As this was the first bit of connection with my own family since Jerry
had practically kicked me down his steps, I was deeply perturbed by it.
I am not without natural affection, and yet I seemed to have died to the
old life as completely as Lovey to that with his daughters. I had never
forgotten Jerry’s words: “And now get out. Don’t let any of us ever see
your face or hear your name again.”
The very fact that he was justified had roused the foolish remnant of my
pride.
I had loved my mother; I had reverenced my father; though my brothers
were indifferent to me, I had felt a genuine tenderness for my sisters.
But since that night on Jerry’s steps it had been to me as if I had put
myself on one side of a flood and left them on the other, and that there
was no magic skiff that would carry me back whence I came. I cannot say
that I grieved for them; and it was the last of my thoughts that they
would grieve for me. I accepted the condition that we were dead to each
other, and tried to bury memory.
And now came this first stirring of resurrection. It hurt me. I didn’t
want it. It was like the return of life to a frozen limb. Numbness was
preferable to anguish.
“Lovey,” I said, as the old man hung about me when I was undressing that
night, “how would you feel if one of your daughters—”
He raised himself from the task of pulling off my boots, which to humor
him I allowed him to perform, and looked at me in terror.
“They ain’t—they ain’t after me?”
“No, no! But suppose they were—wouldn’t you like to see them?”
He dropped the boot he held in his hand.
“Y’ain’t goin’ to ’ave them ’unted up for me, Slim?”
“I don’t know anything about them, Lovey. That isn’t my point at all. But
suppose—just suppose—you could see them again; would you do it?”
He shook his bald head.
“They’re dead to me. I’m dead to them. If we was to see each other now
’twouldn’t be nothink but diggin’ up a corpse.”
“Nothink but diggin’ up a corpse,” I repeated to myself as I turned east
from Fifth Avenue, leaving the brown trees of the Park behind me, and
took the few steps necessary to reach my uncle Van Elstine’s door. He
had married my mother’s sister, and during the lifetime of my aunt the
families had been fairly intimate. Of late years they had drifted apart,
as families will, though touch-and-go relations were still maintained.
I have to admit that while waiting for Annette in the library up-stairs I
was nervous. I was coming back to that family life in which I should have
interests, affections, cares, responsibilities. For the past three years
I had had no one to think of but myself; and if in that freedom there
were heartaches, there were no complexities.
Though it was not yet dark, the curtains were drawn and the room was
lighted not only by a shaded lamp, but by the flicker of a fire. When
Annette, wearing a tea-gown, appeared at last in the doorway she stood
for a second to examine me.
“Why, Jack!” she exclaimed, then. “I didn’t know you were in New York.
Have you brought Frank with you?”
“I am Frank,” I laughed, going forward to offer my hand. “I didn’t know
Jack and I were so much alike. But you’re the second person who has said
it within a few days.”
“It’s your mustache, I think,” she explained as we shook hands. “I never
saw you wear one before.”
“I never did.”
“Do sit down. They’ll bring tea in a minute. I’m so glad to see you. But
if it’s not a rude question, tell me why you’ve been here all this time
and never let me know.”
It would be difficult to define the conditions which made Annette at the
age of thirty-three what Cantyre styled one of the smartest women in New
York, but the minute you saw her you felt that it was so. My uncle Van
Elstine was only comfortably off; their house was not large; though they
entertained a good deal, their manner of living was not showy. But my
aunt Van Elstine had established the tradition—some women have the art
of doing it—that whatever she had and did and said was “the thing,” and
Annette, as her only child and heiress, had kept it up.
As far as I could understand the matter, which had been explained to
me once or twice, my aunt was exclusive. In the rush of the newly come
and the rise of the newly rich, which marked the last quarter of the
nineteenth century in New York, she and a few like-minded friends had
made it their business to pick and choose and form what might literally
be called an _élite_. By 1913, however, the _élite_ was not only formed
but founded on a rock as firm as the granite of Manhattan, and Annette’s
picking and choosing could be on another principle. Hers was that more
civilized American tendency to know every one worth knowing, which is
still largely confined, so they tell me, to Washington and New York.
