in its +most virulent form: so had health. I had +always enjoyed—and suffered from—virulent +health. I am going to take the Bulgar bacillus. +</p> + +<p> +Why do <i>you</i> dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular +physicians are naturally hated by unpopular +physicians. But how does <i>he</i> run against or +run over you? +</p> + +<p> +Which of your books was it the condescending +Englishman liked? Suppose you +send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of +each of your books? Those you gave me as +they came out seem to have disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +The wild rose is now going to pour down +her graceful stalk a tubeful of the Balkan +bacillus. +</p> + +<p> +More trouble with the Balkans! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> + (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise<br /> + intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least<br /> + for <i>that</i>!).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 3.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +A bolt of divine lightning has struck me +out of the smiling blue, a benign fulmination +from an Olympian. +</p> + +<p> +To descend the long slope of Olympus to +you. A few days ago I received a letter from +the great English novelist, Edward Blackthorne, +in praise of my work. The great +Edward reads my books and the great Ben +Doolittle doesn't—score heavily for the +aforesaid illustrious Eddy. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I have for years known that you +do not cast your legal or illegal eyes on fiction, +though not long ago I heard you admit that +you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On +the ground, that it is a lawyer's novel: which is +no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My +own opinion of why you read it is that you +were in search of information how to make +the ten thousand! As a literary performance +your reading "Ten Thousand a Year" may +be likened to the movement of a land-turtle +which has crossed to the opposite side of his +dusty road to bite off a new kind of weed, +waddling along his slow way under the +impenetrable roof of his own back. +</p> + +<p> +For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust +as I love and trust no other human being in +this world, do you know what I think of you +as most truly being? The very finest possible +specimen of the highest order of human +land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives +under a shovel turned upside down over it, +called its back; and a human land-turtle is a +fellow who thrives under the roof of the five +senses and the practical. Never does a turtle +get from under his carapace, and never does +the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his +five senses. Of course you realise that not +during our friendship have I paid you so +extravagant a compliment. For the human race +has to be largely made up of millions of +land-turtles. They cause the world to go slowly, +and it is the admirable stability of their lives +neither to soar nor to sink. You are a +land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, Esquire; you live +under the shell of the practical; that is, you +have no imagination; that is, you do not read +fiction; that is, you do not read Me! +Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but +cherish all the confidence and love in the +world for you. But, mind you, only as an +unparalleled creeping thing. +</p> + +<p> +To get on with the business of this letter: +the English novelist laid aside his enthusiasm +for my work long enough to make a request: +he asked me to send him some Kentucky +ferns for his garden. Owing to my long +absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch +with people and things down there. But you +left that better land only a few years ago. I +recollect that of old you manifested a +weakness for sending flowers to womankind—another +evidence, by the way, of lack of +imagination. Such conduct shows a mere +botanical estimate of the grand passion. The +only true lovers, the only real lovers, that +women ever have are men of imagination. +Why should these men send a common +florist's flowers! They grow and offer their +own—the roses of Elysium! +</p> + +<p> +To pass on, you must still have clinging to +your memory, like bats to a darkened, disused +wall, the addresses of various Louisville +florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no +light at all, were the former emissaries of your +folly and your fickleness. Will you send me +at once the address of a firm in whose hands +I could safely entrust this very high-minded +international piece of business? +</p> + +<p> +Inasmuch as you are now a New York +lawyer and inasmuch as New York lawyers +charge for everything—concentration of mind, +if they have any mind, tax on memory and +tax on income, their powers of locomotion and +of prevarication, club dues and death dues, +time and tumult, strikes and strokes, and all +other items of haste and waste, you are +authorised to regard this letter a professional +demand and to let me have a reasonable bill +at a not too early date. Charge for whatever +you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for +your friendship. "Naught that makes life +most worth while can be had for gold." (Rather +elegant extract from one of my +novels which you disdain to read!) +</p> + +<p> +I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me +have an immediate reply. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending +to quarrel? And do you still keep up the +pretence? +</p> + +<p> +Predestined magpies! +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>150 Broad Street,<br /> + June 5.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +Your highly complimentary and +philosophical missive is before my eyes. +</p> + +<p> +You understand French, not I. But I have +accumulated a few quotations which I +sometimes venture to use in writing, never in +my proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to +the French the French with which I am +familiar, the French themselves would drive +their own vernacular out of their land—over +into Germany! Here is one of those fond +inaudible phrases: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>A chaque oiseau<br /> + Son nid est beau.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes +prefers his own tub. +</p> + +<p> +The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club +dinner the other night. One of the +speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the +blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping +around the heads of the guests without +finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing +about the edges of a pond, trying in vain to +strike a place to land. But everybody +cheered uproariously, made happy by the +discovery that someone actually could say +something at a New York dinner that nobody +had heard before. One man next to the +speaker (of course coached beforehand) passed +a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made +its way down the table to me at the other end +and I, in the New York way, laid it up for +future use at a dinner in some other city. +Meantime I use it now on you. +</p> + +<p> +It is true that I arrived in New York from +Kentucky some years ago. It is likewise +undeniable that for some years previous thereto +I had dealings with Louisville florists. But I +affirm now, and all these variegated +gentlemen, if they <i>are</i> gentlemen, would gladly +come on to New York as my witnesses and +bear me out in the joyful affidavit, that +whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked +my behaviour, never once did I commit the +futility, the imbecility, of trafficking in ferns. +</p> + +<p> +A great English novelist—ferns! A rising +young American novelist—ferns! Frogstools, +mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't you +ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? +Or if they should be too gross for his delicate +soul, a birdcage containing a pair of warbling +young bluegrass moonbeams? +</p> + +<p> +I am a <i>land</i>-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank +God! If I have no imagination, thank God! +If I live and move and have my being under +the shovel of the five senses and of the +practical, thank God! But, my good fellow, whom +I love and trust as I love and trust no other +man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I +think of you as most truly being? +</p> + +<p> +A poor, harmless tinker. +</p> + +<p> +You, with your pastime of fabricating +novels, dwell in a little workshop of the +imagination; you tinker with what you are +pleased to call human lives, reality, truth. +On your shop door should hang a sign to +catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, +splendid tinkering. No matter who you are, +what your past career or present extremity, +come in and let the owner of this shop make +your acquaintance and he will work you over +into something finer than you have ever been +or in this world will ever be. For he will make +you into an unfallen original or into a +perfected final. If you have never had a chance +to do your best in life, he will give you that +chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the +broken-down, especially welcome. Everybody +made over to be as everybody should be by +Beverley Sands." +</p> + +<p> +But, brother, the sole thing with which you, +the tinker, do business is the sole thing with +which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, as +a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, +actuality, truth. During the years that I +have been an attorney never have I had a +case in court without first of all things looking +for the element of imagination in it and trying +to stamp that element out of the case and kick +it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, +that indefatigable mischief-maker, your +beautiful and beloved patron power—imagination. +</p> + +<p> +Going on to testify out of my experience as +a land-turtle, I depose the following, having +kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the +turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the +tracks of most of the other animal creatures +and gets to know them and their ways. But +there is one path of one creature marked for +unique renown among nose-bearing men: +that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white +piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence—surnamed +the polecat. +</p> + +<p> +Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably +disposed, may in your profession be the +harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged +thing you will that soars innocently toward +bright skies; but, once unkindly disposed, it +is in my profession, and in every other, the +polecat of the human faculties. When it has +testified against you, it vanishes from the +scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with +its testimony. +</p> + +<p> +Hence it is that I go gunning first for this +same little animal whose common den is the +lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though +you never seem to have encountered him in +your work and walks. If you should do so, if +you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile +imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may +the land-turtle be able to crawl to you and +stand by you in that hour! +</p> + +<p> +But—the tinker to his work, the turtle to +his! <i>A chaque oiseau</i>! Diogenes, your tub! +</p> + +<p> +As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. +I paid for the flowers, <i>she</i> got them. Anybody +can receive money for blossoms, but only a +statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can +fill an order for flowers with equity and fresh +buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & Faulds. +You could reasonably rely upon them to fill +any order that you might place in their hands, +however nonsensical-comical, billy-goatian-satirical +it may be. They'd send your Englishman +an opossum with a pouch full of +blooming hyacinths if that would quiet his +longing and make him happy. I should think +it might. +</p> + +<p> +We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? +Are you still cooing? +</p> + +<p> +Uncertain doves! +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01b"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>150 Broad Street,<br /> + June 5.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +I send you some red roses to go with your +black hair and your black eyes, never so +black as when black with temper. When +may I come to see you? Why not to-morrow +night? +</p> + +<p> +Another matter, not so vital but still +important: a few years before we left Louisville +to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New +York, I at different times employed divers +common carriers known as florists to convey +to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions +that could not be depicted in writing +fluid. In other words, I hired those +mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in +terms of their costliest, most sensational +merchandise. You should be prepared to say +which of these florists struck you as the best +business agent. +</p> + +<p> +Would you send me the address of that man +or of that firm? Immediately you will want +to know why. Always suspicious! Let the +suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. +Some foggy-headed Englishman has besought +him to ship him (the foggy one) some +Kentucky vegetation all the way across the +broad Atlantic to his wet domain—interlocking +literary idiots! Beverley appeals to +me, I to you, the highest court in everything. +</p> + +<p> +Are you still enjoying the umbrageous +society of that giraffe-headed jackass, Doctor +Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his +unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? +<i>He</i> a nerve specialist! The only nerve +in his practice is <i>his</i> nerve. Doesn't my +love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? +Isn't it the right kind? Will it ever give +out? +</p> + +<p> +Your reply, then, will cover four points: +to thank me for the red roses; to say when I +may come to see you; to send me the address +of the Louisville florist who became most +favourably known to you through a reckless +devotion; and to explain your patience with +that unhappy fool. +</p> + +<p> +Thy sworn and thy swain, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>The Franklin Flats,<br /> + June 6.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville +florist is one of your flimsiest subterfuges. +What you wished to receive from me was a +letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable +on your last visit and you have since been +concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards. +Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my +aid as indispensable. That is like you men! +If one of you can but make a woman forget, +if he can but lead her to forgive him, by +flattering her with the idea that she is +indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her +figure standing on the long road of time: +dumbly, patiently standing there, waiting for +some male to pass along and permit her to +accompany him as his indispensable +fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good +humour by being honoured with your request +that I supply you with the name of a florist. +</p> + +<p> +Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply +you. All the Louisville florists, as I thought +at the time, carried out their instructions +faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally +received flowers not fresh. Did it occur to +me to blame the florists? Never! I did what +a woman always does: she thinks less of—well, +she doesn't think less of the <i>florist</i>! +</p> + +<p> +Be this as it may, Beverley might try +Phillips & Faulds for whatever he is to export. +As nearly as I now remember they sent the +biggest boxes of whatever you ordered! +</p> + +<p> +I have an appointment for to-morrow night, +but I think I can arrange to divide the evening, +giving you the later half. It shall be for +you to say whether the best half was <i>yours</i>. +That will depend upon <i>you</i>. +</p> + +<p> +I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of +Dr. Claude Mullen because he loves me and +I do not love him. The fascination of his +presence lies in my indifference. Perhaps +women are so seldom safe with the men who +love them, that any one of us feels herself +entitled to make the most of a rare chance! +I am not only safe, I am entertained. As I +go down into the parlour, I almost feel that +I ought to buy a ticket to a performance in +my own private theatre. +</p> + +<p> +Ben, dear, are you going to commit the +folly of being jealous? If I had to marry <i>him</i>, +do you know what my first wifely present +would be? A liberal transfusion of my own +blood! As soon as I enter the room, what +fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which +hold little cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am +always expecting the little pools to run over: +then there would be tears. The night he goes +for good—perhaps they will be tears that +night. +</p> + +<p> +If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about +him, still encourage his visits, I have simply +to say that I don't know. When it comes to +what a woman will "receive" in such cases, +the ground she walks on is very uncertain to +her own feet. It may be that the one thing +she forever craves and forever fears not to +get is absolute certainty, certainty that some +day love for her will not be over, everything be +not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's +love is pitiful, and as long as a man's love is +pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it. +Therefore he is irresistible—as my guest! +</p> + +<p> +The roses are glorious. I bury my face in +them down to the thorns. And then I come +over and sign my name as the indispensable +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 6.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +I have had a note from Beverley, asking +whether he could come this evening. I have +written that I have an appointment, but I did +not enlighten him as to the appointment being +with you. Why not let him suffer awhile? I +will explain afterwards. I told him that I +could perhaps arrange to divide the evening; +would you mind? And would you mind coming +early? I will do as much for you some +time, and <i>I suspect I couldn't do more</i>! +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +P.S.—Rather than come for the first half +of the evening perhaps you would prefer to +<i>postpone</i> your visit <i>altogether</i>. It would +suit me just as well; <i>better</i> in fact. There +really was something very <i>particular</i>, Tilly +dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about +to-night. +</p> + +<p> +I shall not look for you at all <i>this</i> evening, +<i>best</i> of friends. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 6.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +The very particular something to talk to +Ben about to-night is the identical something +for every other night. And nothing could be +more characteristic of you, as soon as you +heard that my visit would clash with one of +his, than your eagerness to push me partly +out of the house in a hurried letter and then +push me completely out in a quiet postscript. +Being a woman, I understand your temptation +and your tactics. I fully sympathise +with you. +</p> + +<p> +Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted +intimate. I shall not drop in to interrupt you +and Ben—both not so young as you once were +and both getting stout—heavy Polly, heavy +Ben—as you sit side by side in your little +Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always +suggests to me an enormous turnip hollowed +out square: with no windows; with a hole on +one side to come in and a hole on the other +side to go out; upholstered in enormous +bunches of beets and horse-radish, and lighted +with a wilted electric sunflower. There you +two will sit to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben, +suffocating for fresh air and murmuring to +each other as you have murmured for years: +</p> + +<p> +"I do! I do!" +</p> + +<p> +"I do! I do!" +</p> + +<p> +One sentence in your letter, Polly dear, +takes your photograph like a camera; the result +is a striking likeness. That sentence is this: +</p> + +<p> +"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will +explain afterwards." +</p> + +<p> +That is exactly what you will do, what you +would always do: explain afterwards. In +other words, you plot to make Ben jealous +but fear to make him too jealous lest he desert +you. If on the evening of this visit you should +forget "to explain," and if during the night +you should remember, you would, if need +were, walk barefoot through the streets in +your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter, +if you could reach it, and say: "Ben, +that appointment wasn't with any other man; +it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I +had told you!" +</p> + +<p> +That is, you have already disposed of +yourself, breath and soul, to Ben; and while you +are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you +have espoused in his behalf what you consider +your best and strongest trait—loyalty. Under +the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a +few years after marriage, have devoured all +there is of Ben alive and will have taken your +seat beside what are virtually his bones. As +the years pass, the more ravenously you will +preside over the bones. Never shall the world +say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever +was left of her dear Ben Doolittle! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Your loyalty</i>! I believe the first I saw of it +was years ago one night in Louisville when +you and I were planning to come to New York +to live. Naturally we were much concerned +by the difficulties of choosing our respective +New York residences and we had written on +and had received thumb-nailed libraries of +romance about different places. As you +looked over the recommendations of each, you +came upon one called The Franklin Flats. +The circular contained appropriate +quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I +remember how your face brightened as you +said: "This ought to be the very thing." One +of the quotations on the circular ran +somewhat thus: "Beware of meat twice +boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So +they must have a good restaurant!" +</p> + +<p> +In other words, you believed that a house +named after Franklin could but resemble +Franklin. A building put up in New York +by a Tammany contractor, if named after +Benjamin Franklin and advertised with +quotations from Franklin's works, would embody +the traits of that remote national hero! To +your mind—not to your imagination, for you +haven't any—to your mind, and you have a +great deal of mind, the bell-boys, the +superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids, +the flunkied knave who stands at the +front door—all these were loyally congregated +as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still +in the Franklin Flats! I know what you have +long suffered there; but move away! Not +Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building +as long as the building stands by the +contractor and the contractor stands by profits +and losses. +</p> + +<p> +While on the subject of loyalty, not your +loyalty but woman's loyalty, I mean to +finish with it. And I shall go on to say that +occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass +window in some Fifth Avenue shop and have +studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised +loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes +effect in those processions that now and +then sweep up the Avenue as though they +were Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The +marchers try first not to look self-conscious; +all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the +cause." But beneath all other expressions +and differences of expression I have always +seen one reigning look as plainly as though it +were printed in enormous letters on a banner +flying over their heads: +</p> + +<p> +"Strictly Monogamous Women." +</p> + +<p> +At such times I have felt a wild desire, when +I should hear of the next parade, to organise +a company of unenthralled young girls who +with unfettered natures and unfettered +features should tramp up the Avenue under their +own colours. If the women before them—those +loyal ones—would actually carry, as +they should, a banner with the legend I have +described, then my company of girls should +unfurl to the breeze their flag with the truth +blazoned on it: +</p> + +<p> +"Not Necessarily Monogamous!" +</p> + +<p> +The honest human crowd, watching and +applauding us, would pack the Avenue from +sidewalks to roofs. +</p> + +<p> +Between you and me everything seems to +be summed up in one difference: all my life +I have wanted to go barefoot and all your life, +no matter what the weather, you have been +solicitous to put on goloshes. +</p> + +<p> +My very nature is rooted in rebellion that +in a world alive and running over with +irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to +find her chief happiness in just one! The +heart going out to so many in succession, and +the hand held by one; year after year your +hand held by the first man who impulsively +got possession of it. Every instinct of my +nature would be to jerk my hand away and +be free! To give it again and again. +</p> + +<p> +This subject weighs crushingly on me as I +struggle with this letter because I have +tidings for you about myself. I am to write +words which I have long doubted I should +ever write, life's most iron-bound words. +Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at +last. Of course it is Beverley. Not without +waverings, not without misgivings. But I'd +feel those, be the man whoever he might. +Why I feel thus I do not know, but I know I +feel. I tell you this first because it was you +who brought Beverley and me together, who +have always believed in his career. (Though +I think that of late you have believed more +in him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning +to believe in his career. He has lately +ascertained that his work is making a splendid +impression in England. If he succeeds in +England, he will succeed in this country. He has +received an invitation to visit some delightful +and very influential people in England and +"to bring me along!" Think of anybody +bringing <i>me</i> along! If we should be +entertained by these people [they are the +Blackthornes], such is English social life, that we +should also get to know the white Thornes +and the red Thornes—the whole social forest. +The iron rule of my childhood was economy; +and the influence of that iron rule over me is +inexorable still: I cannot even contemplate +such prodigal wastage in life as not to accept +this invitation and gather in its wealth of +consequences. +</p> + +<p> +More news of me, very, very important: <i>at +last</i> I have made the acquaintance of George +Marigold. I have become one of his patients. +</p> + +<p> +Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from +him. You need not return it. I shall not +answer it. I shall leave things to his imagination +and his imagination will give him no rest. +</p> + +<p> +If Ben hurled at <i>you</i> a jealous letter about +Dr. Mullen, you would immediately write to +remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule +Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's +eyes. That is, you would do an abominable +thing, never doubting that Ben would admire +you the more. And you would be right; for +as Ben observed you tear Dr. Mullen to +pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back +in his chair and chuckle within himself: +"Glorious, staunch old Polly!" +</p> + +<p> +And what you would do in this instance you +will do all your life: you will practise disloyalty +to every other human being, as in this letter +you have practised it with me, for the sake +of loyalty to Ben: your most pronounced, +most horrible trait. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 7.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +I return Beverley's letter. Without comment, +since I did not read it. You know how +I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him. +I have a feeling for him unlike that for any +other human being, not even Ben; I look upon +him as set apart and sacred because he has +genius and belongs to the world. +</p> + +<p> +As for his faults, those that I have not +already noticed I prefer to find out for +myself. I have never cared to discover any +human being's failings through a third person. +Instead of getting acquainted with the +pardonable traits of the abused, I might really +be introduced to the <i>abominable traits of the +abuser</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Once more</i>, you think you are going to marry +Beverley! I shall reserve my congratulations +for the <i>event itself</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Thank you for surrendering your claim on +my friendship and society last night. Ben +and I had a most satisfactory evening, and +when not suffocating we murmured "I do" +to our hearts' content. +</p> + +<p> +Next time, should your visits clash, I'll +push <i>him</i> out. Yet I feel in honour bound to +say that this is only my present state of mind. +I might weaken at the last moment—even in +the Franklin Flats. +</p> + +<p> +As to some things in your letter, I have long +since learned not to bestow too much +attention upon anything you say. You court a +kind of irresponsibility in language. With +your inborn and over-indulged willfulness you +love to break through the actual and to revel +in the imaginary. I have become rather used +to this as one of your growing traits and I am +therefore not surprised that in this letter you +say things which, if seriously spoken, would +insult your sex and would make them recoil +from you—or make them wish to burn you at +the stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue +with your company of girls in that kind of +procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: +you will be tramping through the slums where +you belong. +</p> + +<p> +All this, I repeat, is merely your way—to +take things out in talking. But we can make +words our playthings in life's shallows until +words wreck us as their playthings in life's +deeps. +</p> + +<p> +Still, in return for your compliments to me, +<i>which, of course, you really mean</i>, I paid you +one the other night when thinking of you +quite by myself. It was this: nature seems +to leave something out of each of us, but we +presently discover that she perversely put it +where it does not belong. +</p> + +<p> +What she left out of you, my dear, was the +domestic tea-kettle. There isn't even any +place for one. But she made up for lack of +the kettle <i>by rather overdoing the stove</i>! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your <i>discreet</i> friend,<br /> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + June 7, 1900.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +GENTLEMEN: +</p> + +<p> +A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin +Doolittle, has suggested your firm as reliable +agents to carry out an important commission, +which I herewith describe: +</p> + +<p> +I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire +you to make a collection of these ferns and to +ship them, expenses prepaid, to Edward +Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, +Warwickshire, England. The cost is not to +exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish you +the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid +unnecessary correspondence, I herewith enclose, +payable to your order, my check for that +amount. +</p> + +<p> +Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating +whether you will undertake this commission +and see it through? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Louisville, Ky.,<br /> + June 10, 1900.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Your valued letter with check for $25 +received. We handle most of the ferns on the +list, and know the others and can easily get +them. +</p> + +<p> +You may rely upon your valued order +receiving the best attention. Thanking you for +the same, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours very truly,<br /> + PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + June 15, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: +</p> + +<p> +Your second letter came into the port of +my life like an argosy from a rich land. I +think you must have sent it with some +remembrance of your own youth, or out of your +mature knowledge of youth itself; how too +often it walks the shore of its rocky world, +cutting its bare feet on sharp stones, as it +strains its eyes toward things far beyond its +horizon but not beyond its faith and hope. +Some day its ship comes in and it sets sail +toward the distant ideal. How much the opening +of the door of your friendship, of your life, +means to me! A new consecration envelops +the world that I am to be the guest of a great +man. If words do not say more, it is because +words say so little. +</p> + +<p> +Delay has been unavoidable in any mere +formal acknowledgment of your letter. You +spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My +silence has been due to the arrangement of +hinges for the shipment of the ferns. I +wished to insure their safe transoceanic +passage and some inquiries had to be made in +Kentucky. +</p> + +<p> +You may rely upon it that the matter will +receive the best attention. In good time the +ferns, having reached the end of their journey, +will find themselves put down in your garden +as helpless immigrants. From what outlook +I can obtain upon the scene of their reception, +they should lack only hands to reach +confidingly to you and lack only feet to run with +all their might away from Hodge. +</p> + +<p> +I acknowledge—with the utmost thanks—the +unusual and beautiful courtesy of +Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife, +if I have one, and to me. It is the dilemma +of my life, at the age of twenty-seven, to be +obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands +exists, but that nevertheless there is no +such person. +</p> + +<p> +Can you imagine a man's stretching out his +hand to pluck a peach and just before he +touched the peach, finding only the bough of +the tree? Then, as from disappointment he +was about to break off the offensive bough, +seeing again the dangling peach? Can you +imagine this situation to be of long +continuance, during which he could neither take +hold of the peach nor let go of the tree—nor +go away? If you can, you will understand +what I mean when I say that my bride +persists in remaining unwed and I persist in +wooing. I do not know why; she protests +that she does not know; but we do know that +life is short, love shorter, that time flies, and +we are not husband and wife. +</p> + +<p> +If she remains undecided when Summer +returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne and you will +let me come alone. +</p> + +<p> +Thus I can thank you with certainty for +one with the hope that I may yet thank you +for two. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +P.S.—Can you pardon the informality of +a postscript? +</p> + +<p> +As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy +situation, marriage is denied me on account +of the whole unhappy history of +woman—which is pretty hard. But a good many +American ladies—the one I woo among them—are +indignant just now that they are being +crowded out of their destinies by husbands—or +even possibly by bachelors. These ladies +deliver lectures to one another with discontented +eloquence and rouse their auditresses +to feministic frenzy by reminding them that +for ages woman has walked in the shadow of +man and that the time has come for the worm +[the woman] to turn on the shadow or to +crawl out of it. +</p> + +<p> +My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly +say that the only two shadows I could ever +think of casting on the woman I married +would be that of my umbrella whenever it +rained, and that of her parasol whenever the +sun shone. But I do maintain that if there +is not enough sunshine for the men and women +in the world, if there has to be some casting +of shadows in the competition and the crowding, +I do maintain that the casting of the +shadow would better be left to the man. He +has had long training, terrific experience, in +this mortal business of casting the shadow, +has learned how to moderate it and to hold +it steady! The woman at least knows where +it is to be found, should she wish to avail +herself of it. But what would be the state of a +man in his need of his spouse's penumbra? +He would be out of breath with running to +keep up with the penumbra or to find where +it was for the time being! +</p> + +<p> +I have seen some of these husbands who +live—or have gradually died out—in the +shadow of their wives; they are nature's +subdued farewell to men and gentlemen. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01c"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 16.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +A remarkable thing has lately happened to +me. +</p> + +<p> +One of my Kentucky novels, upon being +republished in London some months ago, +fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. +This critic's praise later made its way to the +stately library of Edward Blackthorne. What +especially induced the latter to read the book, +I infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer +from my description of a woodland scene with +ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, +is himself interested in ferns. He consequently +wrote to some other English authors +and critics, calling attention to my work, and +he sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns +for his garden. +</p> + +<p> +This recognition in England hilariously +affected my friends over here. Tilly, whose +mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair +of golden balances for weighing delight against +delight (always her most vital affair), when +this honour for me fell into the scales, found +them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as +I have often thought, that she has long been +holding on to me merely until she could take +sure hold of someone else of more splendid +worldly consequence, she suddenly at least +tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, +solid Polly, wholesome and dependable as a +well-browned whole-wheat baker's loaf +weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she +heard of it, gave me a Bohemian supper in +her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a +few undersized people, inasmuch as she and +Ben, the chief personages of the entertainment, +took up most of the room. We were +so packed in, that literally it was a night in +Bohemia <i>aux sardines</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Since the good news from England came +over, Ben, with his big, round, clean-shaven, +ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, +which makes him look like a thirty-five-year-old +Bacchus who had never drunk a drop—even +Ben has beamed on me like a mellower +orb. He is as ashamed as ever of my books, +but is beginning to feel proud that so many +more people are being fooled by them. +Several times lately I have caught his eyes +resting on me with an expression of affectionate +doubt as to whether after all he might be +mistaken in not having thought more of me. +But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a +human refrigerator containing a mental +thermometer, which rises or falls toward like or +dislike over a background for book-sales, got +wind of the matter and promptly invited me +to one of his thermometric club-lunches—always +an occasion for acute gastritis. +</p> + +<p> +Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, +where, of course, the leading English reviews +are kept on file. Some of the members must +have seen the favourable criticisms. One +night I became aware as I passed through the +rooms that club heroes seated here and there +threw glances of fresh interest toward me and +exchanged auspicious words. The president—who +for so long a time has styled himself the +Nestor of the club that he now believes it is +the members who do this, the garrulous old +president, whose weaknesses have made holes +in him through which his virtues sometimes +leak out and get away, met me under the +main chandelier and congratulated me in +tones so intentionally audible that they +violated the rules but were not punishable under +his personal privileges. +</p> + +<p> +There was a sinister incident: two members +whom Ben and I wish to kick because they +have had the audacity to make the acquaintance +of Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise +also because they are fashionable charlatans +in their profession—these two with dark looks +saw the president congratulate me. +</p> + +<p> +More good fortune yet to come! The ferns +which I am sending Mr. Blackthorne will +soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious +man has many visitors; he leads them, +if he likes, to his fern bank. "These," he will +some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. +These are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. +These were sent me by Turgenieff. And +these," he will add, turning to his guests, +"these came from a young American novelist, +a Kentuckian, whose work I greatly respect: +you must read his books." The guests +separate to their homes to pursue the subject. +Spreading fame—may it spread! Last of all, +the stirring effect of this on me, who now run +toward glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran +toward Venus—with both feet and wings. +</p> + +<p> +The ironic fact about all this commotion +affecting so many solid, substantial people—the +ironic fact is this: +</p> + +<p> +<i>There was no woodland scene and there were +no ferns.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Here I reach the curious part of my +story. +</p> + +<p> +When I was a country lad of some seventeen +years in Kentucky, one August afternoon +I was on my way home from a tramp of +several miles. My course lay through patches +of woods—last scant vestiges of the primeval +forest—and through fields garnered of summer +grain or green with the crops of coming +autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence +and crossed an old woods-pasture where stock +grazed. +</p> + +<p> +The August sky was clear and the sun beat +down with terrific heat. I had been walking +for hours and parching thirst came upon me. +</p> + +<p> +This led me to remember how once these +rich uplands had been the vast rolling forest +that stretched from far-off eastern mountains +to far-off western rivers, and how under its +shade, out of the rock, everywhere bubbled +crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams +diamond bright, drinking places of the bold +game. +</p> + +<p> +The sun beat down on me in the treeless +open field. My feet struck into a path. It, +too, became a reminder: it had once been a +trail of the wild animals of that verdurous +wilderness. I followed its windings—a sort of +gully—down a long, gentle slope. The +windings had no meaning now: the path could +better have been straight; it was devious +because the feet that first marked it off had +threaded their way crookedly hither and +thither past the thick-set trees. +</p> + +<p> +I reached the spring—a dry spot under the +hot sun; no tree overshadowing it, no vegetation +around it, not a blade of grass; only dust +in which were footprints of the stock which +could not break the habit of coming to it but +quenched their thirst elsewhere. The bulged +front of some limestone rock showed where +the ancient mouth of the spring had been. +Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a +few clods. Hovering over these, rising and +sinking, a little quivering jet of gold, a flock +of butterflies. The grey stalk of a single dead +weed projected across the choked orifice of +the fountain and one long, brown grasshopper—spirit +of summer dryness—had crawled out +to the edge and sat motionless. +</p> + +<p> +A few yards away a young sycamore had +sprung up from some wind-carried seed. Its +grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow +on the dry grass and I went over and lay +down under it to rest—my eyes fixed on the +forest ruin. +</p> + +<p> +Years followed with their changes. I being +in New York with my heart set on building +whatever share I could of American literature +upon Kentucky foundations, I at work on a +novel, remembered that hot August afternoon, +the dry spring, and in imagination restored +the scene as it had been in the Kentucky +of the pioneers. +</p> + +<p> +I now await with eagerness all further +felicities that may originate in a woodland +scene that did not exist. What else will grow +for me out of ferns that never grew? +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap02"></a></p> + +<h3> +PART SECOND +</h3> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + May 1, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +It is the first of the faithful leafy May +again. I sit at my windows as on this day a +year ago and look out with thankfulness upon +what a man may call the honour of the +vegetable world. +</p> + +<p> +A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of +yours or by some books—for I believe I read +more than one of them—I, betrayed by the +phrase that when we touch a book we touch +a man, overstepped the boundaries of caution +as to having any dealings with glib, plausible +strangers and wrote you a letter. I made a +request of you in that letter. I thought the +request bore with it a suitable reward: that +I should be grateful if you would undertake +to have some ferns sent to me for my collection. +</p> + +<p> +Your sleek reply led me still further astray +and I wrote again. I drew my English cloak +from my shoulders and spread it on the ground +for you to step on. I threw open to you the +doors of my hospitality, good-fellowship. +</p> + +<p> +That was last May. Now it is May again. +And now I know to a certainty what for +months I have been coming to realise always +with deeper shame: that you gave me your +word and did not keep your word; doubtless +never meant to keep it. +</p> + +<p> +Why, then, write you about this act of +dishonour now? How justify a letter to a man +I feel obliged to describe as I describe you? +</p> + +<p> +The reason is this, if you can appreciate +such a reason. My nature refuses to let go a +half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an +abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood +I came upon a partly chopped-down tree, and +I must needs go far and fetch an axe and +finish the job. What I have begun to build I +must build at till the pattern is wrought out. +Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the +stamina of resolution. The upright moral +skeleton within me would decay and crumble and +I should sink down and flop like a human frog. +</p> + +<p> +Since, then, you dropped the matter in +your way—without so much as a thought of +a man's obligation to himself—I dismiss it in +my way—with the few words necessary to +enable me to rid my mind of it and of such a +character. +</p> + +<p> +I wish merely to say, then, that I despise +as I despise nothing else the ragged edge of a +man's behaviour. I put your conduct before +you in this way: do you happen to know of a +common cabbage in anybody's truck patch? +Observe that not even a common cabbage +starts out to do a thing and fails to do it if it +can. You must have some kind of perception +of an oak tree. Think what would become of +human beings in houses if builders were +deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound oak? +Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how +it takes hold and will not be shaken loose by +the capricious compelling winds. In your +country have you the plover? Think what +would be the plover's fate, if it did not steer +straight through time and space to a distant +shore. Why, some day pick up merely a +piece of common quartz. Study its powers +of crystallisation. And reflect that a man +ranks high or low in the scale of character +according to his possession or his lack of the +powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his +mind can assume fixity around an idea, if +they can adjust themselves unalterably about +a plan, expect something of him. If they run +through his hours like water, if memory is +a millstream, if remembrance floats forever +away, expect nothing. +</p> + +<p> +Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted +for themselves the characters of familiar +plants about them. Do you know what to +them the fern stood for? The fern stood for +Fidelity. Those true, constant souls would +have said that you had been unfaithful even +with nature's emblems of Fidelity. +</p> + +<p> +The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight +falls in a white radiance on my plants. +I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on +honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a +certain spot in the garden; I dislike to look +at it. There is a shadow on the place where +your books once stood on my library shelves. +Your specious books!—your cleverly +manufactured books!—but there are successful +scamps in every profession. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights,<br /> + May 10, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I wish to inform you that I have just +received from you a letter in which you attack +my character. I wish in reply further to +inform you that I have never felt called upon +to defend my character. Nor will I, even +with this letter of yours as evidence, attack +your character. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 13, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I ask your attention to the enclosed letter +from Mr. Edward Blackthorne. By way of +contrast and also of reminder, lest you may +have forgotten, I send you two other letters +received from him last year. I shared with +you at the time the agreeable purport of these +earlier letters. This last letter came three +days ago and for three days I have been +trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write +to you about it. At last I am able to do so. +</p> + +<p> +You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has +never received the ferns. Then where have +they been all this time? I took it for granted +that they had been shipped. The order was +last spring placed with the Louisville firm +recommended by you. They guaranteed the +execution of the order. I forwarded to them +my cheque. They cashed my cheque. The +voucher was duly returned to me cancelled +through my bank. I could not suppose they +would take my cheque unless they had +shipped the plants. They even wrote me +again in the Autumn of their own accord, +stating that the ferns were about to be sent +on—Autumn being the most favourable season. +Then where are the ferns? +</p> + +<p> +I felt so sure of their having reached +Mr. Blackthorne that I harboured a certain +grievance and confess that I tried to make generous +allowance for him as a genius in his never +having acknowledged their arrival. +</p> + +<p> +I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an +immediate explanation. As soon as they reply +I shall let you hear further. The fault may +be with them; in the slipshod Southern way +they may have been negligent. My cheque +may even have gone as a bridal present to +some junior member of the firm or to help +pay the funeral expenses of the senior member. +</p> + +<p> +There is trouble somewhere behind and I +think there is trouble ahead. +</p> + +<p> +Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine +ladies; but if some lady will kindly +lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit +that I have it and on the strength of it—or +the weakness—declare my belief that the +mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some +curious and funny things. +</p> + +<p> +As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: +after these days of turbulence, I have come to +see my way clear to interpret it thus: a great +man, holding a great place in the world, +offered his best to a stranger and the stranger, +as the great man believes, turned his back on +it. That is the grievance, the insult. If +anything could be worse, it is my seeming +discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the +invitation came also from her. In a word, here +is a genius who strove to advance my work +and me, and he feels himself outraged in his +kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and +his family—in all his best. +</p> + +<p> +But of course that is the hardest of all +human things to stand. Men who have +treated each other but fairly well or even +badly in ordinary matters often in time +become friends. But who of us ever forgives +the person that slights our best? Out of a +rebuff like that arises such life-long +unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ +itself doubtless for this very reason took pains +to issue its warning—no pearls before swine! +And perhaps of all known pearls a great native +British pearl is the most prized by its British +possessor! +</p> + +<p> +The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's +best has been his worst: if I did not merit his +best, I deserve his worst; hence his last letter. +God have mercy on the man who deserved +that letter! You will have observed that his +leading trait as revealed in all his letters is +enormous self-love. That's because he is a +genius. Genius <i>has</i> to have enormous +self-love. Beware the person who has none! +Without self-love no one ever wins any other's +love. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the mighty English archer with his +mighty bow shot his mighty arrow—but at +an innocent person. +</p> + +<p> +Still the arrow of this letter, though it +misses me, kills my plans. The first trouble +will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally +fixed for June, and our plans embraced a +wedding journey to England and the acceptance +of the invitation of the Blackthornes. +The prospect of this wonderful English +summer—I might as well admit it—was one thing +that finally steadied all her wavering as to +marriage. +</p> + +<p> +Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, +no English celebrities to greet us as American +celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no lawns, +no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely +two unknown, impoverished young Yankee +tourists, trying to get out of chilly England +what can be gotten by anybody with a few, +a very few, dollars. +</p> + +<p> +But Tilly dreads disappointment as she +dreads disease. To her disappointment is a +disease in the character of the person who +inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to +get you to read one of Balzac's masterpieces, +<i>The Magic Skin</i>. I told you enough about it +to enable you to understand what I now say: +that ever since I became engaged to Tilly I +have been to her as a magic skin which, as +she cautiously watches it, has always shrunk +a little whenever I have encountered a defeat +or brought her a disappointment. No later +success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the +shrunken skin: it remains shrunken where +each latest disappointment has left it. +</p> + +<p> +Now when I tell her of my downfall and the +collapse of the gorgeous summer plans! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY<br /> + (the Expanding Scamp and the<br /> + Shrinking Skin).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 14th.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +I have duly pondered the letters you send. +</p> + +<p> + "Fie, fee, fo, fum,<br /> + I smell the blood of an Englishman!"<br /> +</p> + +<p> +If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents +from him in my possession. And suppose +you send me all later letters, whether +from him or from anyone else, that bear on +this matter. It begins to grow interesting +and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, +then, as your lawyer, the custodian of all +pertinent and impertinent papers. They can go +into the locker where I keep your immortal +but impecunious Will. Some day I might +have to appear in court, I with my shovel and +five senses and no imagination, to plead <i>une +cause célèbre</i> (a little more of my scant +intimate French). +</p> + +<p> +The explanation I give of this gratuitously +insulting letter is that at last you have run +into a hostile human imagination in the +person of an old literary polecat, an aged +book-skunk. Of course if I could decorate my style +after the manner of your highly creative +gentlemen, I might say that you had unwarily +crossed the nocturnal path of his touchy +moonlit mephitic highness. +</p> + +<p> +I am not surprised, of course, that this +letter has caused you to think still more +highly of its writer. I tell you that is your +profession—to tinker—to turn reality into +something better than reality. +</p> + +<p> +Some day I expect to see you emerge from +your shop with a fish story. Intending buyers +will find that you have entered deeply into +the ideals and difficulties of the man-eating +shark: how he could not swim freely for +whales in his track and could not breathe +freely for minnows in his mouth; how he got +pinched from behind by the malice of the +lobster and got shocked on each side by the +eccentricities of the eel. The other fish did +not appreciate him and he grew embittered—and +then only began to bite. You will make +over the actual shark and exhibit him to your +reader as the ideal shark—a kind of beloved +disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish. +</p> + +<p> +Anything imaginative that you might make +out of a shark would be a minor achievement +compared with what you have done for this +Englishman. Might the day come, the +avenging day, when Benjamin Doolittle could get +a chance to write him just one letter! May +the god of battles somehow bring about a +meeting between the middle-aged land-turtle +and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars +somebody's fur will have to fly and it will +not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any. +</p> + +<p> +You speak of a trouble that looms up in +your love affair: let it loom. The nearer it +looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly +warned you that you have bound your life +and happiness to the wrong person, and the +person is constantly becoming worse. +Detach your apparatus of dreams at last from +her. Take off your glorious rainbow world-goggles +and see the truth before it is too late. +Do not fail, unless you object, to send me +all letters incoming about the ferns—those +now celebrated bushes. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 13, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +We acknowledge receipt of your letter of +May 10 relative to an order for ferns. +</p> + +<p> +It is decidedly rough. The senior member +of our firm who formerly had charge of this +branch of our business has been seriously ill +for several months, and it was only after we +had communicated with him at home in bed +that we were able to extract from him +anything at all concerning your esteemed order. +</p> + +<p> +He informs us that he turned the order +over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce, native fern +collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that +they would gather the ferns and forward them +to the designated address. He likewise +informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns +& Bruce, as we know only too well, has long +been indebted to this firm for a considerable +amount, he calculated that they would willingly +ship the ferns in partial liquidation of +our old claims. +</p> + +<p> +It seems, as he tells us, that they did +actually gather the ferns and get them ready +for shipment, but at the last minute changed +their mind and called on our firm for +payment. There the matter was unexpectedly +dropped owing to the sudden illness of the +aforesaid member of our house, and we knew +nothing at all of what had transpired until +your letter led us to obtain from him at his +bedside the statements above detailed. +</p> + +<p> +An additional embarrassment to the unusually +prosperous course of our business was +occasioned by the marriage of a junior member +of the firm and his consequent absence for a +considerable time, which resulted in an +augmentation of the expenses of our establishment +and an unfortunate diminution of our +profits. +</p> + +<p> +In view of the illness of the senior member +of our house and in view of the marriage of a +junior member and in view of the losses and +expenses consequent thereon, and in view of +the subsequent withdrawal of both from +active participation in the conduct of the +affairs of our firm, and in view also of a +disagreement which arose between both members +and the other members as to the financial +basis of a settlement on which the withdrawal +could take place, our affairs have of necessity +been thrown into court in litigation and are +still in litigation up to this date. +</p> + +<p> +Regretting that you should have been +seemingly inconvenienced in the slightest +degree by the apparent neglect of a former +member of our firm, we desire to add that as +soon as matters can be taken out of court our +firm will be reorganised and that we shall +continue to give, as heretofore, the most +scrupulous attention to all orders received. +</p> + +<p> +But we repeat that your letter is pretty +rough. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Dunkirk, Tenn.,<br /> + May 20, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds +gave us the order for the ferns. Owing to +extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered +earlier than usual and it was unsafe to ship +at that time; in the Winter the weather was +so severe that even in February we were +unable to make any digging, as the frost had +not disappeared. When at last we got the +ferns ready, we called on them for payment +and they wouldn't pay. Phillips & Faulds +are not good paying bills and we could not +put ourselves to expense filling their new +order for ferns, not wishing to take more +risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, +and could not afford to ship more. proved +very unsatisfactory and had to drop them +entirely. +</p> + +<p> +Are already out of pocket the cost of the +ferns, worthless to us when Phillips & Faulds +dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we +owed them because they won't pay their bills. +If you do not wish to have any further +dealings with them you might write to Noah +Chamberlain at Seminole, North Carolina, +just over the state line, not far from here, an +authority on American ferns. We have +sometimes collected rare ferns for him to +ship to England and other European +countries. Vouch for him as an honest man. +Always paid his bills, old accounts against +Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them +entirely. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BURNS & BRUCE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 24.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +You requested me to send you for possible +future reference all incoming letters upon the +subject of the ferns. Here are two more that +have just fluttered down from the blue +heaven of the unexpected or been thrust up +from the lower regions through a crack in +the earth's surface. +</p> + +<p> +Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling +eloquence of Messrs. Phillips & Faulds. When +the eloquence has ceased to ripple and settles +down to stay, their letter has the cold purity +of a whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. +They and another firm of florists have a +law-suit as to which owes the other, and they +meantime compel me, an innocent bystander, +to deliver to them my pocketbook. +</p> + +<p> +Will you please immediately bring suit +against Phillips & Faulds on behalf of my +valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable +indignation? Bring suit against and bring +your boot against them if you can. My +ducats! Have my ducats out of them or +their peace by day and night. +</p> + +<p> +The other letter seems of an unhewn +probity that wins my confidence. That is to +say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure +me that I ought to believe, and with all my +heart I do now believe, in the existence, just +over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of +good character and a business head. Thus I +now press on over the Tennessee state line +into North Carolina. +</p> + +<p> +For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; +more than ever they must go to him +now. Not the entire British army drawn up +on the white cliffs of Dover could keep me +from landing them on the British Isle. Even +if I had to cross over to England, travel to +his home, put the ferns down before him or +throw them at his head and walk out of his +house without a word. +</p> + +<p> +I told you I had a borrowed premonition +that there would be trouble ahead: now it is +not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. +I have grown to stand in dread of all florists, +and I approach this third one with my hat in +my hand (also with my other hand on my +pocketbook). +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + May 25, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +You have been recommended to me by +Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk, +Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied +upon to keep his word and to carry out his +business obligations. +</p> + +<p> +Accepting at its face value their high +testimonial as to your trustworthiness, I desire +to place with you the following order: +</p> + +<p> +Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my +request, have forwarded to you a list of rare +Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these +ferns and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, +Esq., King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, +England. As a guaranty of good faith +on my part, I enclose in payment my check +for twenty-five dollars. Will you have the +kindness to let me know at once whether you +will undertake this commission and give it +the strictest attention? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + May 29.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I have received your letter with your check +in it. +</p> + +<p> +You are the first person that ever offered +me money as a florist. I am not a florist, if +I must take time to inform you. I had +supposed it to be generally known throughout +the United States and in Europe that I am +professor of botany in this college, and have +been for the past fifteen years. If Burns & +Bruce really told you I am a florist—and I +doubt it—they must be greater ignoramuses +than I took them to be. I always knew that +they did not have much sense, but I thought +they had a little. It is true that they have +at different times gathered specimens of ferns +for me, and more than once have shipped +them to Europe. But I never imagined they +were fools enough to think this made me a +florist. My collection of ferns embraces dried +specimens for study in my classrooms and +specimens growing on the college grounds. +The ferns I have shipped to Europe have +been sent to friends and correspondents. The +President of the Royal Botanical Society of +Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I +have sent him some and I have also sent some +to friends in Norway and Sweden and to +other scientific students of botany. +</p> + +<p> +It only shows that your next-door neighbour +may know nothing about you, especially +if you are a little over your neighbour's head. +</p> + +<p> +My daughter, who is my secretary, will +return your check, but I thought I had better +write and tell you myself that I am not a +florist. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours truly,<br /> + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + May 29.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I can but express my intense indignation, +as Professor Chamberlain's only daughter, +that you should send a sum of money to my +distinguished father to hire his services as a +nurseryman. I had supposed that my father +was known to the entire intelligent American +public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked +with such men as Dana and Gray and +Alexander von Humboldt. +</p> + +<p> +People of our means and social position in +the South do not peddle bulbs. We do not +reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn +our bread by making funeral wreaths and +crosses. +</p> + +<p> +You must be some kind of nonentity. +</p> + +<p> +Your cheque is pinned to this letter. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 3.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I am deeply mortified at having believed +Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be well-informed +and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that +it is no longer safe for me to believe +anybody—not about nurserymen. I am not sure now +that I should believe you. You say you are a +famous botanist, but you may be merely a +famous liar, known as such to various learned +bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is +necessary, and you must admit that your +letter does not furnish me with that proof. +</p> + +<p> +Still I am going to believe you and I renew +the assurance of my mortification that I have +innocently caused you the chagrin of +discovering that you are not so well known, at +least in this country, as you supposed. I +suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; +it is the tie that binds: blest be the tie. +</p> + +<p> +I shall be extremely obliged if you will +have the kindness to return to me the list of +ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & +Bruce, and for that purpose you will please +to find enclosed an envelope addressed and +stamped. +</p> + +<p> +I acknowledge the return of my cheque, +which occasions me some surprise and not a +little pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +Allow me once more to regret that through +my incurable habit of believing strangers, +believing everybody, I was misled into taking +the lower view of you as a florist instead of +the higher view as a botanist. But you must +admit that I was right in classification and +wrong only in elevation. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 8.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I know nothing about any list of ferns. +Stop writing to me. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 8.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +It is excruciating the way you continue to +persecute my great father. What is wrong +with you? What started you to begin on us +in this way? We never heard of <i>you</i>. Would +you let my dear father alone? +</p> + +<p> +He is a very deep student and it is intolerable +for me to see his priceless attention +drawn from his work at critical moments +when he might be on the point of making +profound discoveries. My father is a very +absent-minded man, as great scholars usually +are, and when he is interrupted he may even +forget what he has just been thinking about. +</p> + +<p> +Your letter was a very serious shock to +him, and after reading it he could not even +drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. +Time and again he put his cup down and said +to me in a trembling voice: "Think of his +calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up +from the table without eating anything and +left the room. He turned at the door and +said to me, with a confused expression: "I +<i>may</i>, once in my life—but <i>he</i> didn't know +anything about <i>that</i>." +</p> + +<p> +He shut his door and stayed in his library +all evening, thinking without nourishment. +</p> + +<p> +What a viper you are to call my great father +a liar. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 12.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I knew I was in for it! I send another +installment of incredible letters from +unbelievable people. +</p> + +<p> +In my wanderings over the earth after the +ferns I have innocently brought my foot +against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called +the head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist, +and the whole hill is frantic with fury. +As far as heard from, there are only two ants +in the hill, but the two make a lively many +in their letters. It's a Southern vendetta +and my end may draw nigh. +</p> + +<p> +Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly +is at hand. She has been out of town for a +house-party somewhere and is to return +to-morrow. When Tilly came to New York a +few years ago she had not an acquaintance; +now I marvel at the world of people she knows. +It is the result of her never declining an +invitation. Once I derided her about this, and +with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed +the reason: that no one ever knew what an +acquaintanceship might lead to. This +principle, or lack of principle, has led her far. +And wherever she goes, she is welcomed afterwards. +It is her mystery, her charm. I often +ask myself what is her charm. At least her +charm, as all charm, is victory. You are +defeated by her, chained and dragged along. +Of course, I expect all this to be reversed +after Tilly marries me. Then I am to have +my turn—she is to be led around, dragged +helpless by <i>my</i> charm. Magnificent outlook! +</p> + +<p> +To-morrow she is to return, and I shall +have to tell her that it is all over—our +wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the +whole vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud, +carrying with it the bright raindrops of her +hopes. +</p> + +<p> +I have never, by the way, mentioned to +Tilly this matter of the ferns. My first idea +was to surprise her: as some day we strolled +through the Blackthorne garden he would +point to the Kentucky specimens flourishing +there in honour of me. I have always observed +that any unexpected pleasure flushes +her face with a new light, with an effulgence +of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment +makes her suddenly look old and rather ugly. +</p> + +<p> +This was the first reason. Now I do not +intend to tell her at all. Disappointment will +bring out her demand to know why she is +disappointed—naturally. But how am I to tell +on the threshold of marriage that it is all due +to a misunderstanding about a handful of +ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would +never believe me—naturally. She would +infer that I was keeping back the real reason, +as being too serious to be told. +</p> + +<p> +Here, then, I am. But where am I? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY (complete and final<br /> + disappearance of the Magic Skin).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> +<i>June 13.</i> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly +about the ferns. Here I come in: there must +always be things that a man must refuse to +tell a woman. As soon as he tells her everything, +she puts her foot on his neck. I have +always refused even to tell Polly some things, +not that they might not be told, but that +Polly must not be told them; not for the +things' sake, but for Polly's good—and for a +man's peaceful control of his own life. +</p> + +<p> +For whatever else a woman marries in a +man, one thing in him she must marry: a rock. +Times will come when she will storm and rage +around that rock; but the storms cannot last +forever, and when they are over, the rock will +be there. By degrees there will be less storm. +Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take +possession of my whole life; to enter into all +my affairs. I am to her a house, no closet of +which must remain locked. Thus there are +certain closets which she repeatedly tries to +open. I can tell by her very expression when +she is going to try once more. Were they +opened, she would not find much; but it is +much to be guarded that she shall not open +them. +</p> + +<p> +The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly +as fact and too important as principle. +</p> + +<p> +Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me +anything about the ferns! When I am with +Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of +the fields. +</p> + +<p> +Let me hear at once how the trouble turns +out with Tilly. +</p> + +<p> +I must not close without making a profound +obeisance to your new acquaintances—the +Chamberlains. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +Something extremely disagreeable has come +up between Beverley and me. He tells me +we're not to go to England on our wedding +journey as anyone's guests: we travel as +ordinary American tourists unknown to all +England. +</p> + +<p> +You can well understand what this means +to me: you have watched all along how I have +pinched on my small income to get ready for +this beautiful summer. There has been a +quarrel of some kind between Mr. Blackthorne +and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me +the nature of the quarrel. I insisted that it +was my right to know and he insisted that it +is a man's affair with another man and not +any woman's business. Think of a woman +marrying a man who lays it down as a law +that his affairs are none of her business! +</p> + +<p> +I gave Beverley to understand that our +marriage was deferred for the summer. He +broke off the engagement. +</p> + +<p> +I had not meant to tell you anything, since +I am coming to-night. I have merely wished +you to understand how truly anxious I am to +see you, even forgetting your last letter—no, +not forgetting it, but overlooking it. Remember +you <i>then</i> broke an appointment with me; +<i>this</i> time keep your appointment—being loyal! +The messenger will wait for your reply, stating +whether the way is clear for me to come. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me +for to-night, but I have written to excuse +myself, and I shall be waiting most +impatiently. The coast will be clear and I hope +the night will be. +</p> + +<p> +"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; +"the horse-radish" and "the beets" will be +still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will +shed its usual ray on our heads. No breeze +will disturb us, for there will be no fresh air. +We shall have the long evening to ourselves, +and you can tell me just how it is that you +two, <i>not</i> heavy Tilly, <i>not</i> heavy Beverley, +sat on opposite sides of the room and +declared to each other: +</p> + +<p> +"I will not." +</p> + +<p> +"I will not." +</p> + +<p> +Since I have broken an engagement for +you, be sure not to let any later temptation +elsewhere keep you away. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Later in the day] +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 13.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected +final flare-up. Yesterday he wrote, +asking me to come up as soon as I was through +with business. I spent last night with him. +</p> + +<p> +We drew our chairs up to his opened window, +turned out the lights, got our cigars, and +with our feet on the window-sills and our +eyes on the stars across the sky talked the +long, quiet hours through. +</p> + +<p> +He talked, not I. Little could I have said +to him about the woman who has played fast +and loose with him while using him for her +convenience. He made it known at the +outset that not a word was to be spoken against +her. +</p> + +<p> +He just lay back in his big easy chair, +with his feet on his window-sill and his eyes +on the stars, and built up his defence of Tilly. +All night he worked to repair wreckage. +</p> + +<p> +As the grey of morning crept over the city +his work was well done: Tilly was restored to +more than she had ever been. Silence fell +upon him as he sat there with his eyes on the +reddening east; and it may be that he saw +her—now about to leave him at last—as some +white, angelic shape growing fainter and +fainter as it vanished in the flush of a new +day. +</p> + +<p> +You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. +If there were any wings anywhere around, it +was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar +with an early start to bring down some other +victim: the angel-aeroplane out after more +prey. I think we both know who the prey +will be. +</p> + +<p> +The solemn influence of the night has +rested on me. Were it possible, I should feel +even a higher respect for Beverley; there is +something in him that fills me with awe. He +suffers. He could mend Tilly but he cannot +mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him. +</p> + +<p> +Their quarrel brings me with an aching +heart closer to you. I must come to-night. +The messenger will wait for a word that I +may. And a sudden strange chill of desolation +as to life's brittle ties frightens me into +sending you some roses. +</p> + +<p> +Your lover through many close and constant years, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Still later in the day] +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +An incredible thing has happened. Ben +has just written that he wishes to see me +to-night. Will you, after all, wait until +to-morrow evening? My dear, I <i>have</i> to ask this +of you because there is something very +particular that Ben desires to talk to me about. +</p> + +<p> +<i>To-morrow night</i>, then, without fail, you +and I! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Late at night of the same day] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +We have talked the matter over and send +you our conjoined congratulations that your +engagement is broken off and your immediate +peril ended. But our immediate caution is +that the end of the betrothal will not +necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the +tempter will at once turn away from you in +pursuit of another man. She will begin to +weave her web about <i>him</i>. But if possible +she will still hold <i>you</i> to that web by a single +thread. Now, more than ever, you will need +to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible +to such a nature as yours. +</p> + +<p> +Not until obliged will she ever let you go +completely. She hath a devil—perhaps the +most famous devil in all the world—the love +devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, +are poor quitters. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + (Signed)<br /> + POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle.<br /> + BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles.<br /> + (His handwriting; her ideas<br /> + and language.)<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +This is the third time within the past +several months that I have requested you to +let me have your bill for professional services. +I shall not suppose that you have relied upon +my willingness to remain under an obligation +of this kind; nor do I like to think I have +counted for so little among your many +patients that you have not cared whether I +paid you or not. If your motive has been +kindness, I must plainly tell you that I do +not desire such kindness; and if there has +been no motive at all, but simply indifference, +I must remind you that this indifference means +disrespect and that I resent it. +</p> + +<p> +The things you have indirectly done for +me in other ways—the songs, the books and +magazines, the flowers—these I accept with +warm responsive hands and a lavish mind. +</p> + +<p> +And with words not yet uttered, perhaps +never to be uttered. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours sincerely,<br /> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June the Seventeenth.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +I have your bill and I make the due +remittance with all due thanks. +</p> + +<p> +Your note pleasantly reassures me how +greatly you are obliged that I could put you +in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins +about the purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. +It was a pleasure; in fact, a matter of +some pride to do this, and I am delighted that +they could furnish you a horse you approve. +</p> + +<p> +While taking my customary walk in the +Park yesterday morning, I had a chance to +see you and your new mount making +acquaintance with one another. I can pay you no +higher compliment than to say that you ride +like a Kentuckian. +</p> + +<p> +Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a +habit of mine to choose the footways through +the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn +to them by my childhood habit and girlish +love of riding. Even to see from day to day +what one once had but no longer has is to +keep alive hope that one may some day have +it again. +</p> + +<p> +You should some time go to Kentucky and +ride there. My cousins will look to that. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours sincerely,<br /> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June the Eighteenth.