"Mr. Hunt came down on Thursday, as I expected. He was in some sort
my guest, and we met amicably, and parted _friendlily_. The most
important development of his visit was, that [he says] he did, in the
early stages of the affair, send me just such a letter as I told him
he should have sent,--a letter written, as he says, by his own hand,
because he would not have his clerk mixed up in it; written with great
pain, and the only letter he has written since his hand has been so
lame, except one to Dickens.[7] In this, he assured me that it was
all right, that he had the figures to show me so, notwithstanding
appearances; and begged me to let him come to Zoar and do so. This,
without any other explanation, would have quite satisfied me in the
beginning; but this letter I never received. Of course, however, I
receive his assertion that such a letter was written, and I make the
best use I can of it. He assured me, in the most solemn manner, that
he has done by me as he has done by A., B., and the others; and that
he has always done what he thought the best thing and most to my
advantage. Now, when a man tells me that, I can have nothing more to
say to him. H. has a greater percentage because his books have never
been printed but once, and that when work was cheaper, and so they
pay him at the old prices. But I will go into particulars more fully
when I see you. I suppose it is pretty much the same as you have heard
yourself.... He admitted that he did not wonder at my course, seeing I
had not received his letter, yet seemed to think I should have had more
confidence in him; had always supposed _I_ should stand by him, though
the heavens fell. The heavens did not fall, though I sometimes think a
part of the sky is not there. I told him that I had no intention to
meddle with the past; agreed that they should go on with their books as
if nothing had happened, and desired him, whatever course I might take
in the future, to believe me not unfriendly toward himself, but that
the developments of this trouble had made it impossible for me at once
to resume my old place. But I don't think he minded that.
"Now you see ... we are at peace. I do not deceive myself. It is not a
very rapturous sort of peace. The relations between us are but a thin,
meagre, unsubstantial substitute for those that formerly existed; but
they are better than war--and they are truer than the old ones,--and
truth is better than falsehood, however agreeable the falsehood be. I
do not mean that on either side there was any intentional falsehood,
but that there was a sort of glamour which is now removed.
"Now, if any one ever speaks to you of this, say, as I shall, that
there was a misunderstanding, but that it is removed.
"I hope that you will not disapprove of what I have done; or perhaps,
rather, of what I have not done, for my action has been chiefly a
negative. I have simply let things be, in form, which I have always
meant to do in substance. He assures me that it is all right, and I
cannot stand up and dispute his word."
Mr. Hunt, during this interview, insisted that at the time he made the
change from ten per cent. to fifteen cents, he had a long talk with
me and fully explained the reason. I insisted that he never had done
so. I admitted that he had announced that he was going to make the
change on account of the fluctuations in the prices of things, and the
consequent uncertainties. It was all I wanted, and more. If he had said
nothing I should have been just as well satisfied, I had so much faith
in him. A positive assurance generally carries it over a negative.
Still, if a man asserted that he had offered himself to a girl, her
negative assertion that he never had, would, of itself, be entitled
to as much credence as his positive one, supposing the character of
both to be equal. If the man were in the habit of offering himself to
girls, while the girl had never had another lover, her negative would
surely outweigh his positive. Mr. Hunt had dealings with many authors.
He was my only publisher, and he was more likely to be mistaken in this
than I. He might have intended to make the explanation, or might have
made it to some one else; but an explanation made to me, it is next to
impossible I should have forgotten.
Really, the matter was not of importance, because if he had made it
then it would have answered every purpose. If I could have been made to
see at one time, that seven and a half equals ten, I could have been
made to see it at another.
Here the controversy seemed to have come to a natural and pacific
conclusion, and I began to take up the burden of life again, saying
only, it might have been different perhaps, but then it might not. I
cannot affirm that I was entirely satisfied about the missing letter.
Letters never are lost in our climate. We often wish they would be.
There are dozens in this correspondence, nothing in whose life would
have become them like the leaving it. But they all went straight as an
arrow to the mark, and now, like Burns' sonsie, smirking, dear-bought
Bess,
"They stare their daddy in the face;
Enough of aught ye like, but grace."
On the 24th of February, Mr. Hunt seemed first to have awakened to the
fact that there was any cloud in the sky, and begged me in all kindness
to tell him the ground of my sudden dissatisfaction. Of course, the
missing letter could not have been written before that time. After I
replied to him, alleging the grounds of my sudden dissatisfaction, he
replied by calling on Mr. Dane, as Mr. Dane's letter to me shows. I was
not only unable to find any place where Mr. Hunt's explanatory letter
might have been missing, but I could not find a place where it could
have come in.
But I let that pass. There seemed to be nothing more to do, and if
there had been, I was too tired to do it. I thought the affair, like
David's destructions, had come to a perpetual end, which, if not
absolutely satisfactory, was at least relatively so. There are very few
kinds of peace which are not better than war. I was not sure I had done
the wisest thing, and as I wrote to Mr. Dane in review of it, "to speak
the truth in love, I don't much care. That is, the whole affair had
become so utterly tiresome to me that I long ago grew indifferent to
it. How the business part of it should be settled, I little cared. What
I really had at stake, is lost."
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