“Deep Harbor, N. Y.
“Aug. 16, 191--
“Dear Rad:
“Yes; stare as hard as you will, rub your eyes, put on your glasses.
The postmark of this letter _is_ Deep Harbor, and the illegible
scrawl _is_ that of Caleb Whitman, editor and would-be novelist.
“When we parted Saturday night I fully intended to carry out my plan
of going to the camp. Indeed, on the following morning I bought
my ticket, seated myself in the car for Utica (which was as far
as I could go on the through train) and tried to lose myself in
contemplation of the expected joys before me.
“Then what happened? Why didn’t I get to my destination? Why am I not
at this very moment sitting near a camp fire listening to the stories
of how-the-trout-got-away? I can’t entirely explain it myself. The
human mind is an intricate piece of machinery, and you know my
stupidity is boundless when I am asked to explain the workings of a
machine. All I know is that the wheels of the car had no sooner begun
to grind under my particular chair than the prospect of the weeks in
the camp affected me exactly like cold pan cakes.
“However, there I sat, letting myself be borne along nearer and
nearer to the bacon, the cornmeal, the old yarns, and the straw bed
under the canvas. When we reached Utica, I clambered out, to wait for
the jerk-water accommodation that was to take me to the end of my
journey. It was hotter than a greenhouse in summer. I made for the
magazine stand, bought a copy of our own sheet, just to see how it
would strike me coming off the news stand, and--I won’t blame it to
_Better Every Week_--I fell asleep. I was awakened by the uniformed
human megaphone bawling out a train. Looking at my watch I saw that
it was time for my own old ice wagon to start into the hills; so,
seizing my bag, my gun, my fishing tackle and a few other little
trifles, I ran to the tracks, just in time to see a train pulling out.
“‘You can make it,’ a passenger shouted, stretching out a hand for my
bag. So I ran, and he stretched, until finally, with his help, I made
the step, bags and all.
“‘Well,’ he said good-naturedly, ‘that was something of a sprint;’
and together we made for the smoking car. There we exchanged the
usual confidences as to politics and occupation. After a while I told
him my destination. He was solemn faced. He stared at me contritely.
‘Partner,’ he said sorrowfully, ‘I’ve done you a bad turn. I’ve
h’isted you on the wrong train. This here goes west. You’re headed
for Jackson.’
“‘What’s Jackson like?’ I asked hopefully.
“‘Jackson is a fust rate town--electric lights, trolley car, cement
sidewalks.’ He stared at me uncertainly. ‘Don’t it make no difference
to you where you land?’
“‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I’m on my vacation. Is there anything to do at
Jackson? Any water there? Fishing, that sort of thing?’
“‘Well, no, not at Jackson. But we are only ten miles from the lake.’
“‘What lake?’
“‘What lake! Good Lord; don’t you know in what direction you are
going? Lake Ontario, of course.’
“Lake Ontario! You have no idea how cool that sounded, Rad. I let my
mind drift away for a moment from the hot car, the stale old camp,
out, out over the miles of shining blue waters. It sounded good to me.
“‘Know any quiet place on the lake where I can board for a week or
two?’
“‘Well, no place with _style_.’ (You see, Rad, _he_ was properly
impressed by my general appearance. He saw that I was a man of
fashion--which is more than you ever discovered). He hesitated:
‘There’s awful good fishing and sailing at Deep Harbor.’
“Deep Harbor! If that innocent citizen had discharged a cannon in my
ear, I could not have been more startled. ‘Deep Harbor! Deep Harbor!
Am I on the way to Deep Harbor? Of all places on earth, that’s the
one I want to go to most.’
“‘Well,’ he said, looking at me narrowly, as if to detect signs of a
disordered mind. ‘You’re the fust I ever heard say that. Most people
wants to get away from there. It’s deader than--well, deader than
dead fish. It’s quieter than an empty house. It’s more monotonous
than an old schooner when they ain’t no wind.’
“‘How do you get there?’ was all I said for answer.
“‘You wait two hours in Jackson, and get the dummy. You can’t count
on it being on time, either.’
“‘I’ll wait,’ I said; and then, as the conductor approached--he
had been delayed by an argument with a mother as to whether a boy
of twelve was over five--I said ‘Ticket for Jackson,’ and all was
settled.
“Then Jackson and supper. It was very good, too, served in a neat
country hotel. Opposite me was a young sergeant of the regulars
(it seems there’s a post somewhere in this locality), uncommonly
good looking and uncommonly entertaining, so that the time passed
very pleasantly before we parted--I for the dummy, he for the army
daugherty, drawn by two splendid mules. I hope we meet again.
