wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow
on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest--my
eyes fixed on the forest ruin.
Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart
set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon
Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot
August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the
scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers.
I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate
in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me
out of ferns that never grew?
PART SECOND
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England,
May 1, 1911._
DEAR SIR:
It is the first of the faithful leafy May again. I sit at my windows
as on this day a year ago and look out with thankfulness upon what a
man may call the honour of the vegetable world.
A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of yours or by some books--for
I believe I read more than one of them--I, betrayed by the phrase
that when we touch a book we touch a man, overstepped the boundaries
of caution as to having any dealings with glib, plausible strangers
and wrote you a letter. I made a request of you in that letter. I
thought the request bore with it a suitable reward: that I should be
grateful if you would undertake to have some ferns sent to me for my
collection.
Your sleek reply led me still further astray and I wrote again. I
drew my English cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the ground
for you to step on. I threw open to you the doors of my hospitality,
good-fellowship.
That was last May. Now it is May again. And now I know to a
certainty what for months I have been coming to realise always with
deeper shame: that you gave me your word and did not keep your word;
doubtless never meant to keep it.
Why, then, write you about this act of dishonour now? How justify a
letter to a man I feel obliged to describe as I describe you?
The reason is this, if you can appreciate such a reason. My nature
refuses to let go a half-done deed. I remain annoyed by an
abandoned, a violated, bond. Once in a wood I came upon a partly
chopped-down tree, and I must needs go far and fetch an axe and
finish the job. What I have begun to build I must build at till the
pattern is wrought out. Otherwise I should weaken, soften, lose the
stamina of resolution. The upright moral skeleton within me would
decay and crumble and I should sink down and flop like a human frog.
Since, then, you dropped the matter in your way--without so much as a
thought of a man's obligation to himself--I dismiss it in my
way--with the few words necessary to enable me to rid my mind of it
and of such a character.
I wish merely to say, then, that I despise as I despise nothing else
the ragged edge of a man's behaviour. I put your conduct before you
in this way: do you happen to know of a common cabbage in anybody's
truck patch? Observe that not even a common cabbage starts out to do
a thing and fails to do it if it can. You must have some kind of
perception of an oak tree. Think what would become of human beings
in houses if builders were deceived as to the trusty fibre of sound
oak? Do you ever see a grape-vine? Consider how it takes hold and
will not be shaken loose by the capricious compelling winds. In your
country have you the plover? Think what would be the plover's fate,
if it did not steer straight through time and space to a distant
shore. Why, some day pick up merely a piece of common quartz. Study
its powers of crystallisation. And reflect that a man ranks high or
low in the scale of character according to his possession or his lack
of the powers of crystallisation. If the forces of his mind can
assume fixity around an idea, if they can adjust themselves
unalterably about a plan, expect something of him. If they run
through his hours like water, if memory is a millstream, if
remembrance floats forever away, expect nothing.
Simple, primitive folk long ago interpreted for themselves the
characters of familiar plants about them. Do you know what to them
the fern stood for? The fern stood for Fidelity. Those true,
constant souls would have said that you had been unfaithful even with
nature's emblems of Fidelity.
The English sky is clear to-day. The sunlight falls in a white
radiance on my plants. I sit at my windows with my grateful eyes on
honest out-of-doors. There is a shadow on a certain spot in the
garden; I dislike to look at it. There is a shadow on the place
where your books once stood on my library shelves. Your specious
books!--your cleverly manufactured books!--but there are successful
scamps in every profession.
I am,
Very truly yours,
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE
_Cathedral Heights,
May 10, 1911._
DEAR SIR:
I wish to inform you that I have just received from you a letter in
which you attack my character. I wish in reply further to inform you
that I have never felt called upon to defend my character. Nor will
I, even with this letter of yours as evidence, attack your character.
I am,
Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
_May 13, 1911._
DEAR BEN:
I ask your attention to the enclosed letter from Mr. Edward
Blackthorne. By way of contrast and also of reminder, lest you may
have forgotten, I send you two other letters received from him last
year. I shared with you at the time the agreeable purport of these
earlier letters. This last letter came three days ago and for three
days I have been trying to quiet down sufficiently even to write to
you about it. At last I am able to do so.
You will see that Mr. Blackthorne has never received the ferns. Then
where have they been all this time? I took it for granted that they
had been shipped. The order was last spring placed with the
Louisville firm recommended by you. They guaranteed the execution of
the order. I forwarded to them my cheque. They cashed my cheque.
The voucher was duly returned to me cancelled through my bank. I
could not suppose they would take my cheque unless they had shipped
the plants. They even wrote me again in the Autumn of their own
accord, stating that the ferns were about to be sent on--Autumn being
the most favourable season. Then where are the ferns?
