Please send that picture. You have moved to the very last seat in
the car and I have picked up my traps and followed you. Will you
send it, or are you going to move into the Pullman?
Yours as ever,
B. H.
_October 7th.
Saturday. In the Garden. Sunset._
I was up with the day this morning. At sunrise I had breakfasted and
was in the lumbering old hack bumping over the miles that end with
the trolley that carries us these days into our mountain city and
metropolis twenty miles away from this little town. I went in to do
my fall shopping, hat and coat suit and some other needed little
things. There’s a new woman’s outfitter that has stimulated shopping
marvellously. I saw some stunning things, and I bought—a white silk
evening gown, very modern, very clinging, very beautiful. There’s a
cunning little fringe of crystal beads on the short sleeves. The dear
little skimpy sash-ends have the crystal fringe, too. When I moved
about in it and tried it on, the funny little waves of happiness ran
up and down my spine and thrilled my knees just as if I really had
my hand on the doorknob of that Magic Palace I first divined that
day at Edna Kennedy’s. Something pagan stirred in me with the tinkle
of my barbaric finery. I bought white silk stockings and white satin
slippers, too. I spent every penny of three months’ hard work, and I
borrowed my fare on the trolley from our butcher. If he had not been
on I suppose I would have asked the conductor for a loan. The Bible
says take no thought of the morrow. I did not. But to-morrow, when
icy winds blow, with what shall I be clothed? I shan’t worry now.
It is too warm and lovely. If I should spend my winter in the state
asylum, and I do seem headed that way, my old suit will be quite
stylish enough.
There are some La France roses blooming, as lovely ones as I have
ever had. I get up from the garden seat and catch their pink satin
faces to me and bury my face in their fragrant hearts. I whisper to
them: “My poor foolish darlings, why do you bloom so late? Do you not
know that all this wonderfulness of warmth, this semblance of summer,
is a deception? Do you not know that winter is at hand? What is this
absurd thing blooming in my heart as satiny pink and perfumed as
they? The amethyst light has gone from the hills; gray and quiet they
wrap their night robes of mist about them and wait for the morning.
And the sky, still tender, waits for the stars. And I—for what do I
wait?”
_October 8th.
Sunday. Garden. Sunset._
The day has been hot. It has rained somewhere and there is a superb
sunset display. It seems that all the golds and crimsons and purples
in the world have been pounded and mixed in a vast mortar and flung
in one magnificent wave of colour on the western sky. The mountains
are wine drenched. The garden riots in colour. Everywhere colour,
warmth, perfume. The glory fades, but the warmth remains. Oh, the
moon! Big as a wagon wheel it wavers on the hill, hesitating about
its plunge into space. I must go in. Mammy is calling me to supper.
Yes, blessed old coloured lady, I am coming! Her eyes are dim. She
could not have seen that it was my bedroom rug I put under the cherry
tree.
_Midnight._
Was it I who put the rug under the cherry tree? Was it I who crept
down the stairs in such delicious stealth? And did it all happen
just two hours ago when John’s light went out? I had dressed in my
tinkling finery, with my hair done like hers on page 131, and I went
down to see myself full length in the big old mirror brought from
the childhood home. I did not mean to go outside, but the moonlight
lay in silver splashes on the portico, and as I stepped into it
it swept over me in one great delirious wave, not just ordinary
moonlight—sorcery. Standing there in my shimmering gown and satin
shoes, I lost all sense of the real me. Drawn by that compelling
light that lay on the world beyond the door in a still white flood,
I stepped into the fragrant night and sped to the big old cherry
tree. No, not I—a red-lipped, shining-eyed, radiant young creature
that bore only a physical resemblance to me. Not a leaf dropped to
fret the stillness. Nothing stirred, and yet the whole world seemed
afloat. I heard the gate’s click as it opened. The man’s soft felt
hat was pulled down low on his brow, shading the features, but I knew
him—that is, I divined who it was. Just for a moment I thought him
a vision breathed into the night by its magic and my desire to have
him there. Just for a moment the solid earth, the misty hills lost
foundation. He did not see me so still in the shadow of the cherry
tree. Halfway up the walk he stopped, perhaps with the realization
that the house was dark, for I had blown out the lamp I carried down.
