THE EMBLEMS OF
FIDELITY
A Comedy in Letters
BY
JAMES LANE ALLEN
AUTHOR OF
"THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL,"
"THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC.
There is nothing so ill-bred as audible
laughter.... I am sure that since I have
had the full use of my reason nobody has
ever heard me laugh.
--Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
To
THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY
INCOMPARABLE ALLY
OF VICTORY
LIST OF CHARACTERS
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE...............Famous elderly English novelist
BEVERLEY SANDS....................Rising young American novelist
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE....Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands
GEORGE MARIGOLD............................Fashionable physician
CLAUDE MULLEN............Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of
George Marigold
RUFUS KENT.......................Long-winded president of a club
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN......Very learned, very absent-minded professor
PHILLIPS AND FAULDS.....................................Florists
BURNS AND BRUCE.........................................Florists
JUDD AND JUDD...........................................Florists
ANDY PETERS..............................................Florist
HODGE......................Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne
TILLY SNOWDEN.............Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands
POLLY BOLES..........Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle,
friend of Tilly Snowden
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN......Very devoted, very proud sensitive
daughter of Noah Chamberlain
ANNE RAEBURN..........Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne
CONTENTS
PART SECOND
PART THIRD
THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England,
May 1, 1910._
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the
outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows
with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much
of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled,
rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden.
You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact,
however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very
natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for
you probably agree with me that the writing of novels--not, of
course, the mere odious manufacture of novels--results in the making
of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that
we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not
do at all as fellow-creatures.
I shall not loiter at the threshold of this letter to fatigue your
ear with particulars regarding the several parts of your story most
enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough to say that no admirable
human being has ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears by any
such desirable procedure. In England, and I presume in the United
States, novelists have long noses for incense [poets, too, though of
course only in their inferior way]. I repeat that we English
novelists are a species of greyhound for running down on the most
distant horizon any scampering, half-terrified rabbit of a
compliment. But I freely confess that nature loaded me beyond the
tendency of being a mere greyhound. I am a veritable elephant in the
matter, being marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible proboscis
which is not only adapted to admit praise but is quite capable of
actively reaching around in every direction to procure it. Even the
greyhound cannot run forever; but an elephant, if he once possess it,
will wave such a proboscis till he dies.
There are likely to be in any very readable book a few pages which
the reader feels tempted to tear out for the contrary reason,
perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his tenderness. Some
haunting picture of the book-gallery that he would cut from the
frame. Should you be displeased by the discrimination, I shall trust
that you may be pleased nevertheless by the avowal that there is a
scene in your novel which has peculiarly ensnared my affections.
At this point I think I can see you throw down my letter with more
insight into human nature than patience with its foibles. You toss
it aside and exclaim: "What does this Englishman drive at? Why does
he not at once say what he wants?" You are right. My letter is
perhaps no better than strangers' letters commonly are: coins, one
side of which is stamped with your image and the other side with
their image, especially theirs.
I might as well, therefore, present to you my side of the coin with
the selfish image. Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, you
are the horse in an open pasture and I am the stableman who schemes
to catch you: to do this, I approach, calling to you affectionately
and shaking a bundle of oats behind which is coiled a halter. You
are thinking that if I once clutch you by the mane you will get no
oats. But, my dear sir, you have from the very first word of this
letter already been nibbling the oats. And now you are my animal!
There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday
woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands--a cool,
moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare,
beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can _see_ the ferns! I can see the
sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now,
as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade
and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They
are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock
of daffodils; for they have been collected out of England's best and
from other countries.
Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: Will you send me
the root-stocks of some of those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on
my Warwickshire fern bank?
Do not suppose that my garden is on a small scale a public park or
exhibition, made as we have created Kensington Gardens. Everything
in it is, on the contrary, enriched with some personal association.
I began it when a young man in the following way:
At that period I was much under the influence of the Barbizon
painters, and I sometimes entertained myself in the forests where
masters of that school had worked by hunting up what I supposed were
the scenes of some of Corot's masterpieces.
Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted trees as though he were
looking at enormous ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and some
rise higher than others as trees; his trees descend through the air
and are lost lower down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot ferns
for my good Warwickshire loam. Another winter Christine Nilsson was
singing at Covent Garden. I spent several evenings with her. When I
bade her good-bye, I asked her to send me some ferns from Norway in
memory of Balzac and _Seraphita_. Yet another winter, being still a
young man and he, alas! a much older one, I passed an evening in
Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in talking about his novels
and I remember quoting these lines from one of them: "It was a
splendid clear morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hung like snipe in the
clear pale azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves and grass
and glistened like silver on the spiders' webs; the moist dark earth
seemed still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the songs of
larks showered down from all over the sky."
He sat looking at me in surprised, touched silence.
"But you left out something!" I suggested, with the bumptiousness of
a beginner in letters. He laughed slightly to himself--and perhaps
more at me--as he replied: "I must have left out a great deal"--he,
fiction's greatest master of compression. After a moment he inquired
with a kind of vast patient condescension: "What is it that you
definitely missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns were growing
thereabouts." He smiled reminiscently. "So there were," he replied,
smiling reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot was," I said, "I
should travel to it for some ferns." A mystical look came into his
eyes as he muttered rather to himself than for my ear: "That spot!
Where is that spot? That spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the
whole of Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, one pain, one
passion. Sometime afterwards there reached me at home a hamper of
Russian fern-roots with Turgenieff's card.
I tell you all this as I make the request, which is the body of this
letter and, I hope, its wings, in order that you may intimately
understand. I desire the ferns not only because you have interested
me in your Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, but
because I have become interested in your art and in you. While I
read your book I believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously at
work, creating where no hand had created before; or if on its chosen
scene it found a ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality from
that ruin. But to create where no hand has created before, or to
create them again where human things lie in decay--that to me is the
true energy of literature.
I should not omit to tell you that some of our most tight-islanded,
hard-headed reviewers have been praising your work as of the best
that reaches us from America. It was one such reviewer that first
guided me to your latest book. Now I myself have written to some of
our critics and have thrown my influence in favour of your fresh,
beautiful art, which can only come from a fresh, beautiful nature.
Should you decide to bestow any notice upon this rather amazing
letter, you will bear in mind of course that there will be pounds
sterling for plants. Whatever character my deed or misdeed may later
assume, it must first and at least have the nature of a transaction
of the market-place.
So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all,
I am,
Gratefully yours,
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
_Cathedral Heights, New York,
May 12, 1910._
MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:
Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, in some modern Æsop's
Fables, read how a whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had taken
the trouble to turn entirely round to encourage a puffing young
porpoise; or of how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, had on
some fine spring day looked down and complimented a small dogwood
tree upon its size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, while
thus unreal, your letter is in its way the most encouragingly real
thing that has ever come into my life. Before I go further I should
like to say that I have read every book you have written and have
bought your books and given them away with such zeal and zest that
your American publishers should feel more interest in me than can
possibly be felt by the gentlemen who publish mine.
It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, in bad taste. A
man's praise of another may not follow upon that man's praise of him.
Our virtues have their hour. If they do not act then, they are not
like clocks which may be set forward but resemble fruits which lose
their flavour when they pass into ripeness. Still, what I have said
is honest. You may remember that I am yet moving amid life's
uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk in quietness the world's
highway of a great career. My praise could have borne little to you;
yours brings everything to me. And you must reflect also that it is
just a little easier for any Englishman to write to an American in
this way. The American could but fear that his letter might
seriously disturb the repose of a gentleman who was reclining with
his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and Shakespeare's entire bosom in
this regard, as you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in England.
It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange for the shipment of the
ferns. A good many years have passed since I lived in Kentucky and I
am no longer in close touch with people and things down there. But
without doubt the matter can be managed through correspondence and
all that I await from you now is express instructions. The ferns
described in my book are not known to me by name. I have procured
and have mailed to you along with this, lest you may not have any,
some illustrated catalogues of American ferns, Kentucky ferns
included. You have but to send me a list of those you want. With
that in hand I shall know exactly how to proceed.
You cannot possibly understand how happy I am that my work has the
approval of the English reviews, which still remain the best in the
world. To know that my Kentucky stories are liked in
England--England which, remaining true to so many great traditions,
holds fast to the classic tradition in her literature.
