night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as
Lizzie's note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a
despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across
the way. It seemed very appropriate.
The doctors feared--Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in
Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in
Washington. He could not be found. And did I think--?
No, I thought none of the things that Stella's sister suggested. Of a
sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned,
clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement
of children; and I heard the organ clatter down the street, and set up
its faint jingling in the distance. And I knew with an unreasoning
surety. I pitied Stella now ineffably, not for the maiming and crippling
of her body, for the spoiling of that tender miracle, that white flower
of flesh, but for the falling of her air-castle, the brave air-castle
which to her meant everything. I guessed what had happened.
Later I found Peter Blagden, no matter where. It is not particularly to
my credit that I knew where to look for him. Yet the French have a
saying of infinite wisdom in their _qui a bu boira_. The old vice had
gripped the man, irresistibly, and he had stolen off to gratify it in
secret; and he had not been sober for a week. He was on the verge of
collapse even when I told him--oh, with a deliberate cruelty, I grant
you,--what had happened that afternoon.
Then, swiftly, his demolishment came; and I could not--could not for
very shame--bring this shivering, weeping imbecile to the bedside of
Stella, who was perhaps to die that night. Such was the news I brought
to Stella's sister; through desolate streets already blanching in the
dawn.
Stella was calling for Peter. We manufactured explanations.
4
Nice customs curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and
the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room,
and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow is
cheeping somewhere.
"Tell me the truth," says Stella, pleadingly. Her face, showing over
billows of bedclothes, is as pale as they. But beautiful, and
exceedingly beautiful, is Stella's face, now that she is come to die.
It heartened me to lie to her. Peter had been retained in the great
Western Railway case. He had been called to Denver, San Francisco
and--I forget today just why or even whither. He had kept it as a
surprise for her. He was hurrying back. He would arrive in two days. I
showed her telegrams from Peter Blagden,--clumsy forgeries I had
concocted in the last half-hour.
Oh, the story ran lamely, I grant you. But, vanity apart, I told it
with conviction. Stella must and should die in content; that much at
least I could purchase for her; and my thoughts were strangely nimble,
there was a devilish fluency in my speech, and lie after lie was fitted
somehow into an entity that surprised even me as it took plausible
form. And I got my reward. Little by little, the doubt died from her
eyes as I lied stubbornly in a drug-scented silence; a little by a
little, her cheeks flushed brighter, and ever brighter, as I dilated on
this wonderful success that had come to Peter Blagden, till at last her
face was all aflame with happiness.
She had dreamed of this, half conscious of her folly; she had worked
toward this consummation for months. But she had hardly dared to hope
for absolute success; it almost worried her; and she could not be
certain, even now, whether it was the soup or her blue silk that had
influenced Allardyce most potently. Both had been planned to wheedle
him, to gain this glorious chance for Peter Blagden....
"You--you are sure you are not lying?" said Stella, and smiled in
speaking, for she believed me infinitely.
"Stella, before God, it is true!" I said, with fervour. "On my word of
honour, it is as I tell you!" And my heart was sick within me as I
thought of the stuttering brute, the painted female thing with tumbled
hair, and the stench of liquor in the room--Ah, well, the God I called
to witness strengthened me to smile back at Stella.
"I believe you," she said, simply. "I--I am glad. It is a big thing for
Peter." Her eyes widened in wonder and pride, and she dreamed for just
a moment of his future. But, upon a sudden, her face fell. "Dear,
dear!" said Stella, petulantly; "I'd forgotten. I'll be dead by then."
"Stella! Stella!" I cried, and very hoarsely; "why--why, nonsense,
child! The doctor thinks--he is quite sure, I mean--" I had a horrible
desire to laugh. Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven.
"Ah, I know," she interrupted. "I am a little afraid to die," she went
on, reflectively. "If one only knew--" Stella paused for a moment; then
she smiled. "After all," she said, "it isn't as if I hadn't
accomplished anything. I have made Peter. The ball is at his feet now;
he has only to kick it. And I helped."
