_April 5th._
This sweet spring afternoon I cannot stay indoors. In her joy the
earth is like the mother of a new-born child. A light, restless wind
has piled snowy, errant clouds above the mountain tops, the little
green leaves are uncurling, the sun shining as it shines only in the
spring and on an awakened world—and the birds——A lover bird, just the
kind to capture a little lady bird’s heart, has been pouring out a
passionate mating song for two whole days. He is in the cedar tree
not far from my window. His little lady love answers from the willow
in the pasture. He is trying to make her come to him, I feel sure.
Will she?
_April 6th._
_Saturday Afternoon._
My lover bird is gone from the cedar tree. Down in the willow’s cool
depths, above the spring where the colts and cattle drink, there are
such flutterings, such joyous little outbursts of song that I smile
in sympathy. Wise, wise, little woman-bird. Since the coming of these
last letters there’s been a stealthy fear following at my heels—the
fear that I might go to New York. I could make my book an excuse, and
I have some money. I have spent very little since that extravagant
outburst last fall. And I could make Dicky an excuse. Dear little
Dicky, who is as joyous over my book as if she herself had written it.
I will not go! The fate that let me put the light out the night that
Bobby came here is a wicked, wicked jade, but I defy her! I’ll stay
right here!
That Bobby should remember a little girl’s hat through all the years!
That day so far in the past, when I left Roseboro and Ernest Cold was
on the train—Bobby said he was; I don’t remember—Bobby put a real
daisy in my hat band when he came in the train to tell me good-bye,
and he said——
That stealthy fear that I might go to New York is stealthy no longer.
Boldly it has stalked out in front of me and clutched me by the
throat.
_April 15th._
This morning when I pushed up the shade in my berth I was greeted
by the sun’s big, round, inquiring eye. “What are you doing here?”
he seemed to be asking. I hastened to explain that my going to New
York was in no way connected with Mr. Robert Haralson; that he is
not to know I am there. Somewhat shamefacedly I explain to that red,
watchful eye that Dicky is not to know I am there either. Dicky
doesn’t need me now. Her last letter is as joyous as the lilt of a
lark.
My publishers (how fine it sounds) want some little changes made in
the book, and for that sole reason I am on a Pullman bound for New
York.
So accustomed am I to space that I could not be boxed up in lower
twelve last night, so I took the whole section. This morning as I
stood on my bed reaching up for my skirt the train took a sharp
curve that landed me in the aisle of the car. Visions of a hospital
danced with a million stars before my eyes. A young, lovely girl
helped me back into my berth. No one else, not even the porter, had
witnessed my humiliation. In a little while, in spite of my aching
head, I collected my senses sufficiently to get to the dressing-room.
Making myself presentable was a clutching sort of experience. I have
not spent the night in a train since I was eighteen, and I must
have been more agile then. When I emerged from dressing I felt as a
mountaineer’s baby must feel when it is being hushed to sleep. If you
have ever seen one being flung from side to side of its rude little
cradle, threshed about like a weaver’s shuttle, then you understand
perfectly.
The girl was waiting for me; she proposed that we breakfast together.
In the dining car, under the stimulus of the coffee, which stopped my
headache, I told the girl about my little book and that I was going
on for my first trip. Back in the coach we were the only passengers
and we sat together; she told me about herself. She is going to New
York, too. She is going to join the great army of workers. She is
so sweet and young, so girlish and refined, so beautifully although
simply dressed, that I think my face must have shown my astonishment
and regret. That she should be adrift in a great city seemed too
dreadful—one of its labourers, and on small wages, in desolate
lodgings, isolated from all social life with her kind. I thought of
the city’s temptations for a lonely, beautiful girl. And I said:
“Child, go back to your family. Haven’t you somebody?”
“I have my little baby that lies in the cemetery.” Her young laugh
rang bitter. “I am all alone. I left my husband—he didn’t love
baby and me any longer. I mean he didn’t love me. He adored baby.
