Now get mad if you want to, but couldn’t you agree to let somebody
call you that? (Bobby has scratched out the “Miss.”) That’s the way
I think of you, and if you insist on being called by your golf and
automobile name of Carrie, why, tear up this letter and throw it
out the kitchen window over the cliff.
Why didn’t you answer my last letter? Rowing on the lake, I
suppose, with the gent that comes to see you. I hope the lake will
freeze. And I hope the gent—won’t freeze. So, there!
I am looking over your last letter to-night, and it’s like the
breath of a spring wind through a laurel thicket. I’m going to take
it page by page and answer it.
The first page contains a quotation from a letter to you from an
insect known as a “literary agent.” Dear Carrie, listen to the
chirp of the crickets on the mountain, but don’t pay any attention
to the noise of that tribe. I am fortunate enough not to know this
particular duffer that has written such “piffle” (as they say in
Chicago), but I’ve heard about him—and you cut him out. He’s an
insufferable, measly kid, at the Sweet Caporal cigarette age,
and his graft is to stuff you provincial writers (I’m speaking
impersonally now) with his taffy so he can get your stuff to peddle
around. Don’t you believe his trick; and you quit sending him your
stuff. He’s trying to make you think you’ve got George Eliot and
Mrs. Humphry Ward beat to a batter, when you know yourself it ain’t
so. Isn’t that a sage, oh, what a wonderfully sage remark when he
says “you must write your best!”
Don’t you believe “that the editors are asking about you
constantly, and are more than anxious to see your work.” It’s not
so.
Now get mad again, and when that old-time smile comes back, read on
further.
Mein Gott! what a recollection you have of me! “A tall, slender lad
with nice eyes—awfully quiet, and——Oh, I’ll admit the exceedingly
fond.” Was it a mystery why? Well, I dunno, except because you were
so sweet and devilish.
To-day I am as slender as anybody five feet eight and weighing 175
pounds could be, and I’ve sharp, mean eyes. (I told Bobby that
he had nice eyes because I couldn’t remember the colour.) I’ve
been taken for a detective lots of times, but I haven’t changed
so much inside, and if you were on the twentieth floor of the
Waldorf-Astoria to-night, and had a string long enough, I’ll bet
I’d have a magnolia or two and a box of candy to tie to the end of
it.
You speak of meeting old Tom in your letter. Well, just a few days
afterward I got a letter from him talking about old days. Said
he’d been in New York often and might be back. Lordy! I’d like to
see him again. (Back in the old days at Roseboro Tom was one of the
whistlers under my window the night I got the magnolias.)
Well, now, Carrie, what do _you_ care if Tom pays attention to
somebody and likes her? Ain’t that the only thing there is that’s
worth two cents? Doesn’t the gentleman that takes you out driving
and boat riding ever—ever—talk about how nice the moon looks? Oh,
Carrie, never get so you feel like running down such foolishness.
After everything is added and subtracted, _that_ is the only
remainder.
On the next page I find the very wise remark of your friend Miss
Baxter (whom I would be glad to consider mine—I mean mein freund!)
that you can’t write a love story because you know nothing about
it. Miss Baxter is altogether wrong but none the less charming.
That led me to inclose you a little story of mine—a thing that is
apparently egotistical to do—that settles the question beyond all
controversy. Read it some time when you are up in the arbour about
twilight when they are calling you to supper—but don’t go.
On page three of your letter I observe a reference to your picture.
Sure, Mike! I asked you for your picture. And I’ve got it, ain’t I?
I’d like to see you get it back!
Oh, Carrie, if you “knowed” how folks try to get letters from me
and can’t, you’d appreciate the delightful toil I take in writing
to you. Ordinarily it’s just like laying bricks for me to write
even a business letter, but when I write to you—lemme see what
to say—it’s like lifting the lightest feather from the breast of
an eider duck and watching it float through the circumambient
atmosphere. (That strike you hard enough?)
I’ll tell you what, Carrie—(now don’t get mad, Caroline) I need a
boss. For the last month I’ve been so no-account and lazy that I
haven’t turned out a line. And yet, I don’t think it’s exactly my
fault. I’ve felt kind of melancholy and dreamy and lonesome, and I
don’t sleep well of nights. Once I dreamed that I had a magnolia
for you and you turned up your nose at it and went away with
Jeff—you remember Jeff?
_Everybody’s Magazine_ sent down the editor’s automobile and took
me uptown to a distinguished nerve specialist, who decided that I
had been working too hard, and advised me either to take a trip to
Europe or some tablets he had in a box. I took the tablets. They
didn’t taste bad, so I kept on taking ’em, and I ain’t a bit worse
to-day.
