But do not despise me, O sage in the upper chamber, for my selfishness. I

keep far to the windward of you because I was made for love, not for

sacrifice. The altar of your soul life is very fine, very beautiful, but I

am too much alive to be offered up on such a table. Suppose I trusted you,

gave myself with my heart, and in after years you should fall upon the

idea of expurgating all sensations, all heresies, all affections from your

life as the Brahmins do, what then would become of poor Jessica? I should

sit upon your altar like a withered fairy, casting dust over my unhallowed

head and calling down elfish curses upon you. Ah me! when I come upon a

splendid man-statue that suddenly glows into living heart and flesh, I may

wonder and love, but I should never trust myself in the arms of that

phenomenon, lest, being clasped there, he should as suddenly turn back to

his native stone and freeze the life in me!

Have you noticed that I tell you nothing of the village doings here, the

little church sociables and a thousand commonplace details that go to make

up the sum of existence amid such surroundings? It is because I do not

really live among them. My mind is alien to these narrow margins of

society and religion. But it is always of the little forest that I tell

you, as if that were my real home, as indeed it is. And it is the dearer

to me now that we have walked through it together. So in each letter you

may expect a report of how things go there. This morning, as I looked

about at the sober ground covered thick with dying leaves, I thought of

what a gallant display of autumnal colors we had on that morning. Our

little friends of the summer time are flitting here and there through the

naked branches in silent confusion. There are no green boughs behind which

to conceal their orchestral moods. Besides, their inspiration is gone,

their singing hearts are benumbed by the cold. But for your letter thrust

somewhere I could not have escaped the ghost of sadness that seemed to

haunt the earth and sky. Suddenly, as I stood in the midst of it all, a

cardinal flashed like a red spark into a tall pine, fluffed out his

breast, and swept the forest with a defiant note of melody. It was a

challenge to the long winter time, a prophecy of spring and of high green

trees, and of a mate cloistered now far away in the wilderness: "You shall

not hear a simple song, but you shall remember that music is the voice of

love," whispered the letter against my heart. What a brave thing is life

when we have love and the hope of spring latent within us! I admit, as I

listened to the little red troubadour of the pine, that, had you been as

near as the dreams and fancies that wrapped me about, this fight in me for

freedom would have been at an end. Do not trust these feeble moods of

mine, however; not one of them would last half the length of time you

would need to make the journey from New York to Morningtown!

So! you have written such a review of Miss Addams's book as will astonish

the "average reader," and all the while you wondered: "How will Jessica

answer that?" Abridged, this is her opinion: That an editor should be

careful how he kicks his heels at the spirit of his age. The world has an

ancient and effective way of dealing with such heroes.

No, I am not familiar with the _Imitation_. But I gather from the passages

you quote that it is a spiritual exercise prepared for those who "possess

all the comforts of this life," and are weary enough of them to pass on to

the philosophy of renunciation. But you should remember that the

Hull-House classes have not had the necessary experience with comforts.

Renunciation is impossible for them, for they have nothing to give up.

My love to the little goblin boy.

XXII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

MY DEAR JESSICA:

Did ever "Father Confessor" have so sweet and so wilful a sinner to

shrive! Your only sin is that you love me, and do you think I shall grant

absolution for that? As I read your letter with its wayward confession, it

seemed to me indeed that I was in some temple of the gods instead of this

book-littered den, and the rumble of the street was transfigured into the

sound of triumphant music. And all the while the voice of the little

penitent, hidden from my eyes, but almost within reach of my breath,

murmured in my ears: "I love you, I love you, and that is my sin." Dear

girl, when you have given me your heart, do you suppose I shall be slow to

confiscate your will? It is not lawful that a man's, or a woman's, heart

and will should be at enmity with each other. I know that your will is

strong, but I know, too, that your heart is stronger. Why did you turn me

away without one word of hope or consolation when I visited you in

Morningtown? Out of the great store of happiness that God has given you,

could you not spare one little morsel? Ah, I would not offer you up a

sacrifice on the altar of any spiritual creed, but take you with me into

that upper chamber that looks toward the golden sunrise. I would share

your happiness and give you in return a portion in the hope that I too

have found. With you at my side I could walk through the world, (for I am

not such a recluse as you might suppose,) knowing that the desire of all

men's hearts had fallen to me, and that my life was consecrated henceforth

to noble uses. And yet to-day I am very sad.

Let me tell you a little story of the way your admired Simonians act when

their general promulgations of brotherhood are brought to an individual

test. Our proprietor and manager, a smooth-faced, meek-eyed Jew, who has

made himself right with this world, at least, is much concerned with

charities and civic meetings and reform clubs and progress societies and

the preaching of universal democracy, and all that,--a veritable Pharisee

among the humanitarians. He often asks me to give a good word to some

Simoniacal book. Well, I have a poor broken-down Irishman named O'Meara,

who reviews a certain class of publications for me. He is the kind of man

you would never expect to meet in this country: a relic of

eighteenth-century Grub Street,--a man who reads Latin and Greek, who can

quote pages of the Fathers, who has a high ideal of literature and

conscience in writing, and withal a victim to the demon whiskey that has

dragged him down to the very gutter. His life has been a mystery to me,

and some feeling of shame has kept him from ever telling me where and how

he lives. At intervals he comes shuffling into my office, with bleared

eyes and palsied hand, and for charity's sake I give him a book to

review--and not exactly for charity either, for he does his work well. Two

or three weeks ago our Simoniacal manager came into my office and asked me

who that tramp was whom he had seen several times go away with books. I

told him the whole story, thinking to arouse his sympathy. What was my

surprise when he broke out into a mild stream of abuse--the more startling

because he ordinarily says so little--against allowing such besotted

tramps to come into the offices! When a man drank himself into such a

state as that there was no doing anything with him, etc. O'Meara came back

in a day or two with his "copy," and I told him that the chief had ordered

me to cut him off. Poor wretch! he said never a word for himself, but

turned and shambled guiltily out of the room--I shall never forget the

sound of his trailing, despondent feet.

I heard no more from him until yesterday, when the office boy came in and

told me a beggar child insisted on seeing me. What was my astonishment

when it proved to be our goblin boy, who had been sent to ask me to come

to his father; and his father was O'Meara! It all seemed as unsubstantial

as a dream. I went with the child, of course. He guided me through the

dark entry where I had seen him so often, in behind a great printing

house, to a foul court hidden away from the street like some criminal

outlaw. I will not try to describe the noisomeness of that reeking hole. I

found O'Meara lying on a heap of sacks in a mouldering closet which was

entirely dark save for what little light came through the doorway.

Darkness, indeed, was his only comfort. He would not shake hands with me,

for he has, withal, the instincts of a gentleman, and it seemed as if the

shame of his whole degraded life lay with him before me in his misery. His

tragedy will have been played out in a day or two, I think; and I wish the

memory of it might also pass from my mind. What shall I do with the goblin

boy? The hatefulness of it all stands between me and my thoughts of you. I

cannot harden myself yet for a while to dream of pure beauty. I read your

letter over and over, but its sweet medicament cannot purge my breast. Not

even the acknowledgment of your love can drown these sighs I have heard.

XXIII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. PHILIP TOWERS:

You lack the proper ethical pose of a Father Confessor. I have

excommunicated you. The charge against you is that you take an audacious

advantage of the confessional, not to bless me, but to rejoice in my

romantic vagrancy. For a man giving himself airs in the "upper chamber,"

you have very human ways, and I begin to suspect you only keep your creed

and philosophy up there.

But you are greatly mistaken if you think you can ever wheedle me into

such a sunrise attic. I can be domesticated, but not etherealised. And you

hold strange doctrines for an ascetic. You think that because I love it

will be easy to "confiscate" my will. Even _I_ know better than that. We

live to conquer our hearts. There is no freedom of mind and spirit till

that decisive battle has been fought and won. My heart is a gay vagabond,

ready to dance before the door of your tent, but my will is better

disciplined. It weighs and counts the costs and rejects this sentimental

bargain, because, O Stranger to my soul, I doubt if you can pay the

interest love demands upon so large an investment. There is not enough of

you; and your capital consists in something less vital,--in wind-cooled

philosophies, and the passions of an occult spirit ever ready to escape

into mysticism. Why will you not be content with a companionship on this

basis? You keep your wings and you wish mine also. Well, you shall not

have them! I have no disposition to simulate the example of those small

insects who come out in early spring with splendid wings, make one flight

far enough through the sunlight to lose them, and crawl all the remainder

of their days in the domestic dust of their little tenements.

Besides, does not the science of biology teach that romantic love, in the

very nature of things, is transient?--a little heathen angel that we

entertain unawares, who comes and goes at will? I cannot tell you what

satisfaction and what distress that theory has caused me of late. I would

have my own heart free, but I am willing to move my little heaven and

earth to prolong your bondage. Selfish?--I know, but consider upon what

loneliness and terror such selfishness is based. A man is always

sufficient unto himself, particularly if he can abstract and divert

himself into a line of thought as you are able to do, but a woman without

a lover is a pathetic thing. There is no real reason for her existence;

all her little miracles of expression and posing are for naught. She is a

sort of prima donna lost out of the play. There is no one to give her the

happy cue to the whole meaning of life. Oh, my Love! I _cannot_ live

without a lover. Do not bereave me! I should shrivel up, I am sure,--grow

old and sour and sad. I might even become a deaconess with Hull-House

propensities. I am a naive beggar, you see; I ask all you have, and admit

that I am unwilling to give in return what I myself have.