She adored him, too. She used to say, ‘I’m des trazy ’bout my dear
daddy.’” She looked from the window; I could see her chin quiver.
When she turned back to me her voice was quite steady. “I want to be
fair to him. When baby died it hurt him cruelly, and always when I
place flowers in the little urn at the head of baby’s grave, I find
beautiful ones in the urn at the foot. I know, although he does not
love me any longer, that it hurts him for me to be a wage-earner. But
I can’t take his money. You—you don’t believe in divorce?” Her voice
was half timid.
I was silent. It is something I am so ignorant of. The old Ducketts
are the nearest approach to divorce that we have in our mountain
world. Recently, without a word to any one, that poor old lady left
her home and moved to a little house across the street. Our village
has wondered and gossiped about this rupture after sixty years of
life together. Poor old lady, she slips in the back door of his house
when he is sitting at the front door, and does up the work she has
done for sixty years; then she slips home again.
“A woman can’t judge”—the girl’s voice with a defiant note in it
brought my thoughts with a start back from the Ducketts, and to
her—“unless it is her own problem. She, the other woman, wanted him
to leave baby and me. He dropped the letter on the floor and I picked
it up and read it. I don’t know why I did it. I had perfect faith
in him. She said all her happiness was at stake; she eliminated our
happiness—baby’s and mine.”
“But, child”—my mind took a wider circle than it had ever had need
of in Marsville—“any woman might fall in love with another woman’s
husband and try to take him from her. I know a coloured woman whose
husband beats her, and when I try to make her leave him and live on
a nice little place we have and do our washing, she says she would
leave her old man but that she might not find another, that husbands
is so ‘scase.’ They must be from the way some women behave. Perhaps
your husband was not at fault.”
The lovely colour mounted to her face, it quivered as she told me
that he had acknowledged it. We were both silent then. But presently
I asked if he had gone to the other woman. She murmured no.
“He says that he is penitent.” Her eyes were stormy. “He begs me to
take him back. Upon what foundation would I build my faith in him
again?”
I think my own answer surprised me. “Bodies sometimes sin when souls
are clean,” I said. “It could have been a passing sin of the body
that did not touch the spirit, which is still true to you. If the
spirit sinned he would not want to come back—he would not be sorry.
Oh, child, don’t you see?”
“I never—did see—it like—that.” The girl’s words trailed like broken
winged birds, her face paled.
We were under the shed in Washington and a solitary passenger,
travelling bag in hand, was coming down the aisle of our coach. At
sight of her, for he did not know me, his face whitened, too. In one
great throb of my heart I took in the situation. I knew that he was
her husband, and that he loved her. I saw it in the flash of his face
at sight of her—a blind man given back his sight might look out on
his restored world with a look like that.
In a lightning-like flash of time I had leaped to my feet, pushed him
into the seat where I had been, and, without in the least knowing
what I was saying, I heard myself say: “You foolish children. Go back
to the little grave and put the two urns for flowers together. Then
start life all over again.”
I left them staring into each other’s eyes in a sort of mesmerized
trance, and went into the next coach. When my eyes cleared of tears I
saw that the bright sunlight world beyond the car window was filled
with yellow butterflies. In their circling they made a great golden
wedding ring. The sweet prophecy seemed mine—not belonging to the
people I had left back in the other coach. At lunch they asked me to
come to their table, but I smilingly refused. When two people have
just been caught up in a golden chariot and given passage direct to
Paradise there is no room in the vehicle for outsiders.
I could not grind under the river and get out in the heart of the
city, as the advertisements say. I had to see the skyline from the
Jersey side. How wonderful it is as it glitters in the soft spring
light—a proud wonder city that rests on great, tossing waters. And
there lie the docks. I can read the names of the different lines on
the dark little houses. And far down the stretch of moving water
I see a gallant little tug assisting a great vessel out to sea. A
sort of trembling seized me. Like a vision that fades, all thought
of the life that lay behind me—John, mammy, the little mountain
village—slipped away. As the boat drifts near and nearer to that
white wonder city I want to fling the people huddled on the seats,
apathetic as sheep, into the water. I want to cry aloud, “City, city,
I am coming!” But they wake up at the dock. How alive they are! I am
alive, too. I am over the mountain wall. At last I am part of the
big, alive, throbbing world.
