_March 5._ Though I committed the rudeness of refusing to call, you
never in our subsequent intercourse varied your manner by the slightest
shade, treating me always with a courtesy I ill deserved. After such a
rebuff, it is true, you were too self-respecting to offer me again any
favor tending to a better acquaintance, but otherwise you bore yourself
towards me as you did towards the thousand other men whom you were
obliged to meet.
Your life as a social favorite, and mine as a literary hack, gave
little opportunity for our seeing each other, yet we met far more
frequently than would have seemed possible. Occasionally I found you at
the Blodgetts’, though not as often as our informal footing in that
household had led me to hope; for you were in such social demand that
your morning hours were the time you usually took to run in upon them.
But now and then we lunched or dined there, and Mrs. Blodgett little
dreamed how willingly I obeyed her positive command that I was to come
to every one of her afternoons when Agnes told me that you were to
receive or pour tea. Little I had of your attention, for you were a
magnet to many, but I could stand near you and could watch and listen,
and that was happiness.
A cause of meeting more discordant to me was furnished by my employer.
I wrote for him an editorial on the folk-leid basis of the Wagner
trilogy, which I suppose he sent or read to you; for it resulted in a
box-party to attend the series, and I was asked to be one of the
guests. “Nothing like having your books of reference under your arm,”
was Mr. Whitely’s way of telling me for what purpose I was wanted; and
I presume that was, in truth, the light in which he viewed me. Though I
scorned such service, the mere fact that you were to be there was
enough to make me accept. How low love can bring a man if his spirit is
once mastered by it!
I would have sunk far deeper, I believe, to obtain what I earned, for
there were delightful moments of mutually absorbing discussions, only
too quickly interrupted by Mr. Whitely or others of the party breaking
in on our conversation. What was equal happiness to me was the
association of you in my mind with the noblest of music. I can never
hear certain movements of those operas without your image coming before
me as clearly as if I saw your reflection in a mirror. And from that
time one of my keenest pleasures has been to beg tickets from the
musical critic of our staff, whenever one of the trilogy is to be
given, and sit through the opera dreaming of those hours. I could write
here every word you uttered, but what especially impressed itself upon
my memory was something called out by the fate of Brunhilde. As we
stood in the lobby waiting for the carriages, at the end of Die
Walküre, you withdrew a little, as if still feeling the beauty and
tragedy of the last act too deeply to take part in the chit-chat with
which the rest of the party beguiled the time. I stood near you, but,
respecting your mood, was silent too, until you finally broke the pause
by saying, “I do not know whether it is Wagner’s music or because
Brunhilde appeals to me, but I always feel that I have suffered as she
does. It almost makes me believe in the theory of metempsychosis.”
“Is it so much consciousness of a past, Miss Walton,” I suggested, “as
prescience of the future? Woman’s story is so unvaryingly that of
self-sacrifice for love that I should suppose Brunhilde’s fate would
appeal to the sex as a prophecy rather than as a memory.”
“Her punishment could have been far worse.”
“Left a defenseless prey to the first comer?”
“But surrounded by fire, so that the first comer must be a brave man.”
“Do you value courage so highly?”
“Yes. The truly brave, I think, cannot be mean, and without meanness
there must be honor. I almost envy Brunhilde her walls of fire, which
put to absolute proof any man who sought her. The most successful of
men; the most intellectually brilliant, may be—By what can we to-day
test courage and honor?”
“There is as much as ever, Miss Walton. Is it no gain that courage has
become moral rather than physical?”
“Is it no loss that of all the men I know, there is not one of whom I
can say with certainty, ‘He is a brave man’?”
Our numbers were called at this point, and the conversation was never
continued. Every word you had said recalled to me my former friend, and
I understood your repugnance for anything cowardly.
At the last of these operas, by another perverse joke of Dame Fortune,
who seems to have so many laughs at my expense, I was introduced to the
chaperon, “Mrs. Polhemus.” Looking up, I found myself facing my mother.
