Bobby, I condone your offense—time spent cutting up the papers, time
worth so many cents per word, to amuse me. Times spent together when
apart, how close they come.
_April 29th.
Morning._
How the sea flashes, and the blue, blue sky flashes, too. There’s a
boat drifting this way. It looks like a white-winged gull afloat,
a messenger of joy. How the waves sing, and their swelling song is
all about a little girl in a white sunbonnet picking cherries in the
lane. I remember that day, too, Bobby. It was a picnic. You climbed
the tree and I caught up my dress to catch the big ripe cherries.
When the picnic was over and we got home my gentle mother scolded
over the ruined dress. She gave it to the washerwoman’s little girl.
How the waves sing, and their shouting song is—Bobby’s _loved one_.
_Afternoon._
The day’s mood has changed. A cold wind blows in from the sea. If
mammy could see me out here on this deserted stretch of shore in the
rain and the spray that dashes on me from the stormy, inrushing waves
she’d say her prayers in thankfulness that she put the old storm coat
and rubbers in, for I’ve got them on.
How fierce the rush of the waves! Something as elementally savage as
their assault of the shore stirs in me, writhes in its travail—is
born. Bobby is _mine_.
Dicky, light-hearted, laughing child who would pluck the flower of
love as a baby gathers a posy, forgive me.
When the day is hot and the road is long, and the flower of love
droops, what then, Dicky?
_Night._
I have wired Bobby that I will be in New York Wednesday. It will take
me that long to finish the changes in the book. I wired him that my
train gets in about five-thirty, and that if he likes I will take
dinner with him.
_April 30th._
Bobby’s wire reads:
Sure, Mike, I’ll be on hand at 5:30 Wednesday to welcome you on
your retreat from Bosting. And don’t bother yourself about the
train getting in at six or later, for I’ll be on the job and I’ll
be there when you get there.
I have already ordered the lye hominy and turnip greens for dinner,
and you’ll be properly looked after by the committee of one when
you hit the town.
Hoping these few lines will find you the same, I remain,
Yours continuously,
B.
_May 1st._
Bobby wasn’t at the train. If he was, we missed each other. I wasn’t
conscious of it on the train, but now I know I pictured him there
at the station, standing just a little in advance of the mass of
people; vaguely, I think my mind ran the gamut of earth’s meetings
and thought of dim shores, not of earth, where that one who goes
first must surely await the other. To the whir of the wheels as they
ate up the miles that lie between Boston and New York my heart sang,
Bobby’s loved one, Bobby’s _loved one_. I was in a maze of vague,
happy thought—and he wasn’t there—he didn’t meet me.
It is 12 P. M. now. I went with Miss Jackson to a horrid
little show, and when we came in I could not believe there was not a
message of some sort for me.
_May 2d._
I stayed in all morning in such a tense state of expectancy that it
has left me limp. How glad I am that Dicky does not know I am here—I
simply can’t see Dicky yet. I am at sea as to Bobby’s reason for not
meeting me, at sea that no message from him comes to me, but one
thing I know: I can trust his, “Mum’s the word, Caroline.”
Mrs. Christopher and I shopped this afternoon. Afterward we had tea
at the Astor and went down to the Waldorf and sat in Peacock Alley.
Such a mix up of fine clothes and commonness. The women have hard
faces, painted, world-weary, they are too much of—oh, everything: too
red as to lips, too black as to eyebrows, too gold as to hair; they
don’t walk—they can’t, poor things—their general appearance as they
mince along the Avenue is that of a procession of mannikins done up
in slit bolster cases. Bah! It all makes me think of a big rock near
Marsville. Once I passed it with a mountaineer. “When I wuz a child,”
he said, “that wuz a monster rock—the masterest (biggest) rock I ever
seed. Hit’s dwindled sence I wuz a child.” Since I reached here New
York’s dwindled.
“Caroline Howard,” I said to myself, sternly, out in the street
again, “it isn’t New York that has dwindled—it is you. Robert
Haralson didn’t meet you. Whatever his reason for a dime he could
have ’phoned from his home; a slot machine would have cost him a
nickel, a note a two-cent stamp.”
