CONSTANCE TO MYRA
MY DEAR LADY BOUNTIFUL: Your letter--the ridiculous one--came
yesterday. The idea of your proposing in the very morning of your
honey-month to take the Colfax Avenue house and turn it into a home for
indigent relatives! As Tommie would put it, "Wot are you givin' us!"
But seriously, cuzzy dear, it's quite out of the question. Papa
wouldn't hear to it, and besides, we are getting along very cosily
now, re-learning a good many lessons that prosperity makes one forget.
One of them is that gratitude isn't quite like the dodo,--gone into
fossilistic extinction, you know.
Margaret Gannon is one of the instances. She has taken a room in our
block, and there is no limit to her great Irish tender-heartedness. If
I'd let her, she would make me sit down and hold my hands while she
does the housework of our three rooms. In spite of all I can say or
do, she does do a great deal of it; and I can hear her sewing-machine
buzzing deep into the night to pay for it.
Tommie is another. The day we moved down here from the old home in
Colfax Avenue that "irreclaimable little savage," as you once called
him, brought me his surplus of a dollar and something and asked me to
"blow it in" for him. Think of it and weep, you luxury-spoiled darling!
I could have hugged him, dirt and all. And since that day he has been
my Ariel, in more ways than you would think possible. He is so sharp
and keen-witted; and his philanthropy has developed into a passion.
Mr. Lansdale has been most kind. That is the proper phrase, I believe,
but now that I have written it down it seems trite and meaningless.
If I say that he has fairly earned the right to sign himself "Robert
Lansdale, Gentleman," you will understand. The change in our
circumstances has been a test that he alone of all our friends has
been able to endure unmoved. I don't say that others are not kind and
sympathetic, but they are--well, they are different. Now that I can
say it without hurting you, I'll admit that I've always had a good
bit of contempt for culture of the imported variety (I think I have
been spelling it "culchah"), but Mr. Lansdale has converted me. It is
worth something to be able to rise superior to circumstances,--the
circumstances of others, I mean,--and, between us two, it's a virtue to
which we new people haven't quite attained.
I presume you read the Denver papers, and if you do you know all I
could tell you about the person whom you once said was better worth
saving than other people. Mr. Lansdale, who was one of the original
trio, you remember, talks very sparingly of Mr. Jeffard; from which I
infer that there isn't much to be said,--in mixed company. The newly
arrived one lives in an apartment building, and papa says they are
beginning to call him a miser on the street. They'd say that of any
capitalist who wouldn't invest in at least one "ground-floor" a day;
but I think you will agree with me that they can't say anything worse
than the truth about him. I haven't had the ill-chance to meet him yet
(I hope I'll be spared that), but I am afraid Tommie has been spying
upon him,--for reasons of his own which he won't explain. I happened
to overhear the final volley of a small battle royal between my Ariel
and Margaret the other day, which had in it a hint of an unnamable
thing,--a thing which involves Margaret and the unworthy one. You may
remember that he once posed as her _deus ex machina_. And she has grown
dangerously beautiful in her year of uprightness.
When you write, tell me all about your plans for the summer; and
believe me always
Your cousin-content,
CONNIE.
MYRA TO CONSTANCE
DEAR CONNIE: Really, the S. P. C. C. ought to take you in hand! To
think of the cold-blooded way in which you hoodwinked us up to the
very last moment, making us believe that the Lodestar involvement was
next to nothing, and keeping the home intact solely for the purpose
of providing a proper stage-setting for the final act of our little
comedy-drama! It's fairly heart-breaking; the more since you won't let
us share with you, as we'd be glad to. Before you saw fit to confide
in us, Dick had used every argument short of a pick-handle to convince
me that I should presently go back to Denver and creature comforts,
leaving him here to go on delving in the Myriad. I only laughed at
him, but I'll recant if you will listen to reason, and let me make a
home for you and Uncle Stephen. But as between living a three-quarter
widow in Denver on mere visiting terms with you and your father, and
hibernating here with Dick, you may be sure I shall choose the latter.
