_February 26._ The setting of my leg, that night, was so long and
exhausting an operation that after it was done I was given an opiate.
Instead of bringing oblivion the drug produced a dreamy condition, in
which I was cognizant of nothing that happened about me, and saw only
your face. I knew I ought to sleep, and did my best to think of other
things; but try as I might, my thought would return and dwell upon your
beauty.
I have often wished I had been born an artist, that I might try to
paint your portrait, for words can no more picture you than they can
transmit the fragrance of a violet. Indeed, to me the only word which
even expresses your charm is “radiant,” and that to others, who have
never seen you, would suggest little. No real beauty can be described,
for it rests in nothing that is tangible. In truth, to speak of your
glorious hair, the whiteness of your brow and throat, the brilliant
softness of your eyes, or the sweetness yet strength of your tender
though unsmiling lips is to make but a travesty of description. I have
heard painters talk of your hair and try to convey an idea of its
beauty, but I know it too well even to make the attempt. When we were
gazing at the rainbow, last autumn, and you said that if its tints
could be transferred to a palette you believed it would be possible to
paint anything, I could not help correcting, “Except your hair.” You
laughed, and declared, “I did not know you ever made that kind of a
speech!” whereupon Agnes cried, “Didn’t I ever tell you, Maizie, the
compliment the doctor paid you last winter?” I thought she was alluding
to my retort when my mother asserted that your eyes were so large and
lustrous that, to her, they were “positively loud.” Indignant at such a
remark, Agnes had appealed to me to deny it. Not caring to treat the
malicious speech seriously, I had answered that I could not agree,
though I had sometimes thought your eyes “too dressy for the
daytime,”—a joke I have heard so often quoted that it is apparently in
a measure descriptive, yet one which I should have felt mortified at
hearing repeated to you. Fortunately Agnes’s reference was to another
remark of mine, in which, speaking of your mouth, I had crudely
translated a couple of lines from a Persian poem:—
“In vain you strive to speak a bitter word—
It meets the sweetness of your lips ere it is heard.”
You were too used to compliments to be embarrassed when the lines were
repeated, and only looked at me in a puzzled way. I do not wonder you
were surprised at the implied admiration of the two speeches, after my
apparent coldness and indifference. My behavior must seem to you as
full of contradictions as your beauty is to me. To say your great
attraction is the radiance—the verve, spirit, and capacity for
enthusiasm—of which one cannot fail to be conscious is to deny the calm
dignity with which you bear yourself, yet both these qualities belong
to you. The world insists that you are proud and distant, and your face
has the clean-cut features which we associate with patrician blood,
while your height and figure, and the set and carriage of your head
upon that slender throat, suggest a goddess. But I, who understand you
so much better than the world, know that your proud face overlies the
tenderest of natures, and is not an index, but a mask of feelings you
do not care to show. As for the people who criticise you most, they
would be the last to do so if they were not conscious of the very
superiority they try to lessen.—Ah, how foolish it is to write all
this, as if I needed to convince myself of what I know so well! And
even if this were for the eye of others, to those who know you not it
would be but the extravagant idealism for which a lover is proverbial.
When I awoke from the sleep my dreaming had drifted into, my first
request of my father was to find your whereabouts. He told me that a
dragoman had come that morning to inquire for me,—and had left what now
he showed me,—a great bunch of roses and a basket of fruit, with the
card of “Mr. Foster G. Blodgett, 547 Fifth Avenue,” on the back of
which was written:—
“With sincere regrets that a previously formed plan of leaving Tangier
this morning prevents our seeing our courteous instructor of last
night, and with hopes that he may have a quick and easy recovery from
his accident.”
The card was a man’s, but the handwriting was feminine, and the moment
my father turned his back I kissed it. I was further told that the
servant had asked my name and taken it down, giving me the instant hope
that when you knew to whom you had been so merciful, you would even
disarrange your plans to let me have a moment’s glimpse of you. But
though I listened all the afternoon hopefully and expectantly, you
never came. I felt such shyness about you, I did not speak to my father
of your beauty, and he did not question me at all.
