Part 7

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."