Part 2

Yesterday I walked up to Marsville, a mile away, for the mail, as I mostly do Saturday mornings, and Ellinor Baxter joined me. Ellinor is not a native Marsvillian either. Back in the dim past she came for the health of one of her family. Ellinor has always had musical yearnings, quite a little talent, too. She is the village musician and music teacher, and this year she has an assistant. The assistant is fresh from a bigger life: last winter she studied in Boston, and she has a friend who is doing wonderful things in Grand Opera abroad. It makes Ellinor quite tragic. Yesterday when we reached the edge of the wood, and the mountain world lay about us like a vast picture, Ellinor flung out her arms as if to embrace all the several hundred peaks in sight and cried out: “Oh, how I hate that wall of mountains! If we could sweep it away we’d get a view, Caroline. We’d see what the world is doing. It’s a prison wall. I can’t escape. It seems that some hand of iron holds me here. If I had only gone eight years ago when mother’s death gave me the freedom to go! Now I haven’t the youth to make a new life for myself. Why don’t you go? What holds you here?”

“John, dear, good old John, I suppose,” I answered slowly.

Ellinor Baxter laughed scornfully. “John would be a less spoiled citizen without you. You are wasting the best years of your life. Soon you will be thirty.”

“I am thirty. This is my birthday.” I said it defiantly, because, uttered, it sounded so very, very ancient.

Ellinor suddenly softened. “You look a young twenty-five. Some women begin to fade at twenty-five. Some mornings when you rush past to school you look eighteen——

“And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre. Hid i’ the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wildgrape cluster, Gush in golden-tinted plenty——”

“Ellinor!”

But Ellinor was in deadly earnest. Her eyes were full of tears. “Child,” she said, “get away from here. Love, marry, fulfil your destiny.”

For just a moment I stopped and shut my eyes, pretending that a brier had caught my skirt. With shut eyes I knew that deep in the emerald world about me the black gum flaunted its crimson leaves—emblem of change; that the corn in long, straight rows stood hardening in the ear; that the mountains, glistening chain on glistening chain, were shimmering in the morning light. Standing there, I saw more: October’s pageant; November’s dull, soft tones; the desolation and the grayness that is December mountains’ dim forms seen through curtains of rain; January’s white, white world—and then the surprise of a snowdrop, the warm, fragrant spring breath of the south wind shepherding flocks of snowy clouds.

“I love it all,” I said. And I spoke the truth. Since that August Sunday now a month past, since that earthquake upheaval, I have basked in peace. “I am busy. Most of the year I wake with just the thought of scrambling into my clothes, swallowing my breakfast, and getting to the schoolroom in time. When it is winter it is almost dark when I get home; when it is spring I have my flowers. And there’s always John’s clothes to mend and my own to make and——”

But with a gesture that was passionate Ellinor Baxter stopped me. “All this may satisfy at thirty, but it won’t feed a woman’s heart at forty. Then she feels the need of love—contact with a man’s broader life. The monotony, the emptiness of life as she lives it alone tortures at forty. I know, for I am thirty-eight. And if she finds this out at forty it is mostly too late. Men pass us by for fresher faces.”

I did not know this new Ellinor Baxter who had lifted her mask and given me a peep at the real woman behind it, but for the first time in my life I loved her.

* * * * *

As we turned into Main Street a big automobile was leaving the post-office. Mr. Black and his nice little wife—new people who are summering here—were in the tonneau. I hardly know how it came about, but in what seemed the twinkling of an eye Ellinor and I were in it, too. I did not understand where it was we were going, and when I tried to find out I swallowed so many buckets of air that I gave it up. But it was not of the slightest importance. All that had ever happened to me was of slight importance. I was having my first automobile ride. We seemed to winnow the air like birds: to dip and dart down and around the curves, to soar up the hills with the flash and swiftness of wings. A dozen miles from our village we raced up a stately avenue and ran under a _porte-cochère_—our flight at end.