He stood there very still. When he turned he walked rapidly down
the walk and out the gate. I made a swift little rush from under the
tree, a swift little rush that sent out a myriad of tiny sounds—that
pagan thing in me alive, clamouring for its woman’s birthright. I
think the gate’s sharp click drowned the tinkling call of my finery.
He did not glance back. After what seemed an æon of time I heard
voices—the faint roll of wheels.
Perhaps I would think the whole fantastic thing a dream were it not
for the wicked glitter of the baubles on my poor little frock that
lies in a neglected heap there in the moonlight where I stepped out
of it.
_October 26th._
Twenty days since I wrote those last words—twenty warm, still,
sun-drenched days as like one to another as peas in a pod. The
oldest inhabitant fails to remember such another October. But this
morning, without the warning of a frost, it has come. The sun floods
my desolated and blackened garden. It always hurts me to give up
my flower children. I should hear only the pleasantest things at
breakfast the morning of a freeze, but this morning after John had
gone mammy brought my hot cakes in and told me that Lucius Blake
was the author of a story that was spreading over the village like
fire. Lucius said that he had driven the finest sort of a dude down
to our house Sunday night, October 8th. Lucius said he came inside
the gate, stood there like a stone, and that when he came back to
the buggy he said: “I should have warned my friends of my arrival.
I suspect from the darkened house that they are absent at Grand
Opera.” He then offered Lucius ten dollars to drive him to town, and
they rode through the night in silence. I should think the silence
would have killed Lucius, but he has lived to tell the tale. I am
not in the least comforted that mammy, on the pretense that we need
sugar, has hurried up to the village to tell everybody that Lucius
is a liar—in the language of the mountains a master liar. I am not
in the least comforted with anything. Fate, you are a cruel jade
to let me put the light out, and I hate you. I have snatched the
poor innocent-of-offence gown from its hanger, if it is innocent—I
remember that night it twinkled so wickedly—and I have flung it into
the fire. I feel wildly happy that Bobby’s book smoulders on it. But
I have turned my eyes away as a wicked, yellowish-red, forked tongued
flame leaps at the wavy lock of hair that always I know escapes
Bobby’s brushes because it likes to lie on his broad, thoughtful brow.
How odd the room feels without the picture. I’ve got in the way of
looking for the greeting from those watchful eyes, in the way of
seeing the mocking smile on those pictured lips, the minute I open
my door. No simple maiden in her charm for you, Mr. Robert Haralson!
Do I see you this minute motoring down your brilliant Avenue? And do
I see her, the pride of your Avenue? Our uplands do not breed such
exotics.
_November 15th._
The days drift by like dull-hued birds. There’s not a song in the
throat of a single one. Dull-hued is the word, for the rains have
washed the colour from the hills. And like a giant graystone prison
wall the mountains, desolate, rattlesnaky things, stand against the
sky. Jack the Giant Killer himself couldn’t scale them. Mammy watches
me anxiously. She says I am sick. I am—sick for a bigger life.
Teaching is routine after twelve years. I haven’t any worry. Dicky
since her “Personal” escapade is being good, unless some mischief
is brewing she has not yet got into trouble over. Some day—not this
dull-eyed day—I mean to put to myself the question, “Why have you
never said one word to Robert Haralson about Dicky—poor, cooped-up,
lonely little Dicky?” And I mean to get an honest answer.
