THE LETTER
“Well, my boy, have you been and done it? and was she favorable? You
look rather happy,” Colin said to Rex as he came upon the piazza where
the old man was sitting.
“No, I haven’t,” Rex answered, adding that Irene had been summoned to
New York to her brother, who was dying, and he had just time to say
good-by.
“Her brother!” Colin repeated. “I didn’t know she had one, and I don’t
believe Sandy did. She never mentioned him, did she? Who is he?”
“Her brother—that’s all I know,” Rex said, adding that he had never
inquired about her family relations and she might have more than one
brother for aught he knew.
“Quite right,” Colin responded. “There’s nothing to hinder her having a
dozen if she likes. Queer, though, we never heard Tom speak of him. I’m
sorry you didn’t have a chance to square up to her before she went. Here
you’ve let the time run to waste and now she’s gone, and that brother
may die and she go into black, and the very old Harry be to pay before
you see her again. Rex, my boy, you haven’t used her fair.”
Some such thought was in Rex’s mind, and he said, rather humbly, “I’m
afraid I have been rather slow and half-hearted; but what can I do now?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, unless you write her a letter. George of
Uxbridge! That’s just the checker!” Colin exclaimed, delighted with his
bright idea. “Write and tell her what a laggard you have been. That will
chirp her up a bit with her sick brother. Don’t put it off, but begin at
once after lunch, which I think is ready now.”
Rex had not much appetite for lunch. The reprieve, which had been so
welcome, bade fair not to last long. And then he didn’t know what to
say. He had never written to a woman in his life except once to his
laundress asking where a part of his washing had gone to and why she
tore his shirts so badly. That had been easy to do, because he was
indignant that his shirts were torn, and out of five pairs of socks,
only one pair had been returned, and that was not his, or mated either.
He could write to Bridget O’Hara about his socks and shirts, but writing
to Irene was a different matter. Hers must be a love-letter, or the
semblance of one, and he felt himself wholly inadequate to the task.
Once he thought to consult Colin, but remembering the old man’s advice
with regard to his lovemaking, he changed his mind and decided to try
and see what he could do alone.
“If Tom were only here to start me,” he thought, as he took up his pen
and a sheet of dainty note paper with his monogram in the corner. It was
very easy to write “Oakfield, Aug. ——” but what to say next was a
puzzler. Finally he wrote: “My dear Irene,” and then stopped and stared
at it, with a feeling that it was quite too familiar. He had never
called her Irene, and he didn’t know as she was his “dear.” He must
think about it. He liked her and he supposed she would be his wife, and
in time very dear to him. But now “My dear” was a little too strong with
Irene attached to it. Taking another sheet he began: “Miss Irene
Burdick,” but that was quite too formal and this second sheet followed
the first into the waste basket. He had only one left of that particular
kind and could not afford to spoil that. So he practised on a less
expensive sheet till he decided that “Dear Miss Burdick,” which meant
nothing, as dear was a common mode of expression, would do, and began to
write, sweating like rain, weighing every word, and feeling that the
hardest work he had ever done was writing that letter, which in a way
was intended as a proposal.
“Dear Miss Burdick,” he wrote, “I am very sorry for the illness of your
brother, which necessitated your leaving so suddenly, just as I was
about to speak of something I ought to have spoken of before, and
should, but for my natural nervousness or shyness, or whatever you may
choose to call it, together with a doubt as to what were your feelings
on the subject. Believe me, Miss Burdick, I would not on any account try
to persuade you to think favorably of the plan if your heart is not in
it. I am aware that you are placed in a very delicate position, which I
regret as much as you possibly can.”
Here Rex stopped suddenly, with a feeling that it would never do to say
that he regretted the relation in which he stood to Irene. He had made a
horrid blunder and used up his last sheet of fine note paper.
“Oh, for Tom, or somebody,” he groaned, and the somebody came in the
person of Colin, who knocked at the door. “Oh, come in, come. I am glad
to see you,” Rex said, changing his mind with regard to consulting
Colin. “I am writing to Miss Burdick and have spoiled three sheets of my
best note paper, and have told her she can not regret the peculiar
relations in which we stand to each other more than I do. What do you
think of that?”
