Part 6

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.