THE LETTER TO PATSIE
Two days after the breaking of his engagement to Doris, Bojo wrote to
Patsie. His letter--the first he had written her--he was two days in
composing, tearing up several drafts. He was afraid to say too much, and
to discuss trivial matters seemed to him insincere. Finally he sent this
letter:
Dear Drina:
I suppose by now Doris has told you of what has happened.
There are a great many things I want you to know about these
trying months, that I've wanted you to know and have been
hurt that you didn't know. Now that it's over I realize what
a tragedy it would have been, and yet I would have gone on
believing it was the right thing to do, trying to make
myself believe in what I was doing. During all this time I
have never forgotten certain things you said to me, your
message the day of the panic, the look in your eyes that
afternoon before I went in to see your father and--other
memories. I want to see you. Where are you? When will you be
back in New York?
Faithfully yours,
BOJO.
Having written this he carried it around in his pocket for another day
before posting it. No sooner was it irrevocably beyond his hands than he
had the feeling that he had committed an irretrievable blunder. The next
moment it seemed to him that he had done the direct and courageous
thing, that she would understand and be grateful to him for his
frankness. Each morning he heard the rustle of the mail slipping under
the door with a sudden cold foreboding, certain that her letter had
come. Each evening, back from the grind of the factory, he came into the
monastic corridors of Westover Court and turned the corner of the desk
with a hot-and-cold hope that in the letter-box there, under the number
51, would be a letter waiting for him. When after a week no word had
come, he began to make excuses. She was away on a visit, her mail had to
be forwarded or more probably held for her return. But one day,
happening to glance at the social column, in a report of the Berkshires
he found her name as a contender in a tennis tournament. He wrote a
second note:
Dear Patsie:
Did you get my letter of ten days ago, and won't you write
me?
Yours,
BOJO.
Perhaps his first had miscarried. Such accidents were rare but yet they
did occur. He calculated the shortest time she could receive his letter
and answer it and waited expectantly all that day. Again a week passed
and no word from her. What had happened? Had he really blundered in
sending the first letter? Was her pride hurt, or what? A feeling of
despair began to settle over him. He did not attempt a third letter,
sick at heart. The thought that he might have wounded her--he always
imagined her as a child--was unbearable. It hurt him as it had hurt him
with a haunting sadness, the day after their wild toboggan ride, when he
had seen the pain in her eyes--eyes that were yet too young for the
knowledge of the sorrow and ugliness of the world. Finally, through a
chance remark one day when he had dropped in to his club, he learned
that she was to be present at a house party at Skeeter Stoughton's on
Long Island. Overlooking the incident of his unsuccessful attempt to
enter their employ, he took his friend into a half confidence and begged
him to secure him an invitation for over Sunday.
When he was once on the train and he knew for certain that in a short
two hours he would look into her eyes again, a feeling almost of panic
seized him. When they were in the motor rushing over smooth white roads
and he felt the lost distances melting away beneath him, this feeling
became one of the acutest misery. All that he had carefully planned and
rehearsed to say to her, suddenly deserted his mind.
"What shall I say? What shall I do?" he said to himself, cold with
horror. There seemed to be nothing he could say or do. His very presence
was an impertinence, which she must resent.
Luckily no one was in the house except their hostess and he had a short
moment to reassemble his thoughts before they strolled down to join the
party at the tennis courts. He was known to most of the crowd who
greeted his appearance as the return of the prodigal. Patsie was on the
courts, her back to him as they came up, Gladys Stone on the opposite
side of the net. Some one called out joyfully, "Bojo Crocker!" and she
turned with an involuntarily startled movement, then hastily controlling
herself at the cry of her partner, drove the ball into the net for the
loss of the point.
When next, ensconced under a red-and-white awning among the array of
cool flannels and summery dresses, he sought her, she was seriously
intent on Hieher game, a little frown on her young forehead, her lips
rebelliously set, the swirling white silk collar open at the browned
throat, the sleeve rolled up above the firm slender forearm. She moved
lightly as a young animal in slow, well calculated tripping movements or
in rapid shifting springs. Her partner, a younger brother of Skeeter's,
home on vacation, gathered in the balls and offered them to her with a
solicitude that was quite evident. Bojo felt an instinctive antipathy
watching their laughing intimacy. It seemed to him that they excluded
him, that she was still a child unable to distinguish between a
stripling and a man, still without need of any deeper emotions than a
light-hearted romping comradeship.
With the ending of the set, greetings could no longer be avoided. As
she came to him directly, holding out her hand in the most natural way,
he felt as though he were going red to the ears, that every one must
perceive his embarrassment before this girl still in her teens. He said
stupidly, pretending amazement,
"You here? Well, this is a surprise!"
"Yes, isn't it?" she said with seeming unconsciousness.