The putting forth of your own personal influence in my behalf is a
source of joy and pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns growing
in your garden in token of me is the most inspiring event yet to mark
my life.
I am,
Sincerely yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England,
May 22, 1910._
MY DEAR SANDS:
Your letter was brought out to me as I was hanging an old gate in a
clover-field canopied with skylarks. When I cannot make headway
against some obstruction in the development of a story, for instance,
putting the hinges of the narrative where the reader will not see any
hinges, I let the book alone and go out and do some piece of work,
surrounded by the creatures which succeed in all they undertake
through zest and joy. By the time I get back, the hinges of the book
have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence
the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we
climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it.
It is splendid news that I am to get the Kentucky ferns. Thank you
for the catalogues. A list of those I most covet is enclosed. The
cost, shipping expenses included, will not, I fear, exceed five
pounds. Of course it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but I
suppose I must restrict myself to the despicable market price.
Shamefully cheap many of the dearest things in this world are; and
what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless!
A draft will be forwarded in advance upon receipt of the American
shipper's address. Or I could send it forthwith to you. Meantime
from now on I shall be remembering with impatience how many miles it
is across the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace American
ferns travel. These will be awaited like guests whom one goes to the
gate to meet.
You do not know the names of those you describe so wonderfully! I am
glad. I abhor the names of my own. Of course, as they are bought,
memoranda must be depended upon by which to buy them. These data,
verified by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs as fern
headstones. When each fern is planted, into the soil beside it is
stuck its headstone, which, like that for a human being, tells the
name, not the nature, of what it memorialises.
Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns according to the slabs. It
is time you should know Hodge by his slab. No such being can yet be
found in the United States: your civilisation is too young. Hodge is
my British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out for every
birthday much as for any total solar eclipse of the year--with a kind
of growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday should finally, as
it passes, bowl him over for good--he announced to me with visible
relief the other day that he had successfully passed another total
natal eclipse; that he was fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight
years old. The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 and Hodge
without knowing it was beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For
Hodge is English landscape gardening in human shape. He is the
benevolent spirit of the English turf, a malign spirit to English
weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, a wheelbarrow of
spring manure, a pile of autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant
future mythology of our English rural life he will perhaps rank where
he belongs--as a luminary next in importance to the sun: a two-legged
god be-earthed in old clothes, with a stiff back, a stiff temper, the
jaw of the mastiff and the eye of a prophet.
It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would not allow anything to come
into the garden without mastering that thing. For the sake of his
own authority he must subdue as much of the Latin language as invades
his territory along with the ferns. But I think nothing comparable
to such a struggle against overwhelming odds--Hodge's brain pitted
against the Latin names of the ferns--nothing comparable to the dull
fury of that onset is to be found in the history of man unless it be
England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. England did conquer
Napoleon and finally shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and
Hodge has finally conquered the names of the ferns and shut them up
in a desolate, rocky place--his skull, his personal promontory.
Nowadays you should see him meet me in a garden path when I come down
early some morning. You should see him plant himself before me and,
taking off his cap and scratching the back of his neck with the back
of his muddy thumb, make this announcement: "The _Asplenium
filix-faemina_ put up two new shoots last night, sir. Bishop's
crooks, I believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a farmer and
my shepherd should notify me that one of the ewes had dropped twin
lambs at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: the honour of the
shoots--a questionable honour--goes to Hodge as their botanical sire!
When I receive visitors by reason of my books--and strangers do
sometimes make pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of "Black
Oaks"--if the day is pleasant, we have tea in the garden. While the
strangers drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known proboscis over
the company for any praise they may have brought along. Should this
seem adequate, I later reward them with a stroll. That is Hodge's
hour and opportunity. Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but
invariably, he steps out from some bush and takes his place behind me
as we move.
When we reach the fern bank, the visitors regularly begin to inquire:
"What is the name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to Hodge much as
a drum-major, if asked by a by-stander what the music was that the
band had just been playing, might wheel in dismay to the nearest
horn. Hodge steps forward: now comes the reward of all his toil.