The lady who came out to greet us was surrounded by dogs, big and little, aristocratic and plebeian, handsome and hideous. After greeting her, Mrs. Black drew me forward and said: “Edna, this is Caroline Howard, who adores every word you write. Edna is my sister, Miss Howard.”

I draw a long breath of happiness at thought of yesterday. I live it all over again. I feel sure it was no ordinary spark of liking that leaped between Edna Kennedy and me instantaneously and spontaneously. We had luncheon yesterday on a big wide veranda that overlooks a winding ribbon of a river from the view we had of it as calm and still as if frozen. After luncheon there was music: Geraldine Farrar in “Madam Butterfly”—and the story unfolded before me. I felt the anguish of that poor little waiting and trusting and praying wife. Tetrazzini in the mad scene from “Lucia,” and the flutelike voice going high and high and higher, till I bent forward in breathless suspense to drop back in my chair in content at that last marvellously dizzyingly high sweet bird note. Moved by a little burst of confidence I could not control, I told Edna Kennedy that I had never heard grand opera; that I had never been anywhere or seen anything. And then I told her of the thrilly little waves running up and down me that were fairly shouting it was the beginning and not the end of beautiful happenings to me—just as though I had walked through a wood and come to a beautiful palace, and only stepped up on the portico with my hand still on the doorknob. I told her about Robert Haralson, too: what friends we were when I was little, before we came to live in the mountains. I was dreadfully disappointed that she does not know him. She says few people know him. She says he is shy; that he lives in his work—that the first night of the big play that is making him so rich and famous he ran away from the theatre afraid of the call that authors get to come before the curtain. As we were leaving, Edna Kennedy gathered some magazines from the library table and gave them to me. “He is in them all,” she said. “Nobody in the literary and dramatic world is more in the public eye.”

I was very quiet coming home, and everything seemed little and mean and isolated and countrified when I got here. I went to my room immediately after supper. I said I was tired, but I was never less tired in my life. I read all the things the magazines said about Robert Haralson, and I looked long at the picture I found in one of them of my old-time boy friend. I have not treasured any sentimental memories of Bobby. I was little more than a child when I last saw him. It is true that the whole town teased Bobby about me—they called me his little sweetheart and accused him of robbing the cradle—but I have no treasured memories of him or of any man.

I am indifferent to men, as Dicky says. Always I have turned with distaste from the thought of marriage. In that I think I am different from most women. There have been two—such nice splendid fellows I knew in my college life—who have penetrated my wilderness more times than one. And I? I like them. Life with either would seem to hold much that it withholds now. I have tried to yield, but I cannot; the thought of the nearness of what should be sweet and sacred to a woman brings a wave of physical nausea. For that reason I don’t in the least understand what came over me last night as I gazed at a picture only dimly familiar to me. Ellinor’s words came back throbbing with their loneliness and hunger. I knew them to be true. I saw myself at forty rushing through breakfast and running the mile to school, pottering about the flowers, mending the clothes—day after day, month after month, year after year spent in dull monotony—and my youth rolled away—my life.

I did a strange thing—I, trained to chain my emotions as we chain wild beasts, in frantic haste I wrote to Bobby. It was not much of a letter—just:

“Bobby, I wonder if the years have swept from your brain cells all memory of the little girl who used to live next door? She’ll never get to New York, never! There’s a wall of mountains that she can’t scale. But if ever you come to Marsville, whistle across the fence, won’t you? The little girl’s got one of your stories treasured in her desk without knowing until some one’s letter gave away the secret of its authorship. Big congratulations, Bobby!”

I went down to the yard and waked old Harris and paid him to walk to the railroad station, three miles across the gap, and mail it. Now it is late Sunday afternoon and it has been gone almost a whole day. But of course I will never have an answer to it. I am sure Mr. Robert Haralson keeps a female secretary who will scan it coldly and throw it in the waste basket.

