_February 21._ To put all this on paper is weak and aimless, yet it
seems to ease my sadness. I suppose a scribbler unconsciously comes to
write out whatever he feels, as a nervous woman plays her emotions away
on a piano. If this is so, why should not I salve my grief in any way
that lessens it? Those old days had such happiness in them that the
mere memory brings some to me, and to sit here at my study table and
write of the past is better than idle dwelling on the present.
You were jubilant when first told that we were all to go to Europe for
a summer, and laughed at my fears and despondency. Could I have had an
intuition of coming evil, or was my alarm due to the engravings of
those terrible sea-monsters with which Mercator populated the oceans in
his “Atlas sive Cosmographicæ,” and to the pictures and tales in
bloodthirsty old Exquemelin’s “Bucaniers of America”? Our notions of
what the trip meant were evidently not very clear, for at once we set
to storing up provisions, and weeks before the time of sailing we were
the proud possessors of a cracker-box full of assorted edibles, a jar
of olives we had pilfered, and a small pie you had cajoled the cook
into making for us. How we loved and gloated over that pie! Daily we
sorted our sea-stores, added new supplies, and ate what clearly could
be kept no longer. My mother found us one day deeply engrossed in the
occupation, cuffed us both, and sent the olives back to the pantry and
the tin box to the ash-barrel. As for the pie, such hot words passed
about it between “Madame” and “Monsieur Philippe” that our cook left us
without warning. We were again punished for being the cause of his
desertion, and that evening father dined at his club.
The different effects my mother’s gusts of anger had on you and on me
were curiously distinctive. You met them fearlessly and stubbornly,
while to me the moments of her fury were moments in which I could
scarcely breathe, and of which I felt the terror for hours after. I
sometimes wonder if the variance was because I had learned to fear the
outbursts even as a baby, whereas your character had partly formed
before you encountered them. Who knows but a change of circumstances
might have made me the fearless one, and you the timorous? At least I
should be glad to think that I might have been like you in courage and
spirit, even though it is impossible to imagine that you could ever be
like me. It is a singular turn of life’s whirligig that when my mother
tried to pain you last autumn by her cruel remarks, you were helpless
to retort, and owed your escape to my help.
What a delight the ocean voyage was to us! Those were the times of
ten-day trips, still dear to all true lovers of the sea; and had our
wishes been consulted, thrice ten would have been none too long for our
passage. The officers, the crew, the stewards, and the passengers were
no more proof against your indefinable spell than was I, and it seemed
quite as if the boat were your private yacht, with all on board seeking
only to serve you. Our pleasure was so intense that we planned an ideal
future, in which I was to become the captain of a steam-ship, and you
were to live on the vessel in some equally delightful if impossible
capacity.
The last time I was in Paris, I walked several miles merely to look at
the outside of our pension, and then went on and sat dreaming in the
little park near it in which we passed so many hours of our stay in
that city. As of old, the place was full of children and nurses, and I
understood what had puzzled me not a little in recollection,—how you
and I, without mingling with them, had learned so quickly the language
they chattered. Do you remember their friendly advances, met only by
rebuffs? My coldness flowed from shyness, and yours from a trait that
people to this day call haughtiness, but which I know to be only a
fastidious refinement that yields acquaintance to few and friendship to
fewer. From the moment you came into my life I craved no other friend,
and you seemed equally content. What was there in me that won for me
what you gave so rarely? Was there an instinct of natural sympathy, or
was it merely pity for me in the loving heart you masked behind that
subtle face?
It is indicative of what children we still were that during the whole
of our sojourn in Paris neither of us was conscious that our standard
of living had changed. We lodged in a cheap pension; instead of our own
carriage we used the omnibus; and a thousand other evidences told the
story of real economy; yet not one we observed except the disappearance
of our _bonne_, and this was noted, not as a loss, but as a joy to
both.
After the nurse was gone my father became more than ever our comrade,
and a better one two children never had. Oh, those long excursions to
Versailles, Montmartre, and Fontainebleau, our boat trips up and down
the Seine, and our shorter jaunts within the city! What happiness it
was to us when he came in whistling and cried, “Donald, Maizie, you are
horribly bad children, and I’m going to take you on a lark to punish
you!” After time spent in filling our lunch-basket with big rolls
bought at the _boulangerie_, a few sous’ worth of cherries or other
fruit lengthily bargained for with the _fruitier_, and a half litre of
cheap wine, plus whatever other luxuries our imaginations or our
appetites could suggest, away we would go for a long day of pure
delight, whether passed under green trees or wandering through
galleries and museums. My father was an encyclopædia of information,
and had the knack of making knowledge interesting to the child mind. He
could re-create a bygone period from a battle-axe or a _martel de fer_,
the personality of a queen from her lace ruff or stomacher, and the
history of plant growth from a fern or flower. If his mind had been
allowed to expand when he was young, instead of being stunted in a
broker’s office, I believe he might have been one of the world’s great
writers or critics.