"That is the _Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum_, sir." "And what is
this one?" "That is the _Polypodium elegantissimum_, mum." Then you
would understand what it sometimes means to attain scholarship
without Oxford or Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman
orator and a garden ass.
You will be wondering why I am telling you this about Hodge. For the
very particular reason that Hodge will play a part, I know not what
part, in the pleasant business that has come up between us. He looms
as the danger between me and the American ferns after the ferns shall
have arrived here. It is a fact that very few foreign ferns have
ever done well in my garden, watch over them as closely as I may:
especially those planted in more recent years. Could you believe it
possible of human nature to refuse to water a fern, to deny a little
earth to the root of a fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from
it when there was nobody near to observe the deed, to jab at it with
a sharp trowel? I shall not press the matter further, for I
instinctively turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has within
himself some incomprehensible little terrible spot and I feel that
this is Hodge's spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he will
kill what he hates, if he dares. I have been so aroused to defend
his faithful character that I have devised two pleadings: first,
Hodge is the essence of British parliaments, the sum total of British
institutions; therefore he patriotically believes that things British
should be good enough for the British--of course, their own ferns.
At other times I am rather inclined to surmise that his malice and
murderous resentment are due to his inability to take on any more
Latin, least of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt now defends
himself against any more Latin as a man with his back to the wall
fights for his life: the personal promontory will hold no more.
You have written me an irresistible letter, though frankly I made no
effort to resist it. Your praise of my books instantly endeared you
to me.
Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has already brought results so
agreeable and surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to plunge a
second time and more deeply.
Is there--how could there help being!--a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands? Mrs.
Blackthorne wishes to know. I read your letter to Mrs. Blackthorne.
Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed
with _you_. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. And Mr. and Mrs.
Blackthorne would like to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands
and, if so, whether she and you will not some time follow the ferns
and come and take possession for a while of our English garden.
You and I can go off to ourselves and discuss our "dogwoods" and
"black oaks"; and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at their tea
across the garden, can exchange copies of their highly illuminated
and privately circulated little masterpieces about their husbands.
(The husbands should always edit the masterpieces!)
Both of you, will you come?
Finally, as to your generous propaganda in behalf of my books and as
to the favourable reports which my publishers send me from time to
time in the guise of New World royalties, you may think of the
proboscis as now being leveled straight and rigid like a gun-barrel
toward the shores of the United States, whence blow gales scented
with so glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that Columbus was not
mistaken: America is turning out to be a place worth while.
Your deeply interested,
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN
_June 3._
DEAR TILLY:
Crown me with some kind of chaplet--nothing classic, nothing
sentimental, but something American and practical--say with twigs of
Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the leaves of that forest
favourite which in boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with
its inner bark--entwine me, O Tilly, with a garland of slippery elm
for the virtue of always making haste to share with you my slippery
pleasures! I write at full speed now to empty into your lap, a
wonderfully receptive lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has ever
come to me as your favourite author--and favourite young husband to
be.
The great English novelist Blackthorne, many of whose books we have
read together (whenever you listened), recently stumbled over one of
my obstructive tales; one of my awkwardly placed literary hurdles on
the world's race-course of readers. As a result of his fall he got
up, dusted himself thoroughly of his surprise, and actually
despatched to me an acknowledgment of his thanks for the happy
accident. I replied with a volley of my own thanks, with salvos of
praise for him. Now he has written again, throwing wide open his
house and his heart, both of which appear to be large and admirably
suited to entertain suitable guests.
At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart--can
you find where it is?--and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the
novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr.
Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a _Mrs._ Beverley Sands.
If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!--he
invites her, invites _us_, _Mrs._ Blackthorne invites _us_, should we
sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed
country-house in Warwickshire. If, then, our often postponed
marriage, our despairingly postponed marriage, should be arranged to
madden me and gladden the rest of mankind before next summer, we
could, with our arms around one another's necks, be conveyed by steam
and electricity on our wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance
and be there deposited, still oblivious of everything but ourselves.