_September 27th. Wednesday._

I can’t see how it got here in this marvellously short time, but I have Bobby’s answer:

_80 Waverly Place, September 25th._

MY DEAR “MISS CARRIE”:

Just once, if I may—and then I will try to think of you as Caroline.

I was gladder to get your little note than the biggest editor’s check I ever saw. Seems to me (after trying very hard) I do remember a small “sassy” girl that used to live next door.

When you ask if I remember you, it reminds me of a story told of Congressman John Allen of Mississipi—(never could spell Mississip)—is that right? A lady approached him in Washington one day and held out her hand. “Now confess, Mr. Allen,” she said, “that you’ve forgotten all about me.”

He had; he knew her face, but his memory wouldn’t serve him any further. But, with a low bow, he replied: “Madam, I’ve made it the business of my life to try to forget you.”

See?—as we New Yorkers say.

Well, well, how time does fly! as the little boy said when his teacher told him Rome was founded in 684 B. C. I never expected anything so nice and jolly as to hear from you. It’s like finding a five-dollar bill in an old vest pocket.

Isn’t it funny that I was thinking of you a little while last week? I had a map, looking all about on it trying to decide on somewhere to go for a few weeks to get away from the city. Mountains for me always! So my eye naturally ran down the Blue Ridge chain. Here’s the latest picture of the distinguished Mr. Haralson. Does it look anything like the moonstruck little shrimp that used to hang around and bother you so much? I can remember what an awkward, bashful, sentimental, ugly, uninteresting nuisance I was then. No wonder I couldn’t make any impression on you! I’ve improved a good deal since. In fact, it seems to me that the older I grow the better looking and more fascinating I become. Of course it doesn’t seem just right for me to say so, but if I didn’t tell you you mightn’t ever find it out.

In those days I took life mighty seriously and sentimentally: that’s why I always went about looking like a monkey with the toothache; but in after years I learned that life is only a jolly good comedy for the most part, and I began to enjoy it. I believe I’m about five years younger than I was the last time you saw me—when you left the depot in Roseboro for Marsville. Ernest Cold rode up with you on the train; and I haven’t forgiven him for it yet.

It’s mighty nice of you to say you would be able to stand seeing me again if I should come to Marsville. I shore would love to ride up and holler “Hello!” over the fence. Lemme see! Trip to Europe—automobiles—steam yacht—Rockefeller’s money—no, none of those things sound half as good. But lawsy me! I don’t know when I shall ever drap down your way.

I’ve about decided to go up along the Maine coast fishing with an editor man. I live in a room or two as big as a barn on Waverly Place. I’m so lazy and cool and contented there all by myself with my books and things that I haven’t been away from town in two summers.

Now, I’m not going to talk about myself any more. I’ve been in New York about four years, and I guess I’ve “made good,” for everything I write is engaged long before it is written.

I’ve been puzzling over your signature. It’s the same old name you had when you wore your hair in a plait; and I have two very good reasons for thinking it ought to be different. One is that somebody wrote me several years ago that you had married; and the other is that it isn’t possible—it isn’t _possible_—that the young men of our old state could be so unappreciative as to have let you escape. But if you are married, please, oh, please get a divorce at once, so you can be “Miss Carrie” again.

I am trusting to your good nature to accept a little book of mine that came out last winter. You don’t have to read it, you know. It’s just the thing to prop the kitchen door when the wind is in the east.

And, Miss Carrie, some day when you ain’t real busy won’t you sit at your desk where you keep those antiquated stories, and write to me? I’d be so pleased to hear something about what the years have done for you, and what you think about when the tree frogs begin to holler in the evenings. Got any tree frogs up there?

Do this, and I’ll promise to say “Caroline” next time.

Let me say once more how good it was to hear from you, and that I am, yours sincerely, ROBERT HARALSON.

_September 28th._

The picture and the book have come. The picture is splendid. It dominates my room.

