XVII

_March 8._ Each day I determine to spend my evening usefully, but try

as I may, when the time comes I feel too weary to do good work, and so

morbidly recur to these memories. I ought to fight the tendency, the

more that in reverting to the past I seem only to dwell on its sadness,

thus intensifying my own depression. Let me see if I cannot for one

night write of the good fortune that has come to me in the last three

years.

Pleased with the success of my book of travel and text-books, and

knowing of my wish for work, the American publishers offered me the

position of assistant editor of their magazine and reader of

manuscripts. By hard work and late hours the task could be done in my

mornings and evenings, allowing me to continue in Mr. Whitely’s employ;

so I eagerly accepted the position. I can imagine few worse fates than

reading the hopeless and impossible trash that comes to every

publisher; but this was not my lot, for I was to read only the

manuscripts that had been winnowed of the chaff. Yet this very

immunity, as it proved, nearly lost me an opportunity of trying to be

of service to you.

Returning a bundle of stuff to the manuscript clerk one day, I saw “M.

Walton, 287 Madison Avenue, New York City,” in your handwriting, on the

cover of a bulky pile of sheets on his desk. Startled, I demanded,

“What is this?”

“It’s a rejected manuscript I was on the point of wrapping to return,”

the clerk answered.

Opening the cover, I saw, “A Woman’s Problem, a Novel, by Aimez

Lawton.” It needed little perception to detect your name in the

anagram.

“Mrs. Graham has rejected it?” I asked, and he nodded.

“Give me the file about it, please,” I requested; and after a moment’s

search he handed me the envelope, and I glanced over its meagre

contents: a brief formal note from you, submitting it, and the short

opinion of the woman reader. “Traces of amateurishness, but a work of

considerable power and feeling, marred by an inconclusive ending,” was

the epitome of her opinion, coupled with the recommendation not to

accept.

“Register it on my list, and I’ll take it and look it over,” I said,

and went to my little editorial cuddy, feeling actually rich in the

possession of the manuscript. Indeed, it was all I could do to go

through my morning quota of proof-reading and “making up” dummy forms

for the magazine’s next issue, I was so eager for your book.

A single reading told me you had put the problem of your life into the

story. It is true the heroine was different enough in many respects to

make analogy hardly perceptible, though she too was a tender, noble

woman. She had never felt the slightest responsive warmth for any of

her lovers, but she was cramped by the social conventions regarding

unmarried women, and questioned whether her life would not be more

potent if she married, even without love. One of her lovers was a man

of force, brains, wealth, and ambition, outwardly an admirable match,

respected by the world, and, most of all, able to draw about him the

men of genius and intellect she wished to know, but whom her society

lot debarred her from meeting. Yet your heroine was conscious of

faults: she felt in him a touch of the soil that repels every woman

instinctively; at times his nature seemed hard and unsympathetic, and

his scientific work, for which he was famous, had narrowed his strong

mind to think only of facts and practicalities, to the exclusion of

everything ideal or beautiful. In the end, however, his persistent

wooing convinced her of the strength of his feeling; and though she was

conscious that she could never love him as she wished to love, the tale

ended by her marrying him. Am I to blame for reading in this the story

of Mr. Whitely’s courtship of you? I only marveled at how much of his

true character you had detected under his veneer.

To me the story was sweet and noble. I loved your heroine from

beginning to end. She was so strong even in her weaknesses; for you

made her no unsubstantial ideal. I understood her craving something

more than her allotted round of social amusements, and her desire for

intercourse and friendship with finer and more purposeful people than

she daily met. I even understood her willingness to accept love, when

not herself feeling it; for my own life was so hungry-hearted that I

had come to yearn for the slightest tenderness, no matter who the giver

might be.