Your account of O'Meara interests me. But what right have you to slip out

of your stern character as a merely spiritual man, and assume the guise of

a good Samaritan? Really it is not fair; your tender compassion is

illogical, and, however benign, I cannot accept it as evidence in your

favour. But your account of the poor man's distress touched my heart. And

you ask me what ought to be done with the little goblin boy. Dear Philip,

could _we_ not adopt him? Think how many years then, we should have to

correspond in and to dispute with each other about his upbringing! I would

make the jackets and you should furnish the ethics for him. You should

provide a home for him, and I would give a little of the warmth that any

woman's tenderness imparts to any child. I will begin at once with a

maternal dictation,--he must be sent into the country. For children are

like lambs, I think; they also need to grow up in a green field, and to

gambol there. He must have no cares, no obligations--just be encouraged to

let go all the good and evil there is in him. When he has expanded to his

natural size morally and physically, we can tell better what to do with

him. Are you laughing at me, or are you scandalised at such a proposition?

Then why did you ask my advice? When a child is without parents, is it not

better to provide him with a pair of them, even if one is a wizard who

knows how to metamorphose himself into many different personalities, such

as sage, mystic, lover, good Samaritan, and I know not how many more?

XXIV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

[THIS LETTER WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE PRECEDING LETTER OF JESSICA'S, BUT WAS

NOT RECEIVED UNTIL LATER.]

DEAR JESSICA:

I often wonder whether I have made it quite clear to you why it is

possible to hold in high esteem personally the workers of Hull House and

these other philanthropists, while detesting their views as formulated

into a dogma. Just after I had sent off my last letter to you I met with

something in a morning paper which will throw light on my position. In an

address before Princeton Theological Seminary Dr. Lyman Abbott is reported

to have used these words:

"To follow Christ is, first of all, to give yourself to the service

of God by serving your fellow-men. This is more important than the

question of the Trinity, of the atonement, or of creeds."

Now the question of the Trinity or of the atonement may not seem essential

to me. My faith has passed out of them--beyond them, I trust; and at least

I do not call myself a Christian. But remember that Dr. Abbott is a

teacher of Christianity and was on this occasion addressing students of

theology. Certainly to him and to his audience these are, they must be,

the first of all matters in the realm of ideas, whether accepted or

rejected, and to speak slightingly of them is to show contempt for

everything that transcends the material world. I know that Dr. Abbott,

like some others, makes this service of our fellow-men to be a form of the

service of God; but the slightest knowledge of the spirit of the day,

indeed any intelligent reading of the words I have quoted, makes plain how

entirely this "service of God" is a tag, a meaningless concession to an

older form of speech. What seriously concerns our humanitarians is the

service of mankind. Now am I not justified in saying that true religion

would at least change the order of ideas and declare that to serve mankind

is, first of all, to give one's self to the service of God? This is not a

quibbling of words, but a radical distinction. It is because I find in all

so-called humanitarians this tendency to place humanity before God,

material needs before ideals, that I call them, when all is said, the most

insidious foes of true religion. Their very virtues make them more

dangerous than outspoken materialists and scoffers. It is largely due to

them and their creed that we have no art and no literature; for art and

literature depend, at the last analysis, on a reaching out after ideas, on

an attempt to transmute material things into spiritual values,--on faith,

in a word. The humanitarians cry out against the materialism and the

commercial spirit of the age. They do not perceive that the only remedy

against this degeneracy is the renewal of faith in something greater and

higher than our material needs. Let them preach for a while the blessings

of poverty and other-worldliness. The attempt to instil benevolence or

so-called human justice into society as the chief message of religion is

merely to play into the hands of the enemy. Do you see why I call them the

real followers of Simon Magus, who sought to buy the gift of God with a

price? "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is

not right in the sight of God."

Consider how impossible it would have been in any age of genuine or real

creativeness for a leading preacher of Christianity to have pronounced Dr.

Abbott's words, and you will see how far humanitarianism has fallen from

faith in the spirit. I know that passages maybe quoted from the Bible

which might seem to make Christ himself responsible for this new Simony;

but Satan, too, may quote Scripture. Surely the whole tenor of Christ's

teaching is the strongest rebuke to this lowering of the spirit's demands.

He spent his life to bring men into communion with God, not to modify

their worldly surroundings. Indeed, the world was to him a place of misery

and iniquity, doomed to speedy destruction. He sought to save a remnant

from the wrath of judgment as a brand is plucked from the fire, and he

separated his disciples utterly from acquiescence in the comforts of this

earth; they were to be in the world but not of it: "Render unto Caesar the

things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." He

taught poverty and not material progress. Those he praised were the poor

and the meek and the unresisting and the persecuted--those who were cut

off from the hopes of the world.

And now, dear girl, do you ask me to apply my preaching to my own case? Of

a truth I have faith. I think it my true service to men that I should

learn to love you greatly; and out of that love shall flow charity and

justice and righteousness toward the world. Let it be my meed of service

that men shall see the beauty of my homage.

XXV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR JESSICA:

The end has come even sooner than I looked for it. This afternoon, little

Jack, our goblin boy, came to my office and I followed him back to the

dismal court where his father lay expecting me. I had arranged that the

poor wretch should be carried into a room where at least there was a bed

and where a ray of clean sunshine might greet his soul when departing on

the long journey; and there I found him lying perfectly quiet save for the

twitching of his hands outstretched on the counterpane. I thought a

glimmer of content lightened his dull eyes as I sat down beside him. I

talked with him a little, but he seemed scarcely to heed my words. Then

turning his head towards me he plucked from under his pillow an old

thumb-worn copy of _Virgil_ (so bedraggled and spotted that no second-hand

book-seller would have looked at it) and thrust it out to me, intimating

by a gesture that he would have me read to him. I asked him where I should

begin, and he held up two fingers as if to indicate the second book of the

_AEneid_; and there I began with the fall of Troy-town.

He listened with apparent apathy, though I know not what echoes the

sonorous lines awakened in his mind, until I came to the words:

Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus.

I saw his hands clench together feebly here, and then there was no more

motion. Presently I looked into his face, and I knew that no sound of my

voice, nor any sound of the world, could ever reach him again; for the

story of his unspeakable sorrow, like the ruin of Troy, had been told to

the end. He had spoken not a single word; he had carried the silence of

his soul into the infinite silences of death. The secret of his life had

passed with him. I shall probably never know what early dreams and

ambitions had faded into this squalid despair. And his pitiful wan-faced

boy--who was the child's mother? I am glad I do not know; I am only glad I

can tell him of your love. I shall see that the father is buried decently

with a wooden slab to distinguish his grave from the innumerable dead who

rest in the earth. Might we not print above his body the last words of the

poem he seems to have loved so much: _Fugit indignata sub umbras_! For I

think it was the indignity of shame in the end that killed him. Is he not

now all that Caesar and Virgil are? Shall he not sleep as peacefully in his

pauper's bed as the great General Grant in that mausoleum raised by the

river's side?--Commonplace thoughts that came to me as I sat for a while

musing in the presence of death; but is not death the inevitable

commonplace that shall put to rout all our originality in the end?

And all the while our Jack was sitting perfectly motionless by the window,

looking out into the court--into the blue sky, I think. I picked up one of

his thin hands and said to him: "Little Jack, your father has gone away

from us and is at rest. There is a beautiful lady in the South who loves

you as she loves me; will not her love make you happy?" He did not appear

to understand me, but shrank into himself as if afraid. Indeed, sweet

benefactress, I shall send him into the country somewhere as you bid me,

and I shall see that your love brings him greater happiness than it has

brought me, for with him you shall not withdraw with one hand what you

have held out in the other.

I went away, leaving an old woman to care for the dead man and his child.

It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the

street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence. Is it not a

strange thing that death should have this power of benediction? Of a

sudden a breath comes out of the heavens, our little cares are touched by

an eternal presence, a rift is blown in the thick mists that hem us about,

and behold, we look out into infinite visionless space. And now I am back

in my office. I open O'Meara's worn and much-stained _Virgil_, and inside

the cover I find these words scribbled in pencil: "_I have cried unto God

and He hath not heard my cry; but thou, O beloved poet, art ever near with

consolation_!" I do not know whether the sentence is original with O'Meara

or a quotation; it is certainly new to me. One other book I brought with

me, and the two were the whole worldly possession of the dead man. This is

a small but pretty thick blank-book, written over almost to the last page.

I have not examined the contents carefully, but I can see that they are

made up of miscellaneous passages copied from books and of reflections on

a great variety of topics, with few or no records of events. One of the

last entries is from Clarence Mangan's heart-breaking poem, _The Nameless

One_:

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow,

And want, and sickness, and houseless nights,

He bides in calmness the silent morrow

That no ray lights.

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,

Deep in your bosoms: there let him dwell!

He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble

Here, and in hell.

And is it not a touch of Fate's irony that I should be sending this

threnody of death to one who might expect to receive from me only messages

and pleadings of love? Death and love are the very antipodes of our

existence, one would say. And yet I do not know; I feel nothing

incongruous in linking the twain together. Love, too, breaks open the

barriers of our poor personality that the breath of the infinite may blow

in upon us. I cannot say how it is with others, but so it is with me: love

lays a hand upon me, and instantly the discords of the world are hushed in

my ears, the little desires and fears that trouble me are shamed into

silence, and I am rapt away into the infinitely great heart that throbs at

the centre of all. It is strange, but life itself seems to pass away in

the presence of this power that is the creator of life. I speak darkly,

but my words have a meaning. And, dear sweetheart, be not afraid that you

shall be left without a lover; that I shall bereave you! Do you think for

an instant that I can cease to love? I cannot understand this war between

your heart and your will; am I very stupid? Surely when I come to you, I

shall bring this contention to an end, and you--it hath not entered into

the heart of man to conceive what you shall give me. Out of the

conclusions of death into the prophecies of love! I am filled with

wondering.