My shoulders braced, my chin went up, my spirit caught the spirit
of this great wonder-town. Night fell. The magic of night on
Broadway—the flashing signs, the whizzing motors, the hurrying,
surging throngs, the snatches of speech that drift to one’s ears,
there on the street where all seems youth, laughter, joy—human
documents, the snatches of speech one hears. “How can I leave you
here?” I heard the words spoken by a plain anxious-faced woman, and
the overdressed, under-dressed, doll-faced girl’s answer: “You poor
dear! How you worry! What have I to fear? New York’s lovely, and my
job’s lovely, and my boss is loveliest of all.”
I heard a man’s voice, such a cultured, hearty sort of a voice, but a
note of bitterness and discouragement rang through it. “That man—I
gave him his chance—brought him here. Look where he is now, and look
where I am. He is not an artist. His success is not based on a solid
foundation. But look at him—money—fame—what’s the use of holding to
one’s ideals, of being faithful to them. What’s the use of—anything?”
My train goes out in an hour. City of laughter and of tears, of power
that can crush as a giant foot crushes an ant, marvel of the world—I
bid you adieu.
_May 4th.
Sunday Night._
I’ve broken the Sabbath by travelling all day. In town I hired
a buggy to bring me home. Our hacks do not run on Sunday. It is
raining. It has rained all the way. I had a silent driver who never
spoke to me, seldom to his horses. I was glad that it was raining;
glad that my driver was silent. My thoughts were as vague, as blurred
as the dim mountain forms seen through the rain. We drove through
Marsville without meeting a soul. As we passed the Duckett houses
that forever watch each other like antagonists, I saw that poor old
lady slipping home from doing up his work; I saw him rocking on his
front porch in placid content. A sudden rage against this man-made
world seized me.
I scrambled in my bag for the little gift to her, leaped out, and
sent the man on home with my baggage.
He greeted me jauntily. He was just sitting there counting his
blessings. He could eat three as hearty meals a day as he had ever
et, and when night come sleep sound as a mouse in a shuck pen—the
Lord had been good to the old man.
I wasn’t hypocrite enough to take the hand extended. I wanted to
shake the life out of his smiling old body.
“Has he been good to the old lady?” I asked. He only stared at me.
“Do you know you told me you swam your horse through swollen streams
once to get to a little log church because you knew your congregation
would be waiting for you there? You wanted to preach that sermon that
day that some soul might be saved that you might never reach again.
You said you didn’t want the devil to get anybody. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” he quavered, “I remember.”
“Well,” I stormed, “it’s my honest belief that he will get you.
I wonder what the God you have preached all these years means to
do with men like you who are mean to their wives and cloak their
meanness to poor feeble old women under smooth-sounding texts.”
He stood up, his faded blue eyes flashed, his pallid lips under the
straggly white moustache worked. When he dropped back in his chair,
having uttered no word, I thought maybe I had killed him. But I did
not care. He would have gone to his Maker with a little preparation
he would otherwise not have had. I stood over him silent, inexorable.
“She got mad because——”
“Never mind what she got mad about,” I said. “For fifty-nine years
and six months she didn’t get mad. And she’s not mad now. I saw her
slipping out of the back of your house just a minute ago. She’s been
doing up your night work. You ought to go over there and get down on
your knees—the knees you have worn out praying the Lord to make you
the sort of a man you have not desired to be—and ask her to forgive
you, and bring her home.”
Some good honest blood left in the old veins crept up and tinged the
pallid, sunken cheeks. And, suddenly, all my fierceness was gone.
I was pleading for the love that had betrayed them at the end of a
lifetime. I had his old, old hands in mine that looked so young and
strong by contrast, and I was leading him back to their courtship
days, to the time when their one little child was born and she almost
lost her life. Some of the story I knew from him, and some of it I
knew from her. Before I finished the tears were dropping down his
cheeks. “The old man has some lonely hours,” he said. Gayly I told
him they were over; gayly I pressed my gift into his hand, and I
fairly pushed him into her gate.
As I hurried on I suddenly realized that the rain was over, that the
eastern hills were sparkling under a giant rainbow, and that Ellinor
Baxter was rushing toward me with outstretched hands. Ellinor threw
as many of her pupils as she could on her assistant, and, with the
help of one of the older girls, took my pupils in my absence.