_April 16th._ 12 P. M.
Late yesterday afternoon when I ran up the steps of 30 West Twentieth
Street and the door opened and closed on me, my one sensation was
relief. I had taken a cab at the ferry and I had marvelled at the
dexterity with which the cabby turned and twisted through the
dingy streets. Safe, not kidnapped, money still in my bag, the
wonderful adventure of getting to my destination without adventure
accomplished, I stepped from that cab. The cabby took my trunk from
the top of his hansom, banged it on the sidewalk, accepted the dollar
we had agreed upon, and waited. I waited, too, politely. Suddenly he
turned very red and climbed to his perch, swearing roundly.
As I followed Miss Jackson up the stairs to the third floor I asked
her why he did that. She answered vaguely that they were rude.
I came to Miss Jackson’s because her mother and my mother knew each
other, and because it is eminently respectable. As we climbed the
dark stairs my elation dropped from me. The hall needs the winds of
heaven to blow through it. Coming back to dinner, I fairly groped
through the dimness. But the dining-room was bright and cheerful.
All the people seemed young. They were very gay. At dinner the whole
talk was of the theatre. As I have not been to a play since I was
eighteen, I sat stupidly quiet. Everybody went out after dinner—most
of them to the theatre. Miss Jackson went, too. Up in my room I
leaned from the window and tried to realize the wonderfulness of
being in New York. Below me the street was dark, but far away across
the housetops I saw a glow that I took to be the lights of Broadway.
After a long time I stole down the dim, depressing stairs. I opened
the door, let in the sweet, cool April air. I don’t know how long
I stood there looking out at the dark, deserted street. I thought
of it as a siren of the sea, calling, luring to it the youth of our
wide, free land. My mind went to my little room up two dark flights
of stairs. I was paying ten dollars a week for a room just about
the size of the rug in front of my fireplace at home. What was
the size of the working girl’s room who paid five dollars a week?
How many flights of dark stairs did she have to climb? I seemed to
feel the city—the city that I have not yet seen. I seemed to feel
its immensity—stretching away, street after street, in overpowering
sameness the length of the island. I thought of the overcrowded East
Side and the foreigners herded like cattle, overflowing into the
streets, and then I thought of Bobby—or had I been thinking of him
through all my thoughts?—jostling in the crowded streets, loitering,
listening, feeling the beat of the city’s great heart.
When I closed the door and came down the hall I saw the telephone in
spite of the dimness. Almost before I knew it I had found the number
I sought, my hand was on the receiver. But I did not take it down.
The memory of a bright-eyed little lady bird who waited for her lover
to come to her restrained me. I must be as wise as she.
I ran up to my room. A fog had crept in from the sea. The river must
be near. The calls of whistles and horns came shrill and often. They
seemed to give anxious warning. The city _is_ a siren. It wrapped
itself closer in this white fog sheet of mystery and it called to me.
Hastily I donned coat and hat, ran down the stairs and out on the
street. I did not hesitate—to hesitate was to go back. In front of
me, not far away, another street opened. I reached it, stood still
for a moment; a wraithlike little figure hurried past. “What street
is this?” I asked. Wraithlike he sped on without a reply. I hurried
after him, caught him by the arm. “What street is this?” I insisted.
“And which is up and which down?”
“Whut’s de matter wid y’nut?”
Humbly, I told him that I was a stranger; that I lived near and had
just walked out for a little glimpse of the city. He told me to keep
straight ahead until I came to Twenty-third Street, and stand there a
while till the hayseeds fell off me. I gave him a dime. He graciously
allowed me to accompany him. The city street widens beautifully at
Twenty-third. It had seemed like one of our narrow mountain gulches.
