XXIX.

There was only one thing for Cornelia to do now, and she did it as well

as she knew how, or could hope to know without the help that she could

not seek anywhere. She wrote to Ludlow and thanked him, and told him

that she did not think she should go on with the picture of Charmian,

for the present. She said, in the first five or six drafts of her

letter, that it had been her uncertainty as to this which made her

hesitate when he spoke to her, but in every form she gave this she

found it false; and at last she left it out altogether, and merely

assured him that she had nothing whatever to forgive him. She wished to

forbid his coming to see her; she did not know quite how to do that;

but either the tone of her letter was forbidding enough, or else he

felt that he had done his whole duty, now, for he did not come.

With moments of utter self-abasement, she had to leave Charmian to the

belief that she was distraught and captious, solely for the reason they

shared the secret of, and Charmian respected this with a devotion so

obvious as to be almost spectacular. Cornelia found herself turning

into a romantic heroine, and had to make such struggle against the

transformation as she could in bursts of hysterical gayety. These had

rather the effect of deepening Charmian's compassionate gloom, till she

exhausted her possibilities in that direction and began to crave some

new expression. There was no change in her affection for Cornelia; and

there were times when Cornelia longed to trust her fully; she knew that

it would be safe, and she did not believe that it would lower her in

Charmian's eyes; but to keep the fact of her weakness altogether her

own seemed the only terms on which she could bear it.

One day there came a letter from her mother out of her usual order of

writing; she wrote on Sunday, and her letters reached Cornelia the next

evening; but this letter came on a Wednesday morning, and the sight of

it filled Cornelia with alarm, first for her mother, and then for

herself; which deepened as she read:

"DEAR NIE: That good-for-nothing little scrub has been here, talken

aboute you, and acting as if you was hand-and-glove with him. Now

Nelie, I don't want to interfere with you anyway and I won't if you

say the word. But I never felt just righte about that fellow, and

what I done long ago to make you tollerate him, and now I want to

make it up to you if I can. He is a common low-down person, and he

isn't fit to speake to you, and I hope you wont speake to him. The

divorce, the way I look at it, don't make any difference; hese just

as much married as what he ever was, and if he had never been

married atoll, it wouldn't of made any difference as far as I feel

about it. Now Nelie, you are old enough to take care of yourself,

but I hope if that fellow ever comes around you again, you'll box

his ears and be done with him. I know hes got a smooth tongue, and

he can make you laugh in spite of yourselfe, but don't you have

anything to do with him.

"MOTHER.

"P. S. I have been talken it over with Mrs. Burton, and she thinks

just the way I do aboute it. She thinks you are good enough for the

best, and you no need to throw yourself away on such a perfect

little scamp. In haste. How is that cellebrated picture that you

are painting with Mr. Ludlow getting along?"

* * * * *

Cornelia got this letter from the postman at Mrs. Montgomery's door,

when she opened it to go out in the morning, and she read it on her way

to the Synthesis. It seemed to make the air reel around her, and step

by step she felt as if she should fall. A wild anger swelled her heart,

and left no room there for shame even. She wondered what abominable

lies that little wretch had told; but they must have been impudent

indeed to overcome her mother's life-long reluctance from writing and

her well-grounded fears of spelling, so far as to make her send a

letter out of the usual course. But when her first fury passed, and she

began to grow weak in the revulsion, she felt only her helplessness in

the presence of such audacity, and a fear that nothing could save her

from him. If he could make her so far forget herself as to tolerate

him, to listen to his stories, to laugh at his jokes, and show him that

she enjoyed his company, after all she knew of him, then he could make

her marry him, if he tried.

The logic was perfect, and it seemed but another link in the

infrangible chain of events, when she found another letter waiting for

her at the office of the Synthesis. It bore the postmark of Lakeland,

of the same date as her mother's, and in the corner of the envelope the

business card of Gates & Clarkson, Dealers in Art Goods; J. B.