Where her mother had withdrawn Annette went forward. Her _flair_ for the
important or the soon to be important was unerring. Hers was one of the
few drawing-rooms through which every one interesting, both domestic and
foreign, was bound at some time to pass. Being frankly and unrestrainedly
curious, she kept in touch with the small as well as with the great,
with the young as well as with the old, maintaining an enormous
correspondence, and getting out of her correspondents every ounce of
entertainment they could yield her. On her side she repaid them by often
lending them a helping hand.
The warmth of her greeting now was due not to the fact that I was her
cousin, but to her belief that I had been up to something. It was always
those who had been up to something with whom she was most eager to come
heart to heart. Without temptations of her own, as far as I could ever
see, she got from the indiscretions of others the same sort of pleasure
that a scientist finds in studying the wrigglings of microbes under a
microscope.
Having some inkling of this, I answered her questions not untruthfully,
but with reservations, saying that I had not come to see her because I
had been down on my luck.
“And how did you come to be down on your luck?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“You don’t look it now.”
“I’ve been doing better lately. I’ve made two or three friends who’ve
given me a hand.” Carrying the attack in her direction, I asked, “How did
you hear that I was in New York?”
“Hilda Grace told me. She said you’d been working on that memorial of
hers. She thought it awfully strange—you won’t think me rude in repeating
it?—that a man like you should be only in a secondary position.”
“If she knew how glad I was to get that—”
She changed the subject abruptly.
“When did you last hear from home?”
I thought it sufficient to say: “Not for a long time. I may as well admit
that nowadays I never hear from home at all.”
“And, if it’s not a rude question, why don’t you?”
“Partly, I suppose, because I don’t write.”
“So I understood from Jack. But, Frank dear, do you think it kind?”
I broke in with the question, the answer to which I had really come to
get, “When did you last see Jack?”
“About eighteen months ago; just before he was married. He knew you were
somewhere about, but he wasn’t confidential on the subject.”
“No; he wouldn’t be. Did he seem all right?”
“Quite; and awfully in love with Mary Sweet. What’s she like, really?”
I described my new sister-in-law as I remembered her, going on to say:
“I suppose you gave Jack a good time. Did you—did you take him about
anywhere?”
“Let me see. I took him to—where was it? I took him to the
Wynfords’—and—and—oh, yes!—to the Barrys’. And it’s too funny! I really
think Regina fell in love with him at first sight. For a month or two
she questioned me about him every time we met. Then all of a sudden she
stopped. If she was struck by the thunderbolt, as the French put it—well,
all I can say is that it serves her right.”
“Serves her right—what for?”
“Oh, the way she’s carried on. It’s disgraceful. Do you know her? Her
father is an architect, like you.”
Annette’s round, dusky face, which had no beauty but a quick, dimpling
play of expression, was one that easily betrayed her ruling passion of
curiosity. It was now so alight with anticipation that I tried to be more
than ever casual.
“I’ve—I’ve just met her.”
“Where?”
“Once at the memorial, when she came with Mrs. Grace; and a few nights
ago I dined with her at the Coningsbys’.”
“I wonder she didn’t take you for Jack.”
To this I was not obliged to make a response for the reason that, the man
having arrived with the tea, Annette had to give her attention to the
placing of the tray.
When I had taken a cup of tea from her hand I created a diversion with
the question, “What did you mean by saying the way she carried on was
disgraceful?”
“Why, the way she gets engaged and disengaged. It’s been three times in
as many years, and goodness knows how many more experiments—”
“I suppose she’s trying to find the right man.”
“It’s pretty hard on those she takes up and puts down in the process.
She’ll get left in the end, you’ll see if she doesn’t.”
“Isn’t it better to get left than to marry the wrong man?”
“The very day I took Jack to see her she’d broken off her engagement to
Jim Hunter. I didn’t know it at the time. It was two or three days later
before it came out. If I had known it and told Jack—”
“Well, what then?”
“Oh, I don’t say anything. They were awfully taken with each other. But
I’m glad he was saved. If he hadn’t gone straight back to Montreal he
might now be in the place of poor Stephen Cantyre.”
“I see a good deal of Cantyre.”
“So I understand.”
“Who told you?”
“Elsie Coningsby.”
“You seem to have got a good deal of information about me all of a
sudden.”
“Because you’ve dropped right into the little circle in which we all know
one another with a kind of village-like intimacy. New York is really a
congeries of villages.”
“But any one could see that Cantyre would never make a husband for a
high-spirited girl like Miss Barry.”
