(_Eastlake has the masculine fondness for seeing himself in the right_.)
I turned the Stanwoods' card down, and for your sake, or rather for the
sake of your memory. I preferred to sit here and dream about you in the
midst of my chimney-pots and the dull March mists rather than to run
the risk of another, and perhaps fatal, impression. And so far as you
are concerned your reproach is just. Do I "play with everything"?
Perhaps I am afraid that it might play with me. Imagine frolicking with
tigers, who might take you seriously some day, as a tidbit for
afternoon tea--if you should confess that you were serious! That's the
way I think of the world, or, rather, your part of it. Surely, it is a
magnificent game, whose rules we learn completely just as our blood
runs too slowly for active exercise. I like to break off a piece of its
cake (or its rank cheese at times) and lug it away with me to my den up
here for further examination. I think about it, I dream over it; yes,
in a reflective fashion, I _feel_. It is a charming, experimental way
of living.
Then, after the echo becomes faint and lifeless, or, if you prefer, the
cheese too musty, I sally out once more to refresh my larder. You play
also in your way, but not so intelligently (pardon me), for you deceive
yourself from day to day that your particular object, your temporary
mood, is the one eternal thing in life. After all, you have mastered
but one trick--the trick of being loved. With that trick you expect to
take the world; but, alas! you capture only an old man's purse or a
young man's passion.
Artificial, my letters--yes, if you wish. I should say, not
crude--matured, considered. I discuss the love you long to experience.
I dangle it before your eyes as a bit of the drapery that goes to the
ball of life. But when dawn almost comes and the ball is over, you
mustn't expect the paper roses to smell. This mystifies you a little,
for you are a plain, downright siren. Your lovers' songs have been in
simple measures. Well, the moral is this: take my love-letters as real
(in their way) as the play, or rather, the opera; infinitely true for
the moment, unreal for the hour, eternal as the dead passions of the
ages. Further, it is better to feel the aromatic attributes of love
than the dangerous or unlovely reality. You can flirt with number nine
or marry number ten, but I shall be stored away in your drawer for a
life.
You have carried me far afield, away from men and things. So, for a
moment, I have stopped to listen to the hum of this chaotic city as it
rises from Dearborn and State in the full blast of a commercial noon.
You wonder why an unprofitable person like myself lives here, and not
in an up-town club with my fellows. Ah, my dear lady, I wish to see the
game always going on in its liveliest fashion. So I have made a den for
myself, not under the eaves of a hotel, but on the roof, among the
ventilators. Here I can see the clouds of steam and the perpetual pall
of smoke below me. I can revel in gorgeous sunsets when the fiery light
threads the smoke and the mists and the sodden clouds eastward over the
lake. And at night I take my steamer chair to the battlements and peer
over into a sea of lights below. As I sit writing to you, outside go
the click and rattle of the elevator gates and other distant noises of
humanity. My echo comes directly enough, but it does not deafen me.
Below there exists my barber, and farther down that black pit of an
elevator lies lunch, or a cigar, or a possible cocktail, if the mental
combination should prove unpleasant. Across the hall is Aladdin's lamp,
otherwise my banker; and above all is Haroun al Raschid. Am I not wise?
In the morning, if it is fair, I take a walk among the bulkheads on the
roof, and watch the blue deception of the lake. Perhaps, if the wind
comes booming in, I hear the awakening roar in the streets and think of
work. Perhaps the clear emptiness of a Sunday hovers over the shore;
then I wonder what you will say to this letter. Will you feel with me
that you should live on a housetop and eat cheese? Do you long for a
cool stream without flies, and a carpet of golden sand? Do you want a
coal fire and a husband home at six-thirty, or a third-class ticket to
the realms of nonsense? Are you thinking of Lane's income, or Smith's
cleverness, or the ennui of too many dinners?
I know: you are thinking of love while you read this, and are happy. If
I might send you a new sensation in every line, I should be happy, too,
for your prodigal nature demands novelty. I should then be master for a
moment. And love is mastery and submission, the two poles of a strong
magnet. Adieu.