A. V. O. E.: Something in YOU? One has only to look at you to see
there's nothing in you but a note scribbled to him by a cousin. Look
at ME! There are three sheets, closely written, in ME. The lady to
whom I am addressed--
A. V. Y. E.: Yes, sir, yes; you told me all about her yesterday.
A. V. O. E.: And I shall do so to-day and to-morrow and every day and
all day long. That young lady was a widow. She stayed here many
times. She was delicate, and the air suited her. She was poor, and
the tariff was just within her means. She was lonely, and had need of
love. I have in me for her a passionate avowal and strictly honorable
proposal, written to her, after many rough copies, by a gentleman who
had made her acquaintance under this very roof. He was rich, he was
charming, he was in the prime of life. He had asked if he might write
to her. She had flutteringly granted his request. He posted me to her
the day after his return to London. I looked forward to being torn
open by her. I was very sure she would wear me and my contents next to
her bosom. She was gone. She had left no address. She never
returned. This I tell you, and shall continue to tell you, not because
I want any of your callow sympathy,--no, THANK you!--but that you may
judge how much less than slight are the probabilities that you
yourself--
But my reader has overheard these dialogues as often as I. He wants to
know what was odd about this particular letter-board before which I was
standing. At first glance I saw nothing odd about it. But presently I
distinguished a handwriting that was vaguely familiar. It was mine. I
stared, I wondered. There is always a slight shock in seeing an
envelop of one's own after it has gone through the post. It looks as
if it had gone through so much. But this was the first time I had ever
seen an envelop of mine eating its heart out in bondage on a
letter-board. This was outrageous. This was hardly to be believed.
Sheer kindness had impelled me to write to "A. V. Laider, Esq.," and
this was the result! I hadn't minded receiving no answer. Only now,
indeed, did I remember that I hadn't received one. In multitudinous
London the memory of A. V. Laider and his trouble had soon passed from
my mind. But--well, what a lesson not to go out of one's way to write
to casual acquaintances!
My envelop seemed not to recognize me as its writer. Its gaze was the
more piteous for being blank. Even so had I once been gazed at by a
dog that I had lost and, after many days, found in the Battersea Home.
"I don't know who you are, but, whoever you are, claim me, take me out
of this!" That was my dog's appeal. This was the appeal of my envelop.
I raised my hand to the letter-board, meaning to effect a swift and
lawless rescue, but paused at sound of a footstep behind me. The old
waiter had come to tell me that my luncheon was ready. I followed him
out of the hall, not, however, without a bright glance across my
shoulder to reassure the little captive that I should come back.
I had the sharp appetite of the convalescent, and this the sea air had
whetted already to a finer edge. In touch with a dozen oysters, and
with stout, I soon shed away the unreasoning anger I had felt against
A. V. Laider. I became merely sorry for him that he had not received
a letter which might perhaps have comforted him. In touch with
cutlets, I felt how sorely he had needed comfort. And anon, by the big
bright fireside of that small dark smoking-room where, a year ago, on
the last evening of my stay here, he and I had at length spoken to each
other, I reviewed in detail the tragic experience he had told me; and I
simply reveled in reminiscent sympathy with him.
A. V. LAIDER--I had looked him up in the visitors'-book on the night of
his arrival. I myself had arrived the day before, and had been rather
sorry there was no one else staying here. A convalescent by the sea
likes to have some one to observe, to wonder about, at meal-time. I
was glad when, on my second evening, I found seated at the table
opposite to mine another guest. I was the gladder because he was just
the right kind of guest. He was enigmatic. By this I mean that he did
not look soldierly or financial or artistic or anything definite at
all. He offered a clean slate for speculation. And, thank heaven! he
evidently wasn't going to spoil the fun by engaging me in conversation
later on. A decently unsociable man, anxious to be left alone.
The heartiness of his appetite, in contrast with his extreme fragility
of aspect and limpness of demeanor, assured me that he, too, had just
had influenza. I liked him for that. Now and again our eyes met and
were instantly parted. We managed, as a rule, to observe each other
indirectly. I was sure it was not merely because he had been ill that
he looked interesting. Nor did it seem to me that a spiritual
melancholy, though I imagined him sad at the best of times, was his
sole asset. I conjectured that he was clever. I thought he might also
be imaginative. At first glance I had mistrusted him. A shock of
white hair, combined with a young face and dark eyebrows, does somehow
make a man look like a charlatan. But it is foolish to be guided by an
accident of color. I had soon rejected my first impression of my
fellow-diner. I found him very sympathetic.