“How do you know she’s high-spirited, if it’s not a rude question?”
“Oh, one can tell.”
“You’ve seen her only twice. You must have noticed her very particularly.”
“I’ve noticed Cantyre very particularly; and just as he wouldn’t make her
the right kind of husband she wouldn’t make him the right kind of wife.”
When Annette said anything in which there was a special motive a series
of concentric shadows fled over her face like ripples from the spot where
a stone is thrown into a pool.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t like her, if it isn’t a rude thing to say.”
“What has my liking her or not liking her got to do with it?”
“Nothing but the question of your own safety. If she notices how much
you’re like Jack—”
“If she was going to notice that,” I said, boldly, “she would have done
it already.”
“And so much the worse for you if she has—unless you’re put on your
guard.”
“If you mean put on my guard against the danger of being Cantyre’s
successor in a similar experience—”
“That was my idea.”
“Well, I can give you all the reassurance you need, Annette. In the first
place, I’ve got no money—”
The relevance of her interruption did not come to me till nearly a year
later.
“Frank dear, I must ask you, while I think of it, didn’t you know that
your mother was very, very ill?”
All the blood in my body seemed to rush back to my heart and to stay
there. We talked no more of Regina Barry, nor of anything but stark
fundamental realities. In an instant they became as much the essentials
of my life as if Regina Barry had never existed. Annette showed herself
much better informed as to my career than she pretended to be, giving me
to understand that the day on which I disappeared my mother had received
a kind of death-blow. She was of the type to leave the ninety and nine in
the wilderness to go after that which was lost; and in her inability to
do so she had been seized, so Annette told me, with a mortal pining away.
With her decline my father was declining also, and all because of me.
“I’ve been the most awful rotter, Annette,” I groaned, as I staggered to
my feet. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Frank, I do know it. That’s why I’ve been so glad to get hold of
you at last, and ask you to—to redeem yourself.”
“Redeem myself by going back?”
She looked up at me and nodded.
“Oh, but how can I?”
_CHAPTER XII_
My question was answered next evening by Beady Lamont.
Greatly to Lovey’s disgust, I made it a point to attend every Saturday
meeting at the club.
“Them low fellas ain’t fit company for you, Slim,” he would protest.
“What’s the use of cuttin’ out the booze and bein’ rich if you don’t ’old
yer ’ead above the likes o’ that?”
“They’ve been awfully white with us, Lovey.”
“They wasn’t no whiter with us than they’d be with anybody else; and
don’t three out o’ every five give ’em the blue Peter?”
But though we had this discussion once a week, he always accompanied me
to Vandiver Street, showing his disapproval when he got there in sitting
by himself and refusing to respond to advances.
I have to confess that I needed the fellowship of men who had been
through the same mill as myself, in order to keep up the fight. Again let
me repeat it, I am giving you but a faint idea of the struggle I had to
make. No evil habit relinquishes its hold easily, and the one to which
I had given myself over is perhaps the most tenacious of all. It would
be wearisome if I were to keep telling you how near I came at times to
courting the old disaster, and how close the shave by which I sheered
away; but I never felt safer than a blind man walking along the edge of
a cliff. More than once I tore the blue star from my buttonhole, though
on each occasion I juggled myself into putting it back again. I juggled
myself as I did on the morning when I gazed at the brown-green water
flowing beneath Greeley’s Slip. I said that what I didn’t do to-day I
would still be free to do to-morrow, thus tiding myself over the worst
minutes, if only by a process of postponement.
But among my brothers at the club I heard so many tales of heroic
resistance that I grew ashamed of my periods of weakness. What Pyn and
Mouse and the Scotchman and the piano-mover and Beady Lamont could do, I
told myself, I also could do. Moreover, new men came in, and more than
one of the educated type turned to me for help. To a journalist named
Edmonds, and to an actor named Prince, I stood as next friend, and only
declined to officiate in the same capacity for Headlights, the big-eyed
tailor, and the wee bye Daisy, when they returned, penitent, on the
ground that I couldn’t watch over more than two men efficiently. With the
actor I had no trouble, but twice I had to go down to Stinson’s and pull
Edmonds out of a drunken spell. To keep him out was putting me on all
my mettle; and in order to maintain my mettle I had to stay out myself.
