Part 5

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.