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +I was passing this morning and witnessed +the accident, and I must express my +condolences for what might have been and +congratulations upon what was. +</p> + +<p> +You certainly fell well—not unlike a +Kentuckian! +</p> + +<p> +I feel sure that my cousins could not have +known the horse was tricky. Any horse is +tricky to the end of his days and the end of +his road. He may not show any tricks at +home, but becomes tricky in new places. +(Can this be the reason that he is called the +most human of beasts?) +</p> + +<p> +You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly +to my mind that of late you have expressed +growing interest in Kentucky. More than +once, also (since you have begun to visit me), +you have asked me to tell you about my life +there. Frankly, this is because I am something +of a mystery and you would like to +have the mystery cleared up. You wish to +find out, without letting me know you are +finding out, whether there is not something +<i>wrong</i> about me, some <i>risk</i> for you in visiting +me. That is because you have never known +anybody like me. I frighten you because I +am not afraid of people, not afraid of life. +You are used to people who are afraid, +especially to women who are afraid. You +yourself are horribly afraid of nearly +everything. +</p> + +<p> +Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, +though it may not greatly explain why I am +without fear; still, the land and the people +might mean something; they ought to mean +much. +</p> + +<p> +I was born of not very poor and immensely +respectable parents in a poor and not very +respectable county of Kentucky. The first +thing I remember about life, my first social +consciousness, was the discovery that I was +entangled in a series of sisters: there were six +of us. I was as nearly as possible at the +middle of the procession—with three older +and two younger, so that I was crowded both +by what was before and by what was behind. +I early learned to fight for the present—against +both the past and the future—learned +to seize what I could, lest it be seized either +by hands reaching backward or by hands +reaching forward. Literally, I opened my +eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I +began to practise at home the game of the +world. +</p> + +<p> +Why my mother bore only daughters will +have to be referred to the new science which +takes as its field the forces and the mysteries +that are sovereign between the nuptials and +the cradle. But the reason, as openly laughed +about in the family when the family grew old +enough to laugh, as laughed about in the +neighbourhood, was this: +</p> + +<p> +Even before marriage my father and my +mother had waged a violent discussion about +woman's suffrage. You may not know that +in Kentucky from the first the cause of female +suffrage has been upheld by a strong minority +of strong women, a true pioneer movement +toward the nation's future now near. It +seems that my father, who was a brilliant +lawyer, always browbeat my mother in +argument, overwhelmed her, crushed her. +Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly +rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked +deep into the coals. But regularly when the +time came she replied to all his arguments by +presenting him with another suffragette! +Throughout her life she declined even to +bear him a son to continue the argument! +Her six daughters—she would gladly have had +twelve if she could—were her triumphant +squad for the armies of the great rebellion. +</p> + +<p> +Does this help to explain me to you? +</p> + +<p> +What next I relate about my early life is +something that you perhaps have never given +a thought to—children's pets and playthings: +it explains a great deal. Have you ever +thought of a vital difference between country +children and town children? Country children +more quickly throw away their dolls, if they +have them, and attach their sympathies to +living objects. A child's love of a doll is at +best a sham: a little master-drama of the +child's imagination trying to fill two roles—its +own and the role of something which cannot +respond. But a child's love of a living +creature, which it chooses as the object of its +love and play and protection, is stimulating, +healthful and kicking with reality: because +it is vitalised by reciprocity in the playmate, +now affectionate and now hostile, but always +representing something intensely alive—which +is the whole main thing. +</p> + +<p> +We are just beginning to find out that the +dramas of childhood are the playgrounds of +life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the +others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll +without any return, will cling to a rag husband +without any return. A child's loyalty to an +automaton prepares a woman for endurance +of an automaton. Dolls have been the +undoing and the death of many wives. +</p> + +<p> +A multitude of dolls would have been needed +to supply the six destructive little girls of my +mother's household. We soon broke our +china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one +another's. For whatever reason, all lifeless +pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the +house and the little scattering herd of us +turned our restless and insatiate natures loose +upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted +nearly everything on the farm. My father +was a director of the County Fair, and I +remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we +roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize +exhibition of our favourites that year. They +comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a calf, a +lamb and a puppy. +</p> + +<p> +Sooner or later our living playthings +outgrew us or died or were sold or made their +sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we +disconsolate? Not a bit. Did we go down to +the branch and gather there under an old +weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our +hearts thrived on death and destruction, +annihilation released us from old ties, change +gave us another chance, and we provided +substitutes and continued our devotion. +</p> + +<p> +And I think this explains a good deal. +And these two experiences of my childhood, +taken together, explain me better than +anything else I know. Competition first taught +me to seize what I wanted before anyone else +could seize it. Natural changes next taught +me to be prepared at any moment to give +that up without vain regret and to seize +something else. Thus I seemed to learn +life's lesson as I learned to walk: that what +you love will not last long, and that long +love is possible only when you love often. +</p> + +<p> +So many women know this; how few admit +it! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June the Nineteenth.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go +away for the summer: first to some friends, +then further away to other friends, then still +further away to other friends: a summer +pageant of brilliant changes. +</p> + +<p> +There is no reason why I should write to +you. Your stateroom will be filled with +flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; +friends will wave to you from the pier. My +letter may be lost among the others, but at +least it will have been written, and writing it +is its pleasure to me. +</p> + +<p> +I was to go to England this summer, was +to go as a bride. A few nights since I +decided not to go because I did not approve of +the bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +We marvel at life's coincidences: one +evening, not long ago, while speaking of your +expected summer in England, you mentioned +that you planned to make a pilgrimage to see +Edward Blackthorne. You were to join some +American friends over there and take them +with you. That is the coincidence: <i>I</i> was to +visit the Blackthornes this very summer, not +as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited +guest—with the groom whom I have rejected. +</p> + +<p> +It is like scattering words before the +obvious to say that I wish you a pleasant summer. +Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, +some night on the passage across, lean far +over and look down at the phosphorescent +couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of +the deep, remember that the Venus of modern +life is the American woman. +</p> + +<p> +Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing +else, brings you home—see you not at all or +seldom or often? +</p> + +<p> +At least this will remind you that I merely +say <i>au revoir</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Adrift for the summer rather than be an +unwilling bride. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June twenty-first.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 21.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +Since life separated us the other night I +have not heard from you. I have not +expected a letter, nor do you expect one from +me. But I am going away to-morrow for the +summer and my heart has a few words for +you which must be spoken. +</p> + +<p> +It was not disappointment about the summer +in England, not even your refusal to +explain why you disappointed me, that held the +main reason of my drawing back. I am in the +mood to-night to tell you some things very +frankly: +</p> + +<p> +Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to +be married and twice as the wedding drew +near I drew away from it. It is an old, old +feeling of mine, though I am so young, that +if married I should not long be happy. Of +course I should be happy for a while. But +<i>afterwards</i>! The interminable, intolerable +<i>afterwards</i>! The same person year in and +year out—I should be stifled. Each of the +men to whom I was engaged had given me +before marriage all that he had to give: the +rest I did not care for; after marriage with +either I foresaw only staleness, his limitations, +monotony. +</p> + +<p> +Believe this, then: there are things in you +that I cling to, other things in you that do +not draw me at all. And I cling more to life +than to you, more than to any one person. +How can any one person ever be all to me, all +that I am meant for, and <i>I will live</i>! +</p> + +<p> +Why should we women be forced to spend +our lives beside the first spring where one +happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! +Why be doomed to die in old age at the same +spring! With all my soul I believe that the +world which has slowly thrown off so many +tyrannies is about to throw off other tyrannies. +It has been so harsh toward happiness, +so compassionate toward misery and wrong. +Yet happiness is life's finest victory: for ages +we have been trying to defeat our one best +victory—our natural happiness! +</p> + +<p> +A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning—then +to go thirsty for the rest of the long, +hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet +at spring after spring—there are so many +springs! And thirst is so eager for them! +</p> + +<p> +Come to see me in the autumn. For I will +not, cannot, give you up. And when you +come, do not seek to renew the engagement. +Let that go whither it has gone. But come +to see me. +</p> + +<p> +For I love you. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 21.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY BOLES: +</p> + +<p> +This is good-bye to you for the summer +and, better than that, it is good-bye to you +for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth +that we have long hated each other and have +used our acquaintanceship and our letters to +express our hatred? How could there ever +have been any friendship between you and me? +</p> + +<p> +Let me tell you of the detestable little +signs that I have noticed in you for years. +Are you aware that all the time you have +occupied your apartment, you have never +changed the arrangement of your furniture? +As soon as your guests are gone, you push +every chair where it was before. For years +your one seat has been the same end of the +same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted +your disquietude if any guest happened to +sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere. +For years you have worn the same breast-pin, +though you have several. The idea of your +being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride +yourself in such externals of faithfulness. +</p> + +<p> +You soul of perfidy! +</p> + +<p> +I leave you undisturbed to innumerable +appointments with Ben, and with the same +particular something to talk about, falsest +woman I have ever known. +</p> + +<p> +Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the +fact that you are secretly receiving almost +constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will +you tell him? <i>Or shall I?</i> +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap02b"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 23rd.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I am worried. +</p> + +<p> +I begin to feel doubtful as to what course +I should pursue with Dr. Claude Mullen. +Of late he has been coming too often. He +has been writing to me too often. He appears +to be losing control of himself. Things cannot +go on as they are and they must not get worse. +What I could not foresee is his determination +to hold <i>me</i> responsible for his being in love +with me! He insists that <i>I</i> encouraged him +and am now unfair—<i>me</i> unfair! Of course I +have <i>never</i> encouraged his visits; out of simple +goodness of heart I have <i>tolerated</i> them. Now +the reward of my <i>kindness</i> is that he holds me +responsible and guilty. He is trying, in other +words, to take advantage of my <i>sympathy</i> for +him. I <i>do</i> feel sorry for him! +</p> + +<p> +I have not been cruel enough to dismiss +him. His last letter is enclosed: it will give +you some idea——! +</p> + +<p> +Can you advise me what to do? I have +always relied upon <i>your</i> judgment in everything. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Faithfully yours,<br /> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Penciled in Court Room] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 24th.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: +tell him to take a cab and drive straight to +the nearest institution for the weak-minded, +engage a room, lock himself in and pray God +to give him some sense. Tell him to stay +secluded there until that prayer is answered. +The Almighty himself couldn't answer his +prayer until after his death, and by that time +he'd be out of the way anyhow and you +wouldn't mind. +</p> + +<p> +I return his funeral oration unread, since I +did not wish to attract attention to myself +as moved to tears in open court. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Evening of the same day] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN: +</p> + +<p> +This is a night I have long waited for and +worked for. +</p> + +<p> +You have understood why during these +years I have never asked you to set a day +for our marriage. It has been a long, hard +struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a +living and a practice and a name. You know +I have had as my goal not a living for one +but a living for two—and for more than +two—for our little ones. When I married you, I +meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, +all flats. +</p> + +<p> +But with these two hands of mine I have +laid hold of the affairs of this world and +shaken them until they have heeded me and +my strength. I have won, I am independent, +I am my own man and my own master, and +I am ready to be your husband as through it +all I have been your lover. +</p> + +<p> +Name the day when I can be both. +</p> + +<p> +Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave +this firm and establish my own and I want +that done first. Some months must yet pass. +Any day of next Spring, then—so far away +but nearer than any other Spring during these +impatient years. +</p> + +<p> +Polly, constant one, I am your constant +lover, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Roses to you. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 24.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN! +</p> + +<p> +My heart answers you. It leaps forward +to the day. I have set the day in my heart +and sealed it on my lips. Come and break +that seal. To-night I shall tear two of the +rosebuds apart and mingle their petals on my +pillow. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> +<i>June 26.</i> +</p> + +<p> +It occurs to me that our engagement might +furnish you the means of getting rid of your +prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to +come to see you: tell him you have some joyful +news that must be imparted at once. When +he arrives announce to him that you have +named the day of your marriage to me. To +<i>me</i>, tell him! Then let him take himself off. +You say he complains that all this is getting +on his nerves. Anything that could sit on +his nerves would be a mighty small animal. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 27.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> +<i>June 28.</i> +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 14.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I. s. y. s. r. r. (You have long since learned +what that means.) +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your man,<br /> + BEN D.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAREST BEN: +</p> + +<p> +You need not give another thought to +Dr. Mullen. He does not annoy me any +more. He can drop finally out of our +correspondence. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your devoted<br /> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 16.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 17.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Awaiting your courteous order, we are +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD.<br /> + Per Q.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO "JUDD & JUDD, PER Q." +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 18.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + July 18.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 21.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Please advise me at once whether you will +do this. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 22.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 23.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +I have your letter and I take the greatest +possible pleasure in enclosing my cheque to +cover the additional expense, as you kindly +suggest. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>October 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +They are gone! They're off! They have +weighed anchor! They have sailed; they have +departed! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +<i>Le Génie Oblige</i> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +ANNE RAEBURN TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE IN ITALY +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + November 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"The <i>Scolopendium vulgare</i> put up two new +shoots after he went away, mum. Bishop's +crooks he calls 'em, mum." +</p> + +<p> +I replied that I was glad to hear the ferns +were thrifty. He, jerking his thumb toward +the fern bank, added still more resentfully: +</p> + +<p> +"The <i>Adiantum nigrum</i> put up some, mum." +</p> + +<p> +I replied that I should announce to you the +good news. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 that +<i>he</i> did 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." +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I am, dear Mr. Blackthorne, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + ANNE RAEBURN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 27.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 28.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +<i>The ferns have come back to me from England!</i> +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 29.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +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! +<i>J'y suis, J'y reste</i>. (French forever! <i>Boutez +en avant, mon</i> French!) +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Our fee is $50; hadn't you better stop at +$50 and think yourself lucky? <i>Monsieur a +bien tombé</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Any more fern letters? Don't forget them. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + December 25.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I shall always remember you for having +been instrumental in his death. This is the +kind of Christmas Day you have presented +to me. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + January 7.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Necessity knows no law, and I have become +a sad victim of necessity, hence this +appeal to you. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Hoping for an early reply, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + A proud daughter of the Southland,<br /> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>January 10.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +The tumult in my bones was a well-advised +monitor. More fern letters <i>were</i> on the way: +I enclose them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One thing I cannot get out of <i>my</i> head: +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? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>January 11.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +The letters are filed away with their +predecessors. +</p> + +<p> +If I am any judge of human nature, you +will receive others from this daughter of the +South in the same strain. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I wish these gentlemen would study the +contrariwise case of Clara: she would convert +a drink of water into a mouthful of sawdust. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +RUFUS KENT TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>The Great Dipper,<br /> + January 12.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +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.) ... +</p> + +<p> +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?" +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I now come to the subject of your letter, +and this is what I have ascertained: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"That," he said, "was once reserved for +some ferns which your young American +novelist promised to send me." +</p> + +<p> +The whole company gathered curiously +about the spot and all naturally asked, "But +where are the ferns?" +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Blackthorne without a word and with +an air of regret that even so little had escaped +him, led the party further away. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. I <i>will</i> add, 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.... +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Faithfully yours,<br /> + RUFUS KENT.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap03"></a></p> + +<h2> +PART THIRD +</h2> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + May 1, 1912</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + A proud daughter of the Southland,<br /> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 17, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +I have received your cheque and I think +what you have done is most appropriate. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +If my grey-haired father, who is now beyond +the blue skies, were only back in North +Carolina! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 21, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Andy Peters is a confirmed rascal. +I almost feel that I shall have to do +something desperate if I am to succeed. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 24, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +Clara Louise Chamberlain is in New York! +God Almighty! +</p> + +<p> +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 I <i>was</i> in a way +"instrumental" in bringing about the great +botanist's demise. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But I can't have that woman as <i>my</i> secretary! +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. +</p> + +<p> +Let her be <i>your</i> secretary, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 25, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR MADAM: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 27, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then I asked her to receive the dictation +of the address, which was as follows: +</p> + +<p> +"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. +</p> + +<p> +"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. +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This morning she did not come. I called +up her address; she had left there. Nothing +was known of her. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Your obedient counsel and turtle, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 28, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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 you <i>can't</i> +imagine, <i>can't</i> imagine, <i>can't</i> imagine! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 29, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your respectful erring servant,<br /> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 30, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY BOLES: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As a sign of my displeasure I carried the +flowers across the room to the mantelpiece. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I now come to the incident which explains +why I think my letter should be sent to Ben +Doolittle. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Act as you think best. And remember, +please, under what stress of feeling I must be +to write another letter to you. <i>To you!</i> +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[A second letter enclosed in the preceding one] +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Again I leave the matter to Ben and you. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 2, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +TILLY SNOWDEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 their +<i>backs</i>. If history speaks truly, quite a few +notorious ones have come to grief—but <i>you</i> +will understand. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 2, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Are you going to write to me every day +while I am gone? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 4, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +If the stems of your roses do not happen to +be long, make them long. (You know the +wires.) +</p> + +<p> +Very truly yours, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 4, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I happen to hold the key to Beverley's +comic behaviour in Tilly's parlour. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, but why did you go away without +good-bye? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 5, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +I go on where I left off yesterday. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I explained to Beverley, and we went out +and bought a dictograph, and he concealed +it where, of course, he could not find it! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I sent Beverley to Brooklyn for the day. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But all this is nothing, nothing, nothing! +I am lost without you. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Louisville, Kentucky,<br /> + June 9, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Marigold will want revenge on Beverley, +and he will have his revenge—in some +way. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +My mother joins me in love to you. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>150 Wall Street, New York,<br /> + June 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + Edward Blackthorne, Esq.,<br /> + King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 that +<i>his</i> duty 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. +</p> + +<p> +I have observed that there is danger in +many people causing any one person to think +himself a superior person unless he <i>is</i> a +superior person. If he really is what is +thought of him, no harm is done him. But +if he is widely regarded a superior person +and is not a superior person, harm may +result to him. For whenever any person is +praised beyond his deserts, he is not lifted +up by such praise any more than the stature +of a man is increased by thickening the heels +of his shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to +be lowered by over-praise. For, prodded by +adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary +image and assume, as far as he can, the guise +of some inferior creature which more +glaringly expresses what he is—as the peacock, +the owl, the porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, +the ass. I have seen all these. I have +seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, +speechless owl novelist, the fretful porcupine +novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, the +ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred +ass novelist. And many others. +</p> + +<p> +You may begin to wonder why I am led +into these reflections in this letter. The +reason is, I have been wondering into what +kind of inferior creature your fame—your +over-praise—has lowered <i>you</i>. Frankly, I +perfectly know; I will not name the animal. +But I feel sure that he is a highly offensive +small beast. +</p> + +<p> +If you feel disposed to read further, I shall +explain. +</p> + +<p> +I have in my legal possession three letters +of yours. They were written to a young +gentleman whom I have known now for a good many +years, whose character I know about as well +as any one man can know another's, and for +whom increasing knowledge has always led +me to feel increasing respect. The young +man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You may now +realise what I am coming to. +</p> + +<p> +The first of these letters of yours reveals +you as a stranger seeking the acquaintance +of Mr. Sands—to a certain limit: you asked +of him a courtesy and you offered courtesies +in exchange. That is common enough and +natural, and fair, and human. But what I +have noticed is your doing this with the air +of the superior person. Mr. Sands, being a +novelist, is of course a superior person. +Therefore, you felt called upon to introduce +yourself to him as a <i>more</i> superior person. +That is, you condescended to be gracious. +You made it a virtue in you to ask a favour +of him. You expected him to be delighted +that you allowed him to serve you. +</p> + +<p> +In the second letter you go further. He +wafted some incense toward you and you +got on your knees to this incense. You get +up and offer him more courtesies—all +courtesies. Because he praised you, you even +wish him to visit you. +</p> + +<p> +Now the third letter. The favour you +asked of Mr. Sands was that he send you +some ferns. By no fault of his except too +much confidence in the agents he employed +(he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted +you), by no other fault of his the ferns were +not sent. You waited, time passed, you +grew impatient, you grew suspicious of +Mr. Sands, you felt slighted, you became piqued +in your vanity, wounded in your self-love, +you became resentful, you became furious, +you became revengeful, you became abusive. +You told him that he had never meant to +keep his word, that you had kicked his books +out of your library, that he might profitably +study the moral sensitiveness of a head of +cabbage. +</p> + +<p> +During the summer American tourists +visited you—pilgrims of your fame. You took +advantage of their visit to promulgate +mysteriously your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by +one explicit word, you understand. Your +exalted imagination merely lied on him, and +you entrusted to other imaginations the duty +of scattering broadcast your noble lie. They +did this—some of them happening not to be +friends of Mr. Sands—and as a result of the +false light you threw upon his character, he +now in the minds of many persons rests under +a cloud. And that cloud is never going to be +dispelled. +</p> + +<p> +Enclosed you will please find copies of these +three letters of yours; would you mind reading +them over? And you will find also a +packet of letters which will enable you to +understand why the ferns never reached you +and the whole entanglement of the case. +And finally, you will find enclosed a brief with +which, were I to appear in Court against you, +as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up +to public view as what you are. +</p> + +<p> +I shall merely add that I have often met +you in the courtroom as the kind of criminal +who believes without evidence and who +distrusts without reason; who is, therefore, ready +to blast a character upon suspicion. If he +dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence +against him, he draws upon the dark traits +of his own nature to furnish the evidence. +</p> + +<p> +I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands. +</p> + +<p> +I am, as to you, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Merely,<br /> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + June 21, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> + Benjamin Doolittle,<br /> + 150 Wall Street,<br /> + New York City.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +You state in your letter, which I have just +laid down, that you are a stranger to me. +There is no conceivable reason why I should +wish to offer you the slightest rudeness—even +that of crossing your word—yet may I say, +that I know you perfectly? If you had +unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, +you might have found, scattered here and +there, everything that you have said in your +letter, and almost in your very words. That +is, I have two or three times drawn your +portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus while +you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel +bound to say that you are an old acquaintance +in nature. +</p> + +<p> +You cannot for a moment imagine—however, +you despise imagination and I withdraw +the offensive word—you cannot for a moment +suppose that I can have any motive in being +discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go on to +say, but only with your permission, that the +first time I attempted to sketch you, was in a +very early piece of work; I was a youthful +novelist, at the outset of my career. I +projected a story entitled: "<i>The Married +Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens.</i>" I feel +bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly +remind me of the <i>Sal Blivvens</i> of my story. +In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was this: as +twenty-one human shillings he never made an +exact human guinea—his shillings ran a few +pence over, or they fell a few pence short. +That is, Ned never did just enough of +anything, or said just enough, but either too much +or too little to suit <i>Sal</i>. He never had just one +idea about any one thing, but two or three +ideas; he never felt in just one way about any +one thing, but had mixed feelings, a variety +of feelings. He was not a yard measure or +a pint measure or a pound measure; he overflowed +or he didn't fill, and any one thing in +him always ran into other things in him. +</p> + +<p> +Being a young novelist I was not satisfied +to offer <i>Sal</i> to the world on her own account, +but I must try to make her more credible and +formidable by following her into the next +generation, and giving her a son who inherited +her traits. Thus I had <i>Tommy Blivvens</i>. +When Tommy was old enough to receive his +first allowance of Christmas pudding, he +proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He +picked out all the raisins and made a little +pile of them. And made a little separate pile +of the currants, and another pile of the +almonds, and another of the citron, or of +whatever else there was to separate. Then in +profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, +as a philosopher of the sure. +</p> + +<p> +Thus—and I insist I mean no disrespect—your +letter does revive for me a little innocent +laughter at my early literary vision of a +human baggage—friend of my youthful days +and artistic enthusiasm—<i>Sal Blivvens</i>. I +arranged that when <i>Ned</i> died, his neighbours all +felt sorry and wished him a green turf for his +grave. <i>Sal</i>, I felt sure, survived him as one +who all her life walks past every human heart +and enters none—being always dead-sure, +always dead-right; for the human heart +rejects perfection in any human being. +</p> + +<p> +I recognise you as belonging to the large +tough family of the human cocksures. <i>Sal +Blivvens</i> belonged to it—dead-sure, +dead-right, every time. We have many of the +cocksures in England, you must have many of +them in the United States. The cocksures are +people who have no dim borderland around +their minds, no twilight between day and +darkness. They see everything as they see a +highly coloured rug on a well-lighted floor. +There is either rug or no rug, either floor or no +floor. No part of the floor could possibly be +rug and no part of the rug could possibly be +floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the natural +prosecuting attorney of human nature's +natural misgivings and wiser doubts and nobler +errors. How the American cocksures of their +day despised the man Washington, who often +prayed for guidance; with what contempt +they blasted the character of your Abraham +Lincoln, whose patient soul inhabited the +border of a divine disquietude and whose +public life was the patient study of hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +I have taken notice of the peculiarly +American character of your cocksureness: it +magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile, +to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the +ton. Do you happen to know Michael +Angelo's <i>Moses</i>? I always think of an American +cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's +<i>Moses</i>—colossal law-giver, a hyper-stupendous +fellow. And I have often thought that a +regiment of American cocksures would be the +most terrific spectacle on a battlefield that the +rest of the human race could ever face. Just +now it has occurred to me that it was your +great Emerson who spoke best on the weakness +of the superlative—the cocksure is the +human superlative. +</p> + +<p> +As to your letter: You declare you know +nothing about novels, but your arraignment +of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure +that you are perfectly right about me. Your +arraignment of me is exact. You are +conscious of no more moral perturbation as to +justice than exists in a monkey wrench. But +that is the nature of the cocksure—his +conclusions have to him the validity of a +hardware store. +</p> + +<p> +This, however, is nothing. I clear it away +in order to tell you that I am filled with +admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and +of the savage ferocity with which you attack +me as his enemy. That makes you a friend +worth having, and I wish you were to be +numbered among mine; there are none too many +such in this world. Next, I wish to assure +you that I have studied your brief against me +and confess that you have made out the case. +I fell into a grave mistake, I wronged your +friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it +was a poor, sorry, shabby business. I am +about to write to Mr. Sands. If he is what +you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive +me—though you never may. I shall ask him, +as I could not have asked him before, whether +he will not come to visit me. My house, my +hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, +shall be his. I shall take every step possible +to undo what I thoughtlessly, impulsively did. +I shall write to the President of his Club. +</p> + +<p> +One exception is filed to a specification in +your brief: no such things took place in my +garden upon the visit of the American +tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate +any mysterious hostility to Mr. Sands. You +tell me that among those tourists were persons +hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile +persons who misinterpreted and exaggerated +whatever took place. You knew these +persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then +you accepted their testimony as true—being +a cocksure. +</p> + +<p> +A final word to you. Your whole character +and happiness rests upon the belief that +you see life clearly and judge rightly the +fellow-beings whom you know. Those <i>you</i> +doubt ought to be doubted and those <i>you</i> +trust ought to be trusted! Now I have +travelled far enough on life's road to have +passed its many human figures—perhaps all +the human types that straggle along it in +their many ways. No figures on that road +have been more noticeable to me than here +and there a man in whom I have discerned a +broken cocksure. +</p> + +<p> +You say you like biography: do you like +to read the Life of Robert Burns? And I +wonder whether these words of his have ever +guided you in your outlook upon life: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + "<i>Then gently scan your brother man</i><br /> + * * * * *<br /> + <i>To step aside is human.</i>"<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +I thank you again. I wish you well. And +I hope that no experience, striking at you +out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave +you one of those noticeable men—a broken +cocksure. +</p> + +<p> +Your deeply obliged and very grateful, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 30, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +About a month ago I took it upon myself +to write the one letter that had long been +raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. +And I sent him all the fern letters. And then +I drew up the whole case and prosecuted him +as your lawyer. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I meant my letter to be an +infernal machine that would blow him to pieces. +He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and +inserted a crank, and turned it into a +music-box to grind out his praises. +</p> + +<p> +And then the kind of music he ground out +for me. +</p> + +<p> +All day I have been ashamed to stand up +and I've been ashamed to sit down. He told +me that my letter reminded him of a character +in his first novel—a woman called <i>Sal +Blivvens</i>. ME—<i>Sal Blivvens!</i> +</p> + +<p> +But of what use is it for us poor, +common-clay, rough, ordinary men who have no +imagination—of what use is it for us to +attack you superior fellows who have it, have +imagination? You are the Russians of the +human mind, and when attacked on your +frontiers, you merely retreat into a vast, +unknown, uninvadable country. The further +you retire toward the interior of your +mysterious kingdom, the nearer you seem to +approach the fortresses of your strength. +</p> + +<p> +I am wiser—if no better. If ever again I +feel like attacking any stranger with a letter, +I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether +he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. +If he is a genius, I am going to let him alone. +</p> + +<p> +Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to +see your man Blackthorne now. Ask him +some time whether a short visit from +Benjamin Doolittle could be arranged on any +terms of international agreement. +</p> + +<p> +Now for something on my level of ordinary +life! A day or two ago I was waiting in front +of the residence of one of my uptown clients, +a few doors from the residence of your friend +Dr. Marigold. While I waited, he came out +on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I +drove past, I leaned far out and made them +a magnificent sweeping bow: one can afford +to be forgiving and magnanimous after he +settled things to his satisfaction. They did +not return the bow but exchanged quiet +smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. +They seemed like saying: he bows best who +bows last. +</p> + +<p> +You are the best thing in New York to me +since Polly went away. Without you both +it would come near to being one vast solitude. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN (alias <i>Sal Blivvens</i>).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 1, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I wrote you this morning upon receipt of +your letter telling me of your own terrific +letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless +arraignment of him. Let me say again +that I wish to pour out my gratitude to you +for your motives and also, well, also my regret +at your action. Somehow I have been +reminded of Voltaire's saying: he had a brother +who was such a fool that he started out to be +perfect; as a consequence the world knows +nothing of Voltaire's brother: it knows very +well Voltaire with his faults. +</p> + +<p> +The mail of yesterday which brought you +Mr. Blackthorne's reply to your arraignment +brought me also a letter: he must have written +to us both instantly. His letter is the only +one that I cannot send you; you would not +desire to read it. You are too big and +generous, too warmly human, too exuberantly +vital, to care to lend ear to a great man's +chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. +You are not Cassius to carp at Caesar. +</p> + +<p> +Now this afternoon a second letter comes +from Mr. Blackthorne and that I enclose: it +will do you good to read it—it is not a black +passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap03b"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +I follow up my letter of yesterday with the +unexpected tidings of to-day. I am willing +to believe that these will interest you as +associated with your coming visit. +</p> + +<p> +Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final +natal eclipse, has bowled him over and left +him darkened for good. He can trouble us +no more, but will now do his part as mould +for the rose of York and the rose of Lancaster. +He will help to make a mound for some other +Englishman's ferns. When you come—and +I know you will come—we shall drink a cup +of tea in the garden to his peaceful +memory—and to his troubled memory for Latin. +</p> + +<p> +I am now waiting for you. Come, out of +your younger world and with your youth to +an older world and to an older man. And let +each of us find in our meeting some presage +of an alliance which ought to grow always +closer in the literatures of the two nations. +Their literatures hold their ideals; and if their +ideals touch and mingle, then nothing practical +can long keep them far apart. If two oak +trees reach one another with their branches, +they must meet in their roots; for the branches +are aerial roots and the roots are underground +branches. +</p> + +<p> +Come. In the eagerness of my letter of +yesterday to put myself not in the right but +less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the +very matter with which the right and the +wrong originated. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Will you, after all, send the ferns?</i> +</p> + +<p> +The whole garden waits for them; a white +light falls on the vacant spot; a white light +falls on your books in my library; a white +light falls on you, +</p> + +<p> +I wait for you, both hands outstretched. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +(Note penciled on the margin of the letter +by Beverley Sands to Ben Doolittle: "You +will see that I am back where the whole thing +started; I have to begin all over again with +the ferns. And now the florists will be after +me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow +of my bones, and my bones by this time are a +wireless station on this subject.") +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +We take pleasure in enclosing our new +catalogue for the coming autumn, and should +be pleased to receive any further commissions +for the European trade. +</p> + +<p> +We repeat that we have no connection +whatever with any house doing business in +the city under the name of Botany. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD,<br /> + Per Q.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Louisville, Kentucky,<br /> + July 4th, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory +for the approaching autumn season, in view of +having been honoured upon a previous +occasion with your flattering patronage, and +reasoning that our past transactions have +been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves +of this opportunity of reviving the +conjunction heretofore existing between us as most +gratifying and thank you sincerely for past +favours. We hope to continue our pleasant +relations and desire to say that if you should +contemplate arranging for the shipments of +plants of any description, we could afford you +surprised satisfaction. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Dunkirk, Tennessee,<br /> + July 6, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +We are prepared to supply you with +anything you need. Could ship ferns to any +country in Europe, having done so for the +late Noah Chamberlin, the well-known florist +just across the State line, who was a customer +of ours. +</p> + +<p> +old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet +paid, had to drop them entirely. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BURNS & BRUCE.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +If you need any forest trees, we could +supply you with all the forest trees you want, +plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty +of walnuts, etc. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + July 7th, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I have lately enlarged my business and will +be able to handle any orders you may give me. +The orders which Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain +said you were to send have not yet turned +up. I write to you, because I have heard +about you a great deal through Miss Clara +Louise, since her return from her visit to New +York. She succeeded in getting two or three +donations of books for our library, and they +have now given her a place there. I was +sorry to part with Miss Clara Louise, but I +had just married, and after the first few weeks +I expected my wife to become my assistant. +I am not saying anything against Miss Clara +Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet +violets, especially on a Sunday, having the +run of the flowers. She and Alice didn't get +along very well together, and I did have a +bad set-back with my violets while she was +here. +</p> + +<p> +Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make +a speciality of seedlins. If you want any +seedlins, will you call on me? I am young +and just married and anxious to please, and +I wish you would call on me when you want +anything green. Nothing dried. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours respectfully,<br /> + ANDY PETERS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 7th, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +It makes me a little sad to write. I +suppose you saw in this morning's paper the +announcement of Tilly's marriage next week +to Dr. Marigold. Nevertheless—congratulations! +You have lost years of youth and +happiness with some lovely woman on account +of your dalliance with her. +</p> + +<p> +Now at last, you will let her alone, and +you will soon find—Nature will quickly +drive you to find—the one you deserve to +marry. +</p> + +<p> +It looks selfish at such a moment to set my +happiness over against your unhappiness, +but I've just had news, that at last, after +lingering so long and a little mysteriously in +Louisville, Polly is coming. Polly is coming +with her wedding clothes. We long ago +decided to have no wedding. All that we have +long wished is to marry one another. +Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, +Polly is another cocksure. We shall jog along +as a perfectly satisfied couple of cocksures on +the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly +will never find out that she married <i>Sal +Blivvens</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +Dear fellow, truest of comrades among +men, it is inevitable that I reluctantly leave +you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as +the friend who marries. +</p> + +<p> +One awful thought freezes me to my chair +this hot July day. You have never said a +word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, +since the day of my hypothetical charge to the +jury. Can it be possible that you followed +her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? +I have often warned you against Tilly, as +inconstant. But, my dear fellow, remember +there is a worse extreme than in +inconstancy—Clara Louise would be sealing wax. +You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of +sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in +conversation, she'd seal you the tighter. +</p> + +<p> +Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. +</p> + +<p> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 8.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I saw the announcement in the morning +paper about Tilly. +</p> + +<p> +It wouldn't be worth while to write how I +feel. +</p> + +<p> +It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, +homeless in New York. And I saw her. As +to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, +that is solely a question of my royalties. +Royalties are human gratitude; why should +not the dews of gratitude fall on one so +parched? Besides, I don't owe you anything, +gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, I feel you're going—you're passing on +to Polly. I append a trifle which explains +itself, and am, making the best of everything, +the same +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + <i>A Meditation in Verse</i><br /> + (<i>Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing his<br /> + favourite weakness</i>)<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>How can I mind the law's delay,<br /> + Or what a jury thinks it knows,<br /> + Or what some fool of a judge may say?<br /> + Polly comes with the wedding clothes.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>Time, who cheated me so long,<br /> + Kept me waiting mid life's snows,<br /> + I forgive and forget your wrong:<br /> + Polly comes with the wedding clothes.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>Winter's lonely sky is gone,<br /> + July blazes with the rose,<br /> + All the world looks smiling on<br /> + At Polly in her wedding clothes.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[A hurried letter by messenger] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +Polly reached New York two days ago. I +went up that night. She had gone out—alone. +She did not return that night. I +found this out when I went up yesterday +morning and asked for her. She has not +been there since she left. They know nothing +about her. I have telegraphed Louisville. +They have sent me no word. Come down +at once. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> +BEN. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Hurried letter by messenger] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +Is anything wrong about Polly? +</p> + +<p> +I met her on the street yesterday. She +tried to pass without speaking. I called to +her but she walked on. I called again and +she turned, hesitatingly, then came back very +slowly to meet me half-way. You know how +composed her manner always is. But she +could not control her emotion: she was deeply, +visibly troubled. Strange as it may seem, +while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, +I could but notice a trifle, as at such moments +one often does: she was beautifully dressed: a +new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over +her as for some impending ceremony. We +have always thought of Polly as one of the +women who are above dress. Such disregard +was in a way a verification of her character, +the adornment of her sincerity. Now she was +beautifully dressed. +</p> + +<p> +"But what is the meaning of all this?" I +asked, frankly mystified. +</p> + +<p> +Something in her manner checked the +question, forced back my words. +</p> + +<p> +"You will hear," she said, with quivering +lips. She looked me searchingly all over +the face as for the sake of dear old times +now ended. Then she turned off abruptly. +I watched her in sheer amazement till she +disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +I have been waiting to hear from you, but +cannot wait any longer. What does it mean? +Why don't you tell me? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 11.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +I have with incredible eyes this instant read +this cutting from the morning paper: +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the +City Hall in Jersey City to Dr. Claude Mullen. +</p> + +<p> +She must have been on her way when I saw +her. +</p> + +<p> +I have read the announcement without being +able to believe it—with some kind of death +in life at my heart. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am +coming at once. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 18.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +The ferns have had their ironic way with +us and have wrought out their bitter comedy +to its end. The little group of us who were +the unsuspecting players are henceforth +scattered, to come together in the human +playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the +curtain waits to descend, and I, who +innocently brought the drama on, am left the +solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, +depart to go my separate road. +</p> + +<p> +This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful +the morning is for her! The whole sky is one +exquisite blue—no sign of any storm-plan far +or near. The July air blows as cool as early +May. I sit at my window writing and it +flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances +of the green park below my window enter +my room and encircle me like living human +tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, +Tilly is dressing for her wedding, and +I—God knows why—am thinking of old-time +Kentucky gardens in one of which she played +as a child. Tilly, a little girl romping in her +mother's garden—Tilly before she was old +enough to know anything of the world—anything +of love—now, as she dresses for her +wedding—I cannot shut out that vision of +early purity. +</p> + +<p> +Yesterday a note came from her. I had +had no word since the day I openly ridiculed +the man she is to marry. But yesterday she +sent me this message: +</p> + +<p> +"Come to-night and say good-bye." +</p> + +<p> +She was not in her rooms to greet me. I +waited. Moments passed, long moments of +intense expectancy. She did not enter. I +fixed my eyes on her door. Once I saw it +pushed open a little way, then closed. Again +it was opened and again it was held as though +for lack of will or through quickly changing +impulses. Then it was opened and she +entered and came toward me, not looking at +me, but with her face turned aside. She +advanced a few paces and with some +swift, imperious rebellion, she turned and +passed out of the room and then came quickly +back. She had caught up her bridal veil. +She held the wreath in her hand and as she +approached me, I know not with what sudden +emotion she threw a corner of the veil over +her head and face and shoulders. And she +stood before me with I know not what struggle +tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper +she said: +</p> + +<p> +"Lift my veil." +</p> + +<p> +I lifted her veil and laid it back over her +forehead. She closed her eyes as tears welled +out of them. +</p> + +<p> +"Kiss me," she said. +</p> + +<p> +I would have taken her in my arms as mine +at that moment for all time, but she stepped +back and turned away, fading from me +rather than walking, with her veil pressed +like a handkerchief to her eyes. The door +closed on her. +</p> + +<p> +I waited. She did not come again. +</p> + +<p> +Now she is dressing for the marriage +ceremony. A friend gives her a house wedding. +The company of guests will be restricted, +everything will be exquisite, there will be +youth and beauty and distinction. There +will be no love. She marries as one who steps +through a beautiful arch further along one's +path. +</p> + +<p> +Whither that path leads, I do not know; +from what may lie at the end of it I turn away +and shudder. +</p> + +<p> +My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning +is of one exiled from happiness because +nature withheld from her the one thing needed +to make her all but perfect: that needful thing +was just a little more constancy. It is her +doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a +brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to +her lips it drops from her hand. Forever her +hand stretched out toward joy and forever +joy shattered at her feet. +</p> + +<p> +American scientists have lately discovered +or seem about to discover, some new fact in +Nature—the butterfly migrates. What we +have thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant +of a single summer in a single zone +follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells +in a summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the +psyche of life's fields, then she seeks perpetual +summer as the law of her own being. All our +lives move along old, old paths. There is no +new path for any of us. If Tilly's fate is the +butterfly path, who can judge her harshly? +Not I. +</p> + +<p> +They sail away at once on their wedding +journey. He has wealth and social influence +of the fashionable sort which overflows into +the social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: +the papers found space for their plans of +travel: England and Scotland, France and +Switzerland, Austria and Germany, Bohemia +and Poland, Russia, Italy and Sicily—home. +The great world-path of the human butterfly, +seeking summer with insatiate quest. +</p> + +<p> +Home to his practice with that still fluttering +psyche! And then the path—the domestic +path—stretching straight onward across the +fields of life—what of his psyche then? Will she +fold her wings on a bed-post—year after year +slowly opening and unfolding those brilliant +wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?... +</p> + +<p> +I cannot write of human life unless I can +forgive life. How forgive unless I can understand? +I have wrought with all that is within +me to understand Polly—her treachery up to +the last moment, her betrayal of Ben's +devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly, +doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems +built upon one trait, one virtue—loyalty. +She was disloyal to Ben because she had come +to believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign +excellence. There were things in his life +which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps +every day there were mere trifles which he did +not share with her—why should he? On a +certain memorable morning she discovered +that for years he had been keeping from her +some affairs of mine: that was his loyalty to +me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I +think that was the rift in the lute. Still a +man must not surrender himself wholly into +the keeping of the woman he loves; let him, +and he becomes anything in her life but a +man. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime Polly found near by another +suitor who offered her all he was—what +little there was of him—one of those +man-climbers who must run over the sheltering +wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified +in Polly her one passion for marrying—that +she should possess a pet. Now she possesses +one, owns him, can turn him round and +round, can turn him inside out, can see all +there is of him as she sees her pocket-handkerchief, +her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any +little familiar piece of property which she can +become more and more attached to as the +years go by for the reason that it will never +surprise her, never puzzle her, never change +except by wearing out. +</p> + +<p> +This will be the end of the friendship +between Drs. Marigold and Mullen: their wives +will see to that. So much the better: scattered +impostors do least harm. +</p> + +<p> +I have struggled to understand the mystery +of her choice as to how she should be married. +Surely marriage, in the existence of any one, +is the hour when romance buds on the most +prosaic stalk. It budded for Polly and she +eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her +heavy mind without the wings of imagination. +She got as far as the nearest City Hall. +Instead of a minister she chose to be married +by a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been +unjust, she would be married by the figure of +Justice as a penal ceremony executed over +Ben: she mailed him a paper and left him to +understand that she had fled from him to +Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry! +</p> + +<p> +A line in an evening paper lets me know +that she and the Doctor have gone for their +honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly +first came North to live and the first summer +came round she decided to spend it at Ocean +Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would +get a grove and an ocean with one railway +ticket, without having to change; she could +settle in a grove with an ocean and in an +ocean with a grove. What her disappointment +was I do not know, but every summer she has +gone back to Ocean Grove—the Franklin +Flats by the sea.... +</p> + +<p> +Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had +spent part of every evening with him since +Polly's marriage—silent, empty evenings—a +quiet, stunned man. Confidence in himself +blasted out of him, confidence in human +nature, in the world. With no imagination +in him to deal with the reasons of Polly's +desertion—just a passive acceptance of it as a +wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball. +</p> + +<p> +Her name was never called. A stunned, silent +man. Clear, joyous steady light in his eyes +gone—an uncertain look in them. Strangest +of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And +courtesy for bluff warm confidence—courtesy +as of one who stumblingly reflects that he +must begin to be careful with everybody. +</p> + +<p> +His active nature meantime kept on. Life +swept him forward—nature did—whether he +would or not. I went down late one +evening. Evidently he had been working in his +room all day; the things Polly must have +sent him during all those years were gone. +He had on new slippers, a fresh robe, taking +the place of the slippers and the robe she +had made for him. Often I have seen him +tuck the robe in about his neck as a man +might reach for the arms of a woman to +draw them about his throat as she leans over +him from behind. +</p> + +<p> +During our talk that evening he began +strangely to speak of things that had taken +place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, +on the farm; did I remember this in +Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind had +gone back to old certainties. It was like his +walking away from present ruins toward +things still unharmed—never to be harmed. +</p> + +<p> +Early next morning he surprised me by +coming up, dressed for travel, holding a grip. +</p> + +<p> +"I am going to Kentucky," he said. +</p> + +<p> +I went to the train with him. His reserve +deepened on the way; if he had plans, he did +not share them with me. +</p> + +<p> +What I make out of it is that he will come +back married. No engagement this time, no +waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage +will sadly bring him. I think she will be +young—this time. But she will be, as nearly as +possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman +now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted +man for life. He thinks he will be getting +some one to take Polly's place. In reality it +will be his second attempt to marry Polly. +</p> + +<p> +I am bidding farewell the little group of us. +Some one else will have to write of me. How +can I write of myself? This I will say: that +I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to +leave a little of his wool on every bramble. +</p> + +<p> +I sail next week for England to make my +visit to Mr. Blackthorne—at last. Another +letter has come from him. He has thrown +himself into the generous work of seeing that +my visit to him shall make me known. He +tells me there will be a house party, a +week-end; some of the great critics will be there, +some writers. "You must be found out in +England widely and at once," he writes. +</p> + +<p> +My heart swells as one who feels himself +climbing toward a height. There is kindled +in me that strangest of all the flames that burn +in the human heart, the shining thought that +my life is destined to be more than mine, that +my work will make its way into other minds +and mingle with the better, happier impulses +of other lives. +</p> + +<p> +The ironic ferns have had their way with +us. But after all has it not been for the best? +Have they not even in their irony been the +emblems of fidelity? +</p> + +<p> +They have found us out, they have played +upon our weaknesses, they have exaggerated +our virtues until these became vices, they have +separated us and set us going our diverging +ways. +</p> + +<p> +But while we human beings are moving +in every direction over the earth, the earth +without our being conscious of it is carrying +us in one same direction. So as we follow the +different pathways of our lives which appear +to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, +may it not be true that to the Power which +sets us all in motion and drives us whither it +will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity? +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +THE END +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t4"> + THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br /> + GARDEN CITY, N. Y.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60435 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + diff --git a/60435-8.txt b/old/60435-8.txt index 1f64de4..6446ab2 100644 --- a/60435-8.txt +++ b/old/60435-8.txt @@ -1,5821 +1,5821 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen
-
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-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
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-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Emblems of Fidelity
- A Comedy in Letters
-
-Author: James Lane Allen
-
-Release Date: October 5, 2019 [EBook #60435]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Al Haines
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- THE EMBLEMS OF
- FIDELITY
-
- A Comedy in Letters
-
- BY
-
- JAMES LANE ALLEN
-
- AUTHOR OF
- "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL,"
- "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC.
-
-
- There is nothing so ill-bred as audible
- laughter.... I am sure that since I have
- had the full use of my reason nobody has
- ever heard me laugh.
- --Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son.
-
-
-
- GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
- DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
- 1919
-
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
- DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
- TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
- INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
-
-
-
-
- To
- THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY
-
- INCOMPARABLE ALLY
- OF VICTORY
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF CHARACTERS
-
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE...............Famous elderly English novelist
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS....................Rising young American novelist
-
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE....Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands
-
-GEORGE MARIGOLD............................Fashionable physician
-
-CLAUDE MULLEN............Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of
- George Marigold
-
-RUFUS KENT.......................Long-winded president of a club
-
-NOAH CHAMBERLAIN......Very learned, very absent-minded professor
-
-PHILLIPS AND FAULDS.....................................Florists
-
-BURNS AND BRUCE.........................................Florists
-
-JUDD AND JUDD...........................................Florists
-
-ANDY PETERS..............................................Florist
-
-HODGE......................Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN.............Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands
-
-POLLY BOLES..........Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle,
- friend of Tilly Snowden
-
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN......Very devoted, very proud sensitive
- daughter of Noah Chamberlain
-
-ANNE RAEBURN..........Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-PART SECOND
-
-PART THIRD
-
-
-
-
-THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY
-
-
-
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _King Alfred's Wood,
- Warwickshire, England,
- May 1, 1910._
-
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-
-I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the
-outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows
-with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much
-of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled,
-rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden.
-
-You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact,
-however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very
-natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for
-you probably agree with me that the writing of novels--not, of
-course, the mere odious manufacture of novels--results in the making
-of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that
-we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not
-do at all as fellow-creatures.
-
-I shall not loiter at the threshold of this letter to fatigue your
-ear with particulars regarding the several parts of your story most
-enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough to say that no admirable
-human being has ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears by any
-such desirable procedure. In England, and I presume in the United
-States, novelists have long noses for incense [poets, too, though of
-course only in their inferior way]. I repeat that we English
-novelists are a species of greyhound for running down on the most
-distant horizon any scampering, half-terrified rabbit of a
-compliment. But I freely confess that nature loaded me beyond the
-tendency of being a mere greyhound. I am a veritable elephant in the
-matter, being marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible proboscis
-which is not only adapted to admit praise but is quite capable of
-actively reaching around in every direction to procure it. Even the
-greyhound cannot run forever; but an elephant, if he once possess it,
-will wave such a proboscis till he dies.
-
-There are likely to be in any very readable book a few pages which
-the reader feels tempted to tear out for the contrary reason,
-perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his tenderness. Some
-haunting picture of the book-gallery that he would cut from the
-frame. Should you be displeased by the discrimination, I shall trust
-that you may be pleased nevertheless by the avowal that there is a
-scene in your novel which has peculiarly ensnared my affections.
-
-At this point I think I can see you throw down my letter with more
-insight into human nature than patience with its foibles. You toss
-it aside and exclaim: "What does this Englishman drive at? Why does
-he not at once say what he wants?" You are right. My letter is
-perhaps no better than strangers' letters commonly are: coins, one
-side of which is stamped with your image and the other side with
-their image, especially theirs.
-
-I might as well, therefore, present to you my side of the coin with
-the selfish image. Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, you
-are the horse in an open pasture and I am the stableman who schemes
-to catch you: to do this, I approach, calling to you affectionately
-and shaking a bundle of oats behind which is coiled a halter. You
-are thinking that if I once clutch you by the mane you will get no
-oats. But, my dear sir, you have from the very first word of this
-letter already been nibbling the oats. And now you are my animal!
-
-There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday
-woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands--a cool,
-moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare,
-beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can _see_ the ferns! I can see the
-sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now,
-as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade
-and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They
-are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock
-of daffodils; for they have been collected out of England's best and
-from other countries.
-
-Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: Will you send me
-the root-stocks of some of those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on
-my Warwickshire fern bank?
-
-Do not suppose that my garden is on a small scale a public park or
-exhibition, made as we have created Kensington Gardens. Everything
-in it is, on the contrary, enriched with some personal association.
-I began it when a young man in the following way:
-
-At that period I was much under the influence of the Barbizon
-painters, and I sometimes entertained myself in the forests where
-masters of that school had worked by hunting up what I supposed were
-the scenes of some of Corot's masterpieces.
-
-Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted trees as though he were
-looking at enormous ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and some
-rise higher than others as trees; his trees descend through the air
-and are lost lower down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot ferns
-for my good Warwickshire loam. Another winter Christine Nilsson was
-singing at Covent Garden. I spent several evenings with her. When I
-bade her good-bye, I asked her to send me some ferns from Norway in
-memory of Balzac and _Seraphita_. Yet another winter, being still a
-young man and he, alas! a much older one, I passed an evening in
-Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in talking about his novels
-and I remember quoting these lines from one of them: "It was a
-splendid clear morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hung like snipe in the
-clear pale azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves and grass
-and glistened like silver on the spiders' webs; the moist dark earth
-seemed still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the songs of
-larks showered down from all over the sky."
-
-He sat looking at me in surprised, touched silence.
-
-"But you left out something!" I suggested, with the bumptiousness of
-a beginner in letters. He laughed slightly to himself--and perhaps
-more at me--as he replied: "I must have left out a great deal"--he,
-fiction's greatest master of compression. After a moment he inquired
-with a kind of vast patient condescension: "What is it that you
-definitely missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns were growing
-thereabouts." He smiled reminiscently. "So there were," he replied,
-smiling reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot was," I said, "I
-should travel to it for some ferns." A mystical look came into his
-eyes as he muttered rather to himself than for my ear: "That spot!
-Where is that spot? That spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the
-whole of Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, one pain, one
-passion. Sometime afterwards there reached me at home a hamper of
-Russian fern-roots with Turgenieff's card.
-
-I tell you all this as I make the request, which is the body of this
-letter and, I hope, its wings, in order that you may intimately
-understand. I desire the ferns not only because you have interested
-me in your Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, but
-because I have become interested in your art and in you. While I
-read your book I believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously at
-work, creating where no hand had created before; or if on its chosen
-scene it found a ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality from
-that ruin. But to create where no hand has created before, or to
-create them again where human things lie in decay--that to me is the
-true energy of literature.
-
-I should not omit to tell you that some of our most tight-islanded,
-hard-headed reviewers have been praising your work as of the best
-that reaches us from America. It was one such reviewer that first
-guided me to your latest book. Now I myself have written to some of
-our critics and have thrown my influence in favour of your fresh,
-beautiful art, which can only come from a fresh, beautiful nature.
-
-Should you decide to bestow any notice upon this rather amazing
-letter, you will bear in mind of course that there will be pounds
-sterling for plants. Whatever character my deed or misdeed may later
-assume, it must first and at least have the nature of a transaction
-of the market-place.
-
-So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all,
-
-I am,
-
- Gratefully yours,
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-
- _Cathedral Heights, New York,
- May 12, 1910._
-
-MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
-
-Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, in some modern Æsop's
-Fables, read how a whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had taken
-the trouble to turn entirely round to encourage a puffing young
-porpoise; or of how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, had on
-some fine spring day looked down and complimented a small dogwood
-tree upon its size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, while
-thus unreal, your letter is in its way the most encouragingly real
-thing that has ever come into my life. Before I go further I should
-like to say that I have read every book you have written and have
-bought your books and given them away with such zeal and zest that
-your American publishers should feel more interest in me than can
-possibly be felt by the gentlemen who publish mine.
-
-It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, in bad taste. A
-man's praise of another may not follow upon that man's praise of him.
-Our virtues have their hour. If they do not act then, they are not
-like clocks which may be set forward but resemble fruits which lose
-their flavour when they pass into ripeness. Still, what I have said
-is honest. You may remember that I am yet moving amid life's
-uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk in quietness the world's
-highway of a great career. My praise could have borne little to you;
-yours brings everything to me. And you must reflect also that it is
-just a little easier for any Englishman to write to an American in
-this way. The American could but fear that his letter might
-seriously disturb the repose of a gentleman who was reclining with
-his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and Shakespeare's entire bosom in
-this regard, as you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in England.
-
-It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange for the shipment of the
-ferns. A good many years have passed since I lived in Kentucky and I
-am no longer in close touch with people and things down there. But
-without doubt the matter can be managed through correspondence and
-all that I await from you now is express instructions. The ferns
-described in my book are not known to me by name. I have procured
-and have mailed to you along with this, lest you may not have any,
-some illustrated catalogues of American ferns, Kentucky ferns
-included. You have but to send me a list of those you want. With
-that in hand I shall know exactly how to proceed.
-
-You cannot possibly understand how happy I am that my work has the
-approval of the English reviews, which still remain the best in the
-world. To know that my Kentucky stories are liked in
-England--England which, remaining true to so many great traditions,
-holds fast to the classic tradition in her literature.
-
-The putting forth of your own personal influence in my behalf is a
-source of joy and pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns growing
-in your garden in token of me is the most inspiring event yet to mark
-my life.
-
-I am,
-
- Sincerely yours,
- BEVERLEY SANDS.
-
-
-
-
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _King Alfred's Wood,
- Warwickshire, England,
- May 22, 1910._
-
-MY DEAR SANDS:
-
-Your letter was brought out to me as I was hanging an old gate in a
-clover-field canopied with skylarks. When I cannot make headway
-against some obstruction in the development of a story, for instance,
-putting the hinges of the narrative where the reader will not see any
-hinges, I let the book alone and go out and do some piece of work,
-surrounded by the creatures which succeed in all they undertake
-through zest and joy. By the time I get back, the hinges of the book
-have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence
-the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we
-climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it.
-
-It is splendid news that I am to get the Kentucky ferns. Thank you
-for the catalogues. A list of those I most covet is enclosed. The
-cost, shipping expenses included, will not, I fear, exceed five
-pounds. Of course it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but I
-suppose I must restrict myself to the despicable market price.
-Shamefully cheap many of the dearest things in this world are; and
-what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless!
-
-A draft will be forwarded in advance upon receipt of the American
-shipper's address. Or I could send it forthwith to you. Meantime
-from now on I shall be remembering with impatience how many miles it
-is across the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace American
-ferns travel. These will be awaited like guests whom one goes to the
-gate to meet.
-
-You do not know the names of those you describe so wonderfully! I am
-glad. I abhor the names of my own. Of course, as they are bought,
-memoranda must be depended upon by which to buy them. These data,
-verified by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs as fern
-headstones. When each fern is planted, into the soil beside it is
-stuck its headstone, which, like that for a human being, tells the
-name, not the nature, of what it memorialises.
-
-Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns according to the slabs. It
-is time you should know Hodge by his slab. No such being can yet be
-found in the United States: your civilisation is too young. Hodge is
-my British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out for every
-birthday much as for any total solar eclipse of the year--with a kind
-of growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday should finally, as
-it passes, bowl him over for good--he announced to me with visible
-relief the other day that he had successfully passed another total
-natal eclipse; that he was fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight
-years old. The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 and Hodge
-without knowing it was beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For
-Hodge is English landscape gardening in human shape. He is the
-benevolent spirit of the English turf, a malign spirit to English
-weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, a wheelbarrow of
-spring manure, a pile of autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant
-future mythology of our English rural life he will perhaps rank where
-he belongs--as a luminary next in importance to the sun: a two-legged
-god be-earthed in old clothes, with a stiff back, a stiff temper, the
-jaw of the mastiff and the eye of a prophet.
-
-It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would not allow anything to come
-into the garden without mastering that thing. For the sake of his
-own authority he must subdue as much of the Latin language as invades
-his territory along with the ferns. But I think nothing comparable
-to such a struggle against overwhelming odds--Hodge's brain pitted
-against the Latin names of the ferns--nothing comparable to the dull
-fury of that onset is to be found in the history of man unless it be
-England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. England did conquer
-Napoleon and finally shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and
-Hodge has finally conquered the names of the ferns and shut them up
-in a desolate, rocky place--his skull, his personal promontory.
-
-Nowadays you should see him meet me in a garden path when I come down
-early some morning. You should see him plant himself before me and,
-taking off his cap and scratching the back of his neck with the back
-of his muddy thumb, make this announcement: "The _Asplenium
-filix-faemina_ put up two new shoots last night, sir. Bishop's
-crooks, I believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a farmer and
-my shepherd should notify me that one of the ewes had dropped twin
-lambs at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: the honour of the
-shoots--a questionable honour--goes to Hodge as their botanical sire!
-
-When I receive visitors by reason of my books--and strangers do
-sometimes make pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of "Black
-Oaks"--if the day is pleasant, we have tea in the garden. While the
-strangers drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known proboscis over
-the company for any praise they may have brought along. Should this
-seem adequate, I later reward them with a stroll. That is Hodge's
-hour and opportunity. Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but
-invariably, he steps out from some bush and takes his place behind me
-as we move.
-
-When we reach the fern bank, the visitors regularly begin to inquire:
-"What is the name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to Hodge much as
-a drum-major, if asked by a by-stander what the music was that the
-band had just been playing, might wheel in dismay to the nearest
-horn. Hodge steps forward: now comes the reward of all his toil.
-"That is the _Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum_, sir." "And what is
-this one?" "That is the _Polypodium elegantissimum_, mum." Then you
-would understand what it sometimes means to attain scholarship
-without Oxford or Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman
-orator and a garden ass.