"Yes," said I. My voice was shaken, broken out of all control. "You
have helped. Why, you have done everything, Stella! There is not a
young man in America with his prospects. In five years, he will be one
of our greatest lawyers,--everybody says so--everybody! And you have
done it all, Stella--every bit of it! You have made a man of him, I
tell you! Look at what he was!--and then look at what he is! And--and
you talk of leaving him now! Why, it's preposterous! Peter needs you, I
tell you--he needs you to cajole the proper people and keep him steady
and--and--Why, you artful young woman, how could he possibly get on
without you, do you think? Oh, how can any of us get on without you?
You _must_ get well, I tell you. In a month, you will be right as a
trivet. You die! Why, nonsense!" I laughed. I feared I would never have
done with laughter over the idea of Stella's dying.
"But I have done all I could. And so he doesn't need me now." Stella
meditated for yet another moment. "I believe I shall always know when
he does anything especially big. God would be sure to tell me, you see,
because He understands how much it means to me. And I shall be
proud--ah, yes, wherever I am, I shall be proud of Peter. You see, he
didn't really care about being a success, for of course he knows that
Uncle Larry will leave him a great deal of money one of these days. But
I am such a vain little cat--so bent on making a noise in the world,
--that, I think, he did it more to please my vanity than anything else.
I nagged him, frightfully, you know," Stella confessed, "but he was
always--oh, _so_ dear about it, Rob! And he has never failed me--not
even once, although I know at times it has been very hard for him."
Stella sighed; and then laughed. "Yes," said she, "I think I am
satisfied with my life altogether. Somehow, I am sure I shall be told
about it when he is a power in the world--a power for good, as he will
be,--and then I shall be very perky--somewhere. I ought to sing _Nunc
Dimittis_, oughtn't I?" I was not unmoved; nor did it ever lie within
my power to be unmoved when I thought of Stella and how gaily she went
to meet her death....
5
"Good-bye," said she, in a tired voice.
"Good-bye, Stella," said I; and I kissed her.
"And I don't think you are a mess. And I _don't_ hate you." She was
smiling very strangely. "Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter
what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared
let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter--But, you
see, you weren't--"
"No, dear, you did the right thing--what was best for all of us--"
"Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much!
You aren't--being dependable, like Peter, even now," she said,
reproachfully....
Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven.
15.
_He Decides to Amuse Himself_
I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral,
--say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the
grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that
seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about
the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor,
for that matter, could I.
"But it was flagrant, flagrant!" my heart screeched in a grill of
impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will
You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was
flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the
twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it
wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!" In such a frame of
mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn.
2
It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident,
though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had
left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen
to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking
hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at
seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been
quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly,
and would have made anybody else think, "Oh how candid is the egotism
of this child!" and would have moved that person, metaphorically
anyhow, to pat me upon the head.
But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered:
"Your book?--Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little
letter about how wonderful it was?"
"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of _The
Complete Letter Writer_. There was not a bit of you in it."
"Well, that is why I dislike your book--because there was not a bit of
_you_ in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and
also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the
feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they
were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never
seen, but had read a lot about."
"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You
should be pleased."
"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other
book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than
once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear?
--You did nicer things than write books'--and he did .... I hear many
things of you...."
"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear."
And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed.
"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with
you by the people who care for you?--and one of them dislikes pottage.
Indeed, I _would_ have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I
almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great
length of liking you,--because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear,
you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better
reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with
pottage...."
The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely
what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just
twice as petulant as I was already.
"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching
lately--dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather
obviously an afterthought.
"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were
quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of
her death."
"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw,
but it served.
"Yes,--I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella
all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have
been different. And--she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair,
Bettie,--it is hideously unfair!"
"Robin--" she began.
"And why should you be living," I said, in half-conscious absurdity,
"when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive.
Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even
particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President
has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to
his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand
protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter
Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by
this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella
that I loved,--the Stella that was the first and will always be the
first with me. For I want her--just Stella--! Oh, it is an excellent
jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came
to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking
you to marry me,--you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!" And
I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger.
But the girl, too, was angry. "Marry you!" she said. "Why, Robin, you
were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow,
who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether
she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough
to make a spectacle of you, even now."
"I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your
opinion," said I. "Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in
the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie." And I kissed her
hand. "And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear," I said.
Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train.
And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt "Good
evening, gentlemen," as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel
Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had
left them there two years ago.