My courage was no whit nobler than that of the man who would turn tail
in the battle if it weren’t for shame before his comrades; but there is
something to be got out of even such valor as that.
And in the club I got it. Perhaps we were all putting up a bluff. Perhaps
those whom I looked upon as heroes were inwardly no more glorious than I.
But when the fellows whom I patted on the back patted me in their turn, I
was obliged to live up to their commendation. There came, indeed, a time
when I couldn’t help seeing that in the eyes of new-comers especially I
was taken as a pillar of the club, and knew that I couldn’t fall without
bringing down some of the living walls along with me. To be strong enough
to hold up my portion of the weight became once more with me then a
question of _noblesse oblige_.
The Saturday evening after my talk with Annette was a special one. After
the actor, the journalist, Headlights, and Daisy had renewed their pledge
for a week, Lovey and I stood up with the Scotchman, the piano-mover,
and three or four others, and repeated ours for a month. It probably
seems a simple thing to you; but for us who knew what had been our perils
during the preceding month and the months preceding that, it was a
solemn undertaking. The first vow of all had been relatively easy, since
new resolutions have an attraction in themselves. The weekly vows that
came afterward were not so fiercely hard, because they were but weekly.
When it came to promising for a month—well, I can only say that to us a
month had the length which it has to a child. It seemed to stretch on
indefinitely ahead of one. The foe, retreating as we pressed forward, was
always keeping up a rear-guard fight, and we never woke in the morning
without being aware that we might strike an ambush before nightfall. We
got so tired of the struggle that we often thought of the relief it would
be to be captured; and many a time the resolution was made that when this
month was up....
And just at these minutes the chaps who seemed stronger would close in
about us, or those who seemed weaker would make some appeal, and when the
critical Saturday evening came round we would walk up again, impelled by
forces beyond our control, and repledge ourselves.
On such occasions there was always some word spoken to us by men who had
fought longer than we had and seen the enemy routed more effectively.
That night the speaker to the blue-star men was that club benefactor and
favorite, Beady Lamont. He was a huge mass of muscle, turning the scale
at three hundred and more. Strength was in every movement when he walked
and every pose when he stood still. To my architect’s eye he planted his
legs as though they were ancient Egyptian monoliths. Comparatively small
round the abdomen, his chest was like a great drum. His arms—but why give
a description? Hercules must have been like him, and Goliath of Gath,
and Charlemagne, and the Giants that were in Those Days. They said that
in drink he used to be terrible; but now his big, jolly face was all a
quiver of good-will.
His voice was one of those husky chuckles of which the very gurgles
make you laugh. To make you laugh was his principle function in the
club. On this evening he began his talk with a string of those amusing,
disconnected anecdotes which used to be a feature of after-dinner
speeches, somewhat as a boy will splash about in the water before he
begins to swim. But when he swam it was with vigor.
“And now some of you blue-star guys is probably hittin’ a question that
sooner or later knocks at the nuts of most of us chaps that’s trying to
make good all over again. That’s families. Say, ain’t families the deuce?
You may run like a hare, or climb like a squirrel, or light away like a
skeeter—and your family’ll be at your heels. It’s somethin’ fierce. You
can never get away from them; they’ll never let you get away from them.
Because”—his voice fell to a tone of solemnity—“because no matter how
fast you sprint, or how high you climb, or how graceful you can dodge—you
carries your family with you. You can no more turn your back on it than
you can on your own stummick. You may refuse to pervide for it, you may
treat it cruel, you may leave it to look out for itself; but you can
never git away from knowin’ in your heart that if you’re a bum husband
or father or son you’re considerable more bum as a man. That’s why the
family is after us. Can’t shake ’em off! Got ’em where they won’t be
shook off. God A’mighty Hisself put ’em there, and, oh, boys, listen to
me and I’ll tell you why.”
He made dabs at his wrists as though to turn up his sleeves, like a man
warming to his work. Taking a step or two forward he braced his left
hand on his barrel-shaped hip, while his gigantic forefinger was pointed
dramatically toward his audience.
“Say, did any of you married guys ever wish to God you was single again?
Sure you did! Was any of you chaps with two or three little kids to feed
ever sorry for the day when he heard the first of his young ones cry?