Dickerson, in a line of fine print at the top was modestly "with" them.

The address, "Dear friend," was written over something else which had

been rubbed out, but beyond this the letter ran fluently and

uninterruptedly along in a hand which had a business-like directness

and distinctness. "I don't know," the writer said, "as you expected to

hear from me, and I don't know as I expected to let you, but

circumstances alter cases, and I just wanted to drop you a line and

tell you that I have been in Pymantoning and seen your mother. She is

looking prime, and younger than ever. We had a long talk about old

times, and I told her what a mistake I made. Confession is good for the

soul, they say, and I took a big dose of it; I guess I confessed pretty

much everything; regular Topsey style. Well, your mother didn't spare

me any, and I don't know but what she was about right. The fact is, a

man on the road don't think as much about his p's and q's as he ought

as long as he is young, and if I made a bad break in that little

matrimonial venture of mine, I guess it was no more than I deserved to.

I told your mother just how I happened to meet you again, and how the

sight of you was enough to make another man of me. I was always a

little too much afraid of you, or it might have turned out different;

but I can appreciate a character like yours, and I want you to know it.

I guess your mother sized it up about right when I said all I asked was

to worship you at a distance, and she said she guessed you would look

out for the _distance._ I told her you had, up to date. I want you to

understand that I don't presume on anything, and if we seemed to have a

pretty good time after the theatre, the other night, it was because you

didn't want to spoil Mrs. Montgomery's fun, and treated me well just

because I was a friend of hers. Well, it's pretty hard to realize that

my life is ruined, and that I have got nobody but myself to thank for

it, but I guess that's what I've got to come to, sooner or later. It's

what your mother said, and I guess she was right; she didn't spare me a

bit, and I didn't want her to. I knew she would write to you, as soon

as I was gone, and tell you not to have anything to do with me; and if

she has, all I have got to say is, _all right_. I have been a bad lot,

and I don't deny it, and all I can ask now, from this time forward, is

to be kept from doing any more mischief. I don't know as I shall ever

see you again; I had a kind of presentiment I shouldn't, and I told

your mother so. I don't know but I told a little more about how kind

you were to me the other evening than what the facts would justify

exactly, but as sure as you live I didn't _mean_ to lie about it. If I

exaggerated any, it was because it seemed the greatest thing in the

world to me, just to talk to you, and be where I could see you smile,

and hear you laugh; you've got a laugh that is like a child's, or an

angel's, if angels laugh. I've heard of their weeping, and if you knew

my whole life, I think you would shed a tear or two over me. But that

is not what I am trying to get at; I want to explain that if I appeared

to brag of being tolerated by you, and made it seem any thing more than

toleration, it was because it was like heaven to me not to have you

give me the grand bounce again. And what I want to ask you now, is just

to let me write to you, every now and then, and when I am tempted to go

wrong, anyways--and a business life is full of temptations--let me put

the case before you, and have you set me right. I won't want but a word

from you, and most part of the time, I shall just want to free my mind

to you on life in general, and won't expect any answer. I feel as if

you had got my soul in your hands, and you could save it, or throw it

away. That is all. I am writing on the train, and I have to use pencil.

I hope you'll excuse the stationery; it's all the porter could get me,

and I'm anxious to have a letter go back to you at once. I know your

mother has written to you, and I want to corroborate everything she

says against me."

The letter covered half-a-dozen telegraph blanks, and filled them full,

so that the diffident suggestion, "My permanent address is with Gates &

Clarkson," had to be written along the side of the first page.

The low cunning, the impudent hypocrisy, the leering pretence of

reverence, the affectation of penitence, the whole fraudulent design,

so flimsy that the writer himself seemed to be mocking at it, was open

to Cornelia, and she read the letter through with distinct relief.

