Chapter III: Part 3

I have never, by the way, mentioned to Tilly this matter of the ferns. My first idea was to surprise her: as some day we strolled through the Blackthorne garden he would point to the Kentucky specimens flourishing there in honour of me. I have always observed that any unexpected pleasure flushes her face with a new light, with an effulgence of fresh beauty, just as every disappointment makes her suddenly look old and rather ugly.

This was the first reason. Now I do not intend to tell her at all. Disappointment will bring out her demand to know why she is disappointed--naturally. But how am I to tell on the threshold of marriage that it is all due to a misunderstanding about a handful of ferns! It would be ridiculous. She would never believe me--naturally. She would infer that I was keeping back the real reason, as being too serious to be told.

Here, then, I am. But where am I?

BEVERLEY (complete and final
disappearance of the Magic Skin).

BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_June 13._

DEAR BEVERLEY:

You are perfectly right not to tell Tilly about the ferns. Here I come in: there must always be things that a man must refuse to tell a woman. As soon as he tells her everything, she puts her foot on his neck. I have always refused even to tell Polly some things, not that they might not be told, but that Polly must not be told them; not for the things' sake, but for Polly's good--and for a man's peaceful control of his own life.

For whatever else a woman marries in a man, one thing in him she must marry: a rock. Times will come when she will storm and rage around that rock; but the storms cannot last forever, and when they are over, the rock will be there. By degrees there will be less storm. Polly's very loyalty to me inspires her to take possession of my whole life; to enter into all my affairs. I am to her a house, no closet of which must remain locked. Thus there are certain closets which she repeatedly tries to open. I can tell by her very expression when she is going to try once more. Were they opened, she would not find much; but it is much to be guarded that she shall not open them.

The matter is too trivial to explain to Tilly as fact and too important as principle.

Harbour no fear that Polly knows from me anything about the ferns! When I am with Polly, my thoughts are not on the grass of the fields.

Let me hear at once how the trouble turns out with Tilly.

I must not close without making a profound obeisance to your new acquaintances--the Chamberlains.

BEN.

TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES

_June 15._

DEAR POLLY:

Something extremely disagreeable has come up between Beverley and me. He tells me we're not to go to England on our wedding journey as anyone's guests: we travel as ordinary American tourists unknown to all England.

You can well understand what this means to me: you have watched all along how I have pinched on my small income to get ready for this beautiful summer. There has been a quarrel of some kind between Mr. Blackthorne and Beverley. Beverley refuses to tell me the nature of the quarrel. I insisted that it was my right to know and he insisted that it is a man's affair with another man and not any woman's business. Think of a woman marrying a man who lays it down as a law that his affairs are none of her business!

I gave Beverley to understand that our marriage was deferred for the summer. He broke off the engagement.

I had not meant to tell you anything, since I am coming to-night. I have merely wished you to understand how truly anxious I am to see you, even forgetting your last letter--no, not forgetting it, but overlooking it. Remember you _then_ broke an appointment with me; _this_ time keep your appointment--being loyal! The messenger will wait for your reply, stating whether the way is clear for me to come.

TILLY.

POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN

_June 15._

DEAR TILLY:

Dr. Mullen had an appointment with me for to-night, but I have written to excuse myself, and I shall be waiting most impatiently. The coast will be clear and I hope the night will be.

"The turnip," as you call it, will be empty; "the horse-radish" and "the beets" will be still the same; "the wilted sunflower" will shed its usual ray on our heads. No breeze will disturb us, for there will be no fresh air. We shall have the long evening to ourselves, and you can tell me just how it is that you two, _not_ heavy Tilly, _not_ heavy Beverley, sat on opposite sides of the room and declared to each other:

"I will not."

"I will not."

Since I have broken an engagement for you, be sure not to let any later temptation elsewhere keep you away.

POLLY.

[Later in the day]

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

_June 13._

DEAR POLLY:

Beverley and Tilly have had the long-expected final flare-up. Yesterday he wrote, asking me to come up as soon as I was through with business. I spent last night with him.

We drew our chairs up to his opened window, turned out the lights, got our cigars, and with our feet on the window-sills and our eyes on the stars across the sky talked the long, quiet hours through.

He talked, not I. Little could I have said to him about the woman who has played fast and loose with him while using him for her convenience. He made it known at the outset that not a word was to be spoken against her.

He just lay back in his big easy chair, with his feet on his window-sill and his eyes on the stars, and built up his defence of Tilly. All night he worked to repair wreckage.

As the grey of morning crept over the city his work was well done: Tilly was restored to more than she had ever been. Silence fell upon him as he sat there with his eyes on the reddening east; and it may be that he saw her--now about to leave him at last--as some white, angelic shape growing fainter and fainter as it vanished in the flush of a new day.