Think what it would mean to you to be launched upon the rosy sea of
English social life amid the orisons and benisons of such illustrious
literary personages. Think of those lovely English lawns, raked and
rolled for centuries, and of many-coloured _fêtes_ on them; of the
national tea and the national sandwiches; of national strawberries
and clotted cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's flunkies still
flunkying and Queen Anne's fads yet fadding; of week-ends without
end--as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself growing more and more a
celebrity, as the English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers
gradually brought into public appreciation the vague potentialities,
not necessarily the bare actualities, of modest young Sands himself.
Eventually, no doubt, there would be a day for you at Sandringham
with the royal ladies. They would drive you over--I have not the
least idea how great the distance is--to drink tea at Stonehenge.
Imagine yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy English
afternoon, imagine yourself seated under a heavy black-silk English
umbrella on a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, tearing at
an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest strain and surrounded by male and
female admirers, all under heavy black-silk umbrellas--Spitalsfield,
I suppose--as Mrs. Beverley Sands.
Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign triumph, this career of
glory, comes to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, it is
inaccessible. Look upon it as in part the property that I am to
settle upon you at the time of our union--my honours. You have
already understood from me that my entire estate, both my real estate
and my unreal estate, consists of future honours. Those I have just
described are an early payment on the marriage contract--foreign
exchange!
What reply, then, in your behalf am I to send to the lofty and
benevolent Blackthornes? As matters halt between us--he also loves
who only writes and waits--I can merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that
there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists in remaining a
Miss Snowden. With this realisation of what you will lose as Miss
Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you not think it wise--and
wise you are, Tilly--any longer to persist in your persistence? You
once, in a moment of weakness, confessed to me--think of your having
a moment of weakness!--you once confessed to me, though you may deny
it now (Balzac defines woman as the angel or devil who denies
everything when it suits her), you once confessed to me that you
feared your life would be taken up with two protracted pleasures,
each of which curtailed the other: the pleasure of being engaged to
me a long time and the pleasure of being married to me a long time.
Nerve yourself to shortening the first in order to enter upon the
compensations of the second.
Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect of obliterating from the
world one whom I first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. Where
will Tilly Snowden be when only Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where
will be that wild rose in a snow bank--the rose which was truly wild,
the snow bank which was not cold (or was it?)? I think I should
easily become reconciled to your being known, say, as Madame Snowden,
so that you might still stand out in your own right and wild-rose
individuality. We could visit England as the rising American author,
Beverley Sands, and his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. Everybody
would then be asking who the mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I
should relate that she was a retired opera singer--having retired
before she advanced.
By the way, you confided to me some time ago that you were not very
well. You always _look_ well, mighty well to _me_, Tilly. Perfectly
well to _me_. Can your indisposition be imaginary? Or is it merely
fashionable? Or--is it something else? What of late has sickened me
is an idea of yours that you might sometime consult Doctor G. M.
Tilly! Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me when I think of
that charlatan's door being closed behind you as a patient of his!
Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the beautiful Blackthornes!
Your easy and your uneasy
BEVERLEY.
TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_"Slippery Elm" Apartments,
June 4._
I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown you with slippery elm--you
seem to think I keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it--if it is the
leaf you sigh for. But please do not try to crown me with a wig of
your creative hair; that is, with your literary honours.
How wonderfully the impressions of childhood disappear from memory
like breaths on a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to their
shapes if the glass be coldly breathed upon! As I read your letter,
at least as I read the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your letter,
I remembered, probably for the first time in years, a friend of my
mother's.
She had been inveigled to become the wife, that is, the legally
installed life-assistant, of an exceedingly popular minister; and
when I was a little girl, but not too little to understand--was I
ever too little to understand?--she used to slip across the street to
our house and in confidence to my mother pour out her sense of humour
at the part assigned her by the hired wedding march and evangelical
housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, always
half-whispered, confidences--for how often in life one feels guilty
when telling the truth and innocent when lying!
On this particular morning she and my mother laughed till they were
weary, while I danced round them with delight at the idea of having
even the tip of my small but very active finger in any pie that
savoured of mischief. She had been telling my mother that if, some
Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a sermon which brought
people into the church, she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If
he made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she might possibly look
out for a pair of ducks. Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be
merely a strip of worthless territory lying alongside the land of
Canaan; people simply walked over her, tramped across her, on their
way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful things to Canaan, her
husband.