I felt so sure of their having reached Mr. Blackthorne that I
harboured a certain grievance and confess that I tried to make
generous allowance for him as a genius in his never having
acknowledged their arrival.
I have demanded of Phillips & Faulds an immediate explanation. As
soon as they reply I shall let you hear further. The fault may be
with them; in the slipshod Southern way they may have been negligent.
My cheque may even have gone as a bridal present to some junior
member of the firm or to help pay the funeral expenses of the senior
member.
There is trouble somewhere behind and I think there is trouble ahead.
Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine ladies; but if some
lady will kindly lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit that
I have it and on the strength of it--or the weakness--declare my
belief that the mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some curious
and funny things.
As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: after these days of
turbulence, I have come to see my way clear to interpret it thus: a
great man, holding a great place in the world, offered his best to a
stranger and the stranger, as the great man believes, turned his back
on it. That is the grievance, the insult. If anything could be
worse, it is my seeming discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the
invitation came also from her. In a word, here is a genius who
strove to advance my work and me, and he feels himself outraged in
his kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and his family--in all
his best.
But of course that is the hardest of all human things to stand. Men
who have treated each other but fairly well or even badly in ordinary
matters often in time become friends. But who of us ever forgives
the person that slights our best? Out of a rebuff like that arises
such life-long unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ
itself doubtless for this very reason took pains to issue its
warning--no pearls before swine! And perhaps of all known pearls a
great native British pearl is the most prized by its British
possessor!
The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's best has been his worst:
if I did not merit his best, I deserve his worst; hence his last
letter. God have mercy on the man who deserved that letter! You
will have observed that his leading trait as revealed in all his
letters is enormous self-love. That's because he is a genius.
Genius _has_ to have enormous self-love. Beware the person who has
none! Without self-love no one ever wins any other's love.
Thus the mighty English archer with his mighty bow shot his mighty
arrow--but at an innocent person.
Still the arrow of this letter, though it misses me, kills my plans.
The first trouble will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally fixed
for June, and our plans embraced a wedding journey to England and the
acceptance of the invitation of the Blackthornes. The prospect of
this wonderful English summer--I might as well admit it--was one
thing that finally steadied all her wavering as to marriage.
Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, no English celebrities to
greet us as American celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no
lawns, no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely two unknown,
impoverished young Yankee tourists, trying to get out of chilly
England what can be gotten by anybody with a few, a very few, dollars.
But Tilly dreads disappointment as she dreads disease. To her
disappointment is a disease in the character of the person who
inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to get you to read one of
Balzac's masterpieces, _The Magic Skin_. I told you enough about it
to enable you to understand what I now say: that ever since I became
engaged to Tilly I have been to her as a magic skin which, as she
cautiously watches it, has always shrunk a little whenever I have
encountered a defeat or brought her a disappointment. No later
success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the shrunken skin: it
remains shrunken where each latest disappointment has left it.
Now when I tell her of my downfall and the collapse of the gorgeous
summer plans!
BEVERLEY
(the Expanding Scamp and the
Shrinking Skin).
BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_May 14th._
DEAR BEVERLEY:
I have duly pondered the letters you send.
"Fie, fee, fo, fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman!"
If you do not mind, I shall keep these documents from him in my
possession. And suppose you send me all later letters, whether from
him or from anyone else, that bear on this matter. It begins to grow
interesting and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, then, as
your lawyer, the custodian of all pertinent and impertinent papers.
They can go into the locker where I keep your immortal but
impecunious Will. Some day I might have to appear in court, I with
my shovel and five senses and no imagination, to plead _une cause
célèbre_ (a little more of my scant intimate French).
The explanation I give of this gratuitously insulting letter is that
at last you have run into a hostile human imagination in the person
of an old literary polecat, an aged book-skunk. Of course if I could
decorate my style after the manner of your highly creative gentlemen,
I might say that you had unwarily crossed the nocturnal path of his
touchy moonlit mephitic highness.
I am not surprised, of course, that this letter has caused you to
think still more highly of its writer. I tell you that is your
profession--to tinker--to turn reality into something better than
reality.
Some day I expect to see you emerge from your shop with a fish story.
Intending buyers will find that you have entered deeply into the
ideals and difficulties of the man-eating shark: how he could not
swim freely for whales in his track and could not breathe freely for
minnows in his mouth; how he got pinched from behind by the malice of
the lobster and got shocked on each side by the eccentricities of the
eel. The other fish did not appreciate him and he grew
embittered--and then only began to bite. You will make over the
actual shark and exhibit him to your reader as the ideal shark--a
kind of beloved disciple of the sea, the St. John of fish.
Anything imaginative that you might make out of a shark would be a
minor achievement compared with what you have done for this
Englishman. Might the day come, the avenging day, when Benjamin
Doolittle could get a chance to write him just one letter! May the
god of battles somehow bring about a meeting between the middle-aged
land-turtle and the aged skunk! On that field of Mars somebody's fur
will have to fly and it will not be the turtle's, for he hasn't any.