Surest thing you know! Did any of us with a father and a mother, with
brothers and sisters, too, very likely, ever kick because we hadn’t been
born an orphan and an only child? You bet your sweet life we did! The
drinkin’ man don’t want no hangers-on. He wants to be free. Life ain’t
worth a burnt match to him when he’s got other people to think of, and a
home to keep up, and can’t spend every penny on hisself. Some of us here
to-night has cursed our wives; some of us has beat our children; some of
us has cut out father and mother as if they’d never done nothin’ for us,
and we could cast off from ’em with no more conscience than a tug’ll cast
off from a liner.
“But, boys, when God A’mighty put us into this world He put us into
a family first of all. He gives us kindness there, and care, and
eddication, and the great big thing that fills the whole universe and
that we ain’t got no other name for only love. As soon as we’d got pretty
well grown He give us another feeling—one that druv us by and by to go
and start a family for ourselves. Most of us went and started one, and
them that haven’t done it yet’ll do it before the next few years is out.
But, boys, what’s it all for? Everything’s got to be for somethin’ or
else it’s just lumberin’ up the ground; and this here matter of families
is either the worst or the best thing you’ll find anywhere on earth. If
it’s not the best it’s the worst, and it has to be one or t’other.
“Now I stand before you as one who used to think it was the worst. I
won’t say nothin’ of my father and mother. Them things is too sacred to
be trotted out. But I’ll speak of my wife, because she’s that grateful
for what’s been done for me—and everything done for me has been done
twice as much, ten times as much, for her—that she’d like me to bring
her into whatever I’ve got to say. I’ve known the time when I was as
crazy to be quit of my family as a dog to be rid of the tin can tied to
his tail. I had a wife, then, and three children; and, O my God! but I
thought they was a drag! I couldn’t go nowhere without thinkin’ I ought
to be with ’em, and I couldn’t take a drink without knowin’ I had to
steal it from my little boy and my two little girls. They was the p’ison
of my life. There was nights when I was reelin’ home and I used to hope
that the house had been burnt down durin’ the day and they buried in
the ashes. That’d leave me free again. Not to have no home—not to have
to ante up for no one but myself—was the only thing I ever prayed for.
And by gum, but my prayer was answered! One night I come home and found
the house empty. My wife had decamped, and left a note that run somethin’
like this: ‘Dear Beady,’ says she, ‘I can’t stand this life no more,’
says she. ‘If it was only me I wouldn’t mind; but I can’t see my children
kicked and beat and starved and hated, not by no one.’ And then she
signed her name.
“Well, say, boys, most of you has heard what happened to me after that.
I sure had one grand time while it lasted—and it lasted just about six
months. I saw a man oncet—we was movin’ a party from Harlem to the
Bronx—fall down a flight of stairs with a sofa on his back, and he sure
did get some pace on. Well, my pace was just about as quick—and as dead
easy as he struck the landin’ at the bottom I struck the gutter. Now you
know the rest of my story, because some of you guys has had a hand in it.
“But what I want to tell you is this: That when I begun to come to again,
as you might say, the first thing I wondered about was the wife and the
kids. I couldn’t get ’em out of my mind, nohow. What did I ever have ’em
for? I asked myself. Why in hell did I ever get married? Nobody never
druv me into it. I did it of my own accord. I went hangin’ after the
girl, who had a good place in the kitchen department of a big store,
and I never let her have no peace till she said she’d marry me, and did
it. Why had I been such a crazy fool? There was days and days, sittin’
right in there in that back room, when I asked myself that; and at last
I got the answer. I’m goin’ to tell it to you now, because there’s a
lot of you shysters that’s only been a few weeks in the club that’s
askin’ yourselves that very same thing. You’ve got wives and kids, the
Lord knows where—scattered to the four winds of heaven, for anything you
know—and you wish you hadn’t. But, say, don’t you go on wishin’ no such
thing; for I’m goin’ to tell you what God A’mighty said to me right there
in that back settin’-room.”
He squared himself now, planting his Egyptian monoliths with a force
which in itself was a kind of eloquence. His hands were thrust deep into
his trousers pockets and his big chest expanded.