I gave my little lad another dime. I wanted to be told so much. The
open space, vague in the fog, is Madison Square; the street that
rolled away into the gloom, the Avenue, and the white, white foggy
flare of light, Broadway.
Some weight of the city’s loneliness fell on me as I retraced my
steps alone. The fog seemed denser—it might have been because the
light lay behind. A few blocks down, as I turned into my own street,
my own audacious thoughts brought me to a standstill. If I kept
straight on I would come to Washington Square. An old schoolmate
lived there.
I had no difficulty in recognizing the Arch, the cross on the
church, the light that burns always. I found the number. I would
have thought I had made a mistake, but I have written it so often. I
went up the bare, worn steps, rang a jangly bell. A slatternly woman
came to the door. Back of her I could see a dingy hall lighted by a
blinking gas jet. She called my friend loudly. There was no reply.
She said her work was heavier in the spring, that she was often very
late.
I had pictured my artist friend in her studio home surrounded with
comfort. “Hasn’t she a studio?” I stammered. The woman laughed
loudly. “Her room, third floor back, ain’t no bigger ’n yo’ hand. She
paints an’ sews an’ cooks, eats an’ lives an’ sleeps there, ’cept
when she got jobs out.”
I turned and fled. I was trembling so I could hardly stand. Such a
fragile, lovely creature—my friend back in my school-girl days. A
joyous young creature, fashioned for joy. I did not want to see her;
I knew instinctively that she did not want to see me.
On the street again, out of the foggy darkness, a shadow lurched
toward me. I shrank against the building I was passing. It bent and
looked into my face, laughed drunkenly, and passed on. I tried to
move. My limbs had taken root. As I stood there flattened against
that wall I heard cautious, descending footsteps, whispering voices.
Some people were coming down nearby steps, and I was glad. I would
follow close behind them. After what was to me a very long time, as
they did not pass, I went in the direction of their voices, until I
stumbled over a dark mass that lay in my path. Something told me. The
slow, cautious steps, the whispering voices—I dropped to my knees on
the pavement. The face I lifted and looked into was a young girl’s.
She was unconscious. I sprang up. There was movement in my limbs now.
I ran, breathless, into a man. I caught him by the arm, pleading with
him to hurry; I dragged him to the girl on the pavement. I gasped out
all I knew.
He took a flashlight from somewhere about him, knelt, looked at the
girl, and I—I looked at the pool of blood widening on the pavement.
I had not seen it before. She was dying. I dropped down by her, too.
“Oh, poor little girl,” I cried, “why did you come to this city of
Gomorrha? Why didn’t you stay at home?”
“See here”—the light flashed full in my own face, the low, cold voice
bit into my spirit as a bullet of steel might have burrowed in my
flesh—“how do I know that what you’ve told me is on the level?”
Stupidly I stared at him. Whose face was this—as familiar as my own
viewed in the looking-glass?
The eyes looking into mine were suddenly confused, the apology he
gave murmured. He stared as though I bewildered him. He pushed his
hat back. I hadn’t recognized Bobby Haralson, but I knew that lock of
hair on his brow. Had I not once watched a flame devour it? Head and
heart awhirl, I smiled at him. “Mr. Haralson,” I said, and I laughed
outright. “I am on the level.”
There was the sound of approaching footsteps. He flashed the light
out. “So you know me?” he said.
“Who does not?” I answered. “But you do not know me, honest, now.”
“I do—and I don’t,” he said.
Not far away a figure loomed; it brought us back to the poor little
girl that lay there so quietly between us.
“You must get away, quickly. Officer!” he called. His voice has a
carrying quality if it is so low, for soon an answering hail came
through the fog.
“Will you go? Go!” he commanded. “I’ll see this through.”
“I can’t,” I said, and I suddenly knew that I spoke out of a vast
content. “I’m lost. It’s no use to tell me west. I don’t know west.”
“West what?” Again his words bit into me like they were steel.
“Twenty.” The officer was only a few steps away and Bobby fairly
forced it from me.
“The Arch, the Avenue, Twentieth Street, then to your left.”