-
-You will be wondering why I am telling you this about Hodge. For the
-very particular reason that Hodge will play a part, I know not what
-part, in the pleasant business that has come up between us. He looms
-as the danger between me and the American ferns after the ferns shall
-have arrived here. It is a fact that very few foreign ferns have
-ever done well in my garden, watch over them as closely as I may:
-especially those planted in more recent years. Could you believe it
-possible of human nature to refuse to water a fern, to deny a little
-earth to the root of a fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from
-it when there was nobody near to observe the deed, to jab at it with
-a sharp trowel? I shall not press the matter further, for I
-instinctively turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has within
-himself some incomprehensible little terrible spot and I feel that
-this is Hodge's spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he will
-kill what he hates, if he dares. I have been so aroused to defend
-his faithful character that I have devised two pleadings: first,
-Hodge is the essence of British parliaments, the sum total of British
-institutions; therefore he patriotically believes that things British
-should be good enough for the British--of course, their own ferns.
-At other times I am rather inclined to surmise that his malice and
-murderous resentment are due to his inability to take on any more
-Latin, least of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt now defends
-himself against any more Latin as a man with his back to the wall
-fights for his life: the personal promontory will hold no more.
-
-You have written me an irresistible letter, though frankly I made no
-effort to resist it. Your praise of my books instantly endeared you
-to me.
-
-Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has already brought results so
-agreeable and surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to plunge a
-second time and more deeply.
-
-Is there--how could there help being!--a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands? Mrs.
-Blackthorne wishes to know. I read your letter to Mrs. Blackthorne.
-Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed
-with _you_. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. And Mr. and Mrs.
-Blackthorne would like to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands
-and, if so, whether she and you will not some time follow the ferns
-and come and take possession for a while of our English garden.
-
-You and I can go off to ourselves and discuss our "dogwoods" and
-"black oaks"; and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at their tea
-across the garden, can exchange copies of their highly illuminated
-and privately circulated little masterpieces about their husbands.
-(The husbands should always edit the masterpieces!)
-
-Both of you, will you come?
-
-Finally, as to your generous propaganda in behalf of my books and as
-to the favourable reports which my publishers send me from time to
-time in the guise of New World royalties, you may think of the
-proboscis as now being leveled straight and rigid like a gun-barrel
-toward the shores of the United States, whence blow gales scented
-with so glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that Columbus was not
-mistaken: America is turning out to be a place worth while.
-
- Your deeply interested,
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-
- _June 3._
-
-DEAR TILLY:
-
-Crown me with some kind of chaplet--nothing classic, nothing
-sentimental, but something American and practical--say with twigs of
-Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the leaves of that forest
-favourite which in boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with
-its inner bark--entwine me, O Tilly, with a garland of slippery elm
-for the virtue of always making haste to share with you my slippery
-pleasures! I write at full speed now to empty into your lap, a
-wonderfully receptive lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has ever
-come to me as your favourite author--and favourite young husband to
-be.
-
-The great English novelist Blackthorne, many of whose books we have
-read together (whenever you listened), recently stumbled over one of
-my obstructive tales; one of my awkwardly placed literary hurdles on
-the world's race-course of readers. As a result of his fall he got
-up, dusted himself thoroughly of his surprise, and actually
-despatched to me an acknowledgment of his thanks for the happy
-accident. I replied with a volley of my own thanks, with salvos of
-praise for him. Now he has written again, throwing wide open his
-house and his heart, both of which appear to be large and admirably
-suited to entertain suitable guests.
-
-At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart--can
-you find where it is?--and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the
-novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr.
-Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands.
-If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!--he
-invites her, invites _us_, _Mrs._ Blackthorne invites _us_, should we
-sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed
-country-house in Warwickshire. If, then, our often postponed
-marriage, our despairingly postponed marriage, should be arranged to
-madden me and gladden the rest of mankind before next summer, we
-could, with our arms around one another's necks, be conveyed by steam
-and electricity on our wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance
-and be there deposited, still oblivious of everything but ourselves.
-
-Think what it would mean to you to be launched upon the rosy sea of
-English social life amid the orisons and benisons of such illustrious
-literary personages. Think of those lovely English lawns, raked and
-rolled for centuries, and of many-coloured _fêtes_ on them; of the
-national tea and the national sandwiches; of national strawberries
-and clotted cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's flunkies still
-flunkying and Queen Anne's fads yet fadding; of week-ends without
-end--as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself growing more and more a
-celebrity, as the English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers
-gradually brought into public appreciation the vague potentialities,
-not necessarily the bare actualities, of modest young Sands himself.
-Eventually, no doubt, there would be a day for you at Sandringham
-with the royal ladies. They would drive you over--I have not the
-least idea how great the distance is--to drink tea at Stonehenge.
-Imagine yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy English
-afternoon, imagine yourself seated under a heavy black-silk English
-umbrella on a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, tearing at
-an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest strain and surrounded by male and
-female admirers, all under heavy black-silk umbrellas--Spitalsfield,
-I suppose--as Mrs. Beverley Sands.
-
-Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign triumph, this career of
-glory, comes to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, it is
-inaccessible. Look upon it as in part the property that I am to
-settle upon you at the time of our union--my honours. You have
-already understood from me that my entire estate, both my real estate
-and my unreal estate, consists of future honours. Those I have just
-described are an early payment on the marriage contract--foreign
-exchange!
-
-What reply, then, in your behalf am I to send to the lofty and
-benevolent Blackthornes? As matters halt between us--he also loves
-who only writes and waits--I can merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that
-there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists in remaining a
-Miss Snowden. With this realisation of what you will lose as Miss
-Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you not think it wise--and
-wise you are, Tilly--any longer to persist in your persistence? You
-once, in a moment of weakness, confessed to me--think of your having
-a moment of weakness!--you once confessed to me, though you may deny
-it now (Balzac defines woman as the angel or devil who denies
-everything when it suits her), you once confessed to me that you
-feared your life would be taken up with two protracted pleasures,
-each of which curtailed the other: the pleasure of being engaged to
-me a long time and the pleasure of being married to me a long time.
-Nerve yourself to shortening the first in order to enter upon the
-compensations of the second.
-
-Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect of obliterating from the
-world one whom I first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. Where
-will Tilly Snowden be when only Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where
-will be that wild rose in a snow bank--the rose which was truly wild,
-the snow bank which was not cold (or was it?)? I think I should
-easily become reconciled to your being known, say, as Madame Snowden,
-so that you might still stand out in your own right and wild-rose
-individuality. We could visit England as the rising American author,
-Beverley Sands, and his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. Everybody
-would then be asking who the mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I
-should relate that she was a retired opera singer--having retired
-before she advanced.
-
-By the way, you confided to me some time ago that you were not very
-well. You always _look_ well, mighty well to _me_, Tilly. Perfectly
-well to _me_. Can your indisposition be imaginary? Or is it merely
-fashionable? Or--is it something else? What of late has sickened me
-is an idea of yours that you might sometime consult Doctor G. M.
-Tilly! Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me when I think of
-that charlatan's door being closed behind you as a patient of his!
-
-Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the beautiful Blackthornes!
-
-Your easy and your uneasy
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _"Slippery Elm" Apartments,
- June 4._
-
-I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown you with slippery elm--you
-seem to think I keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it--if it is the
-leaf you sigh for. But please do not try to crown me with a wig of
-your creative hair; that is, with your literary honours.
-
-How wonderfully the impressions of childhood disappear from memory
-like breaths on a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to their
-shapes if the glass be coldly breathed upon! As I read your letter,
-at least as I read the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your letter,
-I remembered, probably for the first time in years, a friend of my
-mother's.
-
-She had been inveigled to become the wife, that is, the legally
-installed life-assistant, of an exceedingly popular minister; and
-when I was a little girl, but not too little to understand--was I
-ever too little to understand?--she used to slip across the street to
-our house and in confidence to my mother pour out her sense of humour
-at the part assigned her by the hired wedding march and evangelical
-housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, always
-half-whispered, confidences--for how often in life one feels guilty
-when telling the truth and innocent when lying!
-
-On this particular morning she and my mother laughed till they were
-weary, while I danced round them with delight at the idea of having
-even the tip of my small but very active finger in any pie that
-savoured of mischief. She had been telling my mother that if, some
-Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a sermon which brought
-people into the church, she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If
-he made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she might possibly look
-out for a pair of ducks. Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be
-merely a strip of worthless territory lying alongside the land of
-Canaan; people simply walked over her, tramped across her, on their
-way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful things to Canaan, her
-husband.
-
-That childish nonsense comes back to me strangely, and yet not
-strangely as I think of your funny letter, your very, very funny
-letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to me because I am not
-myself but am possibly a Mrs.--well, _some_ Mrs. Sands. The English
-scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it is Canaan and his strip
-all over again--there on the English lawns; a great many heavy
-English people are tramping heavily over me on their way to Canaan.
-The fabulous tea at Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at
-Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that at last choked to death
-the ill-fated Tilly Snowden.
-
-In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, then, begs that you
-will thank the Blackthornes, Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for their
-invitation; as best she can she thanks you; but for the present, and
-for how much of the future she does not know, she prefers to remain
-what is very necessary to her independence and therefore to her
-happiness; and also what is quite pleasing to her ear--the wild rose
-in the snow bank (cold or not cold, according to the sun).
-
-In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true that I have more than
-once postponed the date of our marriage. I have never said why;
-perhaps I myself have never known just why. But at least do not
-expect me to shorten the engagement in order that I may secure some
-share of your literary honours. As a little girl I always despised
-queens who were crowned with their husbands. It seemed to me that
-the queen was crowned with what was left over and was merely allowed
-to sit on the corner of the throne as the poor connection.
-
-
-P.S.--Still, I _would_ like to go to England. I mean, of course, I
-wish _we_ could go on our wedding journey! If I got ready, could I
-rely upon _you_? I have always wished to visit England without being
-debarred from its social life. Seriously, the invitation of the
-Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity and an advantage not to
-be thrown away. Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am wise!
-
-It is true that I have not been feeling very well. And it is true
-that I have consulted Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. That
-dreaded door has closed behind me! I have been alone with him! The
-diagnosis at least was delightful. He made it appear like opening a
-golden door upon a charming landscape. I had but to step outdoors
-and look around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, Health, my
-former friend, how do you do! Why did you go back on me?" He tells
-me my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. I said to him
-that _must_ be the disease; namely, that it was _mild_. Never in my
-life had I had anything that was mild! Disease from my birth up had
-attacked me only in its most virulent form: so had health. I had
-always enjoyed--and suffered from--virulent health. I am going to
-take the Bulgar bacillus.
-
-Why do _you_ dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular physicians are naturally
-hated by unpopular physicians. But how does _he_ run against or run
-over you?
-
-Which of your books was it the condescending Englishman liked?
-Suppose you send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of each of your
-books? Those you gave me as they came out seem to have disappeared.
-
-The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful
-of the Balkan bacillus.
-
-More trouble with the Balkans!
-
- TILLY
-
- (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise
- intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least
- for _that_!).
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _June 3._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a
-benign fulmination from an Olympian.
-
-To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I
-received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward
-Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books
-and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't--score heavily for the aforesaid
-illustrious Eddy.
-
-Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or
-illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that
-you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a
-lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own
-opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information
-how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading
-"Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle
-which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off
-a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the
-impenetrable roof of his own back.
-
-For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other
-human being in this world, do you know what I think of you as most
-truly being? The very finest possible specimen of the highest order
-of human land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives under a
-shovel turned upside down over it, called its back; and a human
-land-turtle is a fellow who thrives under the roof of the five senses
-and the practical. Never does a turtle get from under his carapace,
-and never does the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his five
-senses. Of course you realise that not during our friendship have I
-paid you so extravagant a compliment. For the human race has to be
-largely made up of millions of land-turtles. They cause the world to
-go slowly, and it is the admirable stability of their lives neither
-to soar nor to sink. You are a land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle,
-Esquire; you live under the shell of the practical; that is, you have
-no imagination; that is, you do not read fiction; that is, you do not
-read Me! Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but cherish
-all the confidence and love in the world for you. But, mind you,
-only as an unparalleled creeping thing.
-
-To get on with the business of this letter: the English novelist laid
-aside his enthusiasm for my work long enough to make a request: he
-asked me to send him some Kentucky ferns for his garden. Owing to my
-long absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch with people and
-things down there. But you left that better land only a few years
-ago. I recollect that of old you manifested a weakness for sending
-flowers to womankind--another evidence, by the way, of lack of
-imagination. Such conduct shows a mere botanical estimate of the
-grand passion. The only true lovers, the only real lovers, that
-women ever have are men of imagination. Why should these men send a
-common florist's flowers! They grow and offer their own--the roses
-of Elysium!
-
-To pass on, you must still have clinging to your memory, like bats to
-a darkened, disused wall, the addresses of various Louisville
-florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no light at all, were
-the former emissaries of your folly and your fickleness. Will you
-send me at once the address of a firm in whose hands I could safely
-entrust this very high-minded international piece of business?
-
-Inasmuch as you are now a New York lawyer and inasmuch as New York
-lawyers charge for everything--concentration of mind, if they have
-any mind, tax on memory and tax on income, their powers of locomotion
-and of prevarication, club dues and death dues, time and tumult,
-strikes and strokes, and all other items of haste and waste, you are
-authorised to regard this letter a professional demand and to let me
-have a reasonable bill at a not too early date. Charge for whatever
-you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for your friendship.
-"Naught that makes life most worth while can be had for gold."
-(Rather elegant extract from one of my novels which you disdain to
-read!)
-
-I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me have an immediate reply.
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending to quarrel? And do
-you still keep up the pretence?
-
-Predestined magpies!
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _150 Broad Street,
- June 5._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-Your highly complimentary and philosophical missive is before my eyes.
-
-You understand French, not I. But I have accumulated a few
-quotations which I sometimes venture to use in writing, never in my
-proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to the French the French with
-which I am familiar, the French themselves would drive their own
-vernacular out of their land--over into Germany! Here is one of
-those fond inaudible phrases:
-
- _A chaque oiseau
- Son nid est beau._
-
-
-That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes prefers his own tub.
-
-The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club dinner the other
-night. One of the speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the
-blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping around the heads of the
-guests without finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing about
-the edges of a pond, trying in vain to strike a place to land. But
-everybody cheered uproariously, made happy by the discovery that
-someone actually could say something at a New York dinner that nobody
-had heard before. One man next to the speaker (of course coached
-beforehand) passed a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made its
-way down the table to me at the other end and I, in the New York way,
-laid it up for future use at a dinner in some other city. Meantime I
-use it now on you.
-
-It is true that I arrived in New York from Kentucky some years ago.
-It is likewise undeniable that for some years previous thereto I had
-dealings with Louisville florists. But I affirm now, and all these
-variegated gentlemen, if they _are_ gentlemen, would gladly come on
-to New York as my witnesses and bear me out in the joyful affidavit,
-that whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked my behaviour,
-never once did I commit the futility, the imbecility, of trafficking
-in ferns.
-
-A great English novelist--ferns! A rising young American
-novelist--ferns! Frogstools, mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't
-you ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? Or if they should
-be too gross for his delicate soul, a birdcage containing a pair of
-warbling young bluegrass moonbeams?
-
-I am a _land_-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank God! If I have no
-imagination, thank God! If I live and move and have my being under
-the shovel of the five senses and of the practical, thank God! But,
-my good fellow, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other
-man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I think of you as most truly
-being?
-
-A poor, harmless tinker.
-
-You, with your pastime of fabricating novels, dwell in a little
-workshop of the imagination; you tinker with what you are pleased to
-call human lives, reality, truth. On your shop door should hang a
-sign to catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, splendid
-tinkering. No matter who you are, what your past career or present
-extremity, come in and let the owner of this shop make your
-acquaintance and he will work you over into something finer than you
-have ever been or in this world will ever be. For he will make you
-into an unfallen original or into a perfected final. If you have
-never had a chance to do your best in life, he will give you that
-chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the broken-down, especially
-welcome. Everybody made over to be as everybody should be by
-Beverley Sands."
-
-But, brother, the sole thing with which you, the tinker, do business
-is the sole thing with which I, the turtle, do not do business. I,
-as a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, actuality, truth. During
-the years that I have been an attorney never have I had a case in
-court without first of all things looking for the element of
-imagination in it and trying to stamp that element out of the case
-and kick it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, that
-indefatigable mischief-maker, your beautiful and beloved patron
-power--imagination.
-
-Going on to testify out of my experience as a land-turtle, I depose
-the following, having kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the
-turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the tracks of most of the
-other animal creatures and gets to know them and their ways. But
-there is one path of one creature marked for unique renown among
-nose-bearing men: that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white
-piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence--surnamed the polecat.
-
-Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably disposed, may in
-your profession be the harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged
-thing you will that soars innocently toward bright skies; but, once
-unkindly disposed, it is in my profession, and in every other, the
-polecat of the human faculties. When it has testified against you,
-it vanishes from the scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with its
-testimony.
-
-Hence it is that I go gunning first for this same little animal whose
-common den is the lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though you never
-seem to have encountered him in your work and walks. If you should
-do so, if you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile
-imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may the land-turtle be able to
-crawl to you and stand by you in that hour!
-
-But--the tinker to his work, the turtle to his! _A chaque oiseau_!
-Diogenes, your tub!
-
-As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. I paid for the
-flowers, _she_ got them. Anybody can receive money for blossoms, but
-only a statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can fill an order for
-flowers with equity and fresh buds. Go ahead and try Phillips &
-Faulds. You could reasonably rely upon them to fill any order that
-you might place in their hands, however nonsensical-comical,
-billy-goatian-satirical it may be. They'd send your Englishman an
-opossum with a pouch full of blooming hyacinths if that would quiet
-his longing and make him happy. I should think it might.
-
-We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle,
-
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
-
-How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? Are you still cooing?
-
-Uncertain doves!
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-
- _150 Broad Street,
- June 5._
-
-DEAR POLLY:
-
-I send you some red roses to go with your black hair and your black
-eyes, never so black as when black with temper. When may I come to
-see you? Why not to-morrow night?
-
-Another matter, not so vital but still important: a few years before
-we left Louisville to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New
-York, I at different times employed divers common carriers known as
-florists to convey to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions that
-could not be depicted in writing fluid. In other words, I hired
-those mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in terms of
-their costliest, most sensational merchandise. You should be
-prepared to say which of these florists struck you as the best
-business agent.
-
-Would you send me the address of that man or of that firm?
-Immediately you will want to know why. Always suspicious! Let the
-suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. Some
-foggy-headed Englishman has besought him to ship him (the foggy one)
-some Kentucky vegetation all the way across the broad Atlantic to his
-wet domain--interlocking literary idiots! Beverley appeals to me, I
-to you, the highest court in everything.
-
-Are you still enjoying the umbrageous society of that giraffe-headed
-jackass, Doctor Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his
-unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? _He_ a nerve
-specialist! The only nerve in his practice is _his_ nerve. Doesn't
-my love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? Isn't it the right
-kind? Will it ever give out?
-
-Your reply, then, will cover four points: to thank me for the red
-roses; to say when I may come to see you; to send me the address of
-the Louisville florist who became most favourably known to you
-through a reckless devotion; and to explain your patience with that
-unhappy fool.
-
-Thy sworn and thy swain,
-
- BEN DOOLITTLE.
-
-
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _The Franklin Flats,
- June 6._
-
-MY DEAR BEN:
-
-Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville florist is one of
-your flimsiest subterfuges. What you wished to receive from me was a
-letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable on your last visit and
-you have since been concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards.
-Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my aid as indispensable.
-That is like you men! If one of you can but make a woman forget, if
-he can but lead her to forgive him, by flattering her with the idea
-that she is indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her figure
-standing on the long road of time: dumbly, patiently standing there,
-waiting for some male to pass along and permit her to accompany him
-as his indispensable fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good
-humour by being honoured with your request that I supply you with the
-name of a florist.
-
-Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply you. All the Louisville
-florists, as I thought at the time, carried out their instructions
-faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally received flowers not
-fresh. Did it occur to me to blame the florists? Never! I did what
-a woman always does: she thinks less of--well, she doesn't think less
-of the _florist_!
-
-Be this as it may, Beverley might try Phillips & Faulds for whatever
-he is to export. As nearly as I now remember they sent the biggest
-boxes of whatever you ordered!
-
-I have an appointment for to-morrow night, but I think I can arrange
-to divide the evening, giving you the later half. It shall be for
-you to say whether the best half was _yours_. That will depend upon
-_you_.
-
-I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of Dr. Claude Mullen because
-he loves me and I do not love him. The fascination of his presence
-lies in my indifference. Perhaps women are so seldom safe with the
-men who love them, that any one of us feels herself entitled to make
-the most of a rare chance! I am not only safe, I am entertained. As
-I go down into the parlour, I almost feel that I ought to buy a
-ticket to a performance in my own private theatre.
-
-Ben, dear, are you going to commit the folly of being jealous? If I
-had to marry _him_, do you know what my first wifely present would
-be? A liberal transfusion of my own blood! As soon as I enter the
-room, what fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which hold little
-cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am always expecting the little pools
-to run over: then there would be tears. The night he goes for
-good--perhaps they will be tears that night.
-
-If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about him, still encourage
-his visits, I have simply to say that I don't know. When it comes to
-what a woman will "receive" in such cases, the ground she walks on is
-very uncertain to her own feet. It may be that the one thing she
-forever craves and forever fears not to get is absolute certainty,
-certainty that some day love for her will not be over, everything be
-not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's love is pitiful, and as
-long as a man's love is pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it.
-Therefore he is irresistible--as my guest!
-
-The roses are glorious. I bury my face in them down to the thorns.
-And then I come over and sign my name as the indispensable
-
- POLLY BOLES.
-
-
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-
- _June 6._
-
-DEAR TILLY:
-
-I have had a note from Beverley, asking whether he could come this
-evening. I have written that I have an appointment, but I did not
-enlighten him as to the appointment being with you. Why not let him
-suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards. I told him that I could
-perhaps arrange to divide the evening; would you mind? And would you
-mind coming early? I will do as much for you some time, and _I
-suspect I couldn't do more_!
-
-
-P.S.--Rather than come for the first half of the evening perhaps you
-would prefer to _postpone_ your visit _altogether_. It would suit me
-just as well; _better_ in fact. There really was something very
-_particular_, Tilly dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about to-night.
-
-I shall not look for you at all _this_ evening, _best_ of friends.
-
- POLLY BOLES.
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-
- _June 6._
-
-DEAR POLLY:
-
-The very particular something to talk to Ben about to-night is the
-identical something for every other night. And nothing could be more
-characteristic of you, as soon as you heard that my visit would clash
-with one of his, than your eagerness to push me partly out of the
-house in a hurried letter and then push me completely out in a quiet
-postscript. Being a woman, I understand your temptation and your
-tactics. I fully sympathise with you.
-
-Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted intimate. I shall not drop
-in to interrupt you and Ben--both not so young as you once were and
-both getting stout--heavy Polly, heavy Ben--as you sit side by side
-in your little Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always suggests
-to me an enormous turnip hollowed out square: with no windows; with a
-hole on one side to come in and a hole on the other side to go out;
-upholstered in enormous bunches of beets and horse-radish, and
-lighted with a wilted electric sunflower. There you two will sit
-to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben, suffocating for fresh air and
-murmuring to each other as you have murmured for years:
-
-"I do! I do!"
-
-"I do! I do!"
-
-One sentence in your letter, Polly dear, takes your photograph like a
-camera; the result is a striking likeness. That sentence is this:
-
-"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards."
-
-That is exactly what you will do, what you would always do: explain
-afterwards. In other words, you plot to make Ben jealous but fear to
-make him too jealous lest he desert you. If on the evening of this
-visit you should forget "to explain," and if during the night you
-should remember, you would, if need were, walk barefoot through the
-streets in your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter, if you could
-reach it, and say: "Ben, that appointment wasn't with any other man;
-it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I had told you!"
-
-That is, you have already disposed of yourself, breath and soul, to
-Ben; and while you are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you have
-espoused in his behalf what you consider your best and strongest
-trait--loyalty. Under the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a
-few years after marriage, have devoured all there is of Ben alive and
-will have taken your seat beside what are virtually his bones. As
-the years pass, the more ravenously you will preside over the bones.
-Never shall the world say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever
-was left of her dear Ben Doolittle!
-
-_Your loyalty_! I believe the first I saw of it was years ago one
-night in Louisville when you and I were planning to come to New York
-to live. Naturally we were much concerned by the difficulties of
-choosing our respective New York residences and we had written on and
-had received thumb-nailed libraries of romance about different
-places. As you looked over the recommendations of each, you came
-upon one called The Franklin Flats. The circular contained
-appropriate quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I remember how
-your face brightened as you said: "This ought to be the very thing."
-One of the quotations on the circular ran somewhat thus: "Beware of
-meat twice boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So they must have a
-good restaurant!"
-
-In other words, you believed that a house named after Franklin could
-but resemble Franklin. A building put up in New York by a Tammany
-contractor, if named after Benjamin Franklin and advertised with
-quotations from Franklin's works, would embody the traits of that
-remote national hero! To your mind--not to your imagination, for you
-haven't any--to your mind, and you have a great deal of mind, the
-bell-boys, the superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids, the
-flunkied knave who stands at the front door--all these were loyally
-congregated as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still in the
-Franklin Flats! I know what you have long suffered there; but move
-away! Not Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building as long as
-the building stands by the contractor and the contractor stands by
-profits and losses.
-
-While on the subject of loyalty, not your loyalty but woman's
-loyalty, I mean to finish with it. And I shall go on to say that
-occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass window in some Fifth
-Avenue shop and have studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised
-loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes effect in those
-processions that now and then sweep up the Avenue as though they were
-Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The marchers try first not to look
-self-conscious; all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the cause."
-But beneath all other expressions and differences of expression I
-have always seen one reigning look as plainly as though it were
-printed in enormous letters on a banner flying over their heads:
-
-"Strictly Monogamous Women."
-
-At such times I have felt a wild desire, when I should hear of the
-next parade, to organise a company of unenthralled young girls who
-with unfettered natures and unfettered features should tramp up the
-Avenue under their own colours. If the women before them--those
-loyal ones--would actually carry, as they should, a banner with the
-legend I have described, then my company of girls should unfurl to
-the breeze their flag with the truth blazoned on it:
-
-"Not Necessarily Monogamous!"
-
-The honest human crowd, watching and applauding us, would pack the
-Avenue from sidewalks to roofs.
-
-Between you and me everything seems to be summed up in one
-difference: all my life I have wanted to go barefoot and all your
-life, no matter what the weather, you have been solicitous to put on
-goloshes.
-
-My very nature is rooted in rebellion that in a world alive and
-running over with irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to find
-her chief happiness in just one! The heart going out to so many in
-succession, and the hand held by one; year after year your hand held
-by the first man who impulsively got possession of it. Every
-instinct of my nature would be to jerk my hand away and be free! To
-give it again and again.
-
-This subject weighs crushingly on me as I struggle with this letter
-because I have tidings for you about myself. I am to write words
-which I have long doubted I should ever write, life's most iron-bound
-words. Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at last. Of course
-it is Beverley. Not without waverings, not without misgivings. But
-I'd feel those, be the man whoever he might. Why I feel thus I do
-not know, but I know I feel. I tell you this first because it was
-you who brought Beverley and me together, who have always believed in
-his career. (Though I think that of late you have believed more in
-him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning to believe in his career.
-He has lately ascertained that his work is making a splendid
-impression in England. If he succeeds in England, he will succeed in
-this country. He has received an invitation to visit some delightful
-and very influential people in England and "to bring me along!"
-Think of anybody bringing _me_ along! If we should be entertained by
-these people [they are the Blackthornes], such is English social
-life, that we should also get to know the white Thornes and the red
-Thornes--the whole social forest. The iron rule of my childhood was
-economy; and the influence of that iron rule over me is inexorable
-still: I cannot even contemplate such prodigal wastage in life as not
-to accept this invitation and gather in its wealth of consequences.
-
-More news of me, very, very important: _at last_ I have made the
-acquaintance of George Marigold. I have become one of his patients.
-
-Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from him. You need not
-return it. I shall not answer it. I shall leave things to his
-imagination and his imagination will give him no rest.
-
-If Ben hurled at _you_ a jealous letter about Dr. Mullen, you would
-immediately write to remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule
-Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's eyes. That is, you would
-do an abominable thing, never doubting that Ben would admire you the
-more. And you would be right; for as Ben observed you tear Dr.
-Mullen to pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back in his chair
-and chuckle within himself: "Glorious, staunch old Polly!"
-
-And what you would do in this instance you will do all your life: you
-will practise disloyalty to every other human being, as in this
-letter you have practised it with me, for the sake of loyalty to Ben:
-your most pronounced, most horrible trait.
-
- TILLY SNOWDEN.
-
-
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-
- _June 7._
-
-DEAR TILLY:
-
-I return Beverley's letter. Without comment, since I did not read
-it. You know how I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him. I
-have a feeling for him unlike that for any other human being, not
-even Ben; I look upon him as set apart and sacred because he has
-genius and belongs to the world.
-
-As for his faults, those that I have not already noticed I prefer to
-find out for myself. I have never cared to discover any human
-being's failings through a third person. Instead of getting
-acquainted with the pardonable traits of the abused, I might really
-be introduced to the _abominable traits of the abuser_.
-
-_Once more_, you think you are going to marry Beverley! I shall
-reserve my congratulations for the _event itself_.
-
-Thank you for surrendering your claim on my friendship and society
-last night. Ben and I had a most satisfactory evening, and when not
-suffocating we murmured "I do" to our hearts' content.
-
-Next time, should your visits clash, I'll push _him_ out. Yet I feel
-in honour bound to say that this is only my present state of mind. I
-might weaken at the last moment--even in the Franklin Flats.
-
-As to some things in your letter, I have long since learned not to
-bestow too much attention upon anything you say. You court a kind of
-irresponsibility in language. With your inborn and over-indulged
-willfulness you love to break through the actual and to revel in the
-imaginary. I have become rather used to this as one of your growing
-traits and I am therefore not surprised that in this letter you say
-things which, if seriously spoken, would insult your sex and would
-make them recoil from you--or make them wish to burn you at the
-stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue with your company of girls in
-that kind of procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: you will
-be tramping through the slums where you belong.
-
-All this, I repeat, is merely your way--to take things out in
-talking. But we can make words our playthings in life's shallows
-until words wreck us as their playthings in life's deeps.
-
-Still, in return for your compliments to me, _which, of course, you
-really mean_, I paid you one the other night when thinking of you
-quite by myself. It was this: nature seems to leave something out of
-each of us, but we presently discover that she perversely put it
-where it does not belong.
-
-What she left out of you, my dear, was the domestic tea-kettle.
-There isn't even any place for one. But she made up for lack of the
-kettle _by rather overdoing the stove_!
-
- Your _discreet_ friend,
- POLLY BOLES.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS
-
- _Cathedral Heights, New York,
- June 7, 1900._
-
-GENTLEMEN:
-
-A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin Doolittle, has suggested
-your firm as reliable agents to carry out an important commission,
-which I herewith describe:
-
-I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire you to make a
-collection of these ferns and to ship them, expenses prepaid, to
-Edward Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire,
-England. The cost is not to exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish
-you the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid unnecessary
-correspondence, I herewith enclose, payable to your order, my check
-for that amount.
-
-Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating whether you will
-undertake this commission and see it through?
-
- Very truly yours,
- BEVERLEY SANDS.
-
-
-
-
-PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Louisville, Ky.,
- June 10, 1900._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-Your valued letter with check for $25 received. We handle most of
-the ferns on the list, and know the others and can easily get them.
-
-You may rely upon your valued order receiving the best attention.
-Thanking you for the same,
-
- Yours very truly,
- PHILLIPS & FAULDS.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-
- _Cathedral Heights, New York,
- June 15, 1910._
-
-MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
-
-Your second letter came into the port of my life like an argosy from
-a rich land. I think you must have sent it with some remembrance of
-your own youth, or out of your mature knowledge of youth itself; how
-too often it walks the shore of its rocky world, cutting its bare
-feet on sharp stones, as it strains its eyes toward things far beyond
-its horizon but not beyond its faith and hope. Some day its ship
-comes in and it sets sail toward the distant ideal. How much the
-opening of the door of your friendship, of your life, means to me! A
-new consecration envelops the world that I am to be the guest of a
-great man. If words do not say more, it is because words say so
-little.
-
-Delay has been unavoidable in any mere formal acknowledgment of your
-letter. You spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My silence has
-been due to the arrangement of hinges for the shipment of the ferns.
-I wished to insure their safe transoceanic passage and some inquiries
-had to be made in Kentucky.
-
-You may rely upon it that the matter will receive the best attention.
-In good time the ferns, having reached the end of their journey, will
-find themselves put down in your garden as helpless immigrants. From
-what outlook I can obtain upon the scene of their reception, they
-should lack only hands to reach confidingly to you and lack only feet
-to run with all their might away from Hodge.
-
-I acknowledge--with the utmost thanks--the unusual and beautiful
-courtesy of Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife, if I
-have one, and to me. It is the dilemma of my life, at the age of
-twenty-seven, to be obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands
-exists, but that nevertheless there is no such person.
-
-Can you imagine a man's stretching out his hand to pluck a peach and
-just before he touched the peach, finding only the bough of the tree?
-Then, as from disappointment he was about to break off the offensive
-bough, seeing again the dangling peach? Can you imagine this
-situation to be of long continuance, during which he could neither
-take hold of the peach nor let go of the tree--nor go away? If you
-can, you will understand what I mean when I say that my bride
-persists in remaining unwed and I persist in wooing. I do not know
-why; she protests that she does not know; but we do know that life is
-short, love shorter, that time flies, and we are not husband and wife.
-
-If she remains undecided when Summer returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne
-and you will let me come alone.
-
-Thus I can thank you with certainty for one with the hope that I may
-yet thank you for two.
-
-I am,
-
- Sincerely yours,
- BEVERLEY SANDS.
-
-
-P.S.--Can you pardon the informality of a postscript?
-
-As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy situation, marriage is
-denied me on account of the whole unhappy history of woman--which is
-pretty hard. But a good many American ladies--the one I woo among
-them--are indignant just now that they are being crowded out of their
-destinies by husbands--or even possibly by bachelors. These ladies
-deliver lectures to one another with discontented eloquence and rouse
-their auditresses to feministic frenzy by reminding them that for
-ages woman has walked in the shadow of man and that the time has come
-for the worm [the woman] to turn on the shadow or to crawl out of it.
-
-My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly say that the only two shadows
-I could ever think of casting on the woman I married would be that of
-my umbrella whenever it rained, and that of her parasol whenever the
-sun shone. But I do maintain that if there is not enough sunshine
-for the men and women in the world, if there has to be some casting
-of shadows in the competition and the crowding, I do maintain that
-the casting of the shadow would better be left to the man. He has
-had long training, terrific experience, in this mortal business of
-casting the shadow, has learned how to moderate it and to hold it
-steady! The woman at least knows where it is to be found, should she
-wish to avail herself of it. But what would be the state of a man in
-his need of his spouse's penumbra? He would be out of breath with
-running to keep up with the penumbra or to find where it was for the
-time being!
-
-I have seen some of these husbands who live--or have gradually died
-out--in the shadow of their wives; they are nature's subdued farewell
-to men and gentlemen.
-
-
-
-
-DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _June 16._
-
-A remarkable thing has lately happened to me.
-
-One of my Kentucky novels, upon being republished in London some
-months ago, fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. This
-critic's praise later made its way to the stately library of Edward
-Blackthorne. What especially induced the latter to read the book, I
-infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer from my description of a
-woodland scene with ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens,
-is himself interested in ferns. He consequently wrote to some other
-English authors and critics, calling attention to my work, and he
-sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns for his garden.
-
-This recognition in England hilariously affected my friends over
-here. Tilly, whose mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair of
-golden balances for weighing delight against delight (always her most
-vital affair), when this honour for me fell into the scales, found
-them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as I have often thought,
-that she has long been holding on to me merely until she could take
-sure hold of someone else of more splendid worldly consequence, she
-suddenly at least tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, solid
-Polly, wholesome and dependable as a well-browned whole-wheat baker's
-loaf weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she heard of it, gave
-me a Bohemian supper in her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a
-few undersized people, inasmuch as she and Ben, the chief personages
-of the entertainment, took up most of the room. We were so packed
-in, that literally it was a night in Bohemia _aux sardines_.
-
-Since the good news from England came over, Ben, with his big, round,
-clean-shaven, ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, which makes
-him look like a thirty-five-year-old Bacchus who had never drunk a
-drop--even Ben has beamed on me like a mellower orb. He is as
-ashamed as ever of my books, but is beginning to feel proud that so
-many more people are being fooled by them. Several times lately I
-have caught his eyes resting on me with an expression of affectionate
-doubt as to whether after all he might be mistaken in not having
-thought more of me. But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a human
-refrigerator containing a mental thermometer, which rises or falls
-toward like or dislike over a background for book-sales, got wind of
-the matter and promptly invited me to one of his thermometric
-club-lunches--always an occasion for acute gastritis.
-
-Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, where, of course, the
-leading English reviews are kept on file. Some of the members must
-have seen the favourable criticisms. One night I became aware as I
-passed through the rooms that club heroes seated here and there threw
-glances of fresh interest toward me and exchanged auspicious words.
-The president--who for so long a time has styled himself the Nestor
-of the club that he now believes it is the members who do this, the
-garrulous old president, whose weaknesses have made holes in him
-through which his virtues sometimes leak out and get away, met me
-under the main chandelier and congratulated me in tones so
-intentionally audible that they violated the rules but were not
-punishable under his personal privileges.
-
-There was a sinister incident: two members whom Ben and I wish to
-kick because they have had the audacity to make the acquaintance of
-Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise also because they are
-fashionable charlatans in their profession--these two with dark looks
-saw the president congratulate me.
-
-More good fortune yet to come! The ferns which I am sending Mr.
-Blackthorne will soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious man
-has many visitors; he leads them, if he likes, to his fern bank.
-"These," he will some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. These
-are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. These were sent me by
-Turgenieff. And these," he will add, turning to his guests, "these
-came from a young American novelist, a Kentuckian, whose work I
-greatly respect: you must read his books." The guests separate to
-their homes to pursue the subject. Spreading fame--may it spread!
-Last of all, the stirring effect of this on me, who now run toward
-glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran toward Venus--with both feet and
-wings.
-
-The ironic fact about all this commotion affecting so many solid,
-substantial people--the ironic fact is this:
-
-_There was no woodland scene and there were no ferns._
-
-Here I reach the curious part of my story.
-
-When I was a country lad of some seventeen years in Kentucky, one
-August afternoon I was on my way home from a tramp of several miles.
-My course lay through patches of woods--last scant vestiges of the
-primeval forest--and through fields garnered of summer grain or green
-with the crops of coming autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence and
-crossed an old woods-pasture where stock grazed.
-
-The August sky was clear and the sun beat down with terrific heat. I
-had been walking for hours and parching thirst came upon me.
-
-This led me to remember how once these rich uplands had been the vast
-rolling forest that stretched from far-off eastern mountains to
-far-off western rivers, and how under its shade, out of the rock,
-everywhere bubbled crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams
-diamond bright, drinking places of the bold game.
-
-The sun beat down on me in the treeless open field. My feet struck
-into a path. It, too, became a reminder: it had once been a trail of
-the wild animals of that verdurous wilderness. I followed its
-windings--a sort of gully--down a long, gentle slope. The windings
-had no meaning now: the path could better have been straight; it was
-devious because the feet that first marked it off had threaded their
-way crookedly hither and thither past the thick-set trees.
-
-I reached the spring--a dry spot under the hot sun; no tree
-overshadowing it, no vegetation around it, not a blade of grass; only
-dust in which were footprints of the stock which could not break the
-habit of coming to it but quenched their thirst elsewhere. The
-bulged front of some limestone rock showed where the ancient mouth of
-the spring had been. Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a
-few clods. Hovering over these, rising and sinking, a little
-quivering jet of gold, a flock of butterflies. The grey stalk of a
-single dead weed projected across the choked orifice of the fountain
-and one long, brown grasshopper--spirit of summer dryness--had
-crawled out to the edge and sat motionless.
-
-A few yards away a young sycamore had sprung up from some
-wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow
-on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest--my
-eyes fixed on the forest ruin.
-
-Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart
-set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon
-Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot
-August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the
-scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers.
-
-I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate
-in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me
-out of ferns that never grew?
-
-
-
-
-PART SECOND
-
-
-
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _King Alfred's Wood,
- Warwickshire, England,
- May 1, 1911._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-It is the first of the faithful leafy May again. I sit at my windows
-as on this day a year ago and look out with thankfulness upon what a
-man may call the honour of the vegetable world.
-
-A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of yours or by some books--for
-I believe I read more than one of them--I, betrayed by the phrase
-that when we touch a book we touch a man, overstepped the boundaries
-of caution as to having any dealings with glib, plausible strangers
-and wrote you a letter. I made a request of you in that letter. I
-thought the request bore with it a suitable reward: that I should be
-grateful if you would undertake to have some ferns sent to me for my
-collection.
-
-Your sleek reply led me still further astray and I wrote again. I
-drew my English cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the ground
-for you to step on. I threw open to you the doors of my hospitality,
-good-fellowship.
-
-That was last May. Now it is May again. And now I know to a
-certainty what for months I have been coming to realise always with
-deeper shame: that you gave me your word and did not keep your word;
-doubtless never meant to keep it.
-
-Why, then, write you about this act of dishonour now? How justify a
-letter to a man I feel obliged to describe as I describe you?
-
-The reason is this, if you can appreciate such a reason. My nature
-refuses to let go a half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an
-abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood I came upon a partly
-chopped-down tree, and I must needs go far and fetch an axe and
-finish the job. What I have begun to build I must build at till the
-pattern is wrought out. Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the
-stamina of resolution. The upright moral skeleton within me would
-decay and crumble and I should sink down and flop like a human frog.
-
-Since, then, you dropped the matter in your way--without so much as a
-thought of a man's obligation to himself--I dismiss it in my
-way--with the few words necessary to enable me to rid my mind of it
-and of such a character.
-
-I wish merely to say, then, that I despise as I despise nothing else
-the ragged edge of a man's behaviour. I put your conduct before you
-in this way: do you happen to know of a common cabbage in anybody's
-truck patch? Observe that not even a common cabbage starts out to do
-a thing and fails to do it if it can. You must have some kind of
-perception of an oak tree. Think what would become of human beings
-in houses if builders were deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound
-oak? Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how it takes hold and
-will not be shaken loose by the capricious compelling winds. In your
-country have you the plover? Think what would be the plover's fate,
-if it did not steer straight through time and space to a distant
-shore. Why, some day pick up merely a piece of common quartz. Study
-its powers of crystallisation. And reflect that a man ranks high or
-low in the scale of character according to his possession or his lack
-of the powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his mind can
-assume fixity around an idea, if they can adjust themselves
-unalterably about a plan, expect something of him. If they run
-through his hours like water, if memory is a millstream, if
-remembrance floats forever away, expect nothing.
-
-Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted for themselves the
-characters of familiar plants about them. Do you know what to them
-the fern stood for? The fern stood for Fidelity. Those true,
-constant souls would have said that you had been unfaithful even with
-nature's emblems of Fidelity.
-
-The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight falls in a white
-radiance on my plants. I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on
-honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a certain spot in the
-garden; I dislike to look at it. There is a shadow on the place
-where your books once stood on my library shelves. Your specious
-books!--your cleverly manufactured books!--but there are successful
-scamps in every profession.
-
-I am,
-
- Very truly yours,
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
-
- _Cathedral Heights,
- May 10, 1911._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-I wish to inform you that I have just received from you a letter in
-which you attack my character. I wish in reply further to inform you
-that I have never felt called upon to defend my character. Nor will
-I, even with this letter of yours as evidence, attack your character.
-
-I am,
-
- Very truly yours,
- BEVERLEY SANDS.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _May 13, 1911._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-I ask your attention to the enclosed letter from Mr. Edward
-Blackthorne. By way of contrast and also of reminder, lest you may
-have forgotten, I send you two other letters received from him last
-year. I shared with you at the time the agreeable purport of these
-earlier letters. This last letter came three days ago and for three
-days I have been trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write to
-you about it. At last I am able to do so.
-
-You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has never received the ferns. Then
-where have they been all this time? I took it for granted that they
-had been shipped. The order was last spring placed with the
-Louisville firm recommended by you. They guaranteed the execution of
-the order. I forwarded to them my cheque. They cashed my cheque.
-The voucher was duly returned to me cancelled through my bank. I
-could not suppose they would take my cheque unless they had shipped
-the plants. They even wrote me again in the Autumn of their own
-accord, stating that the ferns were about to be sent on--Autumn being
-the most favourable season. Then where are the ferns?
-
-I felt so sure of their having reached Mr. Blackthorne that I
-harboured a certain grievance and confess that I tried to make
-generous allowance for him as a genius in his never having
-acknowledged their arrival.
-
-I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an immediate explanation. As
-soon as they reply I shall let you hear further. The fault may be
-with them; in the slipshod Southern way they may have been negligent.
-My cheque may even have gone as a bridal present to some junior
-member of the firm or to help pay the funeral expenses of the senior
-member.
-
-There is trouble somewhere behind and I think there is trouble ahead.
-
-Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine ladies; but if some
-lady will kindly lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit that
-I have it and on the strength of it--or the weakness--declare my
-belief that the mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some curious
-and funny things.
-
-As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: after these days of
-turbulence, I have come to see my way clear to interpret it thus: a
-great man, holding a great place in the world, offered his best to a
-stranger and the stranger, as the great man believes, turned his back
-on it. That is the grievance, the insult. If anything could be
-worse, it is my seeming discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the
-invitation came also from her. In a word, here is a genius who
-strove to advance my work and me, and he feels himself outraged in
-his kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and his family--in all
-his best.
-
-But of course that is the hardest of all human things to stand. Men
-who have treated each other but fairly well or even badly in ordinary
-matters often in time become friends. But who of us ever forgives
-the person that slights our best? Out of a rebuff like that arises
-such life-long unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ
-itself doubtless for this very reason took pains to issue its
-warning--no pearls before swine! And perhaps of all known pearls a
-great native British pearl is the most prized by its British
-possessor!
-
-The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's best has been his worst:
-if I did not merit his best, I deserve his worst; hence his last
-letter. God have mercy on the man who deserved that letter! You
-will have observed that his leading trait as revealed in all his
-letters is enormous self-love. That's because he is a genius.
-Genius _has_ to have enormous self-love. Beware the person who has
-none! Without self-love no one ever wins any other's love.
-
-Thus the mighty English archer with his mighty bow shot his mighty
-arrow--but at an innocent person.
-
-Still the arrow of this letter, though it misses me, kills my plans.
-The first trouble will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally fixed
-for June, and our plans embraced a wedding journey to England and the
-acceptance of the invitation of the Blackthornes. The prospect of
-this wonderful English summer--I might as well admit it--was one
-thing that finally steadied all her wavering as to marriage.
-
-Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, no English celebrities to
-greet us as American celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no
-lawns, no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely two unknown,
-impoverished young Yankee tourists, trying to get out of chilly
-England what can be gotten by anybody with a few, a very few, dollars.
-
-But Tilly dreads disappointment as she dreads disease. To her
-disappointment is a disease in the character of the person who
-inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to get you to read one of
-Balzac's masterpieces, _The Magic Skin_. I told you enough about it
-to enable you to understand what I now say: that ever since I became
-engaged to Tilly I have been to her as a magic skin which, as she
-cautiously watches it, has always shrunk a little whenever I have
-encountered a defeat or brought her a disappointment. No later
-success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the shrunken skin: it
-remains shrunken where each latest disappointment has left it.
-
-Now when I tell her of my downfall and the collapse of the gorgeous
-summer plans!
-
- BEVERLEY
- (the Expanding Scamp and the
- Shrinking Skin).
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _May 14th._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-I have duly pondered the letters you send.
-
- "Fie, fee, fo, fum,
- I smell the blood of an Englishman!"
-
-If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents from him in my
-possession. And suppose you send me all later letters, whether from
-him or from anyone else, that bear on this matter. It begins to grow
-interesting and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, then, as
-your lawyer, the custodian of all pertinent and impertinent papers.
-They can go into the locker where I keep your immortal but
-impecunious Will. Some day I might have to appear in court, I with
-my shovel and five senses and no imagination, to plead _une cause
-célèbre_ (a little more of my scant intimate French).
-
-The explanation I give of this gratuitously insulting letter is that
-at last you have run into a hostile human imagination in the person
-of an old literary polecat, an aged book-skunk. Of course if I could
-decorate my style after the manner of your highly creative gentlemen,
-I might say that you had unwarily crossed the nocturnal path of his
-touchy moonlit mephitic highness.
-
-I am not surprised, of course, that this letter has caused you to
-think still more highly of its writer. I tell you that is your
-profession--to tinker--to turn reality into something better than
-reality.
-
-Some day I expect to see you emerge from your shop with a fish story.
-Intending buyers will find that you have entered deeply into the
-ideals and difficulties of the man-eating shark: how he could not
-swim freely for whales in his track and could not breathe freely for
-minnows in his mouth; how he got pinched from behind by the malice of
-the lobster and got shocked on each side by the eccentricities of the
-eel. The other fish did not appreciate him and he grew
-embittered--and then only began to bite. You will make over the
-actual shark and exhibit him to your reader as the ideal shark--a
-kind of beloved disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish.
-
-Anything imaginative that you might make out of a shark would be a
-minor achievement compared with what you have done for this
-Englishman. Might the day come, the avenging day, when Benjamin
-Doolittle could get a chance to write him just one letter! May the
-god of battles somehow bring about a meeting between the middle-aged
-land-turtle and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars somebody's fur
-will have to fly and it will not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any.
-
-You speak of a trouble that looms up in your love affair: let it
-loom. The nearer it looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly
-warned you that you have bound your life and happiness to the wrong
-person, and the person is constantly becoming worse. Detach your
-apparatus of dreams at last from her. Take off your glorious rainbow
-world-goggles and see the truth before it is too late. Do not fail,
-unless you object, to send me all letters incoming about the
-ferns--those now celebrated bushes.
-
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
-
-
-
-
-PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _May 13, 1911._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-We acknowledge receipt of your letter of May 10 relative to an order
-for ferns.
-
-It is decidedly rough. The senior member of our firm who formerly
-had charge of this branch of our business has been seriously ill for
-several months, and it was only after we had communicated with him at
-home in bed that we were able to extract from him anything at all
-concerning your esteemed order.
-
-He informs us that he turned the order over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce,
-native fern collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that they would
-gather the ferns and forward them to the designated address. He
-likewise informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns & Bruce, as we
-know only too well, has long been indebted to this firm for a
-considerable amount, he calculated that they would willingly ship the
-ferns in partial liquidation of our old claims.
-
-It seems, as he tells us, that they did actually gather the ferns and
-get them ready for shipment, but at the last minute changed their
-mind and called on our firm for payment. There the matter was
-unexpectedly dropped owing to the sudden illness of the aforesaid
-member of our house, and we knew nothing at all of what had
-transpired until your letter led us to obtain from him at his bedside
-the statements above detailed.
-
-An additional embarrassment to the unusually prosperous course of our
-business was occasioned by the marriage of a junior member of the
-firm and his consequent absence for a considerable time, which
-resulted in an augmentation of the expenses of our establishment and
-an unfortunate diminution of our profits.
-
-In view of the illness of the senior member of our house and in view
-of the marriage of a junior member and in view of the losses and
-expenses consequent thereon, and in view of the subsequent withdrawal
-of both from active participation in the conduct of the affairs of
-our firm, and in view also of a disagreement which arose between both
-members and the other members as to the financial basis of a
-settlement on which the withdrawal could take place, our affairs have
-of necessity been thrown into court in litigation and are still in
-litigation up to this date.
-
-Regretting that you should have been seemingly inconvenienced in the
-slightest degree by the apparent neglect of a former member of our
-firm, we desire to add that as soon as matters can be taken out of
-court our firm will be reorganised and that we shall continue to
-give, as heretofore, the most scrupulous attention to all orders
-received.
-
-But we repeat that your letter is pretty rough.
-
- Very truly yours,
- PHILLIPS & FAULDS.
-
-
-
-
-BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Dunkirk, Tenn.,
- May 20, 1911._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds gave us the order for the
-ferns. Owing to extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered earlier
-than usual and it was unsafe to ship at that time; in the Winter the
-weather was so severe that even in February we were unable to make
-any digging, as the frost had not disappeared. When at last we got
-the ferns ready, we called on them for payment and they wouldn't pay.
-Phillips & Faulds are not good paying bills and we could not put
-ourselves to expense filling their new order for ferns, not wishing
-to take more risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, and could
-not afford to ship more. proved very unsatisfactory and had to drop
-them entirely.
-
-Are already out of pocket the cost of the ferns, worthless to us when
-Phillips & Faulds dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we owed them
-because they won't pay their bills. If you do not wish to have any
-further dealings with them you might write to Noah Chamberlain at
-Seminole, North Carolina, just over the state line, not far from
-here, an authority on American ferns. We have sometimes collected
-rare ferns for him to ship to England and other European countries.
-Vouch for him as an honest man. Always paid his bills, old accounts
-against Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them entirely.
-
- Very truly yours,
- BURNS & BRUCE.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _May 24._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-You requested me to send you for possible future reference all
-incoming letters upon the subject of the ferns. Here are two more
-that have just fluttered down from the blue heaven of the unexpected
-or been thrust up from the lower regions through a crack in the
-earth's surface.
-
-Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling eloquence of Messrs.
-Phillips & Faulds. When the eloquence has ceased to ripple and
-settles down to stay, their letter has the cold purity of a
-whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. They and another firm of florists
-have a law-suit as to which owes the other, and they meantime compel
-me, an innocent bystander, to deliver to them my pocketbook.
-
-Will you please immediately bring suit against Phillips & Faulds on
-behalf of my valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable indignation?
-Bring suit against and bring your boot against them if you can. My
-ducats! Have my ducats out of them or their peace by day and night.
-
-The other letter seems of an unhewn probity that wins my confidence.
-That is to say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure me that I
-ought to believe, and with all my heart I do now believe, in the
-existence, just over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of good
-character and a business head. Thus I now press on over the
-Tennessee state line into North Carolina.
-
-For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; more than ever they
-must go to him now. Not the entire British army drawn up on the
-white cliffs of Dover could keep me from landing them on the British
-Isle. Even if I had to cross over to England, travel to his home,
-put the ferns down before him or throw them at his head and walk out
-of his house without a word.
-
-I told you I had a borrowed premonition that there would be trouble
-ahead: now it is not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. I
-have grown to stand in dread of all florists, and I approach this
-third one with my hat in my hand (also with my other hand on my
-pocketbook).
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
-
- _Cathedral Heights, New York,
- May 25, 1911._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-You have been recommended to me by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk,
-Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied upon to keep his word
-and to carry out his business obligations.
-
-Accepting at its face value their high testimonial as to your
-trustworthiness, I desire to place with you the following order:
-
-Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my request, have forwarded to you
-a list of rare Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these ferns
-and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, Esq., King Alfred's Wood,
-Warwickshire, England. As a guaranty of good faith on my part, I
-enclose in payment my check for twenty-five dollars. Will you have
-the kindness to let me know at once whether you will undertake this
-commission and give it the strictest attention?
-
- Very truly yours,
- BEVERLEY SANDS.
-
-
-
-
-NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Seminole, North Carolina,
- May 29._
-
-SIR:
-
-I have received your letter with your check in it.
-
-You are the first person that ever offered me money as a florist. I
-am not a florist, if I must take time to inform you. I had supposed
-it to be generally known throughout the United States and in Europe
-that I am professor of botany in this college, and have been for the
-past fifteen years. If Burns & Bruce really told you I am a
-florist--and I doubt it--they must be greater ignoramuses than I took
-them to be. I always knew that they did not have much sense, but I
-thought they had a little. It is true that they have at different
-times gathered specimens of ferns for me, and more than once have
-shipped them to Europe. But I never imagined they were fools enough
-to think this made me a florist. My collection of ferns embraces
-dried specimens for study in my classrooms and specimens growing on
-the college grounds. The ferns I have shipped to Europe have been
-sent to friends and correspondents. The President of the Royal
-Botanical Society of Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I have
-sent him some and I have also sent some to friends in Norway and
-Sweden and to other scientific students of botany.
-
-It only shows that your next-door neighbour may know nothing about
-you, especially if you are a little over your neighbour's head.
-
-My daughter, who is my secretary, will return your check, but I
-thought I had better write and tell you myself that I am not a
-florist.
-
- Yours truly,
- NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.
-
-
-
-
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Seminole, North Carolina,
- May 29._
-
-SIR:
-
-I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's
-only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my
-distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had
-supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American
-public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana
-and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt.
-
-People of our means and social position in the South do not peddle
-bulbs. We do not reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn our
-bread by making funeral wreaths and crosses.
-
-You must be some kind of nonentity.
-
-Your cheque is pinned to this letter.
-
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
-
- _June 3._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-I am deeply mortified at having believed Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be
-well-informed and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that it is no
-longer safe for me to believe anybody--not about nurserymen. I am
-not sure now that I should believe you. You say you are a famous
-botanist, but you may be merely a famous liar, known as such to
-various learned bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is
-necessary, and you must admit that your letter does not furnish me
-with that proof.
-
-Still I am going to believe you and I renew the assurance of my
-mortification that I have innocently caused you the chagrin of
-discovering that you are not so well known, at least in this country,
-as you supposed. I suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; it
-is the tie that binds: blest be the tie.
-
-I shall be extremely obliged if you will have the kindness to return
-to me the list of ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & Bruce,
-and for that purpose you will please to find enclosed an envelope
-addressed and stamped.
-
-I acknowledge the return of my cheque, which occasions me some
-surprise and not a little pleasure.
-
-Allow me once more to regret that through my incurable habit of
-believing strangers, believing everybody, I was misled into taking
-the lower view of you as a florist instead of the higher view as a
-botanist. But you must admit that I was right in classification and
-wrong only in elevation.
-
- Very truly yours,
- BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely).
-
-
-
-
-NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _June 8._
-
-SIR:
-
-I know nothing about any list of ferns. Stop writing to me.
-
- NOAH CHAMBERLAIN.
-
-
-
-
-CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _June 8._
-
-SIR:
-
-It is excruciating the way you continue to persecute my great father.
-What is wrong with you? What started you to begin on us in this way?
-We never heard of _you_. Would you let my dear father alone?
-
-He is a very deep student and it is intolerable for me to see his
-priceless attention drawn from his work at critical moments when he
-might be on the point of making profound discoveries. My father is a
-very absent-minded man, as great scholars usually are, and when he is
-interrupted he may even forget what he has just been thinking about.
-
-Your letter was a very serious shock to him, and after reading it he
-could not even drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. Time
-and again he put his cup down and said to me in a trembling voice:
-"Think of his calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up from the
-table without eating anything and left the room. He turned at the
-door and said to me, with a confused expression: "I _may_, once in my
-life--but _he_ didn't know anything about _that_."
-
-He shut his door and stayed in his library all evening, thinking
-without nourishment.
-
-What a viper you are to call my great father a liar.
-
- CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _June 12._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-I knew I was in for it! I send another installment of incredible
-letters from unbelievable people.
-
-In my wanderings over the earth after the ferns I have innocently
-brought my foot against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called the
-head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist, and the whole hill
-is frantic with fury. As far as heard from, there are only two ants
-in the hill, but the two make a lively many in their letters. It's a
-Southern vendetta and my end may draw nigh.
-
-Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly is at hand. She has been
-out of town for a house-party somewhere and is to return to-morrow.
-When Tilly came to New York a few years ago she had not an
-acquaintance; now I marvel at the world of people she knows. It is
-the result of her never declining an invitation. Once I derided her
-about this, and with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed the
-reason: that no one ever knew what an acquaintanceship might lead to.
-This principle, or lack of principle, has led her far. And wherever
-she goes, she is welcomed afterwards. It is her mystery, her charm.
-I often ask myself what is her charm. At least her charm, as all
-charm, is victory. You are defeated by her, chained and dragged
-along. Of course, I expect all this to be reversed after Tilly
-marries me. Then I am to have my turn--she is to be led around,
-dragged helpless by _my_ charm. Magnificent outlook!
-
-To-morrow she is to return, and I shall have to tell her that it is
-all over--our wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the whole
-vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud, carrying with it the bright
-raindrops of her hopes.