As soon as I realized that the story was your own, I hoped it might

tell me something of your thoughts of my father and myself; but that

part of your life you passed over as if it never had been. Was the

omission due to too much feeling or too little? I have always suspected

that I served as a model for one of your minor characters: a dreamy,

unsocial being, curiously variable in mood; at times talking learnedly

and even wittily, but more often absolutely silent. He was by

profession an artist, and you made him content to use his talent on

book and magazine illustration, apparently without a higher purpose in

life than to earn enough to support himself, in order that he might

pass the remainder of his time in an intellectual indulgence scarcely

higher in motive than more material dissipation. His evident sadness

and lack of ambition was finally discovered to be due to a

disappointment in love; and as a cure, your heroine introduced him to

her best friend,—a young girl,—and through her influence he was roused

to some ambition, and in the end he dutifully fell in love as your

heroine wished. It was a sketch that made me wince, and yet at which I

could not help but laugh. I suppose it was a true picture, and I am

quite conscious that at times I must seem ridiculous to you; for often

my mood is such, or my interest in you is so strong, that I forget even

the ordinary courtesies and conventions. There is a general idea that a

lover is always at his best when with the woman he loves, but, from my

own experience, I think he is quite as likely to be at his worst. To

watch your graceful movements, to delight in the play of expression on

your face, and to catch every inflection in your voice and every word

you speak are pleasures so engrossing to me that I must appear to you

even more abstracted than I ordinarily am, though a dreamer at best.

And yet now and then I have thought you were conscious of a tenderness

in me, which, try as I will, I cannot altogether hide.

The main fault of the novel was unquestionably that most accented by

the reader, and, recognizing the story as the problem of your life, I

understood why you supplied no solution to the riddle. You begged the

question you propounded; the fact that your heroine married the hero

being no answer, since only by the results of that marriage would it be

possible to say if she had chosen the better part. It was this that

convinced me you were putting on paper your own thoughts and mood. You

were debating this theme, and could carry it in imagination to the

point of marriage; but what lay beyond that was unknowable, and you

made no attempt to invent a conclusion, the matter being too real to

you to be merely a subject for artistic idealism and invention.

Hitherto I had classed Mr. Whitely with your other lovers, feeling sure

that you could not love him any more than you could any of them; but

now for the first time I began to fear his success.

After reading the story three times I carried it back to the manuscript

clerk; and when I had allowed sufficient time for it to be returned, I

wrote you a long letter, telling how I had come to read the story, and

making a careful criticism and analysis of both its defects and its

merits. I cannot tell you what a labor of love that letter was, or how

much greater pains I took over your book than I have ever taken over

any writing of my own. What was perhaps unfair, after pointing out the

inconclusiveness of your ending, I sketched what I claimed was the

logical end to the story. Thinking as I did that I knew the original in

your mind, I was more influenced by my knowledge of him than I was by

the character in your book, and therefore possibly my inference was

unjust. But in hopes of saving you from Mr. Whitely, I pictured a

sequel in which your heroine found only greater loneliness in her

loveless union, her husband’s love proving a tax, and not a boon; and

marriage, instead of broadening her life, only bent and narrowed it by

just so much as a strong-willed and selfish man would inevitably cramp

the life of one over whom law and public opinion gave him control.

I was richly rewarded by your letter of thanks. You were so winning in

your sweet acceptance of all my criticisms, and so lovable in your

simple gratitude, that I would have done a thousand times the work to

earn such a letter. Yet even in this guerdon I could not escape the

sting of my unhappy lot; for, unable to reconcile my distant conduct

with the apparent trouble I had taken, you asked me to dinner, leaving

me to select the day, and spoke of the pleasure it would give you to

have an opportunity to talk over the book with me.

I can think of few greater delights than to have gone over your story,

line by line and incident by incident. My love pleaded with me to take

the chance, pointing out that it would do you no harm, but on the

contrary aid you, and I found a dozen specious reasons; but tempt me as

they might, I always came back to the truth that if you knew who I

really was you would not invite me, nor accept a favor at my hands. In

the end I wrote you that my time was so mortgaged that I must deny

myself the pleasure. A small compensation was my offer that if you

chose to rewrite the story and send me the manuscript, I would gladly

read it over again and make any further suggestions which occurred to

me. You thanked me by letter gracefully, but I was conscious of your

bewilderment in the very care with which you phrased your note; and

when next we met I could see that I had become more an enigma than

ever,—for which there is indeed small wonder.

God keep you, my darling.