That was all. The next moment she was in some new group, arranging
another match. Short and circumstantial as her greeting had been, it
left him with a sinking despair. He had hurt her irrevocably, she
resented his presence--that was evident. His whole coming had been a
dreadful mistake. Depressed, he turned to Gladys Stone to attempt the
concealment from strange eyes of the disorder within himself. He was yet
too inexperienced in the ways of the women of the world to even suspect
the depth of resentment that could lie in her tortured heart.
"I'm awfully glad to see you--awfully," he said, committing the blunder
of giving to his voice a note of discreet sympathy. It had been his
distressing duty to bring her personally the little baggage of her
sentimental voyage--letters, a token or two, several photographs--to
witness with clouding eyes the spectacle of her complete breakdown.
She drew a little away at his words, straightening up and looking from
him.
"Have you heard the date of the wedding, Doris's wedding?" she said
coldly.
It was his time to wince, but he was incapable of returning the feminine
attack.
"You should know better than I," he said quietly.
She looked at him with a perfect simulation of ignorance:
"You were rather well interested, weren't you?"
"More than that, as you know, Gladys," he said, looking directly in her
eyes. A certain look she saw there caused her to make a sudden retreat
into banality--
"Do you play?"
"Sometimes."
Miss Stoughton and others impatient of the role of spectators were
organizing tables of auction inside the house. His reason told him that
the best thing for him to do would be to join them and show a certain
indifference, but the longing, miserable and unreasoning, within him to
stay, to be where he could see her, filling his eyes, after all the long
vacant summer, was too strong. He hesitated and remained, saying to
himself--
"Suppose I am a fool. She'll think I haven't the nerve of a mouse."
He wanted to chatter, to laugh at the slightest pretext, to maintain an
attitude of light inconsequential amusement, but the attempt failed. He
remained moody and taciturn, his eyes irresistibly fastened on the young
figure, so free and untamed, reveling in the excitement and hazards of
the game, wondering to himself that this girl, who now seemed so calmly
steeled against the display of the slightest interest in him, had once
swayed against his shoulder, yielding to the enveloping sense of a
moonlight night, loneliness and the invisible, inexplicable impulse
toward each other. What had come to end all this and how was it possible
for her to dissemble the emotion that she must feel, with the knowledge
of his eyes steadily and moodily fixed upon her?
He was resolved to find a moment's isolation in which to speak to her
directly and she just as determined to prevent it. As a consequence he
felt himself circumvented at every move, without being able to say to
himself that it had been done deliberately. The others who perhaps
perceived his intention sought an instinctive distance, with that innate
sympathy which goes out to lovers, but Patsie with a foreseeing eye
called young Stoughton to her side and pretending a slightly wrenched
ankle, leaned heavily on his arm. In which fashion they regained the
house without Bojo having been able by hook or crook to have gained a
moment for a private word.
At dinner, where he had hoped that Skeeter Stoughton, in return for his
half confidence, would have arranged so that he should sit next to her,
he found Patsie on the opposite side of the table. An accusatory glance
towards Skeeter was answered by one of mystification. Then he understood
that she must have rearranged the cards herself. He was unskilled in the
knowledge of the ways of young girls and their instinctive cruelty to
those who love them and even those whom they themselves love. He was
hurt, embarrassed, prey to idiotic suppositions that left him miserable
and self-conscious. He was even ready to believe that she had taken the
others into her confidence, that every one must be watching, smiling
behind their correct masks. The dinner seemed interminable. He was too
wretched to conceal his emotions, neglecting his neighbors shamefully
until one, a debutante of the year, rallied him maliciously.
"Mr. Crocker, I believe you're in love!"
He glanced at Patsie, frightened lest the remark might have carried, but
from her attitude he could divine nothing. She was rattling away,
answering some lightly flung remark from down the table. He began to
talk desperately in idiotic, meaningless sentences, aware that his
neighbor was watching him with a mischievous smile.
"Are you really in love?" she said delightedly when he had run out of
ideas.
He was struck by a sudden inspiration.
"If I confess will you help me?" he said in a whisper. Miss Hunter,
enraptured with the idea of anything that bordered on the romantic,
bobbed her head in enthusiastic response.
"Very well, after dinner," he said in the same low tone. He had a
feeling that Patsie had been trying to listen and began to talk with a
gaiety for which he found no reason in himself. Several times he glanced
across the table and he felt--though their eyes never met--that her
glance had but just left him, was on him the moment he turned away. He
found her much changed. She was not yet a woman, by a certain veil of
fragility and inconscient shyness, but the child was gone. Her glance
was more sobered and more thoughtful as though the touch of some sadness
had stolen the bubbling spirits of childhood and left a comprehension of
deeper trials approaching. At times she assumed an attitude of great
dignity, la grande maniere, which was yet but assumed and made him
smile.