Our native hotel, built in Eastern fashion about a court, with only
blank outside walls, was no place in which to pass a long invalidism,
and three days later my father had me carried to the steamer, and,
crossing to Gibraltar, we traveled by easy railroad trips to Leipzig.
We had left our belongings with Jastrow, and he begged us, on our
arrival, to become members of his household, which we were only too
glad to do for a time. His joy over my return was most touching, and he
and Humzel both seemed to regard me very much as if I were the creation
of their own brains, who was to bring them immortal fame in time. My
father had long before counseled me to be a pursuer of knowledge, and
not of money; telling me the winning of the latter narrowed the
intellect and stunted the finer qualities of one’s nature, making all
men natural enemies, while the acquisition of the former broadened
one’s mind, developed the nobility within, and engendered love of one’s
associates. These two men illustrated his theory, and had my tendency
been avaricious I think their unselfish love and example would have
made me otherwise. And yet, how dare I claim to be free from
sordidness, when all my thoughts and hopes and daily life are now bent
on winning money?
My leg was far too troublesome to permit me to sit at a desk, but my
father insisted on being my scribe; and thus, lying on a lounge, I
began part of the work I had so long planned, taking up for my first
book the Turkish irruption, the crusades against the Saracens, and
their subsequent history. Thinking so much of you, both as the child
who had won my boyish heart and as the beautiful woman whose face had
fascinated and moved me so deeply, I do not know how, except for my
work, I should have lived through those long and weary months of
enforced inaction while my leg so slowly knit.
More as recreation from this serious endeavor than as supplementary
labor, I gathered the articles I had written for the Deutsche Rundshau
and the Revue des Deux Mondes from time to time in our travels, and
with new material from my journal I worked the whole into a popular
account of what we had seen and done. While I still used a
walking-stick I was reading proof of the German edition, and my English
replica, rather than translation, was under negotiation through my
publisher for London and New York editions. My father, who busied
himself with a French version, insisted that the book would be a great
success, and the articles under my assumed name had been so well
noticed that I was myself hopeful of what better work in book form
might do for my reputation; for against his advice, I had determined to
abandon my pseudonym.
But all these schemes and hopes were forgotten in the illness of my
father. Contrary to my wishes, he had overworked himself in the French
translation, while his life, for months of my enforced inactivity, had
been one long service, impossible for me to avoid or refuse without
giving him pain. This double exertion proved too great a strain. The
day after he sent the manuscript to Paris, as he sat conning the sheets
of the concluding chapter of my history, he laid them down without a
word, and, leaning forward, quietly rested his head upon the table. I
was by his side and had him on the sofa in an instant, where he lay
unconscious till the doctor came. We were told that it was a slight
stroke, and by the next day he seemed quite well. But slowly he lost
the use of one side, and within a week was helpless. I like to remember
that I was well enough to tend him as he had tended me. He lingered for
a month, sweet and gentle as always; then, one evening, as I sat beside
him, he opened his eyes and said, “Good-night, Don. Good-night,
Maizie.” And with those words his loving soul went back to its Creator.
I found about his neck a ribbon to which was attached a locket
containing the long tress you cut off for him that day in the Bois, one
of my mother’s curls, and a little tow-colored lock which I suppose was
my own hair before it darkened,—a locket I have since worn unchanged,
because, sadly discordant though such association has become, I cannot
bring myself to separate what he tied together. It seems to symbolize
his love for all of us.
The kindness of my friends I can never forget. I was so broken down as
really to be unfit for thought, and their generous foresight did
everything possible to spare me trouble or pain. Especially to
Professor and Frau Jastrow do I owe an unpayable debt, for they made me
feel that there was still some one in whose love I stood first; and had
I been the child who had never come to them, I question if they could
have done more for me than they did.
One thing that I had to do myself was to notify my mother of my
father’s death. From the time she had quitted us my father and I had
avoided mention of her; but during his illness he asked me to write in
case of his death, and gave me her New York address, from which I
inferred that in some way he had kept himself informed concerning her,
though I feel very certain that she had never written him. That I had
never tried to learn anything myself was due to the estrangement, but
still more to my interest in my studies and work. Now I wrote her, as I
had promised, telling her briefly the circumstances of my father’s
illness and death, and offering to write fuller details if she wished
to know them. I would not feign love for her, but I wrote tenderly of
him and without coldness to her. She never replied.