I cannot tell you how strangely I felt in making my bow. She was as
handsome as ever, it appeared to me, and the smooth rich olive
complexion seemed to have given her an undying youth. For a moment I
feared recognition, but the difference was too great between the pallid
stooping boy of fifteen she had last seen in Paris and the straight
bronzed man of twenty-seven. As of old she was magnificently dressed
and fairly glittered with diamonds, which curiously enough instantly
brought to my mind the face of my father as I kissed him last. Was it
the strong connection of contrast, or was it a quirk of my brain?
This chance meeting had a sequel that pains me to this day. Dining the
next evening at the Blodgetts’ with you and your uncle, the latter
spoke of my mother’s diamonds. Mrs. Blodgett said, with a laugh, “One
would think, after her rich marriage, that she might pay up the money
her first husband stole from Maizie.”
“She could have done that years ago if she had cared to,” sneered Mr.
Walton.
Your eyes were lowered, and you still kept them so as you replied, “I
would not accept the money from Mrs. Polhemus.”
In my suffering I sat rigid and speechless, wincing inwardly at each
blow of the lash, when Mr. Blodgett, with a kindness I can never reward
or even acknowledge, observed, “I believe it was his wife’s
extravagance which made William Maitland a bankrupt and an embezzler.
Till his marriage with her he was a man of simple habits and of
unquestioned business honesty, but he was caught by her looks, just as
Polhemus has been. In those first years he could deny her nothing, and
when the disillusionment came he was too deep in to prevent the wreck.”
“You’ve been revising your views a bit,” retorted Mr. Walton. “I never
expected to hear you justify any of that family.”
“Perhaps I have reason to,” replied Mr. Blodgett.
“I don’t believe any of those Maitlands have the least honesty!”
exclaimed Agnes. “How I hate them!”
“It is not a subject of which I like to speak,” you stated in an
evidently controlled voice, still with lowered eyes, “but it is only
right to say that some one—I suppose the son—is beginning to pay back
the debt.”
“Pay back the money, Maizie!” ejaculated Mr. Walton. “Why haven’t you
told me of it?”
“It did not seem necessary,” you answered.
“I’m sure it’s a trick,” asserted Agnes. “He’s probably trying to worm
his way back to your friendship, to get something more out of you.”
“How much”—began Mr. Walton; but you interrupted him there by saying,
“I would rather not talk about it.”
The subject was changed at once, but when we were smoking, Mr. Walton
asked, “Blodgett, do you know anything about that Maitland affair?”
“A little,” replied the host.
“The debt really is being paid?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know by whom?”
“So Maizie tells me.”
“Has she made no attempt to find out?”
“When the first payment was made she came to me for advice.”
“Well?” asked Mr. Walton eagerly.
“She got it,” declared Mr. Blodgett.
“What did she do?” persisted Mr. Walton.
Mr. Blodgett was silent for a moment, and then responded, “The exact
opposite of what I advised. Do you know, Walton, you and I remind me of
the warm-hearted elephant who tried to hatch the ostrich eggs by
sitting on them.”
“In what respect?”
“We decided that we must break up Maizie’s love of the Maitlands for
her own good.”
“Well?”
“Well, we made the whole thing so mean to her that finally we did break
something. Then, manlike, we were satisfied. What was it we broke?”
“Nonsense!” growled Mr. Walton, sipping his wine.
Mr. Blodgett laughed slightly. “That’s rather a good name for it,” he
assented; “but the trouble is, Walton, that nonsense is a very big part
of every woman’s life. You’ll never get me to fool with it again.”
I often ponder over those three brief remarks of yours, and of what you
said to me last autumn, in our ride and in the upper hall of My Fancy,
trying to learn, if possible, what your feeling is towards us. Can you,
despite all that has intervened, still feel any tenderness and love for
my father and me? Perhaps it was best that you were silent; if you had
spoken of him with contempt, I think—I know you would not, my darling,
for you loved him once, and that, to you, would be reason enough to be
merciful to the dead, however sinning.
Dear love, good-night.