That childish nonsense comes back to me strangely, and yet not
strangely as I think of your funny letter, your very, very funny
letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to me because I am not
myself but am possibly a Mrs.--well, _some_ Mrs. Sands. The English
scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it is Canaan and his strip
all over again--there on the English lawns; a great many heavy
English people are tramping heavily over me on their way to Canaan.
The fabulous tea at Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at
Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that at last choked to death
the ill-fated Tilly Snowden.
In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, then, begs that you
will thank the Blackthornes, Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for their
invitation; as best she can she thanks you; but for the present, and
for how much of the future she does not know, she prefers to remain
what is very necessary to her independence and therefore to her
happiness; and also what is quite pleasing to her ear--the wild rose
in the snow bank (cold or not cold, according to the sun).
In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true that I have more than
once postponed the date of our marriage. I have never said why;
perhaps I myself have never known just why. But at least do not
expect me to shorten the engagement in order that I may secure some
share of your literary honours. As a little girl I always despised
queens who were crowned with their husbands. It seemed to me that
the queen was crowned with what was left over and was merely allowed
to sit on the corner of the throne as the poor connection.
P.S.--Still, I _would_ like to go to England. I mean, of course, I
wish _we_ could go on our wedding journey! If I got ready, could I
rely upon _you_? I have always wished to visit England without being
debarred from its social life. Seriously, the invitation of the
Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity and an advantage not to
be thrown away. Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am wise!
It is true that I have not been feeling very well. And it is true
that I have consulted Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. That
dreaded door has closed behind me! I have been alone with him! The
diagnosis at least was delightful. He made it appear like opening a
golden door upon a charming landscape. I had but to step outdoors
and look around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, Health, my
former friend, how do you do! Why did you go back on me?" He tells
me my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. I said to him
that _must_ be the disease; namely, that it was _mild_. Never in my
life had I had anything that was mild! Disease from my birth up had
attacked me only in its most virulent form: so had health. I had
always enjoyed--and suffered from--virulent health. I am going to
take the Bulgar bacillus.
Why do _you_ dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular physicians are naturally
hated by unpopular physicians. But how does _he_ run against or run
over you?
Which of your books was it the condescending Englishman liked?
Suppose you send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of each of your
books? Those you gave me as they came out seem to have disappeared.
The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful
of the Balkan bacillus.
More trouble with the Balkans!
TILLY
(auto-intoxicated, not otherwise
intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least
for _that_!).
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
_June 3._
DEAR BEN:
A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a
benign fulmination from an Olympian.
To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I
received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward
Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books
and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't--score heavily for the aforesaid
illustrious Eddy.
Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or
illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that
you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a
lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own
opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information
how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading
"Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle
which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off
a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the
impenetrable roof of his own back.
For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other
human being in this world, do you know what I think of you as most
truly being? The very finest possible specimen of the highest order
of human land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives under a
shovel turned upside down over it, called its back; and a human
land-turtle is a fellow who thrives under the roof of the five senses
and the practical. Never does a turtle get from under his carapace,
and never does the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his five
senses. Of course you realise that not during our friendship have I
paid you so extravagant a compliment. For the human race has to be
largely made up of millions of land-turtles. They cause the world to
go slowly, and it is the admirable stability of their lives neither
to soar nor to sink. You are a land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle,
Esquire; you live under the shell of the practical; that is, you have
no imagination; that is, you do not read fiction; that is, you do not
read Me! Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but cherish
all the confidence and love in the world for you. But, mind you,
only as an unparalleled creeping thing.
To get on with the business of this letter: the English novelist laid
aside his enthusiasm for my work long enough to make a request: he
asked me to send him some Kentucky ferns for his garden. Owing to my
long absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch with people and
things down there. But you left that better land only a few years
ago. I recollect that of old you manifested a weakness for sending
flowers to womankind--another evidence, by the way, of lack of
imagination. Such conduct shows a mere botanical estimate of the
grand passion. The only true lovers, the only real lovers, that
women ever have are men of imagination. Why should these men send a
common florist's flowers! They grow and offer their own--the roses
of Elysium!