Anywhere but in England it would be impossible for two solitary men,
howsoever much reduced by influenza, to spend five or six days in the
same hostel and not exchange a single word. That is one of the charms
of England. Had Laider and I been born and bred in any other land than
Eng we should have become acquainted before the end of our first
evening in the small smoking-room, and have found ourselves irrevocably
committed to go on talking to each other throughout the rest of our
visit. We might, it is true, have happened to like each other more
than any one we had ever met. This off chance may have occurred to us
both. But it counted for nothing against the certain surrender of
quietude and liberty. We slightly bowed to each other as we entered or
left the dining-room or smoking-room, and as we met on the wide-spread
sands or in the shop that had a small and faded circulating library.
That was all. Our mutual aloofness was a positive bond between us.
Had he been much older than I, the responsibility for our silence would
of course have been his alone. But he was not, I judged, more than
five or six years ahead of me, and thus I might without impropriety
have taken it on myself to perform that hard and perilous feat which
English people call, with a shiver, "breaking the ice." He had reason,
therefore, to be as grateful to me as I to him. Each of us, not the
less frankly because silently, recognized his obligation to the other.
And when, on the last evening of my stay, the ice actually was broken
there was no ill-will between us: neither of us was to blame.
It was a Sunday evening. I had been out for a long last walk and had
come in very late to dinner. Laider had left his table almost directly
after I sat down to mine. When I entered the smoking-room I found him
reading a weekly review which I had bought the day before. It was a
crisis. He could not silently offer nor could I have silently
accepted, six-pence. It was a crisis. We faced it like men. He made,
by word of mouth, a graceful apology. Verbally, not by signs, I
besought him to go on reading. But this, of course, was a vain counsel
of perfection. The social code forced us to talk now. We obeyed it
like men. To reassure him that our position was not so desperate as it
might seem, I took the earliest opportunity to mention that I was going
away early next morning. In the tone of his "Oh, are you?" he tried
bravely to imply that he was sorry, even now, to hear that. In a way,
perhaps, he really was sorry. We had got on so well together, he and
I. Nothing could efface the memory of that. Nay, we seemed to be
hitting it off even now. Influenza was not our sole theme. We passed
from that to the aforesaid weekly review, and to a correspondence that
was raging therein on faith and reason.
This correspondence had now reached its fourth and penultimate
stage--its Australian stage. It is hard to see why these
correspondences spring up; one only knows that they do spring up,
suddenly, like street crowds. There comes, it would seem, a moment
when the whole English-speaking race is unconsciously bursting to have
its say about some one thing--the split infinitive, or the habits of
migratory birds, or faith and reason, or what-not. Whatever weekly
review happens at such a moment to contain a reference, however remote,
to the theme in question reaps the storm. Gusts of letters come in
from all corners of the British Isles. These are presently reinforced
by Canada in full blast. A few weeks later the Anglo-Indians weigh in.
In due course we have the help of our Australian cousins. By that
time, however, we of the mother country have got our second wind, and
so determined are we to make the most of it that at last even the
editor suddenly loses patience and says, "This correspondence must now
cease.--Ed." and wonders why on earth he ever allowed anything so
tedious and idiotic to begin.
I pointed out to Laider one of the Australian letters that had
especially pleased me in the current issue. It was from "A Melbourne
Man," and was of the abrupt kind which declares that "all your
correspondents have been groping in the dark" and then settles the
whole matter in one short sharp flash. The flash in this instance was
"Reason is faith, faith reason--that is all we know on earth and all we
need to know." The writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., "A
Melbourne Man." I said to Laider how very restful it was, after
influenza, to read anything that meant nothing whatsoever. Laider was
inclined to take the letter more seriously than I, and to be mildly
metaphysical. I said that for me faith and reason were two separate
things, and as I am no good at metaphysics, however mild, I offered a
definite example, to coax the talk on to ground where I should be safer.
"Palmistry, for example," I said. "Deep down in my heart I believe in
palmistry."
Laider turned in his chair.
"You believe in palmistry?"