I
August 1, 1900.
Dearest Judy dear: Father and Uncle Phineas and Chris have all gone to
Portland for a few days. They left here last Thursday. I think that
they will return to-morrow. Father had to see Dr. Joe. I don’t know
why the others went, unless it was, perhaps, for the trip.
Christopher was no sooner out of sight than Irene began to move
Father’s belongings out of his room, preparing to unpack her boxes and
to instal herself and Christopher in Father’s room. She said she
positively had not asked Father to exchange rooms with her. She said
he had offered to do so, because he had heard that she wanted a cupola
room in order to fix the cupola up as an Oriental cozy corner.
Olympe asked her why she had not made the exchange while Christopher
had been at home. Irene said because she wished to surprise him. (It
is only by remembering Grandfather’s sixth rule, under “B,” that I am
restraining myself from underlining almost every word in this letter,
and clubbing it all up with ! ! !)
Aunt Gracia and Olympe tried to reason with Irene. She kept right
along dumping things out of Father’s room and tugging her things in. I
ran and told Grandfather. He would not budge. Grandfather, of late,
budges less and less. The only thing he has said about the entire
affair he said this morning when Irene took him into the room to show
it to him. He said: “My word! My wordless word!”
Neal declares that he and I should try to be broad-minded and
receptive toward the new. He says that forward steps should be made in
house furnishings as well as in other things. He says that perhaps the
ultra-moderns are right in attempting to get away from the austerity
of the early colonial furnishings. He says that perhaps we do need
more colour, more daintiness, more luxury, and more invitations to
relaxation.
Aunt Gracia says that if Neal and I find daintiness in that room, her
imagination pales before our conception of a really honest, cleanly
junk heap. She said that a fishnet stuck full of trash was not merely
inartistic, it was also a wall-wide inducement to dirt. She said she
could get all the colour she needed from the Turkey carpets in the
front and back parlours that Great-great-grandfather had bought in the
Orient, or from the pulled rugs that Great-grandmother and her
sister-in-law had made. She said the Oriental cozy corner was not an
invitation to relaxation. She said it was an invitation to
assassination.
Poor, lovely Aunt Gracia has grown bitter of late. For one thing, I
think that her blackmailing, as she called it, has turned into a
boomerang. Irene told me about it. That is, Irene said that if Chris
knew she didn’t have to stay here, that Archie was pleading with her
to return to him, and that he would send her the money for the trip at
any time, she thought that Chris would act very differently.
I asked Irene why, then, if she wished Chris to act differently, she
did not tell him about Archie? She said that she was tempted to, every
minute of the day; but that Gracia advised so strongly against it she
was afraid to. She said that Gracia had known Chris longer than she,
Irene, had known him; and that Gracia was afraid such a disclosure
might result in tragedy.
I asked Irene what sort of tragedy. Irene did not know. So I went and
asked Aunt Gracia.
I could not get any satisfaction from her because she was indignant
with Irene for having told me about Archie Biggil and his passionate
letter, and the rest. Aunt Gracia is sweet but odd. She does not
understand that I know all there is to know about at least the
theories of love and passion from having read widely about them in
books.
She said that unless I would promise her never again to listen to
Irene when she talked on subjects of the sort, she would take the
matter up with Grandfather. I told her I would not promise, because it
was unreasonable for her to ask me to. Not, you understand, Judy dear,
that I liked listening to the sort of thing Irene was always telling
me. Dr. Joe did not like to cut up cadavers when he was in medical
college, either. It was a part of his education that he had to endure.
So I thought that, since live men did actually say to live women: “My
God! The haunting beauty of your white body never leaves me day or
night!” I should, as a prospective writer, know it. That is what I
told Aunt Gracia.
She put her arm around me and said let us go and talk to Grandfather.
We did so. Aunt Gracia and I were both astonished to find that he knew
all about Archie Biggil. Irene had told him, he said, because she was
troubled and needed to confide in someone.
Grandfather said that I had been quite right in refusing to promise
not to listen to Irene; that is, if I wished to be a writer of the
Laura Jean Libby or Marie Corelli school. He had thought, he said,
that I cared more for Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott; but, evidently,
he had been labouring under a misconception.
I had a feeling that Grandfather was what Chris calls “spoofing” me;
but I could not be sure. Perhaps I was mistaken. At any rate, quite
soon, we got it straightened out tidily.
An author, Grandfather says, must go about collecting material
constantly. But, despite that, an author must use a definite
discrimination about the sort of material he chooses to collect.
Grandfather says that no person can gather all the sorts, because it
is a physiological fact that one’s brain has room for only a certain
amount. It was necessary, he said, to decide quite early on one’s
standards, and then collect in line with them, to the exclusion of
other material, in order that one’s mind should not become hopelessly
cluttered.
I feel that Grandfather should have given me this information long
ago. I am thankful to have obtained it now before it is entirely too
late.
It took us some time, you see, to get to the explanation of the
tragedy that Aunt Gracia feared.
Grandfather said to her that he, like Lucy, was not quite clear on
this point. He could not, he said, visualize Christopher running about
menacing fatuous ex-husbands.
Aunt Gracia replied that it seemed to her the real tragedy impending
was for Christopher to discover Irene.
Grandfather smiled that heavenly smile of his that usually means a
pearl. “He won’t, dearest. Set your mind at rest. He won’t. That, in
itself, constitutes the tragedy—or the triumph—of marriage.”