You know what I think of this Tilly-angel. If there were any wings anywhere around, it was those of an aeroplane leaving its hangar with an early start to bring down some other victim: the angel-aeroplane out after more prey. I think we both know who the prey will be.

The solemn influence of the night has rested on me. Were it possible, I should feel even a higher respect for Beverley; there is something in him that fills me with awe. He suffers. He could mend Tilly but he cannot mend himself: in a way she has wrecked him.

Their quarrel brings me with an aching heart closer to you. I must come to-night. The messenger will wait for a word that I may. And a sudden strange chill of desolation as to life's brittle ties frightens me into sending you some roses.

Your lover through many close and constant years,

BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.

[Still later in the day]

POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN

_June 15._

DEAR, DEAR, DEAR TILLY:

An incredible thing has happened. Ben has just written that he wishes to see me to-night. Will you, after all, wait until to-morrow evening? My dear, I _have_ to ask this of you because there is something very particular that Ben desires to talk to me about.

_To-morrow night_, then, without fail, you and I!

POLLY BOLES.

POLLY BOLES AND BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE TO
BEVERLEY SANDS

[Late at night of the same day]

_June 15._

DEAR BEVERLEY:

We have talked the matter over and send you our conjoined congratulations that your engagement is broken off and your immediate peril ended. But our immediate caution is that the end of the betrothal will not necessarily mean the end of entanglement: the tempter will at once turn away from you in pursuit of another man. She will begin to weave her web about _him_. But if possible she will still hold _you_ to that web by a single thread. Now, more than ever, you will need to be on your guard, if such a thing is possible to such a nature as yours.

Not until obliged will she ever let you go completely. She hath a devil--perhaps the most famous devil in all the world--the love devil. And all devils, famous or not famous, are poor quitters.

(Signed)
POLLY BOLES for Ben Doolittle.
BEN DOOLITTLE for Polly Boles.
(His handwriting; her ideas
and language.)

TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD

MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:

This is the third time within the past several months that I have requested you to let me have your bill for professional services. I shall not suppose that you have relied upon my willingness to remain under an obligation of this kind; nor do I like to think I have counted for so little among your many patients that you have not cared whether I paid you or not. If your motive has been kindness, I must plainly tell you that I do not desire such kindness; and if there has been no motive at all, but simply indifference, I must remind you that this indifference means disrespect and that I resent it.

The things you have indirectly done for me in other ways--the songs, the books and magazines, the flowers--these I accept with warm responsive hands and a lavish mind.

And with words not yet uttered, perhaps never to be uttered.

Yours sincerely,
TILLY SNOWDEN.

_June the Seventeenth._

TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD

MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:

I have your bill and I make the due remittance with all due thanks.

Your note pleasantly reassures me how greatly you are obliged that I could put you in correspondence with some Kentucky cousins about the purchase of a Kentucky saddle-horse. It was a pleasure; in fact, a matter of some pride to do this, and I am delighted that they could furnish you a horse you approve.

While taking my customary walk in the Park yesterday morning, I had a chance to see you and your new mount making acquaintance with one another. I can pay you no higher compliment than to say that you ride like a Kentuckian.

Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a habit of mine to choose the footways through the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn to them by my childhood habit and girlish love of riding. Even to see from day to day what one once had but no longer has is to keep alive hope that one may some day have it again.

You should some time go to Kentucky and ride there. My cousins will look to that.

Yours sincerely,
TILLY SNOWDEN.

_June the Eighteenth._

TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD

MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:

I was passing this morning and witnessed the accident, and I must express my condolences for what might have been and congratulations upon what was.

You certainly fell well--not unlike a Kentuckian!

I feel sure that my cousins could not have known the horse was tricky. Any horse is tricky to the end of his days and the end of his road. He may not show any tricks at home, but becomes tricky in new places. (Can this be the reason that he is called the most human of beasts?)

You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly to my mind that of late you have expressed growing interest in Kentucky. More than once, also (since you have begun to visit me), you have asked me to tell you about my life there. Frankly, this is because I am something of a mystery and you would like to have the mystery cleared up. You wish to find out, without letting me know you are finding out, whether there is not something _wrong_ about me, some _risk_ for you in visiting me. That is because you have never known anybody like me. I frighten you because I am not afraid of people, not afraid of life. You are used to people who are afraid, especially to women who are afraid. You yourself are horribly afraid of nearly everything.

Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, though it may not greatly explain why I am without fear; still, the land and the people might mean something; they ought to mean much.

I was born of not very poor and immensely respectable parents in a poor and not very respectable county of Kentucky. The first thing I remember about life, my first social consciousness, was the discovery that I was entangled in a series of sisters: there were six of us. I was as nearly as possible at the middle of the procession--with three older and two younger, so that I was crowded both by what was before and by what was behind. I early learned to fight for the present--against both the past and the future--learned to seize what I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the world.

