To His Club,
Come to the house and get the Royal Sèvres tea-service on which you
and Lisa had your first tea together and a check made out to you in my
check book in the library table drawer.
Uncle Pelleas.
And so on, with the witnesses’ names properly in the corners.
“Perfect,” said I with enthusiasm. “O, Pelleas, let us get a bill
through to this effect.”
“But we may live to be only ninety, you know,” he reminded me.
We went to the window, presently, and threw it open on the chance of
hearing the bird of dawning singing all night long in the Park, which
is of course, in New York, where it sings on Star of Bethlehem night.
We did not hear it, but it is something to have been certain that it
was there. And as we closed the casement,
“After all,” Pelleas said seriously, “the Telegraph Will Bill would
have to do only with property. And a will ought to be concerned with
soberer matters.”
So it ought, in spite of its dress of diction, rather like the motley.
“A man,” Pelleas continued, “ought to have something more important to
will away than his house and his watch and his best bed. A man’s poor
soul, now--unless he is an artist, which he probably is not--has no
chance verbally to leave anybody anything.”
“It makes its will every day,” said I.
“Even so,” Pelleas contended, “it ought to die rich if it’s anything of
a soul.”
And that is true enough.
“Suppose,” Pelleas suggested, “the telegrams were to contain something
like this: ‘And from my spirit to yours I bequeath the hard-won
knowledge that you must be true from the beginning. But if by any
chance you have not been so, then you must be true from the moment that
you know.’ Why not?”
Why not, indeed?
“I think that would be mine to give,” Pelleas said reflectively; “and
what would yours be, Etarre?” he asked.
At that I fell in sudden abashment. What could I say? What would I
will my poor life to mean to any one who chances to know that I have
lived at all? O, I dare say I should have been able to formulate many a
fine-sounding phrase about the passion for perfection, but confronted
with the necessity I could think of nothing save a few straggling
truths.
“I don’t know,” said I uncertainly; “I am sure of so little, save
self-giving. I should like to bequeath some knowledge of the magic of
self-giving. Now Nichola,” I hazarded, to evade the matter, “would no
doubt say: ‘And from my soul to your soul this word about the universe:
_Helping is why._’”
“But you--you, Etarre,” Pelleas persisted; “what would the real You
will to others, in this mortuary telegram?”
And as I looked at him I knew.
“O, Pelleas,” I said, “I think I would telegraph to every one: ‘From my
spirit to your spirit, some understanding of the preciousness of love.
And the need to keep it true.’”
I shall always remember with what gladness he turned to me. I wished
that his smile and our bright hearth and our Christmas roses might
bless every one.
“I wanted you to say that,” said Pelleas.
* * * * *
Printed in the United States of America.