Obediently, I did it all. I am safe at Miss Jackson’s. But, oh, will
I ever sleep again? When I close my eyes I see the girl’s fair little
face, that widening pool of blood; and then I see Bobby’s eyes—the
puzzled stir of memory in them.
_April 17th._
I fell asleep at daylight this morning. When I waked the breeze
was tossing the curtains, the sun shining, there was a sense of
joyousness in the morning. I shopped with an agent—I could not have
shopped without one. We lunched at a cunning tearoom just off the
Avenue. I ordered just about what mammy would have for a guest of
ours: soup, broiled chicken, two vegetables, a salad, a sweet, and
coffee. I nearly fainted when I saw my bill. And then the tip! I
would not have given it, but I saw it offered at a nearby table. I
was confused to give it, but the pretty, refined looking girl did not
seem to mind accepting it.
This afternoon, by appointment, I met Mr. Elliott. Mr. Elliott is a
member of the firm. He is young, tall, slender. Somehow I thought all
publishers were middle-aged, stocky as to build, and with close-cut
white moustaches.
Mr. Elliott asked me if I had ever dined at Mouquin’s. His face was
a compliment when I told him that like a little mountain boy of my
acquaintance I had never “ben nowhar nur seen nothin’.” I _do like_
Mr. Elliott. My heart is almost leaping out of me! I drove straight
to Mrs. Christopher again. She told me all the literary people go to
Mouquin’s. If Bobby should be there to-night! If we should meet!
_One_ A. M.
Out of gratitude to Mrs. Christopher I must acknowledge that the
girl who looked back at me from the mirror to-night was a stranger
to me. Mr. Elliott did not know her, either. As I came down the
boarding-house stairs—the parlours at present are occupied by people
from the South and the stuffy hall is the only reception-room—I
flushed under his gaze. It is most bewildering to emerge from a
Marsville spinster to a New York belle.
Mouquin’s. A confused memory of a flight of steps, a clutter of
tables, a sea of faces.
“Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you like your oysters? It is a trifle late
for them.”
We were seated. I knew that. It was Mr. Elliott’s voice. I knew that,
too. I was glad, although he seemed so far away, that I had not lost
him. The plate that was rising, falling, lurchingly, drunkenly, held
oysters——
“Drink your cocktail.” Out of the blur of things he pushed it toward
me. Obediently I drank it. I saw that the oysters numbered six, that
their shells were as pink and polished as a lady’s finger-nails.
Obediently I ate them—the oysters, not the shells.
“What makes you so quiet to-night? But maybe you aren’t having a good
time?”
With the help of the wine that sparkled and bubbled at my right hand,
blessed little helper in time of need, I did not have to give account
of my appetite again; I was making quite respectable headway with
my chicken. Feverishly I assured Mr. Elliott that I was having the
loveliest time but one I’d ever had in my life.
Mr. Elliott beamed. “Will you tell me about that time?” he asked.
But women have their little reserves. The lovely time to which I
had reference was a mountain storm I once survived, on Craggy, six
thousand feet above sea level, separated from my party, having
followed a cattle path by mistake, and—_alone_. This time was just
as lovely as that. Then, after a terrified scurrying here and there,
I had gone back to the mountain top to wait. Out of what had seemed
an innocent sky an electric storm broke. Lashing his steeds with
whips of fire, Apollo drove them across the boiling heavens. At each
ear-crashing report of thunder the earth threatened to crumble,
hurling me down through bottomless space. With the sharp hissings
of snakes the lightning fell about me. Rain-drenched, storm-torn,
but too terrified to brave the electric fires darting across the
mountain’s top to what seemed safety under the big rock where a flock
of frightened sheep huddled, I took the storm in the open. When it
had rolled away the sheep no longer huddled—I was indeed alone—they
lay still.
“Does it meet your approval?” Mr. Elliott put the direct question to
me, and somehow I knew it had been asked before. I looked down at my
plate helplessly—we had reached the salad course—I tried to rouse my
laggard brain. Approval of what, and what was approval?