To pass on, you must still have clinging to your memory, like bats to
a darkened, disused wall, the addresses of various Louisville
florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no light at all, were
the former emissaries of your folly and your fickleness. Will you
send me at once the address of a firm in whose hands I could safely
entrust this very high-minded international piece of business?
Inasmuch as you are now a New York lawyer and inasmuch as New York
lawyers charge for everything--concentration of mind, if they have
any mind, tax on memory and tax on income, their powers of locomotion
and of prevarication, club dues and death dues, time and tumult,
strikes and strokes, and all other items of haste and waste, you are
authorised to regard this letter a professional demand and to let me
have a reasonable bill at a not too early date. Charge for whatever
you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for your friendship.
"Naught that makes life most worth while can be had for gold."
(Rather elegant extract from one of my novels which you disdain to
read!)
I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me have an immediate reply.
BEVERLEY.
How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending to quarrel? And do
you still keep up the pretence?
Predestined magpies!
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_150 Broad Street,
June 5._
DEAR BEVERLEY:
Your highly complimentary and philosophical missive is before my eyes.
You understand French, not I. But I have accumulated a few
quotations which I sometimes venture to use in writing, never in my
proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to the French the French with
which I am familiar, the French themselves would drive their own
vernacular out of their land--over into Germany! Here is one of
those fond inaudible phrases:
_A chaque oiseau
Son nid est beau._
That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes prefers his own tub.
The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club dinner the other
night. One of the speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the
blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping around the heads of the
guests without finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing about
the edges of a pond, trying in vain to strike a place to land. But
everybody cheered uproariously, made happy by the discovery that
someone actually could say something at a New York dinner that nobody
had heard before. One man next to the speaker (of course coached
beforehand) passed a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made its
way down the table to me at the other end and I, in the New York way,
laid it up for future use at a dinner in some other city. Meantime I
use it now on you.
It is true that I arrived in New York from Kentucky some years ago.
It is likewise undeniable that for some years previous thereto I had
dealings with Louisville florists. But I affirm now, and all these
variegated gentlemen, if they _are_ gentlemen, would gladly come on
to New York as my witnesses and bear me out in the joyful affidavit,
that whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked my behaviour,
never once did I commit the futility, the imbecility, of trafficking
in ferns.
A great English novelist--ferns! A rising young American
novelist--ferns! Frogstools, mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't
you ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? Or if they should
be too gross for his delicate soul, a birdcage containing a pair of
warbling young bluegrass moonbeams?
I am a _land_-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank God! If I have no
imagination, thank God! If I live and move and have my being under
the shovel of the five senses and of the practical, thank God! But,
my good fellow, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other
man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I think of you as most truly
being?
A poor, harmless tinker.
You, with your pastime of fabricating novels, dwell in a little
workshop of the imagination; you tinker with what you are pleased to
call human lives, reality, truth. On your shop door should hang a
sign to catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, splendid
tinkering. No matter who you are, what your past career or present
extremity, come in and let the owner of this shop make your
acquaintance and he will work you over into something finer than you
have ever been or in this world will ever be. For he will make you
into an unfallen original or into a perfected final. If you have
never had a chance to do your best in life, he will give you that
chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the broken-down, especially
welcome. Everybody made over to be as everybody should be by
Beverley Sands."
But, brother, the sole thing with which you, the tinker, do business
is the sole thing with which I, the turtle, do not do business. I,
as a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, actuality, truth. During
the years that I have been an attorney never have I had a case in
court without first of all things looking for the element of
imagination in it and trying to stamp that element out of the case
and kick it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, that
indefatigable mischief-maker, your beautiful and beloved patron
power--imagination.
Going on to testify out of my experience as a land-turtle, I depose
the following, having kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the
turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the tracks of most of the
other animal creatures and gets to know them and their ways. But
there is one path of one creature marked for unique renown among
nose-bearing men: that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white
piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence--surnamed the polecat.
Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably disposed, may in
your profession be the harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged
thing you will that soars innocently toward bright skies; but, once
unkindly disposed, it is in my profession, and in every other, the
polecat of the human faculties. When it has testified against you,
it vanishes from the scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with its
testimony.