Under such stimulating tutelage our progress in those two years was
really wonderful. No subject my father touched upon could remain dull;
we were at a receptive age when the mind is fresh and elastic for all
that interests it, and Paris was a great picture-book to illustrate
what he taught us. We did not know we were studying far deeper into
subjects than many educated people ever go. I laugh still at your
telling the old German on the train to Sèvres the history of the Faust
plot, and at his amazed “Ach, zo!” to hear such erudition pour from
your childish lips. I think you were the cleverer and the quicker, but
there was no competition, only fellowship about our learning. I suppose
you were above rivalry, as you are above all mean things.
And that is your chief glory to me. In those seven years of closest
companionship, and in these last three years of lesser intercourse but
far keener observation, I have never known you to do a mean thing or to
speak a mean thought. I almost feel it treason to couple the word with
you, or deny a trait so impossible for you to possess, and of which you
have always shown such scorn and hatred. At this moment I know that I
should only have to speak to part you forever from—Ah, what foolishness
I am writing, tempting me to even greater meanness than his, and so to
deserve the greater contempt from you! Thinking me base, you closed
your doors to me three years ago, and I love you the better that not
even for auld lang syne could you pardon what is so alien to you. If
the day ever comes when you again admit me to your friendship, I shall
be happy in knowing that you think me above baseness or meanness; for
you would not compound with them, Maizie, be the circumstances what
they might.
Our Paris life would not have been so happy and careless but for the
slight part my mother had in it. So little did we see of her in those
years that I think of her scarcely as one of us. I remember dimly a
scene of hot anger between her and my father,—he standing passively by
the high porcelain stove, while she raged about the room. So great was
her fury that once, in passing, as I crouched scared and silent on the
sofa, she struck me,—a blow which brought my father to my side, where
he stood protectingly while the storm lasted, with his hand resting
lovingly on my shoulder. My vague impression is that the outburst was
only a protest against the poor lodgings, but it may have occurred when
some explanation took place between my parents. I can see my mother
now, sitting on the little balcony overlooking the garden of our
pension, snarling an ill-natured word at us as you and I tried to play
consultation games of chess against my father. He gave us odds at first
of the rook and two pawns, but finally only of a knight. Oh, the
triumph of those victories! How we gloried in them, and how delighted
our antagonist was when we conquered him! Little we minded what my
mother did except when we happened to be alone with her, and I think
that the dear father played bad chess with us rather than good at the
cafés, and made us his companions wherever he went, to save us from her
severity.
I can recall very clearly her constant difficulties with our landlady
and the servants, which finally culminated in a request that we should
seek lodgings elsewhere. Do you recollect Madame Vanott’s clasping us
both in her arms and filling our hands with bonbons, when the time of
parting came? I do not know where we removed to, my sole remembrance of
the next few weeks being of my mother’s complaints of lodgings, food,
servants, and French life generally. We moved three times within a
month, fairly expelled by our landlords because they could not live at
peace with “la Madame.” Our last exodus began in an angry scene between
her and the housewife, in which a gendarme played a part, and from
which you and I fled. The next morning we learned that my mother had
determined to return to America, and leave us to live our own life.
Three days later we said emotionless good-bys, my father going as far
as Havre with her.
Her departure set us asking questions, and my father’s replies
explained many things which, in our childish talks, we had gravely
discussed. He told us how his own wealth had been lost in Wall Street,
barely enough being left for a competence even in Europe. Of my
mother’s leaving us he spoke sadly. “She never pretended to care for
me,” he said, “but I loved her and was willing to marry her. The wrong
was mine, and we should not blame her if, when I can no longer give
what was her price, she does not choose to continue the one-sided
bargain.” At the time her absence seemed to you and me only a relief,
but now, as I look back, I know that my father never ceased to love
her,—all the more, perhaps, because his love had never been
requited,—and that separation must have been the final wrecking of his
life. Yet from the day she left us I never heard him speak an angry
word, and sorrow that would have crushed most men seemed to make him
the gentler and sweeter. I wish—Ah! the clock is striking three, and if
I am to bring working power to working hours I must stop writing.
Good-night, dear one.