“How radiant you look!” I said as I kissed her. “I was afraid you
would be all dragged out with the children.”
“The children,” she said, vaguely, and then flushing like a rosy girl
she plunged into stories of the children’s good behaviour. She turned
and walked homeward with me. Was it that fleeting brightness in the
sky that made her seem so young and bright and strangely changed?
_May 15th._
School closed to-day. Commencement was quite a triumph. Monday
morning I went to work in the schoolroom, examinations and
commencement exercises on hand. Suddenly the play I had seen with
Miss Jackson and thought so bad came into my mind. The more I thought
of it the better it seemed. I decided on tableaux, my ideas got from
that play. There were just fourteen days in which to work it out,
but the children hailed it with joy. It was something new; it was
something different. Ellinor’s help was invaluable. Marsville was
delighted with it. Ellinor _is_ changed. If there was anybody here
to love I’d think she was in love. She was running to angles, and
now she’s got some pretty curves, the gray hairs are quite hidden
by the new way she is doing her lovely, heavy, red-brown hair, and
her soft brown eyes—they are looking out on the spring world with a
new, wistful expression in them. She smiles so easily and she hums
snatches of tender old songs.
_May 22d.
Midnight._
This afternoon there was an unfamiliar knock at the door and I ran
down without waiting for mammy. It was Mr. Elliott. He looked so
foreign to the old place, so New Yorkish standing there, that quite
without warning, in the way I do things, while my lips were speaking
a welcome and he was following me into the sitting-room, something
within me was singing: “How could I know I should love thee afar,
when I did not love thee anear?” But that something within me was not
singing about Mr. Elliott, although I saw the glad light in his eyes.
My own eyes saw the sun-shot green May-mist of the trees in Madison
Square, the clock’s big face above the treetops, against the sky’s
soft blue the radiant, triumphant Diana. My ears heard the roll of
wheels on the Avenue, the clang of cars on Broadway; my veins felt
the beat of the city’s hurrying, feverish life.
Out under the pines where mammy brought tea and helped me, with the
dignity of a departed day, I still felt alien to it all. Mr. Elliott
praised the beaten biscuit, and she told him as a mark of special
favour the story of receiving my great aunt’s teeth when she was
dying. I could not seem to belong to the scene—the big waving pine
plumes against the spring sky, the ancient house drowsing in peace,
the soft sweep of the hills, the mountains against the sky like a
string of sapphires. But when Mr. Elliott said good-bye, when he
caught my hands and poured out a flood of eager words, “Would I?
Could I?” I came back to reality.
Did it mean _that_, this feel of the city? Could I go back and live
there with Mr. Elliott—dear, charming, nice Mr. Elliott. For one
swift instant I was swept by his belief in what we together might
make of life, and it seemed so infinitely more than I could make of
life alone. For one swift instant that old terror—the inevitableness
of human change—pierced me like a sword. Always I have felt a
contemptuous sort of pity for Jane Joyner, who lives near, toothless
and untidy and incapable as she is, with the house running over with
dirty children. Was Jane to be pitied? Jane whose youth and beauty
were not dead but had passed into another form of life—lived in her
children. Was she out of harmony with life’s great laws? Big and
fierce my heart cried out, “No!” It was I who was outside of life,
not Jane. Her man’s arm went round her shoulders nights when she
stood over the kitchen stove. Her baby lifted its dirty, loving,
laughing little face to hers as it clutched her knees. Taking my
lonely after-supper walk I had seen them through the open kitchen
door. What had I? A dream that was bodiless, life emptied of the big,
vital things. And if I sent Mr. Elliott away as I sent the others,
the boy lovers who came over the mountains to tell me what he is
telling me now? What have I left that is more than I refuse? In the
bare, honest moment I faced it. Bleak and stark in its honesty, the
truth faced me. After work hours when I walk in the twilight and look
in Jane Joyner’s kitchen the thing that comes close to my heart is a
dream without a body—nothing more.
“I thought I was happy until you came along,” Mr. Elliott was saying.
“Then I found out how lonely my gayety was.”
He is strong and fine, capable of making a woman happy, and I hold
the future of our two lives in my hands. And then he was drawing me
to him. Almost, his lips touched mine. The quick revolt, the wave of
physical nausea—it was as though an icy, sinister wind had swooped
down on my blooming flowers and shrivelled them.