“It gets my goat!” The words came from my lips. My ears heard them.
And the fright of the foolish words cleared my brain.
“What!” There was astonishment, there was amusement, there was also a
puzzled intentness in the eyes that looked into mine, and I stammered
that the girl who sat at the next table—the girl who looked so
cultured and smartly got up—had just said it, and that it was new to
me, but it sounded like an idiom of the street.
With that careless, satiated New York glance Mr. Elliott’s eyes swept
the girl. “Beef to the heel,” he said heartlessly.
“Beef to the heel!” That puzzled me, too.
We had drained our coffee cups when two people who sat at a table
behind us passed—a man and a woman—Bobby Haralson and Dicky. I
recognized Bobby as I came in; the lovely droop of Dicky’s back is
not unfamiliar to me, either.
“That’s Bob Haralson—you’ve heard of him—one of our biggest men, and
his biggest work is still in him. He’s the nicest, most lovable,
queerest fellow you ever did see. He has hosts of friends, but
mostly, he lives to himself. He’d give his last dollar to a friend
and go hungry himself; and once I knew him to refuse to be introduced
to a rich fellow of power in the literary world because that man
belonged soul and body to a corporation—had been bought. That’s Bob
Haralson! I often see him here, but I never saw him here with a woman
before. Come to think of it, I never saw him anywhere before with a
woman—not much in his line, women. But they seemed to be having a
corking time. I never saw him so animated. That little witch—pretty,
wasn’t she?—has got him going. I’d have asked him over to be
introduced had he been alone.”
As we left the restaurant Mr. Elliott asked me to go with him to a
little theatre where the one-act plays were all thrills. I couldn’t
tell him that if I had any more thrills he’d probably have to call an
ambulance and send me to a hospital; I couldn’t explain that as far
as I was concerned the play was done, curtain down, and lights out.
We went. We sat in darkness. The darkness was a great relief. Mr.
Elliott could not see me. I sat there with tightly shut eyes until,
at a stir among the people about me, I heard some one say a man had
fainted. “It gets my goat!” I murmured. Fortunately there was quite a
little stir about us and Mr. Elliott did not hear me.
_April 18th._
Some hours ago, when I left New York, having decided to run up to
Plymouth and finish up the work on the book by the sea, Mr. Elliott
put me in the coach, having showered me with books, flowers, and
magazines. I opened the flowers in the cab, and I stared at them and
at him.
“Don’t you like them?”
Did I like orchids and lilies of the valley? Bobby’s Christmas gift
to me? I pulled up. I wasn’t going to be beef to the heel. I joined
the New York procession—and I think I made good.
There’s a little slit of a mirror in the coach, right here by my
chair, and I take a peep at myself. Blessings on Mrs. Christopher, I
don’t look like a spinster, and from Marsville. And then—then I bury
my face in nice Mr. Elliott’s flowers, drinking in their perfume,
and splashing them with some very big and salty tears.
_April 25th._
I have spent the morning in Plymouth’s quaint old graveyard—such a
soft, sunny, springlike morning. I have looked at the dim old slabs
that bear testimony to the virtue of departed wives. I am sitting on
the grave of a virtuous wife now, looking past the stones, past the
big rock the nimble Pilgrims leaped on when they landed on free soil,
far out to where sea and sky meet. Had I been a Puritan maid I would
have said to my lover when we climbed to this hill soft days like
this and looked to sea: “Dear boy, with my heart I give you all that
women who are like me give to one man—the thoughts I have kept for
you, the lips I have kept for you. If you had a great searchlight and
should throw it back over the road of my life there’s not a single
little bend that it would shame me for your eyes to see; but when I’m
dead, don’t put my virtue on a tombstone.”