Bobby _was_ awfully fond of me. Lots of things I had forgotten come back as I look at the picture—the night he was allowed by mother after some hours of hard begging to take me to Commencement at the Female Seminary in old Roseboro and sat with his arm stretched on the back of the bench. I did not think it would be nice of me to ask him to remove it, and my back aches right now again at thought of the rigidity of my spine through the long hours of that female evening. You would not be guilty of such a ruralism now, Mr. Cosmopolite.

I have written him. It is only polite to let him know that I appreciate the picture and the book.

_October 2d. Monday Afternoon._

Bobby’s letter was here this afternoon when I got in from school. Wasn’t it marvellous that it could get here? My eyes went straight to the table and I felt kind of queer and quivery all over when I saw the big square envelope with the bold handwriting that looked as familiar as if I had been getting his letters all my life. Here is his letter:

_New York, September 30th._

MY DEAR MISS CARRIE:

Never thought you were going to stir up so much trouble when you did me that big favour of writing a “hello” to me across the mountains, did you? Well, please let me write this time, and if it’s too much, give me the teeny-weenyest bit of a hint, and I’ll turn my pen into a sword and cut it all out.

Was it cheeky of you to write to me? My dear Miss Carrie, I don’t know exactly what the unpardonable sin is, but if you hadn’t written, I’d feel awfully anxious about your future.

Right here let me assure you that I’m not one of these confirmed correspondents. Hand on my heart! I vow I haven’t written two pages at a time to anybody in years and years. My closest friends complain that I don’t even answer letters. But when I hear from—oh, you forbade that, didn’t you.

Don’t chain up your impulses, dear friend; let ’em skallyhoot around. We don’t live more than nine times; and bottles and chains weren’t made for people to confine and tie up their good impulses with.

So you shook your head when you read that I was thinking of you last week? All right. Couldn’t expect you to believe. But please turn to page 78 and page 131 of the book I sent you, and try to think whose eyes I attempted to describe. Since I saw you last I’ve seen only one pair of eyes like that; and they—well, they only _resembled_.

Think I’m foolish? Oh, no, I’m not. One can have an ideal if one wants to. I’ve had one for—years. All I’ve had since have busted and gone up the flume. Please, Miss Carrie, lemme keep that one. I ain’t going to bother you about it. You say those old days are laid away between lavender scented sheets. I can understand that for you. Mine are not. They are fresh and fragrant, dewy and everlasting. I’m not going to insist upon your believing it—shake your head if you want to and give the sun a chance to brighten his rays. I’m superior to luck, fate, history, and time. If I choose to stand under a certain window yet in Roseboro and sigh for the unattainable, no one shall balk me. So, don’t you try to bulldoze me, Miss Caroline Howard. If my spirit elects to wander there, please you let it alone.

Do you know that over there in the Ridge of blue and gold you are the most splendidly endowed of all the daughters of the gods? Why? Because my memory tells me that you have (to my memorial eye and mind) all that can be conferred of loveliness; and, according to your boast, you have a new and delectable way of fixing tomatoes. Now, I adore tomatters. I could die for ’em, I nearly have several times. You can’t imagine how interested I was in your tomato garden. In your tomato garden. Say—I believe you promulgated some nonsense in your letter about whether I stood under Fifth Avenue girls’ windows about midnight and sent up flowers and candies. Why, lemme tell you, Miss Carrie, I’ve seen ’em and talked to ’em, and had tea with ’em—and lemme tell you—I’d rather set (not sit) across a little table with you and have a tomatter between us with ice and——

Say—I don’t agree with you about the nuts. Why, I never saw a tomatter in my life stuffed with nuts. Air they good? The ice sounds all right. And lemme tell you—I think you’re wrong about the Mayonnaise dressing. I have such a respect for tomatters that I must challenge you. French dressing, with green peppers—so say I.

And yet it is no more than Cosmic and Natural Justice that you should be woozy about the proper way to fix tomatters. Perfection has never been attained by mortals. (Now my memory is at work again.) If you could be as I remember you and an expert in tomatters, too, why there would be double perfection, and that’s an unknown quantity in mathematics. I prefer to retain my ideal; therefore the deduction is: your tomatters are off their trolley. Still, I’d like to try one. That’s constancy and faith. Will you keep one on ice for me, on the chance that good Fortune may allow me to drift down that way?

