Chapter VII

“YOU will wonder at seeing this letter from me,” Glenn wrote to Esther, “for it will not be a usual one--not at all the sort of letter you have been accustomed to receiving from me. Perhaps it is that I have changed--greatly changed from that old self you knew--most of all changed from what I used to be to you. I can see you now as you looked to me that afternoon at Indian Well, when I first spoke to you. You touched me so closely then--so nearly--and you were such a child.

“All through that first year I think you could never have guessed how much the blossoming of that little wild heart of yours meant to me. I watched it from day to day, from month to month, so closely. Maybe I watered it some, and pulled some of the weeds that might have crowded its roots. I hope so. You were a child then and I a man, yet I had been a man without a passion. I thought much in those days, and dreamed that I knew myself. Achievement was my god. I told myself that my interest in you was the interest of the philosopher--the master--and I watched your mind unfold with a curious delight. I know now, dear, that it was a far different feeling from that--one that went far deeper and meant much more to me, even when I would not admit it to myself. It is to his own heart last of all that a man admits his own error. And yet, as I look back at it now, I think that I meant to be honest with myself. When you came to the city and I saw the wondrous woman that had grown--when I saw your flower heart--still the heart of the child in all that was sweet and innocent--turning more and more towards me for its sun--it waked something new within me. I saw the problem. I felt your dependence grow each day stronger. You leaned upon me so that I thought sometimes I could feel every throb of your heart. You were achieving. Your art was growing. Your genius was lifting. You were coming nearer and nearer to the ideal that I had imagined for you. When such a development has become the great and absorbing passion of a man’s life, I cannot express to you how haunting becomes the fear of disappointment, how terrible the jealousy of circumstance that may step between him and its fulfillment. You had beautiful ideals--such as I have had--and they had grown a part of you. To lose them would have ashed the ember; it would have deadened the quick sensibilities and wounded that soul-instinct of yours in which your music lived. And when I saw these ideals dependent upon me--upon my presence--upon the sympathy of mine, which I could not have denied if I had tried--I stood by them and you. Dear, the soul of a woman is a wonderful thing. It will not bear experiment. Yours was like a sensitive plant that cannot bear the light, and sheds its loveliest perfume in the dark. So I tried to give it the darkness--to cloud the glare of hollowness that was in our world--to let the light in slowly and only when the leaves were strong enough to bear it. All this time I could not help but see that when I went from you the shock would be great. My philosophy taught me the penalty of emotion, and I thought I had much to do in the world. I dreamed of work that would absorb me utterly--that would take the best that was in me, of feeling and of effort. All my life I had denied myself the passion that my eyes told me was growing in you. I had grown to consider myself apart from others--a mental solitary who had locked the door of his heart because he had work to do. It had not occurred to me that the Juggernaut whose rumbling wheels I would not hear might crush you. It was the concert at the Metropolitan that opened my eyes. I knew then that your art and your heart had twined together so intimately that if one were cut, the other would bleed. I knew then that I must either go or stay, that if I became a stronger part of you my going would be fatal to your own achievement and to mine. Dear, it was not all selfishness--this resolve of mine. You will never know what it meant to me to tear up the roots that had grown in spite of me: it was like tearing the flesh and leaving it quivering. But that I could have borne if it left you better able to go on. I did not know then what I know now. I blame myself that I did not read truer. The news of your breakdown and the giving up of your music came to me like a blow in the dark. In showing me yours, it has shown me my own heart. The depths of my self-condemnation have taught me myself. It has taught me that achievement is a pitiful thing compared with a woman’s love--that your happiness means more to me--a thousand times more--than success: that I love you--I love you--utterly and wholly--and that I want you to be my wife. The future is impossible to me without you. Each day since I saw you, your step has been in every sound. Each night your face has been my vision. Here from my window I can see a little knoll on which is a cross, where the peasants go to pray to the patron saint of the village. It is ugly, and battered, and old, but it has come to be beautiful to me, for I know now what they are praying for. The hills are gold with the grain, and a little winding path runs down toward my eyrie. I can almost imagine you coming down it now to meet me, with your dear face raised to my window--”

As Glenn finished the page, the boy tapped at the little door with the daily mail, and he reached out an indifferent hand to take it. A familiar flourish caught his eye, and, recognizing Richmond Briarley’s penmanship, he opened a bulky envelope. A card, closely written, and a small book met his gaze.