“I think you are an imbecile, or crazy,” Colin said. “I could do better,
and I never wrote a love-letter in my life.”
“I know you could and I wish you’d write it for me, or make an outline
for me to copy. Will you?” Rex said.
“Heavens and earth!” Colin replied. “Do you expect an old man like me to
dictate your love-letters? Plunge in and say something like this: ‘My
dear Irene, I ought to have spoken to you before, but I am such a coward
and I did not know how you felt, or if your pulse beat in unison with
mine.’”
This beating of the pulse seemed to be a favorite theme with Colin, who
went on: “‘I refer, of course, to Sandy McPherson’s will, in which it is
proposed that we marry each other. You know about it. Colin McPherson
sent you a copy, and if you are willing to accede to its conditions, I
am, and I herewith make you a formal offer of my heart and hand. Please
answer by return mail. Yours lovingly,
Reginald Travers.
“‘P. S. I hope your brother is better!’”
“There! How is that? It is not too hifalutin’ for a starter.”
Colin was perspiring nearly as much as Rex with his efforts at
composition, which Reginald heard in a vague kind of way, with a sense
of the ludicrousness of the affair.
“Thanks,” he said, when Colin had finished. “I think I can go on now and
write something she will understand.”
He turned to his desk, while Colin left the room, thinking to himself,
“Good fellow, but dum fool in some things; don’t know what to say to
that girl.”
Meanwhile Rex had selected his fourth sheet of paper, which he must make
answer his purpose. He didn’t say “My dear Irene,” but simply “Miss
Burdick,” forgetting the dear until he was well under way, and would not
begin again. Neither did he say anything about her pulse beating in
unison with his, but he went straight at the subject of the will, saying
he was ready to fulfil his part of it if she were and apologizing for
not having spoken of it before.
“I am rather shy and slow, but it has always been in my mind,” he
wrote, adding in conclusion, “We have not had a long acquaintance,
but in the intimate relations of married life we shall soon learn to
know and esteem each other. Yours truly,
“Reginald Travers.”
The ending sounded a little stiff. Indeed, his whole letter seemed a
little stiff and as if his heart were not in it. “Not such as Tom would
write to the little one,” he thought, “but I’m not Tom, and she’s not
the little one,” and then there swept over him a longing for something,
he hardly knew what, except that it was different from the prospect
opening before him and from which he found himself shrinking more and
more. “It’s the giving up of my freedom, I dread,” he said to himself.
“I’ve had my way so long as a fussy old bachelor that I shan’t know what
to do with a wife upsetting my things and having opinions different from
my own and shocking me with habits I know nothing about. I’m glad that
twist of hair went out to sea. I couldn’t have borne to see it lying
round as I might some day. I hope she hasn’t any more. Ah, well, it says
somewhere ‘the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb,’ and I put my trust
in Providence to steer me through the shoals of matrimony. Carlyle, I
believe, felt some as I do before he married Janie, and they got on
pretty well, except for a few squabbles, which Irene and I will never
have. She is not as catty as Janie, and I hope I am not as selfish as
Carlyle.”
He read the letter over two or three times, and finally put it in an
envelope and addressed it to “Miss Irene Burdick, New York.” Then it
occurred to him that there should be some street and number to insure
its delivery. This he did not know. Colin, when questioned, had lost the
address of Mrs. Graham, which would presumably be that of Irene. There
was nothing to do but go to Rena and get the direction.
“I’ll do that,” he said, with a good deal of alacrity.
It did not tire him, nor make him nervous, to think of calling upon
Rena, and although his head was still aching, he resolved to go at once.
He should feel better when the letter had gone and he was committed past
recall. The day was hotter than any which had preceded it and was one of
those sultry, sticky days when exertion of any kind seems a burden, and
Rex felt it intensely, and would far rather have remained on the couch
in his cool room than have gone out in the heat of the afternoon for a
walk to Mrs. Parks’ through pastures and lane where there was no shade.
“I am in for it and must brace up,” he said, and putting two plantain
leaves in the top of his hat to keep his head cool, and taking the
biggest umbrella he could find, he started along the short road through
the pasture and meadow which led to Mrs. Parks’ house.