_April 26th._
This has been a heavenly day. Mr. Elliott came to Boston on business
and ran down to Duxbury to see some friends of his, and all of them
motored over to Plymouth and got me. I lunched at the loveliest home
in Duxbury. The sea was almost in the back porch. Mr. Elliott came
back in the machine with me and took the train for Boston. When
he left he held my hands in a mighty close friendly clasp, and he
said—never mind what he said. It is lovely of Mr. Elliott to be so
good to me, and it’s comforting down to my toes. For some idiotic
reason I want to cry again. I won’t cry! And I won’t sit here. (I
have climbed to the old graveyard, and seated myself on the slab of a
virtuous spouse.) I need all my nerve force. It must sparkle in the
changes I’ve got to put in my book. And I know why I’m nervous, and I
know why I want to cry. It’s always satisfactory when you can chase
an emotion to its lair——I was taken to the graveyard when I was very
little—mammy used to take me with her when she went to put flowers on
my great-aunt’s grave, the lady whose false teeth fell into mammy’s
care; and she (mammy) was always so solemn on these occasions—it was
before the day of Christian Science—there was death then, and hell,
and a devil. I feel quite cheerful since I have analyzed the teary
feeling.
_April 26th._
_Night._
A letter from Dicky forwarded to New York and on here. It lilts like
the song of the happy little wren that was singing in the big cedar
tree at the garden gate the day I left home.
“Oh, Caroline,” Dicky says, “I want to go out under the stars
to-night at home and bury my face in the pansies that always riot
in your April garden. With their soft little faces close, close to
mine, I want to tell them a secret. I want to tell it to you, too,
Caroline. But not yet—not yet.”
I go out under the stars, through the quiet streets, and down to the
quiet sea. The night is poignantly sweet and beautiful. Dicky, little
sister, child of my love, keep your secret. I could not bear to hear
it yet—not yet.
_April 27th._
A telegram from Bobby. He wants to come to Plymouth. He has something
to tell me. It is Bobby’s chivalry that makes him feel he should go
through the form of asking me for Dicky. I have wired no. There’s a
little kodak of him that I cut from a magazine and put in my little
silver frame. I can reach out my hand and touch it here where I sit,
and, vaguely, it comforts me.
I have faced it. I love Bobby. To love—it is to give. Bobby’s wife
must give. The hands that take into their keeping that precious
thing—his genius—what tender, comprehending hands they must be.
There’ll be times, lots of ’em, when Bobby’s wife will have to do all
the loving for two. There’ll be times when he will thrust her out,
and if she sits whimpering on the doorstep that it’s cold out there,
heaven help her—how he’ll hate her. There’ll be times when the work
presses, when he’s distrait—knows she’s there just as he knows the
house furnishings are there, bed near centre of room, bureau against
west wall, light above——If she gets frightened at the wilted leaves
and jerks his love for her out of his body to look at the roots too
often, then heaven help you, Robert Haralson.
Bobby, Bobby, I’d know at a glance—without a glance. When you opened
the door I’d _feel_, Bobby. Sometimes her tired-out man child
quivering with his day’s toil asks mother love of his wife. She’s
got to be counsellor, comforter, friend—comrade with whom to forget
life’s cares. Out of all the world she’s got to be the one woman that
is his _need_. I am your _need_! If disaster stripped you of all that
the world has showered on you, if it reduced you to the hurdy-gurdy
man who grinds his organ under your window—Bobby, Bobby, would Dicky
_love_ the gathering of the pennies?
_April 28th.
Morning._
Bobby wires again: “What are you up to, Caroline, that you didn’t let
me know you were here, that Dicky didn’t know; that Elliott wasn’t
told it was Dicky with me; that you were so naughty in the Square the
other night as to laugh at my confusion? Little girl with eyes like
moonflowers, all right for youse. And mum’s the word.”
“Her eyes, full and clear, with their white-encircled, gray irises,
are like moonflowers.” That’s what Bobby says on page 131 about his
heroine. And back in one of his first letters to me, “Please turn to
page 131 of the book and try to think whose eyes I tried to describe.”
_April 28th.
Noon._
On the heels of Bobby’s telegram I have this letter from him.
_To-day, Wednesday._