You shall hear more hereafter of poor Jack, our adopted child.

XXVI

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR PHILIP:

See how you shame me! For this long while I have wished to begin my

letters thus, but I waited, hoping you would entreat me to do so. I

expected you to provide an excuse. I thought my own pleasure would wear

the genial air of a concession to your wishes. Indeed, the way you wait

for me to be obliged to do such things of my own accord, fills me with

superstitious anxieties. It is as if you had some unfair foreknowledge of

the natural order of events. You would take things for granted, and thus

produce an hypnotic effect by your convictions so strong as to compel my

conformity. But I console myself with the reflection that all this is

mental. You terrify only my intelligence with your strange sorcery. And

for this reason I shall always escape your bondage, for I am too wise to

concede my familiar territory to such an overbearing foreign power.

However, I must not forget the prime object I have in writing this letter.

It is to tell you that the little box of childish things, which you must

have received already and wondered at, are _not_ for the literary editor

of _The Gazette_, but for Jack, sent with the hope that they may in some

measure comfort his sad heart. I went so far as to purchase material for

the promised set of jackets, when suddenly I remembered that I was

ignorant of both his age and size. You have never told me that, though you

have given me such a real picture of him that I could almost trust my

imagination to cut those garments to fit him!

Your account of O'Meara's death affected me deeply. With what sublime

abandon does such a man let go his soul into the mystery of that silence

which we call eternity!

Is it not strange how the same impressions come to many, but by different

ways! "It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises

of the street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence," you

said, and the sentence recalled a somewhat similar experience of my own on

Cumberland Island, where father and I went last summer for a short

vacation. One day, leaving the group of happy bathers to their surf, I

climbed up inland among the sand-hills, that lie along the shore like the

white pillows of fabulous sea-gods. Presently I came upon one of those

great sand-pits that stretch along the Island, deep and wide like mighty

graves. Far below me a whole forest stood in ghostly silence, with every

whitening limb lifted in supplication, as if all had died in a terrified

struggle with the engulfing sands. Unawares, I had happened upon one of

Nature's griefs--and I do not know how to tell you, but the sight of it

aged me. Of a sudden this death of the trees seemed a far-off part of my

own experience. I was swept out of this contesting, energetic world into a

still region where great events come to pass in silence, and inevitably.

And so real was the illusion that, as I turned to hurry back, it seemed to

me that centuries had passed since I saw the same little tuft of flowers

like a group of purple fairies nodding to me from the top of a tall cliff.

And so I stood there confused by the significance of this silence, so

incredible that even the winds could not shake it. I felt so near and kin

to death that I became "alien" to all the living world about me. For the

first time in my life, I lost the _sense_ of God, which is always a kind

of mental protection against the terrors of infinity. There was nothing to

pray to, only the sea on one side and this grave on the other, with a

little trembling life between.

Thus you will understand that not only have I had a similar experience to

your own upon the occasion of O'Meara's death, but that for once I came

into your region of shades and terrors. I was like one on the point of

dissolution, and almost my soul escaped into your dim habitation. From

your letters I had already learned how near together love and death stood

in your consciousness. Each is an exit through which your spirit is ever

ready to pass. And for the moment, crowded in with skeleton shadows there,

you seemed sensibly near me. I was divided between fear and love. But the

blood of life in me always triumphs,--and then it was that I made my first

flight in consciousness from you. I kissed my hand to the twilight and

ran! I am sure you were there, Philip, a cold-lipped spirit-lover seeking

my mortal life. And, oh my Heart! is it wrong that I would love and be

loved in the flesh? I do not object to spirituality, only it must have a

visible presence and a warm cheek.

P. S.--But, dear Philip, how am I to reconcile this tender charity to Jack

with your anti-humanitarian views? Is a man's heart so divided from his

philosophy? Or do you intend to make a mystic of that poor child, so that

he may escape the woes of his condition? I am curious to see what you will

do with him. Also, I shall certainly defend him against your Nirvana

doctrines if I suspect you of juggling with his soul.

XXVII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR, TEASING, RARE JESSICA:

I have so many things to say to you. First of all, why do you blame me for

my "foreknowledge"? You scold me for my hostility to the sentimentalism of

the day, you scold me then for any act of common human sympathy, and now

you take me to task because I foresee how you will address me in a letter.

Dear me, what a horrid little scold it is! I wonder you didn't quote _The

Raven_,--

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or

devil!"

But really no great powers of prophecy were required. Have you forgotten

that in the very letter before this one you called me "Dear Philip"? And

wasn't that a good index of your tempestuous, contradictory sweet self,

that you should have begun your letter "My dear Mr. Philip Towers" and

then thrown in your "Dear Philip" by the way, as if it would not be

observed! Why, my naughty Jessica, when I came to that phrase, I just took

my longest, biggest blue pencil and put a ring about it so that I might

find it at a moment's notice and feast my eyes a thousand thousand times

on its sweet familiarity. Do not suppose that anything ever escapes me in

your letters. I con every little lapse in your spelling until I know it by

heart. And you do make so many slips, you know, in your reviews as well as

in your letters! I never correct them,--that would be a desecration, I

think,--but send up your copy just as it comes to me. Indeed, I find

myself imitating unawares some of your most unaccountable originalities.

Only the other day I was in the reading-room and our head proofreader, a

sour, wizened old man, cried out to me: "I say, Mr. Towers, what is the

matter with your spelling? You write _propotion_[2] for proportion and

_propersition_ for proposition, and get your _r_'s all mixed up

generally!" There was a titter from all the girls in the room. Then said

I: "Thou fool! knowest thou not that Jessica lives in the South, and

treats her _r_'s with royal contempt as she was taught to treat the black

man? And shall I not imitate her in this as in all her high-born

originalities?" Of course I didn't say that aloud, but just thought it to

myself. And really I do wonder sometimes that your excellent father, when

he taught you Latin, should have permitted you to take such liberties with

our good mother tongue. But after all it is only another sign of your

right Southern wilfulness. Do you not take even greater liberties with

poor human souls?

And you make my prophetic powers a bulwark for your licentious rebellion

and declare that you will always escape my bondage. Shall you, indeed? You

once intimated that I wore ass's ears. I begin to believe it. What a

blind, solemn animal I was when I came to Morningtown to beg for your

love! I was so afraid of you. And as we sat in the circle of your

watching, motionless trees, something of their stiff ways entered into my

heart. I told you of my love so solemnly, and you answered so solemnly.

Fool! Fool! I should have spoken not a single word, but just taken you in

my arms and kissed you once and twice. Don't frown now, it is too late.

There would have been one wild, tempestuous outbreak of indignation, and

then my dryad maiden would have known my "foreknowledge" indeed. Is it too

late to rehearse that curtain-raiser? Dear girl, I would be merry, but I

am not so sure that all is well with my heart. I need you so much now, for

I have entered on a new path and the way is obscure before me. I need you.

Your hand in mine would give me the courage I require.

Do you remember how you warned me of dangers when I reviewed Miss Addams's

book? You, too, were a prophet. Let me tell you how it all came about. The

other day I wrote up Mme. Adam's _Romance of My Childhood and Youth_

(Addams and Adam--the name has a fatality for me), and took occasion to

make it the text of a tremendous preachment against our latter-day

Simony,--as well it might be, for Mme. Adam grew up in the thirties and

forties when France was a huge seething caldron in which all these modern

notions were brewing together. And unfortunately we are just beginning now

where France left off a score of years ago. You have already seen the

review, no doubt, and it is superfluous to repeat its argument. But for my

own justification to you I want to quote a few sentences from the book.

You disdained to make any reply to my letter on Lyman Abbott, and I fear

you have grown weary of the whole subject; but certainly you will be

interested in what I am copying out for you now. In one of her chapters,

then, Mme. Adam writes:

Nature, Science, Humanity, are the three terms of initiation. First

comes nature, which rules everything; then the revelations of nature,

revelations which mean science--that is to say, phenomena made clear

in themselves and observed by man; and lastly, the appropriation of

phenomena for useful social purposes.... There is no error in nature,

no perversity in man; evil comes only from society.... He [Mme.

Adam's father] delighted in proving to me that it was useless for man

to seek beyond nature for unattainable chimeras, for the infinite

which our finite conception was unable to understand, and for the

immaterial, which our materiality can never satisfactorily

explain.... They [these humanitarian socialists] resembled my father.

Their doubts--and they had many!--were of too recent a date to have

dried up their souls; _they no longer believed in a divine Christ;

they still believed in a human one_. They worshipped that mysterious

Science, which replaced for them the supernatural, and which had not

then brought all its brutality to light in crushing man under

machinery.

Could anything be more illuminating than that? Does it not set forth the

close cousinship of humanitarianism with socialism and the fungous growth

of the two out of the mouldering ruins of faith and the foul reek of a

sensuous philosophy? And do you not see why any surrender to this modern

cult of human comfort means the indefinite postponement of that

fresh-dawning ideal which shall bring life to literature and art and evoke

once more the golden destiny of man?