Hence it is that I go gunning first for this same little animal whose
common den is the lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though you never
seem to have encountered him in your work and walks. If you should
do so, if you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile
imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may the land-turtle be able to
crawl to you and stand by you in that hour!
But--the tinker to his work, the turtle to his! _A chaque oiseau_!
Diogenes, your tub!
As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. I paid for the
flowers, _she_ got them. Anybody can receive money for blossoms, but
only a statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can fill an order for
flowers with equity and fresh buds. Go ahead and try Phillips &
Faulds. You could reasonably rely upon them to fill any order that
you might place in their hands, however nonsensical-comical,
billy-goatian-satirical it may be. They'd send your Englishman an
opossum with a pouch full of blooming hyacinths if that would quiet
his longing and make him happy. I should think it might.
We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle,
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? Are you still cooing?
Uncertain doves!
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
_150 Broad Street,
June 5._
DEAR POLLY:
I send you some red roses to go with your black hair and your black
eyes, never so black as when black with temper. When may I come to
see you? Why not to-morrow night?
Another matter, not so vital but still important: a few years before
we left Louisville to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New
York, I at different times employed divers common carriers known as
florists to convey to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions that
could not be depicted in writing fluid. In other words, I hired
those mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in terms of
their costliest, most sensational merchandise. You should be
prepared to say which of these florists struck you as the best
business agent.
Would you send me the address of that man or of that firm?
Immediately you will want to know why. Always suspicious! Let the
suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. Some
foggy-headed Englishman has besought him to ship him (the foggy one)
some Kentucky vegetation all the way across the broad Atlantic to his
wet domain--interlocking literary idiots! Beverley appeals to me, I
to you, the highest court in everything.
Are you still enjoying the umbrageous society of that giraffe-headed
jackass, Doctor Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his
unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? _He_ a nerve
specialist! The only nerve in his practice is _his_ nerve. Doesn't
my love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? Isn't it the right
kind? Will it ever give out?
Your reply, then, will cover four points: to thank me for the red
roses; to say when I may come to see you; to send me the address of
the Louisville florist who became most favourably known to you
through a reckless devotion; and to explain your patience with that
unhappy fool.
Thy sworn and thy swain,
BEN DOOLITTLE.
POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
_The Franklin Flats,
June 6._
MY DEAR BEN:
Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville florist is one of
your flimsiest subterfuges. What you wished to receive from me was a
letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable on your last visit and
you have since been concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards.
Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my aid as indispensable.
That is like you men! If one of you can but make a woman forget, if
he can but lead her to forgive him, by flattering her with the idea
that she is indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her figure
standing on the long road of time: dumbly, patiently standing there,
waiting for some male to pass along and permit her to accompany him
as his indispensable fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good
humour by being honoured with your request that I supply you with the
name of a florist.
Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply you. All the Louisville
florists, as I thought at the time, carried out their instructions
faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally received flowers not
fresh. Did it occur to me to blame the florists? Never! I did what
a woman always does: she thinks less of--well, she doesn't think less
of the _florist_!
Be this as it may, Beverley might try Phillips & Faulds for whatever
he is to export. As nearly as I now remember they sent the biggest
boxes of whatever you ordered!
I have an appointment for to-morrow night, but I think I can arrange
to divide the evening, giving you the later half. It shall be for
you to say whether the best half was _yours_. That will depend upon
_you_.
I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of Dr. Claude Mullen because
he loves me and I do not love him. The fascination of his presence
lies in my indifference. Perhaps women are so seldom safe with the
men who love them, that any one of us feels herself entitled to make
the most of a rare chance! I am not only safe, I am entertained. As
I go down into the parlour, I almost feel that I ought to buy a
ticket to a performance in my own private theatre.
Ben, dear, are you going to commit the folly of being jealous? If I
had to marry _him_, do you know what my first wifely present would
be? A liberal transfusion of my own blood! As soon as I enter the
room, what fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which hold little
cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am always expecting the little pools
to run over: then there would be tears. The night he goes for
good--perhaps they will be tears that night.