Why my mother bore only daughters will have to be referred to the new science which takes as its field the forces and the mysteries that are sovereign between the nuptials and the cradle. But the reason, as openly laughed about in the family when the family grew old enough to laugh, as laughed about in the neighbourhood, was this:

Even before marriage my father and my mother had waged a violent discussion about woman's suffrage. You may not know that in Kentucky from the first the cause of female suffrage has been upheld by a strong minority of strong women, a true pioneer movement toward the nation's future now near. It seems that my father, who was a brilliant lawyer, always browbeat my mother in argument, overwhelmed her, crushed her. Unconvinced, in resentful silence, she quietly rocked on her side of the fireplace and looked deep into the coals. But regularly when the time came she replied to all his arguments by presenting him with another suffragette! Throughout her life she declined even to bear him a son to continue the argument! Her six daughters--she would gladly have had twelve if she could--were her triumphant squad for the armies of the great rebellion.

Does this help to explain me to you?

What next I relate about my early life is something that you perhaps have never given a thought to--children's pets and playthings: it explains a great deal. Have you ever thought of a vital difference between country children and town children? Country children more quickly throw away their dolls, if they have them, and attach their sympathies to living objects. A child's love of a doll is at best a sham: a little master-drama of the child's imagination trying to fill two roles--its own and the role of something which cannot respond. But a child's love of a living creature, which it chooses as the object of its love and play and protection, is stimulating, healthful and kicking with reality: because it is vitalised by reciprocity in the playmate, now affectionate and now hostile, but always representing something intensely alive--which is the whole main thing.

We are just beginning to find out that the dramas of childhood are the playgrounds of life's battlefields. The ones prepare for the others. A nature that will cling to a rag doll without any return, will cling to a rag husband without any return. A child's loyalty to an automaton prepares a woman for endurance of an automaton. Dolls have been the undoing and the death of many wives.

A multitude of dolls would have been needed to supply the six destructive little girls of my mother's household. We soon broke our china tea sets or, more gladly, smashed one another's. For whatever reason, all lifeless pets, all shams, were quickly swept out of the house and the little scattering herd of us turned our restless and insatiate natures loose upon life itself. Sooner or later we petted nearly everything on the farm. My father was a director of the County Fair, and I remember that one autumn, about fair-time, we roped off a corner of the yard and held a prize exhibition of our favourites that year. They comprised a kitten, a duck, a pullet, a calf, a lamb and a puppy.

Sooner or later our living playthings outgrew us or died or were sold or made their sacrificial way to the kitchen. Were we disconsolate? Not a bit. Did we go down to the branch and gather there under an old weeping willow? Quite the contrary. Our hearts thrived on death and destruction, annihilation released us from old ties, change gave us another chance, and we provided substitutes and continued our devotion.

And I think this explains a good deal. And these two experiences of my childhood, taken together, explain me better than anything else I know. Competition first taught me to seize what I wanted before anyone else could seize it. Natural changes next taught me to be prepared at any moment to give that up without vain regret and to seize something else. Thus I seemed to learn life's lesson as I learned to walk: that what you love will not last long, and that long love is possible only when you love often.

So many women know this; how few admit it!

Sincerely yours,
TILLY SNOWDEN.

_June the Nineteenth._

TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD

MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD:

You sail to-morrow. And to-morrow I go away for the summer: first to some friends, then further away to other friends, then still further away to other friends: a summer pageant of brilliant changes.

There is no reason why I should write to you. Your stateroom will be filled with flowers; you will have letters and telegrams; friends will wave to you from the pier. My letter may be lost among the others, but at least it will have been written, and writing it is its pleasure to me.

I was to go to England this summer, was to go as a bride. A few nights since I decided not to go because I did not approve of the bridegroom.

We marvel at life's coincidences: one evening, not long ago, while speaking of your expected summer in England, you mentioned that you planned to make a pilgrimage to see Edward Blackthorne. You were to join some American friends over there and take them with you. That is the coincidence: _I_ was to visit the Blackthornes this very summer, not as a stranger pilgrim, but as an invited guest--with the groom whom I have rejected.

It is like scattering words before the obvious to say that I wish you a pleasant summer. Not a forgetful one. To aid memory, as you, some night on the passage across, lean far over and look down at the phosphorescent couch of the sea for its recumbent Venus of the deep, remember that the Venus of modern life is the American woman.

Am I to see you when autumn, if nothing else, brings you home--see you not at all or seldom or often?

At least this will remind you that I merely say _au revoir_.

Adrift for the summer rather than be an unwilling bride.

TILLY SNOWDEN.

_June twenty-first._

TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_June 21._

DEAR BEVERLEY:

Since life separated us the other night I have not heard from you. I have not expected a letter, nor do you expect one from me. But I am going away to-morrow for the summer and my heart has a few words for you which must be spoken.