Well, this morning the particular Simon Magus who rules _The Gazette_

walked into my office and, after some preliminary sparring, came out with

a complaint which I knew had been preparing in his brain for some time. It

seems that he had already been deluged with letters about my heretical

attack on Miss Addams, and now a new storm had begun over my further

delinquencies. He kindly told me that my views were a hundred years behind

the age and that they were doing injury to the paper. Against the latter

charge I had no defence, and immediately capitulated. To cut a

disagreeable tale short, I anticipated his purpose and offered to make way

for some man who would better harmonise with the benevolent policy of the

paper. The first of the month comes in four days, and then I shall be

thrown once again on my own resources. The shock, though expected, is a

little disconcerting; for at times a man grows weary and discouraged in

fighting against the perpetual buffeting of the current. But most of all I

am wondering how my independence will affect the hopes that were beginning

to colour my dreams. Dear Jessica, you will not forsake me now; you will

put away your perversity and love me simply and unreservedly? There are

difficulties before me, I know; but I am not afraid if only my heart is at

peace. I am free, and if there is any power in my brain, any skill in my

right hand, I will make such a pother that the world shall hear me. I will

not die till I am heard. And so I ask you to help-me. With your love I

shall be made bold, and no opposition and no repeated reverses shall

trouble me. And in the end your happiness is in my making.

Indeed, your box of little things for Jack made Olympian merriment in

Newspaper Row, for several men were in my office when I opened it. Jack is

ten years old, small for his age, but quietly precocious. I cannot write

more of him now. Address your next letter not to the office but to----;

and when I open that letter will it bring me joy or grief? Your joy may

cast a ruddy light on my path, but nothing that you can say will shake me

in my firm resolve. No sorrow shall hinder me, but, oh, happy Heart! I,

too, long for happiness.

XXVIII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

KIND SIR:

Which do you think requires the more grace in a woman, to hold out against

a dear enemy or to yield? My own experience teaches me that there is more

facility in resistance. Acting thus I have always felt in accord with

natural instincts, and there is a barbaric sense of security in following

them.... Yet I have only one thing to tell you in reply to your "so many."

Can you guess what it is? Already I think the birds know it. I have so far

departed from my natural order of perversity and self-protection that they

feel it, and twitter together when I pass by. I think they look down upon

me now with high-feathered contempt. Could anything be more mortifying?

Do not laugh, Philip! You have behaved little better than a robber in this

matter. I have lost to you, but the game was not fair; dear mendicant, you

played with a card up your sleeve! All my life I have planned to outwit

predestination. I have ignored Sabbath-day doctrines and faith-binding

dogmas to this end. I could even have held out indefinitely against your

"foreknowledge," but when you come, heralded by an unexpected misfortune,

asking "peace" of me that you may meet your own difficulties with a

steadier courage, I find you invincible. It is as if you had suddenly

slipped through the door of my heart and left will, betrayed, on guard

outside. I have no defence in my nature against your plea. The diplomacy

of your need takes me unawares, and, no matter how I fear the future, now

I am bound to add myself to you in love and hope. The prospect is terrible

and sweet. Already it has made me a stranger in my father's house, a

foreigner among the trees, and a wakeful, frightened mystery to myself. I

am full of tears and secresy. I am no longer Jessica, the wind-souled

dryad of the forest, but merely a woman in definition, facing a new world

of pain and joy. Oh, my beloved! you have taken all that I have, all that

I am! Henceforth I shall be only a part of you,--a little hyperbole of

domesticity always following after, or advancing to meet you.... Dear gods

of the world, defend me from such a fate! ... After all, I cannot admit

the "one thing." I cannot submit to this annihilation, this absorption of

character and personality. If you take me, you do so at your own risk, I

will not promise "peace," but confusion rather. But if you get me, you

must take me. Yet, if you come to Morningtown after me, I will deny my

love, not out of perversity, but out of fear. The sight of you is a signal

for me to take refuge upon my tallest bough. And I can no more come down

to you than a young lady robin could fly into your pocket. It is all very

well for you to exhort me to love you "simply and unreservedly,"--I do.

Nothing could be simpler, more elemental, than my love is; and do I

reserve a single thought of it from you? But I am not conventional enough

in heart or training to surrender. My genius for you does not extend so

far. To lose myself does not seem to me wise or logical, however

scriptural or legal the practice is. The truth is, I cannot agree to be

taken, any more than the little petticoated planet above your head can

kick off her diadem of light. I do not know what you will do about it,

because it is not my business to know these things. All I am sure of is

that I love you, and that I belong to you if only you can get my

extradition papers from Nature herself.

Meanwhile I have ventured to prepare my father's mind for a new idea. As

we sat before the library fire this evening, each employed according to

his calling, he with Fletcher's _Appeal_ and I with my sewing, I asked the

usual introductory question to our conversations. And it is always the

signal for him to raise his shield of orthodoxy; for it has long been my

habit to creep around the corner of my private opinion and tease him with

what he is pleased to term "the most blasphemous speculations." Therefore

when I said, "Father, I wish to ask you a question," he looked up with the

guarded eye of a man who expects an assault from an unscrupulous

antagonist.

"Well, my daughter, ask."

"Which would you advise me to marry, father, a humanitarian whose highest

law is the material welfare of his kind, or an ascetic whose spirituality

is something more and something less than scriptural?"

"Neither, Jessica; if you must marry, choose a man who believes in the

divinity of Christ and lives somewhere within the limits of the Ten

Commandments!"--Heavens! think of bondage with a man who is bounded upon

the north, east, south, and west of his soul by laws enacted to discipline

the Israelites in the Wilderness! In that case, I should insist upon a

bridal trip to Canaan, with the hope of reaching the Promised Land as a

widow.

And this reminds me to ask you what manner of man you are yourself. Do you

reflect that we have seen each other only twice? and both times you were

on guard, once as an editor, and once as a lover. Even your face has faded

to a mere shadow, and, if you persist in your petulant obstinacy about the

picture[3], is like to vanish clean away into nothing. Only your

encompassing eyes peer at me with solemn expostulation out of the

shimmering form I conjure up and call my lover. Is it quite fair, Philip?

And as for your character, my hope is that, in spite of your mental pose

as a sage, you have an unreasonable disposition, a chaotic temper. A long

term of years with a serene, gentle-spirited man would be unbearable to

me. Rather than prolong the futility of existence with one I could not

provoke, even enrage, I should commit suicide. My own disposition is so

equally divided between perversity and repentance that I could not endure

the placidity, the ennui, of a level turnpike existence.

And now isn't it an evidence of your high-minded heartlessness, that in

the same letter where you sue for love you also introduce a philosophical

discussion and show even more heat in maintaining it than you do in your

amorous petition? Why I cannot take warning and fly to the ends of my

earth away from you now while there is yet time, is a mystery to me!

And so you expect to make such a pother in your opposition to the spirit

of the times that all the world will hear you. Dear Master, I doubt if you

will! Your bells ring too high up. The angels in heaven may hear you, but

men are not listening in that direction. I did not reply to your

contention against Lyman Abbott, because it is a far cry from you to me on

this subject. In consciousness we are at opposite ends of a great problem,

and I think the normal man walks somewhere between. Besides, I am not sure

that I understand your position; I am not familiar with the starry

highways of your mind. Still, in a general way it has always seemed to me

that material things are, after all, "counters which represent spiritual

realities." And I take comfort in the fact that it must require us all to

work out the Great Plan,--humanitarian, sage, pilgrim, ascetic, even the

butcher and candlestick maker. And while we do not know it, really we are

working together for one end hidden now in the divine economy of far-off

destiny and justice.... To me the wonder of wonders is that I may some day

light a little taper in your upper chamber myself, and kneel together with

you before the same window to worship. Only, dear Heart, please get your

deity named before I come!

P.S.--As to my spelling, that is a coquettish licence I take with the

genealogy of words. And you may tell your proofreader that the letter _r_

has never been popular in the South since the war. There is hauteur in my

omission of it, and it is a fact that we can express ourselves with far

more vigour without _g_'s or _r_'s than you of the North can with them.

For expression with us is not scholastic, but temperamental! Where is

Jack?

XXIX

PHILIP TO JESSICA

KIND MADAM:

Yes, a little more than kind, dear Jessica, for you have put into my grasp

the flower of perfect delight, and "my hand retains a little breath of

sweet." You have opened a window into my heart and poured through it the

warmth and golden glory of your own sunlight. I am filled with a

joyousness of a new spring--and yet there is something in your letter that

makes me a little sad. You express so frankly that reserve of resentment,

even of bitterness, which always, I think, abides with a woman in all the

sweetness of her love, but which with most women never comes to entire

consciousness. Listen, dear Heart, while I talk to you of yourself and

myself, until we comprehend each other better. It is so much easier for me

to understand you than for you to understand me, because a woman's nature

is single, whereas a man's is double, and in this duality lies all the

reason of that enmity of the sexes which draws us together yet still holds

us asunder.

You complain of my letter because I argue a philosophical proposition in

it while pleading for love. Do you not know that this is man's way? And I

would not try to deceive you: this philosophical proposition, which seems

to you almost a matter of indifference, is more to me than everything else

in the world. For it I could surrender all my heart's hope; for it I could

sacrifice my own person; even, if the choice were necessary, which cannot

be, I might sacrifice you. There is this duality in man's nature. The

ambition of his intellect, the passion, it may be, to force upon the world

some vision of his imagination or some theorem of his brain, works in him

side by side with his personal being, and the two are never quite fused.