“Then Deep Harbor in the blackness of a summer evening with just
enough light for me to see that the one village street of any
pretension slopes down to the water; that the town stands high on
the bluffs; and that it looks out over a great expanse of water.
“As for the hotel, it has the appearance of a moulting bird. My
ink is as thick as curdled custard; my pen is as rusty as I am on
the war of 1812 (one of the naval battles of that war was fought
in this harbor); and my table is as unsteady as a ship without a
center board. Not very promising you say? I’m not so sure. I look for
adventure to-morrow. In the meantime,
“Yours for the quest,
“CALEY.”
“Deep Harbor, N. Y.
“Aug. 17, 191--
“Dear Rad:
“When I tell you that I have not only seen Henry Luffkin, but that
I have been talking to him all this long sunny morning; that I have
arranged to board with him and his sister in a cottage as white as
the lake is blue, doubtless you will think that the quest is over;
that I cry ‘Nuff,’ and that the dinner is on me.
“Nothing of the kind. The chase has just begun. For not even you,
Radding, could suspect Henry of writing verse, knitting wristlets or
having ‘a good cry.’
“I found him in the early morning unreefing the sail of the
‘ferry’--a cat boat with a motor attachment. He is a rugged,
squarely built man with an eye, honest and steady and very blue--as
sailor men’s eyes so often are, from long gazing at sea, I suppose.
Suspecting that he was the ferryman of the postmaster’s report, I
made the sail with him--across the bay to a hamlet that boasts a
cheese factory.
“Occasional, reluctant monosyllables, were all I succeeded in drawing
from Henry by my efforts at conversation. I own I questioned him
shamelessly, veiling my curiosity by frank confidences of my own. I
was a writer, an editor, by trade; was he interested in the modern
periodical?
“Only in _The Harbor_, a sailor’s weekly.
“I supposed a seafaring man like him could not understand what kept
men at their pens.
“No, he couldn’t. Thought it would be monotonous. With sailing it was
different. No two days were alike.
“Had he any children? A daughter, for instance?
“No, he was a bachelor. His sister kept the house. She to be sure
was a great reader. When the old post office was torn down, he had
fetched her over a wheelbarrow full of old newspapers, and she wasn’t
done reading them yet!
“‘It’s the sister,’ I determined. But when (the captain having
admitted they had an extra room) I went to inspect the cottage and
made Sister Abby’s acquaintance, I saw I would have to drop that
solution of our little mystery.
“For Abby was a drab woman, with capable, worn hands, whose
conversation was limited to the frequent repetition of ‘Well, for
pity sakes!’ and whose interest was divided between keeping the white
cottage white and tending a bed of Johnny-jump-ups, neatly surrounded
by variegated pebbles.
“‘This is a beautiful country,’ I said, as she threw open my one
window, neatly protected by mosquito bar. ‘I don’t know of any place
on the coast with a finer view.’
“‘For pity sakes!’ said Sister Abby.
“‘They tell me the British fired a good many balls into these old
banks in 1812,’ I tried again, undaunted.
“‘They drunk from our well,’ said Abby, pointing out to an open well
in the sandy yard below.
“‘I should think,’ said I, ‘that you would all turn story writers in
this country, with such a background.’
“‘For pity sakes!’ said Abby. ‘Who’d do the work?’
“‘Don’t any of the village ladies write?’
“‘Yes, sir, all of ’em.’
“‘_All_ of them?’ This was more than I had bargained for.
“‘Some writes better hands than others, of course.’
“‘I meant fiction,’ I explained, ‘poems, stories, that sort of thing.’
“‘For pity sakes,’ said Sister Abby.
“I am sure she will make me comfortable and forgive me anything
but setting a sandy shoe on her braided rugs. In the meantime I
have taken out my paper, sharpened my pencils and begun the novel.
It ought to be easy to write a sane novel in such matter of fact
surroundings--there’s nothing about Captain Luffkin or Sister Abby to
give a romantic turn to my yarn.
“As ever,
“CALEY.”
“Deep Harbor, N. Y.
“Aug. 20, 191--
“Dear Rad:
“Your letter, with its amazing conclusions, just received. Honestly,
old man, I don’t know what has come over you. I used to think you
were one of the most astute judges of human nature I ever knew, with
more penetration and intuition than any man of my acquaintance. And
yet, in this letter, open before me, you say, ‘I am convinced that
we were both wrong. Neither a pale faced youth, nor a charming girl
wrote the verse and the letters. Abby wrote them!’ And to prove that
absurd assertion, you find proof of a poetical temperament in Abby’s
love of Johnny-jump-ups; you find evidence of exquisite sensitiveness
in a nature that shrinks from the rough intruder (otherwise me) and
hides its real feelings and aspirations in the single phrase, ‘For
pity sakes;’ and you find a sense of humor attested by the remark,
‘Yes, they all write; some writes better hands than others.’ Really,
Rad, I don’t know what to make of you.