With a desolate little smile I drew back from him, an alien standing
outside of all that might have been mine. I bade him good-bye, and
to-night, when I walked by Jane’s kitchen, open to the soft night,
I turned my eyes away, afraid to look in on the sweet little home
scene. In all my life I have never felt so alone.
_Wednesday Morning._
Mr. Elliott sent back a wonderful basket of fruit. It came over
on the hack and the whole village is agog over it. The gossip has
disturbed dear old mammy greatly. She suggests that we still the
gossip and flatter our neighbours by giving a party. Then they won’t
know what to think. I have consented. Mammy is a woman of action. The
party comes off this afternoon. The house hums with activity.
_Wednesday Afternoon._
The party has passed into history. I got only the littlest taste of
the contents of that beautiful basket Mr. Elliott sent me. Everybody
was here, and they all seemed to have such a good time. Even the
reconciled Ducketts tottered over. What a success I seem to be at
reuniting severed hearts. If my book is a failure I may set up an
establishment of the sort—go into a trance and vision dazzling
futures for people. Well, how do I like the idea? Seven days ago had
I put the question to myself my spirit would have flung back in
bitterness, “Physician, heal thyself.”
For seven nights, no matter which way I willed my feet to go, they
have led me past Jane’s kitchen door. Alone in the soft spring
darkness, in the soft wet darkness some of the nights, I have faced
my life. I have looked in that open door till the bitterness and the
loneliness have gone out of me. Last night when her man’s arms went
about her as she dished their supper, when her child’s arms reached
up to her, I looked in, not in bitterness, not in pity of self, not
in aching loneliness, but in love. It is wonderful when you can look
in on untidy Janes at their kitchen tasks and feel close to their
happiness. Life’s supremest gift is hers. Almost, it was mine. Not
a makeshift, not a compromise—life’s supremest gift. Across sunlit
waves a boat like a white-winged gull set sail for me. Almost, it
reached me. How my heart went out to that white drifting boat of
prophecy! How the waves sang! Bobby’s _loved one_. Sunlit waves and
flashing white-winged boat are gone. But the singing soul of those
words shall keep my heart young. It shall be tender to the young and
happy, pitiful to the old and alone, compassionate to all untouched
by love, whether they scoff in unbelief or whether they would lay
down their lives for love.
Oh, how tired I am! And how heavy the silence is here in the
bridelike, white loveliness of my May garden! And how this silence
differs from its fall silences! The silence holds resignation in the
fall—this is tense with expectancy. The snowballs that have come so
late this year are swaying, they seem to be beckoning to some one,
but there is no wind. And the lilies of the valley, late, too—my
flower children delayed their blooming till I came home—are swaying;
they are pouring out their fragrance—it is poignantly, deliciously
sweet, but I feel no wind.
Something is the matter with this garden and with me. I am quivering
all over as if with intense excitement. The party has tired me out.
Just then, when John opened the gate, I almost leaped from this bench.
The letters John has brought me are from Mr. Elliott and Dicky. I
open Mr. Elliott’s first—a woman always opens a man’s letter first.
It is a fine, manly letter, and it ends:
“You said you once knew Bob Haralson. He has been at death’s
door—struck down without a moment’s warning—appendicitis—a knife
quick or death operation. It was the day you came down from Boston. I
remember date because you came down from Boston. Haralson is creeping
about. I saw him yesterday.”
The lines of mountains dance dizzily. I shut my eyes—shut out the
spring glory, my fingers making a pressing blackness against my
eyeballs. I try to imagine the world this spring day with Bobby gone
out of it. Then my heart leaps madly. It is explained—_explained_.
I can’t sit still, so I climb to the hilltop. I am calmer in motion.
I can see the village from the hilltop. It is being claimed by the
twilight, the soft, slow, lingering spring twilight. There must be
a lot of moisture to make such a brilliant aftermath. The heavens
are so pink they have tinged the eastern hills. League on league the
cloud waves blush pink as the heart of a seashell. The whole world
glows. My mood catches the sky’s glowing mood. It is explained. He
has been ill unto death, but he is not dead—he is alive—_alive_.