Whatever the fascinations of Mr. Dickerson were when he was personally

at hand, he had none at a distance, and when she ran over the pages a

second time, it was with a laugh, which she felt sure he would have

joined her in, if he had been there. It turned her tragedy into farce

so completely, for the time, that she went through her morning's work

with a pleasure and a peace of mind which she had not felt for many

days. It really seemed such a joke, that she almost yielded to the

temptation of showing passages of the letter to Charmian; and she

forebore only because she would have had to tell more than she cared to

have any one know of Mr. Dickerson, if she did. She had a right to keep

all that from those who had no right to know it, but she had no right,

or if she had the right, she had not the power to act as if the past

had never been. She set herself to bear what was laid upon her, and if

she was ever to have strength for her burden she must begin by owning

her weakness. There was no one to whom she could own it but her mother,

and she did this fully as soon as she got back to her room, and could

sit down to answer her letter. She enclosed Dickerson's, and while she

did not spare him, she took the whole blame upon herself, for she said

she might have known that if she suffered him to see that he amused her

or pleased her at all, he was impudent enough to think that he could

make her like him again. "And mother," she wrote, "you know I never

really liked him, and was only too glad to get rid of him; you know

that much. But I suppose you will wonder, then, why I ever let him

speak to me if I really despised him as much as ever; and that is not

easy to explain. For one thing he was with Mrs. Montgomery, and she

likes him, and she has always been so good to me that I hated to treat

him badly before her; but that is not the real reason, and I am not

going to pretend it was. You know yourself how funny he is, and can

make you laugh in spite of yourself, but it was not that, either. It

was because I was angry with myself for having been angry with some one

else, without a cause, as I can see it now, and I had made a fool of

myself, and I wanted to get away from myself. I cannot tell you just

how it was, yet, and I do not know as I ever can, but that was truly

it, and nothing else, though the other things had something to do with

it. I suppose it was just like men when they take a drink of whiskey to

make them forget. The worst of it all is, and the discouraging part is,

that it shows me I have not changed a particle. My temper is just us

bad as ever, and I might as well be back at sixteen, for all the sense

I've got. Sometimes it seems to me that the past is all there is of us,

anyway. It seems to come up in me, all the time, and I am so ashamed I

don't know what to do. I make all kinds of good resolutions, and I want

to be good, and then comes something and it is all over with me. Then,

it appears as if it was not me, altogether, that is to blame. I know I

was to blame, this last time, laughing at that little 'scrub's' jokes

as you call him, and behaving like a fool; but I don't see how I was to

blame for his coming back into my life, when I never really wanted him

at all, and certainly never wished to set eyes on him again.

"I don't suppose it would be the least use to ask you not to show this

letter to Mrs. Burton, and I won't, but if you do, I wish you would ask

her what she thinks it means, and whether it's fate, or foreordination,

or _what_."

Mrs. Saunders carried Cornelia's letter to Mrs. Burton, as Cornelia had

foreseen, but the question she put to her was not the abstraction the

girl had suggested. "Mrs. Burton," she asked, "who was it do you

suppose Nie was so mad with that she had to go off and play the fool,

that way?"

Mrs. Burton passed the point of casuistry too. "Well, of course I don't

know, Mrs. Saunders. Has she said anything about Mr. Ludlow lately?"

"No, she hain't said a word, and that seems suspicious. She said a week

or two ago that he had give up trying to paint that Maybough girl, and

that she guessed she had got the last of her lessons from him; but she

didn't seem much troubled about it. But I guess by her not wantin' to

tell, it's him. What do you suppose he did to provoke her?"

"Oh, just some young people's nonsense, probably. It'll come all right.

You needn't worry about it, because if it won't come right of itself,

he'll _make_ it come."

"Oh, I'm not worrying about that," said Mrs. Saunders, "I'm worrying

about this." She gave her the letter Cornelia had enclosed, and as Mrs.

Burton began to read it she said, "If that fellow keeps on writing to

her, I don't know what I _will_ do."