Kind as were all my intimates, I craved more than friendship, however
loving it might be. One of the two great loves of my life had gone out
from it, and, in the gap it left, the other became doubly dear to me.
The wish to see you grew and strengthened each day, until at last it
shaped my plans, and I announced my intention to visit America; making
the specious explanation that, after my long invalidism and grief, the
change would be the best specific for me.
At this time I received the offer of appointment as professor
extraordinarius of philology and ethnology under Jastrow, another
manifestation of his love; but till I had seen you I would not bind
myself by accepting, and through his influence I was given three months
to consider my answer. I seem doomed never to requite the services of
those I love the most, but I am glad that in the nine months which I
passed under his roof my knowledge of the Eastern dialects had pushed
his work so much nearer completion.
Leaving all my possessions behind except the manuscript of my history,
I started on my voyage of love. For two days I tarried in Paris,
settling my little property. I had long known that the flotsam of my
father’s fortune, wrecked in Wall Street, was a few bonds deposited
with Paris bankers; and when I called upon the firm it was merely to
continue the old arrangement, by which they cut the coupons and placed
them to my bank credit. It was in this visit that I searched out our
old pension, and sat dreaming in the park. How could I imagine,
remembering those days of closest love and sympathy, and knowing too
your kindness to one you thought a mere Eastern stroller, that you
could have changed so to your former friend?
The most curious fact to me, in looking back upon that time, is that
the idea never occurred to me that you were a married woman. It never
entered my thoughts that a beauty which fascinated and drew me so far
from my natural orbit must be an equally powerful charm to other men.
As for Mr. Blodgett, I never gave him a second thought, not even
accounting for his relations with you. My foolishness, I suppose, is
typical of the scholar’s abstraction and impracticality.
As the steamer neared New York, my impatience to see you increased
apace. Far from longing for our old ten-day passage, I found a voyage
of seven days too long. Ridiculous as it may seem, I almost lost my
temper at the slowness of the customs examination. I believe I was half
mad, and only marvel that I did so sane a thing as to go to a hotel,
change my clothes, and dine, before attempting to see you.
I ascertained Mr. Walton’s address the moment I reached my hotel, and
sent a messenger there to inquire your whereabouts. He brought me back
word that Mr. Walton was absent from the city, but the servant had
informed him that you still lived with your uncle and that you were in
town.
I cannot tell you the surprise and joy I felt when, on arriving at your
house on Madison Avenue that evening, I discovered it to be our old
habitat. It seemed as if your selection of that as your home, probably
from sentiment, was a bow of promise for the future, and I rang the
bell, almost trembling with emotion and happiness.
The footman showed me to the drawing-room and took my card. All inside,
so far as I could see, was changed past the point of recognition, but
everything was beautiful, and I felt in that one room that no
decorator’s conventional taste had formed its harmony, but that an
artistic sense had planned the whole. What a contrast it was to the old
days of untasteful and untidy richness!
I sat but a moment before the footman returned. Looking not at me, but
over my head, and with an attitude and air as deferential as if I were
the guest of all others most welcome, he said, “Miss Walton declines
the honor of Mr. Maitland’s acquaintance, and begs to be excused.”
The blow came so suddenly, and was so crushing, that for a moment I
lost my dignity. “There must be some mistake!” I exclaimed. “You gave
Miss Walton my card?”
The footman only bowed assent.
“Go to Miss Walton and say I must see her a moment.”
“Miss Walton instructed me to add, in case Mr. Maitland persisted, that
she prefers to hold no intercourse with Mr. Maitland and will receive
no messages from him.”
Pride came to my rescue, and I passed silently into the hall. The
servant opened the door, and I went out from my old home, never to
enter it more. At the foot of the steps I turned and looked back,
hardly yet believing what I had been told. Even in the sting and
humiliation of that moment my love was stronger than the newer
sensations. I said, “Good-night, Maizie. God keep you,” and walked
away.