-
-I have never, by the way, mentioned to Tilly this matter of the
-ferns. My first idea was to surprise her: as some day we strolled
-through the Blackthorne garden he would point to the Kentucky
-specimens flourishing there in honour of me. I have always observed
-that any unexpected pleasure flushes her face with a new light, with
-an effulgence of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment makes her
-suddenly look old and rather ugly.
-
-This was the first reason. Now I do not intend to tell her at all.
-Disappointment will bring out her demand to know why she is
-disappointed--naturally. But how am I to tell on the threshold of
-marriage that it is all due to a misunderstanding about a handful of
-ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would never believe
-me--naturally. She would infer that I was keeping back the real
-reason, as being too serious to be told.
-
-Here, then, I am. But where am I?
-
- BEVERLEY (complete and final
- disappearance of the Magic Skin).
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
-_June 13._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly about the ferns. Here I
-come in: there must always be things that a man must refuse to tell a
-woman. As soon as he tells her everything, she puts her foot on his
-neck. I have always refused even to tell Polly some things, not that
-they might not be told, but that Polly must not be told them; not for
-the things' sake, but for Polly's good--and for a man's peaceful
-control of his own life.
-
-For whatever else a woman marries in a man, one thing in him she must
-marry: a rock. Times will come when she will storm and rage around
-that rock; but the storms cannot last forever, and when they are
-over, the rock will be there. By degrees there will be less storm.
-Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take possession of my
-whole life; to enter into all my affairs. I am to her a house, no
-closet of which must remain locked. Thus there are certain closets
-which she repeatedly tries to open. I can tell by her very
-expression when she is going to try once more. Were they opened, she
-would not find much; but it is much to be guarded that she shall not
-open them.
-
-The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly as fact and too
-important as principle.
-
-Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me anything about the ferns!
-When I am with Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of the fields.
-
-Let me hear at once how the trouble turns out with Tilly.
-
-I must not close without making a profound obeisance to your new
-acquaintances--the Chamberlains.
-
- BEN.
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-
- _June 15._
-
-DEAR POLLY:
-
-Something extremely disagreeable has come up between Beverley and me.
-He tells me we're not to go to England on our wedding journey as
-anyone's guests: we travel as ordinary American tourists unknown to
-all England.
-
-You can well understand what this means to me: you have watched all
-along how I have pinched on my small income to get ready for this
-beautiful summer. There has been a quarrel of some kind between Mr.
-Blackthorne and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me the nature of
-the quarrel. I insisted that it was my right to know and he insisted
-that it is a man's affair with another man and not any woman's
-business. Think of a woman marrying a man who lays it down as a law
-that his affairs are none of her business!
-
-I gave Beverley to understand that our marriage was deferred for the
-summer. He broke off the engagement.
-
-I had not meant to tell you anything, since I am coming to-night. I
-have merely wished you to understand how truly anxious I am to see
-you, even forgetting your last letter--no, not forgetting it, but
-overlooking it. Remember you _then_ broke an appointment with me;
-_this_ time keep your appointment--being loyal! The messenger will
-wait for your reply, stating whether the way is clear for me to come.
-
- TILLY.
-
-
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-
- _June 15._
-
-DEAR TILLY:
-
-Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me for to-night, but I have
-written to excuse myself, and I shall be waiting most impatiently.
-The coast will be clear and I hope the night will be.
-
-"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; "the horse-radish" and
-"the beets" will be still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will shed
-its usual ray on our heads. No breeze will disturb us, for there
-will be no fresh air. We shall have the long evening to ourselves,
-and you can tell me just how it is that you two, _not_ heavy Tilly,
-_not_ heavy Beverley, sat on opposite sides of the room and declared
-to each other:
-
-"I will not."
-
-"I will not."
-
-Since I have broken an engagement for you, be sure not to let any
-later temptation elsewhere keep you away.
-
- POLLY.
-
-
-[Later in the day]
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-
- _June 13._
-
-DEAR POLLY:
-
-Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected final flare-up.
-Yesterday he wrote, asking me to come up as soon as I was through
-with business. I spent last night with him.
-
-We drew our chairs up to his opened window, turned out the lights,
-got our cigars, and with our feet on the window-sills and our eyes on
-the stars across the sky talked the long, quiet hours through.
-
-He talked, not I. Little could I have said to him about the woman
-who has played fast and loose with him while using him for her
-convenience. He made it known at the outset that not a word was to
-be spoken against her.
-
-He just lay back in his big easy chair, with his feet on his
-window-sill and his eyes on the stars, and built up his defence of
-Tilly. All night he worked to repair wreckage.
-
-As the grey of morning crept over the city his work was well done:
-Tilly was restored to more than she had ever been. Silence fell upon
-him as he sat there with his eyes on the reddening east; and it may
-be that he saw her--now about to leave him at last--as some white,
-angelic shape growing fainter and fainter as it vanished in the flush
-of a new day.
-
-You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. If there were any wings
-anywhere around, it was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar with
-an early start to bring down some other victim: the angel-aeroplane
-out after more prey. I think we both know who the prey will be.
-
-The solemn influence of the night has rested on me. Were it
-possible, I should feel even a higher respect for Beverley; there is
-something in him that fills me with awe. He suffers. He could mend
-Tilly but he cannot mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him.
-
-Their quarrel brings me with an aching heart closer to you. I must
-come to-night. The messenger will wait for a word that I may. And a
-sudden strange chill of desolation as to life's brittle ties
-frightens me into sending you some roses.
-
-Your lover through many close and constant years,
-
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
-
-
-[Still later in the day]
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN
-
- _June 15._
-
-DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY:
-
-An incredible thing has happened. Ben has just written that he
-wishes to see me to-night. Will you, after all, wait until to-morrow
-evening? My dear, I _have_ to ask this of you because there is
-something very particular that Ben desires to talk to me about.
-
-_To-morrow night_, then, without fail, you and I!
-
- POLLY BOLES.
-
-
-
-
- POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO
- BEVERLEY SANDS
-
-[Late at night of the same day]
-
- _June 15._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-We have talked the matter over and send you our conjoined
-congratulations that your engagement is broken off and your immediate
-peril ended. But our immediate caution is that the end of the
-betrothal will not necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the
-tempter will at once turn away from you in pursuit of another man.
-She will begin to weave her web about _him_. But if possible she
-will still hold _you_ to that web by a single thread. Now, more than
-ever, you will need to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible
-to such a nature as yours.
-
-Not until obliged will she ever let you go completely. She hath a
-devil--perhaps the most famous devil in all the world--the love
-devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, are poor quitters.
-
- (Signed)
- POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle.
- BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles.
- (His handwriting; her ideas
- and language.)
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-
-This is the third time within the past several months that I have
-requested you to let me have your bill for professional services. I
-shall not suppose that you have relied upon my willingness to remain
-under an obligation of this kind; nor do I like to think I have
-counted for so little among your many patients that you have not
-cared whether I paid you or not. If your motive has been kindness, I
-must plainly tell you that I do not desire such kindness; and if
-there has been no motive at all, but simply indifference, I must
-remind you that this indifference means disrespect and that I resent
-it.
-
-The things you have indirectly done for me in other ways--the songs,
-the books and magazines, the flowers--these I accept with warm
-responsive hands and a lavish mind.
-
-And with words not yet uttered, perhaps never to be uttered.
-
- Yours sincerely,
- TILLY SNOWDEN.
-
-_June the Seventeenth._
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-
-I have your bill and I make the due remittance with all due thanks.
-
-Your note pleasantly reassures me how greatly you are obliged that I
-could put you in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins about the
-purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. It was a pleasure; in fact, a
-matter of some pride to do this, and I am delighted that they could
-furnish you a horse you approve.
-
-While taking my customary walk in the Park yesterday morning, I had a
-chance to see you and your new mount making acquaintance with one
-another. I can pay you no higher compliment than to say that you
-ride like a Kentuckian.
-
-Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a habit of mine to choose the
-footways through the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn to them
-by my childhood habit and girlish love of riding. Even to see from
-day to day what one once had but no longer has is to keep alive hope
-that one may some day have it again.
-
-You should some time go to Kentucky and ride there. My cousins will
-look to that.
-
- Yours sincerely,
- TILLY SNOWDEN.
-
-_June the Eighteenth._
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-
-I was passing this morning and witnessed the accident, and I must
-express my condolences for what might have been and congratulations
-upon what was.
-
-You certainly fell well--not unlike a Kentuckian!
-
-I feel sure that my cousins could not have known the horse was
-tricky. Any horse is tricky to the end of his days and the end of
-his road. He may not show any tricks at home, but becomes tricky in
-new places. (Can this be the reason that he is called the most human
-of beasts?)
-
-You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly to my mind that of late
-you have expressed growing interest in Kentucky. More than once,
-also (since you have begun to visit me), you have asked me to tell
-you about my life there. Frankly, this is because I am something of
-a mystery and you would like to have the mystery cleared up. You
-wish to find out, without letting me know you are finding out,
-whether there is not something _wrong_ about me, some _risk_ for you
-in visiting me. That is because you have never known anybody like
-me. I frighten you because I am not afraid of people, not afraid of
-life. You are used to people who are afraid, especially to women who
-are afraid. You yourself are horribly afraid of nearly everything.
-
-Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, though it may not
-greatly explain why I am without fear; still, the land and the people
-might mean something; they ought to mean much.
-
-I was born of not very poor and immensely respectable parents in a
-poor and not very respectable county of Kentucky. The first thing I
-remember about life, my first social consciousness, was the discovery
-that I was entangled in a series of sisters: there were six of us. I
-was as nearly as possible at the middle of the procession--with three
-older and two younger, so that I was crowded both by what was before
-and by what was behind. I early learned to fight for the
-present--against both the past and the future--learned to seize what
-I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by
-hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's
-insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the
-world.
-
-Why my mother bore only daughters will have to be referred to the new
-science which takes as its field the forces and the mysteries that
-are sovereign between the nuptials and the cradle. But the reason,
-as openly laughed about in the family when the family grew old enough
-to laugh, as laughed about in the neighbourhood, was this:
-
-Even before marriage my father and my mother had waged a violent
-discussion about woman's suffrage. You may not know that in Kentucky
-from the first the cause of female suffrage has been upheld by a
-strong minority of strong women, a true pioneer movement toward the
-nation's future now near. It seems that my father, who was a
-brilliant lawyer, always browbeat my mother in argument, overwhelmed
-her, crushed her. Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly
-rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked deep into the coals.
-But regularly when the time came she replied to all his arguments by
-presenting him with another suffragette! Throughout her life she
-declined even to bear him a son to continue the argument! Her six
-daughters--she would gladly have had twelve if she could--were her
-triumphant squad for the armies of the great rebellion.
-
-Does this help to explain me to you?
-
-What next I relate about my early life is something that you perhaps
-have never given a thought to--children's pets and playthings: it
-explains a great deal. Have you ever thought of a vital difference
-between country children and town children? Country children more
-quickly throw away their dolls, if they have them, and attach their
-sympathies to living objects. A child's love of a doll is at best a
-sham: a little master-drama of the child's imagination trying to fill
-two roles--its own and the role of something which cannot respond.
-But a child's love of a living creature, which it chooses as the
-object of its love and play and protection, is stimulating, healthful
-and kicking with reality: because it is vitalised by reciprocity in
-the playmate, now affectionate and now hostile, but always
-representing something intensely alive--which is the whole main thing.
-
-We are just beginning to find out that the dramas of childhood are
-the playgrounds of life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the
-others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll without any return,
-will cling to a rag husband without any return. A child's loyalty to
-an automaton prepares a woman for endurance of an automaton. Dolls
-have been the undoing and the death of many wives.
-
-A multitude of dolls would have been needed to supply the six
-destructive little girls of my mother's household. We soon broke our
-china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one another's. For whatever
-reason, all lifeless pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the
-house and the little scattering herd of us turned our restless and
-insatiate natures loose upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted
-nearly everything on the farm. My father was a director of the
-County Fair, and I remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we
-roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize exhibition of our
-favourites that year. They comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a
-calf, a lamb and a puppy.
-
-Sooner or later our living playthings outgrew us or died or were sold
-or made their sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we disconsolate?
-Not a bit. Did we go down to the branch and gather there under an
-old weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our hearts thrived on death
-and destruction, annihilation released us from old ties, change gave
-us another chance, and we provided substitutes and continued our
-devotion.
-
-And I think this explains a good deal. And these two experiences of
-my childhood, taken together, explain me better than anything else I
-know. Competition first taught me to seize what I wanted before
-anyone else could seize it. Natural changes next taught me to be
-prepared at any moment to give that up without vain regret and to
-seize something else. Thus I seemed to learn life's lesson as I
-learned to walk: that what you love will not last long, and that long
-love is possible only when you love often.
-
-So many women know this; how few admit it!
-
- Sincerely yours,
- TILLY SNOWDEN.
-
-_June the Nineteenth._
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD
-
-MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:
-
-You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go away for the summer: first to
-some friends, then further away to other friends, then still further
-away to other friends: a summer pageant of brilliant changes.
-
-There is no reason why I should write to you. Your stateroom will be
-filled with flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; friends
-will wave to you from the pier. My letter may be lost among the
-others, but at least it will have been written, and writing it is its
-pleasure to me.
-
-I was to go to England this summer, was to go as a bride. A few
-nights since I decided not to go because I did not approve of the
-bridegroom.
-
-We marvel at life's coincidences: one evening, not long ago, while
-speaking of your expected summer in England, you mentioned that you
-planned to make a pilgrimage to see Edward Blackthorne. You were to
-join some American friends over there and take them with you. That
-is the coincidence: _I_ was to visit the Blackthornes this very
-summer, not as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited guest--with the
-groom whom I have rejected.
-
-It is like scattering words before the obvious to say that I wish you
-a pleasant summer. Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, some
-night on the passage across, lean far over and look down at the
-phosphorescent couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of the deep,
-remember that the Venus of modern life is the American woman.
-
-Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing else, brings you home--see
-you not at all or seldom or often?
-
-At least this will remind you that I merely say _au revoir_.
-
-Adrift for the summer rather than be an unwilling bride.
-
- TILLY SNOWDEN.
-
-_June twenty-first._
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _June 21._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-Since life separated us the other night I have not heard from you. I
-have not expected a letter, nor do you expect one from me. But I am
-going away to-morrow for the summer and my heart has a few words for
-you which must be spoken.
-
-It was not disappointment about the summer in England, not even your
-refusal to explain why you disappointed me, that held the main reason
-of my drawing back. I am in the mood to-night to tell you some
-things very frankly:
-
-Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to be married and twice as the
-wedding drew near I drew away from it. It is an old, old feeling of
-mine, though I am so young, that if married I should not long be
-happy. Of course I should be happy for a while. But _afterwards_!
-The interminable, intolerable _afterwards_! The same person year in
-and year out--I should be stifled. Each of the men to whom I was
-engaged had given me before marriage all that he had to give: the
-rest I did not care for; after marriage with either I foresaw only
-staleness, his limitations, monotony.
-
-Believe this, then: there are things in you that I cling to, other
-things in you that do not draw me at all. And I cling more to life
-than to you, more than to any one person. How can any one person
-ever be all to me, all that I am meant for, and _I will live_!
-
-Why should we women be forced to spend our lives beside the first
-spring where one happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! Why be
-doomed to die in old age at the same spring! With all my soul I
-believe that the world which has slowly thrown off so many tyrannies
-is about to throw off other tyrannies. It has been so harsh toward
-happiness, so compassionate toward misery and wrong. Yet happiness
-is life's finest victory: for ages we have been trying to defeat our
-one best victory--our natural happiness!
-
-A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning--then to go thirsty for
-the rest of the long, hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet at
-spring after spring--there are so many springs! And thirst is so
-eager for them!
-
-Come to see me in the autumn. For I will not, cannot, give you up.
-And when you come, do not seek to renew the engagement. Let that go
-whither it has gone. But come to see me.
-
-For I love you.
-
- TILLY.
-
-
-
-
-TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES
-
- _June 21._
-
-POLLY BOLES:
-
-This is good-bye to you for the summer and, better than that, it is
-good-bye to you for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth that
-we have long hated each other and have used our acquaintanceship and
-our letters to express our hatred? How could there ever have been
-any friendship between you and me?
-
-Let me tell you of the detestable little signs that I have noticed in
-you for years. Are you aware that all the time you have occupied
-your apartment, you have never changed the arrangement of your
-furniture? As soon as your guests are gone, you push every chair
-where it was before. For years your one seat has been the same end
-of the same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted your disquietude
-if any guest happened to sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere.
-For years you have worn the same breast-pin, though you have several.
-The idea of your being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride
-yourself in such externals of faithfulness.
-
-You soul of perfidy!
-
-I leave you undisturbed to innumerable appointments with Ben, and
-with the same particular something to talk about, falsest woman I
-have ever known.
-
-Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the fact that you are secretly
-receiving almost constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will you tell
-him? _Or shall I?_
-
- TILLY SNOWDEN.
-
-
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _June 23rd._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-I am worried.
-
-I begin to feel doubtful as to what course I should pursue with Dr.
-Claude Mullen. Of late he has been coming too often. He has been
-writing to me too often. He appears to be losing control of himself.
-Things cannot go on as they are and they must not get worse. What I
-could not foresee is his determination to hold _me_ responsible for
-his being in love with me! He insists that _I_ encouraged him and am
-now unfair--_me_ unfair! Of course I have _never_ encouraged his
-visits; out of simple goodness of heart I have _tolerated_ them. Now
-the reward of my _kindness_ is that he holds me responsible and
-guilty. He is trying, in other words, to take advantage of my
-_sympathy_ for him. I _do_ feel sorry for him!
-
-I have not been cruel enough to dismiss him. His last letter is
-enclosed: it will give you some idea----!
-
-Can you advise me what to do? I have always relied upon _your_
-judgment in everything.
-
- Faithfully yours,
- POLLY.
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-
-[Penciled in Court Room]
-
- _June 24th._
-
-DEAR POLLY:
-
-Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: tell him to take a cab and
-drive straight to the nearest institution for the weak-minded, engage
-a room, lock himself in and pray God to give him some sense. Tell
-him to stay secluded there until that prayer is answered. The
-Almighty himself couldn't answer his prayer until after his death,
-and by that time he'd be out of the way anyhow and you wouldn't mind.
-
-I return his funeral oration unread, since I did not wish to attract
-attention to myself as moved to tears in open court.
-
- BEN.
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-
-[Evening of the same day]
-
-POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN:
-
-This is a night I have long waited for and worked for.
-
-You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to
-set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for
-me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You
-know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for
-two--and for more than two--for our little ones. When I married you,
-I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats.
-
-But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of
-this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength.
-I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and
-I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your
-lover.
-
-Name the day when I can be both.
-
-Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my
-own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day
-of next Spring, then--so far away but nearer than any other Spring
-during these impatient years.
-
-Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover,
-
- BEN DOOLITTLE.
-
-Roses to you.
-
-
-
-
-POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _June 24._
-
-Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN!
-
-My heart answers you. It leaps forward to the day. I have set the
-day in my heart and sealed it on my lips. Come and break that seal.
-To-night I shall tear two of the rosebuds apart and mingle their
-petals on my pillow.
-
- POLLY.
-
-
-
-
-BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
-
-_June 26._
-
-It occurs to me that our engagement might furnish you the means of
-getting rid of your prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to come
-to see you: tell him you have some joyful news that must be imparted
-at once. When he arrives announce to him that you have named the day
-of your marriage to me. To _me_, tell him! Then let him take
-himself off. You say he complains that all this is getting on his
-nerves. Anything that could sit on his nerves would be a mighty
-small animal.
-
- BEN.
-
-
-
-
-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 devoted
- POLLY.
-
-
-
-
-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:
-
-"The _Scolopendium vulgare_ put 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:
-
-"The _Adiantum nigrum_ put 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 that _he_ did 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, mon_ French!)
-
-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 letters
-_were_ on 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 of _my_ head: 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. I _will_ add, 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.
-
-
-
-
-PART THIRD
-
-
-
-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 I _was_ in 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 as _my_ secretary! 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 be _your_ secretary, 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 you _can't_
-imagine, _can't_ imagine, _can't_ imagine!
-
- 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 their _backs_. If history speaks truly, quite
-a few notorious ones have come to grief--but _you_ will 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 that _his_ duty 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.
-
-I have observed that there is danger in many people causing any one
-person to think himself a superior person unless he _is_ a superior
-person. If he really is what is thought of him, no harm is done him.
-But if he is widely regarded a superior person and is not a superior
-person, harm may result to him. For whenever any person is praised
-beyond his deserts, he is not lifted up by such praise any more than
-the stature of a man is increased by thickening the heels of his
-shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to be lowered by over-praise.
-For, prodded by adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary image and
-assume, as far as he can, the guise of some inferior creature which
-more glaringly expresses what he is--as the peacock, the owl, the
-porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, the ass. I have seen all these. I
-have seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, speechless owl
-novelist, the fretful porcupine novelist, the spring-lamb novelist,
-the ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred ass novelist.
-And many others.
-
-You may begin to wonder why I am led into these reflections in this
-letter. The reason is, I have been wondering into what kind of
-inferior creature your fame--your over-praise--has lowered _you_.
-Frankly, I perfectly know; I will not name the animal. But I feel
-sure that he is a highly offensive small beast.
-
-If you feel disposed to read further, I shall explain.
-
-I have in my legal possession three letters of yours. They were
-written to a young gentleman whom I have known now for a good many
-years, whose character I know about as well as any one man can know
-another's, and for whom increasing knowledge has always led me to
-feel increasing respect. The young man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You
-may now realise what I am coming to.
-
-The first of these letters of yours reveals you as a stranger seeking
-the acquaintance of Mr. Sands--to a certain limit: you asked of him a
-courtesy and you offered courtesies in exchange. That is common
-enough and natural, and fair, and human. But what I have noticed is
-your doing this with the air of the superior person. Mr. Sands,
-being a novelist, is of course a superior person. Therefore, you
-felt called upon to introduce yourself to him as a _more_ superior
-person. That is, you condescended to be gracious. You made it a
-virtue in you to ask a favour of him. You expected him to be
-delighted that you allowed him to serve you.
-
-In the second letter you go further. He wafted some incense toward
-you and you got on your knees to this incense. You get up and offer
-him more courtesies--all courtesies. Because he praised you, you
-even wish him to visit you.
-
-Now the third letter. The favour you asked of Mr. Sands was that he
-send you some ferns. By no fault of his except too much confidence
-in the agents he employed (he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted
-you), by no other fault of his the ferns were not sent. You waited,
-time passed, you grew impatient, you grew suspicious of Mr. Sands,
-you felt slighted, you became piqued in your vanity, wounded in your
-self-love, you became resentful, you became furious, you became
-revengeful, you became abusive. You told him that he had never meant
-to keep his word, that you had kicked his books out of your library,
-that he might profitably study the moral sensitiveness of a head of
-cabbage.
-
-During the summer American tourists visited you--pilgrims of your
-fame. You took advantage of their visit to promulgate mysteriously
-your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by one explicit word, you
-understand. Your exalted imagination merely lied on him, and you
-entrusted to other imaginations the duty of scattering broadcast your
-noble lie. They did this--some of them happening not to be friends
-of Mr. Sands--and as a result of the false light you threw upon his
-character, he now in the minds of many persons rests under a cloud.
-And that cloud is never going to be dispelled.
-
-Enclosed you will please find copies of these three letters of yours;
-would you mind reading them over? And you will find also a packet of
-letters which will enable you to understand why the ferns never
-reached you and the whole entanglement of the case. And finally, you
-will find enclosed a brief with which, were I to appear in Court
-against you, as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up to public
-view as what you are.
-
-I shall merely add that I have often met you in the courtroom as the
-kind of criminal who believes without evidence and who distrusts
-without reason; who is, therefore, ready to blast a character upon
-suspicion. If he dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence
-against him, he draws upon the dark traits of his own nature to
-furnish the evidence.
-
-I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands.
-
-I am, as to you,
-
- Merely,
- BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
-
-
-
-
-EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-
- _King Alfred's Wood,
- Warwickshire, England,
- June 21, 1912._
-
- Benjamin Doolittle,
- 150 Wall Street,
- New York City.
-
-MY DEAR SIR:
-
-You state in your letter, which I have just laid down, that you are a
-stranger to me. There is no conceivable reason why I should wish to
-offer you the slightest rudeness--even that of crossing your
-word--yet may I say, that I know you perfectly? If you had
-unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, you might have
-found, scattered here and there, everything that you have said in
-your letter, and almost in your very words. That is, I have two or
-three times drawn your portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus
-while you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel bound to say
-that you are an old acquaintance in nature.
-
-You cannot for a moment imagine--however, you despise imagination and
-I withdraw the offensive word--you cannot for a moment suppose that I
-can have any motive in being discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go
-on to say, but only with your permission, that the first time I
-attempted to sketch you, was in a very early piece of work; I was a
-youthful novelist, at the outset of my career. I projected a story
-entitled: "_The Married Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens._" I
-feel bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly remind me of the
-_Sal Blivvens_ of my story. In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was
-this: as twenty-one human shillings he never made an exact human
-guinea--his shillings ran a few pence over, or they fell a few pence
-short. That is, Ned never did just enough of anything, or said just
-enough, but either too much or too little to suit _Sal_. He never
-had just one idea about any one thing, but two or three ideas; he
-never felt in just one way about any one thing, but had mixed
-feelings, a variety of feelings. He was not a yard measure or a pint
-measure or a pound measure; he overflowed or he didn't fill, and any
-one thing in him always ran into other things in him.
-
-Being a young novelist I was not satisfied to offer _Sal_ to the
-world on her own account, but I must try to make her more credible
-and formidable by following her into the next generation, and giving
-her a son who inherited her traits. Thus I had _Tommy Blivvens_.
-When Tommy was old enough to receive his first allowance of Christmas
-pudding, he proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He picked out
-all the raisins and made a little pile of them. And made a little
-separate pile of the currants, and another pile of the almonds, and
-another of the citron, or of whatever else there was to separate.
-Then in profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, as a
-philosopher of the sure.
-
-Thus--and I insist I mean no disrespect--your letter does revive for
-me a little innocent laughter at my early literary vision of a human
-baggage--friend of my youthful days and artistic enthusiasm--_Sal
-Blivvens_. I arranged that when _Ned_ died, his neighbours all felt
-sorry and wished him a green turf for his grave. _Sal_, I felt sure,
-survived him as one who all her life walks past every human heart and
-enters none--being always dead-sure, always dead-right; for the human
-heart rejects perfection in any human being.
-
-I recognise you as belonging to the large tough family of the human
-cocksures. _Sal Blivvens_ belonged to it--dead-sure, dead-right,
-every time. We have many of the cocksures in England, you must have
-many of them in the United States. The cocksures are people who have
-no dim borderland around their minds, no twilight between day and
-darkness. They see everything as they see a highly coloured rug on a
-well-lighted floor. There is either rug or no rug, either floor or
-no floor. No part of the floor could possibly be rug and no part of
-the rug could possibly be floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the
-natural prosecuting attorney of human nature's natural misgivings and
-wiser doubts and nobler errors. How the American cocksures of their
-day despised the man Washington, who often prayed for guidance; with
-what contempt they blasted the character of your Abraham Lincoln,
-whose patient soul inhabited the border of a divine disquietude and
-whose public life was the patient study of hesitation.
-
-I have taken notice of the peculiarly American character of your
-cocksureness: it magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile,
-to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the ton. Do you happen
-to know Michael Angelo's _Moses_? I always think of an American
-cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's _Moses_--colossal
-law-giver, a hyper-stupendous fellow. And I have often thought that
-a regiment of American cocksures would be the most terrific spectacle
-on a battlefield that the rest of the human race could ever face.
-Just now it has occurred to me that it was your great Emerson who
-spoke best on the weakness of the superlative--the cocksure is the
-human superlative.
-
-As to your letter: You declare you know nothing about novels, but
-your arraignment of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure that
-you are perfectly right about me. Your arraignment of me is exact.
-You are conscious of no more moral perturbation as to justice than
-exists in a monkey wrench. But that is the nature of the
-cocksure--his conclusions have to him the validity of a hardware
-store.
-
-This, however, is nothing. I clear it away in order to tell you that
-I am filled with admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and of
-the savage ferocity with which you attack me as his enemy. That
-makes you a friend worth having, and I wish you were to be numbered
-among mine; there are none too many such in this world. Next, I wish
-to assure you that I have studied your brief against me and confess
-that you have made out the case. I fell into a grave mistake, I
-wronged your friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it was a
-poor, sorry, shabby business. I am about to write to Mr. Sands. If
-he is what you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive
-me--though you never may. I shall ask him, as I could not have asked
-him before, whether he will not come to visit me. My house, my
-hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, shall be his. I
-shall take every step possible to undo what I thoughtlessly,
-impulsively did. I shall write to the President of his Club.
-
-One exception is filed to a specification in your brief: no such
-things took place in my garden upon the visit of the American
-tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate any mysterious
-hostility to Mr. Sands. You tell me that among those tourists were
-persons hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile persons who
-misinterpreted and exaggerated whatever took place. You knew these
-persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then you accepted their
-testimony as true--being a cocksure.
-
-A final word to you. Your whole character and happiness rests upon
-the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the
-fellow-beings whom you know. Those _you_ doubt ought to be doubted
-and those _you_ trust ought to be trusted! Now I have travelled far
-enough on life's road to have passed its many human figures--perhaps
-all the human types that straggle along it in their many ways. No
-figures on that road have been more noticeable to me than here and
-there a man in whom I have discerned a broken cocksure.
-
-You say you like biography: do you like to read the Life of Robert
-Burns? And I wonder whether these words of his have ever guided you
-in your outlook upon life:
-
- "_Then gently scan your brother man_
- * * * * *
- _To step aside is human._"
-
-
-I thank you again. I wish you well. And I hope that no experience,
-striking at you out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave you one
-of those noticeable men--a broken cocksure.
-
-Your deeply obliged and very grateful,
-
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
-
-
-
-
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _June 30, 1912._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-About a month ago I took it upon myself to write the one letter that
-had long been raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. And I sent
-him all the fern letters. And then I drew up the whole case and
-prosecuted him as your lawyer.
-
-Of course I meant my letter to be an infernal machine that would blow
-him to pieces. He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and inserted
-a crank, and turned it into a music-box to grind out his praises.
-
-And then the kind of music he ground out for me.
-
-All day I have been ashamed to stand up and I've been ashamed to sit
-down. He told me that my letter reminded him of a character in his
-first novel--a woman called _Sal Blivvens_. ME--_Sal Blivvens!_
-
-But of what use is it for us poor, common-clay, rough, ordinary men
-who have no imagination--of what use is it for us to attack you
-superior fellows who have it, have imagination? You are the Russians
-of the human mind, and when attacked on your frontiers, you merely
-retreat into a vast, unknown, uninvadable country. The further you
-retire toward the interior of your mysterious kingdom, the nearer you
-seem to approach the fortresses of your strength.
-
-I am wiser--if no better. If ever again I feel like attacking any
-stranger with a letter, I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether
-he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. If he is a genius, I am
-going to let him alone.
-
-Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to see your man Blackthorne
-now. Ask him some time whether a short visit from Benjamin Doolittle
-could be arranged on any terms of international agreement.
-
-Now for something on my level of ordinary life! A day or two ago I
-was waiting in front of the residence of one of my uptown clients, a
-few doors from the residence of your friend Dr. Marigold. While I
-waited, he came out on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I drove
-past, I leaned far out and made them a magnificent sweeping bow: one
-can afford to be forgiving and magnanimous after he settled things to
-his satisfaction. They did not return the bow but exchanged quiet
-smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. They seemed like saying:
-he bows best who bows last.
-
-You are the best thing in New York to me since Polly went away.
-Without you both it would come near to being one vast solitude.
-
- BEN (alias _Sal Blivvens_).
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-
- _July 1, 1912._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-I wrote you this morning upon receipt of your letter telling me of
-your own terrific letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless
-arraignment of him. Let me say again that I wish to pour out my
-gratitude to you for your motives and also, well, also my regret at
-your action. Somehow I have been reminded of Voltaire's saying: he
-had a brother who was such a fool that he started out to be perfect;
-as a consequence the world knows nothing of Voltaire's brother: it
-knows very well Voltaire with his faults.
-
-The mail of yesterday which brought you Mr. Blackthorne's reply to
-your arraignment brought me also a letter: he must have written to us
-both instantly. His letter is the only one that I cannot send you;
-you would not desire to read it. You are too big and generous, too
-warmly human, too exuberantly vital, to care to lend ear to a great
-man's chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. You are not
-Cassius to carp at Caesar.
-
-Now this afternoon a second letter comes from Mr. Blackthorne and
-that I enclose: it will do you good to read it--it is not a black
-passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight.
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-
-
-[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne]
-
-MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
-
-I follow up my letter of yesterday with the unexpected tidings of
-to-day. I am willing to believe that these will interest you as
-associated with your coming visit.
-
-Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final natal eclipse, has
-bowled him over and left him darkened for good. He can trouble us no
-more, but will now do his part as mould for the rose of York and the
-rose of Lancaster. He will help to make a mound for some other
-Englishman's ferns. When you come--and I know you will come--we
-shall drink a cup of tea in the garden to his peaceful memory--and to
-his troubled memory for Latin.
-
-I am now waiting for you. Come, out of your younger world and with
-your youth to an older world and to an older man. And let each of us
-find in our meeting some presage of an alliance which ought to grow
-always closer in the literatures of the two nations. Their
-literatures hold their ideals; and if their ideals touch and mingle,
-then nothing practical can long keep them far apart. If two oak
-trees reach one another with their branches, they must meet in their
-roots; for the branches are aerial roots and the roots are
-underground branches.
-
-Come. In the eagerness of my letter of yesterday to put myself not
-in the right but less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the very
-matter with which the right and the wrong originated.
-
-_Will you, after all, send the ferns?_
-
-The whole garden waits for them; a white light falls on the vacant
-spot; a white light falls on your books in my library; a white light
-falls on you,
-
-I wait for you, both hands outstretched.
-
- EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
-
-
-(Note penciled on the margin of the letter by Beverley Sands to Ben
-Doolittle: "You will see that I am back where the whole thing
-started; I have to begin all over again with the ferns. And now the
-florists will be after me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow
-of my bones, and my bones by this time are a wireless station on this
-subject.")
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-
-
-JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-We take pleasure in enclosing our new catalogue for the coming
-autumn, and should be pleased to receive any further commissions for
-the European trade.
-
-We repeat that we have no connection whatever with any house doing
-business in the city under the name of Botany.
-
- Respectfully yours,
- JUDD & JUDD,
- Per Q.
-
-
-
-
-PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Louisville, Kentucky,
- July 4th, 1912._
-
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory for the approaching
-autumn season, in view of having been honoured upon a previous
-occasion with your flattering patronage, and reasoning that our past
-transactions have been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves of
-this opportunity of reviving the conjunction heretofore existing
-between us as most gratifying and thank you sincerely for past
-favours. We hope to continue our pleasant relations and desire to
-say that if you should contemplate arranging for the shipments of
-plants of any description, we could afford you surprised satisfaction.
-
- Respectfully yours,
- PHILLIPS & FAULDS.
-
-
-
-
-BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Dunkirk, Tennessee,
- July 6, 1912._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-We are prepared to supply you with anything you need. Could ship
-ferns to any country in Europe, having done so for the late Noah
-Chamberlin, the well-known florist just across the State line, who
-was a customer of ours.
-
-old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet paid, had to drop them
-entirely.
-
- Very truly yours,
- BURNS & BRUCE.
-
-If you need any forest trees, we could supply you with all the forest
-trees you want, plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty of
-walnuts, etc.
-
-
-
-
-ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _Seminole, North Carolina,
- July 7th, 1912._
-
-DEAR SIR:
-
-I have lately enlarged my business and will be able to handle any
-orders you may give me. The orders which Miss Clara Louise
-Chamberlain said you were to send have not yet turned up. I write to
-you, because I have heard about you a great deal through Miss Clara
-Louise, since her return from her visit to New York. She succeeded
-in getting two or three donations of books for our library, and they
-have now given her a place there. I was sorry to part with Miss
-Clara Louise, but I had just married, and after the first few weeks I
-expected my wife to become my assistant. I am not saying anything
-against Miss Clara Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet violets,
-especially on a Sunday, having the run of the flowers. She and Alice
-didn't get along very well together, and I did have a bad set-back
-with my violets while she was here.
-
-Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make a speciality of seedlins.
-If you want any seedlins, will you call on me? I am young and just
-married and anxious to please, and I wish you would call on me when
-you want anything green. Nothing dried.
-
- Yours respectfully,
- ANDY PETERS.
-
-
-
-
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _July 7th, 1912._
-
-DEAR BEVERLEY:
-
-It makes me a little sad to write. I suppose you saw in this
-morning's paper the announcement of Tilly's marriage next week to Dr.
-Marigold. Nevertheless--congratulations! You have lost years of
-youth and happiness with some lovely woman on account of your
-dalliance with her.
-
-Now at last, you will let her alone, and you will soon find--Nature
-will quickly drive you to find--the one you deserve to marry.
-
-It looks selfish at such a moment to set my happiness over against
-your unhappiness, but I've just had news, that at last, after
-lingering so long and a little mysteriously in Louisville, Polly is
-coming. Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. We long ago
-decided to have no wedding. All that we have long wished is to marry
-one another. Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, Polly is
-another cocksure. We shall jog along as a perfectly satisfied couple
-of cocksures on the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly will never
-find out that she married _Sal Blivvens_.)
-
-Dear fellow, truest of comrades among men, it is inevitable that I
-reluctantly leave you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as the
-friend who marries.
-
-One awful thought freezes me to my chair this hot July day. You have
-never said a word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, since the day
-of my hypothetical charge to the jury. Can it be possible that you
-followed her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? I have often
-warned you against Tilly, as inconstant. But, my dear fellow,
-remember there is a worse extreme than in inconstancy--Clara Louise
-would be sealing wax. You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of
-sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in conversation, she'd seal
-you the tighter.
-
-Polly is coming with her wedding clothes.
-
- BEN.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
- _July 8._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-I saw the announcement in the morning paper about Tilly.
-
-It wouldn't be worth while to write how I feel.
-
-It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, homeless in New York. And
-I saw her. As to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, that is
-solely a question of my royalties. Royalties are human gratitude;
-why should not the dews of gratitude fall on one so parched?
-Besides, I don't owe you anything, gentleman.
-
-Yes, I feel you're going--you're passing on to Polly. I append a
-trifle which explains itself, and am, making the best of everything,
-the same
-
- BEVERLEY SANDS.
-
-
-
-
- _A Meditation in Verse_
- (_Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing his
- favourite weakness_)
-
- _How can I mind the law's delay,
- Or what a jury thinks it knows,
- Or what some fool of a judge may say?
- Polly comes with the wedding clothes._
-
- _Time, who cheated me so long,
- Kept me waiting mid life's snows,
- I forgive and forget your wrong:
- Polly comes with the wedding clothes._
-
- _Winter's lonely sky is gone,
- July blazes with the rose,
- All the world looks smiling on
- At Polly in her wedding clothes._
-
-
-
-
-BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
-
-[A hurried letter by messenger]
-
- _July 10, 1912._
-
-Polly reached New York two days ago. I went up that night. She had
-gone out--alone. She did not return that night. I found this out
-when I went up yesterday morning and asked for her. She has not been
-there since she left. They know nothing about her. I have
-telegraphed Louisville. They have sent me no word. Come down at
-once.
-
-BEN.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
-
-[Hurried letter by messenger]
-
- _July 10, 1912._
-
-DEAR BEN:
-
-Is anything wrong about Polly?
-
-I met her on the street yesterday. She tried to pass without
-speaking. I called to her but she walked on. I called again and she
-turned, hesitatingly, then came back very slowly to meet me half-way.
-You know how composed her manner always is. But she could not
-control her emotion: she was deeply, visibly troubled. Strange as it
-may seem, while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, I could but
-notice a trifle, as at such moments one often does: she was
-beautifully dressed: a new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over
-her as for some impending ceremony. We have always thought of Polly
-as one of the women who are above dress. Such disregard was in a way
-a verification of her character, the adornment of her sincerity. Now
-she was beautifully dressed.
-
-"But what is the meaning of all this?" I asked, frankly mystified.
-
-Something in her manner checked the question, forced back my words.
-
-"You will hear," she said, with quivering lips. She looked me
-searchingly all over the face as for the sake of dear old times now
-ended. Then she turned off abruptly. I watched her in sheer
-amazement till she disappeared.
-
-I have been waiting to hear from you, but cannot wait any longer.
-What does it mean? Why don't you tell me?
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-
-
-BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE
-
- _July 11._
-
-I have with incredible eyes this instant read this cutting from the
-morning paper:
-
-Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the City Hall in Jersey City to
-Dr. Claude Mullen.
-
-She must have been on her way when I saw her.
-
-I have read the announcement without being able to believe it--with
-some kind of death in life at my heart.
-
-Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am coming at once.
-
- BEVERLEY.
-
-
-
-
-DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS
-
- _July 18._
-
-The ferns have had their ironic way with us and have wrought out
-their bitter comedy to its end. The little group of us who were the
-unsuspecting players are henceforth scattered, to come together in
-the human playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the curtain waits
-to descend, and I, who innocently brought the drama on, am left the
-solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, depart to go my
-separate road.
-
-This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful the morning is for her!
-The whole sky is one exquisite blue--no sign of any storm-plan far or
-near. The July air blows as cool as early May. I sit at my window
-writing and it flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances of the
-green park below my window enter my room and encircle me like living
-human tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, Tilly is dressing for
-her wedding, and I--God knows why--am thinking of old-time Kentucky
-gardens in one of which she played as a child. Tilly, a little girl
-romping in her mother's garden--Tilly before she was old enough to
-know anything of the world--anything of love--now, as she dresses for
-her wedding--I cannot shut out that vision of early purity.
-
-Yesterday a note came from her. I had had no word since the day I
-openly ridiculed the man she is to marry. But yesterday she sent me
-this message:
-
-"Come to-night and say good-bye."
-
-She was not in her rooms to greet me. I waited. Moments passed,
-long moments of intense expectancy. She did not enter. I fixed my
-eyes on her door. Once I saw it pushed open a little way, then
-closed. Again it was opened and again it was held as though for lack
-of will or through quickly changing impulses. Then it was opened and
-she entered and came toward me, not looking at me, but with her face
-turned aside. She advanced a few paces and with some swift,
-imperious rebellion, she turned and passed out of the room and then
-came quickly back. She had caught up her bridal veil. She held the
-wreath in her hand and as she approached me, I know not with what
-sudden emotion she threw a corner of the veil over her head and face
-and shoulders. And she stood before me with I know not what struggle
-tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper she said:
-
-"Lift my veil."
-
-I lifted her veil and laid it back over her forehead. She closed her
-eyes as tears welled out of them.
-
-"Kiss me," she said.
-
-I would have taken her in my arms as mine at that moment for all
-time, but she stepped back and turned away, fading from me rather
-than walking, with her veil pressed like a handkerchief to her eyes.
-The door closed on her.
-
-I waited. She did not come again.
-
-Now she is dressing for the marriage ceremony. A friend gives her a
-house wedding. The company of guests will be restricted, everything
-will be exquisite, there will be youth and beauty and distinction.
-There will be no love. She marries as one who steps through a
-beautiful arch further along one's path.
-
-Whither that path leads, I do not know; from what may lie at the end
-of it I turn away and shudder.
-
-My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning is of one exiled from
-happiness because nature withheld from her the one thing needed to
-make her all but perfect: that needful thing was just a little more
-constancy. It is her doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a
-brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to her lips it drops from
-her hand. Forever her hand stretched out toward joy and forever joy
-shattered at her feet.
-
-American scientists have lately discovered or seem about to discover,
-some new fact in Nature--the butterfly migrates. What we have
-thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant of a single summer in a
-single zone follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells in a
-summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the psyche of life's fields,
-then she seeks perpetual summer as the law of her own being. All our
-lives move along old, old paths. There is no new path for any of us.
-If Tilly's fate is the butterfly path, who can judge her harshly?
-Not I.
-
-They sail away at once on their wedding journey. He has wealth and
-social influence of the fashionable sort which overflows into the
-social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: the papers found space for
-their plans of travel: England and Scotland, France and Switzerland,
-Austria and Germany, Bohemia and Poland, Russia, Italy and
-Sicily--home. The great world-path of the human butterfly, seeking
-summer with insatiate quest.
-
-Home to his practice with that still fluttering psyche! And then the
-path--the domestic path--stretching straight onward across the fields
-of life--what of his psyche then? Will she fold her wings on a
-bed-post--year after year slowly opening and unfolding those
-brilliant wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?...
-
-I cannot write of human life unless I can forgive life. How forgive
-unless I can understand? I have wrought with all that is within me
-to understand Polly--her treachery up to the last moment, her
-betrayal of Ben's devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly,
-doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems built upon one trait,
-one virtue--loyalty. She was disloyal to Ben because she had come to
-believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign excellence. There were
-things in his life which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps
-every day there were mere trifles which he did not share with
-her--why should he? On a certain memorable morning she discovered
-that for years he had been keeping from her some affairs of mine:
-that was his loyalty to me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her.
-
-I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I think that was the rift
-in the lute. Still a man must not surrender himself wholly into the
-keeping of the woman he loves; let him, and he becomes anything in
-her life but a man.
-
-Meantime Polly found near by another suitor who offered her all he
-was--what little there was of him--one of those man-climbers who must
-run over the sheltering wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified
-in Polly her one passion for marrying--that she should possess a pet.
-Now she possesses one, owns him, can turn him round and round, can
-turn him inside out, can see all there is of him as she sees her
-pocket-handkerchief, her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any little
-familiar piece of property which she can become more and more
-attached to as the years go by for the reason that it will never
-surprise her, never puzzle her, never change except by wearing out.
-
-This will be the end of the friendship between Drs. Marigold and
-Mullen: their wives will see to that. So much the better: scattered
-impostors do least harm.
-
-I have struggled to understand the mystery of her choice as to how
-she should be married. Surely marriage, in the existence of any one,
-is the hour when romance buds on the most prosaic stalk. It budded
-for Polly and she eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her
-heavy mind without the wings of imagination. She got as far as the
-nearest City Hall. Instead of a minister she chose to be married by
-a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been unjust, she would be married by
-the figure of Justice as a penal ceremony executed over Ben: she
-mailed him a paper and left him to understand that she had fled from
-him to Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry!
-
-A line in an evening paper lets me know that she and the Doctor have
-gone for their honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly first came North
-to live and the first summer came round she decided to spend it at
-Ocean Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would get a grove and
-an ocean with one railway ticket, without having to change; she could
-settle in a grove with an ocean and in an ocean with a grove. What
-her disappointment was I do not know, but every summer she has gone
-back to Ocean Grove--the Franklin Flats by the sea....
-
-Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had spent part of every evening
-with him since Polly's marriage--silent, empty evenings--a quiet,
-stunned man. Confidence in himself blasted out of him, confidence in
-human nature, in the world. With no imagination in him to deal with
-the reasons of Polly's desertion--just a passive acceptance of it as
-a wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball.
-
-Her name was never called. A stunned, silent man. Clear, joyous
-steady light in his eyes gone--an uncertain look in them. Strangest
-of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And courtesy for bluff
-warm confidence--courtesy as of one who stumblingly reflects that he
-must begin to be careful with everybody.
-
-His active nature meantime kept on. Life swept him forward--nature
-did--whether he would or not. I went down late one evening.
-Evidently he had been working in his room all day; the things Polly
-must have sent him during all those years were gone. He had on new
-slippers, a fresh robe, taking the place of the slippers and the robe
-she had made for him. Often I have seen him tuck the robe in about
-his neck as a man might reach for the arms of a woman to draw them
-about his throat as she leans over him from behind.
-
-During our talk that evening he began strangely to speak of things
-that had taken place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, on the
-farm; did I remember this in Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind
-had gone back to old certainties. It was like his walking away from
-present ruins toward things still unharmed--never to be harmed.
-
-Early next morning he surprised me by coming up, dressed for travel,
-holding a grip.
-
-"I am going to Kentucky," he said.
-
-I went to the train with him. His reserve deepened on the way; if he
-had plans, he did not share them with me.
-
-What I make out of it is that he will come back married. No
-engagement this time, no waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage
-will sadly bring him. I think she will be young--this time. But she
-will be, as nearly as possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman
-now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted man for life. He
-thinks he will be getting some one to take Polly's place. In reality
-it will be his second attempt to marry Polly.
-
-I am bidding farewell the little group of us. Some one else will
-have to write of me. How can I write of myself? This I will say:
-that I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to leave a little of
-his wool on every bramble.
-
-I sail next week for England to make my visit to Mr. Blackthorne--at
-last. Another letter has come from him. He has thrown himself into
-the generous work of seeing that my visit to him shall make me known.
-He tells me there will be a house party, a week-end; some of the
-great critics will be there, some writers. "You must be found out in
-England widely and at once," he writes.
-
-My heart swells as one who feels himself climbing toward a height.
-There is kindled in me that strangest of all the flames that burn in
-the human heart, the shining thought that my life is destined to be
-more than mine, that my work will make its way into other minds and
-mingle with the better, happier impulses of other lives.
-
-The ironic ferns have had their way with us. But after all has it
-not been for the best? Have they not even in their irony been the
-emblems of fidelity?
-
-They have found us out, they have played upon our weaknesses, they
-have exaggerated our virtues until these became vices, they have
-separated us and set us going our diverging ways.
-
-But while we human beings are moving in every direction over the
-earth, the earth without our being conscious of it is carrying us in
-one same direction. So as we follow the different pathways of our
-lives which appear to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, may
-it not be true that to the Power which sets us all in motion and
-drives us whither it will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity?
-
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
- THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
- GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + +Title: The Emblems of Fidelity + A Comedy in Letters + +Author: James Lane Allen + +Release Date: October 5, 2019 [EBook #60435] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + THE EMBLEMS OF + FIDELITY + + A Comedy in Letters + + BY + + JAMES LANE ALLEN + + AUTHOR OF + "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL," + "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC. + + + There is nothing so ill-bred as audible + laughter.... I am sure that since I have + had the full use of my reason nobody has + ever heard me laugh. + --Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. + + + + GARDEN CITY NEW YORK + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + 1919 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF + TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, + INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN + + + + + To + THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY + + INCOMPARABLE ALLY + OF VICTORY + + + + +LIST OF CHARACTERS + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE...............Famous elderly English novelist + +BEVERLEY SANDS....................Rising young American novelist + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE....Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands + +GEORGE MARIGOLD............................Fashionable physician + +CLAUDE MULLEN............Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of + George Marigold + +RUFUS KENT.......................Long-winded president of a club + +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN......Very learned, very absent-minded professor + +PHILLIPS AND FAULDS.....................................Florists + +BURNS AND BRUCE.........................................Florists + +JUDD AND JUDD...........................................Florists + +ANDY PETERS..............................................Florist + +HODGE......................Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne + +TILLY SNOWDEN.............Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands + +POLLY BOLES..........Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, + friend of Tilly Snowden + +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN......Very devoted, very proud sensitive + daughter of Noah Chamberlain + +ANNE RAEBURN..........Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne + + + + +CONTENTS + +PART SECOND + +PART THIRD + + + + +THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + May 1, 1910._ + +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: + +I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the +outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows +with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much +of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, +rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden. + +You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact, +however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very +natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for +you probably agree with me that the writing of novels--not, of +course, the mere odious manufacture of novels--results in the making +of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that +we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not +do at all as fellow-creatures. + +I shall not loiter at the threshold of this letter to fatigue your +ear with particulars regarding the several parts of your story most +enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough to say that no admirable +human being has ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears by any +such desirable procedure. In England, and I presume in the United +States, novelists have long noses for incense [poets, too, though of +course only in their inferior way]. I repeat that we English +novelists are a species of greyhound for running down on the most +distant horizon any scampering, half-terrified rabbit of a +compliment. But I freely confess that nature loaded me beyond the +tendency of being a mere greyhound. I am a veritable elephant in the +matter, being marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible proboscis +which is not only adapted to admit praise but is quite capable of +actively reaching around in every direction to procure it. Even the +greyhound cannot run forever; but an elephant, if he once possess it, +will wave such a proboscis till he dies. + +There are likely to be in any very readable book a few pages which +the reader feels tempted to tear out for the contrary reason, +perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his tenderness. Some +haunting picture of the book-gallery that he would cut from the +frame. Should you be displeased by the discrimination, I shall trust +that you may be pleased nevertheless by the avowal that there is a +scene in your novel which has peculiarly ensnared my affections. + +At this point I think I can see you throw down my letter with more +insight into human nature than patience with its foibles. You toss +it aside and exclaim: "What does this Englishman drive at? Why does +he not at once say what he wants?" You are right. My letter is +perhaps no better than strangers' letters commonly are: coins, one +side of which is stamped with your image and the other side with +their image, especially theirs. + +I might as well, therefore, present to you my side of the coin with +the selfish image. Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, you +are the horse in an open pasture and I am the stableman who schemes +to catch you: to do this, I approach, calling to you affectionately +and shaking a bundle of oats behind which is coiled a halter. You +are thinking that if I once clutch you by the mane you will get no +oats. But, my dear sir, you have from the very first word of this +letter already been nibbling the oats. And now you are my animal! + +There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday +woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands--a cool, +moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare, +beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can _see_ the ferns! I can see the +sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now, +as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade +and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They +are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock +of daffodils; for they have been collected out of England's best and +from other countries. + +Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: Will you send me +the root-stocks of some of those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on +my Warwickshire fern bank? + +Do not suppose that my garden is on a small scale a public park or +exhibition, made as we have created Kensington Gardens. Everything +in it is, on the contrary, enriched with some personal association. +I began it when a young man in the following way: + +At that period I was much under the influence of the Barbizon +painters, and I sometimes entertained myself in the forests where +masters of that school had worked by hunting up what I supposed were +the scenes of some of Corot's masterpieces. + +Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted trees as though he were +looking at enormous ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and some +rise higher than others as trees; his trees descend through the air +and are lost lower down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot ferns +for my good Warwickshire loam. Another winter Christine Nilsson was +singing at Covent Garden. I spent several evenings with her. When I +bade her good-bye, I asked her to send me some ferns from Norway in +memory of Balzac and _Seraphita_. Yet another winter, being still a +young man and he, alas! a much older one, I passed an evening in +Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in talking about his novels +and I remember quoting these lines from one of them: "It was a +splendid clear morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hung like snipe in the +clear pale azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves and grass +and glistened like silver on the spiders' webs; the moist dark earth +seemed still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the songs of +larks showered down from all over the sky." + +He sat looking at me in surprised, touched silence. + +"But you left out something!" I suggested, with the bumptiousness of +a beginner in letters. He laughed slightly to himself--and perhaps +more at me--as he replied: "I must have left out a great deal"--he, +fiction's greatest master of compression. After a moment he inquired +with a kind of vast patient condescension: "What is it that you +definitely missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns were growing +thereabouts." He smiled reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, +smiling reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot was," I said, "I +should travel to it for some ferns." A mystical look came into his +eyes as he muttered rather to himself than for my ear: "That spot! +Where is that spot? That spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the +whole of Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, one pain, one +passion. Sometime afterwards there reached me at home a hamper of +Russian fern-roots with Turgenieff's card. + +I tell you all this as I make the request, which is the body of this +letter and, I hope, its wings, in order that you may intimately +understand. I desire the ferns not only because you have interested +me in your Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, but +because I have become interested in your art and in you. While I +read your book I believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously at +work, creating where no hand had created before; or if on its chosen +scene it found a ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality from +that ruin. But to create where no hand has created before, or to +create them again where human things lie in decay--that to me is the +true energy of literature. + +I should not omit to tell you that some of our most tight-islanded, +hard-headed reviewers have been praising your work as of the best +that reaches us from America. It was one such reviewer that first +guided me to your latest book. Now I myself have written to some of +our critics and have thrown my influence in favour of your fresh, +beautiful art, which can only come from a fresh, beautiful nature. + +Should you decide to bestow any notice upon this rather amazing +letter, you will bear in mind of course that there will be pounds +sterling for plants. Whatever character my deed or misdeed may later +assume, it must first and at least have the nature of a transaction +of the market-place. + +So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all, + +I am, + + Gratefully yours, + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + May 12, 1910._ + +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: + +Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, in some modern Æsop's +Fables, read how a whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had taken +the trouble to turn entirely round to encourage a puffing young +porpoise; or of how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, had on +some fine spring day looked down and complimented a small dogwood +tree upon its size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, while +thus unreal, your letter is in its way the most encouragingly real +thing that has ever come into my life. Before I go further I should +like to say that I have read every book you have written and have +bought your books and given them away with such zeal and zest that +your American publishers should feel more interest in me than can +possibly be felt by the gentlemen who publish mine. + +It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, in bad taste. A +man's praise of another may not follow upon that man's praise of him. +Our virtues have their hour. If they do not act then, they are not +like clocks which may be set forward but resemble fruits which lose +their flavour when they pass into ripeness. Still, what I have said +is honest. You may remember that I am yet moving amid life's +uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk in quietness the world's +highway of a great career. My praise could have borne little to you; +yours brings everything to me. And you must reflect also that it is +just a little easier for any Englishman to write to an American in +this way. The American could but fear that his letter might +seriously disturb the repose of a gentleman who was reclining with +his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and Shakespeare's entire bosom in +this regard, as you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in England. + +It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange for the shipment of the +ferns. A good many years have passed since I lived in Kentucky and I +am no longer in close touch with people and things down there. But +without doubt the matter can be managed through correspondence and +all that I await from you now is express instructions. The ferns +described in my book are not known to me by name. I have procured +and have mailed to you along with this, lest you may not have any, +some illustrated catalogues of American ferns, Kentucky ferns +included. You have but to send me a list of those you want. With +that in hand I shall know exactly how to proceed. + +You cannot possibly understand how happy I am that my work has the +approval of the English reviews, which still remain the best in the +world. To know that my Kentucky stories are liked in +England--England which, remaining true to so many great traditions, +holds fast to the classic tradition in her literature. + +The putting forth of your own personal influence in my behalf is a +source of joy and pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns growing +in your garden in token of me is the most inspiring event yet to mark +my life. + +I am, + + Sincerely yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + May 22, 1910._ + +MY DEAR SANDS: + +Your letter was brought out to me as I was hanging an old gate in a +clover-field canopied with skylarks. When I cannot make headway +against some obstruction in the development of a story, for instance, +putting the hinges of the narrative where the reader will not see any +hinges, I let the book alone and go out and do some piece of work, +surrounded by the creatures which succeed in all they undertake +through zest and joy. By the time I get back, the hinges of the book +have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence +the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we +climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it. + +It is splendid news that I am to get the Kentucky ferns. Thank you +for the catalogues. A list of those I most covet is enclosed. The +cost, shipping expenses included, will not, I fear, exceed five +pounds. Of course it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but I +suppose I must restrict myself to the despicable market price. +Shamefully cheap many of the dearest things in this world are; and +what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless! + +A draft will be forwarded in advance upon receipt of the American +shipper's address. Or I could send it forthwith to you. Meantime +from now on I shall be remembering with impatience how many miles it +is across the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace American +ferns travel. These will be awaited like guests whom one goes to the +gate to meet. + +You do not know the names of those you describe so wonderfully! I am +glad. I abhor the names of my own. Of course, as they are bought, +memoranda must be depended upon by which to buy them. These data, +verified by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs as fern +headstones. When each fern is planted, into the soil beside it is +stuck its headstone, which, like that for a human being, tells the +name, not the nature, of what it memorialises. + +Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns according to the slabs. It +is time you should know Hodge by his slab. No such being can yet be +found in the United States: your civilisation is too young. Hodge is +my British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out for every +birthday much as for any total solar eclipse of the year--with a kind +of growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday should finally, as +it passes, bowl him over for good--he announced to me with visible +relief the other day that he had successfully passed another total +natal eclipse; that he was fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight +years old. The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 and Hodge +without knowing it was beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For +Hodge is English landscape gardening in human shape. He is the +benevolent spirit of the English turf, a malign spirit to English +weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, a wheelbarrow of +spring manure, a pile of autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant +future mythology of our English rural life he will perhaps rank where +he belongs--as a luminary next in importance to the sun: a two-legged +god be-earthed in old clothes, with a stiff back, a stiff temper, the +jaw of the mastiff and the eye of a prophet. + +It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would not allow anything to come +into the garden without mastering that thing. For the sake of his +own authority he must subdue as much of the Latin language as invades +his territory along with the ferns. But I think nothing comparable +to such a struggle against overwhelming odds--Hodge's brain pitted +against the Latin names of the ferns--nothing comparable to the dull +fury of that onset is to be found in the history of man unless it be +England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. England did conquer +Napoleon and finally shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and +Hodge has finally conquered the names of the ferns and shut them up +in a desolate, rocky place--his skull, his personal promontory. + +Nowadays you should see him meet me in a garden path when I come down +early some morning. You should see him plant himself before me and, +taking off his cap and scratching the back of his neck with the back +of his muddy thumb, make this announcement: "The _Asplenium +filix-faemina_ put up two new shoots last night, sir. Bishop's +crooks, I believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a farmer and +my shepherd should notify me that one of the ewes had dropped twin +lambs at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: the honour of the +shoots--a questionable honour--goes to Hodge as their botanical sire! + +When I receive visitors by reason of my books--and strangers do +sometimes make pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of "Black +Oaks"--if the day is pleasant, we have tea in the garden. While the +strangers drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known proboscis over +the company for any praise they may have brought along. Should this +seem adequate, I later reward them with a stroll. That is Hodge's +hour and opportunity. Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but +invariably, he steps out from some bush and takes his place behind me +as we move. + +When we reach the fern bank, the visitors regularly begin to inquire: +"What is the name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to Hodge much as +a drum-major, if asked by a by-stander what the music was that the +band had just been playing, might wheel in dismay to the nearest +horn. Hodge steps forward: now comes the reward of all his toil. +"That is the _Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum_, sir." "And what is +this one?" "That is the _Polypodium elegantissimum_, mum." Then you +would understand what it sometimes means to attain scholarship +without Oxford or Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman +orator and a garden ass. + +You will be wondering why I am telling you this about Hodge. For the +very particular reason that Hodge will play a part, I know not what +part, in the pleasant business that has come up between us. He looms +as the danger between me and the American ferns after the ferns shall +have arrived here. It is a fact that very few foreign ferns have +ever done well in my garden, watch over them as closely as I may: +especially those planted in more recent years. Could you believe it +possible of human nature to refuse to water a fern, to deny a little +earth to the root of a fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from +it when there was nobody near to observe the deed, to jab at it with +a sharp trowel? I shall not press the matter further, for I +instinctively turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has within +himself some incomprehensible little terrible spot and I feel that +this is Hodge's spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he will +kill what he hates, if he dares. I have been so aroused to defend +his faithful character that I have devised two pleadings: first, +Hodge is the essence of British parliaments, the sum total of British +institutions; therefore he patriotically believes that things British +should be good enough for the British--of course, their own ferns. +At other times I am rather inclined to surmise that his malice and +murderous resentment are due to his inability to take on any more +Latin, least of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt now defends +himself against any more Latin as a man with his back to the wall +fights for his life: the personal promontory will hold no more. + +You have written me an irresistible letter, though frankly I made no +effort to resist it. Your praise of my books instantly endeared you +to me. + +Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has already brought results so +agreeable and surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to plunge a +second time and more deeply. + +Is there--how could there help being!--a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands? Mrs. +Blackthorne wishes to know. I read your letter to Mrs. Blackthorne. +Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed +with _you_. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. And Mr. and Mrs. +Blackthorne would like to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands +and, if so, whether she and you will not some time follow the ferns +and come and take possession for a while of our English garden. + +You and I can go off to ourselves and discuss our "dogwoods" and +"black oaks"; and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at their tea +across the garden, can exchange copies of their highly illuminated +and privately circulated little masterpieces about their husbands. +(The husbands should always edit the masterpieces!) + +Both of you, will you come? + +Finally, as to your generous propaganda in behalf of my books and as +to the favourable reports which my publishers send me from time to +time in the guise of New World royalties, you may think of the +proboscis as now being leveled straight and rigid like a gun-barrel +toward the shores of the United States, whence blow gales scented +with so glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that Columbus was not +mistaken: America is turning out to be a place worth while. + + Your deeply interested, + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 3._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +Crown me with some kind of chaplet--nothing classic, nothing +sentimental, but something American and practical--say with twigs of +Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the leaves of that forest +favourite which in boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with +its inner bark--entwine me, O Tilly, with a garland of slippery elm +for the virtue of always making haste to share with you my slippery +pleasures! I write at full speed now to empty into your lap, a +wonderfully receptive lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has ever +come to me as your favourite author--and favourite young husband to +be. + +The great English novelist Blackthorne, many of whose books we have +read together (whenever you listened), recently stumbled over one of +my obstructive tales; one of my awkwardly placed literary hurdles on +the world's race-course of readers. As a result of his fall he got +up, dusted himself thoroughly of his surprise, and actually +despatched to me an acknowledgment of his thanks for the happy +accident. I replied with a volley of my own thanks, with salvos of +praise for him. Now he has written again, throwing wide open his +house and his heart, both of which appear to be large and admirably +suited to entertain suitable guests. + +At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart--can +you find where it is?--and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the +novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr. +Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands. +If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!--he +invites her, invites _us_, _Mrs._ Blackthorne invites _us_, should we +sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed +country-house in Warwickshire. If, then, our often postponed +marriage, our despairingly postponed marriage, should be arranged to +madden me and gladden the rest of mankind before next summer, we +could, with our arms around one another's necks, be conveyed by steam +and electricity on our wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance +and be there deposited, still oblivious of everything but ourselves. + +Think what it would mean to you to be launched upon the rosy sea of +English social life amid the orisons and benisons of such illustrious +literary personages. Think of those lovely English lawns, raked and +rolled for centuries, and of many-coloured _fêtes_ on them; of the +national tea and the national sandwiches; of national strawberries +and clotted cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's flunkies still +flunkying and Queen Anne's fads yet fadding; of week-ends without +end--as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself growing more and more a +celebrity, as the English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers +gradually brought into public appreciation the vague potentialities, +not necessarily the bare actualities, of modest young Sands himself. +Eventually, no doubt, there would be a day for you at Sandringham +with the royal ladies. They would drive you over--I have not the +least idea how great the distance is--to drink tea at Stonehenge. +Imagine yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy English +afternoon, imagine yourself seated under a heavy black-silk English +umbrella on a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, tearing at +an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest strain and surrounded by male and +female admirers, all under heavy black-silk umbrellas--Spitalsfield, +I suppose--as Mrs. Beverley Sands. + +Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign triumph, this career of +glory, comes to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, it is +inaccessible. Look upon it as in part the property that I am to +settle upon you at the time of our union--my honours. You have +already understood from me that my entire estate, both my real estate +and my unreal estate, consists of future honours. Those I have just +described are an early payment on the marriage contract--foreign +exchange! + +What reply, then, in your behalf am I to send to the lofty and +benevolent Blackthornes? As matters halt between us--he also loves +who only writes and waits--I can merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that +there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists in remaining a +Miss Snowden. With this realisation of what you will lose as Miss +Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you not think it wise--and +wise you are, Tilly--any longer to persist in your persistence? You +once, in a moment of weakness, confessed to me--think of your having +a moment of weakness!--you once confessed to me, though you may deny +it now (Balzac defines woman as the angel or devil who denies +everything when it suits her), you once confessed to me that you +feared your life would be taken up with two protracted pleasures, +each of which curtailed the other: the pleasure of being engaged to +me a long time and the pleasure of being married to me a long time. +Nerve yourself to shortening the first in order to enter upon the +compensations of the second. + +Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect of obliterating from the +world one whom I first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. Where +will Tilly Snowden be when only Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where +will be that wild rose in a snow bank--the rose which was truly wild, +the snow bank which was not cold (or was it?)? I think I should +easily become reconciled to your being known, say, as Madame Snowden, +so that you might still stand out in your own right and wild-rose +individuality. We could visit England as the rising American author, +Beverley Sands, and his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. Everybody +would then be asking who the mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I +should relate that she was a retired opera singer--having retired +before she advanced. + +By the way, you confided to me some time ago that you were not very +well. You always _look_ well, mighty well to _me_, Tilly. Perfectly +well to _me_. Can your indisposition be imaginary? Or is it merely +fashionable? Or--is it something else? What of late has sickened me +is an idea of yours that you might sometime consult Doctor G. M. +Tilly! Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me when I think of +that charlatan's door being closed behind you as a patient of his! + +Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the beautiful Blackthornes! + +Your easy and your uneasy + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _"Slippery Elm" Apartments, + June 4._ + +I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown you with slippery elm--you +seem to think I keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it--if it is the +leaf you sigh for. But please do not try to crown me with a wig of +your creative hair; that is, with your literary honours. + +How wonderfully the impressions of childhood disappear from memory +like breaths on a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to their +shapes if the glass be coldly breathed upon! As I read your letter, +at least as I read the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your letter, +I remembered, probably for the first time in years, a friend of my +mother's. + +She had been inveigled to become the wife, that is, the legally +installed life-assistant, of an exceedingly popular minister; and +when I was a little girl, but not too little to understand--was I +ever too little to understand?--she used to slip across the street to +our house and in confidence to my mother pour out her sense of humour +at the part assigned her by the hired wedding march and evangelical +housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, always +half-whispered, confidences--for how often in life one feels guilty +when telling the truth and innocent when lying! + +On this particular morning she and my mother laughed till they were +weary, while I danced round them with delight at the idea of having +even the tip of my small but very active finger in any pie that +savoured of mischief. She had been telling my mother that if, some +Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a sermon which brought +people into the church, she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If +he made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she might possibly look +out for a pair of ducks. Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be +merely a strip of worthless territory lying alongside the land of +Canaan; people simply walked over her, tramped across her, on their +way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful things to Canaan, her +husband. + +That childish nonsense comes back to me strangely, and yet not +strangely as I think of your funny letter, your very, very funny +letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to me because I am not +myself but am possibly a Mrs.--well, _some_ Mrs. Sands. The English +scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it is Canaan and his strip +all over again--there on the English lawns; a great many heavy +English people are tramping heavily over me on their way to Canaan. +The fabulous tea at Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at +Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that at last choked to death +the ill-fated Tilly Snowden. + +In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, then, begs that you +will thank the Blackthornes, Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for their +invitation; as best she can she thanks you; but for the present, and +for how much of the future she does not know, she prefers to remain +what is very necessary to her independence and therefore to her +happiness; and also what is quite pleasing to her ear--the wild rose +in the snow bank (cold or not cold, according to the sun). + +In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true that I have more than +once postponed the date of our marriage. I have never said why; +perhaps I myself have never known just why. But at least do not +expect me to shorten the engagement in order that I may secure some +share of your literary honours. As a little girl I always despised +queens who were crowned with their husbands. It seemed to me that +the queen was crowned with what was left over and was merely allowed +to sit on the corner of the throne as the poor connection. + + +P.S.--Still, I _would_ like to go to England. I mean, of course, I +wish _we_ could go on our wedding journey! If I got ready, could I +rely upon _you_? I have always wished to visit England without being +debarred from its social life. Seriously, the invitation of the +Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity and an advantage not to +be thrown away. Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am wise! + +It is true that I have not been feeling very well. And it is true +that I have consulted Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. That +dreaded door has closed behind me! I have been alone with him! The +diagnosis at least was delightful. He made it appear like opening a +golden door upon a charming landscape. I had but to step outdoors +and look around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, Health, my +former friend, how do you do! Why did you go back on me?" He tells +me my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. I said to him +that _must_ be the disease; namely, that it was _mild_. Never in my +life had I had anything that was mild! Disease from my birth up had +attacked me only in its most virulent form: so had health. I had +always enjoyed--and suffered from--virulent health. I am going to +take the Bulgar bacillus. + +Why do _you_ dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular physicians are naturally +hated by unpopular physicians. But how does _he_ run against or run +over you? + +Which of your books was it the condescending Englishman liked? +Suppose you send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of each of your +books? Those you gave me as they came out seem to have disappeared. + +The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful +of the Balkan bacillus. + +More trouble with the Balkans! + + TILLY + + (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise + intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least + for _that_!). + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 3._ + +DEAR BEN: + +A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a +benign fulmination from an Olympian. + +To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I +received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward +Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books +and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't--score heavily for the aforesaid +illustrious Eddy. + +Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or +illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that +you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a +lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own +opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information +how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading +"Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle +which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off +a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the +impenetrable roof of his own back. + +For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other +human being in this world, do you know what I think of you as most +truly being? The very finest possible specimen of the highest order +of human land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives under a +shovel turned upside down over it, called its back; and a human +land-turtle is a fellow who thrives under the roof of the five senses +and the practical. Never does a turtle get from under his carapace, +and never does the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his five +senses. Of course you realise that not during our friendship have I +paid you so extravagant a compliment. For the human race has to be +largely made up of millions of land-turtles. They cause the world to +go slowly, and it is the admirable stability of their lives neither +to soar nor to sink. You are a land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, +Esquire; you live under the shell of the practical; that is, you have +no imagination; that is, you do not read fiction; that is, you do not +read Me! Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but cherish +all the confidence and love in the world for you. But, mind you, +only as an unparalleled creeping thing. + +To get on with the business of this letter: the English novelist laid +aside his enthusiasm for my work long enough to make a request: he +asked me to send him some Kentucky ferns for his garden. Owing to my +long absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch with people and +things down there. But you left that better land only a few years +ago. I recollect that of old you manifested a weakness for sending +flowers to womankind--another evidence, by the way, of lack of +imagination. Such conduct shows a mere botanical estimate of the +grand passion. The only true lovers, the only real lovers, that +women ever have are men of imagination. Why should these men send a +common florist's flowers! They grow and offer their own--the roses +of Elysium! + +To pass on, you must still have clinging to your memory, like bats to +a darkened, disused wall, the addresses of various Louisville +florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no light at all, were +the former emissaries of your folly and your fickleness. Will you +send me at once the address of a firm in whose hands I could safely +entrust this very high-minded international piece of business? + +Inasmuch as you are now a New York lawyer and inasmuch as New York +lawyers charge for everything--concentration of mind, if they have +any mind, tax on memory and tax on income, their powers of locomotion +and of prevarication, club dues and death dues, time and tumult, +strikes and strokes, and all other items of haste and waste, you are +authorised to regard this letter a professional demand and to let me +have a reasonable bill at a not too early date. Charge for whatever +you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for your friendship. +"Naught that makes life most worth while can be had for gold." +(Rather elegant extract from one of my novels which you disdain to +read!) + +I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me have an immediate reply. + + BEVERLEY. + + +How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending to quarrel? And do +you still keep up the pretence? + +Predestined magpies! + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _150 Broad Street, + June 5._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +Your highly complimentary and philosophical missive is before my eyes. + +You understand French, not I. But I have accumulated a few +quotations which I sometimes venture to use in writing, never in my +proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to the French the French with +which I am familiar, the French themselves would drive their own +vernacular out of their land--over into Germany! Here is one of +those fond inaudible phrases: + + _A chaque oiseau + Son nid est beau._ + + +That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes prefers his own tub. + +The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club dinner the other +night. One of the speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the +blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping around the heads of the +guests without finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing about +the edges of a pond, trying in vain to strike a place to land. But +everybody cheered uproariously, made happy by the discovery that +someone actually could say something at a New York dinner that nobody +had heard before. One man next to the speaker (of course coached +beforehand) passed a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made its +way down the table to me at the other end and I, in the New York way, +laid it up for future use at a dinner in some other city. Meantime I +use it now on you. + +It is true that I arrived in New York from Kentucky some years ago. +It is likewise undeniable that for some years previous thereto I had +dealings with Louisville florists. But I affirm now, and all these +variegated gentlemen, if they _are_ gentlemen, would gladly come on +to New York as my witnesses and bear me out in the joyful affidavit, +that whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked my behaviour, +never once did I commit the futility, the imbecility, of trafficking +in ferns. + +A great English novelist--ferns! A rising young American +novelist--ferns! Frogstools, mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't +you ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? Or if they should +be too gross for his delicate soul, a birdcage containing a pair of +warbling young bluegrass moonbeams? + +I am a _land_-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank God! If I have no +imagination, thank God! If I live and move and have my being under +the shovel of the five senses and of the practical, thank God! But, +my good fellow, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other +man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I think of you as most truly +being? + +A poor, harmless tinker. + +You, with your pastime of fabricating novels, dwell in a little +workshop of the imagination; you tinker with what you are pleased to +call human lives, reality, truth. On your shop door should hang a +sign to catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, splendid +tinkering. No matter who you are, what your past career or present +extremity, come in and let the owner of this shop make your +acquaintance and he will work you over into something finer than you +have ever been or in this world will ever be. For he will make you +into an unfallen original or into a perfected final. If you have +never had a chance to do your best in life, he will give you that +chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the broken-down, especially +welcome. Everybody made over to be as everybody should be by +Beverley Sands." + +But, brother, the sole thing with which you, the tinker, do business +is the sole thing with which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, +as a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, actuality, truth. During +the years that I have been an attorney never have I had a case in +court without first of all things looking for the element of +imagination in it and trying to stamp that element out of the case +and kick it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, that +indefatigable mischief-maker, your beautiful and beloved patron +power--imagination. + +Going on to testify out of my experience as a land-turtle, I depose +the following, having kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the +turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the tracks of most of the +other animal creatures and gets to know them and their ways. But +there is one path of one creature marked for unique renown among +nose-bearing men: that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white +piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence--surnamed the polecat. + +Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably disposed, may in +your profession be the harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged +thing you will that soars innocently toward bright skies; but, once +unkindly disposed, it is in my profession, and in every other, the +polecat of the human faculties. When it has testified against you, +it vanishes from the scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with its +testimony. + +Hence it is that I go gunning first for this same little animal whose +common den is the lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though you never +seem to have encountered him in your work and walks. If you should +do so, if you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile +imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may the land-turtle be able to +crawl to you and stand by you in that hour! + +But--the tinker to his work, the turtle to his! _A chaque oiseau_! +Diogenes, your tub! + +As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. I paid for the +flowers, _she_ got them. Anybody can receive money for blossoms, but +only a statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can fill an order for +flowers with equity and fresh buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & +Faulds. You could reasonably rely upon them to fill any order that +you might place in their hands, however nonsensical-comical, +billy-goatian-satirical it may be. They'd send your Englishman an +opossum with a pouch full of blooming hyacinths if that would quiet +his longing and make him happy. I should think it might. + +We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle, + + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + +How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? Are you still cooing? + +Uncertain doves! + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + + _150 Broad Street, + June 5._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +I send you some red roses to go with your black hair and your black +eyes, never so black as when black with temper. When may I come to +see you? Why not to-morrow night? + +Another matter, not so vital but still important: a few years before +we left Louisville to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New +York, I at different times employed divers common carriers known as +florists to convey to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions that +could not be depicted in writing fluid. In other words, I hired +those mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in terms of +their costliest, most sensational merchandise. You should be +prepared to say which of these florists struck you as the best +business agent. + +Would you send me the address of that man or of that firm? +Immediately you will want to know why. Always suspicious! Let the +suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. Some +foggy-headed Englishman has besought him to ship him (the foggy one) +some Kentucky vegetation all the way across the broad Atlantic to his +wet domain--interlocking literary idiots! Beverley appeals to me, I +to you, the highest court in everything. + +Are you still enjoying the umbrageous society of that giraffe-headed +jackass, Doctor Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his +unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? _He_ a nerve +specialist! The only nerve in his practice is _his_ nerve. Doesn't +my love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? Isn't it the right +kind? Will it ever give out? + +Your reply, then, will cover four points: to thank me for the red +roses; to say when I may come to see you; to send me the address of +the Louisville florist who became most favourably known to you +through a reckless devotion; and to explain your patience with that +unhappy fool. + +Thy sworn and thy swain, + + BEN DOOLITTLE. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _The Franklin Flats, + June 6._ + +MY DEAR BEN: + +Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville florist is one of +your flimsiest subterfuges. What you wished to receive from me was a +letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable on your last visit and +you have since been concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards. +Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my aid as indispensable. +That is like you men! If one of you can but make a woman forget, if +he can but lead her to forgive him, by flattering her with the idea +that she is indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her figure +standing on the long road of time: dumbly, patiently standing there, +waiting for some male to pass along and permit her to accompany him +as his indispensable fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good +humour by being honoured with your request that I supply you with the +name of a florist. + +Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply you. All the Louisville +florists, as I thought at the time, carried out their instructions +faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally received flowers not +fresh. Did it occur to me to blame the florists? Never! I did what +a woman always does: she thinks less of--well, she doesn't think less +of the _florist_! + +Be this as it may, Beverley might try Phillips & Faulds for whatever +he is to export. As nearly as I now remember they sent the biggest +boxes of whatever you ordered! + +I have an appointment for to-morrow night, but I think I can arrange +to divide the evening, giving you the later half. It shall be for +you to say whether the best half was _yours_. That will depend upon +_you_. + +I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of Dr. Claude Mullen because +he loves me and I do not love him. The fascination of his presence +lies in my indifference. Perhaps women are so seldom safe with the +men who love them, that any one of us feels herself entitled to make +the most of a rare chance! I am not only safe, I am entertained. As +I go down into the parlour, I almost feel that I ought to buy a +ticket to a performance in my own private theatre. + +Ben, dear, are you going to commit the folly of being jealous? If I +had to marry _him_, do you know what my first wifely present would +be? A liberal transfusion of my own blood! As soon as I enter the +room, what fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which hold little +cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am always expecting the little pools +to run over: then there would be tears. The night he goes for +good--perhaps they will be tears that night. + +If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about him, still encourage +his visits, I have simply to say that I don't know. When it comes to +what a woman will "receive" in such cases, the ground she walks on is +very uncertain to her own feet. It may be that the one thing she +forever craves and forever fears not to get is absolute certainty, +certainty that some day love for her will not be over, everything be +not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's love is pitiful, and as +long as a man's love is pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it. +Therefore he is irresistible--as my guest! + +The roses are glorious. I bury my face in them down to the thorns. +And then I come over and sign my name as the indispensable + + POLLY BOLES. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 6._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +I have had a note from Beverley, asking whether he could come this +evening. I have written that I have an appointment, but I did not +enlighten him as to the appointment being with you. Why not let him +suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards. I told him that I could +perhaps arrange to divide the evening; would you mind? And would you +mind coming early? I will do as much for you some time, and _I +suspect I couldn't do more_! + + +P.S.--Rather than come for the first half of the evening perhaps you +would prefer to _postpone_ your visit _altogether_. It would suit me +just as well; _better_ in fact. There really was something very +_particular_, Tilly dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about to-night. + +I shall not look for you at all _this_ evening, _best_ of friends. + + POLLY BOLES. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 6._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +The very particular something to talk to Ben about to-night is the +identical something for every other night. And nothing could be more +characteristic of you, as soon as you heard that my visit would clash +with one of his, than your eagerness to push me partly out of the +house in a hurried letter and then push me completely out in a quiet +postscript. Being a woman, I understand your temptation and your +tactics. I fully sympathise with you. + +Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted intimate. I shall not drop +in to interrupt you and Ben--both not so young as you once were and +both getting stout--heavy Polly, heavy Ben--as you sit side by side +in your little Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always suggests +to me an enormous turnip hollowed out square: with no windows; with a +hole on one side to come in and a hole on the other side to go out; +upholstered in enormous bunches of beets and horse-radish, and +lighted with a wilted electric sunflower. There you two will sit +to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben, suffocating for fresh air and +murmuring to each other as you have murmured for years: + +"I do! I do!" + +"I do! I do!" + +One sentence in your letter, Polly dear, takes your photograph like a +camera; the result is a striking likeness. That sentence is this: + +"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards." + +That is exactly what you will do, what you would always do: explain +afterwards. In other words, you plot to make Ben jealous but fear to +make him too jealous lest he desert you. If on the evening of this +visit you should forget "to explain," and if during the night you +should remember, you would, if need were, walk barefoot through the +streets in your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter, if you could +reach it, and say: "Ben, that appointment wasn't with any other man; +it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I had told you!" + +That is, you have already disposed of yourself, breath and soul, to +Ben; and while you are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you have +espoused in his behalf what you consider your best and strongest +trait--loyalty. Under the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a +few years after marriage, have devoured all there is of Ben alive and +will have taken your seat beside what are virtually his bones. As +the years pass, the more ravenously you will preside over the bones. +Never shall the world say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever +was left of her dear Ben Doolittle! + +_Your loyalty_! I believe the first I saw of it was years ago one +night in Louisville when you and I were planning to come to New York +to live. Naturally we were much concerned by the difficulties of +choosing our respective New York residences and we had written on and +had received thumb-nailed libraries of romance about different +places. As you looked over the recommendations of each, you came +upon one called The Franklin Flats. The circular contained +appropriate quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I remember how +your face brightened as you said: "This ought to be the very thing." +One of the quotations on the circular ran somewhat thus: "Beware of +meat twice boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So they must have a +good restaurant!" + +In other words, you believed that a house named after Franklin could +but resemble Franklin. A building put up in New York by a Tammany +contractor, if named after Benjamin Franklin and advertised with +quotations from Franklin's works, would embody the traits of that +remote national hero! To your mind--not to your imagination, for you +haven't any--to your mind, and you have a great deal of mind, the +bell-boys, the superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids, the +flunkied knave who stands at the front door--all these were loyally +congregated as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still in the +Franklin Flats! I know what you have long suffered there; but move +away! Not Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building as long as +the building stands by the contractor and the contractor stands by +profits and losses. + +While on the subject of loyalty, not your loyalty but woman's +loyalty, I mean to finish with it. And I shall go on to say that +occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass window in some Fifth +Avenue shop and have studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised +loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes effect in those +processions that now and then sweep up the Avenue as though they were +Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The marchers try first not to look +self-conscious; all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the cause." +But beneath all other expressions and differences of expression I +have always seen one reigning look as plainly as though it were +printed in enormous letters on a banner flying over their heads: + +"Strictly Monogamous Women." + +At such times I have felt a wild desire, when I should hear of the +next parade, to organise a company of unenthralled young girls who +with unfettered natures and unfettered features should tramp up the +Avenue under their own colours. If the women before them--those +loyal ones--would actually carry, as they should, a banner with the +legend I have described, then my company of girls should unfurl to +the breeze their flag with the truth blazoned on it: + +"Not Necessarily Monogamous!" + +The honest human crowd, watching and applauding us, would pack the +Avenue from sidewalks to roofs. + +Between you and me everything seems to be summed up in one +difference: all my life I have wanted to go barefoot and all your +life, no matter what the weather, you have been solicitous to put on +goloshes. + +My very nature is rooted in rebellion that in a world alive and +running over with irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to find +her chief happiness in just one! The heart going out to so many in +succession, and the hand held by one; year after year your hand held +by the first man who impulsively got possession of it. Every +instinct of my nature would be to jerk my hand away and be free! To +give it again and again. + +This subject weighs crushingly on me as I struggle with this letter +because I have tidings for you about myself. I am to write words +which I have long doubted I should ever write, life's most iron-bound +words. Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at last. Of course +it is Beverley. Not without waverings, not without misgivings. But +I'd feel those, be the man whoever he might. Why I feel thus I do +not know, but I know I feel. I tell you this first because it was +you who brought Beverley and me together, who have always believed in +his career. (Though I think that of late you have believed more in +him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning to believe in his career. +He has lately ascertained that his work is making a splendid +impression in England. If he succeeds in England, he will succeed in +this country. He has received an invitation to visit some delightful +and very influential people in England and "to bring me along!" +Think of anybody bringing _me_ along! If we should be entertained by +these people [they are the Blackthornes], such is English social +life, that we should also get to know the white Thornes and the red +Thornes--the whole social forest. The iron rule of my childhood was +economy; and the influence of that iron rule over me is inexorable +still: I cannot even contemplate such prodigal wastage in life as not +to accept this invitation and gather in its wealth of consequences. + +More news of me, very, very important: _at last_ I have made the +acquaintance of George Marigold. I have become one of his patients. + +Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from him. You need not +return it. I shall not answer it. I shall leave things to his +imagination and his imagination will give him no rest. + +If Ben hurled at _you_ a jealous letter about Dr. Mullen, you would +immediately write to remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule +Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's eyes. That is, you would +do an abominable thing, never doubting that Ben would admire you the +more. And you would be right; for as Ben observed you tear Dr. +Mullen to pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back in his chair +and chuckle within himself: "Glorious, staunch old Polly!" + +And what you would do in this instance you will do all your life: you +will practise disloyalty to every other human being, as in this +letter you have practised it with me, for the sake of loyalty to Ben: +your most pronounced, most horrible trait. + + TILLY SNOWDEN. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 7._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +I return Beverley's letter. Without comment, since I did not read +it. You know how I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him. I +have a feeling for him unlike that for any other human being, not +even Ben; I look upon him as set apart and sacred because he has +genius and belongs to the world. + +As for his faults, those that I have not already noticed I prefer to +find out for myself. I have never cared to discover any human +being's failings through a third person. Instead of getting +acquainted with the pardonable traits of the abused, I might really +be introduced to the _abominable traits of the abuser_. + +_Once more_, you think you are going to marry Beverley! I shall +reserve my congratulations for the _event itself_. + +Thank you for surrendering your claim on my friendship and society +last night. Ben and I had a most satisfactory evening, and when not +suffocating we murmured "I do" to our hearts' content. + +Next time, should your visits clash, I'll push _him_ out. Yet I feel +in honour bound to say that this is only my present state of mind. I +might weaken at the last moment--even in the Franklin Flats. + +As to some things in your letter, I have long since learned not to +bestow too much attention upon anything you say. You court a kind of +irresponsibility in language. With your inborn and over-indulged +willfulness you love to break through the actual and to revel in the +imaginary. I have become rather used to this as one of your growing +traits and I am therefore not surprised that in this letter you say +things which, if seriously spoken, would insult your sex and would +make them recoil from you--or make them wish to burn you at the +stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue with your company of girls in +that kind of procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: you will +be tramping through the slums where you belong. + +All this, I repeat, is merely your way--to take things out in +talking. But we can make words our playthings in life's shallows +until words wreck us as their playthings in life's deeps. + +Still, in return for your compliments to me, _which, of course, you +really mean_, I paid you one the other night when thinking of you +quite by myself. It was this: nature seems to leave something out of +each of us, but we presently discover that she perversely put it +where it does not belong. + +What she left out of you, my dear, was the domestic tea-kettle. +There isn't even any place for one. But she made up for lack of the +kettle _by rather overdoing the stove_! + + Your _discreet_ friend, + POLLY BOLES. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + June 7, 1900._ + +GENTLEMEN: + +A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin Doolittle, has suggested +your firm as reliable agents to carry out an important commission, +which I herewith describe: + +I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire you to make a +collection of these ferns and to ship them, expenses prepaid, to +Edward Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, +England. The cost is not to exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish +you the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid unnecessary +correspondence, I herewith enclose, payable to your order, my check +for that amount. + +Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating whether you will +undertake this commission and see it through? + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Louisville, Ky., + June 10, 1900._ + +DEAR SIR: + +Your valued letter with check for $25 received. We handle most of +the ferns on the list, and know the others and can easily get them. + +You may rely upon your valued order receiving the best attention. +Thanking you for the same, + + Yours very truly, + PHILLIPS & FAULDS. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + June 15, 1910._ + +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: + +Your second letter came into the port of my life like an argosy from +a rich land. I think you must have sent it with some remembrance of +your own youth, or out of your mature knowledge of youth itself; how +too often it walks the shore of its rocky world, cutting its bare +feet on sharp stones, as it strains its eyes toward things far beyond +its horizon but not beyond its faith and hope. Some day its ship +comes in and it sets sail toward the distant ideal. How much the +opening of the door of your friendship, of your life, means to me! A +new consecration envelops the world that I am to be the guest of a +great man. If words do not say more, it is because words say so +little. + +Delay has been unavoidable in any mere formal acknowledgment of your +letter. You spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My silence has +been due to the arrangement of hinges for the shipment of the ferns. +I wished to insure their safe transoceanic passage and some inquiries +had to be made in Kentucky. + +You may rely upon it that the matter will receive the best attention. +In good time the ferns, having reached the end of their journey, will +find themselves put down in your garden as helpless immigrants. From +what outlook I can obtain upon the scene of their reception, they +should lack only hands to reach confidingly to you and lack only feet +to run with all their might away from Hodge. + +I acknowledge--with the utmost thanks--the unusual and beautiful +courtesy of Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife, if I +have one, and to me. It is the dilemma of my life, at the age of +twenty-seven, to be obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands +exists, but that nevertheless there is no such person. + +Can you imagine a man's stretching out his hand to pluck a peach and +just before he touched the peach, finding only the bough of the tree? +Then, as from disappointment he was about to break off the offensive +bough, seeing again the dangling peach? Can you imagine this +situation to be of long continuance, during which he could neither +take hold of the peach nor let go of the tree--nor go away? If you +can, you will understand what I mean when I say that my bride +persists in remaining unwed and I persist in wooing. I do not know +why; she protests that she does not know; but we do know that life is +short, love shorter, that time flies, and we are not husband and wife. + +If she remains undecided when Summer returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne +and you will let me come alone. + +Thus I can thank you with certainty for one with the hope that I may +yet thank you for two. + +I am, + + Sincerely yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + +P.S.--Can you pardon the informality of a postscript? + +As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy situation, marriage is +denied me on account of the whole unhappy history of woman--which is +pretty hard. But a good many American ladies--the one I woo among +them--are indignant just now that they are being crowded out of their +destinies by husbands--or even possibly by bachelors. These ladies +deliver lectures to one another with discontented eloquence and rouse +their auditresses to feministic frenzy by reminding them that for +ages woman has walked in the shadow of man and that the time has come +for the worm [the woman] to turn on the shadow or to crawl out of it. + +My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly say that the only two shadows +I could ever think of casting on the woman I married would be that of +my umbrella whenever it rained, and that of her parasol whenever the +sun shone. But I do maintain that if there is not enough sunshine +for the men and women in the world, if there has to be some casting +of shadows in the competition and the crowding, I do maintain that +the casting of the shadow would better be left to the man. He has +had long training, terrific experience, in this mortal business of +casting the shadow, has learned how to moderate it and to hold it +steady! The woman at least knows where it is to be found, should she +wish to avail herself of it. But what would be the state of a man in +his need of his spouse's penumbra? He would be out of breath with +running to keep up with the penumbra or to find where it was for the +time being! + +I have seen some of these husbands who live--or have gradually died +out--in the shadow of their wives; they are nature's subdued farewell +to men and gentlemen. + + + + +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 16._ + +A remarkable thing has lately happened to me. + +One of my Kentucky novels, upon being republished in London some +months ago, fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. This +critic's praise later made its way to the stately library of Edward +Blackthorne. What especially induced the latter to read the book, I +infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer from my description of a +woodland scene with ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, +is himself interested in ferns. He consequently wrote to some other +English authors and critics, calling attention to my work, and he +sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns for his garden. + +This recognition in England hilariously affected my friends over +here. Tilly, whose mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair of +golden balances for weighing delight against delight (always her most +vital affair), when this honour for me fell into the scales, found +them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as I have often thought, +that she has long been holding on to me merely until she could take +sure hold of someone else of more splendid worldly consequence, she +suddenly at least tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, solid +Polly, wholesome and dependable as a well-browned whole-wheat baker's +loaf weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she heard of it, gave +me a Bohemian supper in her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a +few undersized people, inasmuch as she and Ben, the chief personages +of the entertainment, took up most of the room. We were so packed +in, that literally it was a night in Bohemia _aux sardines_. + +Since the good news from England came over, Ben, with his big, round, +clean-shaven, ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, which makes +him look like a thirty-five-year-old Bacchus who had never drunk a +drop--even Ben has beamed on me like a mellower orb. He is as +ashamed as ever of my books, but is beginning to feel proud that so +many more people are being fooled by them. Several times lately I +have caught his eyes resting on me with an expression of affectionate +doubt as to whether after all he might be mistaken in not having +thought more of me. But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a human +refrigerator containing a mental thermometer, which rises or falls +toward like or dislike over a background for book-sales, got wind of +the matter and promptly invited me to one of his thermometric +club-lunches--always an occasion for acute gastritis. + +Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, where, of course, the +leading English reviews are kept on file. Some of the members must +have seen the favourable criticisms. One night I became aware as I +passed through the rooms that club heroes seated here and there threw +glances of fresh interest toward me and exchanged auspicious words. +The president--who for so long a time has styled himself the Nestor +of the club that he now believes it is the members who do this, the +garrulous old president, whose weaknesses have made holes in him +through which his virtues sometimes leak out and get away, met me +under the main chandelier and congratulated me in tones so +intentionally audible that they violated the rules but were not +punishable under his personal privileges. + +There was a sinister incident: two members whom Ben and I wish to +kick because they have had the audacity to make the acquaintance of +Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise also because they are +fashionable charlatans in their profession--these two with dark looks +saw the president congratulate me. + +More good fortune yet to come! The ferns which I am sending Mr. +Blackthorne will soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious man +has many visitors; he leads them, if he likes, to his fern bank. +"These," he will some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. These +are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. These were sent me by +Turgenieff. And these," he will add, turning to his guests, "these +came from a young American novelist, a Kentuckian, whose work I +greatly respect: you must read his books." The guests separate to +their homes to pursue the subject. Spreading fame--may it spread! +Last of all, the stirring effect of this on me, who now run toward +glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran toward Venus--with both feet and +wings. + +The ironic fact about all this commotion affecting so many solid, +substantial people--the ironic fact is this: + +_There was no woodland scene and there were no ferns._ + +Here I reach the curious part of my story. + +When I was a country lad of some seventeen years in Kentucky, one +August afternoon I was on my way home from a tramp of several miles. +My course lay through patches of woods--last scant vestiges of the +primeval forest--and through fields garnered of summer grain or green +with the crops of coming autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence and +crossed an old woods-pasture where stock grazed. + +The August sky was clear and the sun beat down with terrific heat. I +had been walking for hours and parching thirst came upon me. + +This led me to remember how once these rich uplands had been the vast +rolling forest that stretched from far-off eastern mountains to +far-off western rivers, and how under its shade, out of the rock, +everywhere bubbled crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams +diamond bright, drinking places of the bold game. + +The sun beat down on me in the treeless open field. My feet struck +into a path. It, too, became a reminder: it had once been a trail of +the wild animals of that verdurous wilderness. I followed its +windings--a sort of gully--down a long, gentle slope. The windings +had no meaning now: the path could better have been straight; it was +devious because the feet that first marked it off had threaded their +way crookedly hither and thither past the thick-set trees. + +I reached the spring--a dry spot under the hot sun; no tree +overshadowing it, no vegetation around it, not a blade of grass; only +dust in which were footprints of the stock which could not break the +habit of coming to it but quenched their thirst elsewhere. The +bulged front of some limestone rock showed where the ancient mouth of +the spring had been. Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a +few clods. Hovering over these, rising and sinking, a little +quivering jet of gold, a flock of butterflies. The grey stalk of a +single dead weed projected across the choked orifice of the fountain +and one long, brown grasshopper--spirit of summer dryness--had +crawled out to the edge and sat motionless. + +A few yards away a young sycamore had sprung up from some +wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow +on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest--my +eyes fixed on the forest ruin. + +Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart +set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon +Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot +August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the +scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers. + +I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate +in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me +out of ferns that never grew? + + + + +PART SECOND + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + May 1, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +It is the first of the faithful leafy May again. I sit at my windows +as on this day a year ago and look out with thankfulness upon what a +man may call the honour of the vegetable world. + +A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of yours or by some books--for +I believe I read more than one of them--I, betrayed by the phrase +that when we touch a book we touch a man, overstepped the boundaries +of caution as to having any dealings with glib, plausible strangers +and wrote you a letter. I made a request of you in that letter. I +thought the request bore with it a suitable reward: that I should be +grateful if you would undertake to have some ferns sent to me for my +collection. + +Your sleek reply led me still further astray and I wrote again. I +drew my English cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the ground +for you to step on. I threw open to you the doors of my hospitality, +good-fellowship. + +That was last May. Now it is May again. And now I know to a +certainty what for months I have been coming to realise always with +deeper shame: that you gave me your word and did not keep your word; +doubtless never meant to keep it. + +Why, then, write you about this act of dishonour now? How justify a +letter to a man I feel obliged to describe as I describe you? + +The reason is this, if you can appreciate such a reason. My nature +refuses to let go a half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an +abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood I came upon a partly +chopped-down tree, and I must needs go far and fetch an axe and +finish the job. What I have begun to build I must build at till the +pattern is wrought out. Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the +stamina of resolution. The upright moral skeleton within me would +decay and crumble and I should sink down and flop like a human frog. + +Since, then, you dropped the matter in your way--without so much as a +thought of a man's obligation to himself--I dismiss it in my +way--with the few words necessary to enable me to rid my mind of it +and of such a character. + +I wish merely to say, then, that I despise as I despise nothing else +the ragged edge of a man's behaviour. I put your conduct before you +in this way: do you happen to know of a common cabbage in anybody's +truck patch? Observe that not even a common cabbage starts out to do +a thing and fails to do it if it can. You must have some kind of +perception of an oak tree. Think what would become of human beings +in houses if builders were deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound +oak? Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how it takes hold and +will not be shaken loose by the capricious compelling winds. In your +country have you the plover? Think what would be the plover's fate, +if it did not steer straight through time and space to a distant +shore. Why, some day pick up merely a piece of common quartz. Study +its powers of crystallisation. And reflect that a man ranks high or +low in the scale of character according to his possession or his lack +of the powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his mind can +assume fixity around an idea, if they can adjust themselves +unalterably about a plan, expect something of him. If they run +through his hours like water, if memory is a millstream, if +remembrance floats forever away, expect nothing. + +Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted for themselves the +characters of familiar plants about them. Do you know what to them +the fern stood for? The fern stood for Fidelity. Those true, +constant souls would have said that you had been unfaithful even with +nature's emblems of Fidelity. + +The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight falls in a white +radiance on my plants. I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on +honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a certain spot in the +garden; I dislike to look at it. There is a shadow on the place +where your books once stood on my library shelves. Your specious +books!--your cleverly manufactured books!--but there are successful +scamps in every profession. + +I am, + + Very truly yours, + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE + + _Cathedral Heights, + May 10, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +I wish to inform you that I have just received from you a letter in +which you attack my character. I wish in reply further to inform you +that I have never felt called upon to defend my character. Nor will +I, even with this letter of yours as evidence, attack your character. + +I am, + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _May 13, 1911._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I ask your attention to the enclosed letter from Mr. Edward +Blackthorne. By way of contrast and also of reminder, lest you may +have forgotten, I send you two other letters received from him last +year. I shared with you at the time the agreeable purport of these +earlier letters. This last letter came three days ago and for three +days I have been trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write to +you about it. At last I am able to do so. + +You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has never received the ferns. Then +where have they been all this time? I took it for granted that they +had been shipped. The order was last spring placed with the +Louisville firm recommended by you. They guaranteed the execution of +the order. I forwarded to them my cheque. They cashed my cheque. +The voucher was duly returned to me cancelled through my bank. I +could not suppose they would take my cheque unless they had shipped +the plants. They even wrote me again in the Autumn of their own +accord, stating that the ferns were about to be sent on--Autumn being +the most favourable season. Then where are the ferns? + +I felt so sure of their having reached Mr. Blackthorne that I +harboured a certain grievance and confess that I tried to make +generous allowance for him as a genius in his never having +acknowledged their arrival. + +I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an immediate explanation. As +soon as they reply I shall let you hear further. The fault may be +with them; in the slipshod Southern way they may have been negligent. +My cheque may even have gone as a bridal present to some junior +member of the firm or to help pay the funeral expenses of the senior +member. + +There is trouble somewhere behind and I think there is trouble ahead. + +Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine ladies; but if some +lady will kindly lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit that +I have it and on the strength of it--or the weakness--declare my +belief that the mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some curious +and funny things. + +As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: after these days of +turbulence, I have come to see my way clear to interpret it thus: a +great man, holding a great place in the world, offered his best to a +stranger and the stranger, as the great man believes, turned his back +on it. That is the grievance, the insult. If anything could be +worse, it is my seeming discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the +invitation came also from her. In a word, here is a genius who +strove to advance my work and me, and he feels himself outraged in +his kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and his family--in all +his best. + +But of course that is the hardest of all human things to stand. Men +who have treated each other but fairly well or even badly in ordinary +matters often in time become friends. But who of us ever forgives +the person that slights our best? Out of a rebuff like that arises +such life-long unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ +itself doubtless for this very reason took pains to issue its +warning--no pearls before swine! And perhaps of all known pearls a +great native British pearl is the most prized by its British +possessor! + +The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's best has been his worst: +if I did not merit his best, I deserve his worst; hence his last +letter. God have mercy on the man who deserved that letter! You +will have observed that his leading trait as revealed in all his +letters is enormous self-love. That's because he is a genius. +Genius _has_ to have enormous self-love. Beware the person who has +none! Without self-love no one ever wins any other's love. + +Thus the mighty English archer with his mighty bow shot his mighty +arrow--but at an innocent person. + +Still the arrow of this letter, though it misses me, kills my plans. +The first trouble will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally fixed +for June, and our plans embraced a wedding journey to England and the +acceptance of the invitation of the Blackthornes. The prospect of +this wonderful English summer--I might as well admit it--was one +thing that finally steadied all her wavering as to marriage. + +Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, no English celebrities to +greet us as American celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no +lawns, no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely two unknown, +impoverished young Yankee tourists, trying to get out of chilly +England what can be gotten by anybody with a few, a very few, dollars. + +But Tilly dreads disappointment as she dreads disease. To her +disappointment is a disease in the character of the person who +inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to get you to read one of +Balzac's masterpieces, _The Magic Skin_. I told you enough about it +to enable you to understand what I now say: that ever since I became +engaged to Tilly I have been to her as a magic skin which, as she +cautiously watches it, has always shrunk a little whenever I have +encountered a defeat or brought her a disappointment. No later +success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the shrunken skin: it +remains shrunken where each latest disappointment has left it. + +Now when I tell her of my downfall and the collapse of the gorgeous +summer plans! + + BEVERLEY + (the Expanding Scamp and the + Shrinking Skin). + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _May 14th._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +I have duly pondered the letters you send. + + "Fie, fee, fo, fum, + I smell the blood of an Englishman!" + +If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents from him in my +possession. And suppose you send me all later letters, whether from +him or from anyone else, that bear on this matter. It begins to grow +interesting and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, then, as +your lawyer, the custodian of all pertinent and impertinent papers. +They can go into the locker where I keep your immortal but +impecunious Will. Some day I might have to appear in court, I with +my shovel and five senses and no imagination, to plead _une cause +célèbre_ (a little more of my scant intimate French). + +The explanation I give of this gratuitously insulting letter is that +at last you have run into a hostile human imagination in the person +of an old literary polecat, an aged book-skunk. Of course if I could +decorate my style after the manner of your highly creative gentlemen, +I might say that you had unwarily crossed the nocturnal path of his +touchy moonlit mephitic highness. + +I am not surprised, of course, that this letter has caused you to +think still more highly of its writer. I tell you that is your +profession--to tinker--to turn reality into something better than +reality. + +Some day I expect to see you emerge from your shop with a fish story. +Intending buyers will find that you have entered deeply into the +ideals and difficulties of the man-eating shark: how he could not +swim freely for whales in his track and could not breathe freely for +minnows in his mouth; how he got pinched from behind by the malice of +the lobster and got shocked on each side by the eccentricities of the +eel. The other fish did not appreciate him and he grew +embittered--and then only began to bite. You will make over the +actual shark and exhibit him to your reader as the ideal shark--a +kind of beloved disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish. + +Anything imaginative that you might make out of a shark would be a +minor achievement compared with what you have done for this +Englishman. Might the day come, the avenging day, when Benjamin +Doolittle could get a chance to write him just one letter! May the +god of battles somehow bring about a meeting between the middle-aged +land-turtle and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars somebody's fur +will have to fly and it will not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any. + +You speak of a trouble that looms up in your love affair: let it +loom. The nearer it looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly +warned you that you have bound your life and happiness to the wrong +person, and the person is constantly becoming worse. Detach your +apparatus of dreams at last from her. Take off your glorious rainbow +world-goggles and see the truth before it is too late. Do not fail, +unless you object, to send me all letters incoming about the +ferns--those now celebrated bushes. + + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + + + + +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _May 13, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +We acknowledge receipt of your letter of May 10 relative to an order +for ferns. + +It is decidedly rough. The senior member of our firm who formerly +had charge of this branch of our business has been seriously ill for +several months, and it was only after we had communicated with him at +home in bed that we were able to extract from him anything at all +concerning your esteemed order. + +He informs us that he turned the order over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce, +native fern collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that they would +gather the ferns and forward them to the designated address. He +likewise informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns & Bruce, as we +know only too well, has long been indebted to this firm for a +considerable amount, he calculated that they would willingly ship the +ferns in partial liquidation of our old claims. + +It seems, as he tells us, that they did actually gather the ferns and +get them ready for shipment, but at the last minute changed their +mind and called on our firm for payment. There the matter was +unexpectedly dropped owing to the sudden illness of the aforesaid +member of our house, and we knew nothing at all of what had +transpired until your letter led us to obtain from him at his bedside +the statements above detailed. + +An additional embarrassment to the unusually prosperous course of our +business was occasioned by the marriage of a junior member of the +firm and his consequent absence for a considerable time, which +resulted in an augmentation of the expenses of our establishment and +an unfortunate diminution of our profits. + +In view of the illness of the senior member of our house and in view +of the marriage of a junior member and in view of the losses and +expenses consequent thereon, and in view of the subsequent withdrawal +of both from active participation in the conduct of the affairs of +our firm, and in view also of a disagreement which arose between both +members and the other members as to the financial basis of a +settlement on which the withdrawal could take place, our affairs have +of necessity been thrown into court in litigation and are still in +litigation up to this date. + +Regretting that you should have been seemingly inconvenienced in the +slightest degree by the apparent neglect of a former member of our +firm, we desire to add that as soon as matters can be taken out of +court our firm will be reorganised and that we shall continue to +give, as heretofore, the most scrupulous attention to all orders +received. + +But we repeat that your letter is pretty rough. + + Very truly yours, + PHILLIPS & FAULDS. + + + + +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Dunkirk, Tenn., + May 20, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds gave us the order for the +ferns. Owing to extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered earlier +than usual and it was unsafe to ship at that time; in the Winter the +weather was so severe that even in February we were unable to make +any digging, as the frost had not disappeared. When at last we got +the ferns ready, we called on them for payment and they wouldn't pay. +Phillips & Faulds are not good paying bills and we could not put +ourselves to expense filling their new order for ferns, not wishing +to take more risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, and could +not afford to ship more. proved very unsatisfactory and had to drop +them entirely. + +Are already out of pocket the cost of the ferns, worthless to us when +Phillips & Faulds dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we owed them +because they won't pay their bills. If you do not wish to have any +further dealings with them you might write to Noah Chamberlain at +Seminole, North Carolina, just over the state line, not far from +here, an authority on American ferns. We have sometimes collected +rare ferns for him to ship to England and other European countries. +Vouch for him as an honest man. Always paid his bills, old accounts +against Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them entirely. + + Very truly yours, + BURNS & BRUCE. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _May 24._ + +DEAR BEN: + +You requested me to send you for possible future reference all +incoming letters upon the subject of the ferns. Here are two more +that have just fluttered down from the blue heaven of the unexpected +or been thrust up from the lower regions through a crack in the +earth's surface. + +Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling eloquence of Messrs. +Phillips & Faulds. When the eloquence has ceased to ripple and +settles down to stay, their letter has the cold purity of a +whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. They and another firm of florists +have a law-suit as to which owes the other, and they meantime compel +me, an innocent bystander, to deliver to them my pocketbook. + +Will you please immediately bring suit against Phillips & Faulds on +behalf of my valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable indignation? +Bring suit against and bring your boot against them if you can. My +ducats! Have my ducats out of them or their peace by day and night. + +The other letter seems of an unhewn probity that wins my confidence. +That is to say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure me that I +ought to believe, and with all my heart I do now believe, in the +existence, just over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of good +character and a business head. Thus I now press on over the +Tennessee state line into North Carolina. + +For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; more than ever they +must go to him now. Not the entire British army drawn up on the +white cliffs of Dover could keep me from landing them on the British +Isle. Even if I had to cross over to England, travel to his home, +put the ferns down before him or throw them at his head and walk out +of his house without a word. + +I told you I had a borrowed premonition that there would be trouble +ahead: now it is not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. I +have grown to stand in dread of all florists, and I approach this +third one with my hat in my hand (also with my other hand on my +pocketbook). + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN + + _Cathedral Heights, New York, + May 25, 1911._ + +DEAR SIR: + +You have been recommended to me by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk, +Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied upon to keep his word +and to carry out his business obligations. + +Accepting at its face value their high testimonial as to your +trustworthiness, I desire to place with you the following order: + +Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my request, have forwarded to you +a list of rare Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these ferns +and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, Esq., King Alfred's Wood, +Warwickshire, England. As a guaranty of good faith on my part, I +enclose in payment my check for twenty-five dollars. Will you have +the kindness to let me know at once whether you will undertake this +commission and give it the strictest attention? + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Seminole, North Carolina, + May 29._ + +SIR: + +I have received your letter with your check in it. + +You are the first person that ever offered me money as a florist. I +am not a florist, if I must take time to inform you. I had supposed +it to be generally known throughout the United States and in Europe +that I am professor of botany in this college, and have been for the +past fifteen years. If Burns & Bruce really told you I am a +florist--and I doubt it--they must be greater ignoramuses than I took +them to be. I always knew that they did not have much sense, but I +thought they had a little. It is true that they have at different +times gathered specimens of ferns for me, and more than once have +shipped them to Europe. But I never imagined they were fools enough +to think this made me a florist. My collection of ferns embraces +dried specimens for study in my classrooms and specimens growing on +the college grounds. The ferns I have shipped to Europe have been +sent to friends and correspondents. The President of the Royal +Botanical Society of Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I have +sent him some and I have also sent some to friends in Norway and +Sweden and to other scientific students of botany. + +It only shows that your next-door neighbour may know nothing about +you, especially if you are a little over your neighbour's head. + +My daughter, who is my secretary, will return your check, but I +thought I had better write and tell you myself that I am not a +florist. + + Yours truly, + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D. + + + + +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Seminole, North Carolina, + May 29._ + +SIR: + +I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's +only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my +distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had +supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American +public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana +and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt. + +People of our means and social position in the South do not peddle +bulbs. We do not reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn our +bread by making funeral wreaths and crosses. + +You must be some kind of nonentity. + +Your cheque is pinned to this letter. + + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN + + _June 3._ + +DEAR SIR: + +I am deeply mortified at having believed Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be +well-informed and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that it is no +longer safe for me to believe anybody--not about nurserymen. I am +not sure now that I should believe you. You say you are a famous +botanist, but you may be merely a famous liar, known as such to +various learned bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is +necessary, and you must admit that your letter does not furnish me +with that proof. + +Still I am going to believe you and I renew the assurance of my +mortification that I have innocently caused you the chagrin of +discovering that you are not so well known, at least in this country, +as you supposed. I suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; it +is the tie that binds: blest be the tie. + +I shall be extremely obliged if you will have the kindness to return +to me the list of ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, +and for that purpose you will please to find enclosed an envelope +addressed and stamped. + +I acknowledge the return of my cheque, which occasions me some +surprise and not a little pleasure. + +Allow me once more to regret that through my incurable habit of +believing strangers, believing everybody, I was misled into taking +the lower view of you as a florist instead of the higher view as a +botanist. But you must admit that I was right in classification and +wrong only in elevation. + + Very truly yours, + BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely). + + + + +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 8._ + +SIR: + +I know nothing about any list of ferns. Stop writing to me. + + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN. + + + + +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 8._ + +SIR: + +It is excruciating the way you continue to persecute my great father. +What is wrong with you? What started you to begin on us in this way? +We never heard of _you_. Would you let my dear father alone? + +He is a very deep student and it is intolerable for me to see his +priceless attention drawn from his work at critical moments when he +might be on the point of making profound discoveries. My father is a +very absent-minded man, as great scholars usually are, and when he is +interrupted he may even forget what he has just been thinking about. + +Your letter was a very serious shock to him, and after reading it he +could not even drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. Time +and again he put his cup down and said to me in a trembling voice: +"Think of his calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up from the +table without eating anything and left the room. He turned at the +door and said to me, with a confused expression: "I _may_, once in my +life--but _he_ didn't know anything about _that_." + +He shut his door and stayed in his library all evening, thinking +without nourishment. + +What a viper you are to call my great father a liar. + + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 12._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I knew I was in for it! I send another installment of incredible +letters from unbelievable people. + +In my wanderings over the earth after the ferns I have innocently +brought my foot against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called the +head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist, and the whole hill +is frantic with fury. As far as heard from, there are only two ants +in the hill, but the two make a lively many in their letters. It's a +Southern vendetta and my end may draw nigh. + +Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly is at hand. She has been +out of town for a house-party somewhere and is to return to-morrow. +When Tilly came to New York a few years ago she had not an +acquaintance; now I marvel at the world of people she knows. It is +the result of her never declining an invitation. Once I derided her +about this, and with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed the +reason: that no one ever knew what an acquaintanceship might lead to. +This principle, or lack of principle, has led her far. And wherever +she goes, she is welcomed afterwards. It is her mystery, her charm. +I often ask myself what is her charm. At least her charm, as all +charm, is victory. You are defeated by her, chained and dragged +along. Of course, I expect all this to be reversed after Tilly +marries me. Then I am to have my turn--she is to be led around, +dragged helpless by _my_ charm. Magnificent outlook! + +To-morrow she is to return, and I shall have to tell her that it is +all over--our wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the whole +vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud, carrying with it the bright +raindrops of her hopes. + +I have never, by the way, mentioned to Tilly this matter of the +ferns. My first idea was to surprise her: as some day we strolled +through the Blackthorne garden he would point to the Kentucky +specimens flourishing there in honour of me. I have always observed +that any unexpected pleasure flushes her face with a new light, with +an effulgence of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment makes her +suddenly look old and rather ugly. + +This was the first reason. Now I do not intend to tell her at all. +Disappointment will bring out her demand to know why she is +disappointed--naturally. But how am I to tell on the threshold of +marriage that it is all due to a misunderstanding about a handful of +ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would never believe +me--naturally. She would infer that I was keeping back the real +reason, as being too serious to be told. + +Here, then, I am. But where am I? + + BEVERLEY (complete and final + disappearance of the Magic Skin). + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + +_June 13._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly about the ferns. Here I +come in: there must always be things that a man must refuse to tell a +woman. As soon as he tells her everything, she puts her foot on his +neck. I have always refused even to tell Polly some things, not that +they might not be told, but that Polly must not be told them; not for +the things' sake, but for Polly's good--and for a man's peaceful +control of his own life. + +For whatever else a woman marries in a man, one thing in him she must +marry: a rock. Times will come when she will storm and rage around +that rock; but the storms cannot last forever, and when they are +over, the rock will be there. By degrees there will be less storm. +Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take possession of my +whole life; to enter into all my affairs. I am to her a house, no +closet of which must remain locked. Thus there are certain closets +which she repeatedly tries to open. I can tell by her very +expression when she is going to try once more. Were they opened, she +would not find much; but it is much to be guarded that she shall not +open them. + +The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly as fact and too +important as principle. + +Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me anything about the ferns! +When I am with Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of the fields. + +Let me hear at once how the trouble turns out with Tilly. + +I must not close without making a profound obeisance to your new +acquaintances--the Chamberlains. + + BEN. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 15._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +Something extremely disagreeable has come up between Beverley and me. +He tells me we're not to go to England on our wedding journey as +anyone's guests: we travel as ordinary American tourists unknown to +all England. + +You can well understand what this means to me: you have watched all +along how I have pinched on my small income to get ready for this +beautiful summer. There has been a quarrel of some kind between Mr. +Blackthorne and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me the nature of +the quarrel. I insisted that it was my right to know and he insisted +that it is a man's affair with another man and not any woman's +business. Think of a woman marrying a man who lays it down as a law +that his affairs are none of her business! + +I gave Beverley to understand that our marriage was deferred for the +summer. He broke off the engagement. + +I had not meant to tell you anything, since I am coming to-night. I +have merely wished you to understand how truly anxious I am to see +you, even forgetting your last letter--no, not forgetting it, but +overlooking it. Remember you _then_ broke an appointment with me; +_this_ time keep your appointment--being loyal! The messenger will +wait for your reply, stating whether the way is clear for me to come. + + TILLY. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 15._ + +DEAR TILLY: + +Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me for to-night, but I have +written to excuse myself, and I shall be waiting most impatiently. +The coast will be clear and I hope the night will be. + +"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; "the horse-radish" and +"the beets" will be still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will shed +its usual ray on our heads. No breeze will disturb us, for there +will be no fresh air. We shall have the long evening to ourselves, +and you can tell me just how it is that you two, _not_ heavy Tilly, +_not_ heavy Beverley, sat on opposite sides of the room and declared +to each other: + +"I will not." + +"I will not." + +Since I have broken an engagement for you, be sure not to let any +later temptation elsewhere keep you away. + + POLLY. + + +[Later in the day] + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 13._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected final flare-up. +Yesterday he wrote, asking me to come up as soon as I was through +with business. I spent last night with him. + +We drew our chairs up to his opened window, turned out the lights, +got our cigars, and with our feet on the window-sills and our eyes on +the stars across the sky talked the long, quiet hours through. + +He talked, not I. Little could I have said to him about the woman +who has played fast and loose with him while using him for her +convenience. He made it known at the outset that not a word was to +be spoken against her. + +He just lay back in his big easy chair, with his feet on his +window-sill and his eyes on the stars, and built up his defence of +Tilly. All night he worked to repair wreckage. + +As the grey of morning crept over the city his work was well done: +Tilly was restored to more than she had ever been. Silence fell upon +him as he sat there with his eyes on the reddening east; and it may +be that he saw her--now about to leave him at last--as some white, +angelic shape growing fainter and fainter as it vanished in the flush +of a new day. + +You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. If there were any wings +anywhere around, it was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar with +an early start to bring down some other victim: the angel-aeroplane +out after more prey. I think we both know who the prey will be. + +The solemn influence of the night has rested on me. Were it +possible, I should feel even a higher respect for Beverley; there is +something in him that fills me with awe. He suffers. He could mend +Tilly but he cannot mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him. + +Their quarrel brings me with an aching heart closer to you. I must +come to-night. The messenger will wait for a word that I may. And a +sudden strange chill of desolation as to life's brittle ties +frightens me into sending you some roses. + +Your lover through many close and constant years, + + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + + +[Still later in the day] + + +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN + + _June 15._ + +DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY: + +An incredible thing has happened. Ben has just written that he +wishes to see me to-night. Will you, after all, wait until to-morrow +evening? My dear, I _have_ to ask this of you because there is +something very particular that Ben desires to talk to me about. + +_To-morrow night_, then, without fail, you and I! + + POLLY BOLES. + + + + + POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO + BEVERLEY SANDS + +[Late at night of the same day] + + _June 15._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +We have talked the matter over and send you our conjoined +congratulations that your engagement is broken off and your immediate +peril ended. But our immediate caution is that the end of the +betrothal will not necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the +tempter will at once turn away from you in pursuit of another man. +She will begin to weave her web about _him_. But if possible she +will still hold _you_ to that web by a single thread. Now, more than +ever, you will need to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible +to such a nature as yours. + +Not until obliged will she ever let you go completely. She hath a +devil--perhaps the most famous devil in all the world--the love +devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, are poor quitters. + + (Signed) + POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle. + BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles. + (His handwriting; her ideas + and language.) + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +This is the third time within the past several months that I have +requested you to let me have your bill for professional services. I +shall not suppose that you have relied upon my willingness to remain +under an obligation of this kind; nor do I like to think I have +counted for so little among your many patients that you have not +cared whether I paid you or not. If your motive has been kindness, I +must plainly tell you that I do not desire such kindness; and if +there has been no motive at all, but simply indifference, I must +remind you that this indifference means disrespect and that I resent +it. + +The things you have indirectly done for me in other ways--the songs, +the books and magazines, the flowers--these I accept with warm +responsive hands and a lavish mind. + +And with words not yet uttered, perhaps never to be uttered. + + Yours sincerely, + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June the Seventeenth._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +I have your bill and I make the due remittance with all due thanks. + +Your note pleasantly reassures me how greatly you are obliged that I +could put you in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins about the +purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. It was a pleasure; in fact, a +matter of some pride to do this, and I am delighted that they could +furnish you a horse you approve. + +While taking my customary walk in the Park yesterday morning, I had a +chance to see you and your new mount making acquaintance with one +another. I can pay you no higher compliment than to say that you +ride like a Kentuckian. + +Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a habit of mine to choose the +footways through the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn to them +by my childhood habit and girlish love of riding. Even to see from +day to day what one once had but no longer has is to keep alive hope +that one may some day have it again. + +You should some time go to Kentucky and ride there. My cousins will +look to that. + + Yours sincerely, + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June the Eighteenth._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +I was passing this morning and witnessed the accident, and I must +express my condolences for what might have been and congratulations +upon what was. + +You certainly fell well--not unlike a Kentuckian! + +I feel sure that my cousins could not have known the horse was +tricky. Any horse is tricky to the end of his days and the end of +his road. He may not show any tricks at home, but becomes tricky in +new places. (Can this be the reason that he is called the most human +of beasts?) + +You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly to my mind that of late +you have expressed growing interest in Kentucky. More than once, +also (since you have begun to visit me), you have asked me to tell +you about my life there. Frankly, this is because I am something of +a mystery and you would like to have the mystery cleared up. You +wish to find out, without letting me know you are finding out, +whether there is not something _wrong_ about me, some _risk_ for you +in visiting me. That is because you have never known anybody like +me. I frighten you because I am not afraid of people, not afraid of +life. You are used to people who are afraid, especially to women who +are afraid. You yourself are horribly afraid of nearly everything. + +Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, though it may not +greatly explain why I am without fear; still, the land and the people +might mean something; they ought to mean much. + +I was born of not very poor and immensely respectable parents in a +poor and not very respectable county of Kentucky. The first thing I +remember about life, my first social consciousness, was the discovery +that I was entangled in a series of sisters: there were six of us. I +was as nearly as possible at the middle of the procession--with three +older and two younger, so that I was crowded both by what was before +and by what was behind. I early learned to fight for the +present--against both the past and the future--learned to seize what +I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by +hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's +insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the +world. + +Why my mother bore only daughters will have to be referred to the new +science which takes as its field the forces and the mysteries that +are sovereign between the nuptials and the cradle. But the reason, +as openly laughed about in the family when the family grew old enough +to laugh, as laughed about in the neighbourhood, was this: + +Even before marriage my father and my mother had waged a violent +discussion about woman's suffrage. You may not know that in Kentucky +from the first the cause of female suffrage has been upheld by a +strong minority of strong women, a true pioneer movement toward the +nation's future now near. It seems that my father, who was a +brilliant lawyer, always browbeat my mother in argument, overwhelmed +her, crushed her. Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly +rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked deep into the coals. +But regularly when the time came she replied to all his arguments by +presenting him with another suffragette! Throughout her life she +declined even to bear him a son to continue the argument! Her six +daughters--she would gladly have had twelve if she could--were her +triumphant squad for the armies of the great rebellion. + +Does this help to explain me to you? + +What next I relate about my early life is something that you perhaps +have never given a thought to--children's pets and playthings: it +explains a great deal. Have you ever thought of a vital difference +between country children and town children? Country children more +quickly throw away their dolls, if they have them, and attach their +sympathies to living objects. A child's love of a doll is at best a +sham: a little master-drama of the child's imagination trying to fill +two roles--its own and the role of something which cannot respond. +But a child's love of a living creature, which it chooses as the +object of its love and play and protection, is stimulating, healthful +and kicking with reality: because it is vitalised by reciprocity in +the playmate, now affectionate and now hostile, but always +representing something intensely alive--which is the whole main thing. + +We are just beginning to find out that the dramas of childhood are +the playgrounds of life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the +others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll without any return, +will cling to a rag husband without any return. A child's loyalty to +an automaton prepares a woman for endurance of an automaton. Dolls +have been the undoing and the death of many wives. + +A multitude of dolls would have been needed to supply the six +destructive little girls of my mother's household. We soon broke our +china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one another's. For whatever +reason, all lifeless pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the +house and the little scattering herd of us turned our restless and +insatiate natures loose upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted +nearly everything on the farm. My father was a director of the +County Fair, and I remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we +roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize exhibition of our +favourites that year. They comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a +calf, a lamb and a puppy. + +Sooner or later our living playthings outgrew us or died or were sold +or made their sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we disconsolate? +Not a bit. Did we go down to the branch and gather there under an +old weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our hearts thrived on death +and destruction, annihilation released us from old ties, change gave +us another chance, and we provided substitutes and continued our +devotion. + +And I think this explains a good deal. And these two experiences of +my childhood, taken together, explain me better than anything else I +know. Competition first taught me to seize what I wanted before +anyone else could seize it. Natural changes next taught me to be +prepared at any moment to give that up without vain regret and to +seize something else. Thus I seemed to learn life's lesson as I +learned to walk: that what you love will not last long, and that long +love is possible only when you love often. + +So many women know this; how few admit it! + + Sincerely yours, + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June the Nineteenth._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD + +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: + +You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go away for the summer: first to +some friends, then further away to other friends, then still further +away to other friends: a summer pageant of brilliant changes. + +There is no reason why I should write to you. Your stateroom will be +filled with flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; friends +will wave to you from the pier. My letter may be lost among the +others, but at least it will have been written, and writing it is its +pleasure to me. + +I was to go to England this summer, was to go as a bride. A few +nights since I decided not to go because I did not approve of the +bridegroom. + +We marvel at life's coincidences: one evening, not long ago, while +speaking of your expected summer in England, you mentioned that you +planned to make a pilgrimage to see Edward Blackthorne. You were to +join some American friends over there and take them with you. That +is the coincidence: _I_ was to visit the Blackthornes this very +summer, not as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited guest--with the +groom whom I have rejected. + +It is like scattering words before the obvious to say that I wish you +a pleasant summer. Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, some +night on the passage across, lean far over and look down at the +phosphorescent couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of the deep, +remember that the Venus of modern life is the American woman. + +Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing else, brings you home--see +you not at all or seldom or often? + +At least this will remind you that I merely say _au revoir_. + +Adrift for the summer rather than be an unwilling bride. + + TILLY SNOWDEN. + +_June twenty-first._ + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 21._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +Since life separated us the other night I have not heard from you. I +have not expected a letter, nor do you expect one from me. But I am +going away to-morrow for the summer and my heart has a few words for +you which must be spoken. + +It was not disappointment about the summer in England, not even your +refusal to explain why you disappointed me, that held the main reason +of my drawing back. I am in the mood to-night to tell you some +things very frankly: + +Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to be married and twice as the +wedding drew near I drew away from it. It is an old, old feeling of +mine, though I am so young, that if married I should not long be +happy. Of course I should be happy for a while. But _afterwards_! +The interminable, intolerable _afterwards_! The same person year in +and year out--I should be stifled. Each of the men to whom I was +engaged had given me before marriage all that he had to give: the +rest I did not care for; after marriage with either I foresaw only +staleness, his limitations, monotony. + +Believe this, then: there are things in you that I cling to, other +things in you that do not draw me at all. And I cling more to life +than to you, more than to any one person. How can any one person +ever be all to me, all that I am meant for, and _I will live_! + +Why should we women be forced to spend our lives beside the first +spring where one happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! Why be +doomed to die in old age at the same spring! With all my soul I +believe that the world which has slowly thrown off so many tyrannies +is about to throw off other tyrannies. It has been so harsh toward +happiness, so compassionate toward misery and wrong. Yet happiness +is life's finest victory: for ages we have been trying to defeat our +one best victory--our natural happiness! + +A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning--then to go thirsty for +the rest of the long, hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet at +spring after spring--there are so many springs! And thirst is so +eager for them! + +Come to see me in the autumn. For I will not, cannot, give you up. +And when you come, do not seek to renew the engagement. Let that go +whither it has gone. But come to see me. + +For I love you. + + TILLY. + + + + +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES + + _June 21._ + +POLLY BOLES: + +This is good-bye to you for the summer and, better than that, it is +good-bye to you for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth that +we have long hated each other and have used our acquaintanceship and +our letters to express our hatred? How could there ever have been +any friendship between you and me? + +Let me tell you of the detestable little signs that I have noticed in +you for years. Are you aware that all the time you have occupied +your apartment, you have never changed the arrangement of your +furniture? As soon as your guests are gone, you push every chair +where it was before. For years your one seat has been the same end +of the same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted your disquietude +if any guest happened to sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere. +For years you have worn the same breast-pin, though you have several. +The idea of your being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride +yourself in such externals of faithfulness. + +You soul of perfidy! + +I leave you undisturbed to innumerable appointments with Ben, and +with the same particular something to talk about, falsest woman I +have ever known. + +Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the fact that you are secretly +receiving almost constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will you tell +him? _Or shall I?_ + + TILLY SNOWDEN. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 23rd._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I am worried. + +I begin to feel doubtful as to what course I should pursue with Dr. +Claude Mullen. Of late he has been coming too often. He has been +writing to me too often. He appears to be losing control of himself. +Things cannot go on as they are and they must not get worse. What I +could not foresee is his determination to hold _me_ responsible for +his being in love with me! He insists that _I_ encouraged him and am +now unfair--_me_ unfair! Of course I have _never_ encouraged his +visits; out of simple goodness of heart I have _tolerated_ them. Now +the reward of my _kindness_ is that he holds me responsible and +guilty. He is trying, in other words, to take advantage of my +_sympathy_ for him. I _do_ feel sorry for him! + +I have not been cruel enough to dismiss him. His last letter is +enclosed: it will give you some idea----! + +Can you advise me what to do? I have always relied upon _your_ +judgment in everything. + + Faithfully yours, + POLLY. + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + +[Penciled in Court Room] + + _June 24th._ + +DEAR POLLY: + +Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: tell him to take a cab and +drive straight to the nearest institution for the weak-minded, engage +a room, lock himself in and pray God to give him some sense. Tell +him to stay secluded there until that prayer is answered. The +Almighty himself couldn't answer his prayer until after his death, +and by that time he'd be out of the way anyhow and you wouldn't mind. + +I return his funeral oration unread, since I did not wish to attract +attention to myself as moved to tears in open court. + + BEN. + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + +[Evening of the same day] + +POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN: + +This is a night I have long waited for and worked for. + +You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to +set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for +me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You +know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for +two--and for more than two--for our little ones. When I married you, +I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats. + +But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of +this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength. +I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and +I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your +lover. + +Name the day when I can be both. + +Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my +own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day +of next Spring, then--so far away but nearer than any other Spring +during these impatient years. + +Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover, + + BEN DOOLITTLE. + +Roses to you. + + + + +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _June 24._ + +Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN! + +My heart answers you. It leaps forward to the day. I have set the +day in my heart and sealed it on my lips. Come and break that seal. +To-night I shall tear two of the rosebuds apart and mingle their +petals on my pillow. + + POLLY. + + + + +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES + +_June 26._ + +It occurs to me that our engagement might furnish you the means of +getting rid of your prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to come +to see you: tell him you have some joyful news that must be imparted +at once. When he arrives announce to him that you have named the day +of your marriage to me. To _me_, tell him! Then let him take +himself off. You say he complains that all this is getting on his +nerves. Anything that could sit on his nerves would be a mighty +small animal. + + BEN. + + + + +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 devoted + POLLY. + + + + +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: + +"The _Scolopendium vulgare_ put 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: + +"The _Adiantum nigrum_ put 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 that _he_ did 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, mon_ French!) + +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 letters +_were_ on 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 of _my_ head: 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. I _will_ add, 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. + + + + +PART THIRD + + + +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 I _was_ in 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 as _my_ secretary! 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 be _your_ secretary, 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 you _can't_ +imagine, _can't_ imagine, _can't_ imagine! + + 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 their _backs_. If history speaks truly, quite +a few notorious ones have come to grief--but _you_ will 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 that _his_ duty 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. + +I have observed that there is danger in many people causing any one +person to think himself a superior person unless he _is_ a superior +person. If he really is what is thought of him, no harm is done him. +But if he is widely regarded a superior person and is not a superior +person, harm may result to him. For whenever any person is praised +beyond his deserts, he is not lifted up by such praise any more than +the stature of a man is increased by thickening the heels of his +shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to be lowered by over-praise. +For, prodded by adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary image and +assume, as far as he can, the guise of some inferior creature which +more glaringly expresses what he is--as the peacock, the owl, the +porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, the ass. I have seen all these. I +have seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, speechless owl +novelist, the fretful porcupine novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, +the ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred ass novelist. +And many others. + +You may begin to wonder why I am led into these reflections in this +letter. The reason is, I have been wondering into what kind of +inferior creature your fame--your over-praise--has lowered _you_. +Frankly, I perfectly know; I will not name the animal. But I feel +sure that he is a highly offensive small beast. + +If you feel disposed to read further, I shall explain. + +I have in my legal possession three letters of yours. They were +written to a young gentleman whom I have known now for a good many +years, whose character I know about as well as any one man can know +another's, and for whom increasing knowledge has always led me to +feel increasing respect. The young man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You +may now realise what I am coming to. + +The first of these letters of yours reveals you as a stranger seeking +the acquaintance of Mr. Sands--to a certain limit: you asked of him a +courtesy and you offered courtesies in exchange. That is common +enough and natural, and fair, and human. But what I have noticed is +your doing this with the air of the superior person. Mr. Sands, +being a novelist, is of course a superior person. Therefore, you +felt called upon to introduce yourself to him as a _more_ superior +person. That is, you condescended to be gracious. You made it a +virtue in you to ask a favour of him. You expected him to be +delighted that you allowed him to serve you. + +In the second letter you go further. He wafted some incense toward +you and you got on your knees to this incense. You get up and offer +him more courtesies--all courtesies. Because he praised you, you +even wish him to visit you. + +Now the third letter. The favour you asked of Mr. Sands was that he +send you some ferns. By no fault of his except too much confidence +in the agents he employed (he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted +you), by no other fault of his the ferns were not sent. You waited, +time passed, you grew impatient, you grew suspicious of Mr. Sands, +you felt slighted, you became piqued in your vanity, wounded in your +self-love, you became resentful, you became furious, you became +revengeful, you became abusive. You told him that he had never meant +to keep his word, that you had kicked his books out of your library, +that he might profitably study the moral sensitiveness of a head of +cabbage. + +During the summer American tourists visited you--pilgrims of your +fame. You took advantage of their visit to promulgate mysteriously +your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by one explicit word, you +understand. Your exalted imagination merely lied on him, and you +entrusted to other imaginations the duty of scattering broadcast your +noble lie. They did this--some of them happening not to be friends +of Mr. Sands--and as a result of the false light you threw upon his +character, he now in the minds of many persons rests under a cloud. +And that cloud is never going to be dispelled. + +Enclosed you will please find copies of these three letters of yours; +would you mind reading them over? And you will find also a packet of +letters which will enable you to understand why the ferns never +reached you and the whole entanglement of the case. And finally, you +will find enclosed a brief with which, were I to appear in Court +against you, as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up to public +view as what you are. + +I shall merely add that I have often met you in the courtroom as the +kind of criminal who believes without evidence and who distrusts +without reason; who is, therefore, ready to blast a character upon +suspicion. If he dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence +against him, he draws upon the dark traits of his own nature to +furnish the evidence. + +I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands. + +I am, as to you, + + Merely, + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. + + + + +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE + + _King Alfred's Wood, + Warwickshire, England, + June 21, 1912._ + + Benjamin Doolittle, + 150 Wall Street, + New York City. + +MY DEAR SIR: + +You state in your letter, which I have just laid down, that you are a +stranger to me. There is no conceivable reason why I should wish to +offer you the slightest rudeness--even that of crossing your +word--yet may I say, that I know you perfectly? If you had +unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, you might have +found, scattered here and there, everything that you have said in +your letter, and almost in your very words. That is, I have two or +three times drawn your portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus +while you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel bound to say +that you are an old acquaintance in nature. + +You cannot for a moment imagine--however, you despise imagination and +I withdraw the offensive word--you cannot for a moment suppose that I +can have any motive in being discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go +on to say, but only with your permission, that the first time I +attempted to sketch you, was in a very early piece of work; I was a +youthful novelist, at the outset of my career. I projected a story +entitled: "_The Married Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens._" I +feel bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly remind me of the +_Sal Blivvens_ of my story. In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was +this: as twenty-one human shillings he never made an exact human +guinea--his shillings ran a few pence over, or they fell a few pence +short. That is, Ned never did just enough of anything, or said just +enough, but either too much or too little to suit _Sal_. He never +had just one idea about any one thing, but two or three ideas; he +never felt in just one way about any one thing, but had mixed +feelings, a variety of feelings. He was not a yard measure or a pint +measure or a pound measure; he overflowed or he didn't fill, and any +one thing in him always ran into other things in him. + +Being a young novelist I was not satisfied to offer _Sal_ to the +world on her own account, but I must try to make her more credible +and formidable by following her into the next generation, and giving +her a son who inherited her traits. Thus I had _Tommy Blivvens_. +When Tommy was old enough to receive his first allowance of Christmas +pudding, he proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He picked out +all the raisins and made a little pile of them. And made a little +separate pile of the currants, and another pile of the almonds, and +another of the citron, or of whatever else there was to separate. +Then in profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, as a +philosopher of the sure. + +Thus--and I insist I mean no disrespect--your letter does revive for +me a little innocent laughter at my early literary vision of a human +baggage--friend of my youthful days and artistic enthusiasm--_Sal +Blivvens_. I arranged that when _Ned_ died, his neighbours all felt +sorry and wished him a green turf for his grave. _Sal_, I felt sure, +survived him as one who all her life walks past every human heart and +enters none--being always dead-sure, always dead-right; for the human +heart rejects perfection in any human being. + +I recognise you as belonging to the large tough family of the human +cocksures. _Sal Blivvens_ belonged to it--dead-sure, dead-right, +every time. We have many of the cocksures in England, you must have +many of them in the United States. The cocksures are people who have +no dim borderland around their minds, no twilight between day and +darkness. They see everything as they see a highly coloured rug on a +well-lighted floor. There is either rug or no rug, either floor or +no floor. No part of the floor could possibly be rug and no part of +the rug could possibly be floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the +natural prosecuting attorney of human nature's natural misgivings and +wiser doubts and nobler errors. How the American cocksures of their +day despised the man Washington, who often prayed for guidance; with +what contempt they blasted the character of your Abraham Lincoln, +whose patient soul inhabited the border of a divine disquietude and +whose public life was the patient study of hesitation. + +I have taken notice of the peculiarly American character of your +cocksureness: it magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile, +to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the ton. Do you happen +to know Michael Angelo's _Moses_? I always think of an American +cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's _Moses_--colossal +law-giver, a hyper-stupendous fellow. And I have often thought that +a regiment of American cocksures would be the most terrific spectacle +on a battlefield that the rest of the human race could ever face. +Just now it has occurred to me that it was your great Emerson who +spoke best on the weakness of the superlative--the cocksure is the +human superlative. + +As to your letter: You declare you know nothing about novels, but +your arraignment of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure that +you are perfectly right about me. Your arraignment of me is exact. +You are conscious of no more moral perturbation as to justice than +exists in a monkey wrench. But that is the nature of the +cocksure--his conclusions have to him the validity of a hardware +store. + +This, however, is nothing. I clear it away in order to tell you that +I am filled with admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and of +the savage ferocity with which you attack me as his enemy. That +makes you a friend worth having, and I wish you were to be numbered +among mine; there are none too many such in this world. Next, I wish +to assure you that I have studied your brief against me and confess +that you have made out the case. I fell into a grave mistake, I +wronged your friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it was a +poor, sorry, shabby business. I am about to write to Mr. Sands. If +he is what you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive +me--though you never may. I shall ask him, as I could not have asked +him before, whether he will not come to visit me. My house, my +hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, shall be his. I +shall take every step possible to undo what I thoughtlessly, +impulsively did. I shall write to the President of his Club. + +One exception is filed to a specification in your brief: no such +things took place in my garden upon the visit of the American +tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate any mysterious +hostility to Mr. Sands. You tell me that among those tourists were +persons hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile persons who +misinterpreted and exaggerated whatever took place. You knew these +persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then you accepted their +testimony as true--being a cocksure. + +A final word to you. Your whole character and happiness rests upon +the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the +fellow-beings whom you know. Those _you_ doubt ought to be doubted +and those _you_ trust ought to be trusted! Now I have travelled far +enough on life's road to have passed its many human figures--perhaps +all the human types that straggle along it in their many ways. No +figures on that road have been more noticeable to me than here and +there a man in whom I have discerned a broken cocksure. + +You say you like biography: do you like to read the Life of Robert +Burns? And I wonder whether these words of his have ever guided you +in your outlook upon life: + + "_Then gently scan your brother man_ + * * * * * + _To step aside is human._" + + +I thank you again. I wish you well. And I hope that no experience, +striking at you out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave you one +of those noticeable men--a broken cocksure. + +Your deeply obliged and very grateful, + + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + + + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _June 30, 1912._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +About a month ago I took it upon myself to write the one letter that +had long been raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. And I sent +him all the fern letters. And then I drew up the whole case and +prosecuted him as your lawyer. + +Of course I meant my letter to be an infernal machine that would blow +him to pieces. He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and inserted +a crank, and turned it into a music-box to grind out his praises. + +And then the kind of music he ground out for me. + +All day I have been ashamed to stand up and I've been ashamed to sit +down. He told me that my letter reminded him of a character in his +first novel--a woman called _Sal Blivvens_. ME--_Sal Blivvens!_ + +But of what use is it for us poor, common-clay, rough, ordinary men +who have no imagination--of what use is it for us to attack you +superior fellows who have it, have imagination? You are the Russians +of the human mind, and when attacked on your frontiers, you merely +retreat into a vast, unknown, uninvadable country. The further you +retire toward the interior of your mysterious kingdom, the nearer you +seem to approach the fortresses of your strength. + +I am wiser--if no better. If ever again I feel like attacking any +stranger with a letter, I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether +he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. If he is a genius, I am +going to let him alone. + +Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to see your man Blackthorne +now. Ask him some time whether a short visit from Benjamin Doolittle +could be arranged on any terms of international agreement. + +Now for something on my level of ordinary life! A day or two ago I +was waiting in front of the residence of one of my uptown clients, a +few doors from the residence of your friend Dr. Marigold. While I +waited, he came out on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I drove +past, I leaned far out and made them a magnificent sweeping bow: one +can afford to be forgiving and magnanimous after he settled things to +his satisfaction. They did not return the bow but exchanged quiet +smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. They seemed like saying: +he bows best who bows last. + +You are the best thing in New York to me since Polly went away. +Without you both it would come near to being one vast solitude. + + BEN (alias _Sal Blivvens_). + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE + + _July 1, 1912._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I wrote you this morning upon receipt of your letter telling me of +your own terrific letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless +arraignment of him. Let me say again that I wish to pour out my +gratitude to you for your motives and also, well, also my regret at +your action. Somehow I have been reminded of Voltaire's saying: he +had a brother who was such a fool that he started out to be perfect; +as a consequence the world knows nothing of Voltaire's brother: it +knows very well Voltaire with his faults. + +The mail of yesterday which brought you Mr. Blackthorne's reply to +your arraignment brought me also a letter: he must have written to us +both instantly. His letter is the only one that I cannot send you; +you would not desire to read it. You are too big and generous, too +warmly human, too exuberantly vital, to care to lend ear to a great +man's chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. You are not +Cassius to carp at Caesar. + +Now this afternoon a second letter comes from Mr. Blackthorne and +that I enclose: it will do you good to read it--it is not a black +passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight. + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne] + +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: + +I follow up my letter of yesterday with the unexpected tidings of +to-day. I am willing to believe that these will interest you as +associated with your coming visit. + +Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final natal eclipse, has +bowled him over and left him darkened for good. He can trouble us no +more, but will now do his part as mould for the rose of York and the +rose of Lancaster. He will help to make a mound for some other +Englishman's ferns. When you come--and I know you will come--we +shall drink a cup of tea in the garden to his peaceful memory--and to +his troubled memory for Latin. + +I am now waiting for you. Come, out of your younger world and with +your youth to an older world and to an older man. And let each of us +find in our meeting some presage of an alliance which ought to grow +always closer in the literatures of the two nations. Their +literatures hold their ideals; and if their ideals touch and mingle, +then nothing practical can long keep them far apart. If two oak +trees reach one another with their branches, they must meet in their +roots; for the branches are aerial roots and the roots are +underground branches. + +Come. In the eagerness of my letter of yesterday to put myself not +in the right but less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the very +matter with which the right and the wrong originated. + +_Will you, after all, send the ferns?_ + +The whole garden waits for them; a white light falls on the vacant +spot; a white light falls on your books in my library; a white light +falls on you, + +I wait for you, both hands outstretched. + + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. + + +(Note penciled on the margin of the letter by Beverley Sands to Ben +Doolittle: "You will see that I am back where the whole thing +started; I have to begin all over again with the ferns. And now the +florists will be after me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow +of my bones, and my bones by this time are a wireless station on this +subject.") + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS + +DEAR SIR: + +We take pleasure in enclosing our new catalogue for the coming +autumn, and should be pleased to receive any further commissions for +the European trade. + +We repeat that we have no connection whatever with any house doing +business in the city under the name of Botany. + + Respectfully yours, + JUDD & JUDD, + Per Q. + + + + +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Louisville, Kentucky, + July 4th, 1912._ + + +DEAR SIR: + +Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory for the approaching +autumn season, in view of having been honoured upon a previous +occasion with your flattering patronage, and reasoning that our past +transactions have been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves of +this opportunity of reviving the conjunction heretofore existing +between us as most gratifying and thank you sincerely for past +favours. We hope to continue our pleasant relations and desire to +say that if you should contemplate arranging for the shipments of +plants of any description, we could afford you surprised satisfaction. + + Respectfully yours, + PHILLIPS & FAULDS. + + + + +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Dunkirk, Tennessee, + July 6, 1912._ + +DEAR SIR: + +We are prepared to supply you with anything you need. Could ship +ferns to any country in Europe, having done so for the late Noah +Chamberlin, the well-known florist just across the State line, who +was a customer of ours. + +old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet paid, had to drop them +entirely. + + Very truly yours, + BURNS & BRUCE. + +If you need any forest trees, we could supply you with all the forest +trees you want, plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty of +walnuts, etc. + + + + +ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _Seminole, North Carolina, + July 7th, 1912._ + +DEAR SIR: + +I have lately enlarged my business and will be able to handle any +orders you may give me. The orders which Miss Clara Louise +Chamberlain said you were to send have not yet turned up. I write to +you, because I have heard about you a great deal through Miss Clara +Louise, since her return from her visit to New York. She succeeded +in getting two or three donations of books for our library, and they +have now given her a place there. I was sorry to part with Miss +Clara Louise, but I had just married, and after the first few weeks I +expected my wife to become my assistant. I am not saying anything +against Miss Clara Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet violets, +especially on a Sunday, having the run of the flowers. She and Alice +didn't get along very well together, and I did have a bad set-back +with my violets while she was here. + +Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make a speciality of seedlins. +If you want any seedlins, will you call on me? I am young and just +married and anxious to please, and I wish you would call on me when +you want anything green. Nothing dried. + + Yours respectfully, + ANDY PETERS. + + + + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + + _July 7th, 1912._ + +DEAR BEVERLEY: + +It makes me a little sad to write. I suppose you saw in this +morning's paper the announcement of Tilly's marriage next week to Dr. +Marigold. Nevertheless--congratulations! You have lost years of +youth and happiness with some lovely woman on account of your +dalliance with her. + +Now at last, you will let her alone, and you will soon find--Nature +will quickly drive you to find--the one you deserve to marry. + +It looks selfish at such a moment to set my happiness over against +your unhappiness, but I've just had news, that at last, after +lingering so long and a little mysteriously in Louisville, Polly is +coming. Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. We long ago +decided to have no wedding. All that we have long wished is to marry +one another. Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, Polly is +another cocksure. We shall jog along as a perfectly satisfied couple +of cocksures on the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly will never +find out that she married _Sal Blivvens_.) + +Dear fellow, truest of comrades among men, it is inevitable that I +reluctantly leave you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as the +friend who marries. + +One awful thought freezes me to my chair this hot July day. You have +never said a word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, since the day +of my hypothetical charge to the jury. Can it be possible that you +followed her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? I have often +warned you against Tilly, as inconstant. But, my dear fellow, +remember there is a worse extreme than in inconstancy--Clara Louise +would be sealing wax. You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of +sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in conversation, she'd seal +you the tighter. + +Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. + + BEN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + + _July 8._ + +DEAR BEN: + +I saw the announcement in the morning paper about Tilly. + +It wouldn't be worth while to write how I feel. + +It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, homeless in New York. And +I saw her. As to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, that is +solely a question of my royalties. Royalties are human gratitude; +why should not the dews of gratitude fall on one so parched? +Besides, I don't owe you anything, gentleman. + +Yes, I feel you're going--you're passing on to Polly. I append a +trifle which explains itself, and am, making the best of everything, +the same + + BEVERLEY SANDS. + + + + + _A Meditation in Verse_ + (_Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing his + favourite weakness_) + + _How can I mind the law's delay, + Or what a jury thinks it knows, + Or what some fool of a judge may say? + Polly comes with the wedding clothes._ + + _Time, who cheated me so long, + Kept me waiting mid life's snows, + I forgive and forget your wrong: + Polly comes with the wedding clothes._ + + _Winter's lonely sky is gone, + July blazes with the rose, + All the world looks smiling on + At Polly in her wedding clothes._ + + + + +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS + +[A hurried letter by messenger] + + _July 10, 1912._ + +Polly reached New York two days ago. I went up that night. She had +gone out--alone. She did not return that night. I found this out +when I went up yesterday morning and asked for her. She has not been +there since she left. They know nothing about her. I have +telegraphed Louisville. They have sent me no word. Come down at +once. + +BEN. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE + +[Hurried letter by messenger] + + _July 10, 1912._ + +DEAR BEN: + +Is anything wrong about Polly? + +I met her on the street yesterday. She tried to pass without +speaking. I called to her but she walked on. I called again and she +turned, hesitatingly, then came back very slowly to meet me half-way. +You know how composed her manner always is. But she could not +control her emotion: she was deeply, visibly troubled. Strange as it +may seem, while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, I could but +notice a trifle, as at such moments one often does: she was +beautifully dressed: a new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over +her as for some impending ceremony. We have always thought of Polly +as one of the women who are above dress. Such disregard was in a way +a verification of her character, the adornment of her sincerity. Now +she was beautifully dressed. + +"But what is the meaning of all this?" I asked, frankly mystified. + +Something in her manner checked the question, forced back my words. + +"You will hear," she said, with quivering lips. She looked me +searchingly all over the face as for the sake of dear old times now +ended. Then she turned off abruptly. I watched her in sheer +amazement till she disappeared. + +I have been waiting to hear from you, but cannot wait any longer. +What does it mean? Why don't you tell me? + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE + + _July 11._ + +I have with incredible eyes this instant read this cutting from the +morning paper: + +Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the City Hall in Jersey City to +Dr. Claude Mullen. + +She must have been on her way when I saw her. + +I have read the announcement without being able to believe it--with +some kind of death in life at my heart. + +Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am coming at once. + + BEVERLEY. + + + + +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS + + _July 18._ + +The ferns have had their ironic way with us and have wrought out +their bitter comedy to its end. The little group of us who were the +unsuspecting players are henceforth scattered, to come together in +the human playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the curtain waits +to descend, and I, who innocently brought the drama on, am left the +solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, depart to go my +separate road. + +This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful the morning is for her! +The whole sky is one exquisite blue--no sign of any storm-plan far or +near. The July air blows as cool as early May. I sit at my window +writing and it flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances of the +green park below my window enter my room and encircle me like living +human tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, Tilly is dressing for +her wedding, and I--God knows why--am thinking of old-time Kentucky +gardens in one of which she played as a child. Tilly, a little girl +romping in her mother's garden--Tilly before she was old enough to +know anything of the world--anything of love--now, as she dresses for +her wedding--I cannot shut out that vision of early purity. + +Yesterday a note came from her. I had had no word since the day I +openly ridiculed the man she is to marry. But yesterday she sent me +this message: + +"Come to-night and say good-bye." + +She was not in her rooms to greet me. I waited. Moments passed, +long moments of intense expectancy. She did not enter. I fixed my +eyes on her door. Once I saw it pushed open a little way, then +closed. Again it was opened and again it was held as though for lack +of will or through quickly changing impulses. Then it was opened and +she entered and came toward me, not looking at me, but with her face +turned aside. She advanced a few paces and with some swift, +imperious rebellion, she turned and passed out of the room and then +came quickly back. She had caught up her bridal veil. She held the +wreath in her hand and as she approached me, I know not with what +sudden emotion she threw a corner of the veil over her head and face +and shoulders. And she stood before me with I know not what struggle +tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper she said: + +"Lift my veil." + +I lifted her veil and laid it back over her forehead. She closed her +eyes as tears welled out of them. + +"Kiss me," she said. + +I would have taken her in my arms as mine at that moment for all +time, but she stepped back and turned away, fading from me rather +than walking, with her veil pressed like a handkerchief to her eyes. +The door closed on her. + +I waited. She did not come again. + +Now she is dressing for the marriage ceremony. A friend gives her a +house wedding. The company of guests will be restricted, everything +will be exquisite, there will be youth and beauty and distinction. +There will be no love. She marries as one who steps through a +beautiful arch further along one's path. + +Whither that path leads, I do not know; from what may lie at the end +of it I turn away and shudder. + +My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning is of one exiled from +happiness because nature withheld from her the one thing needed to +make her all but perfect: that needful thing was just a little more +constancy. It is her doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a +brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to her lips it drops from +her hand. Forever her hand stretched out toward joy and forever joy +shattered at her feet. + +American scientists have lately discovered or seem about to discover, +some new fact in Nature--the butterfly migrates. What we have +thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant of a single summer in a +single zone follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells in a +summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the psyche of life's fields, +then she seeks perpetual summer as the law of her own being. All our +lives move along old, old paths. There is no new path for any of us. +If Tilly's fate is the butterfly path, who can judge her harshly? +Not I. + +They sail away at once on their wedding journey. He has wealth and +social influence of the fashionable sort which overflows into the +social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: the papers found space for +their plans of travel: England and Scotland, France and Switzerland, +Austria and Germany, Bohemia and Poland, Russia, Italy and +Sicily--home. The great world-path of the human butterfly, seeking +summer with insatiate quest. + +Home to his practice with that still fluttering psyche! And then the +path--the domestic path--stretching straight onward across the fields +of life--what of his psyche then? Will she fold her wings on a +bed-post--year after year slowly opening and unfolding those +brilliant wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?... + +I cannot write of human life unless I can forgive life. How forgive +unless I can understand? I have wrought with all that is within me +to understand Polly--her treachery up to the last moment, her +betrayal of Ben's devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly, +doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems built upon one trait, +one virtue--loyalty. She was disloyal to Ben because she had come to +believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign excellence. There were +things in his life which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps +every day there were mere trifles which he did not share with +her--why should he? On a certain memorable morning she discovered +that for years he had been keeping from her some affairs of mine: +that was his loyalty to me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her. + +I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I think that was the rift +in the lute. Still a man must not surrender himself wholly into the +keeping of the woman he loves; let him, and he becomes anything in +her life but a man. + +Meantime Polly found near by another suitor who offered her all he +was--what little there was of him--one of those man-climbers who must +run over the sheltering wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified +in Polly her one passion for marrying--that she should possess a pet. +Now she possesses one, owns him, can turn him round and round, can +turn him inside out, can see all there is of him as she sees her +pocket-handkerchief, her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any little +familiar piece of property which she can become more and more +attached to as the years go by for the reason that it will never +surprise her, never puzzle her, never change except by wearing out. + +This will be the end of the friendship between Drs. Marigold and +Mullen: their wives will see to that. So much the better: scattered +impostors do least harm. + +I have struggled to understand the mystery of her choice as to how +she should be married. Surely marriage, in the existence of any one, +is the hour when romance buds on the most prosaic stalk. It budded +for Polly and she eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her +heavy mind without the wings of imagination. She got as far as the +nearest City Hall. Instead of a minister she chose to be married by +a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been unjust, she would be married by +the figure of Justice as a penal ceremony executed over Ben: she +mailed him a paper and left him to understand that she had fled from +him to Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry! + +A line in an evening paper lets me know that she and the Doctor have +gone for their honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly first came North +to live and the first summer came round she decided to spend it at +Ocean Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would get a grove and +an ocean with one railway ticket, without having to change; she could +settle in a grove with an ocean and in an ocean with a grove. What +her disappointment was I do not know, but every summer she has gone +back to Ocean Grove--the Franklin Flats by the sea.... + +Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had spent part of every evening +with him since Polly's marriage--silent, empty evenings--a quiet, +stunned man. Confidence in himself blasted out of him, confidence in +human nature, in the world. With no imagination in him to deal with +the reasons of Polly's desertion--just a passive acceptance of it as +a wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball. + +Her name was never called. A stunned, silent man. Clear, joyous +steady light in his eyes gone--an uncertain look in them. Strangest +of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And courtesy for bluff +warm confidence--courtesy as of one who stumblingly reflects that he +must begin to be careful with everybody. + +His active nature meantime kept on. Life swept him forward--nature +did--whether he would or not. I went down late one evening. +Evidently he had been working in his room all day; the things Polly +must have sent him during all those years were gone. He had on new +slippers, a fresh robe, taking the place of the slippers and the robe +she had made for him. Often I have seen him tuck the robe in about +his neck as a man might reach for the arms of a woman to draw them +about his throat as she leans over him from behind. + +During our talk that evening he began strangely to speak of things +that had taken place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, on the +farm; did I remember this in Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind +had gone back to old certainties. It was like his walking away from +present ruins toward things still unharmed--never to be harmed. + +Early next morning he surprised me by coming up, dressed for travel, +holding a grip. + +"I am going to Kentucky," he said. + +I went to the train with him. His reserve deepened on the way; if he +had plans, he did not share them with me. + +What I make out of it is that he will come back married. No +engagement this time, no waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage +will sadly bring him. I think she will be young--this time. But she +will be, as nearly as possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman +now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted man for life. He +thinks he will be getting some one to take Polly's place. In reality +it will be his second attempt to marry Polly. + +I am bidding farewell the little group of us. Some one else will +have to write of me. How can I write of myself? This I will say: +that I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to leave a little of +his wool on every bramble. + +I sail next week for England to make my visit to Mr. Blackthorne--at +last. Another letter has come from him. He has thrown himself into +the generous work of seeing that my visit to him shall make me known. +He tells me there will be a house party, a week-end; some of the +great critics will be there, some writers. "You must be found out in +England widely and at once," he writes. + +My heart swells as one who feels himself climbing toward a height. +There is kindled in me that strangest of all the flames that burn in +the human heart, the shining thought that my life is destined to be +more than mine, that my work will make its way into other minds and +mingle with the better, happier impulses of other lives. + +The ironic ferns have had their way with us. But after all has it +not been for the best? Have they not even in their irony been the +emblems of fidelity? + +They have found us out, they have played upon our weaknesses, they +have exaggerated our virtues until these became vices, they have +separated us and set us going our diverging ways. + +But while we human beings are moving in every direction over the +earth, the earth without our being conscious of it is carrying us in +one same direction. So as we follow the different pathways of our +lives which appear to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, may +it not be true that to the Power which sets us all in motion and +drives us whither it will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity? + + +THE END + + + + + THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS + GARDEN CITY, N. Y. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY *** + +***** This file should be named 60435-8.txt or 60435-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/4/3/60435/ + +Produced by Al Haines +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + +Title: The Emblems of Fidelity + A Comedy in Letters + +Author: James Lane Allen + +Release Date: October 5, 2019 [EBook #60435] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1> +<br /><br /> + THE EMBLEMS OF<br /> + FIDELITY<br /> +</h1> + +<p class="t3b"> + A Comedy in Letters<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t3"> + BY<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t3b"> + JAMES LANE ALLEN<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t4"> + AUTHOR OF<br /> + "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL,"<br /> + "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="noindent"> + There is nothing so ill-bred as audible<br /> + laughter.... I am sure that since I have<br /> + had the full use of my reason nobody has<br /> + ever heard me laugh.<br /> + —Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + GARDEN CITY NEW YORK<br /> + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> + 1919<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t4"> + COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY<br /> + DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> + ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br /> + TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br /> + INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + To<br /> + THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY<br /> +<br /> + INCOMPARABLE ALLY<br /> + OF VICTORY<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +LIST OF CHARACTERS +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE . . . Famous elderly English novelist +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +BEVERLEY SANDS . . . Rising young American novelist +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE . . . Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +GEORGE MARIGOLD . . . Fashionable physician +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +CLAUDE MULLEN . . . Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of George Marigold<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +RUFUS KENT . . . Long-winded president of a club +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very learned, very absent-minded professor +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +PHILLIPS AND FAULDS . . . Florists +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +BURNS AND BRUCE . . . Florists +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +JUDD AND JUDD . . . Florists +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +ANDY PETERS . . . Florist +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +HODGE . . . Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +TILLY SNOWDEN . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY BOLES . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, friend of Tilly Snowden<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very devoted, very proud sensitive daughter of Noah Chamberlain<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +ANNE RAEBURN . . . Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3b"> +CONTENTS +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chap02">PART SECOND</a> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a href="#chap03">PART THIRD</a> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01"></a></p> + +<h2> +THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY +</h2> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + May 1, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +I have just read to the end of your latest +novel and under the outdoor influence of that +Kentucky story have sat here at my windows +with my eyes on the English landscape of the +first of May: on as much of the landscape, at +least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, +rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old +Warwickshire garden. +</p> + +<p> +You may or you may not know that I, too, +am a novelist. The fact, however negligible +otherwise, may help to disarm you of some +very natural hostility at the approach of this +letter from a stranger; for you probably agree +with me that the writing of novels—not, of +course, the mere odious manufacture of +novels—results in the making of friendly, brotherly +men across the barriers of nations, and that +we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we +could do less well or not do at all as +fellow-creatures. +</p> + +<p> +I shall not loiter at the threshold of this +letter to fatigue your ear with particulars +regarding the several parts of your story most +enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough +to say that no admirable human being has +ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears +by any such desirable procedure. In +England, and I presume in the United States, +novelists have long noses for incense [poets, +too, though of course only in their inferior +way]. I repeat that we English novelists are +a species of greyhound for running down on +the most distant horizon any scampering, +half-terrified rabbit of a compliment. But I +freely confess that nature loaded me beyond +the tendency of being a mere greyhound. I +am a veritable elephant in the matter, being +marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible +proboscis which is not only adapted to admit +praise but is quite capable of actively +reaching around in every direction to procure it. +Even the greyhound cannot run forever; but +an elephant, if he once possess it, will wave +such a proboscis till he dies. +</p> + +<p> +There are likely to be in any very readable +book a few pages which the reader feels +tempted to tear out for the contrary reason, +perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his +tenderness. Some haunting picture of the +book-gallery that he would cut from the frame. +Should you be displeased by the discrimination, +I shall trust that you may be pleased +nevertheless by the avowal that there is a +scene in your novel which has peculiarly +ensnared my affections. +</p> + +<p> +At this point I think I can see you throw +down my letter with more insight into human +nature than patience with its foibles. You +toss it aside and exclaim: "What does this +Englishman drive at? Why does he not at +once say what he wants?" You are right. +My letter is perhaps no better than strangers' +letters commonly are: coins, one side of which +is stamped with your image and the other +side with their image, especially theirs. +</p> + +<p> +I might as well, therefore, present to you +my side of the coin with the selfish image. +Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, +you are the horse in an open pasture and I +am the stableman who schemes to catch you: +to do this, I approach, calling to you +affectionately and shaking a bundle of oats behind +which is coiled a halter. You are thinking +that if I once clutch you by the mane you +will get no oats. But, my dear sir, you have +from the very first word of this letter already +been nibbling the oats. And now you are my +animal! +</p> + +<p> +There is, then, in your novel a remarkable +description of a noonday woodland scene +somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky +uplands—a cool, moist forest spot. Into this +scene you introduced some rare, beautiful +Kentucky ferns. I can <i>see</i> the ferns! I can +see the sunlight striking through the waving +treetops down upon them! Now, as it +happens, in the old garden under my windows, +loving the shade and moisture of its trees +and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They are +a marvelous company, in their way as good +as Wordsworth's flock of daffodils; for they +have been collected out of England's best +and from other countries. +</p> + +<p> +Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: +Will you send me the root-stocks of some of +those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on +my Warwickshire fern bank? +</p> + +<p> +Do not suppose that my garden is on a +small scale a public park or exhibition, made +as we have created Kensington Gardens. +Everything in it is, on the contrary, enriched +with some personal association. I began it +when a young man in the following way: +</p> + +<p> +At that period I was much under the +influence of the Barbizon painters, and I +sometimes entertained myself in the forests where +masters of that school had worked by hunting +up what I supposed were the scenes of +some of Corot's masterpieces. +</p> + +<p> +Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted +trees as though he were looking at enormous +ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and +some rise higher than others as trees; his trees +descend through the air and are lost lower +down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot +ferns for my good Warwickshire loam. Another +winter Christine Nilsson was singing at +Covent Garden. I spent several evenings +with her. When I bade her good-bye, I asked +her to send me some ferns from Norway in +memory of Balzac and <i>Seraphita</i>. Yet +another winter, being still a young man and he, +alas! a much older one, I passed an evening +in Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in +talking about his novels and I remember +quoting these lines from one of them: "It +was a splendid clear morning; tiny mottled +cloudlets hung like snipe in the clear pale +azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves +and grass and glistened like silver on the +spiders' webs; the moist dark earth seemed +still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the +songs of larks showered down from all over +the sky." +</p> + +<p> +He sat looking at me in surprised, touched +silence. +</p> + +<p> +"But you left out something!" I suggested, +with the bumptiousness of a beginner in +letters. He laughed slightly to himself—and +perhaps more at me—as he replied: "I must +have left out a great deal"—he, fiction's +greatest master of compression. After a +moment he inquired with a kind of vast patient +condescension: "What is it that you definitely +missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns +were growing thereabouts." He smiled +reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, smiling +reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot +was," I said, "I should travel to it for some +ferns." A mystical look came into his eyes as +he muttered rather to himself than for my +ear: "That spot! Where is that spot? That +spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the whole of +Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, +one pain, one passion. Sometime afterwards +there reached me at home a hamper of Russian +fern-roots with Turgenieff's card. +</p> + +<p> +I tell you all this as I make the request, +which is the body of this letter and, I hope, +its wings, in order that you may intimately +understand. I desire the ferns not only +because you have interested me in your +Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, +but because I have become interested in your +art and in you. While I read your book I +believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously +at work, creating where no hand had created +before; or if on its chosen scene it found a +ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality +from that ruin. But to create where no hand +has created before, or to create them again +where human things lie in decay—that to me +is the true energy of literature. +</p> + +<p> +I should not omit to tell you that some of +our most tight-islanded, hard-headed +reviewers have been praising your work as of +the best that reaches us from America. It +was one such reviewer that first guided me to +your latest book. Now I myself have written +to some of our critics and have thrown my +influence in favour of your fresh, beautiful art, +which can only come from a fresh, beautiful +nature. +</p> + +<p> +Should you decide to bestow any notice +upon this rather amazing letter, you will bear +in mind of course that there will be pounds +sterling for plants. Whatever character my +deed or misdeed may later assume, it must +first and at least have the nature of a +transaction of the market-place. +</p> + +<p> +So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all, +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Gratefully yours,<br /> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + May 12, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: +</p> + +<p> +Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, +in some modern Æsop's Fables, read how a +whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had +taken the trouble to turn entirely round to +encourage a puffing young porpoise; or of +how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, +had on some fine spring day looked down and +complimented a small dogwood tree upon its +size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, +while thus unreal, your letter is in its way the +most encouragingly real thing that has ever +come into my life. Before I go further I +should like to say that I have read every book +you have written and have bought your books +and given them away with such zeal and zest +that your American publishers should feel +more interest in me than can possibly be felt +by the gentlemen who publish mine. +</p> + +<p> +It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, +in bad taste. A man's praise of another may +not follow upon that man's praise of him. +Our virtues have their hour. If they do not +act then, they are not like clocks which may +be set forward but resemble fruits which lose +their flavour when they pass into ripeness. +Still, what I have said is honest. You may +remember that I am yet moving amid life's +uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk +in quietness the world's highway of a great +career. My praise could have borne little to +you; yours brings everything to me. And +you must reflect also that it is just a little +easier for any Englishman to write to an +American in this way. The American could +but fear that his letter might seriously disturb +the repose of a gentleman who was reclining +with his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and +Shakespeare's entire bosom in this regard, as +you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in +England. +</p> + +<p> +It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange +for the shipment of the ferns. A good many +years have passed since I lived in Kentucky +and I am no longer in close touch with people +and things down there. But without doubt +the matter can be managed through +correspondence and all that I await from you +now is express instructions. The ferns +described in my book are not known to me by +name. I have procured and have mailed to +you along with this, lest you may not have +any, some illustrated catalogues of American +ferns, Kentucky ferns included. You have +but to send me a list of those you want. With +that in hand I shall know exactly how to +proceed. +</p> + +<p> +You cannot possibly understand how happy +I am that my work has the approval of the +English reviews, which still remain the best +in the world. To know that my Kentucky +stories are liked in England—England which, +remaining true to so many great traditions, +holds fast to the classic tradition in her +literature. +</p> + +<p> +The putting forth of your own personal +influence in my behalf is a source of joy and +pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns +growing in your garden in token of me is the +most inspiring event yet to mark my life. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + May 22, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +Your letter was brought out to me as I was +hanging an old gate in a clover-field canopied +with skylarks. When I cannot make headway +against some obstruction in the development +of a story, for instance, putting the hinges of +the narrative where the reader will not see +any hinges, I let the book alone and go out +and do some piece of work, surrounded by +the creatures which succeed in all they +undertake through zest and joy. By the time I get +back, the hinges of the book have usually +hung themselves without my knowing when +or how. Hence the paradox: we achieve the +impossible by doing the possible; we climb +our mountain of troubles by walking away +from it. +</p> + +<p> +It is splendid news that I am to get the +Kentucky ferns. Thank you for the +catalogues. A list of those I most covet is +enclosed. The cost, shipping expenses included, +will not, I fear, exceed five pounds. Of course +it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but +I suppose I must restrict myself to the +despicable market price. Shamefully cheap many +of the dearest things in this world are; and +what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless! +</p> + +<p> +A draft will be forwarded in advance upon +receipt of the American shipper's address. +Or I could send it forthwith to you. +Meantime from now on I shall be remembering +with impatience how many miles it is across +the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace +American ferns travel. These will be awaited +like guests whom one goes to the gate to meet. +</p> + +<p> +You do not know the names of those you +describe so wonderfully! I am glad. I abhor +the names of my own. Of course, as they are +bought, memoranda must be depended upon +by which to buy them. These data, verified +by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs +as fern headstones. When each fern is planted, +into the soil beside it is stuck its headstone, +which, like that for a human being, tells the +name, not the nature, of what it memorialises. +</p> + +<p> +Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns +according to the slabs. It is time you should +know Hodge by his slab. No such being can +yet be found in the United States: your +civilisation is too young. Hodge is my +British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out +for every birthday much as for any total +solar eclipse of the year—with a kind of +growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday +should finally, as it passes, bowl him over for +good—he announced to me with visible relief +the other day that he had successfully passed +another total natal eclipse; that he was +fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight years +old. The battle of Hastings was fought in +1066 and Hodge without knowing it was +beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For +Hodge is English landscape gardening in +human shape. He is the benevolent spirit of +the English turf, a malign spirit to English +weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, +a wheelbarrow of spring manure, a pile of +autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant future +mythology of our English rural life he will +perhaps rank where he belongs—as a +luminary next in importance to the sun: a +two-legged god be-earthed in old clothes, with a +stiff back, a stiff temper, the jaw of the +mastiff and the eye of a prophet. +</p> + +<p> +It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would +not allow anything to come into the garden +without mastering that thing. For the sake +of his own authority he must subdue as much +of the Latin language as invades his territory +along with the ferns. But I think nothing +comparable to such a struggle against +overwhelming odds—Hodge's brain pitted against +the Latin names of the ferns—nothing +comparable to the dull fury of that onset is to be +found in the history of man unless it be +England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. +England did conquer Napoleon and finally +shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and +Hodge has finally conquered the names of +the ferns and shut them up in a desolate, +rocky place—his skull, his personal promontory. +</p> + +<p> +Nowadays you should see him meet me in +a garden path when I come down early some +morning. You should see him plant himself +before me and, taking off his cap and scratching +the back of his neck with the back of his +muddy thumb, make this announcement: +"The <i>Asplenium filix-faemina</i> put up two new +shoots last night, sir. Bishop's crooks, I +believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a +farmer and my shepherd should notify me +that one of the ewes had dropped twin lambs +at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: +the honour of the shoots—a questionable +honour—goes to Hodge as their botanical sire! +</p> + +<p> +When I receive visitors by reason of my +books—and strangers do sometimes make +pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of +"Black Oaks"—if the day is pleasant, we +have tea in the garden. While the strangers +drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known +proboscis over the company for any praise +they may have brought along. Should this +seem adequate, I later reward them with a +stroll. That is Hodge's hour and opportunity. +Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but +invariably, he steps out from some bush and +takes his place behind me as we move. +</p> + +<p> +When we reach the fern bank, the visitors +regularly begin to inquire: "What is the +name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to +Hodge much as a drum-major, if asked by a +by-stander what the music was that the band +had just been playing, might wheel in dismay +to the nearest horn. Hodge steps forward: +now comes the reward of all his toil. "That +is the <i>Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum</i>, +sir." "And what is this one?" "That is the +<i>Polypodium elegantissimum</i>, mum." Then you +would understand what it sometimes means +to attain scholarship without Oxford or +Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman +orator and a garden ass. +</p> + +<p> +You will be wondering why I am telling +you this about Hodge. For the very particular +reason that Hodge will play a part, I know +not what part, in the pleasant business that +has come up between us. He looms as the +danger between me and the American ferns +after the ferns shall have arrived here. It is +a fact that very few foreign ferns have ever +done well in my garden, watch over them as +closely as I may: especially those planted in +more recent years. Could you believe it +possible of human nature to refuse to water a +fern, to deny a little earth to the root of a +fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from +it when there was nobody near to observe the +deed, to jab at it with a sharp trowel? I shall +not press the matter further, for I instinctively +turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has +within himself some incomprehensible little +terrible spot and I feel that this is Hodge's +spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he +will kill what he hates, if he dares. I have +been so aroused to defend his faithful +character that I have devised two pleadings: +first, Hodge is the essence of British +parliaments, the sum total of British institutions; +therefore he patriotically believes that things +British should be good enough for the British—of +course, their own ferns. At other times +I am rather inclined to surmise that his +malice and murderous resentment are due to +his inability to take on any more Latin, least +of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt +now defends himself against any more Latin +as a man with his back to the wall fights for +his life: the personal promontory will hold no +more. +</p> + +<p> +You have written me an irresistible letter, +though frankly I made no effort to resist it. +Your praise of my books instantly endeared +you to me. +</p> + +<p> +Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has +already brought results so agreeable and +surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to +plunge a second time and more deeply. +</p> + +<p> +Is there—how could there help being!—a +<i>Mrs.</i> Beverley Sands? Mrs. Blackthorne +wishes to know. I read your letter to +Mrs. Blackthorne. Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed +with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed with +<i>you</i>. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. +And Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorne would like to +know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands +and, if so, whether she and you will not some +time follow the ferns and come and take +possession for a while of our English garden. +</p> + +<p> +You and I can go off to ourselves and +discuss our "dogwoods" and "black oaks"; +and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at +their tea across the garden, can exchange +copies of their highly illuminated and +privately circulated little masterpieces about +their husbands. (The husbands should always +edit the masterpieces!) +</p> + +<p> +Both of you, will you come? +</p> + +<p> +Finally, as to your generous propaganda +in behalf of my books and as to the favourable +reports which my publishers send me from +time to time in the guise of New World +royalties, you may think of the proboscis as +now being leveled straight and rigid like a +gun-barrel toward the shores of the United +States, whence blow gales scented with so +glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that +Columbus was not mistaken: America is +turning out to be a place worth while. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your deeply interested,<br /> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 3.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +Crown me with some kind of chaplet—nothing +classic, nothing sentimental, but something +American and practical—say with twigs +of Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the +leaves of that forest favourite which in +boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with +its inner bark—entwine me, O Tilly, with a +garland of slippery elm for the virtue of +always making haste to share with you my +slippery pleasures! I write at full speed now +to empty into your lap, a wonderfully receptive +lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has +ever come to me as your favourite author—and +favourite young husband to be. +</p> + +<p> +The great English novelist Blackthorne, +many of whose books we have read together +(whenever you listened), recently stumbled +over one of my obstructive tales; one of my +awkwardly placed literary hurdles on the +world's race-course of readers. As a result of +his fall he got up, dusted himself thoroughly +of his surprise, and actually despatched to me +an acknowledgment of his thanks for the +happy accident. I replied with a volley of +my own thanks, with salvos of praise for him. +Now he has written again, throwing wide +open his house and his heart, both of which +appear to be large and admirably suited to +entertain suitable guests. +</p> + +<p> +At this crisis place your careful hands over +your careful heart—can you find where it +is?—and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the +novelist's conventional breath for the excited +heroine. Mr. Blackthorne wishes to know +whether there is a <i>Mrs.</i> Beverley Sands. If +there is, and he feels sure there must be, +far-sighted man!—he invites her, invites <i>us</i>, +<i>Mrs.</i> Blackthorne invites <i>us</i>, should we sometime +be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, +far-famed country-house in Warwickshire. +If, then, our often postponed marriage, our +despairingly postponed marriage, should be +arranged to madden me and gladden the rest +of mankind before next summer, we could, +with our arms around one another's necks, be +conveyed by steam and electricity on our +wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance +and be there deposited, still oblivious of +everything but ourselves. +</p> + +<p> +Think what it would mean to you to be +launched upon the rosy sea of English social +life amid the orisons and benisons of such +illustrious literary personages. Think of those +lovely English lawns, raked and rolled for +centuries, and of many-coloured <i>fêtes</i> on them; +of the national tea and the national sandwiches; +of national strawberries and clotted +cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's +flunkies still flunkying and Queen Anne's +fads yet fadding; of week-ends without +end—as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself +growing more and more a celebrity, as the +English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers +gradually brought into public appreciation +the vague potentialities, not necessarily the +bare actualities, of modest young Sands +himself. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a +day for you at Sandringham with the royal +ladies. They would drive you over—I have +not the least idea how great the distance +is—to drink tea at Stonehenge. Imagine +yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy +English afternoon, imagine yourself seated +under a heavy black-silk English umbrella on +a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, +tearing at an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest +strain and surrounded by male and female +admirers, all under heavy black-silk +umbrellas—Spitalsfield, I suppose—as Mrs. Beverley +Sands. +</p> + +<p> +Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign +triumph, this career of glory, comes +to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, +it is inaccessible. Look upon it as in +part the property that I am to settle upon +you at the time of our union—my honours. +You have already understood from me that +my entire estate, both my real estate and my +unreal estate, consists of future honours. +Those I have just described are an early +payment on the marriage contract—foreign +exchange! +</p> + +<p> +What reply, then, in your behalf am I to +send to the lofty and benevolent +Blackthornes? As matters halt between us—he +also loves who only writes and waits—I can +merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that there is +a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists +in remaining a Miss Snowden. With this +realisation of what you will lose as Miss +Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you +not think it wise—and wise you are, Tilly—any +longer to persist in your persistence? +You once, in a moment of weakness, confessed +to me—think of your having a moment of +weakness!—you once confessed to me, though +you may deny it now (Balzac defines woman +as the angel or devil who denies everything +when it suits her), you once confessed to me +that you feared your life would be taken up +with two protracted pleasures, each of which +curtailed the other: the pleasure of being +engaged to me a long time and the pleasure of +being married to me a long time. Nerve +yourself to shortening the first in order to +enter upon the compensations of the second. +</p> + +<p> +Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect +of obliterating from the world one whom I +first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. +Where will Tilly Snowden be when only +Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where will be that +wild rose in a snow bank—the rose which was +truly wild, the snow bank which was not cold +(or was it?)? I think I should easily become +reconciled to your being known, say, as +Madame Snowden, so that you might still +stand out in your own right and wild-rose +individuality. We could visit England as the +rising American author, Beverley Sands, and +his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. +Everybody would then be asking who the +mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I +should relate that she was a retired opera +singer—having retired before she advanced. +</p> + +<p> +By the way, you confided to me some time +ago that you were not very well. You always +<i>look</i> well, mighty well to <i>me</i>, Tilly. Perfectly +well to <i>me</i>. Can your indisposition be +imaginary? Or is it merely fashionable? +Or—is it something else? What of late has +sickened me is an idea of yours that you +might sometime consult Doctor G. M. Tilly! +Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me +when I think of that charlatan's door being +closed behind you as a patient of his! +</p> + +<p> +Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the +beautiful Blackthornes! +</p> + +<p> +Your easy and your uneasy +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>"Slippery Elm" Apartments,<br /> + June 4.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown +you with slippery elm—you seem to think I +keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it—if it +is the leaf you sigh for. But please do not +try to crown me with a wig of your creative +hair; that is, with your literary honours. +</p> + +<p> +How wonderfully the impressions of childhood +disappear from memory like breaths on +a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to +their shapes if the glass be coldly breathed +upon! As I read your letter, at least as I read +the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your +letter, I remembered, probably for the first +time in years, a friend of my mother's. +</p> + +<p> +She had been inveigled to become the wife, +that is, the legally installed life-assistant, of +an exceedingly popular minister; and when I +was a little girl, but not too little to +understand—was I ever too little to understand?—she +used to slip across the street to our house +and in confidence to my mother pour out her +sense of humour at the part assigned her by +the hired wedding march and evangelical +housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, +always half-whispered, confidences—for +how often in life one feels guilty when +telling the truth and innocent when lying! +</p> + +<p> +On this particular morning she and my +mother laughed till they were weary, while I +danced round them with delight at the idea +of having even the tip of my small but very +active finger in any pie that savoured of mischief. +She had been telling my mother that if, some +Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a +sermon which brought people into the church, +she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If he +made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she +might possibly look out for a pair of ducks. +Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be +merely a strip of worthless territory lying +alongside the land of Canaan; people simply +walked over her, tramped across her, on their +way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful +things to Canaan, her husband. +</p> + +<p> +That childish nonsense comes back to me +strangely, and yet not strangely as I think of +your funny letter, your very, very funny +letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to +me because I am not myself but am possibly +a Mrs.—well, <i>some</i> Mrs. Sands. The English +scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it +is Canaan and his strip all over again—there +on the English lawns; a great many heavy +English people are tramping heavily over me +on their way to Canaan. The fabulous tea at +Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at +Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that +at last choked to death the ill-fated Tilly +Snowden. +</p> + +<p> +In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, +then, begs that you will thank the Blackthornes, +Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for +their invitation; as best she can she thanks +you; but for the present, and for how much of +the future she does not know, she prefers to +remain what is very necessary to her +independence and therefore to her happiness; and +also what is quite pleasing to her ear—the +wild rose in the snow bank (cold or not cold, +according to the sun). +</p> + +<p> +In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true +that I have more than once postponed the +date of our marriage. I have never said why; +perhaps I myself have never known just why. +But at least do not expect me to shorten the +engagement in order that I may secure some +share of your literary honours. As a little +girl I always despised queens who were +crowned with their husbands. It seemed to +me that the queen was crowned with what +was left over and was merely allowed to sit +on the corner of the throne as the poor +connection. +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +P.S.—Still, I <i>would</i> like to go to England. +I mean, of course, I wish <i>we</i> could go on our +wedding journey! If I got ready, could I +rely upon <i>you</i>? I have always wished to visit +England without being debarred from its +social life. Seriously, the invitation of the +Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity +and an advantage not to be thrown away. +Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am +wise! +</p> + +<p> +It is true that I have not been feeling very +well. And it is true that I have consulted +Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. +That dreaded door has closed behind me! I +have been alone with him! The diagnosis at +least was delightful. He made it appear like +opening a golden door upon a charming +landscape. I had but to step outdoors and look +around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, +Health, my former friend, how do you do! +Why did you go back on me?" He tells me +my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. +I said to him that <i>must</i> be the disease; +namely, that it was <i>mild</i>. Never in my life +had I had anything that was mild! Disease +from my birth up had attacked me only in its +most virulent form: so had health. I had +always enjoyed—and suffered from—virulent +health. I am going to take the Bulgar bacillus. +</p> + +<p> +Why do <i>you</i> dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular +physicians are naturally hated by unpopular +physicians. But how does <i>he</i> run against or +run over you? +</p> + +<p> +Which of your books was it the condescending +Englishman liked? Suppose you +send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of +each of your books? Those you gave me as +they came out seem to have disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +The wild rose is now going to pour down +her graceful stalk a tubeful of the Balkan +bacillus. +</p> + +<p> +More trouble with the Balkans! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> + (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise<br /> + intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least<br /> + for <i>that</i>!).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 3.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +A bolt of divine lightning has struck me +out of the smiling blue, a benign fulmination +from an Olympian. +</p> + +<p> +To descend the long slope of Olympus to +you. A few days ago I received a letter from +the great English novelist, Edward Blackthorne, +in praise of my work. The great +Edward reads my books and the great Ben +Doolittle doesn't—score heavily for the +aforesaid illustrious Eddy. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I have for years known that you +do not cast your legal or illegal eyes on fiction, +though not long ago I heard you admit that +you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On +the ground, that it is a lawyer's novel: which is +no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My +own opinion of why you read it is that you +were in search of information how to make +the ten thousand! As a literary performance +your reading "Ten Thousand a Year" may +be likened to the movement of a land-turtle +which has crossed to the opposite side of his +dusty road to bite off a new kind of weed, +waddling along his slow way under the +impenetrable roof of his own back. +</p> + +<p> +For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust +as I love and trust no other human being in +this world, do you know what I think of you +as most truly being? The very finest possible +specimen of the highest order of human +land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives +under a shovel turned upside down over it, +called its back; and a human land-turtle is a +fellow who thrives under the roof of the five +senses and the practical. Never does a turtle +get from under his carapace, and never does +the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his +five senses. Of course you realise that not +during our friendship have I paid you so +extravagant a compliment. For the human race +has to be largely made up of millions of +land-turtles. They cause the world to go slowly, +and it is the admirable stability of their lives +neither to soar nor to sink. You are a +land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, Esquire; you live +under the shell of the practical; that is, you +have no imagination; that is, you do not read +fiction; that is, you do not read Me! +Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but +cherish all the confidence and love in the +world for you. But, mind you, only as an +unparalleled creeping thing. +</p> + +<p> +To get on with the business of this letter: +the English novelist laid aside his enthusiasm +for my work long enough to make a request: +he asked me to send him some Kentucky +ferns for his garden. Owing to my long +absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch +with people and things down there. But you +left that better land only a few years ago. I +recollect that of old you manifested a +weakness for sending flowers to womankind—another +evidence, by the way, of lack of +imagination. Such conduct shows a mere +botanical estimate of the grand passion. The +only true lovers, the only real lovers, that +women ever have are men of imagination. +Why should these men send a common +florist's flowers! They grow and offer their +own—the roses of Elysium! +</p> + +<p> +To pass on, you must still have clinging to +your memory, like bats to a darkened, disused +wall, the addresses of various Louisville +florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no +light at all, were the former emissaries of your +folly and your fickleness. Will you send me +at once the address of a firm in whose hands +I could safely entrust this very high-minded +international piece of business? +</p> + +<p> +Inasmuch as you are now a New York +lawyer and inasmuch as New York lawyers +charge for everything—concentration of mind, +if they have any mind, tax on memory and +tax on income, their powers of locomotion and +of prevarication, club dues and death dues, +time and tumult, strikes and strokes, and all +other items of haste and waste, you are +authorised to regard this letter a professional +demand and to let me have a reasonable bill +at a not too early date. Charge for whatever +you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for +your friendship. "Naught that makes life +most worth while can be had for gold." (Rather +elegant extract from one of my +novels which you disdain to read!) +</p> + +<p> +I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me +have an immediate reply. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending +to quarrel? And do you still keep up the +pretence? +</p> + +<p> +Predestined magpies! +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>150 Broad Street,<br /> + June 5.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +Your highly complimentary and +philosophical missive is before my eyes. +</p> + +<p> +You understand French, not I. But I have +accumulated a few quotations which I +sometimes venture to use in writing, never in +my proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to +the French the French with which I am +familiar, the French themselves would drive +their own vernacular out of their land—over +into Germany! Here is one of those fond +inaudible phrases: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>A chaque oiseau<br /> + Son nid est beau.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes +prefers his own tub. +</p> + +<p> +The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club +dinner the other night. One of the +speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the +blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping +around the heads of the guests without +finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing +about the edges of a pond, trying in vain to +strike a place to land. But everybody +cheered uproariously, made happy by the +discovery that someone actually could say +something at a New York dinner that nobody +had heard before. One man next to the +speaker (of course coached beforehand) passed +a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made +its way down the table to me at the other end +and I, in the New York way, laid it up for +future use at a dinner in some other city. +Meantime I use it now on you. +</p> + +<p> +It is true that I arrived in New York from +Kentucky some years ago. It is likewise +undeniable that for some years previous thereto +I had dealings with Louisville florists. But I +affirm now, and all these variegated +gentlemen, if they <i>are</i> gentlemen, would gladly +come on to New York as my witnesses and +bear me out in the joyful affidavit, that +whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked +my behaviour, never once did I commit the +futility, the imbecility, of trafficking in ferns. +</p> + +<p> +A great English novelist—ferns! A rising +young American novelist—ferns! Frogstools, +mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't you +ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? +Or if they should be too gross for his delicate +soul, a birdcage containing a pair of warbling +young bluegrass moonbeams? +</p> + +<p> +I am a <i>land</i>-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank +God! If I have no imagination, thank God! +If I live and move and have my being under +the shovel of the five senses and of the +practical, thank God! But, my good fellow, whom +I love and trust as I love and trust no other +man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I +think of you as most truly being? +</p> + +<p> +A poor, harmless tinker. +</p> + +<p> +You, with your pastime of fabricating +novels, dwell in a little workshop of the +imagination; you tinker with what you are +pleased to call human lives, reality, truth. +On your shop door should hang a sign to +catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, +splendid tinkering. No matter who you are, +what your past career or present extremity, +come in and let the owner of this shop make +your acquaintance and he will work you over +into something finer than you have ever been +or in this world will ever be. For he will make +you into an unfallen original or into a +perfected final. If you have never had a chance +to do your best in life, he will give you that +chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the +broken-down, especially welcome. Everybody +made over to be as everybody should be by +Beverley Sands." +</p> + +<p> +But, brother, the sole thing with which you, +the tinker, do business is the sole thing with +which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, as +a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, +actuality, truth. During the years that I +have been an attorney never have I had a +case in court without first of all things looking +for the element of imagination in it and trying +to stamp that element out of the case and kick +it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, +that indefatigable mischief-maker, your +beautiful and beloved patron power—imagination. +</p> + +<p> +Going on to testify out of my experience as +a land-turtle, I depose the following, having +kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the +turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the +tracks of most of the other animal creatures +and gets to know them and their ways. But +there is one path of one creature marked for +unique renown among nose-bearing men: +that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white +piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence—surnamed +the polecat. +</p> + +<p> +Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably +disposed, may in your profession be the +harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged +thing you will that soars innocently toward +bright skies; but, once unkindly disposed, it +is in my profession, and in every other, the +polecat of the human faculties. When it has +testified against you, it vanishes from the +scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with +its testimony. +</p> + +<p> +Hence it is that I go gunning first for this +same little animal whose common den is the +lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though +you never seem to have encountered him in +your work and walks. If you should do so, if +you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile +imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may +the land-turtle be able to crawl to you and +stand by you in that hour! +</p> + +<p> +But—the tinker to his work, the turtle to +his! <i>A chaque oiseau</i>! Diogenes, your tub! +</p> + +<p> +As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. +I paid for the flowers, <i>she</i> got them. Anybody +can receive money for blossoms, but only a +statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can +fill an order for flowers with equity and fresh +buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & Faulds. +You could reasonably rely upon them to fill +any order that you might place in their hands, +however nonsensical-comical, billy-goatian-satirical +it may be. They'd send your Englishman +an opossum with a pouch full of +blooming hyacinths if that would quiet his +longing and make him happy. I should think +it might. +</p> + +<p> +We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? +Are you still cooing? +</p> + +<p> +Uncertain doves! +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01b"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>150 Broad Street,<br /> + June 5.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +I send you some red roses to go with your +black hair and your black eyes, never so +black as when black with temper. When +may I come to see you? Why not to-morrow +night? +</p> + +<p> +Another matter, not so vital but still +important: a few years before we left Louisville +to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New +York, I at different times employed divers +common carriers known as florists to convey +to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions +that could not be depicted in writing +fluid. In other words, I hired those +mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in +terms of their costliest, most sensational +merchandise. You should be prepared to say +which of these florists struck you as the best +business agent. +</p> + +<p> +Would you send me the address of that man +or of that firm? Immediately you will want +to know why. Always suspicious! Let the +suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. +Some foggy-headed Englishman has besought +him to ship him (the foggy one) some +Kentucky vegetation all the way across the +broad Atlantic to his wet domain—interlocking +literary idiots! Beverley appeals to +me, I to you, the highest court in everything. +</p> + +<p> +Are you still enjoying the umbrageous +society of that giraffe-headed jackass, Doctor +Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his +unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? +<i>He</i> a nerve specialist! The only nerve +in his practice is <i>his</i> nerve. Doesn't my +love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? +Isn't it the right kind? Will it ever give +out? +</p> + +<p> +Your reply, then, will cover four points: +to thank me for the red roses; to say when I +may come to see you; to send me the address +of the Louisville florist who became most +favourably known to you through a reckless +devotion; and to explain your patience with +that unhappy fool. +</p> + +<p> +Thy sworn and thy swain, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>The Franklin Flats,<br /> + June 6.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville +florist is one of your flimsiest subterfuges. +What you wished to receive from me was a +letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable +on your last visit and you have since been +concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards. +Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my +aid as indispensable. That is like you men! +If one of you can but make a woman forget, +if he can but lead her to forgive him, by +flattering her with the idea that she is +indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her +figure standing on the long road of time: +dumbly, patiently standing there, waiting for +some male to pass along and permit her to +accompany him as his indispensable +fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good +humour by being honoured with your request +that I supply you with the name of a florist. +</p> + +<p> +Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply +you. All the Louisville florists, as I thought +at the time, carried out their instructions +faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally +received flowers not fresh. Did it occur to +me to blame the florists? Never! I did what +a woman always does: she thinks less of—well, +she doesn't think less of the <i>florist</i>! +</p> + +<p> +Be this as it may, Beverley might try +Phillips & Faulds for whatever he is to export. +As nearly as I now remember they sent the +biggest boxes of whatever you ordered! +</p> + +<p> +I have an appointment for to-morrow night, +but I think I can arrange to divide the evening, +giving you the later half. It shall be for +you to say whether the best half was <i>yours</i>. +That will depend upon <i>you</i>. +</p> + +<p> +I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of +Dr. Claude Mullen because he loves me and +I do not love him. The fascination of his +presence lies in my indifference. Perhaps +women are so seldom safe with the men who +love them, that any one of us feels herself +entitled to make the most of a rare chance! +I am not only safe, I am entertained. As I +go down into the parlour, I almost feel that +I ought to buy a ticket to a performance in +my own private theatre. +</p> + +<p> +Ben, dear, are you going to commit the +folly of being jealous? If I had to marry <i>him</i>, +do you know what my first wifely present +would be? A liberal transfusion of my own +blood! As soon as I enter the room, what +fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which +hold little cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am +always expecting the little pools to run over: +then there would be tears. The night he goes +for good—perhaps they will be tears that +night. +</p> + +<p> +If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about +him, still encourage his visits, I have simply +to say that I don't know. When it comes to +what a woman will "receive" in such cases, +the ground she walks on is very uncertain to +her own feet. It may be that the one thing +she forever craves and forever fears not to +get is absolute certainty, certainty that some +day love for her will not be over, everything be +not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's +love is pitiful, and as long as a man's love is +pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it. +Therefore he is irresistible—as my guest! +</p> + +<p> +The roses are glorious. I bury my face in +them down to the thorns. And then I come +over and sign my name as the indispensable +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 6.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +I have had a note from Beverley, asking +whether he could come this evening. I have +written that I have an appointment, but I did +not enlighten him as to the appointment being +with you. Why not let him suffer awhile? I +will explain afterwards. I told him that I +could perhaps arrange to divide the evening; +would you mind? And would you mind coming +early? I will do as much for you some +time, and <i>I suspect I couldn't do more</i>! +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +P.S.—Rather than come for the first half +of the evening perhaps you would prefer to +<i>postpone</i> your visit <i>altogether</i>. It would +suit me just as well; <i>better</i> in fact. There +really was something very <i>particular</i>, Tilly +dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about +to-night. +</p> + +<p> +I shall not look for you at all <i>this</i> evening, +<i>best</i> of friends. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 6.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +The very particular something to talk to +Ben about to-night is the identical something +for every other night. And nothing could be +more characteristic of you, as soon as you +heard that my visit would clash with one of +his, than your eagerness to push me partly +out of the house in a hurried letter and then +push me completely out in a quiet postscript. +Being a woman, I understand your temptation +and your tactics. I fully sympathise +with you. +</p> + +<p> +Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted +intimate. I shall not drop in to interrupt you +and Ben—both not so young as you once were +and both getting stout—heavy Polly, heavy +Ben—as you sit side by side in your little +Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always +suggests to me an enormous turnip hollowed +out square: with no windows; with a hole on +one side to come in and a hole on the other +side to go out; upholstered in enormous +bunches of beets and horse-radish, and lighted +with a wilted electric sunflower. There you +two will sit to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben, +suffocating for fresh air and murmuring to +each other as you have murmured for years: +</p> + +<p> +"I do! I do!" +</p> + +<p> +"I do! I do!" +</p> + +<p> +One sentence in your letter, Polly dear, +takes your photograph like a camera; the result +is a striking likeness. That sentence is this: +</p> + +<p> +"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will +explain afterwards." +</p> + +<p> +That is exactly what you will do, what you +would always do: explain afterwards. In +other words, you plot to make Ben jealous +but fear to make him too jealous lest he desert +you. If on the evening of this visit you should +forget "to explain," and if during the night +you should remember, you would, if need +were, walk barefoot through the streets in +your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter, +if you could reach it, and say: "Ben, +that appointment wasn't with any other man; +it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I +had told you!" +</p> + +<p> +That is, you have already disposed of +yourself, breath and soul, to Ben; and while you +are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you +have espoused in his behalf what you consider +your best and strongest trait—loyalty. Under +the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a +few years after marriage, have devoured all +there is of Ben alive and will have taken your +seat beside what are virtually his bones. As +the years pass, the more ravenously you will +preside over the bones. Never shall the world +say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever +was left of her dear Ben Doolittle! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Your loyalty</i>! I believe the first I saw of it +was years ago one night in Louisville when +you and I were planning to come to New York +to live. Naturally we were much concerned +by the difficulties of choosing our respective +New York residences and we had written on +and had received thumb-nailed libraries of +romance about different places. As you +looked over the recommendations of each, you +came upon one called The Franklin Flats. +The circular contained appropriate +quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I +remember how your face brightened as you +said: "This ought to be the very thing." One +of the quotations on the circular ran +somewhat thus: "Beware of meat twice +boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So +they must have a good restaurant!" +</p> + +<p> +In other words, you believed that a house +named after Franklin could but resemble +Franklin. A building put up in New York +by a Tammany contractor, if named after +Benjamin Franklin and advertised with +quotations from Franklin's works, would embody +the traits of that remote national hero! To +your mind—not to your imagination, for you +haven't any—to your mind, and you have a +great deal of mind, the bell-boys, the +superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids, +the flunkied knave who stands at the +front door—all these were loyally congregated +as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still +in the Franklin Flats! I know what you have +long suffered there; but move away! Not +Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building +as long as the building stands by the +contractor and the contractor stands by profits +and losses. +</p> + +<p> +While on the subject of loyalty, not your +loyalty but woman's loyalty, I mean to +finish with it. And I shall go on to say that +occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass +window in some Fifth Avenue shop and have +studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised +loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes +effect in those processions that now and +then sweep up the Avenue as though they +were Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The +marchers try first not to look self-conscious; +all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the +cause." But beneath all other expressions +and differences of expression I have always +seen one reigning look as plainly as though it +were printed in enormous letters on a banner +flying over their heads: +</p> + +<p> +"Strictly Monogamous Women." +</p> + +<p> +At such times I have felt a wild desire, when +I should hear of the next parade, to organise +a company of unenthralled young girls who +with unfettered natures and unfettered +features should tramp up the Avenue under their +own colours. If the women before them—those +loyal ones—would actually carry, as +they should, a banner with the legend I have +described, then my company of girls should +unfurl to the breeze their flag with the truth +blazoned on it: +</p> + +<p> +"Not Necessarily Monogamous!" +</p> + +<p> +The honest human crowd, watching and +applauding us, would pack the Avenue from +sidewalks to roofs. +</p> + +<p> +Between you and me everything seems to +be summed up in one difference: all my life +I have wanted to go barefoot and all your life, +no matter what the weather, you have been +solicitous to put on goloshes. +</p> + +<p> +My very nature is rooted in rebellion that +in a world alive and running over with +irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to +find her chief happiness in just one! The +heart going out to so many in succession, and +the hand held by one; year after year your +hand held by the first man who impulsively +got possession of it. Every instinct of my +nature would be to jerk my hand away and +be free! To give it again and again. +</p> + +<p> +This subject weighs crushingly on me as I +struggle with this letter because I have +tidings for you about myself. I am to write +words which I have long doubted I should +ever write, life's most iron-bound words. +Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at +last. Of course it is Beverley. Not without +waverings, not without misgivings. But I'd +feel those, be the man whoever he might. +Why I feel thus I do not know, but I know I +feel. I tell you this first because it was you +who brought Beverley and me together, who +have always believed in his career. (Though +I think that of late you have believed more +in him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning +to believe in his career. He has lately +ascertained that his work is making a splendid +impression in England. If he succeeds in +England, he will succeed in this country. He has +received an invitation to visit some delightful +and very influential people in England and +"to bring me along!" Think of anybody +bringing <i>me</i> along! If we should be +entertained by these people [they are the +Blackthornes], such is English social life, that we +should also get to know the white Thornes +and the red Thornes—the whole social forest. +The iron rule of my childhood was economy; +and the influence of that iron rule over me is +inexorable still: I cannot even contemplate +such prodigal wastage in life as not to accept +this invitation and gather in its wealth of +consequences. +</p> + +<p> +More news of me, very, very important: <i>at +last</i> I have made the acquaintance of George +Marigold. I have become one of his patients. +</p> + +<p> +Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from +him. You need not return it. I shall not +answer it. I shall leave things to his imagination +and his imagination will give him no rest. +</p> + +<p> +If Ben hurled at <i>you</i> a jealous letter about +Dr. Mullen, you would immediately write to +remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule +Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's +eyes. That is, you would do an abominable +thing, never doubting that Ben would admire +you the more. And you would be right; for +as Ben observed you tear Dr. Mullen to +pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back +in his chair and chuckle within himself: +"Glorious, staunch old Polly!" +</p> + +<p> +And what you would do in this instance you +will do all your life: you will practise disloyalty +to every other human being, as in this letter +you have practised it with me, for the sake +of loyalty to Ben: your most pronounced, +most horrible trait. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 7.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +I return Beverley's letter. Without comment, +since I did not read it. You know how +I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him. +I have a feeling for him unlike that for any +other human being, not even Ben; I look upon +him as set apart and sacred because he has +genius and belongs to the world. +</p> + +<p> +As for his faults, those that I have not +already noticed I prefer to find out for +myself. I have never cared to discover any +human being's failings through a third person. +Instead of getting acquainted with the +pardonable traits of the abused, I might really +be introduced to the <i>abominable traits of the +abuser</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Once more</i>, you think you are going to marry +Beverley! I shall reserve my congratulations +for the <i>event itself</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Thank you for surrendering your claim on +my friendship and society last night. Ben +and I had a most satisfactory evening, and +when not suffocating we murmured "I do" +to our hearts' content. +</p> + +<p> +Next time, should your visits clash, I'll +push <i>him</i> out. Yet I feel in honour bound to +say that this is only my present state of mind. +I might weaken at the last moment—even in +the Franklin Flats. +</p> + +<p> +As to some things in your letter, I have long +since learned not to bestow too much +attention upon anything you say. You court a +kind of irresponsibility in language. With +your inborn and over-indulged willfulness you +love to break through the actual and to revel +in the imaginary. I have become rather used +to this as one of your growing traits and I am +therefore not surprised that in this letter you +say things which, if seriously spoken, would +insult your sex and would make them recoil +from you—or make them wish to burn you at +the stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue +with your company of girls in that kind of +procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: +you will be tramping through the slums where +you belong. +</p> + +<p> +All this, I repeat, is merely your way—to +take things out in talking. But we can make +words our playthings in life's shallows until +words wreck us as their playthings in life's +deeps. +</p> + +<p> +Still, in return for your compliments to me, +<i>which, of course, you really mean</i>, I paid you +one the other night when thinking of you +quite by myself. It was this: nature seems +to leave something out of each of us, but we +presently discover that she perversely put it +where it does not belong. +</p> + +<p> +What she left out of you, my dear, was the +domestic tea-kettle. There isn't even any +place for one. But she made up for lack of +the kettle <i>by rather overdoing the stove</i>! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your <i>discreet</i> friend,<br /> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + June 7, 1900.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +GENTLEMEN: +</p> + +<p> +A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin +Doolittle, has suggested your firm as reliable +agents to carry out an important commission, +which I herewith describe: +</p> + +<p> +I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire +you to make a collection of these ferns and to +ship them, expenses prepaid, to Edward +Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, +Warwickshire, England. The cost is not to +exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish you +the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid +unnecessary correspondence, I herewith enclose, +payable to your order, my check for that +amount. +</p> + +<p> +Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating +whether you will undertake this commission +and see it through? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Louisville, Ky.,<br /> + June 10, 1900.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Your valued letter with check for $25 +received. We handle most of the ferns on the +list, and know the others and can easily get +them. +</p> + +<p> +You may rely upon your valued order +receiving the best attention. Thanking you for +the same, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours very truly,<br /> + PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + June 15, 1910.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: +</p> + +<p> +Your second letter came into the port of +my life like an argosy from a rich land. I +think you must have sent it with some +remembrance of your own youth, or out of your +mature knowledge of youth itself; how too +often it walks the shore of its rocky world, +cutting its bare feet on sharp stones, as it +strains its eyes toward things far beyond its +horizon but not beyond its faith and hope. +Some day its ship comes in and it sets sail +toward the distant ideal. How much the opening +of the door of your friendship, of your life, +means to me! A new consecration envelops +the world that I am to be the guest of a great +man. If words do not say more, it is because +words say so little. +</p> + +<p> +Delay has been unavoidable in any mere +formal acknowledgment of your letter. You +spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My +silence has been due to the arrangement of +hinges for the shipment of the ferns. I +wished to insure their safe transoceanic +passage and some inquiries had to be made in +Kentucky. +</p> + +<p> +You may rely upon it that the matter will +receive the best attention. In good time the +ferns, having reached the end of their journey, +will find themselves put down in your garden +as helpless immigrants. From what outlook +I can obtain upon the scene of their reception, +they should lack only hands to reach +confidingly to you and lack only feet to run with +all their might away from Hodge. +</p> + +<p> +I acknowledge—with the utmost thanks—the +unusual and beautiful courtesy of +Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife, +if I have one, and to me. It is the dilemma +of my life, at the age of twenty-seven, to be +obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands +exists, but that nevertheless there is no +such person. +</p> + +<p> +Can you imagine a man's stretching out his +hand to pluck a peach and just before he +touched the peach, finding only the bough of +the tree? Then, as from disappointment he +was about to break off the offensive bough, +seeing again the dangling peach? Can you +imagine this situation to be of long +continuance, during which he could neither take +hold of the peach nor let go of the tree—nor +go away? If you can, you will understand +what I mean when I say that my bride +persists in remaining unwed and I persist in +wooing. I do not know why; she protests +that she does not know; but we do know that +life is short, love shorter, that time flies, and +we are not husband and wife. +</p> + +<p> +If she remains undecided when Summer +returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne and you will +let me come alone. +</p> + +<p> +Thus I can thank you with certainty for +one with the hope that I may yet thank you +for two. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +P.S.—Can you pardon the informality of +a postscript? +</p> + +<p> +As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy +situation, marriage is denied me on account +of the whole unhappy history of +woman—which is pretty hard. But a good many +American ladies—the one I woo among them—are +indignant just now that they are being +crowded out of their destinies by husbands—or +even possibly by bachelors. These ladies +deliver lectures to one another with discontented +eloquence and rouse their auditresses +to feministic frenzy by reminding them that +for ages woman has walked in the shadow of +man and that the time has come for the worm +[the woman] to turn on the shadow or to +crawl out of it. +</p> + +<p> +My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly +say that the only two shadows I could ever +think of casting on the woman I married +would be that of my umbrella whenever it +rained, and that of her parasol whenever the +sun shone. But I do maintain that if there +is not enough sunshine for the men and women +in the world, if there has to be some casting +of shadows in the competition and the crowding, +I do maintain that the casting of the +shadow would better be left to the man. He +has had long training, terrific experience, in +this mortal business of casting the shadow, +has learned how to moderate it and to hold +it steady! The woman at least knows where +it is to be found, should she wish to avail +herself of it. But what would be the state of a +man in his need of his spouse's penumbra? +He would be out of breath with running to +keep up with the penumbra or to find where +it was for the time being! +</p> + +<p> +I have seen some of these husbands who +live—or have gradually died out—in the +shadow of their wives; they are nature's +subdued farewell to men and gentlemen. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap01c"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 16.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +A remarkable thing has lately happened to +me. +</p> + +<p> +One of my Kentucky novels, upon being +republished in London some months ago, +fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. +This critic's praise later made its way to the +stately library of Edward Blackthorne. What +especially induced the latter to read the book, +I infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer +from my description of a woodland scene with +ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, +is himself interested in ferns. He consequently +wrote to some other English authors +and critics, calling attention to my work, and +he sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns +for his garden. +</p> + +<p> +This recognition in England hilariously +affected my friends over here. Tilly, whose +mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair +of golden balances for weighing delight against +delight (always her most vital affair), when +this honour for me fell into the scales, found +them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as +I have often thought, that she has long been +holding on to me merely until she could take +sure hold of someone else of more splendid +worldly consequence, she suddenly at least +tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, +solid Polly, wholesome and dependable as a +well-browned whole-wheat baker's loaf +weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she +heard of it, gave me a Bohemian supper in +her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a +few undersized people, inasmuch as she and +Ben, the chief personages of the entertainment, +took up most of the room. We were +so packed in, that literally it was a night in +Bohemia <i>aux sardines</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Since the good news from England came +over, Ben, with his big, round, clean-shaven, +ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, +which makes him look like a thirty-five-year-old +Bacchus who had never drunk a drop—even +Ben has beamed on me like a mellower +orb. He is as ashamed as ever of my books, +but is beginning to feel proud that so many +more people are being fooled by them. +Several times lately I have caught his eyes +resting on me with an expression of affectionate +doubt as to whether after all he might be +mistaken in not having thought more of me. +But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a +human refrigerator containing a mental +thermometer, which rises or falls toward like or +dislike over a background for book-sales, got +wind of the matter and promptly invited me +to one of his thermometric club-lunches—always +an occasion for acute gastritis. +</p> + +<p> +Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, +where, of course, the leading English reviews +are kept on file. Some of the members must +have seen the favourable criticisms. One +night I became aware as I passed through the +rooms that club heroes seated here and there +threw glances of fresh interest toward me and +exchanged auspicious words. The president—who +for so long a time has styled himself the +Nestor of the club that he now believes it is +the members who do this, the garrulous old +president, whose weaknesses have made holes +in him through which his virtues sometimes +leak out and get away, met me under the +main chandelier and congratulated me in +tones so intentionally audible that they +violated the rules but were not punishable under +his personal privileges. +</p> + +<p> +There was a sinister incident: two members +whom Ben and I wish to kick because they +have had the audacity to make the acquaintance +of Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise +also because they are fashionable charlatans +in their profession—these two with dark looks +saw the president congratulate me. +</p> + +<p> +More good fortune yet to come! The ferns +which I am sending Mr. Blackthorne will +soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious +man has many visitors; he leads them, +if he likes, to his fern bank. "These," he will +some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. +These are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. +These were sent me by Turgenieff. And +these," he will add, turning to his guests, +"these came from a young American novelist, +a Kentuckian, whose work I greatly respect: +you must read his books." The guests +separate to their homes to pursue the subject. +Spreading fame—may it spread! Last of all, +the stirring effect of this on me, who now run +toward glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran +toward Venus—with both feet and wings. +</p> + +<p> +The ironic fact about all this commotion +affecting so many solid, substantial people—the +ironic fact is this: +</p> + +<p> +<i>There was no woodland scene and there were +no ferns.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Here I reach the curious part of my +story. +</p> + +<p> +When I was a country lad of some seventeen +years in Kentucky, one August afternoon +I was on my way home from a tramp of +several miles. My course lay through patches +of woods—last scant vestiges of the primeval +forest—and through fields garnered of summer +grain or green with the crops of coming +autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence +and crossed an old woods-pasture where stock +grazed. +</p> + +<p> +The August sky was clear and the sun beat +down with terrific heat. I had been walking +for hours and parching thirst came upon me. +</p> + +<p> +This led me to remember how once these +rich uplands had been the vast rolling forest +that stretched from far-off eastern mountains +to far-off western rivers, and how under its +shade, out of the rock, everywhere bubbled +crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams +diamond bright, drinking places of the bold +game. +</p> + +<p> +The sun beat down on me in the treeless +open field. My feet struck into a path. It, +too, became a reminder: it had once been a +trail of the wild animals of that verdurous +wilderness. I followed its windings—a sort of +gully—down a long, gentle slope. The +windings had no meaning now: the path could +better have been straight; it was devious +because the feet that first marked it off had +threaded their way crookedly hither and +thither past the thick-set trees. +</p> + +<p> +I reached the spring—a dry spot under the +hot sun; no tree overshadowing it, no vegetation +around it, not a blade of grass; only dust +in which were footprints of the stock which +could not break the habit of coming to it but +quenched their thirst elsewhere. The bulged +front of some limestone rock showed where +the ancient mouth of the spring had been. +Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a +few clods. Hovering over these, rising and +sinking, a little quivering jet of gold, a flock +of butterflies. The grey stalk of a single dead +weed projected across the choked orifice of +the fountain and one long, brown grasshopper—spirit +of summer dryness—had crawled out +to the edge and sat motionless. +</p> + +<p> +A few yards away a young sycamore had +sprung up from some wind-carried seed. Its +grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow +on the dry grass and I went over and lay +down under it to rest—my eyes fixed on the +forest ruin. +</p> + +<p> +Years followed with their changes. I being +in New York with my heart set on building +whatever share I could of American literature +upon Kentucky foundations, I at work on a +novel, remembered that hot August afternoon, +the dry spring, and in imagination restored +the scene as it had been in the Kentucky +of the pioneers. +</p> + +<p> +I now await with eagerness all further +felicities that may originate in a woodland +scene that did not exist. What else will grow +for me out of ferns that never grew? +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap02"></a></p> + +<h3> +PART SECOND +</h3> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + May 1, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +It is the first of the faithful leafy May +again. I sit at my windows as on this day a +year ago and look out with thankfulness upon +what a man may call the honour of the +vegetable world. +</p> + +<p> +A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of +yours or by some books—for I believe I read +more than one of them—I, betrayed by the +phrase that when we touch a book we touch +a man, overstepped the boundaries of caution +as to having any dealings with glib, plausible +strangers and wrote you a letter. I made a +request of you in that letter. I thought the +request bore with it a suitable reward: that +I should be grateful if you would undertake +to have some ferns sent to me for my collection. +</p> + +<p> +Your sleek reply led me still further astray +and I wrote again. I drew my English cloak +from my shoulders and spread it on the ground +for you to step on. I threw open to you the +doors of my hospitality, good-fellowship. +</p> + +<p> +That was last May. Now it is May again. +And now I know to a certainty what for +months I have been coming to realise always +with deeper shame: that you gave me your +word and did not keep your word; doubtless +never meant to keep it. +</p> + +<p> +Why, then, write you about this act of +dishonour now? How justify a letter to a man +I feel obliged to describe as I describe you? +</p> + +<p> +The reason is this, if you can appreciate +such a reason. My nature refuses to let go a +half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an +abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood +I came upon a partly chopped-down tree, and +I must needs go far and fetch an axe and +finish the job. What I have begun to build I +must build at till the pattern is wrought out. +Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the +stamina of resolution. The upright moral +skeleton within me would decay and crumble and +I should sink down and flop like a human frog. +</p> + +<p> +Since, then, you dropped the matter in +your way—without so much as a thought of +a man's obligation to himself—I dismiss it in +my way—with the few words necessary to +enable me to rid my mind of it and of such a +character. +</p> + +<p> +I wish merely to say, then, that I despise +as I despise nothing else the ragged edge of a +man's behaviour. I put your conduct before +you in this way: do you happen to know of a +common cabbage in anybody's truck patch? +Observe that not even a common cabbage +starts out to do a thing and fails to do it if it +can. You must have some kind of perception +of an oak tree. Think what would become of +human beings in houses if builders were +deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound oak? +Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how +it takes hold and will not be shaken loose by +the capricious compelling winds. In your +country have you the plover? Think what +would be the plover's fate, if it did not steer +straight through time and space to a distant +shore. Why, some day pick up merely a +piece of common quartz. Study its powers +of crystallisation. And reflect that a man +ranks high or low in the scale of character +according to his possession or his lack of the +powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his +mind can assume fixity around an idea, if +they can adjust themselves unalterably about +a plan, expect something of him. If they run +through his hours like water, if memory is +a millstream, if remembrance floats forever +away, expect nothing. +</p> + +<p> +Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted +for themselves the characters of familiar +plants about them. Do you know what to +them the fern stood for? The fern stood for +Fidelity. Those true, constant souls would +have said that you had been unfaithful even +with nature's emblems of Fidelity. +</p> + +<p> +The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight +falls in a white radiance on my plants. +I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on +honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a +certain spot in the garden; I dislike to look +at it. There is a shadow on the place where +your books once stood on my library shelves. +Your specious books!—your cleverly +manufactured books!—but there are successful +scamps in every profession. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights,<br /> + May 10, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I wish to inform you that I have just +received from you a letter in which you attack +my character. I wish in reply further to +inform you that I have never felt called upon +to defend my character. Nor will I, even +with this letter of yours as evidence, attack +your character. +</p> + +<p> +I am, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 13, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I ask your attention to the enclosed letter +from Mr. Edward Blackthorne. By way of +contrast and also of reminder, lest you may +have forgotten, I send you two other letters +received from him last year. I shared with +you at the time the agreeable purport of these +earlier letters. This last letter came three +days ago and for three days I have been +trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write +to you about it. At last I am able to do so. +</p> + +<p> +You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has +never received the ferns. Then where have +they been all this time? I took it for granted +that they had been shipped. The order was +last spring placed with the Louisville firm +recommended by you. They guaranteed the +execution of the order. I forwarded to them +my cheque. They cashed my cheque. The +voucher was duly returned to me cancelled +through my bank. I could not suppose they +would take my cheque unless they had +shipped the plants. They even wrote me +again in the Autumn of their own accord, +stating that the ferns were about to be sent +on—Autumn being the most favourable season. +Then where are the ferns? +</p> + +<p> +I felt so sure of their having reached +Mr. Blackthorne that I harboured a certain +grievance and confess that I tried to make generous +allowance for him as a genius in his never +having acknowledged their arrival. +</p> + +<p> +I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an +immediate explanation. As soon as they reply +I shall let you hear further. The fault may +be with them; in the slipshod Southern way +they may have been negligent. My cheque +may even have gone as a bridal present to +some junior member of the firm or to help +pay the funeral expenses of the senior member. +</p> + +<p> +There is trouble somewhere behind and I +think there is trouble ahead. +</p> + +<p> +Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine +ladies; but if some lady will kindly +lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit +that I have it and on the strength of it—or +the weakness—declare my belief that the +mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some +curious and funny things. +</p> + +<p> +As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: +after these days of turbulence, I have come to +see my way clear to interpret it thus: a great +man, holding a great place in the world, +offered his best to a stranger and the stranger, +as the great man believes, turned his back on +it. That is the grievance, the insult. If +anything could be worse, it is my seeming +discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the +invitation came also from her. In a word, here +is a genius who strove to advance my work +and me, and he feels himself outraged in his +kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and +his family—in all his best. +</p> + +<p> +But of course that is the hardest of all +human things to stand. Men who have +treated each other but fairly well or even +badly in ordinary matters often in time +become friends. But who of us ever forgives +the person that slights our best? Out of a +rebuff like that arises such life-long +unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ +itself doubtless for this very reason took pains +to issue its warning—no pearls before swine! +And perhaps of all known pearls a great native +British pearl is the most prized by its British +possessor! +</p> + +<p> +The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's +best has been his worst: if I did not merit his +best, I deserve his worst; hence his last letter. +God have mercy on the man who deserved +that letter! You will have observed that his +leading trait as revealed in all his letters is +enormous self-love. That's because he is a +genius. Genius <i>has</i> to have enormous +self-love. Beware the person who has none! +Without self-love no one ever wins any other's +love. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the mighty English archer with his +mighty bow shot his mighty arrow—but at +an innocent person. +</p> + +<p> +Still the arrow of this letter, though it +misses me, kills my plans. The first trouble +will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally +fixed for June, and our plans embraced a +wedding journey to England and the acceptance +of the invitation of the Blackthornes. +The prospect of this wonderful English +summer—I might as well admit it—was one thing +that finally steadied all her wavering as to +marriage. +</p> + +<p> +Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, +no English celebrities to greet us as American +celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no lawns, +no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely +two unknown, impoverished young Yankee +tourists, trying to get out of chilly England +what can be gotten by anybody with a few, +a very few, dollars. +</p> + +<p> +But Tilly dreads disappointment as she +dreads disease. To her disappointment is a +disease in the character of the person who +inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to +get you to read one of Balzac's masterpieces, +<i>The Magic Skin</i>. I told you enough about it +to enable you to understand what I now say: +that ever since I became engaged to Tilly I +have been to her as a magic skin which, as +she cautiously watches it, has always shrunk +a little whenever I have encountered a defeat +or brought her a disappointment. No later +success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the +shrunken skin: it remains shrunken where +each latest disappointment has left it. +</p> + +<p> +Now when I tell her of my downfall and the +collapse of the gorgeous summer plans! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY<br /> + (the Expanding Scamp and the<br /> + Shrinking Skin).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 14th.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +I have duly pondered the letters you send. +</p> + +<p> + "Fie, fee, fo, fum,<br /> + I smell the blood of an Englishman!"<br /> +</p> + +<p> +If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents +from him in my possession. And suppose +you send me all later letters, whether +from him or from anyone else, that bear on +this matter. It begins to grow interesting +and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, +then, as your lawyer, the custodian of all +pertinent and impertinent papers. They can go +into the locker where I keep your immortal +but impecunious Will. Some day I might +have to appear in court, I with my shovel and +five senses and no imagination, to plead <i>une +cause célèbre</i> (a little more of my scant +intimate French). +</p> + +<p> +The explanation I give of this gratuitously +insulting letter is that at last you have run +into a hostile human imagination in the +person of an old literary polecat, an aged +book-skunk. Of course if I could decorate my style +after the manner of your highly creative +gentlemen, I might say that you had unwarily +crossed the nocturnal path of his touchy +moonlit mephitic highness. +</p> + +<p> +I am not surprised, of course, that this +letter has caused you to think still more +highly of its writer. I tell you that is your +profession—to tinker—to turn reality into +something better than reality. +</p> + +<p> +Some day I expect to see you emerge from +your shop with a fish story. Intending buyers +will find that you have entered deeply into +the ideals and difficulties of the man-eating +shark: how he could not swim freely for +whales in his track and could not breathe +freely for minnows in his mouth; how he got +pinched from behind by the malice of the +lobster and got shocked on each side by the +eccentricities of the eel. The other fish did +not appreciate him and he grew embittered—and +then only began to bite. You will make +over the actual shark and exhibit him to your +reader as the ideal shark—a kind of beloved +disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish. +</p> + +<p> +Anything imaginative that you might make +out of a shark would be a minor achievement +compared with what you have done for this +Englishman. Might the day come, the +avenging day, when Benjamin Doolittle could get +a chance to write him just one letter! May +the god of battles somehow bring about a +meeting between the middle-aged land-turtle +and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars +somebody's fur will have to fly and it will +not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any. +</p> + +<p> +You speak of a trouble that looms up in +your love affair: let it loom. The nearer it +looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly +warned you that you have bound your life +and happiness to the wrong person, and the +person is constantly becoming worse. +Detach your apparatus of dreams at last from +her. Take off your glorious rainbow world-goggles +and see the truth before it is too late. +Do not fail, unless you object, to send me +all letters incoming about the ferns—those +now celebrated bushes. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 13, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +We acknowledge receipt of your letter of +May 10 relative to an order for ferns. +</p> + +<p> +It is decidedly rough. The senior member +of our firm who formerly had charge of this +branch of our business has been seriously ill +for several months, and it was only after we +had communicated with him at home in bed +that we were able to extract from him +anything at all concerning your esteemed order. +</p> + +<p> +He informs us that he turned the order +over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce, native fern +collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that +they would gather the ferns and forward them +to the designated address. He likewise +informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns +& Bruce, as we know only too well, has long +been indebted to this firm for a considerable +amount, he calculated that they would willingly +ship the ferns in partial liquidation of +our old claims. +</p> + +<p> +It seems, as he tells us, that they did +actually gather the ferns and get them ready +for shipment, but at the last minute changed +their mind and called on our firm for +payment. There the matter was unexpectedly +dropped owing to the sudden illness of the +aforesaid member of our house, and we knew +nothing at all of what had transpired until +your letter led us to obtain from him at his +bedside the statements above detailed. +</p> + +<p> +An additional embarrassment to the unusually +prosperous course of our business was +occasioned by the marriage of a junior member +of the firm and his consequent absence for a +considerable time, which resulted in an +augmentation of the expenses of our establishment +and an unfortunate diminution of our +profits. +</p> + +<p> +In view of the illness of the senior member +of our house and in view of the marriage of a +junior member and in view of the losses and +expenses consequent thereon, and in view of +the subsequent withdrawal of both from +active participation in the conduct of the +affairs of our firm, and in view also of a +disagreement which arose between both members +and the other members as to the financial +basis of a settlement on which the withdrawal +could take place, our affairs have of necessity +been thrown into court in litigation and are +still in litigation up to this date. +</p> + +<p> +Regretting that you should have been +seemingly inconvenienced in the slightest +degree by the apparent neglect of a former +member of our firm, we desire to add that as +soon as matters can be taken out of court our +firm will be reorganised and that we shall +continue to give, as heretofore, the most +scrupulous attention to all orders received. +</p> + +<p> +But we repeat that your letter is pretty +rough. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Dunkirk, Tenn.,<br /> + May 20, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds +gave us the order for the ferns. Owing to +extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered +earlier than usual and it was unsafe to ship +at that time; in the Winter the weather was +so severe that even in February we were +unable to make any digging, as the frost had +not disappeared. When at last we got the +ferns ready, we called on them for payment +and they wouldn't pay. Phillips & Faulds +are not good paying bills and we could not +put ourselves to expense filling their new +order for ferns, not wishing to take more +risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, +and could not afford to ship more. proved +very unsatisfactory and had to drop them +entirely. +</p> + +<p> +Are already out of pocket the cost of the +ferns, worthless to us when Phillips & Faulds +dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we +owed them because they won't pay their bills. +If you do not wish to have any further +dealings with them you might write to Noah +Chamberlain at Seminole, North Carolina, +just over the state line, not far from here, an +authority on American ferns. We have +sometimes collected rare ferns for him to +ship to England and other European +countries. Vouch for him as an honest man. +Always paid his bills, old accounts against +Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them +entirely. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BURNS & BRUCE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 24.