Can you not recall a score of examples in history of men who have led this

dual existence? You reviewed for me Bismarck's Love Letters and were

yourself struck by this sharp contrast between the iron determination of

the man in public affairs and the softness and sweetness of his domestic

life. That is but one case in point of the eternal dualism in masculine

nature which a woman can never comprehend, and which always, if it

confronts her nakedly, she resents. For a woman is not so. There exists no

such gap in her between her heart and brain, between her outer and inner

life. And the consequence shows itself in many ways. She is less efficient

in the world and is never a creator or impresser of new ideas; but, on the

other hand, her character possesses a certain unity that is the wonder of

all men who observe. She calls the man selfish and is bitter against him

at times, but her accusation is wrong. It is not selfishness which leads a

man if needs be to cut off his own personal desires while sacrificing

another; it is the power in him which impels the world into new courses. A

man's virtues are aggressive and turned toward outer conquest and may have

little relation to his own heart. But a woman's virtues are bound up with

every impulse of her personal being; they work out in her a loveliness and

unity of character which make the man appear beside her coarse and

unmoral. Men of vicious private life have more than once been benefactors

of the human race; I think that never happened in the case of a woman.

And because of this harmony, this unconsciousness in woman's virtue, a

man's love of woman takes on a form of idealisation which a woman never

understands and indeed often resents. What in him is something removed

from himself, something which he analyses and governs and manipulates, is

in the woman beloved an integral part of her character. Virtue seems in

her to become personified and he calls her by strange names. For this

reason men who make language tend always to give to abstract qualities the

feminine gender, as you must have observed in Latin and might observe in a

score of other tongues. For this reason, too, a man's love of woman

assumes such form of worship as Dante paid to Beatrice or Petrarch to

Laura. It would be grotesque for a woman to love in this way, for virtue

is not a man's character, but a faculty of his character. And so is it

strange that I should approach you asking for love that my soul may have

peace? It cannot enter into my comprehension that such a cry should come

from you to me. All that I strive to accomplish in the world, all that I

gird myself to battle for, the ideals that I would lay down my life that

men may behold and cherish,--is it not now all gathered up in the beauty

and serenity of your own person? What I labour to express in words is

already yours in inner possession. If I ask you for peace, it is not

selfishness, dear girl; it is prayer. If you should come to me begging for

peace, I should be filled with amazement; for I myself have it not. What I

can give is love's unwearied tenderness and love's unceasing homage to the

beauty of your body and your soul. More than that, I shall give you in the

end the crown of the world's honour. Without you I may accomplish the task

laid upon me, but only with heaviness of soul and abnegation of all that

my heart craves. I was reading in an old drama last night until I came to

these words, and then I set the book aside:

Once a young lark

Sat on thy hand, and gazing on thine eyes

Mounted and sung, thinking them moving skies.

In that sweet hyperbole I seemed to read a transcript of your beauty. If I

am selfish, beloved, all love is selfishness.

Dear girl, it seems that always I must woo you in metaphysics and express

my ardour in theorems. But have I not made myself understood? "Man's love

is of man's life a thing apart," as a thousand women have quoted: and it

is true. But do you not see that even for this reason his love swells into

a passionate idolatry of the woman who knows no such cleavage in her soul.

Try us with sacrifices. I could throw away every earthly good to bestow on

you a year of happiness--only not my philosophic proposition, as you

sarcastically call it. That is greater than I and greater than you--pray

heaven it do not clash with the promise of our peace. Virgil, I think,

meant to exhibit such a tragic conflict in his tale of AEneas and Dido,

only poetwise the inner impulse which worked within AEneas he expressed

dramatically as a messenger from the gods. It shows but little

understanding of the poem or of human nature to censure AEneas as a cold

egotist. Did he not sail away carrying anguish in his heart, _multa

gemens_? For him there was destined toil and warfare, for Dido only terror

and death. The tragedy fell hardest upon the woman, for so the Fates have

ordered.

But why do I write such grim reflections? There is no tragedy, no

separation, for us, but a great wonder of happiness:

The treasures of the deep are not so precious

As are the concealed comforts of a man

Locked up in woman's love.

All the marvellous words of the poets rush into my brain when I think of

this new blessing. Yes, I have acted a robber's part, sweet Jessica, and

he who ravished that great jewel from the Indian idol never carried away

so large a draft on the world's happiness as this that I have stolen. I

cannot be repentant while this golden glow is upon me; later I shall begin

to question my own worthiness.

I cannot now tell you one half that is in my mind to write, or answer one

half the questions in your letter. Jack is living with me just at present,

but of him I will speak next time. I have planned to change my abode, but

of that too next time. And I would not attempt to give a name to the deity

I serve in a postscript, as it were. Dear Heart, only let your love add a

little to your happiness as it has added so much to mine; and trust me.--I

am sending a letter to your father, the contents of which you might

imagine even if he should not show it to you.

XXX

JESSICA TO PHILIP

WRITTEN BEFORE THE RECEIPT OF THE PRECEDING LETTER

MY BELOVED:

Last night, I dreamed myself away to you. I walked beside you, a little

wraith of love, through the silent night streets of your great city,--but

you did not know me. There was no sky above us, only a hollow blackness,

and the snow lay new and white upon the pavements; but I wore green leaves

in my hair and a red Southern rose on my breast to remind you of a brown

forest maid and summer-time far away--and you would not see me! I faced

you in gay mockery and swept a bow, but the blue silence in your eyes

terrified me. I held out my hands beseechingly, touched my cheek to yours,

and you did not feel the pressure. Then I slipped down upon the snow and

wept, and you did not hear me.

We were both "in the spirit," I think. Only, dear Love, when I am in the

spirit, all my thoughts are of you; but though I looked far and near, I

could not find in all your regions one little thought of poor Jessica. All

was misty and dim within your portals. _Your_ thoughts were vague ancient

shapes that wandered past me like Brahmin ghosts. And not one gallant

memory of Jessica legended upon those inner walls of yours!

Dear, I cannot escape now, my heart _will_ not come back to me; and since

it is too late I will not complain. But for a little while I must tell you

these things and pray for your kind comfort, till I shall have become

accustomed to your attic moods and exaltations.

Do you recall the woman I told you of last summer, whose sorrow-smitten

face in the church terrified me so? Grief became credible to me as I gazed

at her. And could it have been, do you think, a message foretold to me of

this magic future, full of intangible fears, wherein I am to live with

you?

XXXI

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Love is a mystic worker of miracles, O my sweet visionary! for on that

very day when you dreamed yourself away to me I beheld you suddenly

standing before me, so life-like and appearing so wistfully beautiful that

I reached out my hand to touch you--but grasped only the impalpable air.

All day and late into the night I had been reading and reflecting, seeking

in the ways of thought some word of comfort for the human heart, until at

last my consciousness became confused. It often happens thus. So real is

this search for some truth outside of me, that it seems as if my soul were

a thing apart from me, a thing which left me to go alone on its dim and

perilous way. I behold it as it were a shadow floating away from me out

into that abyss of shadows which are the thoughts of many men long dead.

And on this occasion the silence into which the Searcher went forth was

vaster and more obscure than ever before, filled with unfathomable

darkness as a clear night might look wherein no moon or stars appeared,

and so lonely "that God himself scarce seemed to be there."

Then, as often when this mood comes upon me, I went out to walk under the

hard flaring lights and amid the streaming crowds of Broadway, in order to

bring back the sense of mortal illusion and unite myself once more to

human existence. The people were pouring from the theatres, and I sought

the densest throng. But still I could not awaken in myself the illusion of

life. And then suddenly, without warning, there in the noisy brawl of the

street, I beheld you standing before me, looking into my face and smiling.

You wore a burning Southern rose upon your breast and were more wondrously

and delicately fair than the dream of poets. And there was a smile upon

your lips as if to say: "Dear Philip, thou hast put away the pleasures and

loveliness of this world as they had been a snaring web of illusion; yet I

do but look upon thee, and forthwith thou art pierced with love and know

that in this scorned desire of beauty dwells the great reality." I reached

out my hand to touch the rose against your heart, but the vision was gone,

and all about me was only the tumultuous mockery of the street.

Sweetheart, you have smitten me with remorse. Shall I take from you only

happiness, and give in return only this spectral dread? Ah, you shall

learn that I am very real, very earthly, capable of love and tenderness

and daily duties and quiet human sympathies! I told you of the dualism

into which my life, into which, indeed, every man's life, is cast; why

will you persist in clinging to that part which is cold and inhuman

instead of seizing upon that which is warm and very near by? I would not

take you with me into those bleak ways where always there is fear lest our

personality be swallowed up in the dark impersonal abyss. I would love you

as a man loves a woman and cleaves to her. Nay, more, I perceive dimly in

that love a strange reconcilement wherein the dual forces of my nature

shall be made one, wherein truth and beauty shall blend together in a

kiss, and there shall be no more seeking in obscurity, but only peace.

When the vision faded from me on Broadway, I turned back to my home, and

there, before the dawn came, tried to write out in words one thought of

the many that thronged upon me. I have almost forgotten the art of making

rhymes if ever I knew it.

A RECONCILIATION

All beauteous things the world's allurement knows:

Starred Venus, when she droops on Tyrian couch

While Evening draws her dusky curtains close,

Or pearled from morning bath she seems to crouch;

In bleak November one strayed violet;

The rathe spring-beauty scattered wide like snow;

The opal in a cirque of diamonds set;

Rare silken gowns that rustle as they flow;

The dumb thrush brooding in her lilac hedge;

The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight;

A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge;

The sunrise flaming on an Alpine height;--

All these I've seen, yet never learned, till now

In thy sweet smiling, to accord my vow

Austere of truth with beauty's charmed delight.

