BECAUSE Miss W—— lived some distance from the city and would remain
there until her school season opened, I neglected to write to her; but
once September had come and the day of her return was near I began to
think of her and soon was as keenly interested as ever. Her simplicity
and charm came back to me with great force, and I one day sat down and
wrote her a brief letter recalling our Chicago days and asking her how
long it would be before she would be returning to St. Louis. I was
rather nervous now lest she should not answer.
In due time, however, a note came in which she told me that she expected
to be at Florissant, about twenty or twenty-five miles out of St. Louis,
by September fifteenth, when her school work would begin, and that she
would be in St. Louis shortly afterward to visit an aunt and hoped to
see me. There was something about the letter so simple, direct and yet
artful that it touched me deeply. As I have said, I really knew nothing
of the conditions which surrounded her, and yet from the time I received
this letter I sensed something that appealed to me: a rurality and
simplicity plus a certain artful daintiness—the power, I suppose, to
pose under my glance and yet evade—which held me as in a vise. Beside
her, all others seemed harder, holder, or of coarser fiber.
It does not matter now but as I look back on it there seems to have been
more of pure, exalted or frenetic romance in this thing (at first, and
even a year or so afterward), than in any mating experience of which I
have any recollection, with the possible exception of Alice. Unlike most
of my other affairs, this (in the beginning at least) seemed more a
matter of pure romance or poetry, a desire to see and be near her.
Indeed I could only think of her as a part of some idyllic country
scene, of walking or riding with her along some leafy country lane, of
rowing a little boat on a stream, of sitting with her under trees in a
hammock, of watching her play tennis, of being with her where grass,
flowers, trees and a blue sky were. In that idyllic world of the Fair
she had seemed well-placed. This must be a perfect love, I thought. Here
was your truly sweet, pure girl who inspired a man with a nobler passion
than mere lust. I began to picture myself with her in a home somewhere,
possibly here in St. Louis, of going with her to church even, for I
fancied she was of a strict religious bent, of pushing a baby
carriage—indeed, of leading a thoroughly domestic life, and being happy
in it!
We fell into a correspondence which swiftly took on a regular form and
resulted, on my part, in a most extended correspondence, letters so long
that they surprised even myself. I found myself in the grip of a
letter-writing fever such as hitherto had never possessed me, writing
long, personal, intimate accounts of my own affairs, my work, my dreams,
what not, as well as what I thought of her, of the beauty of life as I
had seen it with her in Chicago, my theories and imaginings in regard to
everything. As I see it now, this was perhaps my first and easiest
attempt at literary expression, the form being negligible and yet
sufficient to encompass and embody without difficulty all the surging
and seething emotions and ideas which had hitherto been locked up in me,
bubbling and steaming to the explosion point. Indeed the newspaper forms
to which I was daily compelled to confine myself offered no outlet, and
in addition, in Miss W—— I had found a seemingly sympathetic and
understanding soul, one which required and inspired all the best that
was in me. I was now, as I told myself, on the verge of something
wonderful, a new life. I must work, save, advance myself and better my
condition generally, so as to be worthy of her.... At the very same time
I was still able to see beauty in other women and the cloying delights
of those who would never be able to be as good as she! They might be
good enough for me but far beneath her whose eyes were “too pure to
behold evil.”
In the latter part of September she came to St. Louis and gave me my
first delighted sight of her since we had left Chicago. At this time I
was at the topmost toss of my adventures in St. Louis. I was, as I now
assumed, somebody. By now also I had found a new room in the very heart
of the city, on Broadway near the Southern, and was leading a bachelor
existence under truly metropolitan circumstances. This room was on the
third floor rear of a building which looked out over some nondescript
music hall whose glass roof was just below and from whence nightly, and
frequently in the afternoon, issued all sorts of garish music hall
clatter, including music and singing and voices in monologue or
dialogue. One block south were the Southern Hotel, Faust’s Restaurant,
and the Olympic Theater. In the block north were the courthouse and
Dick’s old room, which by now he had abandoned, having in spite of all
his fine dreams of a resplendent heiress married a girl whom together we
had met in the church some months before—a circus-rider! Thereafter he
had removed to a prosaic flat on the south side, an institution which
seemed to me but a crude and rather pathetic attempt at worthless
domesticity.
I should like to report here that something over a year later this first
marriage of his terminated in the death of his wife. Later—some two or
three years—he indulged in a second most prosaic and inartistic
romance—wedding finally, on this occasion, the daughter of a carpenter.
And her name—Sopheronisby Boanerga Watkins. And a year or two after this
she was burned to death by an exploding oil stove. And this was the man
who was bent on capturing an heiress.
In my new room therefore, because it was more of a center, I had already
managed to set up a kind of garret salon, which was patronized by Dick
and Peter, Rodenberger, Dunlap, Brady and a number of other
acquaintances. No sooner was I settled here than Michaelson, whose
affairs I had straightened out by getting him a place on the _Republic_,
put in an appearance, and also John Maxwell, who because of untoward
conditions in Chicago had come to St. Louis to better his fortunes. But
more of that later.
In spite of all these friends and labors and attempts at aiding others,
it was my affair with Miss W—— which now completely engrossed me. So
seriously had I taken this new adventure to heart that I was scarcely
able to eat or sleep. Once I knew definitely that she was inclined to
like me, as her letters proved, and the exact day of her arrival had
been fixed, I walked on air. I had not been able to save much money
since I had been on the _Republic_ (possibly a hundred dollars all told,
and that since my brothers had left), but of that I took forty or fifty
and bought a new fall suit of a most pronounced if not startling
pattern, the coat being extra long and of no known relation to any
current style (an idea of my own), to say nothing of such extras as
patent leather shoes, ties, collars, a new pearl-gray hat—all purchased
in view of this expected visit for her especial delectation! Although I
had little money for what I considered the essentials of
courtship—theater boxes, dinners and suppers at the best restaurants,
flowers, candy—still I hoped to make an impression. Why shouldn’t I?
Being a newspaper man and an ex-dramatic editor, to say nothing of my
rather close friendship with the present _Republic_ critic, I could
easily obtain theater tickets, although the exigencies of my work often
prevented, as I discovered afterward, my accompanying her for more than
an hour at a time.
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