We are both as enthusiastic as can be over the prospects of the mine.
The new machinery is on the way, and we are down twenty feet on the
incline. Another month will surely carry it into pay-rock. (You see I
am learning to talk "mineral-English" with the best of them.) Under the
circumstances, I don't blame Dick for wanting to stay right here every
day; and it won't be so lonesome for me as you may imagine. You see I
have Dick, and he can be a whole cityful upon occasion.
You wouldn't know "The Eyrie" (Dick says the altitude is so great that
we had to have a high-sounding name) since we have begun to remodel it.
We are to have another room, a larger kitchen for Wun Ling (oh, he is a
celestial treasure!--quite the archangel of the culinary host), a huge
chimney, with immense fireplaces, against a possible winter here, and a
wider porch,--board-floored, if you please. And inside I have rugged
and portièred, and pictured and bric-a-bracked, until the pristine
barkiness of the place is all but effaced.
So far, with the exception of an occasional call from Mr. McMurtrie, we
have been "each other's own best company;" but if I stay up all summer
it will be conditional upon your and Uncle Stephen's spending at least
a month with us when the hot weather makes your block uncomfortable.
Don't say no beforehand, unless you want to make me quite disgusted.
Mr. Lansdale is a lineal descendant in the direct line of the
Chevalier,--the _sans peur et sans reproche_ one; you know I've always
said that of him. It chokes me when I think of what is lying in wait
for him. Isn't there the least little glimmer of hope? He looked so
bright and eager on our wedding day that I could almost make myself
believe he was going to get well. You must be very, very careful,
Connie dear; not to encourage him too much, I mean; not unless you--but
I sha'n't say it without your warrant.
What you say about Margaret Gannon's Irish true-heartedness reminds me
of our own wild Irishman. He is the mine blacksmith, a perfect Sheridan
for wit and repartee when he is sober, and a maniac of maniacs when
he is drunk,--which happens whenever Dick relaxes his vigilance for a
single hour.
The other day Pat (if he has any other name I've never heard it) did
a thing heroic. They are using dynamite in the tunnel, and after the
noon blasts one of the miners went in before the deadly gas had been
properly "ventilated" out. One of the others saw him stumble and go
headlong down the incline, and the cry went back to the entrance. Pat
heard it (he was sober that day), flung his tools to the four winds,
dashed into the pit of death, and came out black in the face, but with
the man on his shoulder, just as Dick got down to the entrance. Wasn't
that fine?
As you surmise, we have read all that the newspapers are saying about
Mr. Jeffard. Isn't it queer that he should develop into a millionaire
miser! Dick has told me a great deal about him,--at least about the Mr.
Jeffard he used to know,--and whatever sins he may have had to answer
for in those days, avarice was not one of them. I suppose it is another
case of money-spoiling, but I can't help wanting to doubt your latest
suspicion of him. I read your letter to Dick, and he shook his head
when I came to that part; said he couldn't believe it, even on your
testimony,--that the man might be capable of all sorts of villainy,
but not that. So I am going over to Dick's point of view far enough to
ask you not to be too hard upon the "unworthy one" just because he is
no longer one of your poverty-stricken sinners,--he _was_ that once,
wasn't he? The rich sinners need charity quite as really as the poor;
of a different kind, to be sure, and not always as easy to exercise as
the other, but none the less necessary.
This is all you are going to get to-night. Dick has just come up from
the mine, and he says I sha'n't write any more whatever.
Your loving cousin,
MYRA.
LANSDALE TO BARTROW
MY DEAR RICHARD:--What with a mine for a taskmaster and a wife for your
leisure I can fancy you tossing this letter aside unopened. But the
promise which you exacted is herein kept, and it must plead my excuse
for breaking into your honeymoon with a few pages of barren gossip.
First, as to Miss Elliott and her good father. Your foreboding went
nearer the mark than the ostensible fact. They were merely postponing
the evil day until after your wedding, and when the crash came it
turned out to be no less than a catastrophe. Stephen Elliott met it
like a man, giving up everything to his creditors, and coming down to
a life of the barest necessities with the serenity of a philosopher,
happy, apparently, that the well of assets was deep enough to brim the
tank of liability, though at the expense of the final drop.