It was not disappointment about the summer in England, not even your refusal to explain why you disappointed me, that held the main reason of my drawing back. I am in the mood to-night to tell you some things very frankly:

Twice before I knew you, I was engaged to be married and twice as the wedding drew near I drew away from it. It is an old, old feeling of mine, though I am so young, that if married I should not long be happy. Of course I should be happy for a while. But _afterwards_! The interminable, intolerable _afterwards_! The same person year in and year out--I should be stifled. Each of the men to whom I was engaged had given me before marriage all that he had to give: the rest I did not care for; after marriage with either I foresaw only staleness, his limitations, monotony.

Believe this, then: there are things in you that I cling to, other things in you that do not draw me at all. And I cling more to life than to you, more than to any one person. How can any one person ever be all to me, all that I am meant for, and _I will live_!

Why should we women be forced to spend our lives beside the first spring where one happened to fill one's cup at life's dawn! Why be doomed to die in old age at the same spring! With all my soul I believe that the world which has slowly thrown off so many tyrannies is about to throw off other tyrannies. It has been so harsh toward happiness, so compassionate toward misery and wrong. Yet happiness is life's finest victory: for ages we have been trying to defeat our one best victory--our natural happiness!

A brief cup of joy filled at life's morning--then to go thirsty for the rest of the long, hot, weary day! Why not goblet after goblet at spring after spring--there are so many springs! And thirst is so eager for them!

Come to see me in the autumn. For I will not, cannot, give you up. And when you come, do not seek to renew the engagement. Let that go whither it has gone. But come to see me.

For I love you.

TILLY.

TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES

_June 21._

POLLY BOLES:

This is good-bye to you for the summer and, better than that, it is good-bye to you for life. Why not, in parting, face the truth that we have long hated each other and have used our acquaintanceship and our letters to express our hatred? How could there ever have been any friendship between you and me?

Let me tell you of the detestable little signs that I have noticed in you for years. Are you aware that all the time you have occupied your apartment, you have never changed the arrangement of your furniture? As soon as your guests are gone, you push every chair where it was before. For years your one seat has been the same end of the same frayed sofa. Many a time I have noted your disquietude if any guest happened to sit there and forced you to sit elsewhere. For years you have worn the same breast-pin, though you have several. The idea of your being inconstant to a breast-pin! You pride yourself in such externals of faithfulness.

You soul of perfidy!

I leave you undisturbed to innumerable appointments with Ben, and with the same particular something to talk about, falsest woman I have ever known.

Have you confided to Ben Doolittle the fact that you are secretly receiving almost constant attentions from Dr. Mullen? Will you tell him? _Or shall I?_

TILLY SNOWDEN.

POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_June 23rd._

DEAR BEN:

I am worried.

I begin to feel doubtful as to what course I should pursue with Dr. Claude Mullen. Of late he has been coming too often. He has been writing to me too often. He appears to be losing control of himself. Things cannot go on as they are and they must not get worse. What I could not foresee is his determination to hold _me_ responsible for his being in love with me! He insists that _I_ encouraged him and am now unfair--_me_ unfair! Of course I have _never_ encouraged his visits; out of simple goodness of heart I have _tolerated_ them. Now the reward of my _kindness_ is that he holds me responsible and guilty. He is trying, in other words, to take advantage of my _sympathy_ for him. I _do_ feel sorry for him!

I have not been cruel enough to dismiss him. His last letter is enclosed: it will give you some idea----!

Can you advise me what to do? I have always relied upon _your_ judgment in everything.

Faithfully yours,
POLLY.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

[Penciled in Court Room]

_June 24th._

DEAR POLLY:

Certainly I can advise you. My advice is: tell him to take a cab and drive straight to the nearest institution for the weak-minded, engage a room, lock himself in and pray God to give him some sense. Tell him to stay secluded there until that prayer is answered. The Almighty himself couldn't answer his prayer until after his death, and by that time he'd be out of the way anyhow and you wouldn't mind.

I return his funeral oration unread, since I did not wish to attract attention to myself as moved to tears in open court.

BEN.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

[Evening of the same day]

POLLY, DEAREST, MOST FAITHFUL OF WOMEN:

This is a night I have long waited for and worked for.

You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for two--and for more than two--for our little ones. When I married you, I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats.

But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength. I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your lover.

Name the day when I can be both.

Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day of next Spring, then--so far away but nearer than any other Spring during these impatient years.

Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover,

BEN DOOLITTLE.

Roses to you.

POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_June 24._

Oh, BEN, BEN, BEN!

My heart answers you. It leaps forward to the day. I have set the day in my heart and sealed it on my lips. Come and break that seal. To-night I shall tear two of the rosebuds apart and mingle their petals on my pillow.

