Three Letters, Private and Confidential
From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City.
On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night.
Dear Sis:--When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said
you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly,
until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you
next, here goes.
One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I
happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was
running. It's a rowdy little place--a music hall--but nice people go
there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent.
_She_ was in a box with two men--one old and one young--and an older
woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high
sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock
in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as
matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to
me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any
two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting
sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers
Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I
hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the
space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have
gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was
udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to
sit up and ask what hit me.
She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big
black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things
to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It was _full_ of
little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very
white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the
last notch, I could see that.
Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain
fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that
the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the
show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left
the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let
myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again.
I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were
directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and
continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in
a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being
called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing
out to see if their carriages weren't coming--everything in a whirl of
drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement
sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and
were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I
could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they
throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My
Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little
worried, because he was past taking notice.
The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time,
while the others he'd called were driving up--it was 249 if any one
ever tries to worm it out of you--and then I saw from her face that 249
had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by
another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to
reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its
way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the
inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it,
and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of
prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I
was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and
give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled,
for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the
other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just
aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and
"turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so
frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I
carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still
stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go
on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about
"My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her
mortification, that was natural.
After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never
dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again.
Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mine _she_ was
standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice
Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother--fine people, the real
thing, I judge--were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has
with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine;
had lunch with them, and later a walk with _her_, they leaving at 5.30
for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if
anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge,
about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of
slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as
they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for
her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of
her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up
like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied
from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full
and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I
don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that
they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm
slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so
much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with
warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can
look right through her--eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is
the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to
show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her
beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little
impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a
day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in
society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if
you wanted to talk talky talk.
Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly
after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse
team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind
of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue
striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to
walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness--say,
the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any
one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right
away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother--a
lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady
Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of
meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain,
Most cordially yours,
E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS,
_Bart. & Notary Public._
_From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York._
EN ROUTE, August 28th.
MY DEAR MAUBURN:--Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to.
The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two
children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than
the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little
descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many
dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who
lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but
money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday.
They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic,
and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They
lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of
their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was
the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable
personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born
of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China,
I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners
they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from
outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of
those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness.
That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths,
Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her
indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then
Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young
man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the
mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she
believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It
went up faster than we were going.
By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that
would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred
and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the
young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the
daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And
when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we
fell upon him in desperate kindness.
Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother
and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home
there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of
marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San
Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and
while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least
difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish,
yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face;
a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so
many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year
in New York will tone her down anyway.
Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the
world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable
to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how
the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be
stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write
promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet
little Milbrey chit--really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue
parts--has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from
remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her
son, she means to convert the daughter's _dot_ into Milbrey prestige,
also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years
of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey
is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as
he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York.
I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there
may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know,
though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that
sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone
back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no
attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect?
Why _should_ she have wanted to marry you?
I shall see you probably in another fortnight.
You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where
they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what
we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them
winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such
beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is _so_ impulsively democratic."
Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge
our train has just rattled over. Sincerely,
JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER.
_From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York._
Muetterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last
spring--the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display
of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping.
Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of
marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains
lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in
learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all
animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm
the fittest--twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just
how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate
the exact disturbing effect of the _ensemble_ upon any poor male, and
feeling confident of my excessively eligible _parti_ when I decide for
him--in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting
the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and
despair if they guessed it!
There, there--I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity
and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or
mother me, and will I please omit the _entrees_ and get to the roast
mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than
detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to
relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's
mostly a _troublesome state of mind_, that I shall doubtless find gone
when we reach Jersey City,--and in two ways this Western trip is
responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been
fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before
we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid
German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the
museums, see the _chateaux_ of the Loire, or do the English
race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the
sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our
own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as
Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things
in Whitman, that--
"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free
poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is
to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean,
that sounds so _breezy_ and _stimulating_. And they've helped me
understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the
big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a
meaning--Democracy, _American_ Democracy." Really it's been
interesting, _the jolliest time of my life,_ and it's got me all
unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region,
the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that
this was _my country_--felt that queer little tickling tingle that
locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no _ennui_ here. Some one
said the other day, "_Ennui_ is a disease that comes from living on
other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack
as if I'd been left a billion, that _ennui_ is when you don't know what
to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always _do_
know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "_We always get up
early the day before to do it_."