XXXII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIX

MY DEAR PHILIP:

You are a magician rather than a lover. And no lover, I think, was ever so

subtle at reasoning. At least you do not act the part as I supposed it was

played. A lover, I thought, was one who stood at the door of a woman's

heart and serenaded till she crept out upon her little balcony of sighs

and kissed her hand to him, or shed a tokening bloom upon his upturned

countenance. So far as I could imagine, he was prehistoric in the

simplicity of his methods. Two things I never suspected: that love is the

kind of romantic exegesis you represent it to be, or that every lover,

psychically, is a sort of twin phenomenon--that he is _two_ men instead of

one! And after he is married, I suppose he will be a domestic _trinity_,

but with his godhead concerned with the affairs of the world at large. I

am awed by the revelation; still, it excuses much in my conduct that I had

before felt was reprehensible; for I have scarcely faced my own reflection

in the glass since my ignominious capitulation. Something within charged

treachery against poor Jessica. But if there are _two_ of you, and only

_one_ of me, that fact gives a new and honourable complexion to my part in

the transaction.

However, the way you have multiplied yourself and doubled forces upon me

may be good masculine tactics, but I am sure it is an unparliamentary

advantage you have taken. For you have not only posed as a lover, but with

the cunning words of a logician you prove what seemed wrong to be really a

sublime right; and what _I_ charged as selfishness, _you_ call "a prayer."

I am confused by your argument; it seems incontestable. But do you know,

my Philip, that a woman's convictions are never reached by a mere

argument? For they are hidden in her heart, not in her little bias-fold

mind. And so, in spite of your sweet reasoning with me, and the assumption

you make of omniscience concerning me, my convictions remain. Only, now, I

do not know whether I cherish them against you or against the God who made

me simple and you double.

But granting all you say to be true, that every man has a personal life

and at the same time a universal life energy as well, that there is in him

a little domestic fortress of love, and a battle power of life

apart,--admitting all this, how do you reconcile justice with the fact

that you frankly offer only half of your duality for all of Jessica? Have

you never suspected that she also has fair kingdoms of thought apart from

your science of her? My Prophet, it is you who have discovered them to me!

Love has added a sweet Canaan to my little hemisphere. I have heard

invisible birds singing, I have trysted with spirits of the air since I

knew you. And I have felt the pangs of a consciousness in me so new and so

tender, that I am no longer merely the maid you know, but, dear Master, I

am some one else, near and kin to you as life and spirit are kin! What is

this strange white space in my soul that love has made, so real, yet so

holy that I dare not myself lift the veil of consciousness before it? And

all I know is that I shall meet you there finally heart to heart!--Philip,

kiss me! For I am a frightened white-winged stranger in my own new heavens

and new earth. I am no longer as you imagine, simply one, but I have a

foreign power of life and death in me, and the fact terrifies me.

You declare that there is a difference and a distance between a man's love

and a man's mind which account for his dual nature. There is also an

intelligence of the heart, more astute, more vital, which divides woman's

nature also between the abandon of love and the resentment of

understanding. We know, and we do not know, and we _feel_. What we know is

of little consequence, what we feel is written upon the faces of each

succeeding generation. But what we do _not_ know constitutes that element

of mystery in us that makes us also dual. For we feel and suspect further

than we can understand. Thus, your faculty for projecting yourself in

spirit further than I can follow, excites in me a terror of loneliness

that sharpens into resentment. I am widowed by the loss of the higher half

of your entity. Can you not see, Philip, it is not your views I combat,

your theory about humanitarianism and all that? They are but the

geometrical figures of thought in your mind; and I have no wish to disturb

your "philosophic proposition." The point is, I love that in you more than

I love the lover. And the passion with which you cling to it as something

apart from our relationship offends me, excites forebodings. Tell me, are

"philosophic propositions" alien to love? And after all do you think you

are the only one who may claim them? This is a secret,--I have a little

diagram of feminine wisdom hid away from you somewhere, founded upon the

wit of love. And we shall see which lasts the longer, your proposition or

my understanding!

But I must not forget to speak of a matter much more practical just now.

You mentioned the letter that you sent to father,--"The contents you might

imagine even if he did not show it to you." Well, he did not show it to

me, but from the effect it produced upon him I am obliged to infer that it

contained the most iniquitous blasphemies. Philip, I do hope you are not

subject to fits of "righteous indignation!" I could welcome a season of

secular rage in a man as I could a fierce wind in sultry weather, but this

kind of fury that cloaks itself in the guise of outraged piety is very

trying. No sooner did father read your letter than he strode in upon me

like a grey-bearded firebrand. The offending letter was crushed in his

hand, and his glasses were akimbo on his nose, the way they always are

when he is perturbed. I spare you the details, but from the nature of his

questions you might have thought he was examining you through me for a

licence to preach. I did not try to deceive him in regard to your views,

but my own impression of them is so nebulous that the very vagueness of my

replies increased his alarm. Nor did I protest at the abuse he heaped upon

your absent head. For I know how wickedly and unscrupulously you acted in

the felony of my love, and there was a certain humorous satisfaction in

hearing father give a "philosophic proposition" to your criminality. My

only prayer was that he might not ask me if I loved you. Philip, I would

rather live on bread and water a week than confess it to any living man

besides yourself. But father has dwelt too long outside the realm of

romance to ask that very natural question. Finally I protested feebly:

"But how can it vitally affect a woman's happiness whether or not her

husband accepts the doctrine of repentance just as you do? Can he not love

and cherish his wife even if he does question the veracity of Jonah's

whaling experience?" But when I looked up and saw his face, I was ashamed,

and ran and kissed him, and straightened his glasses so that he could see

me with both eyes. But, dear Heart, his eyes were too full of tears to

fire upon me. And as I sat there upon the arm of his chair, twisting his

sacred beard, this is what he told me. When my mother died, he said, and

left me a little puckered pink mite in his arms, he had solemnly dedicated

me to God. And he declared, moreover, that he could not be faithless to

his vow by giving me in marriage to an infidel. Being an infidel, Philip,

is much worse than being a plain heathen; an infidel is a heathen raised

to the sixteenth power of iniquity! Now I rarely quote Scripture, for I

have too much guile in me to justify the liberty, but I could not refrain

from mentioning Abraham's dilemma, it seemed so appropriate to the

occasion,--how when he was about to offer up Isaac, he saw a little

he-goat suggestively nearby fastened among the thorns; and I suggested

that instead of sacrificing me he should take the widow Smith's little

Johnnie, who shows even at this early Sabbath-school age a pharisaical

aptitude for piety. I pointed out that in the sight of heaven one soul is

as worthy, as acceptable, as another. Besides, did not Isaac become a

righteous man, even if he was not offered up and did live in this world of

temptations an unconscionably long time? But father was not to be reasoned

with or comforted. And yesterday, Sunday, he preached impressively from

the text, "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?

"Of course _you_ are the heathen, Philip, and of course _I_ am the "vain

thing." But that is not father's idea. The vain thing you imagine is that

he will give his consent to our marriage! Well, you may settle it between

you! All I know is that now I am predestined, but not in the dedicated

deaconess direction!

JESSICA, THE BRAVE.

P.S.--What do you think, _our_ little forest is for sale. And oh, Philip,

if some vandal buys my dear trees and cuts them down, my very life will

die of grief! They are my brothers. And if a man built a house there and

asked me to marry him, I would, if he were as ugly as old Jeremiah! (I

suppose all the prophets were like this, their writings produce that

impression!) And my father would consent, even if the bridegroom were a

heathen instead of a prophet. For he would be obliged to attend religious

services at Morningtown, and father does not believe any man can long

remain under the drippings of his sanctuary without being forgiven. And I

do not either. God would have mercy upon him somehow!

XXXIII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Your letter, dearest Jessica, and your father's came by the same post, and

the sensation they gave me was as if some moral confusion had befallen the

elements and summer were mingled with winter in the same sky. Not that his

letter was anything but kind and dignified, but it seemed to remove you

and your life so far away from me. I confess I had some fears that he

might insist on the little we have seen or, as the world judges, know of

each other; it had not occurred to me that my "infidelity" would block my

path to happiness--so little do the people I commonly meet reck of that

matter. I have been accusing the world all along of indifference to the

spirit and to theology, and now, by a sort of poetical irony, I am blocked

in my progress toward happiness by meeting one who adheres to an old-world

belief in these things. The burden of his reply was in these words: "I

cannot conceive that my daughter should give her heart to a man who was

not strong in the faith in which she has herself been nurtured. I would

gladly be otherwise convinced, but from all I can learn you are of those

who trust rather in the pride of intellect than in the humility of

Christian faith. "Why, my fair Jesuit, have you concealed your love as

well as this! I think no one could live in the same house with me without

hearing the bird that sings in my breast. You must tell your father the

whole truth.

Meanwhile I will write to him as best I can, but the real debate I must

leave until I come to Morningtown. And how shall I persuade him that I

have faith or that my faith is in any way an equivalent for his belief in

the Christian dogma? Will he listen to me if I say that a man may believe

the whole catechism and yet have no faith? Mankind, as I regard them, are

divided into two pretty distinct classes: those to whom the visible world

is real and the invisible world unreal or at best a shadow of the visible,

and those to whom this visible realm with all its life is mere illusion

whereas the spirit alone is the eternal reality. Faith is just this

perception of the illusion enwrapping all these phenomena that to those

without faith seem so real; faith is the voluntary turning away of the

spirit from this illusion toward the infinite reality. It is because I

find among the men of to-day no perception of this illusion that I deny

the existence of faith in the world. It is because men have utterly lost

the sense of this illusion that religion has descended into this Simony of

the humanitarians. How shall I tell your father this? I think we should do

better to discuss household economy than religion.