Something drops from my belt and I pick it up and stare at it
stupidly. It is Dicky’s little letter. Dicky will know about Bobby.
She will explain their presence together that night at Mouquin’s.
“Caroline, is your right hand paralyzed that I don’t hear from
you? Do a lot of little tow-headed mountaineers and a garden that
I know is at its loveliest now mean more to you than I do? I can’t
understand your silence. I am coming home. I am to have my vacation
now, and I am to keep on having it. Somebody’s with me. He is the
secret of the prolonged vacation. I guess it will be in June. That’s
the loveliest time of all. He will be here only a day or two, three
at the longest, and I hate to think of him at that dinky little
Marsville hotel. Hotel! Ye gods! Come to New York and we will show
you some hotels. Dearest, won’t you, won’t you, have him home with
us? There are some such ducks of places to spoon these moonlit nights
in that heavenly rose garden of yours.”
Did I cry out in that sharp pain, or was it some wounded thing out
there in the shadow of the woods? Steadily I finish the letter. It
is to-day—now, at twilight—when the hack gets in, that Dicky and her
lover are coming. She apologizes that we do not know earlier, but
mammy and I are equal to any emergency. I do feel sorry for mammy,
but I walk on straight into the sunset glare, leaving mammy to her
fate. That is my only sensation—I am sorry for mammy. She does love
to splurge when company comes.
Far down the road I see a buggy. It is coming this way. There are two
people in it, but it is too far away to recognize faces. It is two
men. It stops. One man gets out, the other turns the buggy around
and drives back toward the village. The man who got out of the buggy
walks on in the rose-red haze that wraps the world. The lilies of the
valley that I thrust in my belt send out a sudden fragrance—it is the
trembling of my body that has shaken them. I stop because I can’t
walk on. I lean against a friendly tree-trunk.
The man comes on, moving slowly, feebly, I see as he gets nearer. I
think of trivial things, as we do in crisic moments. Bobby is taller
than I thought. The hat he is wearing adds distinction to one who is
already distingué. The crease in his trousers will be copied by the
young men of Marsville. From somewhere in me a faint satisfaction
stirs that the party has left me wearing my best new gown, my hair
done in a New York way.
Almost at my side Bobby stops, panting a little. I speak first. Women
always do. I feel sure Eve opened the conversation when Adam waked
from the sleep that deprived him of a rib and supplied him with a
wife.
“So you have come again—and not alone this time.” It is not in the
least what I meant to say.
“Did you know that I came?” Bobby’s low voice holds a note of
surprise. “How did you know? But I suppose the boy told you.”
“I was in the garden. I saw you. I know why you came, and why you
left.”
“Why did I leave?”
“You ran from a youthful ideal.”
“Men have done more foolish things,” Bobby’s answer comes gravely.
“And wiser.” I hate the mocking laughter that escapes my lips.
“I don’t understand you.” His face has grown whiter; it has changed
subtly. “Has Elliott been here? Is it Elliott?”
I sweetly assure him that Mr. Elliott has been here, and I manage to
leave the impression that he may be coming again.
This time Bobby’s face goes close to black. With a mocking little bow
he bids me good-bye, turns, goes down the road. He marches straight
ahead. I have never seen a lion stalk through an African jungle, but
I think of one as I look at him. Where is he going? Where is Dicky’s
lover going? A dumb sort of fright grips me. I spin down the road to
where he marches breast forward with never a backward look—if a woman
can spin in these narrow-not-made-to-overtake-anybody’s-lover New
York frocks.
“Bobby,” I cry, hard upon him, “stop!”
He turns. Not the Bobby of my letters, not the Bobby of my dreams,
not the Bobby of Washington Square, a politely impatient-to-be-gone
stranger.
Always, it is the unexpected that overtakes me. To my amazed surprise
I wet with salty tears my New York finery.
“I’m tired, Bobby,” I gasp. “I’ve been having a party—and I’m not
used to having parties. That’s what makes me such a cat. And, oh,
Bobby, you’ll have to pardon things—Dicky just sprung your coming on
us.”
“Dicky didn’t know that I was coming.” He speaks slowly, he takes my
face in his hands and looks down at me, a long, deep look. The hard,
black look on his own face has lifted.
