Chapter 4

Our eyes met a little wistfully, as if each were striving to read whether the other had gone through the same burning enthuiasms for work, the same loving belief in its success, the same despondent hours when it seemed an utter failure, devoid of sense or interest, and then, somehow, we felt suddenly a mutual confidence, a sense that we knew each other well, the instant _camaraderie_ of two voyagers who find that they have sailed the same seas, passed through the same dangers, and stopped at the same ports.

I heard Mrs. Hopper open the hall-door, caught a glimpse of her looking out at us with satisfaction on her face, warm from the kitchen fire, and heard her close it, with much elaboration, and, tip-toe heavily away.

"Yes, this is my first book," he went on, as though we had not paused. "Of course I have had experience in writing before, magazine sketches, and that sort of thing, and beside that, I once had a mania for newspaper work, and much to my mother's horror, I was really a reporter on one of the city papers--_The Earth_."

"Circulation guaranteed over 380,000," I continued, rather ashamed of my flippancy, although he laughed.

"Exactly. Well, after a time I had an offer to go on the editorial staff of the _Eon_, through a friend who has influence with the management, and it was just then I was taken ill with this typhoid fever that has left me the wreck you see," he said, with a whimsically sad smile. "That is not the worst, though," he went on, a shadow falling over his upturned face, "I cannot explain it, although my doctor pretends to. I had written--oh! say half-a-dozen chapters of this book before my sickness. As soon as I began to be convalescent, I wanted to amuse myself by going on with it. I had my plot roughly blocked out, my characters were entirely distinct in my mind, yet when I took up my pen again, I found I could not write connectedly. It was simply horrible. I shall never forget that day. Of course I imagined I should never write again. I sent for two or three doctors, announced that I had paresis, and was told that it was madness for a man who had been as ill as I to attempt any sort of literary work for weeks, if not months. But the sense that I absolutely could not write preyed upon me. I used to do a little each day in spite of their orders, but it is only now that I am beginning to feel the confusion of ideas lessening, and the ability to present them coherently growing Even yet I only write disconnected parts of the chapters I had planned. It is--oh! what is that pet word of phrenologists? _continuity_, that I have not at my command. I suppose you cannot quite understand the agony of such an experience, never having gone through it. Only yesterday I tore up thirty pages of manuscript, and had more than half a mind to burn the whole thing. It is only the consideration of the possibly great loss to the literary world that withholds me, you know," he said with a half bitter laugh, throwing down the ruins of the flowers he had pulled to pieces with his thin, nervous hands, and rising.

"But I've been an unconscionable bore, even for a valetudinarian, and I believe they are privileged to tax people's amiability. I hope I havn't tired you so that you will forbid my coming again. I will promise not to talk about myself next time," he said, as he turned to go down the path.

I wondered what his book was like, as I lazily watched him cross the street in the noonday sun, and then I remembered with a twinge of conscience that I had hardly written a thousand words since I came. This soft air, redolent of spicy midsummer odors, seemed to produce an invincible indolence, even of thought. After the struggles of the past winter, I was feeling the reaction in utter relaxation of will and purpose. I wondered, were I in Mr. Longworth's place, would I ever write again, from the mere love of it? Was the end, even if that end were success, worth the pain of attaining it? And then, fearing to question myself further, I went to my room and began to write.

Late July was very beautiful in Wauchittic. From the ocean, a dozen miles distant, was wafted the faintest suggestion of the odor of the sea, the wide fields of lush pasture seemed to drink the sun. All night the murmur of the little stream falling over the mill-dam, filled the dark hours with soft whispers. The low woods, with their glittering leaves of the scrub-oak, tempted me, and I discovered fairy glades in their depths, where the grass was thin and pale, and strong ferns grew about the roots of the trees. Sometimes Mr. Longworth would accompany me on my trips of exploration, and, happy in our youth and the gladness of summer, and forgetful of strict conventionality, we would spend long mornings together, writing and reading in an especially cosy spot at the edge of the woods back of the farm. Mr. Longworth was growing so strong that Wilson's position was almost entirely a sinecure, and he spent most of his time lounging in the one village store, relating remarkable stories of New York to a circle of open-mouthed idlers. Day by day, I watched the lessening pallor and the growing health of Mr. Longworth's face, and saw him visibly gain strength. He could carry all the rugs and books and writing materials to our sylvan sanctum without fatigue, and he was so boyishly proud of his health that he used to exhaust himself with too long walks, for which I administered lectures that he always received submissively. One warm morning we had spent an hour in writing. I had grown tired, and throwing down my pen and pad, I left Mr. Longworth still at work, and strayed out into the field in the sun. There had been no rain for days, and the locusts filled the air with their _zeeing_. The wide field was dotted with golden patches of the arnica blossom, or yellow daisy, as the farmers called it. I wandered through the hot, knee-high grass, picking handfuls of the broad yellow suns, then childishly threw them away, and pulled others, with great heads of sweet red clover, and spears of timothy too. I was so happy. My whole being was filled with causeless peace and gladness. From time to time I glanced back to the shade of the oak trees, to the tall, slender figure, with the dark head bent over the white sheets of manuscript, and I sang softly a little song for very joy of my life. I looked up to the deep, cloudless sky, around at the wide stretch of green in the golden sunlight, then almost unconsciously back once more to the edge of the woods, where the spread rugs made a tiny home fit for the heart of summertide. Nor did I guess, even then, which was the dominant note of this wonderful chord that my life had unconsciously struck. I knew only that the world was far more beautiful than I had ever dreamed, and still singing under my breath the little cadence that seemed to fit the day, I wandered slowly back, leaving a path crushed between the tall, sun-faded grasses as I went.

Mr. Longworth laid down his work as I approached. A strange, absurd shyness possessed me, after the weeks of strengthening friendship and simple good-fellowship, but I held out the great bunch of daisies playfully to him, as I seated myself on the pile of rugs. He reached his hand for them eagerly, and buried his face in their sunny depths.

His eyes shone feverishly with his stress of work, and his thin cheeks were flushed. "You look tired," I said. "You should not write so long."

Thus far, though we had often jested about it, we had never read each other portions of our work.

"When I get mine half done," I had said, when he begged me to read him a chapter.

"When I can manage to make a chapter run smoothly to its end," he had replied laughing, in turn, but now to-day, urged by some necessity for an absorbing topic into which I could plunge, losing my restlessness, I insisted that he should read fragments, at least, to me.

He demurred at first. "I have told you how stupid it sounds, these disconnected bits, little descriptions, detached conversations. Sometimes I think I shall never use them after all." He fingered the pages absently.

"No, read it to me as it is," I begged. "I must hear it. I understand, of course, how it is written."

And so, yielding to my entreaties, he read, while I leaned back against the tree trunk, listening at first critically, and interested, perhaps, because it was his work, then with clasped hands and shortening breath, leaning forward that I might lose no word. A little squirrel scampered through the undergrowth back of us, and far in another field I could hear Mr. Hopper's quavering voice, as he called to the haymakers. Sometimes a leaf rustled, falling to the ground, but it was very quiet.

At last he laid down the leaves, and fixed his dark eyes eagerly on my face, as if he would read my thoughts, but my eyes were full of tears, and they were selfish tears. "My poor book!" I said, with a tender contempt for it.

"Do you mean--?" he began increduously.

"I mean that this is wonderful, and that I know I shall never write again," I said. "I do not know how it is, but I can read by the light of your book that you have genius, and that I am a failure. It is well that something brought it home to me before I wasted any more time." I meant to speak bravely, but I knew more than this. I knew that, with all my air-castles shattered, with the knowledge that to him literature was a pastime, while to me it meant livelihood, I gloried more in his success than I should in my own, that I was glad that he, and not I, was to have fame; and in the tumult of new emotions against which I struggled, my lip quivered, I turned aside my head, and felt, but I did not see, the hand that touched mine, thrilling me so that I drew away.

"Miss Marriott--Kate--"

"No, no," I cried, facing him with my cheeks crimson, and speaking rapidly, "I want you to let me send a few pages for a reading to Mr. ----, the editor of ----'s Magazine; he is a friend of mine; he has been so good to me. You say you have no publisher in view. I am certain he will take this when it is finished, and you know what that means; it will make your reputation, and--"

"Ah, but you see, these are only fragments," he said, sadly, regaining his composure. "Suppose I am never able to weave them properly into the plot? You cannot know how discouraged I am sometimes."

"Will you not let me send them?" I asked eagerly. "It is quite true that they are only fragments, but no one could write such things and then fail of success in elaborating; it is impossible. Come, let us go, it is nearly dinner-time," I went on, not giving him time to speak, as I began gathering up the books and rugs. "No, do not talk of my book; it is over. It was only a fancy of mine. I ought to have known I could not really write, and it came to me clearly this morning--so clearly! If you will let me be godmother to yours, that will be a little consolation," I said laughing, and having now his consent to send his MSS. to Mr. ----, I hurried him homeward, talking gaily of indifferent topics, and avoiding the tender, questioning eyes that sought my own.

That there was bitterness in the realization that I had miserably failed, that my novel was stupid and lacked the elements of interest, I cannot deny. Why I had not seen it all before, I can never understand, but this morning, as I compared it with the brilliant and strange play of fancy that characterized Mr. Longworth's work, I felt it keenly and conclusively. In the long afternoon hours I spent that day alone with my manuscript, I learned to face calmly the fact that I must go back to newspaper work without the vestige of a hope that I should ever write a readable novel. What it meant to me to arrive at this conclusion no one will understand who has not had the same hopes and the same downfall, yet through those hours in the little white-washed bed-room, with the locust boughs tapping against the window, the memory that I strenuously put away of that warm clasp, of the new tenderness in the voice that had called me by my name, softened the sharp pangs of disappointment; and he, at least, would not fail as I had done.

Toward sunset I laid away my dead book, and went down to the sitting-room where Mrs. Hopper sat placidly mending. She looked a trifle anxiously at my reddened eyelids. "Feel well?" she queried, plying the needle swiftly. "You mustn't let things prey onto your mind," she admonished, "or you won't get your money's worth of good out of the place, and besides, Lord! what is there worth worryin' over, any how? Money ain't worth it, and love ain't worth it," she declared, with a keen glance at me. "But, there, what _is_ the use of tellin anybody that? I worried some before I married Pa. I guess it's natural. I thought, thinks I, 'Mary Ann Bishop, he's years older'n you, 'n' he's weakly, 'n' there ain't much doubt but what you'll be left a relic'. Now look, that was ten years ago, and Pa ain't no more out o' slew 'n' he was then. 'N' then I thought, 'There, he's had one wife.' (Pa was a widower.) ''N' I expect he'll be always a-comparin' of us.' It ain't happened once, at least, not out loud, an' oh! how good he was to that woman! It didn't seem as if he _could_ be as good to his second. It was all over the place," said Mrs. Hopper laying down "Pa's" calico shirt, and speaking in low and impressive tones, as befits the subject of death, "how he bought her a bran-new wig two weeks before she died, an' he let her be buried in that wig, that cost over thirty dollars! An' as for a stone! Well, there, he went over to Gilsey's marble-yard to New Sidon, 'n' picked out a sixty-dollar tomb, 'n' never asked 'm to heave off a cent! An' that man, Miss Marriott," said Mrs. Hopper, "he'd do just as well by me as ever he done by her, 'n' I'm contented, 'n' I'm happy. I can tell you, I'm a believer in marriage," she said, with a proud smile, as she rose to get tea.

Mr. Longworth brought over a neat package of manuscript that evening, which I sent, with a letter to Mr. ----. We sat talking on the porch, watching the moon rise and flood the dew-wet fields with a tide of white radiance. Occasionally we heard Mr. or Mrs. Hopper in the lamp-lit sitting-room making brief comments on neighborhood gossip, or the crops, and then Mrs. Hopper would go on silently sewing, and "Pa," his white head bent over a "Farmer's Almanac," made long and painful calculations on a scrap of paper in which he seemed to get much mysterious assistance from the almanac.

Without, the cool night air touched my face gently. My head was burning and fevered with the day's emotions, but I felt the infinite peace of the evening calming me.

"No," I said firmly, "indeed I have decided wisely, Mr. Longworth. I am going back to my old work cheerfully, and shall never think again of my--my disappointment. I believe I can easily get work on my old paper, the "_Courier_," and I have been offered an editorial position on a new fashion paper, beside my weekly letter to the "_Red Cañon Gazette_.'" Naturally I did not tell him that I had spent all my savings of a year on this planned vacation, when I was to finish the book that should reimburse me.

"You shall not go back to that wretched drudgery," said Mr. Longworth, in his impetuous, nervous manner. "Do not imagine you are ever to do it again. Tell me," he said, lowering his voice, and leaning toward me so that he could see my face, shaded by the vine-hung trellis. "Could you be happy--"

We heard Mr. Hopper moving around the room uneasily, and instinctively Mr. Longworth paused.

"Ma," said the old man, a trifle reproachfully, "I'm afraid you don't try to make it cheerful for them young folks. Why don't you go out and set for a spell? I guess _I'll_ go."

"Stay where you are, Joseph," said Mrs. Hopper, in loud tones of disapproval, that were wafted through the open window to us. "Did _we_ want the old folks forever runnin' after us before _we_ was married?" Mr. Longworth tried not to steal a mirthful glance at me, but he found it hard to resist. "Oh! pshaw, Ma," replied the old man gently. "There ain't none of that goin' on. He ain't a marryin' man," and we heard his slippered feet pattering softly over the oil-clothed entry, and his mild face beamed on us through the net door, which he held open for a moment before he came out and seated himself in the rocking-chair.

"Well, now, this _is_ comfortable," he said, with a cheerfully social air. "I can tell you this is a night for authors. Here's a chance for poetry!" with a wave of his thin, weather-worn hand toward the peaceful fields. "Made any this evenin'?" he inquired. "Ain't? well, I guess you'll never come across a more inspirin' night," he said, with some disappointment. "I expected likely you'd have some you could say right off. Fer a plain farmer, I don't s'pose there's anybody fonder'n I am of verses," he said, musingly. "I b'lieve I told ye 'twas in our family. I wish you could have met my uncle, Mis' Marriot, died on his ninety-second birthday, and had writ a long piece on each birthday for a matter of forty year. That ther man was talented, I tell ye. There wasn't no occasion he couldn't write a piece onto. Why, the night Ma and me was married (we was married in Ma's sister's parlor) we hadn't more'n turned 'round from the minister, 'n before anybody had a chance t' congratulate us, uncle, he steps right up in front of us, an' sez he:

'Now you are married, an' man an' wife May you live happy this mortial life, An' when your days on this earth is o'er May you both meet together on the evergreen shore.'

"It come to him, jus' come to him that minute, like a flash," said the old man, reflectively, the pathos of his sweet, tremulous voice lending unspeakable melody to the preposterous stanza.

Mr. Hopper had evidently settled himself for the remainder of the evening, and after a time Mr. Longworth bade us good-night, and went across to the Bangs homestead.

All that night I tossed about on my uncomfortable feather-bed, or rather, when I found I could not sleep, I rose after a time, and wrapped in my dressing-gown, I sat by my tiny window, watching the shadows of the wind-blown locust-boughs on the moonlit grass below, full of the dreams which are the stuff that romances are made of, and which, though I had often used them as "material," I had never known myself before; shy and tender dreams they were, that glorified that summer night, and kept me wakeful until dawn.

The next day and the next I was ill and feverish, so ill that I could not rise. Mr. Longworth brought for me great bunches of choice flowers, for which he must have sent Wilson to the next town of New Sidon, and a dainty basket of fruit. The third day I rose and dressed toward noon, and weak as I felt, I decided to walk down to the post-office, for I thought perhaps the air would do me good, and beside, the mail was never brought up until after dark, and I longed to find if Mr. ---- had written me as I expected, about the manuscript. I knew he would be very prompt with me.

I found several letters in the box for me, and eagerly scanning the envelopes, I discovered the well-known buff tint, with the red device of a female figure with a book clasped to the breast, that is the livery of "----'s Magazine." I tore it open, reading as I slowly walked. Mr. ---- had written as follows, in his hurried hand:

"OFFICE OF ----'s MAGAZINE.

"MY DEAR MISS MARRIOTT:

"I return the MSS. you sent us, and I have no hesitation in saying that your friend is a genius. In fact, I was so chained by the somewhat wild and singular style that I sat up most of Tuesday night to go through it myself.

"Of course in their present disconnected state, the fragments are quite unavailable to us, but when worked into a story, they ought to make a success. I hope we shall have the first reading of the completed book. I understand it is the work of a beginner, but it bears none of the marks of the novice, and I can but think we have discovered the 'coming American novelist.'

"By the way, how is your own book coming on?

"Yours in haste,

"---- ----."

I had walked on some distance from the post-office as I read this, for Mr. ----'s chirography was almost undecipherable, even to one accustomed to it. I was just folding the letter to replace it in the envelope, when I heard heavy footsteps hurrying behind me. I turned my head and saw Wilson, quite red in the face with trying to overtake me. "Beg pardon, Miss," he said, touching his hat, "I saw you coming out of the office, and--I'd like to speak to you a minute, if I may."

"What is it?" I asked, somewhat surprised. I stepped back from the path, and Wilson stooped down awkwardly, and picked a twig from a low bush that grew by the fence. "Well," he began, drawing a long breath, "I've been thinking it over, and I've made up my mind to tell you. I expect I ought to have done it before, but my orders was so strict, and--you see I'm saving up to get married, and a man hates to lose a good place,--but that's neither here nor there, Miss, the truth is, I ain't Mr. Longworth's nurse, and I ain't his valley neither. I'm--I'm his attendant."

"Well, what of it?" I said, with some irritation. How could Wilson's absurd distinctions matter to me? What did I care whether he called himself valet, or nurse, or attendant?

To his credit, be it said that there was no tone of half-exultation, almost pardonable after my manner of annoyance, as he went on. His heavy, spatulate finger-tips were stripping the little twig bare of its leaves. As he continued, I fixed my lowered eyes on that bit of alder. I remember every tiny, bright brown knot on it, and how one worm-eaten leaf curled at its edges.

"You see," said Wilson, clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to the Retreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take any dangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind that stand for price. They've got plenty, and they don't care what they pay. I dare say you've been in his father's store many a time,--Longworth & Whittles, one of the biggest and best dry-goods stores on Sixth avenue. The old gentleman's rolling in gold, and there ain't a nicer lady in New York City than Mrs. Longworth. You see, it was this way. Young Mr. Longworth didn't like business, and they sent him abroad to be educated, and when he come back he just fooled around and went out a good deal, and finally, he got in with some literary folks. One of his friends took him to their receptions, and he got it into his head he was going to be a writer. His folks didn't care, they'd have paid a publisher any price to take his books if it would have done any good; but finally he took to shuttin' himself up in his room day and night, writin' all the time, and it told on him pretty well, for I guess he'd never wrote anything but cheques before. And then he'd burn it up as fast as he wrote, and not eat, and not come out o' that room for days at a time. He kept a-saying it would be all right if it would only fit together but that's just where it is, it don't any of it fit together. And now he just writes over and over the same things he wrote a year ago. He don't know it, he burns 'em up, and then he thinks it's all different. He got so bad the doctors said he'd be better up to Dr. Balsam's Retreat, where they could kind of soothe him down, and make him think his health was out of order, and get his mind off his writing, but he did have a pretty bad fever up there, an' ever since he thinks he was editor or somethin' on some paper, and he can tell it off straight as a string. He's all right about everything else, and if you didn't know about it, you'd think he was just what he says, sure enough."