“‘Beady,’ God A’mighty says to me, and it was just as if I’d heard
His voice, ‘if a man don’t have no one to think about but hisself he
becomes the selfishest of all things under the sun. I’m God,’ says He,
‘with nothin’ to do but enj’y myself; and yet if I didn’t have you and
the other things I make to care for and think about I wouldn’t have
nothin’. I’ve just got to have ’em, for if I didn’t I’d go crazy. So I
make beautiful worlds, and grand men, and noble women, and pretty kids,
and strong animals, and sweet birds to sing, and nice flowers to bloom,
and everything like that. I don’t make nothin’ ugly nor nothin’ bad,
nor no sickness nor sufferin’ nor poverty. You guys does all that for
yourselves, and I don’t take no rest day nor night tryin’ to show you how
not to. Listen to me, Beady,’ says He. ‘Stop thinkin’ about yourself and
that awful hulk of a body, and what it wants to eat and especially to
drink. Don’t pay no more attention to it than you can help. Say, you’re
my son, and you’re just like me. What you want is not the booze; it’s
somethin’ outside yourself to think about. I’ve given you a wife and
three fine youngsters. Now get out and get after them. Cut out livin’
for yourself and live for them. You must lose your life to find it; and
the quickest way to lose your life is not to think about your beastly
cravings at all.’
“Well, by gum! boys, if I didn’t take God A’mighty at His word. I says
to myself, I’ll prove this thing or bust—and if I was to bust there’d be
some explosion. When you fellows had kept me here long enough to let me
be pretty nigh sure of myself I went and looked up the wife, and—well,
there! I needn’t say no more. Some of you dubs has been up to my little
place and you know that Whatever spoke to me that day in that back room
is in my little tenement in the Bronx if He ever was anywhere—and that
brings me at last to my p’int.
“I’m speakin’ to you blue-star men because you’ve showed pretty well
by this time the stuff you’re made of. As long as you was in danger
of slippin’ back I wouldn’t say this to you at all. But, say, you’ve
weathered the worst of it, so it’s time for me to speak.
“Has any of you a wife? Then go back to her. Have you kids? Then go back
to ’em. Have you a father or a mother? Then for God’s sake let them
know that you’re doin’ well. Go to ’em—write to ’em—call ’em up on the
’phone—send ’em a telegraph—but don’t let ’em be without the peace o’
mind that’ll come from knowin’ that you’re on your two feet. One of the
most mysterious things in this awful mysterious life is the way somebody
is always lovin’ somebody. Here in these two rooms is a hundred and
sixty-three by actual count of the seediest and most gol-darned boobs
that the country can turn out. As we look at each other we can’t help
askin’ if any one in their tarnation senses could care for the likes of
us. And yet for every bloomin’ one of us you can foot up to eight or ten
that’ll have us in their hearts as if we was gold-headed cherubs.
“Say, boys, I’ll tell you somethin’ confidential like, and don’t think
I’m braggin’. The furniture-movin’ business is the grandest one there is.
For a man that’s mastered it there don’t seem anything in the world left
for him to learn. He’s ready to command a army or to run a ocean liner.
But there’s one thing I’ll be hanged if even a furniture-mover knows
anything about—and that’s love. I’ve thought about it and thought about
it—and it gets me every time. I don’t know what it is, or where it comes
from, or how they brew the durned thing in hearts like yours and mine.
All I know is that it’s there—and that this old world goes round in it.
I’m buttin’ into it all the time, and it kind o’ turns me shy like. My
own little home is so full of it that sometimes it makes me choke. If I
try to get away from it and come down here—well, I’m blest if some bloke
don’t begin ladlin’ it out to me when he don’t hardly know what he’s
doin’. The furniture-movin’ business is that shiny with it when you know
how to see it— But I’ll not say no more. You’d laff. You’re laffin’ at
me now, and I don’t blame you. All I’ve wanted to do is to put some of
you boys wise. If there’s a blue-star man who knows any one in the world
that’s fond of him—then for Christ’s sake get after ’em! And do it not
later than to-night.”
And so I did it. Before going to bed I wrote a long letter to my father,
giving him such details of my history during the past three years as I
thought he would like to know. I hinted that if he or my mother would
care for a visit from me I could go home for a few days.
Then I waited.
In a week I got my reply. It read:
MY DEAR FRANK,—I am glad to receive your letter, but sorry that
it should ever have been necessary for you to write it. That
you should be doing well no one could be more thankful for than
I. I have given your messages to your mother, and she wishes me
to send you her love. I consider it my duty to add, however,
that no messages can withdraw the sword you have thrust into
her heart—and mine.
Your affectionate father,