(_Eastlake has renewed an episode of his past life. The formalities
have been satisfied at a chance meeting, and he continues_.)
... So your carnations lie over there, a bit beyond this page, in a
confusion of manuscripts. Sweet source of this idle letter and gentle
memento of the house on Grant Street and of you! I fancy I catch their
odor before it escapes generously into the vague darkness beyond my
window. They whisper: "Be tender, be frank; recall to her mind what is
precious in the past. For departed delights are rosy with deceitful
hopes, and a woman's heart becomes heavy with living. We are the woman
you once knew, but we are much more. We have learned new secrets, new
emotions, new ambitions, in love--we are fuller than before." So--for
to-morrow they will be shrivelled and lifeless--I take up their message
to-night.
I see you now as this afternoon at the Goodriches', when you came in
triumphantly to essay that hot room of empty, passive folk. Someone was
singing somewhere, and we were staring at one another. There you stood
at the door, placing us; the roses, scattered in plutocratic profusion,
had drooped their heads to our hot faces. We turned from the music to
_you_. You knew it, and you were glad of it. You knew that they were
busy about you, that you and your amiable hostess made an effective
group at the head of the room. You scented their possible disapproval
with zest, for you had so often mocked their good-will with impunity
that you were serenely confident of getting what you wanted. Did you
want a lover? Not that I mean to offer myself in flesh and blood: God
forbid that I should join the imploring procession, even at a
respectful distance! My pen is at your service. I prefer to be your
historian, your literary maid--half slave, half confidant; for then you
will always welcome me. If I were a lover, I might some day be
inopportune. That would not be pleasant.
Yes, they were chattering about you, especially around the table where
some solid ladies of Chicago served iced drinks. I was sipping it all
in with the punch, and looking at the pinks above the dark hair, and
wondering if you found having your own way as good fun as when you were
eighteen. You have gained, my dear lady, while I have been knocking
about the world. You are now more than "sweet": you are almost
handsome. I suppose it is a question of lights and the time of day
whether or not you are really brilliant. And you carry surety in your
face. There is nothing in Chicago to startle you, perhaps not in the
world.
She at the punch remarked, casually, to her of the sherbet: "I wonder
when Miss Armstrong will settle matters with Lane? It is the best she
can do now, though he isn't as well worth while as the men she threw
over." And her neighbor replied: "She might do worse than Lane. She
could get more from him than the showy ones." So Lane is the name of
the day. They have gauged you and put you down at Lane. I took an ice
and waited--but you will have to supply the details.
Meantime, you sailed on, with that same everlasting enthusiasm upon
your face that I knew six years ago, until you spied me. How extremely
natural you made your greeting! I confess I believed that I had lived
for that smile six years, and suffered a bad noise for the sound of
your voice. It seemed but a minute until we found ourselves almost
alone with the solid women at the ices. One swift phrase from you, and
we had slipped back through the meaningless years till we stood _there_
in the parlor at Grant Street, mere boy and girl. The babbling room
vanished for a few golden moments. Then you rustled off, and I believe
I told Mrs. Goodrich that musicales were very nice, for they gave you a
chance to talk. And I went to the dressing-room, wondering what rare
chance had brought me again within the bondage of that voice.
Then, then, dear pinks, you came sailing over the stairs, peeping out
from that bunch of lace. I loitered and spoke. Were the eyes green, or
blue, or gray; ambition, or love, or indifference to the world? I was
at my old puzzle again, while you unfastened the pinks, and, before the
butler, who acquiesced at your frivolity in impertinent silence, you
held them out to me. Only you know the preciousness of unsought-for
favors. "Write me," you said; and I write.
What should man write about to you but of love and yourself? My pen, I
see, has not lost its personal gait in running over the mill books.
Perhaps it politely anticipates what is expected! So much the better,
say, for you expect what all men give--love and devotion. You would not
know a man who could not love you. Your little world is a circle of
possibilities. Let me explain. Each lover is a possible conception of
life placed at a slightly different angle from his predecessor or
successor. Within this circle you have turned and turned, until your
head is a bit weary. But I stand outside and observe the whirligig.
Shall I be drawn in? No, for I should become only a conventional
interest. "If the salt," etc. I remember you once taught in a mission
school.
The flowers will tell me no more! Next time give me a rose--a huge,
hybrid, opulent rose, the product of a dozen forcing processes--and I
will love you a new way. As the flowers say good-by, I will say
goodnight. Shall I burn them? No, for they would smoulder. And if I
left them here alone, to-morrow they would be wan. There! I have thrown
them out wide into that gulf of a street twelve stories below. They
will flutter down in the smoky darkness, and fall, like a message from
the land of the lotus-eaters, upon a prosy wayfarer. And safe in my
heart there lives that gracious picture of my lady as she stands above
me and gives them to me. That is eternal: you and the pinks are but
phantoms. Farewell!