I think that I do not fully understand this. But, since I am sure it
is a pearl, I am quoting it for you. You are married. You may
understand it. At any rate, no matter what it means, exactly, it must
mean that no tragedy, like _Hamlet_, with everyone lying about dead,
is apt to happen.
Judy dear, I love you. Will you tell Greg that I love him, too?—Lucy.
II
August 28, 1900.
Dear, dear Judy-pudy: It was good of you to take so long to explain to
me what Grandfather meant about the tragedy, or the triumph, of
marriage. I think it rather bold of you to say that Grandfather, who
is eighty years old, is wrong about it. You are only twenty-two years
old. But it does not matter. I am no longer interested in marriage. I
have decided, with Neal, never to marry.
Though, of late, I dislike to be on Neal’s side about anything. Some
great change, terrible, grewsome, seems to have occurred within him.
(I know that is a poor sentence, and that it is of a literary flavour
which I despise. But I have tried several drafts on scratch paper and
it seems to be the best I can do.) Or, to put it simply as Grandfather
always advises: If Neal had been a dog for the past few months we
should have been afraid he would bite us. Now he acts as if he had
bitten us and were glad of it.
I do not know what has caused this change in Neal, but I know who has.
The person is Uncle Phineas. When Uncle Phineas came home from his
prospecting trip last month, he came home with a secret. He told Neal
the secret. I am sure of this. They got off alone together and
whispered about the secret.
When I said this to Neal he was angry. He said to have a person like
me in it was a scourge to any family. He did not mean that, I am sure.
But he was very polite, and talked in a low voice, even when he called
names, such as “rubberneck” and threatened. After the many years of
deep study that I have devoted to character, I hope I have at least
discovered that no one gets as angry over anything as Neal got unless
it is the truth. If I had been making a childishly simple mistake,
Neal would have teased me and laughed at me.
Neal said that it was crumby—everything is crumby with Neal, just now,
but that is an improvement over wormy—for me to think that Uncle
Phineas would share a secret with him and with no other member of the
family. It isn’t—crumby, I mean—because, if it were rather a naughty
or mischievous secret, as it probably would be since Uncle Phineas had
it for his, Neal would be more in sympathy with it than would any
other member of the family. Not, of course, that either Neal or Uncle
Phineas would do any wrong thing, but—well, you understand what I
mean. For instance, Uncle Phineas, I believe, is the only member of
the family who would join Neal in his plan to separate Irene and
Christopher. Of course I have no proof that Uncle Phineas has not
shared his secret with some other member of the family. All I know
about that is, if he has shared it with someone else it has not
affected the someone as it has affected Neal.
Father has changed a bit since he returned from Portland, but, if
possible, for the better. I think that is because Chris has stopped
worrying him. Did I tell you that Christopher went to Portland to try
to raise some money? He couldn’t. He has come home again and is
working hard on his new play.
Uncle Phineas has remained in Portland. Even though he is not running
up hotel bills, but is visiting Dr. Joe, it does seem strange for him
to remain in the city for so long. Olympe is furious about it. She
does fury beautifully—not at all in an ordinary fashion, but with
dignity and hauteur. She manages it so nicely, I think, because she
blames Irene and not Uncle Phineas. She pretends that no person in his
senses would stay on the same ranch with Irene if he could stay
elsewhere. I should think that she might blame Chris because he is
responsible for Irene. She does not. She pities him. That is worse
than blaming, of course. Though poor Chris does seem to deserve to be
pitied.
Judy, dear, he was stunned when he discovered that Irene had exchanged
rooms with Father. He came downstairs alone, looking faded and like a
poor photograph of himself.
“Dick, old boy,” he said to Father, “I’m tremendously sorry about this
fracas upstairs. It isn’t that Irene is selfish. She’s the most
generous little thing in the world, really. She doesn’t understand——”
Father said of course she didn’t, and neither did he. He said there
was no tradition that he was aware of which would keep the various
members of the family from making an exchange of rooms, when the
exchange was advantageous.
It may be advantageous for Irene. For all the rest of us it is an
irritation. A dozen times a day, beginning with the morning towels and
ending with the evening lamps, some one of us makes a mistake about
the rooms. We stand and knock at the door of the room that is now
Father’s thinking that Irene or Christopher may be in it. And, since
we know that Father is never in his room in the daytime, we open that
door and walk right in, intruding on Irene and Christopher in a most
humiliating fashion.
Father himself forgets. He came from his bath, the other evening—he
was very tired—and opened the door to his old room and walked right
in. He came so quietly, in his slippers, that Irene had not heard him.
She was in the room alone and she was frightened. (She said it was
partly because she had never seen Father in his dressing gown before.)
She screamed and screamed and screamed. She cried, and had what she
calls a heart attack. Chris was frantic, and poor, darling Father was
stunned from the shock of having caused a lady such distress.
During the heart attack, Irene said that any decent house would have
keys to the doors. Wednesday, Aunt Gracia went to the attic and found
the keys for the doors, and shined them up with Sapolio and put them
in the keyholes. None of us use them, except Irene. Neal is very smart
about them. He says they open a new era on the Q 2 Ranch. He has made
up a song, to the tune of “Bringing in the Sheaves,” which he calls
“Turning Quilter Keys,” and which he sings about, objectionably.
I send my love to you, dear, and to Greg.—Lucy.