I sent up yesterday and got the Christmas _Leslies_. Why, I remembered that story, though I didn’t recognize the name. It was very sweet and tender. I can see that you like kids. I congratulate you heartily on your work; I hope you will find it profitable and a blessing. You have unquestioned sympathy and a deep and true “humanness.” You ought to come to New York, where you will be _in medias res_. There’s nothing like being on the ground. You get artistic ideas and associations here that would be invaluable to you. Writing is a bully game. You want to know the dealers. I studied that fact out, and came here. To-day I get five times more per word than when I came. Sister of the pen and stamped-envelope-for-return, I speak wisdom to you. And here is life. Beautiful are the mountains and the moon silvering their tops; but here one learns the value of each upon each. And the moonlight of the mind is the most beautiful. Here art teaches Nature to conform. You could expand and rise here. I do not advise you, but I speak with wisdom of the markets and the heart. Pardon me if I am scornful of the Mayonnaise, and am dubious about the nuts. I could overlook a stab at my heart with a poniard, but—the tomatter and I have been friends. Yet I could—may I try one the way you fix ’em?

Wish I could have accepted your invitation to sail down on the big golden bubble of a moon, and drap under the cherry tree. Bet a dollar I’d have lit on the rake and the hoe you left there in the grass. Can’t you ever remember to put ’em behind the door in the woodhouse when you are scratching around in the garden? I haven’t ridden on the moon in a long time. It’s on the full now, and I’m afraid I’d slide off. When it gets to look like a slice of canteloupe again, so I can hold on to the ends, I’ll try to make that trip. Please spread an armful of hay and an old piece of carpet under the cherry tree so I won’t come down with such a jolt when I jump off. Then I’d say something like this:

“Miss Howard, please excuse my intrusion into your section of real estate devoted to domestic agriculture; but the object of my somewhat precipitous descent is to ascertain the identity of a certain youthful and pulchritudinous being with whom at a considerably earlier period I sustained cognizance, and whose identification is relatively dependent upon a tonsorial arrangement in which her tresses retain the perpendicularity peculiar to juvenility at the time referred to.”

And you would answer:

“Sir, regretting the futility of your rather incomprehensible errand—which, had you been better versed in the more recent dictates of fashion, might have been advantageously and indefinitely postponed—I must inform you that none of the coiffures that are worn this summer allow any such primitive and adolescent arrangement of the capillary filaments as you refer to in your preamble; and therefore, as far as the little girl whose hair was in a plait is concerned, there is nothing doing.”

I’ll bet that’s what’d happen to me. And then I’d have to go down to the road and sit on the fence and wait a month to catch the moon back.

Miss Carrie, please, please send me that picture of yourself that you mentioned, or another one. If your heart hadn’t been so hard and cruel you’d have enclosed it before instead of talking about it. How can you write those tender and kind little stories when really you are so unfeeling and stony hearted? You knew I wanted that picture. I’m going to tell all the editors I know that your work is a fraud—that you don’t feel it at all.

No doubt there isn’t a single tear in your eye or the slightest thawing of your heart when I remind you that in another two weeks I shall be treading the pathless wilds of Maine. There in the dense tropical forest an infuriated porcupine may spring upon me from some lofty iceberg, or, becoming lost, I might perish in the snow of sunstroke. Think, Miss Carrie, what an ad it would be for you when the papers printed the news of a tourist found in the woods—an unknown man wearing tennis shoes and a woollen comforter, with 30 cents in his pocket, a frozen tomato in one hand, and a picture of the well-known and beautiful authoress C. H. in the other. It is no less than your duty to your publishers to try and get that ad. So, please send on the picture, will you?

Sincerely yours, ROBERT HARALSON.