“And yet I am no nearer proving who did write those letters and
knit my wristlets than I was when I came. Surely it was none of the
village girls whom I met on my solitary walks, fresh and comely as
many of them are. Lady Valentine wouldn’t nudge, nor giggle, nor
stand and watch the dummy come in, with her mouth wide open like a
slot machine.
“You ask about the novel. It goes haltingly. My hero is made of
sawdust, and my girl--I don’t know what ails her. Perhaps she is
_too_ sane. I don’t like her, and neither does the hero.
“CALEY.”
“Deep Harbor, N. Y.
“Aug. 22, 191--
“Dear Rad:
“Something has happened. I have a clue--very slight, but a clue. I
give it to you for what it’s worth.
“Yesterday the novel dragged. I can’t make my sane hero very
convincing. Sanity in love is all very well in real life--I wish
there were more of it--but on paper it’s dull. I got discouraged and
nervous. The hens clucked too loud: Abby said ‘For pity sakes’ once
too often. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon I picked up my
papers, stuck them in my pocket and went forth in search of peace.
“The bluffs which form the shores of the bay are of a soft limestone.
They look, from the ferry, exactly like children’s slates piled
neatly one on top of the other. I walked along the narrow beach
for a mile or more, enjoying the quiet and the smell of the water.
Sometimes the beach disappeared altogether, and then I clung to the
cliffs and crept along the rocks until I found another footing. Well,
when I had done this for an hour, the beach suddenly came to such
an abrupt end that there was no hope of continuing my walk unless
I wanted to swim! Rather than retrace my steps, I managed to pull
myself up the steep cliff--it was some fifty feet high--so it was no
easy task.
“When I reached the summit, decidedly the worse for the scramble,
there, to my surprise, was a most charming old brick mansion, the
kind with fire wings on the sides. I felt as if it were looking at my
untied cravat, my stained trousers and my sandy shoes, in dignified
surprise.
“‘Hello,’ I said, ‘where did you come from?’ But, the mansion making
no answer except to stare harder out of its eight eye-like windows
that faced the road, I approached it and stared over the hedge by
which it was surrounded. A flag stone walk, sunken and worn, led
through tall grass to the loveliest old doorway you ever saw: a
door painted white, with a brass knocker, at the top of long steps
crowned by a small latticed porch; all overgrown with some flowering
vine, and looking like a sweet face peering out of a poke bonnet.
“There was something about the place that said, ‘Nobody at home.’
Most of the shades were drawn. The steps were littered with the
leaves which drifted from the vine every time a fresh puff of wind
came off the lake; so I made bold to push open the gate, walk up the
steps and pull the bell, which jangled lonesomely through the silence.
“Nobody came. I grew bolder and pressed my nose to the slits of
windows on either side of the door and found myself looking directly
into a wide hall, hung with family portraits, furnished in old
mahogany. A delicately balustraded stairway wound upward, hinting at
bed chambers sweet with lavender and orris. Through an open door I
caught a glimpse, a very small glimpse, of the state room, papered
with one of those old landscape papers we sometimes see reproduced.
I have no doubt it’s been there since 1812, and that the oriental
figures in turbans, majestically ascending and descending the broad
steps, have seen history made.
“I wandered around to the rear of the place. The grounds, some four
acres I should say, are all to the back, the mansion itself being
comfortably near the front gate.
“A path led me through some funereal evergreens into a thicket, at
the far end of the garden, near the road that runs past the rear; and
here I found a summer house, completely concealed in the thicket.
Inside there was a rustic table, and a rough seat encircled the walls.
“I seated myself as if I were the owner--I wish I were--brushed off
the leaves that covered the table and began to revise my novel then
and there. I am going to have my heroine live in that house and see
if her surroundings won’t humanize her. I am going to write every day
until somebody comes home and drives me out.
“The clue! I almost forgot. On the rustic table, among the leaves, I
found a bit of cross-barred paper, torn across, on which some one had
written in angular characters, ‘Dear Editor of _Better Every Week_:’
I suppose you will argue, Rad, that any one could have written those
words--some old lady who meant to subscribe for the magazine, for
instance. Think what you will. As for me--well, I’ll tell you what I
think when I write again.
“Yours,
“CALEY.”