Just now I am forcibly detained in New York by a number of petty duties,

but in a few days I shall set forth on my second pilgrimage to

Morningtown. Shall I have any wit to persuade your father that my

"infidelity" is not the unpardonable sin, or that my love for you is

sufficient to cover even that sin and a host of others? And how will

Jessica meet me? She will not look now, I trust, for that cloven hoof

which I never had and those ass's ears which, alas! I did flourish so

portentously. Why, Jessica, according to your own words you will have a

strange double lover to greet, and I think it would be mathematically

correct if you gave two kisses in return for every one. It will be a new

rendering of Catullus's _Da Basia_.

And so your little forest is for sale. Could I buy that faerie land,

sweetheart, and build therein a hidden house and over its threshold carry

a sweet bride! Ah, you have rewritten the sacred story of Eden. Not for

the love of woman should I be driven from the happy garden, but brought by

woman's grace from the desert into the circle of perfect Paradise.

Together we should hearken to the singing of birds; together, we should

bend over the bruised flowers and look up into the green majesty of the

trees; and sometimes, it might be, as we walked together hand in hand in

the cool of the evening,--sometimes, it might be, we should hear the voice

of our own happiness speaking to us from the shadows and deem that it was

God. May angels and ministers of grace enfold you in their mercy for this

dream of rapture you have given me! It shall feed my imagination in dreams

until I come to you and learn in your arms the more "sober certainty of

waking bliss."

Yet, withal, would you be willing to forego your "brothers," as you call

the trees, and this vision of hidden peace? Would it pain you to leave

them and come with me into this great solitude of people which we call New

York? How in that idyllic retreat should I keep my heart and mind on the

stern purpose I have set before me? There, indeed, the world and all the

concerns of mankind would sink so far from my care, would fade into the

mist of such utter illusion, that I know not how I could write with

seriousness about them. I need not the happiness of love's isolation, but

the rude contact of affairs, yet with love's encouragement, to hold me

within practical ideas. So it seems to me now, but I would not mar the

beauty of your life. Of this and many more things we will talk together

when I come.

I have given up my old comfortable quarters in the----and have taken a

couple of cheap rooms here at----. For some months I shall not be writing

for money and I wished not to eat unnecessarily into my small savings. One

room is a mere closet where I sleep, the other is pretty large, but still

crowded immoderately with my books. I am hard at work on a book I have had

in mind for several years,--the history and significance of

humanitarianism. I need not tell you what the gist of that _magnum opus_

is to be, and, dear sceptic, trust me it will be put into such a form as

to stir up a pother whether with or without ultimate results. I have

learned enough from the despised trade of journalism to manage that. When

I return from Morningtown I shall give myself up utterly to composition.

Two or three months ought to suffice for the work, for the material is

already well in hand; and at the end of that time my pen shall turn to

making money again. I have no anxiety about gaining a modest income--and

can you imagine what that means to you and me?

I had thought to send our goblin boy into the country as you bade me, but

for a while I am keeping him here. He sleeps in a cot beside me, and in

the day, when not at school or crouching in sphinxlike silence on the

curbstone, he sits in a great chair by the window. Often when I look up

from my book his eyes are fixed on me with a kind of mute appealing

wonder. Somehow I could not let him go. He seems a link between us in our

separation; and while my thoughts are set upon rebuking the errors of

humanitarianism it will be well to have this object of human pity before

my eyes.

I wonder if you comprehend what a strange wistful letter you have written.

You are no longer merely the maid I knew, and my ways of thought excite in

you a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment--so you say. Once

more, dear girl, we will talk of all this when I come. Until that happy

day, wait, and fortify your love with trust.

XXXIV

JESSICA TO PHILIP

I have a number of terms, my Philip, with which I might begin this letter,

but I have not yet the courage to call you by such dear names beyond the

whispering gallery of my own heart.

And you wonder how I have concealed my romantic deflections from father.

Indeed, I am sure he has noticed a heavenly-mindedness in me for some time

past; but out of the sanctity of his own heart he probably attributed this

improvement to the chastening effects of a particularly gloomy course of

religious reading that he has insisted upon my undertaking this winter.

And, after all, father is not so far wrong as to my spiritual state, for

when love becomes a woman's vocation, she carries blessings in her eyes

and all her moods tiptoe reverently like young novices who follow one

another down a cathedral aisle. This life of the heart becomes her piety,

I think, and the highest form of religion of which she is capable. Jessica

begins to magnify herself, you see! A kingdom of heaven has been set up

within me, dear creator, and naturally I feel this extension of my

boundaries.

But do not expect me to tell father "the whole truth,"--how you first

fascinated me with editorial magnanimity, then baited me with compliments,

and later with deepest confidences, and finally slipped into my Arcadia

disguised as a philosopher, but, when you had got entire possession,

declared yourself a victorious lover! I wonder that you can contemplate

the record you have made in this matter without blushing!

As for your "infidelity," and what you call your "faith," I think father

will denounce them both as blasphemous. Religion to father is something

more than "the poetry he believes in." It has the definition of

experience, miracles, and a whole body of spiritual phenomena quite as

real to him as your upper-chamber existence is to you. Only father has

this advantage of you, he has a real Divinity, with all the necessary

attributes of a man's God. His "voice of happiness" speaks to him from the

stars, and he does not call it an echo, as you do, of a fair voice within

your own heart. Father gets his salvation from the outside of his warring

elements; you speak to your own seas, "Peace be still!" As for me, between

you, I stand winking at Heaven; and I say: "It is evident that neither of

them understands this mystery of life; I will not try to comprehend. I

will be good when I can, and diplomatic when I must, and leave the rest to

heaven and earth and nature." Meanwhile, I advise you not to quote your

pagan authorities to father. If the very worst comes, you may say that you

have almost scriptural proof of my affections,--and mind you say

affections, father could not bear the romantic inflection of such a term

as love. It sounds too secular, carnal, to him.

You ask me if I will consent to abandon such a life as our forest offers

and come with you into "this great solitude of people" which you call New

York. Philip, when a man holds a starling in his hand he does not ask the

bird whether it will stay here or wing yonder, but he carries it with him

where he will; and the starling sings, no less in one place than in

another, because its nature is to sing. But, I think, dear Master, the

motive which prompts the song in the cage is not the same as the impulse

to sing in the forest. So it is with me. If we live here among the trees,

where their green waves make a summer sea high in the heavens above our

heads, I could be as content as any bird is. But if you make our home in

the city, or in the midst of a desert for that matter, I could not

withhold one thought from your happiness, for love has transformed me,

adapted life itself to a new purpose. I have been "called," and I have no

will to resist, because my heart tells me there is goodness in the

purpose, a little necklace of womanly virtues for me. When I think of

pain, and sorrow, my eyes are holden, I can see only the fair form of love

sanctified, and I can hear only your voice calling me to fulfil a destiny

which you yourself do not understand. And as all these things approach,

beloved, father's God is more to me than your fine illusion. I wish for

guardian angels, I feel the need of a Virgin Mary and of all the lady

mothers in heaven to bless me.

But I have been telling you only of my inner life. Outwardly I shall ever

be capable of the most heathen manifestations. For instance, loving as I

do, how do you account for this personal animosity I feel toward you,

almost a madness of fear at the thought of your approaching visit? There

is something that has never been finished in this affair of our hearts.

Perhaps it is that really you have never kissed me. Well, I find it as

easy to write of kisses as to review a sentimental romance, but actually

there is some instinct in me stronger than mind against the fact, do you

understand? Philip, you have no idea of the depths of feminine treachery!

Did I ever intimate a willingness to do such a thing? I do not say that I

_wish_ to kiss another, but I affirm that it would be easier for me to

kiss my father's presiding elder--and heaven knows he is a didactic

monster of head and whiskers! It is not that I do not love you, but that I

do!

Do you know what will happen when you come to Morningtown? I will meet you

at the station, not as Jessica, but as the demure little home-made

daughter of the Methodist minister here; we will greet each other with

blighting formality, for there will be the station-master's wife to

observe us; we will walk home along the main street, and we will speak of

the most trivial or useful subjects, of the weather in New York, and of

Jack more particularly. Out of sheer bravado I will scan your face now and

then, but my eyes will not rest there long enough to fall before yours

discomfited. When we reach the house father will greet you from his Sinai

elevation, with pretty much the same holy-man courtesy Moses would have

showed if a heathen Canaanite had appeared to him. And while you two are

exchanging platitudes, I will escape into this room of mine, take one

glance at my mirror, and then cover my face with my hands for joy and

shame while the red waves of love mount as high as they will over it. Ah,

Philip, I shall be _so_ glad to see you, and so afraid! But you shall have

small satisfaction in either fact, for I do not aim to make it easy for

you to win what is already yours in my heart.

P.S.--So you are keeping Jack mured up with you and your _magnum opus_. No

wonder he "crouches in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone." He prefers it

to your company. You once told me that you found humanitarians difficult

to live with: I wonder what Jack thinks of mystical philosophers in the

domestic relation. It almost brings tears to my eyes. And some day in a

similar situation I may be driven to seek the cold curbstone for

companionship.

XXXV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

It seems to me as I read your letters, my sweet wife to be, that I am only

beginning to learn the richness of my fortune. And will you not, when you

write to me next time--will you not call me by one of those dear names

that you speak in the whispering gallery of your heart? I shall barely

receive more than one letter from you now before I come to see you in

person and tell over with you face to face the story of our love. Just a

few more days and I shall be free.