_Friday. December 21st._
The gods on Mount Olympus, if it be they that control gray,
heavy-lidded days like these, had compassion on me and let to-day
be Friday. I’d have killed all the children in another day, and now
I have until Monday to get back to something akin to normal. I must
have looked my mood when I came in, for poor old mammy had brought
me hot toast and tea and delicious peach jam. I received it with
gratitude, but when she began the recital of that well-known story
in which she stood and received my great aunt’s false teeth in her
last hour, when she launched into my great uncle’s handing them to
her with the words, “Give these into the hands of this faithful
servant,” I leaped up so abruptly that I frightened her. I wonder if
I really meant to pitch the dear, faithful old soul out the window?
I am developing temperament, or is it temper? Perhaps it is all due
to the outside world. The snow sifts bleakly from a bleak sky. What
am I to do with these walled-round-by-winter days? What am I to do
with this woman whose outward appearance is mine? She terrifies me.
For thirty years I’ve tended my little garden plot of life in placid
content; cheerfully I’ve hoed my bean and cabbage rows. Now I want
to dynamite these homely plants. Where the cabbages stand in rows I
want red roses; I can’t abide beans a minute longer, and in their
stead I would like purple orchids. And there’s something else I want:
I want to cry and cry on a broad man shoulder—not John’s shoulder.
Half timidly I glance over my own shoulder as I write it. My own
mother never kissed my father until after they were married, and
my grandmother all her life long dressed and undressed behind the
shelter of the door of the great wardrobe that is here in my room
this very minute, but no reproachful ghosts are gazing at me. And if
all the spinsters in this broad land with their battle cry of freedom
and suffrage (I’ve got freedom and I’m willing for suffrage) had had
the sort of day I’ve had with the children—it’s been a wild beast
of a day and its sharp claws have drawn blood—when twilight came
they would do just what I am doing now. They would whisper into the
firelit gloom which invites reckless confidences, as I am whispering,
“Eve, Eve, you want your Paradise, don’t you?” I do solemnly believe
that soon or late this moment comes to every woman; I do solemnly
believe that she can no more escape this dominant reaching out of
her heart, this dominant yearning for that other one in the world of
two outside of which the rest of humanity is excluded. Since when
have you believed this, Caroline Howard? Honest now. Face Dicky’s
letter—aren’t you the daughter of a soldier?
This time it’s a big, blond young German—a baron. A slight accident
to his hand brought about the acquaintance. Always, Dicky “did” his
hand for him. The acquaintance progressed to the point that he knew
her afternoon off. “Of course,” Dicky writes, “it flattered me to
find him waiting outside the hospital—and with a taxi.”
It seems they had the gayest of drives, but when they turned in at
the Pennsylvania Station Dicky demanded the meaning of it. The baron
was ready with an answer. He told her that they were going away to
an ideal life where they would always be together and always alone.
Dicky objected. Her protest was smothered in the depths of the
baron’s hat, flung quick as magic over her face.
“How I ever emerged from the embrace of that hat with a smiling face
I don’t know. I must thank a year’s training at the hospital for
that. I came out game—cool on the outside, at any rate. I said: ‘We
can’t go away together without baggage—think of the scandal of it.’
From the depths of the cab he produced a big black bag. But I said,
‘That won’t help me.’ It didn’t work. He said in Washington we would
buy enough clothes to last me forever. I fell in gayly with his
plans. Inside the station he bought tickets to Washington. I tried to
get near the ticket window, but he flanked the move. There seemed to
be no people in the station. The few that were there were miles apart
in isolated little groups. Just before our train was called, standing
together as alone as if we were already on the desert to which he
said we would go when we left Washington, a stream of incoming people
surged up from the left wing of the station. I felt sure one of the
men was Bobby Haralson—he or his double. I asked the baron to let
me say good-bye to an old friend, as we were never coming back. He
agreed.
“‘Aren’t you Mr. Haralson?’ I gasped. ‘If you are, don’t you remember
the little gypsy girl who answered your ad?’