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +You requested me to send you for possible +future reference all incoming letters upon the +subject of the ferns. Here are two more that +have just fluttered down from the blue +heaven of the unexpected or been thrust up +from the lower regions through a crack in +the earth's surface. +</p> + +<p> +Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling +eloquence of Messrs. Phillips & Faulds. When +the eloquence has ceased to ripple and settles +down to stay, their letter has the cold purity +of a whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. +They and another firm of florists have a +law-suit as to which owes the other, and they +meantime compel me, an innocent bystander, +to deliver to them my pocketbook. +</p> + +<p> +Will you please immediately bring suit +against Phillips & Faulds on behalf of my +valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable +indignation? Bring suit against and bring +your boot against them if you can. My +ducats! Have my ducats out of them or +their peace by day and night. +</p> + +<p> +The other letter seems of an unhewn +probity that wins my confidence. That is to +say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure +me that I ought to believe, and with all my +heart I do now believe, in the existence, just +over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of +good character and a business head. Thus I +now press on over the Tennessee state line +into North Carolina. +</p> + +<p> +For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; +more than ever they must go to him +now. Not the entire British army drawn up +on the white cliffs of Dover could keep me +from landing them on the British Isle. Even +if I had to cross over to England, travel to +his home, put the ferns down before him or +throw them at his head and walk out of his +house without a word. +</p> + +<p> +I told you I had a borrowed premonition +that there would be trouble ahead: now it is +not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. +I have grown to stand in dread of all florists, +and I approach this third one with my hat in +my hand (also with my other hand on my +pocketbook). +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Cathedral Heights, New York,<br /> + May 25, 1911.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +You have been recommended to me by +Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk, +Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied +upon to keep his word and to carry out his +business obligations. +</p> + +<p> +Accepting at its face value their high +testimonial as to your trustworthiness, I desire +to place with you the following order: +</p> + +<p> +Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my +request, have forwarded to you a list of rare +Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these +ferns and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, +Esq., King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, +England. As a guaranty of good faith +on my part, I enclose in payment my check +for twenty-five dollars. Will you have the +kindness to let me know at once whether you +will undertake this commission and give it +the strictest attention? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + May 29.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I have received your letter with your check +in it. +</p> + +<p> +You are the first person that ever offered +me money as a florist. I am not a florist, if +I must take time to inform you. I had +supposed it to be generally known throughout +the United States and in Europe that I am +professor of botany in this college, and have +been for the past fifteen years. If Burns & +Bruce really told you I am a florist—and I +doubt it—they must be greater ignoramuses +than I took them to be. I always knew that +they did not have much sense, but I thought +they had a little. It is true that they have +at different times gathered specimens of ferns +for me, and more than once have shipped +them to Europe. But I never imagined they +were fools enough to think this made me a +florist. My collection of ferns embraces dried +specimens for study in my classrooms and +specimens growing on the college grounds. +The ferns I have shipped to Europe have +been sent to friends and correspondents. The +President of the Royal Botanical Society of +Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I +have sent him some and I have also sent some +to friends in Norway and Sweden and to +other scientific students of botany. +</p> + +<p> +It only shows that your next-door neighbour +may know nothing about you, especially +if you are a little over your neighbour's head. +</p> + +<p> +My daughter, who is my secretary, will +return your check, but I thought I had better +write and tell you myself that I am not a +florist. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours truly,<br /> + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + May 29.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I can but express my intense indignation, +as Professor Chamberlain's only daughter, +that you should send a sum of money to my +distinguished father to hire his services as a +nurseryman. I had supposed that my father +was known to the entire intelligent American +public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked +with such men as Dana and Gray and +Alexander von Humboldt. +</p> + +<p> +People of our means and social position in +the South do not peddle bulbs. We do not +reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn +our bread by making funeral wreaths and +crosses. +</p> + +<p> +You must be some kind of nonentity. +</p> + +<p> +Your cheque is pinned to this letter. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 3.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I am deeply mortified at having believed +Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be well-informed +and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that +it is no longer safe for me to believe +anybody—not about nurserymen. I am not sure now +that I should believe you. You say you are a +famous botanist, but you may be merely a +famous liar, known as such to various learned +bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is +necessary, and you must admit that your +letter does not furnish me with that proof. +</p> + +<p> +Still I am going to believe you and I renew +the assurance of my mortification that I have +innocently caused you the chagrin of +discovering that you are not so well known, at +least in this country, as you supposed. I +suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; +it is the tie that binds: blest be the tie. +</p> + +<p> +I shall be extremely obliged if you will +have the kindness to return to me the list of +ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & +Bruce, and for that purpose you will please +to find enclosed an envelope addressed and +stamped. +</p> + +<p> +I acknowledge the return of my cheque, +which occasions me some surprise and not a +little pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +Allow me once more to regret that through +my incurable habit of believing strangers, +believing everybody, I was misled into taking +the lower view of you as a florist instead of +the higher view as a botanist. But you must +admit that I was right in classification and +wrong only in elevation. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 8.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I know nothing about any list of ferns. +Stop writing to me. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + NOAH CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 8.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +It is excruciating the way you continue to +persecute my great father. What is wrong +with you? What started you to begin on us +in this way? We never heard of <i>you</i>. Would +you let my dear father alone? +</p> + +<p> +He is a very deep student and it is intolerable +for me to see his priceless attention +drawn from his work at critical moments +when he might be on the point of making +profound discoveries. My father is a very +absent-minded man, as great scholars usually +are, and when he is interrupted he may even +forget what he has just been thinking about. +</p> + +<p> +Your letter was a very serious shock to +him, and after reading it he could not even +drink his tea at supper or enjoy his cold ham. +Time and again he put his cup down and said +to me in a trembling voice: "Think of his +calling me a famous liar!" Then he got up +from the table without eating anything and +left the room. He turned at the door and +said to me, with a confused expression: "I +<i>may</i>, once in my life—but <i>he</i> didn't know +anything about <i>that</i>." +</p> + +<p> +He shut his door and stayed in his library +all evening, thinking without nourishment. +</p> + +<p> +What a viper you are to call my great father +a liar. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 12.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I knew I was in for it! I send another +installment of incredible letters from +unbelievable people. +</p> + +<p> +In my wanderings over the earth after the +ferns I have innocently brought my foot +against an ant-hill of Chamberlains. I called +the head of the hill a florist and he is a botanist, +and the whole hill is frantic with fury. +As far as heard from, there are only two ants +in the hill, but the two make a lively many +in their letters. It's a Southern vendetta +and my end may draw nigh. +</p> + +<p> +Now, too, the inevitable quarrel with Tilly +is at hand. She has been out of town for a +house-party somewhere and is to return +to-morrow. When Tilly came to New York a +few years ago she had not an acquaintance; +now I marvel at the world of people she knows. +It is the result of her never declining an +invitation. Once I derided her about this, and +with her almost terrifying honesty she avowed +the reason: that no one ever knew what an +acquaintanceship might lead to. This +principle, or lack of principle, has led her far. +And wherever she goes, she is welcomed afterwards. +It is her mystery, her charm. I often +ask myself what is her charm. At least her +charm, as all charm, is victory. You are +defeated by her, chained and dragged along. +Of course, I expect all this to be reversed +after Tilly marries me. Then I am to have +my turn—she is to be led around, dragged +helpless by <i>my</i> charm. Magnificent outlook! +</p> + +<p> +To-morrow she is to return, and I shall +have to tell her that it is all over—our +wonderful summer in England. It is gone, the +whole vision drifts away like a gorgeous cloud, +carrying with it the bright raindrops of her +hopes. +</p> + +<p> +I have never, by the way, mentioned to +Tilly this matter of the ferns. My first idea +was to surprise her: as some day we strolled +through the Blackthorne garden he would +point to the Kentucky specimens flourishing +there in honour of me. I have always observed +that any unexpected pleasure flushes +her face with a new light, with an effulgence +of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment +makes her suddenly look old and rather ugly. +</p> + +<p> +This was the first reason. Now I do not +intend to tell her at all. Disappointment will +bring out her demand to know why she is +disappointed—naturally. But how am I to tell +on the threshold of marriage that it is all due +to a misunderstanding about a handful of +ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would +never believe me—naturally. She would +infer that I was keeping back the real reason, +as being too serious to be told. +</p> + +<p> +Here, then, I am. But where am I? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY (complete and final<br /> + disappearance of the Magic Skin).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> +<i>June 13.</i> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly +about the ferns. Here I come in: there must +always be things that a man must refuse to +tell a woman. As soon as he tells her everything, +she puts her foot on his neck. I have +always refused even to tell Polly some things, +not that they might not be told, but that +Polly must not be told them; not for the +things' sake, but for Polly's good—and for a +man's peaceful control of his own life. +</p> + +<p> +For whatever else a woman marries in a +man, one thing in him she must marry: a rock. +Times will come when she will storm and rage +around that rock; but the storms cannot last +forever, and when they are over, the rock will +be there. By degrees there will be less storm. +Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take +possession of my whole life; to enter into all +my affairs. I am to her a house, no closet of +which must remain locked. Thus there are +certain closets which she repeatedly tries to +open. I can tell by her very expression when +she is going to try once more. Were they +opened, she would not find much; but it is +much to be guarded that she shall not open +them. +</p> + +<p> +The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly +as fact and too important as principle. +</p> + +<p> +Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me +anything about the ferns! When I am with +Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of +the fields. +</p> + +<p> +Let me hear at once how the trouble turns +out with Tilly. +</p> + +<p> +I must not close without making a profound +obeisance to your new acquaintances—the +Chamberlains. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +Something extremely disagreeable has come +up between Beverley and me. He tells me +we're not to go to England on our wedding +journey as anyone's guests: we travel as +ordinary American tourists unknown to all +England. +</p> + +<p> +You can well understand what this means +to me: you have watched all along how I have +pinched on my small income to get ready for +this beautiful summer. There has been a +quarrel of some kind between Mr. Blackthorne +and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me +the nature of the quarrel. I insisted that it +was my right to know and he insisted that it +is a man's affair with another man and not +any woman's business. Think of a woman +marrying a man who lays it down as a law +that his affairs are none of her business! +</p> + +<p> +I gave Beverley to understand that our +marriage was deferred for the summer. He +broke off the engagement. +</p> + +<p> +I had not meant to tell you anything, since +I am coming to-night. I have merely wished +you to understand how truly anxious I am to +see you, even forgetting your last letter—no, +not forgetting it, but overlooking it. Remember +you <i>then</i> broke an appointment with me; +<i>this</i> time keep your appointment—being loyal! +The messenger will wait for your reply, stating +whether the way is clear for me to come. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me +for to-night, but I have written to excuse +myself, and I shall be waiting most +impatiently. The coast will be clear and I hope +the night will be. +</p> + +<p> +"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; +"the horse-radish" and "the beets" will be +still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will +shed its usual ray on our heads. No breeze +will disturb us, for there will be no fresh air. +We shall have the long evening to ourselves, +and you can tell me just how it is that you +two, <i>not</i> heavy Tilly, <i>not</i> heavy Beverley, +sat on opposite sides of the room and +declared to each other: +</p> + +<p> +"I will not." +</p> + +<p> +"I will not." +</p> + +<p> +Since I have broken an engagement for +you, be sure not to let any later temptation +elsewhere keep you away. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Later in the day] +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 13.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected +final flare-up. Yesterday he wrote, +asking me to come up as soon as I was through +with business. I spent last night with him. +</p> + +<p> +We drew our chairs up to his opened window, +turned out the lights, got our cigars, and +with our feet on the window-sills and our +eyes on the stars across the sky talked the +long, quiet hours through. +</p> + +<p> +He talked, not I. Little could I have said +to him about the woman who has played fast +and loose with him while using him for her +convenience. He made it known at the +outset that not a word was to be spoken against +her. +</p> + +<p> +He just lay back in his big easy chair, +with his feet on his window-sill and his eyes +on the stars, and built up his defence of Tilly. +All night he worked to repair wreckage. +</p> + +<p> +As the grey of morning crept over the city +his work was well done: Tilly was restored to +more than she had ever been. Silence fell +upon him as he sat there with his eyes on the +reddening east; and it may be that he saw +her—now about to leave him at last—as some +white, angelic shape growing fainter and +fainter as it vanished in the flush of a new +day. +</p> + +<p> +You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. +If there were any wings anywhere around, it +was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar +with an early start to bring down some other +victim: the angel-aeroplane out after more +prey. I think we both know who the prey +will be. +</p> + +<p> +The solemn influence of the night has +rested on me. Were it possible, I should feel +even a higher respect for Beverley; there is +something in him that fills me with awe. He +suffers. He could mend Tilly but he cannot +mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him. +</p> + +<p> +Their quarrel brings me with an aching +heart closer to you. I must come to-night. +The messenger will wait for a word that I +may. And a sudden strange chill of desolation +as to life's brittle ties frightens me into +sending you some roses. +</p> + +<p> +Your lover through many close and constant years, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Still later in the day] +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY: +</p> + +<p> +An incredible thing has happened. Ben +has just written that he wishes to see me +to-night. Will you, after all, wait until +to-morrow evening? My dear, I <i>have</i> to ask this +of you because there is something very +particular that Ben desires to talk to me about. +</p> + +<p> +<i>To-morrow night</i>, then, without fail, you +and I! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS<br /> +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Late at night of the same day] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +We have talked the matter over and send +you our conjoined congratulations that your +engagement is broken off and your immediate +peril ended. But our immediate caution is +that the end of the betrothal will not +necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the +tempter will at once turn away from you in +pursuit of another man. She will begin to +weave her web about <i>him</i>. But if possible +she will still hold <i>you</i> to that web by a single +thread. Now, more than ever, you will need +to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible +to such a nature as yours. +</p> + +<p> +Not until obliged will she ever let you go +completely. She hath a devil—perhaps the +most famous devil in all the world—the love +devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, +are poor quitters. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + (Signed)<br /> + POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle.<br /> + BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles.<br /> + (His handwriting; her ideas<br /> + and language.)<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +This is the third time within the past +several months that I have requested you to +let me have your bill for professional services. +I shall not suppose that you have relied upon +my willingness to remain under an obligation +of this kind; nor do I like to think I have +counted for so little among your many +patients that you have not cared whether I +paid you or not. If your motive has been +kindness, I must plainly tell you that I do +not desire such kindness; and if there has +been no motive at all, but simply indifference, +I must remind you that this indifference means +disrespect and that I resent it. +</p> + +<p> +The things you have indirectly done for +me in other ways—the songs, the books and +magazines, the flowers—these I accept with +warm responsive hands and a lavish mind. +</p> + +<p> +And with words not yet uttered, perhaps +never to be uttered. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours sincerely,<br /> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June the Seventeenth.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +I have your bill and I make the due +remittance with all due thanks. +</p> + +<p> +Your note pleasantly reassures me how +greatly you are obliged that I could put you +in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins +about the purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. +It was a pleasure; in fact, a matter of +some pride to do this, and I am delighted that +they could furnish you a horse you approve. +</p> + +<p> +While taking my customary walk in the +Park yesterday morning, I had a chance to +see you and your new mount making +acquaintance with one another. I can pay you no +higher compliment than to say that you ride +like a Kentuckian. +</p> + +<p> +Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a +habit of mine to choose the footways through +the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn +to them by my childhood habit and girlish +love of riding. Even to see from day to day +what one once had but no longer has is to +keep alive hope that one may some day have +it again. +</p> + +<p> +You should some time go to Kentucky and +ride there. My cousins will look to that. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours sincerely,<br /> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June the Eighteenth.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +I was passing this morning and witnessed +the accident, and I must express my +condolences for what might have been and +congratulations upon what was. +</p> + +<p> +You certainly fell well—not unlike a +Kentuckian! +</p> + +<p> +I feel sure that my cousins could not have +known the horse was tricky. Any horse is +tricky to the end of his days and the end of +his road. He may not show any tricks at +home, but becomes tricky in new places. +(Can this be the reason that he is called the +most human of beasts?) +</p> + +<p> +You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly +to my mind that of late you have expressed +growing interest in Kentucky. More than +once, also (since you have begun to visit me), +you have asked me to tell you about my life +there. Frankly, this is because I am something +of a mystery and you would like to +have the mystery cleared up. You wish to +find out, without letting me know you are +finding out, whether there is not something +<i>wrong</i> about me, some <i>risk</i> for you in visiting +me. That is because you have never known +anybody like me. I frighten you because I +am not afraid of people, not afraid of life. +You are used to people who are afraid, +especially to women who are afraid. You +yourself are horribly afraid of nearly +everything. +</p> + +<p> +Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, +though it may not greatly explain why I am +without fear; still, the land and the people +might mean something; they ought to mean +much. +</p> + +<p> +I was born of not very poor and immensely +respectable parents in a poor and not very +respectable county of Kentucky. The first +thing I remember about life, my first social +consciousness, was the discovery that I was +entangled in a series of sisters: there were six +of us. I was as nearly as possible at the +middle of the procession—with three older +and two younger, so that I was crowded both +by what was before and by what was behind. +I early learned to fight for the present—against +both the past and the future—learned +to seize what I could, lest it be seized either +by hands reaching backward or by hands +reaching forward. Literally, I opened my +eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I +began to practise at home the game of the +world. +</p> + +<p> +Why my mother bore only daughters will +have to be referred to the new science which +takes as its field the forces and the mysteries +that are sovereign between the nuptials and +the cradle. But the reason, as openly laughed +about in the family when the family grew old +enough to laugh, as laughed about in the +neighbourhood, was this: +</p> + +<p> +Even before marriage my father and my +mother had waged a violent discussion about +woman's suffrage. You may not know that +in Kentucky from the first the cause of female +suffrage has been upheld by a strong minority +of strong women, a true pioneer movement +toward the nation's future now near. It +seems that my father, who was a brilliant +lawyer, always browbeat my mother in +argument, overwhelmed her, crushed her. +Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly +rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked +deep into the coals. But regularly when the +time came she replied to all his arguments by +presenting him with another suffragette! +Throughout her life she declined even to +bear him a son to continue the argument! +Her six daughters—she would gladly have had +twelve if she could—were her triumphant +squad for the armies of the great rebellion. +</p> + +<p> +Does this help to explain me to you? +</p> + +<p> +What next I relate about my early life is +something that you perhaps have never given +a thought to—children's pets and playthings: +it explains a great deal. Have you ever +thought of a vital difference between country +children and town children? Country children +more quickly throw away their dolls, if they +have them, and attach their sympathies to +living objects. A child's love of a doll is at +best a sham: a little master-drama of the +child's imagination trying to fill two roles—its +own and the role of something which cannot +respond. But a child's love of a living +creature, which it chooses as the object of its +love and play and protection, is stimulating, +healthful and kicking with reality: because +it is vitalised by reciprocity in the playmate, +now affectionate and now hostile, but always +representing something intensely alive—which +is the whole main thing. +</p> + +<p> +We are just beginning to find out that the +dramas of childhood are the playgrounds of +life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the +others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll +without any return, will cling to a rag husband +without any return. A child's loyalty to an +automaton prepares a woman for endurance +of an automaton. Dolls have been the +undoing and the death of many wives. +</p> + +<p> +A multitude of dolls would have been needed +to supply the six destructive little girls of my +mother's household. We soon broke our +china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one +another's. For whatever reason, all lifeless +pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the +house and the little scattering herd of us +turned our restless and insatiate natures loose +upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted +nearly everything on the farm. My father +was a director of the County Fair, and I +remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we +roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize +exhibition of our favourites that year. They +comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a calf, a +lamb and a puppy. +</p> + +<p> +Sooner or later our living playthings +outgrew us or died or were sold or made their +sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we +disconsolate? Not a bit. Did we go down to +the branch and gather there under an old +weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our +hearts thrived on death and destruction, +annihilation released us from old ties, change +gave us another chance, and we provided +substitutes and continued our devotion. +</p> + +<p> +And I think this explains a good deal. +And these two experiences of my childhood, +taken together, explain me better than +anything else I know. Competition first taught +me to seize what I wanted before anyone else +could seize it. Natural changes next taught +me to be prepared at any moment to give +that up without vain regret and to seize +something else. Thus I seemed to learn +life's lesson as I learned to walk: that what +you love will not last long, and that long +love is possible only when you love often. +</p> + +<p> +So many women know this; how few admit +it! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June the Nineteenth.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: +</p> + +<p> +You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go +away for the summer: first to some friends, +then further away to other friends, then still +further away to other friends: a summer +pageant of brilliant changes. +</p> + +<p> +There is no reason why I should write to +you. Your stateroom will be filled with +flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; +friends will wave to you from the pier. My +letter may be lost among the others, but at +least it will have been written, and writing it +is its pleasure to me. +</p> + +<p> +I was to go to England this summer, was +to go as a bride. A few nights since I +decided not to go because I did not approve of +the bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +We marvel at life's coincidences: one +evening, not long ago, while speaking of your +expected summer in England, you mentioned +that you planned to make a pilgrimage to see +Edward Blackthorne. You were to join some +American friends over there and take them +with you. That is the coincidence: <i>I</i> was to +visit the Blackthornes this very summer, not +as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited +guest—with the groom whom I have rejected. +</p> + +<p> +It is like scattering words before the +obvious to say that I wish you a pleasant summer. +Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, +some night on the passage across, lean far +over and look down at the phosphorescent +couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of +the deep, remember that the Venus of modern +life is the American woman. +</p> + +<p> +Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing +else, brings you home—see you not at all or +seldom or often? +</p> + +<p> +At least this will remind you that I merely +say <i>au revoir</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Adrift for the summer rather than be an +unwilling bride. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<i>June twenty-first.</i> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 21.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +Since life separated us the other night I +have not heard from you. I have not +expected a letter, nor do you expect one from +me. But I am going away to-morrow for the +summer and my heart has a few words for +you which must be spoken. +</p> + +<p> +It was not disappointment about the summer +in England, not even your refusal to +explain why you disappointed me, that held the +main reason of my drawing back. I am in the +mood to-night to tell you some things very +frankly: +</p> + +<p> +Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to +be married and twice as the wedding drew +near I drew away from it. It is an old, old +feeling of mine, though I am so young, that +if married I should not long be happy. Of +course I should be happy for a while. But +<i>afterwards</i>! The interminable, intolerable +<i>afterwards</i>! The same person year in and +year out—I should be stifled. Each of the +men to whom I was engaged had given me +before marriage all that he had to give: the +rest I did not care for; after marriage with +either I foresaw only staleness, his limitations, +monotony. +</p> + +<p> +Believe this, then: there are things in you +that I cling to, other things in you that do +not draw me at all. And I cling more to life +than to you, more than to any one person. +How can any one person ever be all to me, all +that I am meant for, and <i>I will live</i>! +</p> + +<p> +Why should we women be forced to spend +our lives beside the first spring where one +happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! +Why be doomed to die in old age at the same +spring! With all my soul I believe that the +world which has slowly thrown off so many +tyrannies is about to throw off other tyrannies. +It has been so harsh toward happiness, +so compassionate toward misery and wrong. +Yet happiness is life's finest victory: for ages +we have been trying to defeat our one best +victory—our natural happiness! +</p> + +<p> +A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning—then +to go thirsty for the rest of the long, +hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet +at spring after spring—there are so many +springs! And thirst is so eager for them! +</p> + +<p> +Come to see me in the autumn. For I will +not, cannot, give you up. And when you +come, do not seek to renew the engagement. +Let that go whither it has gone. But come +to see me. +</p> + +<p> +For I love you. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 21.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY BOLES: +</p> + +<p> +This is good-bye to you for the summer +and, better than that, it is good-bye to you +for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth +that we have long hated each other and have +used our acquaintanceship and our letters to +express our hatred? How could there ever +have been any friendship between you and me? +</p> + +<p> +Let me tell you of the detestable little +signs that I have noticed in you for years. +Are you aware that all the time you have +occupied your apartment, you have never +changed the arrangement of your furniture? +As soon as your guests are gone, you push +every chair where it was before. For years +your one seat has been the same end of the +same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted +your disquietude if any guest happened to +sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere. +For years you have worn the same breast-pin, +though you have several. The idea of your +being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride +yourself in such externals of faithfulness. +</p> + +<p> +You soul of perfidy! +</p> + +<p> +I leave you undisturbed to innumerable +appointments with Ben, and with the same +particular something to talk about, falsest +woman I have ever known. +</p> + +<p> +Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the +fact that you are secretly receiving almost +constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will +you tell him? <i>Or shall I?</i> +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap02b"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 23rd.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I am worried. +</p> + +<p> +I begin to feel doubtful as to what course +I should pursue with Dr. Claude Mullen. +Of late he has been coming too often. He +has been writing to me too often. He appears +to be losing control of himself. Things cannot +go on as they are and they must not get worse. +What I could not foresee is his determination +to hold <i>me</i> responsible for his being in love +with me! He insists that <i>I</i> encouraged him +and am now unfair—<i>me</i> unfair! Of course I +have <i>never</i> encouraged his visits; out of simple +goodness of heart I have <i>tolerated</i> them. Now +the reward of my <i>kindness</i> is that he holds me +responsible and guilty. He is trying, in other +words, to take advantage of my <i>sympathy</i> for +him. I <i>do</i> feel sorry for him! +</p> + +<p> +I have not been cruel enough to dismiss +him. His last letter is enclosed: it will give +you some idea——! +</p> + +<p> +Can you advise me what to do? I have +always relied upon <i>your</i> judgment in everything. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Faithfully yours,<br /> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Penciled in Court Room] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 24th.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: +tell him to take a cab and drive straight to +the nearest institution for the weak-minded, +engage a room, lock himself in and pray God +to give him some sense. Tell him to stay +secluded there until that prayer is answered. +The Almighty himself couldn't answer his +prayer until after his death, and by that time +he'd be out of the way anyhow and you +wouldn't mind. +</p> + +<p> +I return his funeral oration unread, since I +did not wish to attract attention to myself +as moved to tears in open court. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Evening of the same day] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN: +</p> + +<p> +This is a night I have long waited for and +worked for. +</p> + +<p> +You have understood why during these +years I have never asked you to set a day +for our marriage. It has been a long, hard +struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a +living and a practice and a name. You know +I have had as my goal not a living for one +but a living for two—and for more than +two—for our little ones. When I married you, I +meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, +all flats. +</p> + +<p> +But with these two hands of mine I have +laid hold of the affairs of this world and +shaken them until they have heeded me and +my strength. I have won, I am independent, +I am my own man and my own master, and +I am ready to be your husband as through it +all I have been your lover. +</p> + +<p> +Name the day when I can be both. +</p> + +<p> +Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave +this firm and establish my own and I want +that done first. Some months must yet pass. +Any day of next Spring, then—so far away +but nearer than any other Spring during these +impatient years. +</p> + +<p> +Polly, constant one, I am your constant +lover, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +Roses to you. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 24.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN! +</p> + +<p> +My heart answers you. It leaps forward +to the day. I have set the day in my heart +and sealed it on my lips. Come and break +that seal. To-night I shall tear two of the +rosebuds apart and mingle their petals on my +pillow. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> +<i>June 26.</i> +</p> + +<p> +It occurs to me that our engagement might +furnish you the means of getting rid of your +prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to +come to see you: tell him you have some joyful +news that must be imparted at once. When +he arrives announce to him that you have +named the day of your marriage to me. To +<i>me</i>, tell him! Then let him take himself off. +You say he complains that all this is getting +on his nerves. Anything that could sit on +his nerves would be a mighty small animal. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 27.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> +<i>June 28.</i> +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 14.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I. s. y. s. r. r. (You have long since learned +what that means.) +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your man,<br /> + BEN D.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 15.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAREST BEN: +</p> + +<p> +You need not give another thought to +Dr. Mullen. He does not annoy me any +more. He can drop finally out of our +correspondence. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your devoted<br /> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 16.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 17.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Awaiting your courteous order, we are +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD.<br /> + Per Q.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO "JUDD & JUDD, PER Q." +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 18.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + July 18.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 21.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Please advise me at once whether you will +do this. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 22.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 23.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +I have your letter and I take the greatest +possible pleasure in enclosing my cheque to +cover the additional expense, as you kindly +suggest. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>October 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +They are gone! They're off! They have +weighed anchor! They have sailed; they have +departed! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +<i>Le Génie Oblige</i> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +ANNE RAEBURN TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE IN ITALY +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + November 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +"The <i>Scolopendium vulgare</i> put up two new +shoots after he went away, mum. Bishop's +crooks he calls 'em, mum." +</p> + +<p> +I replied that I was glad to hear the ferns +were thrifty. He, jerking his thumb toward +the fern bank, added still more resentfully: +</p> + +<p> +"The <i>Adiantum nigrum</i> put up some, mum." +</p> + +<p> +I replied that I should announce to you the +good news. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 that +<i>he</i> did 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." +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I am, dear Mr. Blackthorne, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + ANNE RAEBURN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 27.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 28.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +<i>The ferns have come back to me from England!</i> +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 29.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +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! +<i>J'y suis, J'y reste</i>. (French forever! <i>Boutez +en avant, mon</i> French!) +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Our fee is $50; hadn't you better stop at +$50 and think yourself lucky? <i>Monsieur a +bien tombé</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Any more fern letters? Don't forget them. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>December 30.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + December 25.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I shall always remember you for having +been instrumental in his death. This is the +kind of Christmas Day you have presented +to me. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + January 7.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Necessity knows no law, and I have become +a sad victim of necessity, hence this +appeal to you. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Hoping for an early reply, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + A proud daughter of the Southland,<br /> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>January 10.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +The tumult in my bones was a well-advised +monitor. More fern letters <i>were</i> on the way: +I enclose them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +One thing I cannot get out of <i>my</i> head: +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? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>January 11.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +The letters are filed away with their +predecessors. +</p> + +<p> +If I am any judge of human nature, you +will receive others from this daughter of the +South in the same strain. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I wish these gentlemen would study the +contrariwise case of Clara: she would convert +a drink of water into a mouthful of sawdust. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +RUFUS KENT TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>The Great Dipper,<br /> + January 12.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +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.) ... +</p> + +<p> +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?" +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I now come to the subject of your letter, +and this is what I have ascertained: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +"That," he said, "was once reserved for +some ferns which your young American +novelist promised to send me." +</p> + +<p> +The whole company gathered curiously +about the spot and all naturally asked, "But +where are the ferns?" +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Blackthorne without a word and with +an air of regret that even so little had escaped +him, led the party further away. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. I <i>will</i> add, 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.... +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Faithfully yours,<br /> + RUFUS KENT.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap03"></a></p> + +<h2> +PART THIRD +</h2> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + May 1, 1912</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + A proud daughter of the Southland,<br /> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 17, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +I have received your cheque and I think +what you have done is most appropriate. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +If my grey-haired father, who is now beyond +the blue skies, were only back in North +Carolina! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 21, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Andy Peters is a confirmed rascal. +I almost feel that I shall have to do +something desperate if I am to succeed. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 24, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +Clara Louise Chamberlain is in New York! +God Almighty! +</p> + +<p> +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 I <i>was</i> in a way +"instrumental" in bringing about the great +botanist's demise. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But I can't have that woman as <i>my</i> secretary! +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. +</p> + +<p> +Let her be <i>your</i> secretary, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 25, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR MADAM: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 27, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then I asked her to receive the dictation +of the address, which was as follows: +</p> + +<p> +"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. +</p> + +<p> +"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. +</p> + +<p> +"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." +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This morning she did not come. I called +up her address; she had left there. Nothing +was known of her. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Your obedient counsel and turtle, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 28, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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 you <i>can't</i> +imagine, <i>can't</i> imagine, <i>can't</i> imagine! +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 29, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Your respectful erring servant,<br /> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>May 30, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +POLLY BOLES: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +As a sign of my displeasure I carried the +flowers across the room to the mantelpiece. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I now come to the incident which explains +why I think my letter should be sent to Ben +Doolittle. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Act as you think best. And remember, +please, under what stress of feeling I must be +to write another letter to you. <i>To you!</i> +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[A second letter enclosed in the preceding one] +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Again I leave the matter to Ben and you. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + TILLY SNOWDEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 2, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +TILLY SNOWDEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 their +<i>backs</i>. If history speaks truly, quite a few +notorious ones have come to grief—but <i>you</i> +will understand. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 2, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Are you going to write to me every day +while I am gone? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + POLLY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 4, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIRS: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +If the stems of your roses do not happen to +be long, make them long. (You know the +wires.) +</p> + +<p> +Very truly yours, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 4, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I happen to hold the key to Beverley's +comic behaviour in Tilly's parlour. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, but why did you go away without +good-bye? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 5, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR POLLY: +</p> + +<p> +I go on where I left off yesterday. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I explained to Beverley, and we went out +and bought a dictograph, and he concealed +it where, of course, he could not find it! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I sent Beverley to Brooklyn for the day. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But all this is nothing, nothing, nothing! +I am lost without you. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +POLLY BOLES TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Louisville, Kentucky,<br /> + June 9, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Marigold will want revenge on Beverley, +and he will have his revenge—in some +way. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +My mother joins me in love to you. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Sincerely yours,<br /> + POLLY BOLES.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>150 Wall Street, New York,<br /> + June 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + Edward Blackthorne, Esq.,<br /> + King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 that +<i>his</i> duty 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. +</p> + +<p> +I have observed that there is danger in +many people causing any one person to think +himself a superior person unless he <i>is</i> a +superior person. If he really is what is +thought of him, no harm is done him. But +if he is widely regarded a superior person +and is not a superior person, harm may +result to him. For whenever any person is +praised beyond his deserts, he is not lifted +up by such praise any more than the stature +of a man is increased by thickening the heels +of his shoes. On the contrary, he is apt to +be lowered by over-praise. For, prodded by +adulation, he may lay aside his ordinary +image and assume, as far as he can, the guise +of some inferior creature which more +glaringly expresses what he is—as the peacock, +the owl, the porcupine, the lamb, the bulldog, +the ass. I have seen all these. I have +seen the strutting peacock novelist, the solemn, +speechless owl novelist, the fretful porcupine +novelist, the spring-lamb novelist, the +ferocious, jealous bulldog novelist, and the sacred +ass novelist. And many others. +</p> + +<p> +You may begin to wonder why I am led +into these reflections in this letter. The +reason is, I have been wondering into what +kind of inferior creature your fame—your +over-praise—has lowered <i>you</i>. Frankly, I +perfectly know; I will not name the animal. +But I feel sure that he is a highly offensive +small beast. +</p> + +<p> +If you feel disposed to read further, I shall +explain. +</p> + +<p> +I have in my legal possession three letters +of yours. They were written to a young +gentleman whom I have known now for a good many +years, whose character I know about as well +as any one man can know another's, and for +whom increasing knowledge has always led +me to feel increasing respect. The young +man is Mr. Beverley Sands. You may now +realise what I am coming to. +</p> + +<p> +The first of these letters of yours reveals +you as a stranger seeking the acquaintance +of Mr. Sands—to a certain limit: you asked +of him a courtesy and you offered courtesies +in exchange. That is common enough and +natural, and fair, and human. But what I +have noticed is your doing this with the air +of the superior person. Mr. Sands, being a +novelist, is of course a superior person. +Therefore, you felt called upon to introduce +yourself to him as a <i>more</i> superior person. +That is, you condescended to be gracious. +You made it a virtue in you to ask a favour +of him. You expected him to be delighted +that you allowed him to serve you. +</p> + +<p> +In the second letter you go further. He +wafted some incense toward you and you +got on your knees to this incense. You get +up and offer him more courtesies—all +courtesies. Because he praised you, you even +wish him to visit you. +</p> + +<p> +Now the third letter. The favour you +asked of Mr. Sands was that he send you +some ferns. By no fault of his except too +much confidence in the agents he employed +(he over-trusts everyone and over-trusted +you), by no other fault of his the ferns were +not sent. You waited, time passed, you +grew impatient, you grew suspicious of +Mr. Sands, you felt slighted, you became piqued +in your vanity, wounded in your self-love, +you became resentful, you became furious, +you became revengeful, you became abusive. +You told him that he had never meant to +keep his word, that you had kicked his books +out of your library, that he might profitably +study the moral sensitiveness of a head of +cabbage. +</p> + +<p> +During the summer American tourists +visited you—pilgrims of your fame. You took +advantage of their visit to promulgate +mysteriously your hostility to Mr. Sands. Not by +one explicit word, you understand. Your +exalted imagination merely lied on him, and +you entrusted to other imaginations the duty +of scattering broadcast your noble lie. They +did this—some of them happening not to be +friends of Mr. Sands—and as a result of the +false light you threw upon his character, he +now in the minds of many persons rests under +a cloud. And that cloud is never going to be +dispelled. +</p> + +<p> +Enclosed you will please find copies of these +three letters of yours; would you mind reading +them over? And you will find also a +packet of letters which will enable you to +understand why the ferns never reached you +and the whole entanglement of the case. +And finally, you will find enclosed a brief with +which, were I to appear in Court against you, +as Mr. Sands's lawyer, I should hold you up +to public view as what you are. +</p> + +<p> +I shall merely add that I have often met +you in the courtroom as the kind of criminal +who believes without evidence and who +distrusts without reason; who is, therefore, ready +to blast a character upon suspicion. If he +dislikes the person, in the absence of evidence +against him, he draws upon the dark traits +of his own nature to furnish the evidence. +</p> + +<p> +I have written because I am a friend of Mr. Sands. +</p> + +<p> +I am, as to you, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Merely,<br /> + BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> +<p class="salutation"> + <i>King Alfred's Wood,<br /> + Warwickshire, England,<br /> + June 21, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> + Benjamin Doolittle,<br /> + 150 Wall Street,<br /> + New York City.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +You state in your letter, which I have just +laid down, that you are a stranger to me. +There is no conceivable reason why I should +wish to offer you the slightest rudeness—even +that of crossing your word—yet may I say, +that I know you perfectly? If you had +unfortunately read some of my very despicable novels, +you might have found, scattered here and +there, everything that you have said in your +letter, and almost in your very words. That +is, I have two or three times drawn your +portrait, or at least drawn at it; and thus while +you are indeed a stranger to me in name, I feel +bound to say that you are an old acquaintance +in nature. +</p> + +<p> +You cannot for a moment imagine—however, +you despise imagination and I withdraw +the offensive word—you cannot for a moment +suppose that I can have any motive in being +discourteous, and I shall, therefore, go on to +say, but only with your permission, that the +first time I attempted to sketch you, was in a +very early piece of work; I was a youthful +novelist, at the outset of my career. I +projected a story entitled: "<i>The Married +Cross-Purposes of Ned and Sal Blivvens.</i>" I feel +bound to say that you in your letter pleasantly +remind me of the <i>Sal Blivvens</i> of my story. +In Sal's eyes poor Ned's failing was this: as +twenty-one human shillings he never made an +exact human guinea—his shillings ran a few +pence over, or they fell a few pence short. +That is, Ned never did just enough of +anything, or said just enough, but either too much +or too little to suit <i>Sal</i>. He never had just one +idea about any one thing, but two or three +ideas; he never felt in just one way about any +one thing, but had mixed feelings, a variety +of feelings. He was not a yard measure or +a pint measure or a pound measure; he overflowed +or he didn't fill, and any one thing in +him always ran into other things in him. +</p> + +<p> +Being a young novelist I was not satisfied +to offer <i>Sal</i> to the world on her own account, +but I must try to make her more credible and +formidable by following her into the next +generation, and giving her a son who inherited +her traits. Thus I had <i>Tommy Blivvens</i>. +When Tommy was old enough to receive his +first allowance of Christmas pudding, he +proceeded to take the pudding to pieces. He +picked out all the raisins and made a little +pile of them. And made a little separate pile +of the currants, and another pile of the +almonds, and another of the citron, or of +whatever else there was to separate. Then in +profound satisfaction he ate them, pile by pile, +as a philosopher of the sure. +</p> + +<p> +Thus—and I insist I mean no disrespect—your +letter does revive for me a little innocent +laughter at my early literary vision of a +human baggage—friend of my youthful days +and artistic enthusiasm—<i>Sal Blivvens</i>. I +arranged that when <i>Ned</i> died, his neighbours all +felt sorry and wished him a green turf for his +grave. <i>Sal</i>, I felt sure, survived him as one +who all her life walks past every human heart +and enters none—being always dead-sure, +always dead-right; for the human heart +rejects perfection in any human being. +</p> + +<p> +I recognise you as belonging to the large +tough family of the human cocksures. <i>Sal +Blivvens</i> belonged to it—dead-sure, +dead-right, every time. We have many of the +cocksures in England, you must have many of +them in the United States. The cocksures are +people who have no dim borderland around +their minds, no twilight between day and +darkness. They see everything as they see a +highly coloured rug on a well-lighted floor. +There is either rug or no rug, either floor or no +floor. No part of the floor could possibly be +rug and no part of the rug could possibly be +floor. A cocksure, as a lawyer, is the natural +prosecuting attorney of human nature's +natural misgivings and wiser doubts and nobler +errors. How the American cocksures of their +day despised the man Washington, who often +prayed for guidance; with what contempt +they blasted the character of your Abraham +Lincoln, whose patient soul inhabited the +border of a divine disquietude and whose +public life was the patient study of hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +I have taken notice of the peculiarly +American character of your cocksureness: it +magnifies and qualifies a man to step by the mile, +to sit down by the acre, to utter things by the +ton. Do you happen to know Michael +Angelo's <i>Moses</i>? I always think of an American +cocksure as looking like Michael Angelo's +<i>Moses</i>—colossal law-giver, a hyper-stupendous +fellow. And I have often thought that a +regiment of American cocksures would be the +most terrific spectacle on a battlefield that the +rest of the human race could ever face. Just +now it has occurred to me that it was your +great Emerson who spoke best on the weakness +of the superlative—the cocksure is the +human superlative. +</p> + +<p> +As to your letter: You declare you know +nothing about novels, but your arraignment +of the novelist is exact. You are dead-sure +that you are perfectly right about me. Your +arraignment of me is exact. You are +conscious of no more moral perturbation as to +justice than exists in a monkey wrench. But +that is the nature of the cocksure—his +conclusions have to him the validity of a +hardware store. +</p> + +<p> +This, however, is nothing. I clear it away +in order to tell you that I am filled with +admiration of your loyalty to your friend, and +of the savage ferocity with which you attack +me as his enemy. That makes you a friend +worth having, and I wish you were to be +numbered among mine; there are none too many +such in this world. Next, I wish to assure +you that I have studied your brief against me +and confess that you have made out the case. +I fell into a grave mistake, I wronged your +friend deeply, I hope not irreparably, and it +was a poor, sorry, shabby business. I am +about to write to Mr. Sands. If he is what +you say he is, then in an instant he will forgive +me—though you never may. I shall ask him, +as I could not have asked him before, whether +he will not come to visit me. My house, my +hospitality, all that I have and all that I am, +shall be his. I shall take every step possible +to undo what I thoughtlessly, impulsively did. +I shall write to the President of his Club. +</p> + +<p> +One exception is filed to a specification in +your brief: no such things took place in my +garden upon the visit of the American +tourists, as you declare. I did not promulgate +any mysterious hostility to Mr. Sands. You +tell me that among those tourists were persons +hostile to Mr. Sands. It was these hostile +persons who misinterpreted and exaggerated +whatever took place. You knew these +persons to be enemies of Mr. Sands's and then +you accepted their testimony as true—being +a cocksure. +</p> + +<p> +A final word to you. Your whole character +and happiness rests upon the belief that +you see life clearly and judge rightly the +fellow-beings whom you know. Those <i>you</i> +doubt ought to be doubted and those <i>you</i> +trust ought to be trusted! Now I have +travelled far enough on life's road to have +passed its many human figures—perhaps all +the human types that straggle along it in +their many ways. No figures on that road +have been more noticeable to me than here +and there a man in whom I have discerned a +broken cocksure. +</p> + +<p> +You say you like biography: do you like +to read the Life of Robert Burns? And I +wonder whether these words of his have ever +guided you in your outlook upon life: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + "<i>Then gently scan your brother man</i><br /> + * * * * *<br /> + <i>To step aside is human.</i>"<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +I thank you again. I wish you well. And +I hope that no experience, striking at you +out of life's uncertainties, may ever leave +you one of those noticeable men—a broken +cocksure. +</p> + +<p> +Your deeply obliged and very grateful, +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>June 30, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +About a month ago I took it upon myself +to write the one letter that had long been +raging in my mind to Edward Blackthorne. +And I sent him all the fern letters. And then +I drew up the whole case and prosecuted him +as your lawyer. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I meant my letter to be an +infernal machine that would blow him to pieces. +He merely inspected it, removed the fuse and +inserted a crank, and turned it into a +music-box to grind out his praises. +</p> + +<p> +And then the kind of music he ground out +for me. +</p> + +<p> +All day I have been ashamed to stand up +and I've been ashamed to sit down. He told +me that my letter reminded him of a character +in his first novel—a woman called <i>Sal +Blivvens</i>. ME—<i>Sal Blivvens!</i> +</p> + +<p> +But of what use is it for us poor, +common-clay, rough, ordinary men who have no +imagination—of what use is it for us to +attack you superior fellows who have it, have +imagination? You are the Russians of the +human mind, and when attacked on your +frontiers, you merely retreat into a vast, +unknown, uninvadable country. The further +you retire toward the interior of your +mysterious kingdom, the nearer you seem to +approach the fortresses of your strength. +</p> + +<p> +I am wiser—if no better. If ever again I +feel like attacking any stranger with a letter, +I shall try to ascertain beforehand whether +he is an ordinary man like me or a genius. +If he is a genius, I am going to let him alone. +</p> + +<p> +Yet, damn me if I, too, wouldn't like to +see your man Blackthorne now. Ask him +some time whether a short visit from +Benjamin Doolittle could be arranged on any +terms of international agreement. +</p> + +<p> +Now for something on my level of ordinary +life! A day or two ago I was waiting in front +of the residence of one of my uptown clients, +a few doors from the residence of your friend +Dr. Marigold. While I waited, he came out +on the front steps with Dr. Mullen. As I +drove past, I leaned far out and made them +a magnificent sweeping bow: one can afford +to be forgiving and magnanimous after he +settled things to his satisfaction. They did +not return the bow but exchanged quiet +smiles. I confess the smiles have rankled. +They seemed like saying: he bows best who +bows last. +</p> + +<p> +You are the best thing in New York to me +since Polly went away. Without you both +it would come near to being one vast solitude. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEN (alias <i>Sal Blivvens</i>).<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 1, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I wrote you this morning upon receipt of +your letter telling me of your own terrific +letter to Mr. Blackthorne and of your merciless +arraignment of him. Let me say again +that I wish to pour out my gratitude to you +for your motives and also, well, also my regret +at your action. Somehow I have been +reminded of Voltaire's saying: he had a brother +who was such a fool that he started out to be +perfect; as a consequence the world knows +nothing of Voltaire's brother: it knows very +well Voltaire with his faults. +</p> + +<p> +The mail of yesterday which brought you +Mr. Blackthorne's reply to your arraignment +brought me also a letter: he must have written +to us both instantly. His letter is the only +one that I cannot send you; you would not +desire to read it. You are too big and +generous, too warmly human, too exuberantly +vital, to care to lend ear to a great man's +chagrin and regret for an impulsive mistake. +You are not Cassius to carp at Caesar. +</p> + +<p> +Now this afternoon a second letter comes +from Mr. Blackthorne and that I enclose: it +will do you good to read it—it is not a black +passing cloud, it is steady human sunlight. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><a id="chap03b"></a></p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Enclosed letter from Edward Blackthorne] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +MY DEAR MR. SANDS: +</p> + +<p> +I follow up my letter of yesterday with the +unexpected tidings of to-day. I am willing +to believe that these will interest you as +associated with your coming visit. +</p> + +<p> +Hodge is dead. His last birthday, his final +natal eclipse, has bowled him over and left +him darkened for good. He can trouble us +no more, but will now do his part as mould +for the rose of York and the rose of Lancaster. +He will help to make a mound for some other +Englishman's ferns. When you come—and +I know you will come—we shall drink a cup +of tea in the garden to his peaceful +memory—and to his troubled memory for Latin. +</p> + +<p> +I am now waiting for you. Come, out of +your younger world and with your youth to +an older world and to an older man. And let +each of us find in our meeting some presage +of an alliance which ought to grow always +closer in the literatures of the two nations. +Their literatures hold their ideals; and if their +ideals touch and mingle, then nothing practical +can long keep them far apart. If two oak +trees reach one another with their branches, +they must meet in their roots; for the branches +are aerial roots and the roots are underground +branches. +</p> + +<p> +Come. In the eagerness of my letter of +yesterday to put myself not in the right but +less, if possible, in the wrong, I forgot the +very matter with which the right and the +wrong originated. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Will you, after all, send the ferns?</i> +</p> + +<p> +The whole garden waits for them; a white +light falls on the vacant spot; a white light +falls on your books in my library; a white +light falls on you, +</p> + +<p> +I wait for you, both hands outstretched. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p> +(Note penciled on the margin of the letter +by Beverley Sands to Ben Doolittle: "You +will see that I am back where the whole thing +started; I have to begin all over again with +the ferns. And now the florists will be after +me again. I feel this in the trembling marrow +of my bones, and my bones by this time are a +wireless station on this subject.") +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +We take pleasure in enclosing our new +catalogue for the coming autumn, and should +be pleased to receive any further commissions +for the European trade. +</p> + +<p> +We repeat that we have no connection +whatever with any house doing business in +the city under the name of Botany. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + JUDD & JUDD,<br /> + Per Q.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Louisville, Kentucky,<br /> + July 4th, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +Venturing to recall ourselves to your memory +for the approaching autumn season, in view of +having been honoured upon a previous +occasion with your flattering patronage, and +reasoning that our past transactions have +been mutually satisfactory, we avail ourselves +of this opportunity of reviving the +conjunction heretofore existing between us as most +gratifying and thank you sincerely for past +favours. We hope to continue our pleasant +relations and desire to say that if you should +contemplate arranging for the shipments of +plants of any description, we could afford you +surprised satisfaction. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Respectfully yours,<br /> + PHILLIPS & FAULDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Dunkirk, Tennessee,<br /> + July 6, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +We are prepared to supply you with +anything you need. Could ship ferns to any +country in Europe, having done so for the +late Noah Chamberlin, the well-known florist +just across the State line, who was a customer +of ours. +</p> + +<p> +old debts of Phillips and Faulds not yet +paid, had to drop them entirely. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Very truly yours,<br /> + BURNS & BRUCE.<br /> +</p> + +<p> +If you need any forest trees, we could +supply you with all the forest trees you want, +plenty of oaks, etc. plenty of elms, plenty +of walnuts, etc. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +ANDY PETERS TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>Seminole, North Carolina,<br /> + July 7th, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p> +I have lately enlarged my business and will +be able to handle any orders you may give me. +The orders which Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain +said you were to send have not yet turned +up. I write to you, because I have heard +about you a great deal through Miss Clara +Louise, since her return from her visit to New +York. She succeeded in getting two or three +donations of books for our library, and they +have now given her a place there. I was +sorry to part with Miss Clara Louise, but I +had just married, and after the first few weeks +I expected my wife to become my assistant. +I am not saying anything against Miss Clara +Louise, but she was expensive on my sweet +violets, especially on a Sunday, having the +run of the flowers. She and Alice didn't get +along very well together, and I did have a +bad set-back with my violets while she was +here. +</p> + +<p> +Seedlins is one of my specialities. I make +a speciality of seedlins. If you want any +seedlins, will you call on me? I am young +and just married and anxious to please, and +I wish you would call on me when you want +anything green. Nothing dried. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + Yours respectfully,<br /> + ANDY PETERS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 7th, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEVERLEY: +</p> + +<p> +It makes me a little sad to write. I +suppose you saw in this morning's paper the +announcement of Tilly's marriage next week +to Dr. Marigold. Nevertheless—congratulations! +You have lost years of youth and +happiness with some lovely woman on account +of your dalliance with her. +</p> + +<p> +Now at last, you will let her alone, and +you will soon find—Nature will quickly +drive you to find—the one you deserve to +marry. +</p> + +<p> +It looks selfish at such a moment to set my +happiness over against your unhappiness, +but I've just had news, that at last, after +lingering so long and a little mysteriously in +Louisville, Polly is coming. Polly is coming +with her wedding clothes. We long ago +decided to have no wedding. All that we have +long wished is to marry one another. +Mr. Blackthorne called me a cocksure. Well, +Polly is another cocksure. We shall jog along +as a perfectly satisfied couple of cocksures on +the cocksure road. (I hope to God Polly +will never find out that she married <i>Sal +Blivvens</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +Dear fellow, truest of comrades among +men, it is inevitable that I reluctantly leave +you somewhat behind, desert you a little, as +the friend who marries. +</p> + +<p> +One awful thought freezes me to my chair +this hot July day. You have never said a +word about Miss Clara Louise Chamberlain, +since the day of my hypothetical charge to the +jury. Can it be possible that you followed +her up? Did you feed her any more cheques? +I have often warned you against Tilly, as +inconstant. But, my dear fellow, remember +there is a worse extreme than in +inconstancy—Clara Louise would be sealing wax. +You would merely be marrying 115 pounds of +sealing wax. Every time she sputtered in +conversation, she'd seal you the tighter. +</p> + +<p> +Polly is coming with her wedding clothes. +</p> + +<p> + BEN.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 8.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +I saw the announcement in the morning +paper about Tilly. +</p> + +<p> +It wouldn't be worth while to write how I +feel. +</p> + +<p> +It is true that I traced Miss Chamberlain, +homeless in New York. And I saw her. As +to whether I have been feeding cheques to her, +that is solely a question of my royalties. +Royalties are human gratitude; why should +not the dews of gratitude fall on one so +parched? Besides, I don't owe you anything, +gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, I feel you're going—you're passing on +to Polly. I append a trifle which explains +itself, and am, making the best of everything, +the same +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY SANDS.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> + <i>A Meditation in Verse</i><br /> + (<i>Dedicated to Benjamin Doolittle as showing his<br /> + favourite weakness</i>)<br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>How can I mind the law's delay,<br /> + Or what a jury thinks it knows,<br /> + Or what some fool of a judge may say?<br /> + Polly comes with the wedding clothes.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>Time, who cheated me so long,<br /> + Kept me waiting mid life's snows,<br /> + I forgive and forget your wrong:<br /> + Polly comes with the wedding clothes.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + <i>Winter's lonely sky is gone,<br /> + July blazes with the rose,<br /> + All the world looks smiling on<br /> + At Polly in her wedding clothes.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[A hurried letter by messenger] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +Polly reached New York two days ago. I +went up that night. She had gone out—alone. +She did not return that night. I +found this out when I went up yesterday +morning and asked for her. She has not +been there since she left. They know nothing +about her. I have telegraphed Louisville. +They have sent me no word. Come down +at once. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> +BEN. +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="t3"> +[Hurried letter by messenger] +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 10, 1912.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +DEAR BEN: +</p> + +<p> +Is anything wrong about Polly? +</p> + +<p> +I met her on the street yesterday. She +tried to pass without speaking. I called to +her but she walked on. I called again and +she turned, hesitatingly, then came back very +slowly to meet me half-way. You know how +composed her manner always is. But she +could not control her emotion: she was deeply, +visibly troubled. Strange as it may seem, +while I thought of the mystery of her trouble, +I could but notice a trifle, as at such moments +one often does: she was beautifully dressed: a +new charm, a youthful freshness, was all over +her as for some impending ceremony. We +have always thought of Polly as one of the +women who are above dress. Such disregard +was in a way a verification of her character, +the adornment of her sincerity. Now she was +beautifully dressed. +</p> + +<p> +"But what is the meaning of all this?" I +asked, frankly mystified. +</p> + +<p> +Something in her manner checked the +question, forced back my words. +</p> + +<p> +"You will hear," she said, with quivering +lips. She looked me searchingly all over +the face as for the sake of dear old times +now ended. Then she turned off abruptly. +I watched her in sheer amazement till she +disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +I have been waiting to hear from you, but +cannot wait any longer. What does it mean? +Why don't you tell me? +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +BEVERLEY SANDS TO BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 11.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +I have with incredible eyes this instant read +this cutting from the morning paper: +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Miss Polly Boles married yesterday at the +City Hall in Jersey City to Dr. Claude Mullen. +</p> + +<p> +She must have been on her way when I saw +her. +</p> + +<p> +I have read the announcement without being +able to believe it—with some kind of death +in life at my heart. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben! So betrayed! I am +coming at once. +</p> + +<p class="closing"> + BEVERLEY.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS +</p> + +<p class="salutation"> + <i>July 18.</i><br /> +</p> + +<p> +The ferns have had their ironic way with +us and have wrought out their bitter comedy +to its end. The little group of us who were +the unsuspecting players are henceforth +scattered, to come together in the human +playhouse not again. The stage is empty, the +curtain waits to descend, and I, who +innocently brought the drama on, am left the +solitary figure to speak the epilogue ere I, too, +depart to go my separate road. +</p> + +<p> +This is Tilly's wedding day. How beautiful +the morning is for her! The whole sky is one +exquisite blue—no sign of any storm-plan far +or near. The July air blows as cool as early +May. I sit at my window writing and it +flows over me in soft waves, the fragrances +of the green park below my window enter +my room and encircle me like living human +tendernesses. At this moment, I suppose, +Tilly is dressing for her wedding, and +I—God knows why—am thinking of old-time +Kentucky gardens in one of which she played +as a child. Tilly, a little girl romping in her +mother's garden—Tilly before she was old +enough to know anything of the world—anything +of love—now, as she dresses for her +wedding—I cannot shut out that vision of +early purity. +</p> + +<p> +Yesterday a note came from her. I had +had no word since the day I openly ridiculed +the man she is to marry. But yesterday she +sent me this message: +</p> + +<p> +"Come to-night and say good-bye." +</p> + +<p> +She was not in her rooms to greet me. I +waited. Moments passed, long moments of +intense expectancy. She did not enter. I +fixed my eyes on her door. Once I saw it +pushed open a little way, then closed. Again +it was opened and again it was held as though +for lack of will or through quickly changing +impulses. Then it was opened and she +entered and came toward me, not looking at +me, but with her face turned aside. She +advanced a few paces and with some +swift, imperious rebellion, she turned and +passed out of the room and then came quickly +back. She had caught up her bridal veil. +She held the wreath in her hand and as she +approached me, I know not with what sudden +emotion she threw a corner of the veil over +her head and face and shoulders. And she +stood before me with I know not what struggle +tearing her heart. Almost in a whisper +she said: +</p> + +<p> +"Lift my veil." +</p> + +<p> +I lifted her veil and laid it back over her +forehead. She closed her eyes as tears welled +out of them. +</p> + +<p> +"Kiss me," she said. +</p> + +<p> +I would have taken her in my arms as mine +at that moment for all time, but she stepped +back and turned away, fading from me +rather than walking, with her veil pressed +like a handkerchief to her eyes. The door +closed on her. +</p> + +<p> +I waited. She did not come again. +</p> + +<p> +Now she is dressing for the marriage +ceremony. A friend gives her a house wedding. +The company of guests will be restricted, +everything will be exquisite, there will be +youth and beauty and distinction. There +will be no love. She marries as one who steps +through a beautiful arch further along one's +path. +</p> + +<p> +Whither that path leads, I do not know; +from what may lie at the end of it I turn away +and shudder. +</p> + +<p> +My thought of Tilly on her wedding morning +is of one exiled from happiness because +nature withheld from her the one thing needed +to make her all but perfect: that needful thing +was just a little more constancy. It is her +doom, forever to stretch out her hand toward a +brimming goblet, but ere she can bring it to +her lips it drops from her hand. Forever her +hand stretched out toward joy and forever +joy shattered at her feet. +</p> + +<p> +American scientists have lately discovered +or seem about to discover, some new fact in +Nature—the butterfly migrates. What we +have thought to be the bright-winged inhabitant +of a single summer in a single zone +follows summer's retreating wave and so dwells +in a summer that is perpetual. If Tilly is the +psyche of life's fields, then she seeks perpetual +summer as the law of her own being. All our +lives move along old, old paths. There is no +new path for any of us. If Tilly's fate is the +butterfly path, who can judge her harshly? +Not I. +</p> + +<p> +They sail away at once on their wedding +journey. He has wealth and social influence +of the fashionable sort which overflows into +the social mirrors of metropolitan journalism: +the papers found space for their plans of +travel: England and Scotland, France and +Switzerland, Austria and Germany, Bohemia +and Poland, Russia, Italy and Sicily—home. +The great world-path of the human butterfly, +seeking summer with insatiate quest. +</p> + +<p> +Home to his practice with that still fluttering +psyche! And then the path—the domestic +path—stretching straight onward across the +fields of life—what of his psyche then? Will she +fold her wings on a bed-post—year after year +slowly opening and unfolding those brilliant +wings amid the cob-webs of the same bed-post?... +</p> + +<p> +I cannot write of human life unless I can +forgive life. How forgive unless I can understand? +I have wrought with all that is within +me to understand Polly—her treachery up to +the last moment, her betrayal of Ben's +devotion. What I have made out dimly, darkly, +doubtfully, is this: Her whole character seems +built upon one trait, one virtue—loyalty. +She was disloyal to Ben because she had come +to believe that he was disloyal to her sovereign +excellence. There were things in his life +which he persistently refused to tell; perhaps +every day there were mere trifles which he did +not share with her—why should he? On a +certain memorable morning she discovered +that for years he had been keeping from her +some affairs of mine: that was his loyalty to +me; she thought it was his disloyalty to her. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot well picture Polly as a lute, but I +think that was the rift in the lute. Still a +man must not surrender himself wholly into +the keeping of the woman he loves; let him, +and he becomes anything in her life but a +man. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime Polly found near by another +suitor who offered her all he was—what +little there was of him—one of those +man-climbers who must run over the sheltering +wall of some woman. Thus there was gratified +in Polly her one passion for marrying—that +she should possess a pet. Now she possesses +one, owns him, can turn him round and +round, can turn him inside out, can see all +there is of him as she sees her pocket-handkerchief, +her breast-pin, her coffee cup, or any +little familiar piece of property which she can +become more and more attached to as the +years go by for the reason that it will never +surprise her, never puzzle her, never change +except by wearing out. +</p> + +<p> +This will be the end of the friendship +between Drs. Marigold and Mullen: their wives +will see to that. So much the better: scattered +impostors do least harm. +</p> + +<p> +I have struggled to understand the mystery +of her choice as to how she should be married. +Surely marriage, in the existence of any one, +is the hour when romance buds on the most +prosaic stalk. It budded for Polly and she +eloped! It was a short troubled flight of her +heavy mind without the wings of imagination. +She got as far as the nearest City Hall. +Instead of a minister she chose to be married +by a Justice of the Peace: Ben had been +unjust, she would be married by the figure of +Justice as a penal ceremony executed over +Ben: she mailed him a paper and left him to +understand that she had fled from him to +Justice and Peace! Polly's poetry! +</p> + +<p> +A line in an evening paper lets me know +that she and the Doctor have gone for their +honeymoon to Ocean Grove. When Polly +first came North to live and the first summer +came round she decided to spend it at Ocean +Grove, with the idea, I think, that she would +get a grove and an ocean with one railway +ticket, without having to change; she could +settle in a grove with an ocean and in an +ocean with a grove. What her disappointment +was I do not know, but every summer she has +gone back to Ocean Grove—the Franklin +Flats by the sea.... +</p> + +<p> +Yesterday I said good-bye to Ben. I had +spent part of every evening with him since +Polly's marriage—silent, empty evenings—a +quiet, stunned man. Confidence in himself +blasted out of him, confidence in human +nature, in the world. With no imagination +in him to deal with the reasons of Polly's +desertion—just a passive acceptance of it as a +wall accepts a hole in it made by a cannon ball. +</p> + +<p> +Her name was never called. A stunned, silent +man. Clear, joyous steady light in his eyes +gone—an uncertain look in them. Strangest +of all, a reserve in his voice, hesitation. And +courtesy for bluff warm confidence—courtesy +as of one who stumblingly reflects that he +must begin to be careful with everybody. +</p> + +<p> +His active nature meantime kept on. Life +swept him forward—nature did—whether he +would or not. I went down late one +evening. Evidently he had been working in his +room all day; the things Polly must have +sent him during all those years were gone. +He had on new slippers, a fresh robe, taking +the place of the slippers and the robe she +had made for him. Often I have seen him +tuck the robe in about his neck as a man +might reach for the arms of a woman to +draw them about his throat as she leans over +him from behind. +</p> + +<p> +During our talk that evening he began +strangely to speak of things that had taken +place years before in Kentucky, in his youth, +on the farm; did I remember this in +Kentucky, could I recall that? His mind had +gone back to old certainties. It was like his +walking away from present ruins toward +things still unharmed—never to be harmed. +</p> + +<p> +Early next morning he surprised me by +coming up, dressed for travel, holding a grip. +</p> + +<p> +"I am going to Kentucky," he said. +</p> + +<p> +I went to the train with him. His reserve +deepened on the way; if he had plans, he did +not share them with me. +</p> + +<p> +What I make out of it is that he will come +back married. No engagement this time, no +waiting. Swift marriage for what marriage +will sadly bring him. I think she will be +young—this time. But she will be, as nearly as +possible, like Polly. Any other kind of woman +now would leave him a desolate, empty-hearted +man for life. He thinks he will be getting +some one to take Polly's place. In reality it +will be his second attempt to marry Polly. +</p> + +<p> +I am bidding farewell the little group of us. +Some one else will have to write of me. How +can I write of myself? This I will say: that +I think that I am a sheep whose fate it is to +leave a little of his wool on every bramble. +</p> + +<p> +I sail next week for England to make my +visit to Mr. Blackthorne—at last. Another +letter has come from him. He has thrown +himself into the generous work of seeing that +my visit to him shall make me known. He +tells me there will be a house party, a +week-end; some of the great critics will be there, +some writers. "You must be found out in +England widely and at once," he writes. +</p> + +<p> +My heart swells as one who feels himself +climbing toward a height. There is kindled +in me that strangest of all the flames that burn +in the human heart, the shining thought that +my life is destined to be more than mine, that +my work will make its way into other minds +and mingle with the better, happier impulses +of other lives. +</p> + +<p> +The ironic ferns have had their way with +us. But after all has it not been for the best? +Have they not even in their irony been the +emblems of fidelity? +</p> + +<p> +They have found us out, they have played +upon our weaknesses, they have exaggerated +our virtues until these became vices, they have +separated us and set us going our diverging +ways. +</p> + +<p> +But while we human beings are moving +in every direction over the earth, the earth +without our being conscious of it is carrying +us in one same direction. So as we follow the +different pathways of our lives which appear +to lead toward unfaithfulness to one another, +may it not be true that to the Power which +sets us all in motion and drives us whither it +will all our lives are the Emblems of Fidelity? +</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="t3"> +THE END +</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<p class="t4"> + THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br /> + GARDEN CITY, N. Y.<br /> +</p> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY *** + +***** This file should be named 60435-h.htm or 60435-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/4/3/60435/ + +Produced by Al Haines +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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