POLLY.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

_June 26._

It occurs to me that our engagement might furnish you the means of getting rid of your prostrated nerve specialist. Write him to come to see you: tell him you have some joyful news that must be imparted at once. When he arrives announce to him that you have named the day of your marriage to me. To _me_, tell him! Then let him take himself off. You say he complains that all this is getting on his nerves. Anything that could sit on his nerves would be a mighty small animal.

BEN.

POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_June 27._

Our engagement has only made him more determined. He persists in visiting me. His loyalty is touching. Suppose the next time he comes I arrange for you to come. Your meeting him here might have the desired effect.

POLLY BOLES.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

_June 28._

It would certainly have the desired effect, but perhaps not exactly the effect he desires. Madam, would you wish to see the nerve filaments of your fond specialist scattered over your carpet as his life's deplorable arcana? No, Polly, not that!

Make this suggestion to him: that in order to give him a chance to be near you--but not too near--you do offer him for the first year after our marriage--only one year, mind you--you do offer him, with my consent and at a good salary, the position of our furnace-man, since he so loves to warm himself with our fires. It would enable him to keep up his habit of getting down on his knees and puffing for you.

BEN.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

_July 14._

DEAR POLLY:

It occurs to me just at the moment that not for some days have I heard you speak of your racked--or wrecked--nerve specialist. Has he learned to control his microscopic attachment? Has he found an antidote for the bacillus of his anaemic love?

Polly, my woman, if he is still bothering you, let me know at once. It has been my joy hitherto to share your troubles; henceforth it is my privilege to take them on two uncrushable shoulders.

At the drop of your hat I'll even meet him in your flat any night you say, and we'll all compete for the consequences.

I. s. y. s. r. r. (You have long since learned what that means.)

Your man,
BEN D.

POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_July 15._

DEAREST BEN:

You need not give another thought to Dr. Mullen. He does not annoy me any more. He can drop finally out of our correspondence.

Not an hour these days but my thoughts hover about you. Never so vividly as now does there rise before me the whole picture of our past--of all these years together. And I am ever thinking of the day to which we both look forward as the one on which our paths promise to blend and our lives are pledged to meet.

Your devoted
POLLY.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD

_July 16._

DEAR SIRS:

Yesterday while walking along the street I found my attention most favourably drawn to the appearance of your business establishment: to the tubs of plants at the entrance, the vines and flowers in the windows, and the classic Italian statuary properly mildewed. Therefore I venture to write.

Do you know anything about ferns, especially Kentucky ferns? Do you ever collect them and ship them? I wish to place an order for some Kentucky ferns to be sent to England. I had a list of those I desired, but this has been mislaid, and I should have to rely upon the shipper to make, out of his knowledge, a collection that would represent the best of the Kentucky flora. Could you do this?

One more question, and you will please reply clearly and honestly. I notice that your firm speak of themselves as landscape architects. This leads me to inquire whether you have ever had any connection with Botany. You may not understand the question and you are not required to understand it: I simply request you to answer it.

Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_July 17._

DEAR SIR:

Your esteemed favour to hand. We gather and ship ferns and other plants, subject to order, to any address, native or foreign, with the least possible delay, and we shall be pleased to execute any commission which you may entrust to us.

With reference to your other inquiry, we ask leave to state that we have never had the slightest connection with any other concern doing business in the city under the firm-name of Botany. We do not even find them in the telephone directory.

Awaiting your courteous order, we are

Very truly yours,
JUDD & JUDD.
Per Q.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO "JUDD & JUDD, PER Q."

_July 18._

DEAR SIRS:

I am greatly pleased to hear that you have no connection with any other house doing business under the firm-name of Botany, and I accordingly feel willing to risk giving you the following order: That you will make a collection of the most highly prized varieties of Kentucky ferns and ship them, expenses prepaid, to this address, namely: Mr. Edward Blackthorne, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England.

As a guaranty of good faith and as the means to simplify matters without further correspondence, I take pleasure in enclosing my cheque for $25.

You will please advise me when the ferns are ready to be shipped, as I wish to come down and see to it myself that they actually do get off.

Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_Seminole, North Carolina,
July 18._

DEAR SIR:

I met with the melancholy misfortune a few weeks ago of losing my great father. Since his death I have been slowly going over his papers. He left a large mass of them in disorder, for his was too active a mind to pause long enough to put things in order.

In a bundle of notes I have come across a letter to him from Burns & Bruce with the list of ferns in it that they sent him and that had been misplaced. My dear father was a very absent-minded scholar, as is natural. He had penciled a query regarding one of the ferns on the list, and I suppose, while looking up the doubtful point, he had laid the list down to pursue some other idea that suddenly attracted him and then forgot what he had been doing. My father worked over many ideas and moved with perfect ease from one to another, being equally at home with everything great--a mental giant.

I send the list back to you that it may remind you what a trouble and affliction you have been. Do not acknowledge the receipt of it, for I do not wish to hear from you.

CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD

_July 21._

DEAR SIRS:

I wish to take up immediately my commission placed a few days ago. I referred in my first letter to a mislaid list of ferns. This has just turned up and is herewith enclosed, and I now wish you to make a collection of the ferns called for on this list.

Please advise me at once whether you will do this.

Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_July 22._

DEAR SIR:

Your letter to hand, with the list of ferns enclosed. We shall be pleased to cancel the original order, part of which we advise you had already been filled. It does not comprise the plants called for on the list.

This will involve some slight additional expense, and if agreeable, we shall be pleased to have you enclose your cheque for the slight extra amount as per enclosed bill.

Very truly yours,
JUDD & JUDD.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD

_July 23._

DEAR SIRS:

I have your letter and I take the greatest possible pleasure in enclosing my cheque to cover the additional expense, as you kindly suggest.

Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_October 30._

DEAR BEN:

They are gone! They're off! They have weighed anchor! They have sailed; they have departed!

I went down and watched the steamer out of sight. Packed around me at the end of the pier were people, waving hats and handkerchiefs, some laughing, some with tears on their cheeks, some with farewells quivering on their dumb mouths. But everybody forgot his joy or his trouble to look at me: I out-waved, out-shouted them all. An old New York Harbour gull, which is the last creature in the world to be surprised at anything, flew up and glanced at me with a jaded eye.

I have felt ever since as if the steamer's anchor had been taken from around my neck. I have become as human cork which no storm, no leaden weight, could ever sink. Come what will to me now from Nature's unkinder powers! Let my next pair of shoes be made of briers, my next waistcoat of rag weed! Fasten every morning around my neck a collar of the scaly-bark hickory! See to it that my undershirts be made of the honey-locust! For olives serve me green persimmons; if I must be poulticed, swab me in poultices of pawpaws! But for the rest of my days may the Maker of the world in His occasional benevolence save me from the things on it that look frail and harmless like ferns.

Come up to dinner! Come, all there is of you! We'll open the friendly door of some friendly place and I'll dine you on everything commensurate with your simplicity. I'll open a magnum or a magnissimum. I'll open a new subway and roll down into it for joy.

They are gone to him, his emblems of fidelity. I don't care what he does with them. They will for the rest of his days admonish him that in his letter to me he sinned against the highest law of his own gloriously endowed nature:

_Le Génie Oblige_

Accept this phrase, framed by me for your pilgrim's script of wayside French sayings. Accept it and translate it to mean that he who has genius, no matter what the world may do to him, no matter what ruin Nature may work in him, that he who has genius, is under obligation so long as he lives to do nothing mean and to do nothing meanly.

BEVERLEY.

ANNE RAEBURN TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE IN ITALY

_King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England,
November 30._

MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:

I continue my chronicles of an English country-place during the absence of its master, with the hope that the reading of the chronicles may cause him to hasten his return.

An amusing, perhaps a rather grave, matter passed under my observation yesterday. The afternoon was clear and mild and I had taken my work out into the garden. From where I sat I could see Hodge at work with his spade some distance away. Quite unconsciously, I suppose, I lifted my eyes at intervals to look toward him, for by degrees I became aware that Hodge at intervals was looking toward me. I noticed that he was red in the face, which is always a sign of his anger; apparently he wavered as to whether he should or should not do a debatable thing. Finally lifting his spade high and bringing it down with such force that he sent it deep into the mould where it stood upright, he started toward me.

You know how, as he approaches anyone, he loosens his cap from his forehead and scrapes the back of his neck with the back of his thumb. As he stood before me he did this now. Then he made the following announcement in the voice of an aggrieved bully:

"The _Scolopendium vulgare_ put up two new shoots after he went away, mum. Bishop's crooks he calls 'em, mum."

I replied that I was glad to hear the ferns were thrifty. He, jerking his thumb toward the fern bank, added still more resentfully:

"The _Adiantum nigrum_ put up some, mum."

I replied that I should announce to you the good news.

Plainly this was not what he had come to tell me, for he stood embarrassed but not budging, his eyes blazing with a kind of stupid fury. At last he brought out his trouble.

It seems that one day last week a hamper of ferns arrived for you from New York, with only the names of the shippers, charges prepaid. I was not at home, having that day gone to the Vicar's with some marmalade; so Hodge took it upon himself to receive the hamper. By his confession he unwrapped the package and discovering the contents to be a collection of fern-roots, with the list of the Latin names attached, he re-wrapped them and re-shipped them to the forwarding agents--charges to be collected in New York.

This is now Hodge's plight: he is uncertain whether the plants were some you had ordered, or were a gift to you from some friend, or merely a gratuitous advertisement by an American nurseryman. Whether yours or another's, of much value to you or none, he resolved that they should not enter the garden. There was no place for them in the garden without there being a place for their Latin names in his head, and his head would hold no more. At least his temper is the same that has incited all English rebellion: human nature need not stand for it!