But for the present I want to talk to you about Jack. Indeed, I feel a

little sore on this point. It was you who proposed our adopting him, yet,

after your first words of advice, you have left me to work out the

situation quite unaided; and now I can see that you are laughing at me.

Poor Jack, he was something like a "philosophical proposition" which I had

never very thoroughly analysed. One thing, however, begins to grow

perfectly clear: my home is no place for him; he is only a shadow in my

life and needs to take on substance. Well, I thought at last I had solved

the problem--or at least that O'Meara had solved it for me; but here too I

was disappointed. Really, you must help me out of this muddle.

Do you remember the note-book of O'Meara's that I told you about? Ever

since his death I have been too busy really to look through the volume;

but day before yesterday it occurred to me that I might find some

information there about Jack's parentage, and with that end in view I

spent most of the day deciphering the smeared pages. At first I found

everything in the notes except what I wanted, but toward the end of the

book I discovered a whole group of memoranda and reflections in which the

name Tarrytown occurred again and again. I will read you the notes when I

come; without giving many events they tell in a disjointed way a little

idyllic episode in the story of his life. He, too, knew love, and was

loved. There in that village by the Hudson for a few short months he kept

the enemy at bay and was happy. And then, too soon, came the fatal

story--the only dated note in the book, I believe:

September 3d: A son was born and she has left me to care for him

alone. I had thought that happiness might endure, and this too was

illusion. I stand by the tomb and read the graven words: _Et ego in

Arcadia fui_.

And so, yesterday, on a venture I took our little goblin boy with me to

Tarrytown, and after some inquiry found that his mother's relations were

farm people living on the outskirts of the town. They proved to have been

poor but respectable people. At present only the grandfather is living

alone in the house, and he is very feeble. He was willing to assume the

care of Jack, but I cannot persuade myself to leave the child in those

trembling hands. Indeed, when it comes to the issue, I cannot quite decide

to let him go entirely from me, for is he not one of the ties that bind me

to you? I have brought him back with me to New York--which will only

increase your merriment at my expense.

Some day when you have come to live in New York--if this is to be our

home--we will go together up the river to Tarrytown, and you shall see the

land where O'Meara dreamed his dream of happiness and where your adopted

child was born.

And when we go there, I will take you to a bowered nook overhanging the

river, where I passed the afternoon reading and thinking of many things.

There together we will sit in the shadow of the trees and talk and plan

together how _our_ happiness, at least, shall be made to endure; and you

shall teach me to lose this haunting sense of illusion in the great

reality of love. And as the evening descends and twilight steals upon the

ever-flowing water, I will take you in my arms a moment, and this shall be

my vow: God do so to me and more also, if any darkness falls from my life

upon yours, until our evening, too, has come and the light of this world

passes quietly into the dream that lies beyond.

All this I thought yesterday while I sat alone and read once more the sad

record of O'Meara's ruin. He did not stay long in Tarrytown, it seems,

after his loss, but came back to New York, bringing Jack with him, in the

hope that this care might keep him from the old disgrace. Alas, and alas,

you know the end! Sometimes apparently the vision of those peaceful days

returned to him with piercing sweetness. Above all he associated them--so

one may surmise from a number of memoranda--with a new meaning he began to

discover in his beloved Virgil. For, somehow, the story of the _AEneid_

became a symbol to him of the illusion of life. Especially the last

bewildered, shadowy fight of Turnus, driven by some inner frenzy to his

destruction, grew to be the tragedy of his own fall. Many verses from

those books he quotes with comments only too clear. And is there not a

touch of strange pathos in this memory of his summer joy?--

There the meaning of the _Georgics_ was opened to me as it never was

before. The stately lines of precept and the sunny pictures of the

_loetas segetes_ seemed to connect themselves with the smiling scenes

about us. The little village lay among broad farm-checkered hills,

and the garden behind my house stretched back to the brow of a deep

slope. In the cool shadows of the beech trees that edged this hill I

used to lie and read through the long summer mornings; and often I

would look up from the page, disturbed by the hoarse cawing of the

crows as they flew up from the woods or fields nearby and flapped

heavily across the valley. The effect of their flight was simple, but

laid hold on the imagination in a peculiar manner. As they flew in a

horizontal line the sloping hillside appeared to drop away beneath

them like the subsiding of a great wave. It was just the touch needed

to add a sense of mystic instability to the earth and to subtilise

the prosaic farmland into the realm of illusion. Looking at the

fields in this glorified light I first understood the language of the

poet:

_Flumina amem silvasque inglorius_,

and his pathetic envy of those

Too happy husbandmen, if but they knew

The wonders of their state!

And when wearied of this wider scene I turned to the garden itself,

still I was in Virgil's haunted world. Some distance from the house

was a group of apple trees, under whose protecting branches stood a

row of beehives; and nearby, in a tiny rustic arbor, I could sit

through many a golden hour and read, while the hum of bees returning

home with their burden of honey sounded in my ears. It was there I

learned to enjoy the _levium spectacula rerum_, as he calls the story

of his airy tribes; and there in that great quiet of nature,--so wide

and solemn that it seemed a reproach against the noisy activities of

men,--I learned what the poet meant to signify in those famous lines

with which he closes his account of the warring bees:

These mighty battles, all this tumult of the breast,

With but a little scattered earth are brought to rest.

In this way Jack's father learned the illusion of life by looking back on

his happy days. I did not mean to fill my letter with this long extract

from his note-book, nor would I end with such ill-omened words. Dear girl,

I too have learned the deception of life in other ways. Teach me, when I

come to you, the great reality. In all O'Meara's memoranda after his

return to New York I could find only a single direct allusion to the woman

he loved. It was very brief: "On this day two years ago she said I made

her happy!"

Shall I bring happiness to you when I come?

A CODICIL TO LETTER XXXIV

JESSICA TO PHILIP. WRITTEN BEFORE THE RECEIPT OF THE PRECEDING LETTER FROM

PHILIP

Think of this,--I love you, but I do not know you. I only know your heart,

your mind, that part of you which meets me in spirit like the light from

some distant star that slips across my window sill at evening. But you,

oh! Philip, I do not know _you_. You are a stranger whom I have seen only

twice in my life. Do not be angry, my beloved, I do love you; but cannot

you understand that I must get used to the idea of your being some one

very real? These are thoughts forced upon me by your approaching visit,

and so I ask a favour: Do not tell me when to expect you. If you threaten

me with the identical day of your coming, I will vanish from the face of

the earth! But if you come upon me unawares, I shall have been spared that

consciousness of _confession_ face to face involved by a deliberate

welcome. And if you come thus, I shall not have time to retire behind my

instinctive defence against you. You see that I plan in your favour, that

I wish to be unrestrainedly glad when you come.

And about the kisses, you understand of course, dear Philip, that I am

incapable of determining them really! I only contemplated the possibility

when distance made it an impossibility. Still, you cannot fail to know

that I love you, that it would even break my heart if you did not come!

For, Philip, a woman's heart is like the Scriptures, apparently full of

contradictions, but really it is the symbol of our everlasting truth, if

only you have the wisdom to understand it.

And another thing, Philip, the more I think of it, the more I am

scandalised by the way you drag that poor goblin child about. My heart

yearns for him and his solitude in the midst of your philosophies. You

have made a perfect jumping-jack of him for your lordly amusement, and it

isn't fair. Bring him with you to Morningtown. I charge you. And remember,

don't lose him or philosophise him out of existence on the way. I have

talked with father about the boy, and he is primed with religious zeal to

snatch this tender brand from your burning.

XXXVI

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Just a note, sweet lady, to bid you expect me on the afternoon train

Thursday--and is not that a long while from to-day? And please do not come

to the station. I would not have our meeting chilled by the curious eyes

of that station-master's wife; I remember the scrutiny of her gaze too

well. And as for our greeting--you have made a very pretty story out of

that, but have you not omitted Philip from the account? Is it not just

possible that he may mar all Jessica's nicely laid plans? I have a

suspicion that, in his crude masculine way, he may prefer to translate

into fact what Jessica finds so easy to contemplate in words. I feel a bit

uncertain as to how he will behave as a lover; the role is new to him, and

he may be awkward and a bit vehement.

Yes, I will bring Jack and leave him to be brooded under your kind

maternal feathers. You will love him for the pathos of his eyes and for

his quaint ways.

-----

[2] It is unnecessary to say that the spelling throughout

these letters has been corrected for the press.

[3] Alluding to a request not found in this correspondence.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Third Part

which shows how the editor again visits

Jessica in the country, and how love

is buffeted between philosophy

and religion.

XXXVII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

WRITTEN ON RETURNING FROM HIS VISIT TO MORNINGTOWN

Here I am back in my own room, in this solitude of books; and how

different is this home-coming from that other when I brought with me only

bitterness and despair!

Shall I tell you, sweetheart, some of the things I learned during my three

days in Morningtown? First of all, I discovered that you are clothed with

wonderful beauty. In a dim way I knew this before, but the full mystery of

your loveliness was not revealed to me until this third time. Can it be

that love has transformed you a little and added grace to grace, or is it

only my vision that has been purged of its earthly dulness? I could love a

homely woman whose spirit was fair, but to love one who is altogether

beautiful, in whose perfect grace I can find no spot or blemish--that is

the miracle of my blessedness. There was a strange light in your eyes that

haunts me yet. Such a light I have seen on a lonely pool when the evening

sunlight slanted upon it from over the brown hills of autumn, but nowhere

else. My soul would bathe in that pure water and be baptised into the new

faith.