Auntie, dear, the trip has made me _more restless and dissatisfied_
than ever. It makes me want to _do_ something--to _risk_ something, to
want to _want_ something more than I've ever learned to want.
That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more.
It's no less a reason than _the athletic young Bayard_ who cheated
those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the
Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of
him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I
must wait to tell you.
It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to
me, and I took him from his dress to be a _workingman_ in the mine we
visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in
authority. Dear, he was _so_ dear and so Westernly breezy and
progressive and enterprising and so _appallingly candid_. I've been the
"one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter.
Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He
was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or
tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not
beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad
high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest
quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever
saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would _eat it off
even_ clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang,
or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not
used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating
eyes, to show if I'm worth the _asking price_. But here was real love
being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because
I _liked him at once_). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly
because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of
all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and
because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I
won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and
_sneaked_ through my mind--they don't matter now--for all at once it
came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile
ago--you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when
they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York;
some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to
dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his
millions grew.
There was the son before me, just _an ordinary man of millions_, after
all--and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so
gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I
felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and
thereafter I was my _coldly professional self_. If that young man has
not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my
ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret
Milbrey, _nee_ van Schoule.
But, Muetterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself,
even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you
something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do
it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell
you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always
rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple
of years--not too well, but well enough--and now some way I rebel, not
from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I
want to _enjoy myself_ and to find, further, that I'm not indisposed to
_take chances_--as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder?
And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the
bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves to
_many men,_ lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself
to _but one_ enjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any
standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any
rate, she has less _freedom_ and more _obligations_ under her contract.
You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now be _horrified_ if you
will.
I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus
in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a
good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to _"keep
up its traditions."_ I am, in other words, an investment from which
they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her
selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the
family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium.
Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how
sorry I was.
Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you
understand me, and I--
"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."
I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires,
but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a
disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only
more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the
husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or
obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to
get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case
was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his
oppression, if there were that, and even for _the mere offence of his
existence,_ I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars.
But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the
trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I
was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something
seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love--I know
it only too well night and day--but it must be a different kind of man.
He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so
unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of
boldness.
Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if
it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude:
"Blessed is the man who _destroys all barriers"?_ Florence Akemit said
as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the
matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently
challenging--threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing
not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man
who brutally and honestly beats them down, and _destroys them utterly?_
So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an _untidy
litter_ is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that
particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights.
What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so
frank in your time?
Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (_joke; laughter and loud
applause, and cries of "Go on!"_) has a little, much indeed, of the
impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it,
but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a
woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an
insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had
thought me--perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had
inspired--rational creatures, aren't we?--beg pardon--not we, then, but
I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that--for money?
Do I want the money _badly enough?_ Would I not even rather be
penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest
impulse, body and soul--_perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power
over me?_ Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down
too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and
trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere--at
least _if she's a healthy woman_. She's too apt sometime to break her
gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her
impulses run away with her.
Oh, Muetterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange
new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again?
This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him
to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to
go in and hurt him--_make him writhe?_
And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if
women feel it commonly? It was a desire for _motherhood_--a curiously
vivid and very definite longing--entirely irrespective of him, you
understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all
moved toward him, he made me sheerly _want_ to be a mother! Or is it
only that men we don't love make us feel motherly?
Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll
love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft,
cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep.
Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with
_dry-rot_ like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering
in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We
have _to do without so very many more things,_ and mere hunger and cold
are easy compared to the suffering we feel.
Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and
"barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently
like a well brought-up New York girl--_with certain reservations,_ to a
man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become
accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for
example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do
two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer
was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe
when his disreputable old uncle dies.
She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince
to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn,
she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn
my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does.
There, it _is_ a punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've known
_every bad place in it,_ and I've religiously put in your "Come, come,
child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for
which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful
approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more
than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you,
AVICE.
P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are
together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially,
but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car.
Indeed, I hope you know _how thoroughly I detest that man_!