The skies are wistful some days with blue that is always brushed over by clouds: England's same still blue beyond her changing vapours. The evenings are cosy with lamps and November fires and with new books that no hand opens. A few late flowers still bloom, loyal to youth in a world that asks of them now only their old age. The birds sit silent with ruffled feathers and look sturdy and established on the bare shrubs: liberals in spring, conservatives in autumn, wise in season. The larger trees strip their summer flippancies from them garment by garment and stand in their noble nakedness, a challenge to the cold.

The dogs began to wait for you the day you left. They wait still, resolved at any cost to show that they can be patient; that is, well-bred. The one of them who has the higher intelligence! The other evening I filled and lighted your pipe and held it out to him as I have often seen you do. He struck the floor softly with the tip of his tail and smiled with his eyes very tenderly at me, as saying: "You want to see whether I remember that _he_ did that; of course I remember." Then, with a sudden suspicion that he was possibly being very stupid, with quick, gruff bark he ran out of the room to make sure. Back he came, his face in broad silent laughter at himself and his eyes announcing to me--"Not yet."

Do not all these things touch you with homesickness amid the desolation of the Grand Canal--with the shallow Venetian songs that patter upon the ear but do not reach down into strong Northern English hearts?

I have already written this morning to Mrs. Blackthorne. As each of you hands my letters to the other, these petty chronicles, sent out divided here in England, become united in a foreign land.

I am, dear Mr. Blackthorne,

Respectfully yours,
ANNE RAEBURN.

JUDD & JUDD TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_December 27._

DEAR SIR:

We have to report that the ferns recently shipped to a designated address in England in accordance with your instructions have been returned with charges for return shipment to be collected at our office. We enclose our bill for these charges and ask your attention to it at your early convenience. The ferns are ruined and worthless to us.

Very truly yours,
JUDD & JUDD.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO JUDD & JUDD

_December 30._

DEAR SIRS:

I am very much obliged to you for your letter and I take the greatest pleasure imaginable in enclosing my cheque to cover the charges of the return shipment.

Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_December 28._

DEAR BEN:

_The ferns have come back to me from England!_

BEVERLEY.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_December 29._

DEAR BEVERLEY:

I am with you, brother, to the last root. But don't send any more ferns to anybody--don't try to, for God's sake! I'm with you! _J'y suis, J'y reste_. (French forever! _Boutez en avant, mon_ French!)

By the way, our advice is that you drop the suit against Phillips & Faulds. They are engaged in a lawsuit and as we look over the distant Louisville battlefield, we can see only the wounded and the dying--and the poor. Would you squeeze a druggist's sponge for live tadpoles? Whatever you got, you wouldn't get tadpoles, not live ones.

Our fee is $50; hadn't you better stop at $50 and think yourself lucky? _Monsieur a bien tombé_.

Any more fern letters? Don't forget them.

BEN DOOLITTLE.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_December 30._

DEAR BEN:

I take your advice, of course, about dropping the suit against Phillips & Faulds, and I take pleasure in enclosing you my cheque for $50--damn them. That's $75--damn them. And if anybody else anywhere around hasn't received a cheque from me for nothing, let him or her rise, and him or her will get one.

No more letters yet. But I feel a disturbance in the marrow of my bones and doubtless others are on the way, as one more spell of bad weather--another storm for me.

BEVERLEY.

CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_Seminole, North Carolina,
December 25._

SIR:

This is Christmas Day, when every one is thinking of peace and good will on earth. It makes me think of you. I cannot forget you, my feeling is too bitter for oblivion, for it was you who were instrumental in bringing about my father's death. One damp night I heard him get up and then I heard him fall, and rushing to him to see what was the matter, I found that he had stumbled down the three steps which led from his bedroom to his library, and had rolled over on the floor, with his candle burning on the carpet beside him. I lifted him up and asked him what he was doing out of bed and he said he had some kind of recollection about a list of ferns; it worried him and he could not sleep.

The fall was a great shock to his nervous system and to mine, and a few days after that he contracted pneumonia from the cold, being already troubled with lumbago.

My father's life-work, which will never be finished now, was to be called "Approximations to Consciousness in Plants." He believed that bushes knew a great deal of what is going on around them, and that trees sometimes have queer notions which cause them to grow crooked, and that ferns are most intelligent beings. It was while thus engaged, in a weakened condition with this work on "Consciousness in Plants," that he suddenly lost consciousness himself and did not afterwards regain it as an earthly creature.

I shall always remember you for having been instrumental in his death. This is the kind of Christmas Day you have presented to me.

CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.

CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_Seminole, North Carolina,
January 7._

DEAR SIR:

Necessity knows no law, and I have become a sad victim of necessity, hence this appeal to you.