You speak of a trouble that looms up in your love affair: let it
loom. The nearer it looms, the better for you. I have repeatedly
warned you that you have bound your life and happiness to the wrong
person, and the person is constantly becoming worse. Detach your
apparatus of dreams at last from her. Take off your glorious rainbow
world-goggles and see the truth before it is too late. Do not fail,
unless you object, to send me all letters incoming about the
ferns--those now celebrated bushes.
BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.
PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_May 13, 1911._
DEAR SIR:
We acknowledge receipt of your letter of May 10 relative to an order
for ferns.
It is decidedly rough. The senior member of our firm who formerly
had charge of this branch of our business has been seriously ill for
several months, and it was only after we had communicated with him at
home in bed that we were able to extract from him anything at all
concerning your esteemed order.
He informs us that he turned the order over to Messrs. Burns & Bruce,
native fern collectors of Dunkirk, Tenn., who wrote that they would
gather the ferns and forward them to the designated address. He
likewise informs us that inasmuch as the firm of Burns & Bruce, as we
know only too well, has long been indebted to this firm for a
considerable amount, he calculated that they would willingly ship the
ferns in partial liquidation of our old claims.
It seems, as he tells us, that they did actually gather the ferns and
get them ready for shipment, but at the last minute changed their
mind and called on our firm for payment. There the matter was
unexpectedly dropped owing to the sudden illness of the aforesaid
member of our house, and we knew nothing at all of what had
transpired until your letter led us to obtain from him at his bedside
the statements above detailed.
An additional embarrassment to the unusually prosperous course of our
business was occasioned by the marriage of a junior member of the
firm and his consequent absence for a considerable time, which
resulted in an augmentation of the expenses of our establishment and
an unfortunate diminution of our profits.
In view of the illness of the senior member of our house and in view
of the marriage of a junior member and in view of the losses and
expenses consequent thereon, and in view of the subsequent withdrawal
of both from active participation in the conduct of the affairs of
our firm, and in view also of a disagreement which arose between both
members and the other members as to the financial basis of a
settlement on which the withdrawal could take place, our affairs have
of necessity been thrown into court in litigation and are still in
litigation up to this date.
Regretting that you should have been seemingly inconvenienced in the
slightest degree by the apparent neglect of a former member of our
firm, we desire to add that as soon as matters can be taken out of
court our firm will be reorganised and that we shall continue to
give, as heretofore, the most scrupulous attention to all orders
received.
But we repeat that your letter is pretty rough.
Very truly yours,
PHILLIPS & FAULDS.
BURNS & BRUCE TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_Dunkirk, Tenn.,
May 20, 1911._
DEAR SIR:
Your letter to hand. Phillips & Faulds gave us the order for the
ferns. Owing to extreme drought last Fall the ferns withered earlier
than usual and it was unsafe to ship at that time; in the Winter the
weather was so severe that even in February we were unable to make
any digging, as the frost had not disappeared. When at last we got
the ferns ready, we called on them for payment and they wouldn't pay.
Phillips & Faulds are not good paying bills and we could not put
ourselves to expense filling their new order for ferns, not wishing
to take more risk. old, old accounts against them unpaid, and could
not afford to ship more. proved very unsatisfactory and had to drop
them entirely.
Are already out of pocket the cost of the ferns, worthless to us when
Phillips & Faulds dodged and wouldn't pay, pretending we owed them
because they won't pay their bills. If you do not wish to have any
further dealings with them you might write to Noah Chamberlain at
Seminole, North Carolina, just over the state line, not far from
here, an authority on American ferns. We have sometimes collected
rare ferns for him to ship to England and other European countries.
Vouch for him as an honest man. Always paid his bills, old accounts
against Phillips & Faulds unpaid; dropped them entirely.
Very truly yours,
BURNS & BRUCE.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE
_May 24._
DEAR BEN:
You requested me to send you for possible future reference all
incoming letters upon the subject of the ferns. Here are two more
that have just fluttered down from the blue heaven of the unexpected
or been thrust up from the lower regions through a crack in the
earth's surface.
Spare a few minutes to admire the rippling eloquence of Messrs.
Phillips & Faulds. When the eloquence has ceased to ripple and
settles down to stay, their letter has the cold purity of a
whitewashed rotten Kentucky fence. They and another firm of florists
have a law-suit as to which owes the other, and they meantime compel
me, an innocent bystander, to deliver to them my pocketbook.
Will you please immediately bring suit against Phillips & Faulds on
behalf of my valuable twenty-five dollars and invaluable indignation?
Bring suit against and bring your boot against them if you can. My
ducats! Have my ducats out of them or their peace by day and night.