3
It was a long while afterward I discovered that "some damned
good-natured friend," as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had
told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with
Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the
once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the "summer's shopping," who had
told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of
Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly
conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and
was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I
cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other.
As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some
dissatisfaction with the universe. And I returned to Lichfield and
presently reopened part of the old Townsend house .... "Robert and I,"
my mother had said, to Lichfield's delectation, "just live downstairs
in the two lower stories, and ostracise the third floor...." And I was
received by Lichfield society, if not with open arms at least with
acquiescence. And Byam, an invaluable mulatto, the son of my cousin
Dick Townsend and his housekeeper, made me quite comfortable.
Depend upon it, Lichfield knew a deal more concerning my escapades than
I did. That I was "deplorably wild" was generally agreed, and a
reasonable number of seductions, murders and arsons was, no doubt,
accredited to me "on quite unimpeachable authority, my dear."
But I was a Townsend, and Lichfield had been case-hardened to
Townsendian vagaries since Colonial days; and, besides, I had written a
book which had been talked about; and, as an afterthought, I was
reputed not to be an absolute pauper, if only because my father had
taken the precaution, customary with the Townsends, to marry a woman
with enough money to gild the bonds of matrimony. For Lichfield,
luckily, was not aware how near my pleasure-loving parents had come,
between them, to spending the last cent of this once ample fortune.
And, in fine, "Well, really now--?" said Lichfield. Then there was a
tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of
them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary
specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often
embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a
not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a
phrase, forgot to comb its hair, these tonsorial deficiencies were by
the broadminded not appraised too strictly.
I did not greatly care what Lichfield said one way or the other. I was
too deeply engrossed: first, in correcting the final proofs of
_Afield_, my second book, which appeared that spring and was built
around--there is no harm in saying now,--my relations with Gillian
Hardress; secondly, in the remunerative and uninteresting task of
writing for _Woman's Weekly_ five "wholesome love-stories with a dash
of humor," in which She either fell into His arms "with a contented
sigh" or else "their lips met" somewhere toward the ending of the
seventh page; and, thirdly, in diverting myself with Celia Reindan....
4
That, though, is a business I shall not detail, because it was one of
the very vulgarest sort. It was the logical outgrowth of my admiration
for her yellow hair,--she did have extraordinary hair, confound her!
--and of a few moonlit nights. It was simply the result of our common
vanity and of her book-fed sentimentality and, eventually, of her
unbridled temper; and in nature the compound was an unsavoury mess
which thoroughly delighted Lichfield. Lichfield will be only too glad,
even nowadays, to discourse to you of how I got wedged in that infernal
transom, and of how Celia alarmed everybody within two blocks of her
bedroom by her wild yells.
5
I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than
_The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to
marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual
phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible
match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend.
The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had
already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable
magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale,
necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of
someone who would assist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there
must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's
_milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may
remember, I first met with Stella.
So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going
into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the
absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate
waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with.
And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she
couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail.
And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was
not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in
all, I was not discontented when I left her.
Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious
representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible
and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another
penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of
the old scoundrel....
6
When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be
very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every
inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial,"
--and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the
city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had
meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say;
and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green
Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic
reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this
resort.
But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to
treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too
much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I
find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to
any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood
them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse
with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have
forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the
necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in
human interest.
For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other.
Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you
will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and
thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as
I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places
I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks
there, and no more.
For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I
was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven
cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the
other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged
by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield.
16.
_He Seeks for Copy_
I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and,
as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely
well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process.
"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it
may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul,
Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate
scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently
fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to
overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent café! Try now, nunky!
try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the
right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you."
Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the
contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a
nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember;
and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar.
"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth
chapter, and flung down the book.
"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling
with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense
instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter
is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_,
you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments,
the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and
'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to
the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low
moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady
is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to
meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question
nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot
to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit,
and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and
so on."
But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he,
pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something--well! we'll
put it, something of the sort you _can_ do. For you can, you know."
"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second
edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was
ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything
adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's
deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to
this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my
glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light.
"This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford
cake; for I shall have written _As the Coming of Dawn_."
Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me
lending you any money for your--brief Biblical words!" he said.