I am told that he was left quite without resources other than a small
sum of money which one of the creditors absolutely refused to accept;
and he assures me that he will once more shoulder pick and shovel and
go afield again as soon as the season is a little farther advanced.
I confess frankly that the heroism of it bedazes me. If there be any
finer example of dauntlessness in the heart of man, the novellers have
not yet portrayed it for us. He was sixty-three last January, and
he promises to begin the search for another competence with all the
enthusiasm and ardor of youth!
Constance you know, and I need not assure you that the sudden
down-dropping touches her not at all; or if at all, only on the side
of her beneficences to others. So far as one may perceive, the change
for her is only of encompassments. She is as much above it as she was
superior to the cheapening effect of an elastic bank account. To me
she seems the sweeter for the chastening, though really, I presume,
she is neither better nor worse for it,--nor any different. You may be
sure that my first call upon them after the submergence was made with a
heartful of sympathy,--which I took away with me, and with it a lesson
in sincerity and simple-heartedness rare enough in my experience. There
is gentle blood and enviable in these two. My pen is too clumsy to ink
in the details of this picture for you.
As to Jeffard: When he made his appearance I struck hands with your
point of view sufficiently to meet him as if nothing save good fortune
had overtaken him,--an attitude which it is sometimes as difficult for
me to maintain as it appears altogether impossible for some others who
used to know him. By which you will understand that he is ostracized
in a way, or would be in any casting of the potsherd votes by the
unthinking majority.
I am bound to say, however, that the whiplash of public opinion does
not seem to be quite long enough to reach him. A fortnight ago, for
reasons charitable or experimental, as you please, I got him a bidding
to one of Mrs. Calmaine's "ridottos." You know Mrs. Calmaine and her
tolerance, and you will appreciate the situation when I tell you that
I had to manoeuvre a bit for the formal invitation, though Jeffard
used to be in her good book. Jeffard accepted, and I went with him to
see what would befall. There were a good many there who had known the
prehistoric Jeffard, and while they did not pointedly ignore him, they
seemed to be divided between a desire to cold-shoulder the man and to
conciliate the prospective millionaire;--wherefore they compromised by
giving him what you would call "the high hand-shake."
Whatever may have been my motive in dragging him into it, Jeffard's own
reasons for going were confessedly experimental. So much he confided
to me on our early retreat from the house of mirth. "I wanted to find
out where I stand," he said, "and these good people have been quite
explicit. Don't get me any more invitations." And after a time he
added, "I can buy them when I want them." From which you will infer
that he will henceforth sit in the seat of the scornful, and this, I
fear, is the lamentable fact.
Touching his present mode of life, it borders on the puzzling. With
a bank deposit which is currently reported to reach seven figures,
and which is doubtless well up in the sixes, he lives in two rooms in
a block, and takes his meals at the club. A very rich spendthrift
might do this, you will say, saving at the spigot and wasting at the
bung; but so far as my observation goes, Jeffard seems not to know
that his barrel has a bung. And if any of the staves have started on
the side of dissipation, the leak is not yet apparent to me. The other
evening, when I let drive a little arrow pointed with a gibe at his
penuriousness, he laughed and reminded me of something he had said one
night in the famine time when we were dining by the help of a small
windfall of mine. "I told you I should be a miser if the tide ever
turned," said he, "and you scoffed at me. I assure you I can account
for every dollar I have spent since the Midas began to pour them in."
This is his attitude as he defines it, but I can qualify the accusation
a little on the friendly side. I should rather say that he had set his
mark at thrifty frugality. He is not niggardly; in benevolences which
may be paid for in the coin of effort he is still generous; and if he
were living on a clerk's income people would commend him.
But I fancy I hear you cry "Enough!" and this ends with the heartiest
good wishes for you both.
Faithfully yours,
ROBERT LANSDALE.