The other letter seems of an unhewn probity that wins my confidence.
That is to say, Burns & Bruce, whoever they are, assure me that I
ought to believe, and with all my heart I do now believe, in the
existence, just over the Tennessee state line, of a florist of good
character and a business head. Thus I now press on over the
Tennessee state line into North Carolina.
For the ferns must be sent to Mr. Blackthorne; more than ever they
must go to him now. Not the entire British army drawn up on the
white cliffs of Dover could keep me from landing them on the British
Isle. Even if I had to cross over to England, travel to his home,
put the ferns down before him or throw them at his head and walk out
of his house without a word.
I told you I had a borrowed premonition that there would be trouble
ahead: now it is not a premonition, it is my belief and terror. I
have grown to stand in dread of all florists, and I approach this
third one with my hat in my hand (also with my other hand on my
pocketbook).
BEVERLEY.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
_Cathedral Heights, New York,
May 25, 1911._
DEAR SIR:
You have been recommended to me by Messrs. Burns & Bruce, of Dunkirk,
Tennessee, as a nurseryman who can be relied upon to keep his word
and to carry out his business obligations.
Accepting at its face value their high testimonial as to your
trustworthiness, I desire to place with you the following order:
Messrs. Burns & Bruce, acting upon my request, have forwarded to you
a list of rare Kentucky ferns. I desire you to collect these ferns
and to ship them to Mr. Edward Blackthorne, Esq., King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England. As a guaranty of good faith on my part, I
enclose in payment my check for twenty-five dollars. Will you have
the kindness to let me know at once whether you will undertake this
commission and give it the strictest attention?
Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_Seminole, North Carolina,
May 29._
SIR:
I have received your letter with your check in it.
You are the first person that ever offered me money as a florist. I
am not a florist, if I must take time to inform you. I had supposed
it to be generally known throughout the United States and in Europe
that I am professor of botany in this college, and have been for the
past fifteen years. If Burns & Bruce really told you I am a
florist--and I doubt it--they must be greater ignoramuses than I took
them to be. I always knew that they did not have much sense, but I
thought they had a little. It is true that they have at different
times gathered specimens of ferns for me, and more than once have
shipped them to Europe. But I never imagined they were fools enough
to think this made me a florist. My collection of ferns embraces
dried specimens for study in my classrooms and specimens growing on
the college grounds. The ferns I have shipped to Europe have been
sent to friends and correspondents. The President of the Royal
Botanical Society of Great Britain is an old friend of mine. I have
sent him some and I have also sent some to friends in Norway and
Sweden and to other scientific students of botany.
It only shows that your next-door neighbour may know nothing about
you, especially if you are a little over your neighbour's head.
My daughter, who is my secretary, will return your check, but I
thought I had better write and tell you myself that I am not a
florist.
Yours truly,
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN, A.M., B.S., Litt.D.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_Seminole, North Carolina,
May 29._
SIR:
I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's
only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my
distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had
supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American
public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana
and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt.
People of our means and social position in the South do not peddle
bulbs. We do not reside at the entrance to a cemetery and earn our
bread by making funeral wreaths and crosses.
You must be some kind of nonentity.
Your cheque is pinned to this letter.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
BEVERLEY SANDS TO NOAH CHAMBERLAIN
_June 3._
DEAR SIR:
I am deeply mortified at having believed Messrs. Burns & Bruce to be
well-informed and truthful Southern gentlemen. I find that it is no
longer safe for me to believe anybody--not about nurserymen. I am
not sure now that I should believe you. You say you are a famous
botanist, but you may be merely a famous liar, known as such to
various learned bodies in Europe. Proof to the contrary is
necessary, and you must admit that your letter does not furnish me
with that proof.
Still I am going to believe you and I renew the assurance of my
mortification that I have innocently caused you the chagrin of
discovering that you are not so well known, at least in this country,
as you supposed. I suffer from the same chagrin: many of us do; it
is the tie that binds: blest be the tie.
I shall be extremely obliged if you will have the kindness to return
to me the list of ferns forwarded to you by Messrs. Burns & Bruce,
and for that purpose you will please to find enclosed an envelope
addressed and stamped.
I acknowledge the return of my cheque, which occasions me some
surprise and not a little pleasure.
Allow me once more to regret that through my incurable habit of
believing strangers, believing everybody, I was misled into taking
the lower view of you as a florist instead of the higher view as a
botanist. But you must admit that I was right in classification and
wrong only in elevation.
Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS, A.B. (merely).
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_June 8._
SIR:
I know nothing about any list of ferns. Stop writing to me.
NOAH CHAMBERLAIN.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
_June 8._
SIR:
It is excruciating the way you continue to persecute my great father.
What is wrong with you? What started you to begin on us in this way?
We never heard of _you_. Would you let my dear father alone?