Dinner over, dancing began. He made no attempt to seek out Patsie,
putting off Miss Hunter too with evasive answers. He danced once or
twice, but without enjoyment and finally, not to witness the spectacle
of her dancing with other men, made the pretext of an evening cigar to
seek the obliterating darkness of the verandah. Safely hidden in a
favoring corner, he sat, moodily watching the occasional flitting of
laughing couples silhouetted against the starry night. He was totally at
loss to account for the reception. At times a suspicion passed through
his mind that Doris might have given a different account of their
parting scene than the facts warranted. At others, remembering details
of romantic novels, he had devoured, he was willing to believe that his
letter had not reached her, had been intercepted perhaps by Mrs. Drake.
At the end of an hour, fearing to have made his absence too noticeable,
he rose unwillingly to join the gay party within. Suddenly as he rounded
the corner he came upon a couple separating, the man returning to the
dance, the girl leaning against a pillar, plucking at invisible vines.
Then she too turned, coming into a momentary reflection. It was Patsie.
She stopped short, divining who it was, and the instinctive step
backward which she made brought an angry outburst to his lips.
"I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. "I didn't mean to annoy you. I had
been finishing my smoke. I--" He paused, at his wits' end. At this
moment if he had been called upon to recognize his true feelings, he
would have sworn that he hated her bitterly with a fierce, unreasoning
hatred.
"You do not annoy me," she said quietly.
"I was afraid so."
"No."
He hesitated a moment.
"Did you get my letters?"
"Yes."
"Did you answer them?" he said, with a last hope of some possible
misunderstanding.
She shook her head.
He waited a moment for some explanation and as none came, he started to
leave, saying,
"I don't understand at all--but--I don't suppose that matters--"
He went toward the door. Then stopped. He thought he had heard her
calling his name. He returned slowly.
"Did you call me?"
"No, no."
All at once he came to her tempestuously, catching her arm as he would a
naughty child's.
"Drina, I won't be turned away like this. In heaven's name what have I
done that you should treat me like this? At least tell me!"
She did not struggle against his hold, but turned away her head without
answer.
"Was it my first letter? You didn't like me to write that way--so
soon--so soon after breaking the engagement? Was that it? It was, wasn't
it?"
It seemed to him, though he could not be sure, that her head made a
little affirmative nod.
"But what was wrong?" he cried in dismay. "You wouldn't have me be
insincere. You know and I know what you meant to me, you know that if I
went on with Doris after--after that night, it was only from a sense of
duty, of loyalty. Yes, because you yourself came to me and begged me to.
If that's true, why not be open about--"
"Hush," she said hastily. "Some one will hear."
"I don't care if they all hear," he said recklessly. "Drina, what's the
use of pretending. You know I've been in love with you, you and only
you, from the first day I saw you."
She drew her arm from his grasp and turned on him defiantly--
"Thanks-- I don't care to be second fiddle!" she said spitefully.
"Good heavens, that is it!"
"Yes, that is it," she cried out and breaking from him she fled around
the corner of the verandah and it seemed to him that he had caught the
sound of a sob.
He entered the house, a prey to conflicting emotions, perplexed, angry,
inclined to laugh, with alternate flashes of hope and as sudden relapses
into despair. Just as he had made up his mind that she had left for the
night, she reappeared without a trace of concern. But try as he might he
did not succeed in getting another opportunity to speak to her. She
avoided him with a settled cold antagonism. The next day it was the
same. It seemed that everything she did was calculated to wound him and
display her hostility. He had neither the strength nor the wisdom to
respond with indifference, suffering openly. At ten o'clock that night
as he was miserably preparing to enter the automobile that was to take
him to the station, Patsie came hurriedly down the steps, something
white in her hand.
"Please do something for me," she said breathlessly.
"What is it?"
"A letter-- I want you to mail this letter--it's important."
He turned, taking the letter and putting it in his pocket without
noticing it.
She held out her hand. Surprised, he took it, yet without relenting.
"Good-by, Bojo," she said softly.
The next moment he was whirled away. When he reached the Court he
remembered for the first time his commission and, stopping at the desk,
he handed the letter absent-mindedly to Della, saying,
"If you're going out, Della, mail this."
She burst out laughing, with her irresistible Irish smile.
"What are you laughing at?" he said, surprised.
"You're always up to tricks, Mr. Crocker," she said, looking at the
inscription.
"What do you mean?" he asked, puzzled, and, perceiving the cause of her
merriment, he snatched the envelope and glanced at it. It was addressed
to him. Covered with confusion he fled up to his room in a fever of
anticipation and wild hope.
Dear Bojo:
Forgive me for being a horrid, spiteful little cat. I am
sorry but you are very stupid--_very_! Please forgive me.
PATSIE.
P.S. As soon as the wedding is over, we come to New York.
Will you come and see me there--and I'll promise to behave.
DRINA.
He went to bed in the seventh heaven of delight, repeating to himself a
hundred times every word of this letter, turning each phrase over and
over for favorable interpretation. It seemed to him that never had he
spent such deliciously happy days as the last two.