But none of ’em knew that what I needed was just somebody to fix a
cushion for me on the sofa, and tell the man with the gas bill that
I wasn’t in.
You asked me what I get for short stories. I get ten, fifteen,
sometimes twenty cents a word, and everything engaged long before
it’s written.
Now, I’ll tell you what to do: kick the mountains over and hurry
to New York. It’s 50 per cent. of the game to see the editors in
person. Right here is the only place on the American Continent
where you can live. What are the mountains compared to it? Dear
Carrie, kick the mountains over and take my advice. You are far
enough advanced to make your way from the start. And I assure you,
as I said, being on the ground is 50 per cent of the game.
They call it a lonely city. Lonely! with every masterpiece of art,
music, and beautiful things within a block of you! Say, Carrie,
chop down the tomato vines and come on. I can get you into every
editorial office in town (where you are not already appreciated),
and you will make a success. Attend, oh, Princess of the Bluest
Ridge, these are not the words of one D. Hudson the adolescent,
but of Bob the Perspicacious, who has seen and who knows. If I
didn’t think you had the genius to win the game I’d never advise
you to try.
There’s a line in your letter—“I couldn’t know what the boy
had developed into.” I can only say into one surely no better,
unsatisfied, and always remembering the little girl next door.
Please, Carrie, write to me soon, and if you don’t like my letter
say you condone it, for there ain’t nobody up here like you, and
I’m awfully lonesome to-night. And so, may I sign myself,
Yours as ever,
BOB.
P.S. I’m awfully glad to see by the weather reports that there’s a
freeze coming. I hope the gent that rows you on the lake will have
to buy tacks to put in his oars.
P.P.S. I was in a thanksgiving party where we had a flashlight
photo taken. I’ll send you one when they are printed.
Do I condone Bobby’s letter? The wicked, contraband little joy grows
and _grows_.
_Christmas Eve.
Midnight._
It is snowing—a real snow. The night outside my windows is one soft
whirling blur. At dusk John came in from the twenty-mile-away town.
He shook the snow from his clothes like the traditional Santa Claus,
and he was just as full of bundles. Two express packages for me in
the big, bold hand grown so familiar set my heart to beating and my
cheeks to blushing furiously under John’s scalpel eyes.
Since nine o’clock, when John went to bed tired out with his hard
day’s journey, I have sat here in my bedroom, dim save for the light
of the leaping flames and silent save for the sift of the snow piling
high and higher on the window-panes. Luxuriously I dive again into
the most wonderful box of candy I ever dreamed of; luxuriously I
sniff the perfume of the most exquisite flowers I ever saw, across
the snow-filled air the village bells ring their faint, “Peace on
earth, good-will to men.”
To-morrow when I wear my flowers to church, I’ll feel like a
princess—orchids and lilies of the valley—your princess, Bobby.
_Christmas Day. Afternoon._
When my eyes opened this morning the flaming beauty of the east took
me to the window—such a marshalling of sunrise banners to do honour
to the day. Not waiting for my fire, judging from the sounds in that
direction that mammy was having a holiday nap, anyway, I dressed
rapidly, high shoes, short skirt, coat and cap, and sallied forth.
The landscape stretched before me like a vast white sea, its purity
unbroken by footstep of man. It seemed to belong solely to me and
a few noisy crows. I marched straight to the post-office. It was
closed when John passed last night. I had a sneaking little hope—but
it wasn’t there. I got a little note from Dicky, though. She writes
that her gift is delayed. It is always. I could never teach Dicky
timeliness—always, like Bobby Haralson, she has been superior to time.
The day that I began joyously has been a restless one. I have climbed
to the hilltop. Below me the village lies, a crystal toy town in the
lap of crystal hills. My eyes travel down the chain of glistening
hills to Camel Back. Wise old comrade, I do believe he knows. Anyway,
it is a relief to tell him. “Camel Back,” she writes, “A chance
encounter at the theatre with Bobby Haralson in which I still conceal
my identity.” Camel Back’s snowy hump twinkles as though he laughs;
above him the clouds that have seemed to drift aimlessly form a fairy
castle. Its turrets and dome glitter in the sunset’s dying fire. I
can trace a door—a vast, closed portal. How ridiculous that a trick
of the clouds could thrill me! Slowly the door has opened. I can’t
explain the lovely magic of it, but there in the white stillness some
words that Bobby wrote rolled over me in a great, mounting, singing
wave.
“You have sympathy and a deep and true humanness.” If Bobby is not
mistaken! If it could be! Almost solemnly I turn from my mountain,
with its castle fading from the sky, and take my way home.
_January 20th._
Every minute that I can spare from my school duties I work at my
book in a fury of enthusiasm. Just as the snow made the village so
beautiful on Christmas day, something within me no longer sees the
frailties of the mountain people with whom my lot is cast. Their
kindness through all the long years comes to me instead. So I call
my little book “The Window.” I look out and see beauties I never saw
before, and the sun pours in and warms me.
_January 25th._
I am working at it night and day. It grows amazingly. “Child,” some
one said to me yesterday, “I heard ye was writin’ a book. Ain’t
plenty o’ books in the worl’, ’thout rackin’ yore pore brains to
write anuther?”
Almost, I gave back indignant answer; but I have learned of my little
book—of my little book that flows in my veins and runs down through
my finger-tips, sometimes to laugh and exult, sometimes to sob and
sigh.
_February 15th._
My book is written. It was pure joy. It is very simple—just the hopes
and fears, the joys and sorrows of this spot isolated from the big
world by its wall of mountains. I owe much to my book. Winter still
holds the world, but flowers bloom inside me. Not the orchids and
roses I demanded of life when I wanted to dynamite my garden plot,
it is true, but some old-fashioned pinks that make these February
days sweet and smelly ones.
_March 1st._
Did it ever happen to anybody before? I have knocked and knocked at
editors’ doors; I have waited months and got my stories back, too.
Two weeks, and I hold in my hand a telegram from Bobby’s publishers:
“Your little book is ours, and it’s love at first sight.”
_April 1st._
It is advertised in the magazine section of the _Times_. How it
flashes out to meet my eyes: “The Window”—a certain simplicity of
expression—a realism that touches with delicacy and pathos things
that we feel are the actualities of life.
John comes in and brings Dicky’s letter: “Caroline Howard! And not
to tell me! Such a peach of a heroine, Caroline. How’d a sedate old
thing like you catch that spirit of youth? Your heroine flames like
a red, red rose. And what do you know of love’s sweetness and its
fierceness?”
What do I know? I go indoors and gaze soberly at the sedate old
thing that is I. Then I go in search of mammy. “Mammy,” I call, “I
_must_ have somebody to talk to. They say you can look right into the
shadowy interiors of the mountaineers’ cabins; that you can see the
vague objects take shape in them because I’ve got the atmosphere so
well.” Mammy is feeding the chickens. “What is atmosphere, honey?”
she asks calmly. “Oh, feed your chickens,” I say, disgustedly, and,
calmly, she obeys.
By some queer trick our publishers, Bobby’s and mine, have put us
together—my little book by his big book. I have not heard from Bobby
since Christmas. No doubt all his fingers are now out of commission.
Just after Christmas I was in town and I saw a big splendid picture
of Bobby in a bookdealer’s window. I know the man, and, shamelessly,
I told him Bobby was my first cousin—my favourite cousin. He gave
me the picture. Bobby is in his old place on my mantel. And, as
before, he dominates the room. There are times when I almost feel his
presence, distinct, encompassing. My life has not many idle moments,
but when these little lazy let-down minutes do come, when I sit by
the fire at night, the school papers all corrected, just before I go
to bed, I find awaiting me, giving me the feeling that it is always
there, patiently abiding its moment, this nearness to Bobby. It draws
near, not like an alien thing unsure of its welcome, but it comes as
if in answer to a call. How well I know Bobby Haralson! Times spent
together, when apart, how close they come. If disaster overwhelmed
him he’d hide his hurt under a froth of gayety, his lips would mock
with smiles. Once my mother laughingly called my father to see the
pretty picture a little sewing girl made as she slept—her beads of
prayer in her hands. Smilingly my father shook his head. My mother
loved my father for that chivalry to a little sleeping work girl.
Bobby is like that—human enough to advertise through a newspaper
for a girl “pal” and then too chivalrous to meet her. The subtle
gradations that make a gentleman!
_April 1st._
All the way from school this afternoon I kept telling myself there
would be a letter from Bobby on the hall table, and then I would tell
myself it was preposterous after this long silence that I should look
for his letter. But there it was. And he has been sick. I feel his
nerves in the letter.
If Bobby has been reading my last two letters, which he hopes I won’t
make my two last, one was most certainly an old one. Of course I
thanked him for the Christmas flowers and candy. It’s a bad sign, Mr.
Book-writer, for a man to con over old letters. He’s either in his
dotage, or he is in love. Is Bobby in love?
Here’s his letter:
_West 20th Street._
_New York. April 1st._