"MY DEAR MISS BARRINGTON:--
"I admire your idea of gloom! Not the spirit of gloom but of
adventure moves you. I saw it in your eye. When I buy a
horse, I always look at his eye. It's not so much viciousness
that I'm afraid of as stupidity. I like a horse that is
always pressing forward to see what is around the next turn.
Now, we humans are a good deal like horses. Women are,
anyway. And I saw your eye. My own opinion is that you are
having the finest time of anybody I know. You're shaping your
own life, at least,--and that's the best fun there is,--the
best kind of good fortune. Of course you'll get tired of it
after a while. I don't say that because you are a woman, but
I've seen it happen over and over again both with men and
women. After a little while they get tired of roving and
come home.
"You may not believe it, but, after all, that's the great
moment in their lives--you just take it from me who have seen
more than you might think and who have had a good deal of
time to think things out. I do wish you had seen your way to
come out here. There are any number of matters I would like
to talk over with you.
"You mustn't think me impudent for writing in this familiar
way. I write frankly because I'm sure you'll understand, and
the conventionalities have been cast aside because in this
case they seem so immaterial. I can assure you that I'm not
impudent--not where women are concerned, at any rate. I'm a
born lover of women, though I have been no woman's lover. I
haven't seen much of them. Sometimes I've gone a year without
seeing one, not even a squaw. But I judge them by my mother,
who made every one happy who came near her, and by some
others I have known; I judge them by you, though I saw you
only a minute. I suppose you will think me crazy or insincere
in saying that. I'm both sane and honest--ask Honora.
"You speak of my Italians. They are making me trouble. We
have been good friends and they have been happy here. I gave
them lots to build on if they would put up homes; and I
advanced the capital for the cottages and let them pay me
four per cent--the lowest possible interest. I got a school
for their children and good teachers, and I interested the
church down in Denver to send a priest out here and establish
a mission. I thought we understood each other, and that they
comprehended that their prosperity and mine were bound up
together. But an agitator came here the other day,--sent by
the unions, of course,--and there's discontent. They have
lost the friendly look from their eyes, and the men turn out
of their way to avoid speaking to me. Since I've been laid up
here, things have been going badly. There have been meetings
and a good deal of hard talk. I suppose I'm in for a fight,
and I tell you it hurts. I feel like a man at war with his
children. As I feel just now, I'd throw up the whole thing
rather than row with them, but the money of other men is
invested in these mines and I'm the custodian of it. So I've
no choice in the matter. Perhaps, too, it's for their own
good that they should be made to see reason. What do you say?
"Faithfully,
"WANDER."
Honora wrote the same day and to her quiet report of improved nights
and endurable days she added:--
"I hope you will answer my cousin's letter. I can't tell you
what a good man he is, and so boyish, in spite of his being
strong and perfectly brave--oh, brave to the death! He's very
lonely. He always has been. You'll have to make allowances
for his being so Western and going right to the point in such
a reckless way. He hasn't told me what he's written you, but
I know if he wants to be friends with you he'll say so
without any preliminaries. He's very eager to have me talk of
you, so I do. I'm eager to talk, too. I always loved you,
Kate, but now I put you and Karl in a class by yourselves as
the completely dependable ones.
"The babies send kisses. Don't worry about me. I'm beginning
to see that it's not extraordinary for trouble to have come
to me. Why not to me as well as to another? I'm one of the
great company of sad ones now. But I'm not going to be
melancholy. I know how disappointed you'd be if I were. I'm
beginning to sleep better, and for all of this still, dark
cavern in my heart, so filled with voices of the past and
with the horrible chill of the present, I am able to laugh a
little at passing things. I find myself doing it
involuntarily. So at least I've got where I can hear what the
people about me are saying, and can make a fitting reply.
Yes, do write Karl. For my sake."