My wonderful father left me in our proud social position without means. I was thrown by his death upon my own resources, and I have none but my natural faculties and my wonderful experience as his secretary.

With these I had to make my way to a livelihood and deep as was the humiliation of a proud, sensitive daughter of the South and of such a father, I have been forced to come down to a position I never expected to occupy. I have accepted a menial engagement in a small florist establishment of young Mr. Andy Peters, of this place.

Mr. Andy Peters was one of my father's students of Botany. He sometimes stayed to supper, though, of course, my father did not look upon him as our social equal, and cautioned me against receiving his attentions, not that I needed the caution, for I repeatedly watched them sitting together and they were most uncongenial. My father's acquaintance with him made it easier for me to enter his establishment. I am to be his secretary and aid him with my knowledge of plants and especially to bring the influence of my social position to bear on his business.

Since you were the instrument of my father's death, you should be willing to aid me in my efforts to improve my condition in life. I write to say that it would be as little as you could do to place your future commissions for ferns with Mr. Andy Peters. He has just gone into the florist's business and these would help him and be a recommendation to me for bringing in custom. He might raise my salary, which is so small that it is galling.

While father remained on earth and roved the campus, he filled my life completely. I have nothing to fill me now but orders for Mr. Andy Peters.

Hoping for an early reply,

A proud daughter of the Southland,
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE

_January 10._

DEAR BEN:

The tumult in my bones was a well-advised monitor. More fern letters _were_ on the way: I enclose them.

You will discover from the earlier of these two documents that during a late unconscious scrimmage in North Carolina I murdered an aged botanist of international reputation. At least one wish of my life is gratified: that if I ever had to kill anybody, it would be some one who was great. You will gather from this letter that, all unaware of what I was doing, I tripped him up, rolled him downstairs, knocked his candle out of his hand and, as he lay on his back all learned and amazed, I attacked him with pneumonia, while lumbago undid him from below.

You will likewise observe that his daughter seems to be an American relative of Hamlet--she has a "harp" in her head: she harps on the father.

One thing I cannot get out of _my_ head: have you noticed anything wrong at the Club? Two or three evenings, as we have gone in to dinner, have you noticed anything wrong? Those two charlatans put their heads together last night: their two heads put together do not make one complete head--that may be the trouble; beware of less than one good full-weight head. Something is wrong and I believe they are the dark forces: have you observed anything?

BEVERLEY.

BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_January 11._

DEAR BEVERLEY:

The letters are filed away with their predecessors.

If I am any judge of human nature, you will receive others from this daughter of the South in the same strain.

If her great father (local meaning, old dad) is really dead, he probably sawed his head off against a tight clothes-line in the back-yard some dark night, while on his way to their gooseberry bushes to see if they had any sense.

More likely he hurled himself headlong into eternity to get rid of her--rolled down the steps with sheer delight and reached for pneumonia with a glad hand to escape his own offspring and her endless society.

The most terrifying thing to me about this new Clara is her Great Desert dryness; no drop of humour ever bedewed her mind. I believe those eminent gentlemen who call themselves biologists have recently discovered that the human system, if deprived of water, will convert part of its dry food into water.

I wish these gentlemen would study the contrariwise case of Clara: she would convert a drink of water into a mouthful of sawdust.

Humour has long been codified by me as one of nature's most solemn gifts. I divide all witnesses into two classes: those who, while giving testimony or being examined or cross-examined, cause laughter in the courtroom at others. The second class turn all laughter against themselves. That is why the gift of humour is so grave--it keeps us from making ourselves ridiculous. A Frenchman (still my French) has recently pointed out that the reason we laugh is to drive things out of the world, to jolly them out of existence and have a good time as we do it. Therefore not to be laughed at is to survive.

Beware of this new Clara! War breeds two kinds of people: heroes and shams--the heroic and the mock heroic. You and I know the Civil War bred two kinds of burlesque Southerner: the post-bellum Colonel and the spurious proud daughter of the Southland. Proud, sensitive Southern people do not go around proclaiming that they are proud and sensitive. And that word--Southland! Hang the word and shoot the man who made it. There are no proud daughters of the Westland or of the Northland. Beware of this new Clara! This breath of the Desert!

Yes, I have noticed something wrong in the Club. I have hesitated about speaking to you of it. I do not know what it means, but my suspicions lie where yours lie--with those two wallpaper doctors.

BEN.

RUFUS KENT TO BEVERLEY SANDS

_The Great Dipper,
January 12._

MY DEAR MR. SANDS:

I have been President of this Club so long--they have refused to have any other president during my lifetime and call me its Nestor--that whenever I am present my visits are apt to consist of interruptions. To-night it is raining and not many members are scattered through the rooms. I shall be at leisure to answer your very grave letter. (I see, however, that I am going to be interrupted.) ...