“‘Sure Mike, I do,’ he said, and swung his bag into his left hand and
gave me a hearty right hand. My face must have shown that something
was wrong, for he drew me out of the crowd, put down his travelling
bag, and asked me, oh, so quietly, what was wrong. His quiet manner
calmed me. As briefly as I could I told him. He grasped the situation
in a lightning-like flash. ‘Go back to him,’ he said. ‘Keep cool. I’m
on to the job.’ Had I been on to my job I’d never have got in that
cab. The morning paper says he’s a baron all right. It says he’s a
lunatic all right, too. And he has been sent to a private asylum.
“He took his arrest quietly. It was so unexpected it dazed him. I was
so limp after it was all over that Bobby Haralson took me over to the
Waldorf and made me drink a milk punch. Then he brought me home. We
had a heavenly time, and I promised not to be naughty again.
“At the door, he didn’t come in; he said good-bye with that smile
that lights and warms up his face—you remember I told you how
reticent and sort of impersonal he is—and he said next time I wanted
an adventure just send out a wireless and he would answer. I didn’t
tell him about you, Caroline. You have tried so hard to make a hoyden
into a lady that I did not reveal my identity.”
_December 8th._
What an odd, spoiled Bobby! I have a letter from him. Last fall—the
afternoon I went to town and came back with the ill-fated gown—I
sent him the picture. The P. M. (Particularly Mean) letter was the
little note that demanded its return after we failed to meet in our
promenade down in our yard. Bobby expects an answer by return mail—it
is in every confident line of his letter. Mr. Robert Haralson,
spoiled darling of your town, once an old lady of my acquaintance
sent her husband across the mountain to get some “camfire” for her.
The gum was dissolved in whiskey. He drank it and was very sick. I
was present when, convalescent, he humbly asked for chicken soup. The
old lady, with uplifted forefinger said, “Nary a chicken will ye git.”
See, Mr. Robert Haralson? as you New Yorkers say.
Bobby’s confident letter says:
As I write, at my left hand is a basket of letters. I have just
taken from the basket the last nice one you wrote me and the
awfully mean one you wrote afterward. The others run back a month
or two and none are answered yet. My right arm is resting on a
cushion, and I am writing with three fingers.
I have been away. In my accumulated mail there were a couple of
letters from you, and the photo you sent in the lot. The next
morning after I got back I had to send for a doctor. I had got a
knock on my blamed old elbow and she swelled up as big as a prize
beet at the Roseboro County Fair.
Well, old doc said it was cellulitis, which didn’t sound very
reassuring. It comes from having the cellular tissues hurt. And
every day he done that arm up in plaster and eight miles of
bandages. And three or four times he brung along his knives and
lancets and was going to carving at it, but I wouldn’t let him. I
haven’t been able to write any more than a rabbit. I’m getting so I
can use a small quantity of my fingers now, and this is the first
answer to any letter in the basket.
And that is why I haven’t written to thank you for the photo, which
I appreciate highly, and shall not return as you suggest in your P.
M. (Particularly Mean) letter. What’s the matter with it? It looks
all right to me. I can’t suggest any improvement in it. It has lots
of your old expression in it, and although the fool photographer
did all he could to spoil it by making you turn your head as if you
were looking to see if your dress was buttoned all down the back,
it’s a ripping nice picture, and you needn’t want to be “any better
to look at than the picture.” (Can’t you say the mean things when
you want to!)
Now, I wish you’d behave, and take your finger out of your mouth
and stand right there—turn your toes out—and say you are sorry.
Lemme see!—there was another dig—oh, yes—if I “had been a pauper or
a millionaire.”
You bet I’m a pauper now, Miss Carrie. Blowed all my money in on my
trip, and ain’t made any to speak of since except what doc would
carry away with him every day.
Getting along all right again, though, now. How’s your writing
coming on?
Now will you shake hands again, although it’s my left one this time?
Yours as ever,
R. H.
_December 20th._
I have another letter from Bobby. And I didn’t answer his last
letter. As I read it a wicked little joy steals in on me and grows
and _grows_.
_New York, December 18th._