As I try to tell him that Dicky didn’t tell me he was ill, that I
have just learned it from Mr. Elliott’s letter, as I try to tell him
what the bright May world would be to Dicky with him gone out of it,
and as I flounder that I hope they will be heavenly happy, I splash
more tears on my pretty clothes.
Bobby’s face flashes—all that a woman could want or dream of comes
into it.
“Dicky didn’t know I was in the hospital. I went in under an assumed
name. When a fellow’s tied up with publishers and theatrical people
like I am——” Bobby drops the subject as one that holds no further
interest. “If I had died, would it have spoiled the May world for
you, Caroline?” There is a sharp note of anxiety in his voice.
“Bobby, Bobby!” I cry, wildly. “Don’t ask me! What have you done with
Dicky! Where is Dicky?”
“I am not Dicky’s keeper.” The light glows and glows in his face.
“She’s got one, though, and it was odd we should all three have left
town together. I smoked like a furnace all the way down as an excuse
to keep away from them. Caroline”—Bobby’s arms close about me—“I am
not Dicky’s—I am yours.”
Walking home in the twilight that is gray and tender as a dove’s
breast, Bobby tells me that he _was_ afraid the night he ran away. He
says he has tried and tried not to love me—that men like him should
never marry—that they should live alone on the top of the Flat Iron.
“But it is bigger than I,” he says, gravely. “It has swept me to your
feet.”
“To my heart,” I correct, happily.
The hack lumbers around the curve, descends upon us. At sight of
us Dicky and the strange young man who sits on the back seat with
her—John and Ellinor are on the middle seat—roar with laughter.
“You sly fox!” Dicky cries. “How did you get here? We left him on the
train, Caroline, and he sent his regards to you—and he said he was on
his way to Colorado.”
“I am,” Bobby boldly declares. “I stopped by to see if Caroline would
go with me. As to my getting here first, I live in New York. As rapid
transit as is obtainable, say I.”
Dicky flings herself into my arms. “You owe it all to me,” she
declares. “I found him deadly tiresome.” She beamed on Bobby. “All
his talk was about you.
“You sly fox,” she whirled on him again. “You didn’t need to have me
tell you about Caroline. You were hearing from her all the time, now,
weren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me, Caroline?”
“I—I—I——” I stammered.
Bobby isn’t timid, he’s bold as a lion. “The reason is obvious,” he
declares. “I wouldn’t let her. Had you known that I heard, too, it
would have changed everything.”
The others descend from the hack. It goes on with Dicky’s baggage. I
realize that John has been an unnecessarily long time helping Ellinor
out of the carriage; but there are no surprises left in the world. I
greet Dicky’s lover. As we take our leisurely way home I don’t even
wonder what mammy will have for supper.
_May 30th._
“_Day’s at the morn
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled_”——
I am just back from taking a look at old Camel Back. The morning’s
like an opal—it’s all a shifting mist shot through with sunshine.
None of the mountains have shaken off their last night’s
mist-blankets but that brave old blessed Camel Back. He knew I’d be
up, and he gave me royal greeting. “Well,” he seemed to say, “haven’t
I poured all the treasures of the earth perfumed with all the scents
of Araby into your outstretched hands?”
I meant to tell Bobby about Camel Back—for so long I have told my
fancies to a pictured Bobby—but when I thought of it last night, just
before he left for the “dinky” little hotel with Dicky’s doctor—he
was busy fitting a piece of cardboard in which he had cut a round
hole on a certain finger of my left hand, and, anyway, it is not easy
to tell fancies to an eager man who is murmuring realities in one’s
ears—like this: “Dearest one, will you hurry, oh, hurry, and get the
gingham, and the barred muslin, and the bias bombazine fixed up, and
let’s get married quick.”
The morning’s at seven. At eight all of us, Bobby and Dicky’s doctor,
Ellinor, too, are going to breakfast in my rose garden. Mammy planned
it last night. She came to the sitting-room door and asked them all
with the manner of a duchess.
I go to the kitchen door—broiled chickens and waffles, strawberries
and cream. “Can I help you, mammy?”
“Mammy don’t need no help. This come while you was gallivantin’ up
the lane.” The big, bold, square envelope sets my heart to leaping: