However, I do not come seeking absolution for any sins. Such shortcomings as I have are so personal, so really a part of dear me, that I should scarcely be complete without them. They are vixenish plagues of character that distinguish me from more conventional saints. But now that I have willed myself away from you, I need no longer conceal my heart. My love has been shriven, and, like a little white ghost out of heaven, must hark back to you occasionally for a blessing.

To begin with, then, when your letter came this morning, I took just a peep inside to see if it was good, and then hurried away to our forest to enjoy it, for I always feel more at home with you there. And although the season is so far advanced that the whole earth is chilled and desolate, my heart was like the springtide, swelling with gladness. Joy reached to my vagabond heels, and I had much ado to maintain the resignation gait of a minister's daughter through the village streets. And once out of sight I kissed my hand quickly over my shoulder till my face burned. For had you not promised to attend me? "I will wrap you about with fancies and dreams," you said. I was like a young-lady comet drawing after me a luminous trail of love. I began to comprehend the advantages of my position, to rejoice in my sacrifice. I caught the finer aspiration of love, like one who lays down his life and finds it again in nobler forms. Brave, good father, this thing that you have revealed to me is like a sweet eternity. It neither begins nor ends: only we do that. When our time comes we are swept into the current of it, happy, predestined atoms, and afterwards we are lost out of it like the leaves on the trees. But love is like the wind in their branches; it never is gone. So it seems to me now when all my heart's leaves are stirred to gladness by the dear gale of love.

But do not despise me, O sage in the upper chamber, for my selfishness. I keep far to the windward of you because I was made for love, not for sacrifice. The altar of your soul life is very fine, very beautiful, but I am too much alive to be offered up on such a table. Suppose I trusted you, gave myself with my heart, and in after years you should fall upon the idea of expurgating all sensations, all heresies, all affections from your life as the Brahmins do, what then would become of poor Jessica? I should sit upon your altar like a withered fairy, casting dust over my unhallowed head and calling down elfish curses upon you. Ah me! when I come upon a splendid man-statue that suddenly glows into living heart and flesh, I may wonder and love, but I should never trust myself in the arms of that phenomenon, lest, being clasped there, he should as suddenly turn back to his native stone and freeze the life in me!

Have you noticed that I tell you nothing of the village doings here, the little church sociables and a thousand commonplace details that go to make up the sum of existence amid such surroundings? It is because I do not really live among them. My mind is alien to these narrow margins of society and religion. But it is always of the little forest that I tell you, as if that were my real home, as indeed it is. And it is the dearer to me now that we have walked through it together. So in each letter you may expect a report of how things go there. This morning, as I looked about at the sober ground covered thick with dying leaves, I thought of what a gallant display of autumnal colors we had on that morning. Our little friends of the summer time are flitting here and there through the naked branches in silent confusion. There are no green boughs behind which to conceal their orchestral moods. Besides, their inspiration is gone, their singing hearts are benumbed by the cold. But for your letter thrust somewhere I could not have escaped the ghost of sadness that seemed to haunt the earth and sky. Suddenly, as I stood in the midst of it all, a cardinal flashed like a red spark into a tall pine, fluffed out his breast, and swept the forest with a defiant note of melody. It was a challenge to the long winter time, a prophecy of spring and of high green trees, and of a mate cloistered now far away in the wilderness: "You shall not hear a simple song, but you shall remember that music is the voice of love," whispered the letter against my heart. What a brave thing is life when we have love and the hope of spring latent within us! I admit, as I listened to the little red troubadour of the pine, that, had you been as near as the dreams and fancies that wrapped me about, this fight in me for freedom would have been at an end. Do not trust these feeble moods of mine, however; not one of them would last half the length of time you would need to make the journey from New York to Morningtown!

So! you have written such a review of Miss Addams's book as will astonish the "average reader," and all the while you wondered: "How will Jessica answer that?" Abridged, this is her opinion: That an editor should be careful how he kicks his heels at the spirit of his age. The world has an ancient and effective way of dealing with such heroes.

No, I am not familiar with the Imitation. But I gather from the passages you quote that it is a spiritual exercise prepared for those who "possess all the comforts of this life," and are weary enough of them to pass on to the philosophy of renunciation. But you should remember that the Hull-House classes have not had the necessary experience with comforts. Renunciation is impossible for them, for they have nothing to give up.

My love to the little goblin boy.



XXII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

MY DEAR JESSICA:

Did ever "Father Confessor" have so sweet and so wilful a sinner to shrive! Your only sin is that you love me, and do you think I shall grant absolution for that? As I read your letter with its wayward confession, it seemed to me indeed that I was in some temple of the gods instead of this book-littered den, and the rumble of the street was transfigured into the sound of triumphant music. And all the while the voice of the little penitent, hidden from my eyes, but almost within reach of my breath, murmured in my ears: "I love you, I love you, and that is my sin." Dear girl, when you have given me your heart, do you suppose I shall be slow to confiscate your will? It is not lawful that a man's, or a woman's, heart and will should be at enmity with each other. I know that your will is strong, but I know, too, that your heart is stronger. Why did you turn me away without one word of hope or consolation when I visited you in Morningtown? Out of the great store of happiness that God has given you, could you not spare one little morsel? Ah, I would not offer you up a sacrifice on the altar of any spiritual creed, but take you with me into that upper chamber that looks toward the golden sunrise. I would share your happiness and give you in return a portion in the hope that I too have found. With you at my side I could walk through the world, (for I am not such a recluse as you might suppose,) knowing that the desire of all men's hearts had fallen to me, and that my life was consecrated henceforth to noble uses. And yet to-day I am very sad.

Let me tell you a little story of the way your admired Simonians act when their general promulgations of brotherhood are brought to an individual test. Our proprietor and manager, a smooth-faced, meek-eyed Jew, who has made himself right with this world, at least, is much concerned with charities and civic meetings and reform clubs and progress societies and the preaching of universal democracy, and all that,—a veritable Pharisee among the humanitarians. He often asks me to give a good word to some Simoniacal book. Well, I have a poor broken-down Irishman named O'Meara, who reviews a certain class of publications for me. He is the kind of man you would never expect to meet in this country: a relic of eighteenth-century Grub Street,—a man who reads Latin and Greek, who can quote pages of the Fathers, who has a high ideal of literature and conscience in writing, and withal a victim to the demon whiskey that has dragged him down to the very gutter. His life has been a mystery to me, and some feeling of shame has kept him from ever telling me where and how he lives. At intervals he comes shuffling into my office, with bleared eyes and palsied hand, and for charity's sake I give him a book to review—and not exactly for charity either, for he does his work well. Two or three weeks ago our Simoniacal manager came into my office and asked me who that tramp was whom he had seen several times go away with books. I told him the whole story, thinking to arouse his sympathy. What was my surprise when he broke out into a mild stream of abuse—the more startling because he ordinarily says so little—against allowing such besotted tramps to come into the offices! When a man drank himself into such a state as that there was no doing anything with him, etc. O'Meara came back in a day or two with his "copy," and I told him that the chief had ordered me to cut him off. Poor wretch! he said never a word for himself, but turned and shambled guiltily out of the room—I shall never forget the sound of his trailing, despondent feet.

I heard no more from him until yesterday, when the office boy came in and told me a beggar child insisted on seeing me. What was my astonishment when it proved to be our goblin boy, who had been sent to ask me to come to his father; and his father was O'Meara! It all seemed as unsubstantial as a dream. I went with the child, of course. He guided me through the dark entry where I had seen him so often, in behind a great printing house, to a foul court hidden away from the street like some criminal outlaw. I will not try to describe the noisomeness of that reeking hole. I found O'Meara lying on a heap of sacks in a mouldering closet which was entirely dark save for what little light came through the doorway. Darkness, indeed, was his only comfort. He would not shake hands with me, for he has, withal, the instincts of a gentleman, and it seemed as if the shame of his whole degraded life lay with him before me in his misery. His tragedy will have been played out in a day or two, I think; and I wish the memory of it might also pass from my mind. What shall I do with the goblin boy? The hatefulness of it all stands between me and my thoughts of you. I cannot harden myself yet for a while to dream of pure beauty. I read your letter over and over, but its sweet medicament cannot purge my breast. Not even the acknowledgment of your love can drown these sighs I have heard.



XXIII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. PHILIP TOWERS:

You lack the proper ethical pose of a Father Confessor. I have excommunicated you. The charge against you is that you take an audacious advantage of the confessional, not to bless me, but to rejoice in my romantic vagrancy. For a man giving himself airs in the "upper chamber," you have very human ways, and I begin to suspect you only keep your creed and philosophy up there.

But you are greatly mistaken if you think you can ever wheedle me into such a sunrise attic. I can be domesticated, but not etherealised. And you hold strange doctrines for an ascetic. You think that because I love it will be easy to "confiscate" my will. Even I know better than that. We live to conquer our hearts. There is no freedom of mind and spirit till that decisive battle has been fought and won. My heart is a gay vagabond, ready to dance before the door of your tent, but my will is better disciplined. It weighs and counts the costs and rejects this sentimental bargain, because, O Stranger to my soul, I doubt if you can pay the interest love demands upon so large an investment. There is not enough of you; and your capital consists in something less vital,—in wind-cooled philosophies, and the passions of an occult spirit ever ready to escape into mysticism. Why will you not be content with a companionship on this basis? You keep your wings and you wish mine also. Well, you shall not have them! I have no disposition to simulate the example of those small insects who come out in early spring with splendid wings, make one flight far enough through the sunlight to lose them, and crawl all the remainder of their days in the domestic dust of their little tenements.

Besides, does not the science of biology teach that romantic love, in the very nature of things, is transient?—a little heathen angel that we entertain unawares, who comes and goes at will? I cannot tell you what satisfaction and what distress that theory has caused me of late. I would have my own heart free, but I am willing to move my little heaven and earth to prolong your bondage. Selfish?—I know, but consider upon what loneliness and terror such selfishness is based. A man is always sufficient unto himself, particularly if he can abstract and divert himself into a line of thought as you are able to do, but a woman without a lover is a pathetic thing. There is no real reason for her existence; all her little miracles of expression and posing are for naught. She is a sort of prima donna lost out of the play. There is no one to give her the happy cue to the whole meaning of life. Oh, my Love! I cannot live without a lover. Do not bereave me! I should shrivel up, I am sure,—grow old and sour and sad. I might even become a deaconess with Hull-House propensities. I am a naive beggar, you see; I ask all you have, and admit that I am unwilling to give in return what I myself have.

Your account of O'Meara interests me. But what right have you to slip out of your stern character as a merely spiritual man, and assume the guise of a good Samaritan? Really it is not fair; your tender compassion is illogical, and, however benign, I cannot accept it as evidence in your favour. But your account of the poor man's distress touched my heart. And you ask me what ought to be done with the little goblin boy. Dear Philip, could we not adopt him? Think how many years then, we should have to correspond in and to dispute with each other about his upbringing! I would make the jackets and you should furnish the ethics for him. You should provide a home for him, and I would give a little of the warmth that any woman's tenderness imparts to any child. I will begin at once with a maternal dictation,—he must be sent into the country. For children are like lambs, I think; they also need to grow up in a green field, and to gambol there. He must have no cares, no obligations—just be encouraged to let go all the good and evil there is in him. When he has expanded to his natural size morally and physically, we can tell better what to do with him. Are you laughing at me, or are you scandalised at such a proposition? Then why did you ask my advice? When a child is without parents, is it not better to provide him with a pair of them, even if one is a wizard who knows how to metamorphose himself into many different personalities, such as sage, mystic, lover, good Samaritan, and I know not how many more?



XXIV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

[THIS LETTER WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE PRECEDING LETTER OF JESSICA'S, BUT WAS NOT RECEIVED UNTIL LATER.]

DEAR JESSICA:

I often wonder whether I have made it quite clear to you why it is possible to hold in high esteem personally the workers of Hull House and these other philanthropists, while detesting their views as formulated into a dogma. Just after I had sent off my last letter to you I met with something in a morning paper which will throw light on my position. In an address before Princeton Theological Seminary Dr. Lyman Abbott is reported to have used these words:

"To follow Christ is, first of all, to give yourself to the service of God by serving your fellow-men. This is more important than the question of the Trinity, of the atonement, or of creeds."

Now the question of the Trinity or of the atonement may not seem essential to me. My faith has passed out of them—beyond them, I trust; and at least I do not call myself a Christian. But remember that Dr. Abbott is a teacher of Christianity and was on this occasion addressing students of theology. Certainly to him and to his audience these are, they must be, the first of all matters in the realm of ideas, whether accepted or rejected, and to speak slightingly of them is to show contempt for everything that transcends the material world. I know that Dr. Abbott, like some others, makes this service of our fellow-men to be a form of the service of God; but the slightest knowledge of the spirit of the day, indeed any intelligent reading of the words I have quoted, makes plain how entirely this "service of God" is a tag, a meaningless concession to an older form of speech. What seriously concerns our humanitarians is the service of mankind. Now am I not justified in saying that true religion would at least change the order of ideas and declare that to serve mankind is, first of all, to give one's self to the service of God? This is not a quibbling of words, but a radical distinction. It is because I find in all so-called humanitarians this tendency to place humanity before God, material needs before ideals, that I call them, when all is said, the most insidious foes of true religion. Their very virtues make them more dangerous than outspoken materialists and scoffers. It is largely due to them and their creed that we have no art and no literature; for art and literature depend, at the last analysis, on a reaching out after ideas, on an attempt to transmute material things into spiritual values,—on faith, in a word. The humanitarians cry out against the materialism and the commercial spirit of the age. They do not perceive that the only remedy against this degeneracy is the renewal of faith in something greater and higher than our material needs. Let them preach for a while the blessings of poverty and other-worldliness. The attempt to instil benevolence or so-called human justice into society as the chief message of religion is merely to play into the hands of the enemy. Do you see why I call them the real followers of Simon Magus, who sought to buy the gift of God with a price? "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right in the sight of God."

Consider how impossible it would have been in any age of genuine or real creativeness for a leading preacher of Christianity to have pronounced Dr. Abbott's words, and you will see how far humanitarianism has fallen from faith in the spirit. I know that passages maybe quoted from the Bible which might seem to make Christ himself responsible for this new Simony; but Satan, too, may quote Scripture. Surely the whole tenor of Christ's teaching is the strongest rebuke to this lowering of the spirit's demands. He spent his life to bring men into communion with God, not to modify their worldly surroundings. Indeed, the world was to him a place of misery and iniquity, doomed to speedy destruction. He sought to save a remnant from the wrath of judgment as a brand is plucked from the fire, and he separated his disciples utterly from acquiescence in the comforts of this earth; they were to be in the world but not of it: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." He taught poverty and not material progress. Those he praised were the poor and the meek and the unresisting and the persecuted—those who were cut off from the hopes of the world.

And now, dear girl, do you ask me to apply my preaching to my own case? Of a truth I have faith. I think it my true service to men that I should learn to love you greatly; and out of that love shall flow charity and justice and righteousness toward the world. Let it be my meed of service that men shall see the beauty of my homage.



XXV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR JESSICA:

The end has come even sooner than I looked for it. This afternoon, little Jack, our goblin boy, came to my office and I followed him back to the dismal court where his father lay expecting me. I had arranged that the poor wretch should be carried into a room where at least there was a bed and where a ray of clean sunshine might greet his soul when departing on the long journey; and there I found him lying perfectly quiet save for the twitching of his hands outstretched on the counterpane. I thought a glimmer of content lightened his dull eyes as I sat down beside him. I talked with him a little, but he seemed scarcely to heed my words. Then turning his head towards me he plucked from under his pillow an old thumb-worn copy of Virgil (so bedraggled and spotted that no second-hand book-seller would have looked at it) and thrust it out to me, intimating by a gesture that he would have me read to him. I asked him where I should begin, and he held up two fingers as if to indicate the second book of the AEneid; and there I began with the fall of Troy-town.

He listened with apparent apathy, though I know not what echoes the sonorous lines awakened in his mind, until I came to the words:

Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus.

I saw his hands clench together feebly here, and then there was no more motion. Presently I looked into his face, and I knew that no sound of my voice, nor any sound of the world, could ever reach him again; for the story of his unspeakable sorrow, like the ruin of Troy, had been told to the end. He had spoken not a single word; he had carried the silence of his soul into the infinite silences of death. The secret of his life had passed with him. I shall probably never know what early dreams and ambitions had faded into this squalid despair. And his pitiful wan-faced boy—who was the child's mother? I am glad I do not know; I am only glad I can tell him of your love. I shall see that the father is buried decently with a wooden slab to distinguish his grave from the innumerable dead who rest in the earth. Might we not print above his body the last words of the poem he seems to have loved so much: Fugit indignata sub umbras! For I think it was the indignity of shame in the end that killed him. Is he not now all that Caesar and Virgil are? Shall he not sleep as peacefully in his pauper's bed as the great General Grant in that mausoleum raised by the river's side?—Commonplace thoughts that came to me as I sat for a while musing in the presence of death; but is not death the inevitable commonplace that shall put to rout all our originality in the end?

And all the while our Jack was sitting perfectly motionless by the window, looking out into the court—into the blue sky, I think. I picked up one of his thin hands and said to him: "Little Jack, your father has gone away from us and is at rest. There is a beautiful lady in the South who loves you as she loves me; will not her love make you happy?" He did not appear to understand me, but shrank into himself as if afraid. Indeed, sweet benefactress, I shall send him into the country somewhere as you bid me, and I shall see that your love brings him greater happiness than it has brought me, for with him you shall not withdraw with one hand what you have held out in the other.

I went away, leaving an old woman to care for the dead man and his child. It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence. Is it not a strange thing that death should have this power of benediction? Of a sudden a breath comes out of the heavens, our little cares are touched by an eternal presence, a rift is blown in the thick mists that hem us about, and behold, we look out into infinite visionless space. And now I am back in my office. I open O'Meara's worn and much-stained Virgil, and inside the cover I find these words scribbled in pencil: "I have cried unto God and He hath not heard my cry; but thou, O beloved poet, art ever near with consolation!" I do not know whether the sentence is original with O'Meara or a quotation; it is certainly new to me. One other book I brought with me, and the two were the whole worldly possession of the dead man. This is a small but pretty thick blank-book, written over almost to the last page. I have not examined the contents carefully, but I can see that they are made up of miscellaneous passages copied from books and of reflections on a great variety of topics, with few or no records of events. One of the last entries is from Clarence Mangan's heart-breaking poem, The Nameless One:

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow, And want, and sickness, and houseless nights, He bides in calmness the silent morrow That no ray lights.

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble, Deep in your bosoms: there let him dwell! He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble Here, and in hell.

And is it not a touch of Fate's irony that I should be sending this threnody of death to one who might expect to receive from me only messages and pleadings of love? Death and love are the very antipodes of our existence, one would say. And yet I do not know; I feel nothing incongruous in linking the twain together. Love, too, breaks open the barriers of our poor personality that the breath of the infinite may blow in upon us. I cannot say how it is with others, but so it is with me: love lays a hand upon me, and instantly the discords of the world are hushed in my ears, the little desires and fears that trouble me are shamed into silence, and I am rapt away into the infinitely great heart that throbs at the centre of all. It is strange, but life itself seems to pass away in the presence of this power that is the creator of life. I speak darkly, but my words have a meaning. And, dear sweetheart, be not afraid that you shall be left without a lover; that I shall bereave you! Do you think for an instant that I can cease to love? I cannot understand this war between your heart and your will; am I very stupid? Surely when I come to you, I shall bring this contention to an end, and you—it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what you shall give me. Out of the conclusions of death into the prophecies of love! I am filled with wondering.

You shall hear more hereafter of poor Jack, our adopted child.



XXVI

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR PHILIP:

See how you shame me! For this long while I have wished to begin my letters thus, but I waited, hoping you would entreat me to do so. I expected you to provide an excuse. I thought my own pleasure would wear the genial air of a concession to your wishes. Indeed, the way you wait for me to be obliged to do such things of my own accord, fills me with superstitious anxieties. It is as if you had some unfair foreknowledge of the natural order of events. You would take things for granted, and thus produce an hypnotic effect by your convictions so strong as to compel my conformity. But I console myself with the reflection that all this is mental. You terrify only my intelligence with your strange sorcery. And for this reason I shall always escape your bondage, for I am too wise to concede my familiar territory to such an overbearing foreign power.

However, I must not forget the prime object I have in writing this letter. It is to tell you that the little box of childish things, which you must have received already and wondered at, are not for the literary editor of The Gazette, but for Jack, sent with the hope that they may in some measure comfort his sad heart. I went so far as to purchase material for the promised set of jackets, when suddenly I remembered that I was ignorant of both his age and size. You have never told me that, though you have given me such a real picture of him that I could almost trust my imagination to cut those garments to fit him!

Your account of O'Meara's death affected me deeply. With what sublime abandon does such a man let go his soul into the mystery of that silence which we call eternity!

Is it not strange how the same impressions come to many, but by different ways! "It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence," you said, and the sentence recalled a somewhat similar experience of my own on Cumberland Island, where father and I went last summer for a short vacation. One day, leaving the group of happy bathers to their surf, I climbed up inland among the sand-hills, that lie along the shore like the white pillows of fabulous sea-gods. Presently I came upon one of those great sand-pits that stretch along the Island, deep and wide like mighty graves. Far below me a whole forest stood in ghostly silence, with every whitening limb lifted in supplication, as if all had died in a terrified struggle with the engulfing sands. Unawares, I had happened upon one of Nature's griefs—and I do not know how to tell you, but the sight of it aged me. Of a sudden this death of the trees seemed a far-off part of my own experience. I was swept out of this contesting, energetic world into a still region where great events come to pass in silence, and inevitably. And so real was the illusion that, as I turned to hurry back, it seemed to me that centuries had passed since I saw the same little tuft of flowers like a group of purple fairies nodding to me from the top of a tall cliff. And so I stood there confused by the significance of this silence, so incredible that even the winds could not shake it. I felt so near and kin to death that I became "alien" to all the living world about me. For the first time in my life, I lost the sense of God, which is always a kind of mental protection against the terrors of infinity. There was nothing to pray to, only the sea on one side and this grave on the other, with a little trembling life between.

Thus you will understand that not only have I had a similar experience to your own upon the occasion of O'Meara's death, but that for once I came into your region of shades and terrors. I was like one on the point of dissolution, and almost my soul escaped into your dim habitation. From your letters I had already learned how near together love and death stood in your consciousness. Each is an exit through which your spirit is ever ready to pass. And for the moment, crowded in with skeleton shadows there, you seemed sensibly near me. I was divided between fear and love. But the blood of life in me always triumphs,—and then it was that I made my first flight in consciousness from you. I kissed my hand to the twilight and ran! I am sure you were there, Philip, a cold-lipped spirit-lover seeking my mortal life. And, oh my Heart! is it wrong that I would love and be loved in the flesh? I do not object to spirituality, only it must have a visible presence and a warm cheek.

P. S.—But, dear Philip, how am I to reconcile this tender charity to Jack with your anti-humanitarian views? Is a man's heart so divided from his philosophy? Or do you intend to make a mystic of that poor child, so that he may escape the woes of his condition? I am curious to see what you will do with him. Also, I shall certainly defend him against your Nirvana doctrines if I suspect you of juggling with his soul.



XXVII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR, TEASING, RARE JESSICA:

I have so many things to say to you. First of all, why do you blame me for my "foreknowledge"? You scold me for my hostility to the sentimentalism of the day, you scold me then for any act of common human sympathy, and now you take me to task because I foresee how you will address me in a letter. Dear me, what a horrid little scold it is! I wonder you didn't quote The Raven,—

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!"

But really no great powers of prophecy were required. Have you forgotten that in the very letter before this one you called me "Dear Philip"? And wasn't that a good index of your tempestuous, contradictory sweet self, that you should have begun your letter "My dear Mr. Philip Towers" and then thrown in your "Dear Philip" by the way, as if it would not be observed! Why, my naughty Jessica, when I came to that phrase, I just took my longest, biggest blue pencil and put a ring about it so that I might find it at a moment's notice and feast my eyes a thousand thousand times on its sweet familiarity. Do not suppose that anything ever escapes me in your letters. I con every little lapse in your spelling until I know it by heart. And you do make so many slips, you know, in your reviews as well as in your letters! I never correct them,—that would be a desecration, I think,—but send up your copy just as it comes to me. Indeed, I find myself imitating unawares some of your most unaccountable originalities. Only the other day I was in the reading-room and our head proofreader, a sour, wizened old man, cried out to me: "I say, Mr. Towers, what is the matter with your spelling? You write propotion[2] for proportion and propersition for proposition, and get your r's all mixed up generally!" There was a titter from all the girls in the room. Then said I: "Thou fool! knowest thou not that Jessica lives in the South, and treats her r's with royal contempt as she was taught to treat the black man? And shall I not imitate her in this as in all her high-born originalities?" Of course I didn't say that aloud, but just thought it to myself. And really I do wonder sometimes that your excellent father, when he taught you Latin, should have permitted you to take such liberties with our good mother tongue. But after all it is only another sign of your right Southern wilfulness. Do you not take even greater liberties with poor human souls?

And you make my prophetic powers a bulwark for your licentious rebellion and declare that you will always escape my bondage. Shall you, indeed? You once intimated that I wore ass's ears. I begin to believe it. What a blind, solemn animal I was when I came to Morningtown to beg for your love! I was so afraid of you. And as we sat in the circle of your watching, motionless trees, something of their stiff ways entered into my heart. I told you of my love so solemnly, and you answered so solemnly. Fool! Fool! I should have spoken not a single word, but just taken you in my arms and kissed you once and twice. Don't frown now, it is too late. There would have been one wild, tempestuous outbreak of indignation, and then my dryad maiden would have known my "foreknowledge" indeed. Is it too late to rehearse that curtain-raiser? Dear girl, I would be merry, but I am not so sure that all is well with my heart. I need you so much now, for I have entered on a new path and the way is obscure before me. I need you. Your hand in mine would give me the courage I require.

Do you remember how you warned me of dangers when I reviewed Miss Addams's book? You, too, were a prophet. Let me tell you how it all came about. The other day I wrote up Mme. Adam's Romance of My Childhood and Youth (Addams and Adam—the name has a fatality for me), and took occasion to make it the text of a tremendous preachment against our latter-day Simony,—as well it might be, for Mme. Adam grew up in the thirties and forties when France was a huge seething caldron in which all these modern notions were brewing together. And unfortunately we are just beginning now where France left off a score of years ago. You have already seen the review, no doubt, and it is superfluous to repeat its argument. But for my own justification to you I want to quote a few sentences from the book. You disdained to make any reply to my letter on Lyman Abbott, and I fear you have grown weary of the whole subject; but certainly you will be interested in what I am copying out for you now. In one of her chapters, then, Mme. Adam writes:

Nature, Science, Humanity, are the three terms of initiation. First comes nature, which rules everything; then the revelations of nature, revelations which mean science—that is to say, phenomena made clear in themselves and observed by man; and lastly, the appropriation of phenomena for useful social purposes.... There is no error in nature, no perversity in man; evil comes only from society.... He [Mme. Adam's father] delighted in proving to me that it was useless for man to seek beyond nature for unattainable chimeras, for the infinite which our finite conception was unable to understand, and for the immaterial, which our materiality can never satisfactorily explain.... They [these humanitarian socialists] resembled my father. Their doubts—and they had many!—were of too recent a date to have dried up their souls; they no longer believed in a divine Christ; they still believed in a human one. They worshipped that mysterious Science, which replaced for them the supernatural, and which had not then brought all its brutality to light in crushing man under machinery.

Could anything be more illuminating than that? Does it not set forth the close cousinship of humanitarianism with socialism and the fungous growth of the two out of the mouldering ruins of faith and the foul reek of a sensuous philosophy? And do you not see why any surrender to this modern cult of human comfort means the indefinite postponement of that fresh-dawning ideal which shall bring life to literature and art and evoke once more the golden destiny of man?

Well, this morning the particular Simon Magus who rules The Gazette walked into my office and, after some preliminary sparring, came out with a complaint which I knew had been preparing in his brain for some time. It seems that he had already been deluged with letters about my heretical attack on Miss Addams, and now a new storm had begun over my further delinquencies. He kindly told me that my views were a hundred years behind the age and that they were doing injury to the paper. Against the latter charge I had no defence, and immediately capitulated. To cut a disagreeable tale short, I anticipated his purpose and offered to make way for some man who would better harmonise with the benevolent policy of the paper. The first of the month comes in four days, and then I shall be thrown once again on my own resources. The shock, though expected, is a little disconcerting; for at times a man grows weary and discouraged in fighting against the perpetual buffeting of the current. But most of all I am wondering how my independence will affect the hopes that were beginning to colour my dreams. Dear Jessica, you will not forsake me now; you will put away your perversity and love me simply and unreservedly? There are difficulties before me, I know; but I am not afraid if only my heart is at peace. I am free, and if there is any power in my brain, any skill in my right hand, I will make such a pother that the world shall hear me. I will not die till I am heard. And so I ask you to help-me. With your love I shall be made bold, and no opposition and no repeated reverses shall trouble me. And in the end your happiness is in my making.

Indeed, your box of little things for Jack made Olympian merriment in Newspaper Row, for several men were in my office when I opened it. Jack is ten years old, small for his age, but quietly precocious. I cannot write more of him now. Address your next letter not to the office but to——; and when I open that letter will it bring me joy or grief? Your joy may cast a ruddy light on my path, but nothing that you can say will shake me in my firm resolve. No sorrow shall hinder me, but, oh, happy Heart! I, too, long for happiness.



XXVIII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

KIND SIR:

Which do you think requires the more grace in a woman, to hold out against a dear enemy or to yield? My own experience teaches me that there is more facility in resistance. Acting thus I have always felt in accord with natural instincts, and there is a barbaric sense of security in following them.... Yet I have only one thing to tell you in reply to your "so many." Can you guess what it is? Already I think the birds know it. I have so far departed from my natural order of perversity and self-protection that they feel it, and twitter together when I pass by. I think they look down upon me now with high-feathered contempt. Could anything be more mortifying?

Do not laugh, Philip! You have behaved little better than a robber in this matter. I have lost to you, but the game was not fair; dear mendicant, you played with a card up your sleeve! All my life I have planned to outwit predestination. I have ignored Sabbath-day doctrines and faith-binding dogmas to this end. I could even have held out indefinitely against your "foreknowledge," but when you come, heralded by an unexpected misfortune, asking "peace" of me that you may meet your own difficulties with a steadier courage, I find you invincible. It is as if you had suddenly slipped through the door of my heart and left will, betrayed, on guard outside. I have no defence in my nature against your plea. The diplomacy of your need takes me unawares, and, no matter how I fear the future, now I am bound to add myself to you in love and hope. The prospect is terrible and sweet. Already it has made me a stranger in my father's house, a foreigner among the trees, and a wakeful, frightened mystery to myself. I am full of tears and secresy. I am no longer Jessica, the wind-souled dryad of the forest, but merely a woman in definition, facing a new world of pain and joy. Oh, my beloved! you have taken all that I have, all that I am! Henceforth I shall be only a part of you,—a little hyperbole of domesticity always following after, or advancing to meet you.... Dear gods of the world, defend me from such a fate! ... After all, I cannot admit the "one thing." I cannot submit to this annihilation, this absorption of character and personality. If you take me, you do so at your own risk, I will not promise "peace," but confusion rather. But if you get me, you must take me. Yet, if you come to Morningtown after me, I will deny my love, not out of perversity, but out of fear. The sight of you is a signal for me to take refuge upon my tallest bough. And I can no more come down to you than a young lady robin could fly into your pocket. It is all very well for you to exhort me to love you "simply and unreservedly,"—I do. Nothing could be simpler, more elemental, than my love is; and do I reserve a single thought of it from you? But I am not conventional enough in heart or training to surrender. My genius for you does not extend so far. To lose myself does not seem to me wise or logical, however scriptural or legal the practice is. The truth is, I cannot agree to be taken, any more than the little petticoated planet above your head can kick off her diadem of light. I do not know what you will do about it, because it is not my business to know these things. All I am sure of is that I love you, and that I belong to you if only you can get my extradition papers from Nature herself.

Meanwhile I have ventured to prepare my father's mind for a new idea. As we sat before the library fire this evening, each employed according to his calling, he with Fletcher's Appeal and I with my sewing, I asked the usual introductory question to our conversations. And it is always the signal for him to raise his shield of orthodoxy; for it has long been my habit to creep around the corner of my private opinion and tease him with what he is pleased to term "the most blasphemous speculations." Therefore when I said, "Father, I wish to ask you a question," he looked up with the guarded eye of a man who expects an assault from an unscrupulous antagonist.

"Well, my daughter, ask."

"Which would you advise me to marry, father, a humanitarian whose highest law is the material welfare of his kind, or an ascetic whose spirituality is something more and something less than scriptural?"

"Neither, Jessica; if you must marry, choose a man who believes in the divinity of Christ and lives somewhere within the limits of the Ten Commandments!"—Heavens! think of bondage with a man who is bounded upon the north, east, south, and west of his soul by laws enacted to discipline the Israelites in the Wilderness! In that case, I should insist upon a bridal trip to Canaan, with the hope of reaching the Promised Land as a widow.

And this reminds me to ask you what manner of man you are yourself. Do you reflect that we have seen each other only twice? and both times you were on guard, once as an editor, and once as a lover. Even your face has faded to a mere shadow, and, if you persist in your petulant obstinacy about the picture[3], is like to vanish clean away into nothing. Only your encompassing eyes peer at me with solemn expostulation out of the shimmering form I conjure up and call my lover. Is it quite fair, Philip? And as for your character, my hope is that, in spite of your mental pose as a sage, you have an unreasonable disposition, a chaotic temper. A long term of years with a serene, gentle-spirited man would be unbearable to me. Rather than prolong the futility of existence with one I could not provoke, even enrage, I should commit suicide. My own disposition is so equally divided between perversity and repentance that I could not endure the placidity, the ennui, of a level turnpike existence.

And now isn't it an evidence of your high-minded heartlessness, that in the same letter where you sue for love you also introduce a philosophical discussion and show even more heat in maintaining it than you do in your amorous petition? Why I cannot take warning and fly to the ends of my earth away from you now while there is yet time, is a mystery to me!

And so you expect to make such a pother in your opposition to the spirit of the times that all the world will hear you. Dear Master, I doubt if you will! Your bells ring too high up. The angels in heaven may hear you, but men are not listening in that direction. I did not reply to your contention against Lyman Abbott, because it is a far cry from you to me on this subject. In consciousness we are at opposite ends of a great problem, and I think the normal man walks somewhere between. Besides, I am not sure that I understand your position; I am not familiar with the starry highways of your mind. Still, in a general way it has always seemed to me that material things are, after all, "counters which represent spiritual realities." And I take comfort in the fact that it must require us all to work out the Great Plan,—humanitarian, sage, pilgrim, ascetic, even the butcher and candlestick maker. And while we do not know it, really we are working together for one end hidden now in the divine economy of far-off destiny and justice.... To me the wonder of wonders is that I may some day light a little taper in your upper chamber myself, and kneel together with you before the same window to worship. Only, dear Heart, please get your deity named before I come!

P.S.—As to my spelling, that is a coquettish licence I take with the genealogy of words. And you may tell your proofreader that the letter r has never been popular in the South since the war. There is hauteur in my omission of it, and it is a fact that we can express ourselves with far more vigour without g's or r's than you of the North can with them. For expression with us is not scholastic, but temperamental! Where is Jack?



XXIX

PHILIP TO JESSICA

KIND MADAM:

Yes, a little more than kind, dear Jessica, for you have put into my grasp the flower of perfect delight, and "my hand retains a little breath of sweet." You have opened a window into my heart and poured through it the warmth and golden glory of your own sunlight. I am filled with a joyousness of a new spring—and yet there is something in your letter that makes me a little sad. You express so frankly that reserve of resentment, even of bitterness, which always, I think, abides with a woman in all the sweetness of her love, but which with most women never comes to entire consciousness. Listen, dear Heart, while I talk to you of yourself and myself, until we comprehend each other better. It is so much easier for me to understand you than for you to understand me, because a woman's nature is single, whereas a man's is double, and in this duality lies all the reason of that enmity of the sexes which draws us together yet still holds us asunder.

You complain of my letter because I argue a philosophical proposition in it while pleading for love. Do you not know that this is man's way? And I would not try to deceive you: this philosophical proposition, which seems to you almost a matter of indifference, is more to me than everything else in the world. For it I could surrender all my heart's hope; for it I could sacrifice my own person; even, if the choice were necessary, which cannot be, I might sacrifice you. There is this duality in man's nature. The ambition of his intellect, the passion, it may be, to force upon the world some vision of his imagination or some theorem of his brain, works in him side by side with his personal being, and the two are never quite fused. Can you not recall a score of examples in history of men who have led this dual existence? You reviewed for me Bismarck's Love Letters and were yourself struck by this sharp contrast between the iron determination of the man in public affairs and the softness and sweetness of his domestic life. That is but one case in point of the eternal dualism in masculine nature which a woman can never comprehend, and which always, if it confronts her nakedly, she resents. For a woman is not so. There exists no such gap in her between her heart and brain, between her outer and inner life. And the consequence shows itself in many ways. She is less efficient in the world and is never a creator or impresser of new ideas; but, on the other hand, her character possesses a certain unity that is the wonder of all men who observe. She calls the man selfish and is bitter against him at times, but her accusation is wrong. It is not selfishness which leads a man if needs be to cut off his own personal desires while sacrificing another; it is the power in him which impels the world into new courses. A man's virtues are aggressive and turned toward outer conquest and may have little relation to his own heart. But a woman's virtues are bound up with every impulse of her personal being; they work out in her a loveliness and unity of character which make the man appear beside her coarse and unmoral. Men of vicious private life have more than once been benefactors of the human race; I think that never happened in the case of a woman.

And because of this harmony, this unconsciousness in woman's virtue, a man's love of woman takes on a form of idealisation which a woman never understands and indeed often resents. What in him is something removed from himself, something which he analyses and governs and manipulates, is in the woman beloved an integral part of her character. Virtue seems in her to become personified and he calls her by strange names. For this reason men who make language tend always to give to abstract qualities the feminine gender, as you must have observed in Latin and might observe in a score of other tongues. For this reason, too, a man's love of woman assumes such form of worship as Dante paid to Beatrice or Petrarch to Laura. It would be grotesque for a woman to love in this way, for virtue is not a man's character, but a faculty of his character. And so is it strange that I should approach you asking for love that my soul may have peace? It cannot enter into my comprehension that such a cry should come from you to me. All that I strive to accomplish in the world, all that I gird myself to battle for, the ideals that I would lay down my life that men may behold and cherish,—is it not now all gathered up in the beauty and serenity of your own person? What I labour to express in words is already yours in inner possession. If I ask you for peace, it is not selfishness, dear girl; it is prayer. If you should come to me begging for peace, I should be filled with amazement; for I myself have it not. What I can give is love's unwearied tenderness and love's unceasing homage to the beauty of your body and your soul. More than that, I shall give you in the end the crown of the world's honour. Without you I may accomplish the task laid upon me, but only with heaviness of soul and abnegation of all that my heart craves. I was reading in an old drama last night until I came to these words, and then I set the book aside:

Once a young lark Sat on thy hand, and gazing on thine eyes Mounted and sung, thinking them moving skies.

In that sweet hyperbole I seemed to read a transcript of your beauty. If I am selfish, beloved, all love is selfishness.

Dear girl, it seems that always I must woo you in metaphysics and express my ardour in theorems. But have I not made myself understood? "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart," as a thousand women have quoted: and it is true. But do you not see that even for this reason his love swells into a passionate idolatry of the woman who knows no such cleavage in her soul. Try us with sacrifices. I could throw away every earthly good to bestow on you a year of happiness—only not my philosophic proposition, as you sarcastically call it. That is greater than I and greater than you—pray heaven it do not clash with the promise of our peace. Virgil, I think, meant to exhibit such a tragic conflict in his tale of AEneas and Dido, only poetwise the inner impulse which worked within AEneas he expressed dramatically as a messenger from the gods. It shows but little understanding of the poem or of human nature to censure AEneas as a cold egotist. Did he not sail away carrying anguish in his heart, multa gemens? For him there was destined toil and warfare, for Dido only terror and death. The tragedy fell hardest upon the woman, for so the Fates have ordered.

But why do I write such grim reflections? There is no tragedy, no separation, for us, but a great wonder of happiness:

The treasures of the deep are not so precious As are the concealed comforts of a man Locked up in woman's love.

All the marvellous words of the poets rush into my brain when I think of this new blessing. Yes, I have acted a robber's part, sweet Jessica, and he who ravished that great jewel from the Indian idol never carried away so large a draft on the world's happiness as this that I have stolen. I cannot be repentant while this golden glow is upon me; later I shall begin to question my own worthiness.

I cannot now tell you one half that is in my mind to write, or answer one half the questions in your letter. Jack is living with me just at present, but of him I will speak next time. I have planned to change my abode, but of that too next time. And I would not attempt to give a name to the deity I serve in a postscript, as it were. Dear Heart, only let your love add a little to your happiness as it has added so much to mine; and trust me.—I am sending a letter to your father, the contents of which you might imagine even if he should not show it to you.



XXX

JESSICA TO PHILIP

WRITTEN BEFORE THE RECEIPT OF THE PRECEDING LETTER

MY BELOVED:

Last night, I dreamed myself away to you. I walked beside you, a little wraith of love, through the silent night streets of your great city,—but you did not know me. There was no sky above us, only a hollow blackness, and the snow lay new and white upon the pavements; but I wore green leaves in my hair and a red Southern rose on my breast to remind you of a brown forest maid and summer-time far away—and you would not see me! I faced you in gay mockery and swept a bow, but the blue silence in your eyes terrified me. I held out my hands beseechingly, touched my cheek to yours, and you did not feel the pressure. Then I slipped down upon the snow and wept, and you did not hear me.

We were both "in the spirit," I think. Only, dear Love, when I am in the spirit, all my thoughts are of you; but though I looked far and near, I could not find in all your regions one little thought of poor Jessica. All was misty and dim within your portals. Your thoughts were vague ancient shapes that wandered past me like Brahmin ghosts. And not one gallant memory of Jessica legended upon those inner walls of yours!

Dear, I cannot escape now, my heart will not come back to me; and since it is too late I will not complain. But for a little while I must tell you these things and pray for your kind comfort, till I shall have become accustomed to your attic moods and exaltations.

Do you recall the woman I told you of last summer, whose sorrow-smitten face in the church terrified me so? Grief became credible to me as I gazed at her. And could it have been, do you think, a message foretold to me of this magic future, full of intangible fears, wherein I am to live with you?



XXXI

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Love is a mystic worker of miracles, O my sweet visionary! for on that very day when you dreamed yourself away to me I beheld you suddenly standing before me, so life-like and appearing so wistfully beautiful that I reached out my hand to touch you—but grasped only the impalpable air. All day and late into the night I had been reading and reflecting, seeking in the ways of thought some word of comfort for the human heart, until at last my consciousness became confused. It often happens thus. So real is this search for some truth outside of me, that it seems as if my soul were a thing apart from me, a thing which left me to go alone on its dim and perilous way. I behold it as it were a shadow floating away from me out into that abyss of shadows which are the thoughts of many men long dead. And on this occasion the silence into which the Searcher went forth was vaster and more obscure than ever before, filled with unfathomable darkness as a clear night might look wherein no moon or stars appeared, and so lonely "that God himself scarce seemed to be there."

Then, as often when this mood comes upon me, I went out to walk under the hard flaring lights and amid the streaming crowds of Broadway, in order to bring back the sense of mortal illusion and unite myself once more to human existence. The people were pouring from the theatres, and I sought the densest throng. But still I could not awaken in myself the illusion of life. And then suddenly, without warning, there in the noisy brawl of the street, I beheld you standing before me, looking into my face and smiling. You wore a burning Southern rose upon your breast and were more wondrously and delicately fair than the dream of poets. And there was a smile upon your lips as if to say: "Dear Philip, thou hast put away the pleasures and loveliness of this world as they had been a snaring web of illusion; yet I do but look upon thee, and forthwith thou art pierced with love and know that in this scorned desire of beauty dwells the great reality." I reached out my hand to touch the rose against your heart, but the vision was gone, and all about me was only the tumultuous mockery of the street. Sweetheart, you have smitten me with remorse. Shall I take from you only happiness, and give in return only this spectral dread? Ah, you shall learn that I am very real, very earthly, capable of love and tenderness and daily duties and quiet human sympathies! I told you of the dualism into which my life, into which, indeed, every man's life, is cast; why will you persist in clinging to that part which is cold and inhuman instead of seizing upon that which is warm and very near by? I would not take you with me into those bleak ways where always there is fear lest our personality be swallowed up in the dark impersonal abyss. I would love you as a man loves a woman and cleaves to her. Nay, more, I perceive dimly in that love a strange reconcilement wherein the dual forces of my nature shall be made one, wherein truth and beauty shall blend together in a kiss, and there shall be no more seeking in obscurity, but only peace.

When the vision faded from me on Broadway, I turned back to my home, and there, before the dawn came, tried to write out in words one thought of the many that thronged upon me. I have almost forgotten the art of making rhymes if ever I knew it.

A RECONCILIATION

All beauteous things the world's allurement knows: Starred Venus, when she droops on Tyrian couch While Evening draws her dusky curtains close, Or pearled from morning bath she seems to crouch;

In bleak November one strayed violet; The rathe spring-beauty scattered wide like snow; The opal in a cirque of diamonds set; Rare silken gowns that rustle as they flow;

The dumb thrush brooding in her lilac hedge; The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight; A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge; The sunrise flaming on an Alpine height;—

All these I've seen, yet never learned, till now In thy sweet smiling, to accord my vow Austere of truth with beauty's charmed delight.



XXXII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIX

MY DEAR PHILIP:

You are a magician rather than a lover. And no lover, I think, was ever so subtle at reasoning. At least you do not act the part as I supposed it was played. A lover, I thought, was one who stood at the door of a woman's heart and serenaded till she crept out upon her little balcony of sighs and kissed her hand to him, or shed a tokening bloom upon his upturned countenance. So far as I could imagine, he was prehistoric in the simplicity of his methods. Two things I never suspected: that love is the kind of romantic exegesis you represent it to be, or that every lover, psychically, is a sort of twin phenomenon—that he is two men instead of one! And after he is married, I suppose he will be a domestic trinity, but with his godhead concerned with the affairs of the world at large. I am awed by the revelation; still, it excuses much in my conduct that I had before felt was reprehensible; for I have scarcely faced my own reflection in the glass since my ignominious capitulation. Something within charged treachery against poor Jessica. But if there are two of you, and only one of me, that fact gives a new and honourable complexion to my part in the transaction.

However, the way you have multiplied yourself and doubled forces upon me may be good masculine tactics, but I am sure it is an unparliamentary advantage you have taken. For you have not only posed as a lover, but with the cunning words of a logician you prove what seemed wrong to be really a sublime right; and what I charged as selfishness, you call "a prayer." I am confused by your argument; it seems incontestable. But do you know, my Philip, that a woman's convictions are never reached by a mere argument? For they are hidden in her heart, not in her little bias-fold mind. And so, in spite of your sweet reasoning with me, and the assumption you make of omniscience concerning me, my convictions remain. Only, now, I do not know whether I cherish them against you or against the God who made me simple and you double.

But granting all you say to be true, that every man has a personal life and at the same time a universal life energy as well, that there is in him a little domestic fortress of love, and a battle power of life apart,—admitting all this, how do you reconcile justice with the fact that you frankly offer only half of your duality for all of Jessica? Have you never suspected that she also has fair kingdoms of thought apart from your science of her? My Prophet, it is you who have discovered them to me! Love has added a sweet Canaan to my little hemisphere. I have heard invisible birds singing, I have trysted with spirits of the air since I knew you. And I have felt the pangs of a consciousness in me so new and so tender, that I am no longer merely the maid you know, but, dear Master, I am some one else, near and kin to you as life and spirit are kin! What is this strange white space in my soul that love has made, so real, yet so holy that I dare not myself lift the veil of consciousness before it? And all I know is that I shall meet you there finally heart to heart!—Philip, kiss me! For I am a frightened white-winged stranger in my own new heavens and new earth. I am no longer as you imagine, simply one, but I have a foreign power of life and death in me, and the fact terrifies me.

You declare that there is a difference and a distance between a man's love and a man's mind which account for his dual nature. There is also an intelligence of the heart, more astute, more vital, which divides woman's nature also between the abandon of love and the resentment of understanding. We know, and we do not know, and we feel. What we know is of little consequence, what we feel is written upon the faces of each succeeding generation. But what we do not know constitutes that element of mystery in us that makes us also dual. For we feel and suspect further than we can understand. Thus, your faculty for projecting yourself in spirit further than I can follow, excites in me a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment. I am widowed by the loss of the higher half of your entity. Can you not see, Philip, it is not your views I combat, your theory about humanitarianism and all that? They are but the geometrical figures of thought in your mind; and I have no wish to disturb your "philosophic proposition." The point is, I love that in you more than I love the lover. And the passion with which you cling to it as something apart from our relationship offends me, excites forebodings. Tell me, are "philosophic propositions" alien to love? And after all do you think you are the only one who may claim them? This is a secret,—I have a little diagram of feminine wisdom hid away from you somewhere, founded upon the wit of love. And we shall see which lasts the longer, your proposition or my understanding!

But I must not forget to speak of a matter much more practical just now. You mentioned the letter that you sent to father,—"The contents you might imagine even if he did not show it to you." Well, he did not show it to me, but from the effect it produced upon him I am obliged to infer that it contained the most iniquitous blasphemies. Philip, I do hope you are not subject to fits of "righteous indignation!" I could welcome a season of secular rage in a man as I could a fierce wind in sultry weather, but this kind of fury that cloaks itself in the guise of outraged piety is very trying. No sooner did father read your letter than he strode in upon me like a grey-bearded firebrand. The offending letter was crushed in his hand, and his glasses were akimbo on his nose, the way they always are when he is perturbed. I spare you the details, but from the nature of his questions you might have thought he was examining you through me for a licence to preach. I did not try to deceive him in regard to your views, but my own impression of them is so nebulous that the very vagueness of my replies increased his alarm. Nor did I protest at the abuse he heaped upon your absent head. For I know how wickedly and unscrupulously you acted in the felony of my love, and there was a certain humorous satisfaction in hearing father give a "philosophic proposition" to your criminality. My only prayer was that he might not ask me if I loved you. Philip, I would rather live on bread and water a week than confess it to any living man besides yourself. But father has dwelt too long outside the realm of romance to ask that very natural question. Finally I protested feebly: "But how can it vitally affect a woman's happiness whether or not her husband accepts the doctrine of repentance just as you do? Can he not love and cherish his wife even if he does question the veracity of Jonah's whaling experience?" But when I looked up and saw his face, I was ashamed, and ran and kissed him, and straightened his glasses so that he could see me with both eyes. But, dear Heart, his eyes were too full of tears to fire upon me. And as I sat there upon the arm of his chair, twisting his sacred beard, this is what he told me. When my mother died, he said, and left me a little puckered pink mite in his arms, he had solemnly dedicated me to God. And he declared, moreover, that he could not be faithless to his vow by giving me in marriage to an infidel. Being an infidel, Philip, is much worse than being a plain heathen; an infidel is a heathen raised to the sixteenth power of iniquity! Now I rarely quote Scripture, for I have too much guile in me to justify the liberty, but I could not refrain from mentioning Abraham's dilemma, it seemed so appropriate to the occasion,—how when he was about to offer up Isaac, he saw a little he-goat suggestively nearby fastened among the thorns; and I suggested that instead of sacrificing me he should take the widow Smith's little Johnnie, who shows even at this early Sabbath-school age a pharisaical aptitude for piety. I pointed out that in the sight of heaven one soul is as worthy, as acceptable, as another. Besides, did not Isaac become a righteous man, even if he was not offered up and did live in this world of temptations an unconscionably long time? But father was not to be reasoned with or comforted. And yesterday, Sunday, he preached impressively from the text, "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? "Of course you are the heathen, Philip, and of course I am the "vain thing." But that is not father's idea. The vain thing you imagine is that he will give his consent to our marriage! Well, you may settle it between you! All I know is that now I am predestined, but not in the dedicated deaconess direction!

JESSICA, THE BRAVE.

P.S.—What do you think, our little forest is for sale. And oh, Philip, if some vandal buys my dear trees and cuts them down, my very life will die of grief! They are my brothers. And if a man built a house there and asked me to marry him, I would, if he were as ugly as old Jeremiah! (I suppose all the prophets were like this, their writings produce that impression!) And my father would consent, even if the bridegroom were a heathen instead of a prophet. For he would be obliged to attend religious services at Morningtown, and father does not believe any man can long remain under the drippings of his sanctuary without being forgiven. And I do not either. God would have mercy upon him somehow!



XXXIII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Your letter, dearest Jessica, and your father's came by the same post, and the sensation they gave me was as if some moral confusion had befallen the elements and summer were mingled with winter in the same sky. Not that his letter was anything but kind and dignified, but it seemed to remove you and your life so far away from me. I confess I had some fears that he might insist on the little we have seen or, as the world judges, know of each other; it had not occurred to me that my "infidelity" would block my path to happiness—so little do the people I commonly meet reck of that matter. I have been accusing the world all along of indifference to the spirit and to theology, and now, by a sort of poetical irony, I am blocked in my progress toward happiness by meeting one who adheres to an old-world belief in these things. The burden of his reply was in these words: "I cannot conceive that my daughter should give her heart to a man who was not strong in the faith in which she has herself been nurtured. I would gladly be otherwise convinced, but from all I can learn you are of those who trust rather in the pride of intellect than in the humility of Christian faith. "Why, my fair Jesuit, have you concealed your love as well as this! I think no one could live in the same house with me without hearing the bird that sings in my breast. You must tell your father the whole truth.

Meanwhile I will write to him as best I can, but the real debate I must leave until I come to Morningtown. And how shall I persuade him that I have faith or that my faith is in any way an equivalent for his belief in the Christian dogma? Will he listen to me if I say that a man may believe the whole catechism and yet have no faith? Mankind, as I regard them, are divided into two pretty distinct classes: those to whom the visible world is real and the invisible world unreal or at best a shadow of the visible, and those to whom this visible realm with all its life is mere illusion whereas the spirit alone is the eternal reality. Faith is just this perception of the illusion enwrapping all these phenomena that to those without faith seem so real; faith is the voluntary turning away of the spirit from this illusion toward the infinite reality. It is because I find among the men of to-day no perception of this illusion that I deny the existence of faith in the world. It is because men have utterly lost the sense of this illusion that religion has descended into this Simony of the humanitarians. How shall I tell your father this? I think we should do better to discuss household economy than religion.

Just now I am forcibly detained in New York by a number of petty duties, but in a few days I shall set forth on my second pilgrimage to Morningtown. Shall I have any wit to persuade your father that my "infidelity" is not the unpardonable sin, or that my love for you is sufficient to cover even that sin and a host of others? And how will Jessica meet me? She will not look now, I trust, for that cloven hoof which I never had and those ass's ears which, alas! I did flourish so portentously. Why, Jessica, according to your own words you will have a strange double lover to greet, and I think it would be mathematically correct if you gave two kisses in return for every one. It will be a new rendering of Catullus's Da Basia.

And so your little forest is for sale. Could I buy that faerie land, sweetheart, and build therein a hidden house and over its threshold carry a sweet bride! Ah, you have rewritten the sacred story of Eden. Not for the love of woman should I be driven from the happy garden, but brought by woman's grace from the desert into the circle of perfect Paradise. Together we should hearken to the singing of birds; together, we should bend over the bruised flowers and look up into the green majesty of the trees; and sometimes, it might be, as we walked together hand in hand in the cool of the evening,—sometimes, it might be, we should hear the voice of our own happiness speaking to us from the shadows and deem that it was God. May angels and ministers of grace enfold you in their mercy for this dream of rapture you have given me! It shall feed my imagination in dreams until I come to you and learn in your arms the more "sober certainty of waking bliss."

Yet, withal, would you be willing to forego your "brothers," as you call the trees, and this vision of hidden peace? Would it pain you to leave them and come with me into this great solitude of people which we call New York? How in that idyllic retreat should I keep my heart and mind on the stern purpose I have set before me? There, indeed, the world and all the concerns of mankind would sink so far from my care, would fade into the mist of such utter illusion, that I know not how I could write with seriousness about them. I need not the happiness of love's isolation, but the rude contact of affairs, yet with love's encouragement, to hold me within practical ideas. So it seems to me now, but I would not mar the beauty of your life. Of this and many more things we will talk together when I come.

I have given up my old comfortable quarters in the——and have taken a couple of cheap rooms here at——. For some months I shall not be writing for money and I wished not to eat unnecessarily into my small savings. One room is a mere closet where I sleep, the other is pretty large, but still crowded immoderately with my books. I am hard at work on a book I have had in mind for several years,—the history and significance of humanitarianism. I need not tell you what the gist of that magnum opus is to be, and, dear sceptic, trust me it will be put into such a form as to stir up a pother whether with or without ultimate results. I have learned enough from the despised trade of journalism to manage that. When I return from Morningtown I shall give myself up utterly to composition. Two or three months ought to suffice for the work, for the material is already well in hand; and at the end of that time my pen shall turn to making money again. I have no anxiety about gaining a modest income—and can you imagine what that means to you and me?

I had thought to send our goblin boy into the country as you bade me, but for a while I am keeping him here. He sleeps in a cot beside me, and in the day, when not at school or crouching in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone, he sits in a great chair by the window. Often when I look up from my book his eyes are fixed on me with a kind of mute appealing wonder. Somehow I could not let him go. He seems a link between us in our separation; and while my thoughts are set upon rebuking the errors of humanitarianism it will be well to have this object of human pity before my eyes.

I wonder if you comprehend what a strange wistful letter you have written. You are no longer merely the maid I knew, and my ways of thought excite in you a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment—so you say. Once more, dear girl, we will talk of all this when I come. Until that happy day, wait, and fortify your love with trust.



XXXIV

JESSICA TO PHILIP

I have a number of terms, my Philip, with which I might begin this letter, but I have not yet the courage to call you by such dear names beyond the whispering gallery of my own heart.

And you wonder how I have concealed my romantic deflections from father. Indeed, I am sure he has noticed a heavenly-mindedness in me for some time past; but out of the sanctity of his own heart he probably attributed this improvement to the chastening effects of a particularly gloomy course of religious reading that he has insisted upon my undertaking this winter. And, after all, father is not so far wrong as to my spiritual state, for when love becomes a woman's vocation, she carries blessings in her eyes and all her moods tiptoe reverently like young novices who follow one another down a cathedral aisle. This life of the heart becomes her piety, I think, and the highest form of religion of which she is capable. Jessica begins to magnify herself, you see! A kingdom of heaven has been set up within me, dear creator, and naturally I feel this extension of my boundaries.

But do not expect me to tell father "the whole truth,"—how you first fascinated me with editorial magnanimity, then baited me with compliments, and later with deepest confidences, and finally slipped into my Arcadia disguised as a philosopher, but, when you had got entire possession, declared yourself a victorious lover! I wonder that you can contemplate the record you have made in this matter without blushing!

As for your "infidelity," and what you call your "faith," I think father will denounce them both as blasphemous. Religion to father is something more than "the poetry he believes in." It has the definition of experience, miracles, and a whole body of spiritual phenomena quite as real to him as your upper-chamber existence is to you. Only father has this advantage of you, he has a real Divinity, with all the necessary attributes of a man's God. His "voice of happiness" speaks to him from the stars, and he does not call it an echo, as you do, of a fair voice within your own heart. Father gets his salvation from the outside of his warring elements; you speak to your own seas, "Peace be still!" As for me, between you, I stand winking at Heaven; and I say: "It is evident that neither of them understands this mystery of life; I will not try to comprehend. I will be good when I can, and diplomatic when I must, and leave the rest to heaven and earth and nature." Meanwhile, I advise you not to quote your pagan authorities to father. If the very worst comes, you may say that you have almost scriptural proof of my affections,—and mind you say affections, father could not bear the romantic inflection of such a term as love. It sounds too secular, carnal, to him.

You ask me if I will consent to abandon such a life as our forest offers and come with you into "this great solitude of people" which you call New York. Philip, when a man holds a starling in his hand he does not ask the bird whether it will stay here or wing yonder, but he carries it with him where he will; and the starling sings, no less in one place than in another, because its nature is to sing. But, I think, dear Master, the motive which prompts the song in the cage is not the same as the impulse to sing in the forest. So it is with me. If we live here among the trees, where their green waves make a summer sea high in the heavens above our heads, I could be as content as any bird is. But if you make our home in the city, or in the midst of a desert for that matter, I could not withhold one thought from your happiness, for love has transformed me, adapted life itself to a new purpose. I have been "called," and I have no will to resist, because my heart tells me there is goodness in the purpose, a little necklace of womanly virtues for me. When I think of pain, and sorrow, my eyes are holden, I can see only the fair form of love sanctified, and I can hear only your voice calling me to fulfil a destiny which you yourself do not understand. And as all these things approach, beloved, father's God is more to me than your fine illusion. I wish for guardian angels, I feel the need of a Virgin Mary and of all the lady mothers in heaven to bless me.

But I have been telling you only of my inner life. Outwardly I shall ever be capable of the most heathen manifestations. For instance, loving as I do, how do you account for this personal animosity I feel toward you, almost a madness of fear at the thought of your approaching visit? There is something that has never been finished in this affair of our hearts. Perhaps it is that really you have never kissed me. Well, I find it as easy to write of kisses as to review a sentimental romance, but actually there is some instinct in me stronger than mind against the fact, do you understand? Philip, you have no idea of the depths of feminine treachery! Did I ever intimate a willingness to do such a thing? I do not say that I wish to kiss another, but I affirm that it would be easier for me to kiss my father's presiding elder—and heaven knows he is a didactic monster of head and whiskers! It is not that I do not love you, but that I do!

Do you know what will happen when you come to Morningtown? I will meet you at the station, not as Jessica, but as the demure little home-made daughter of the Methodist minister here; we will greet each other with blighting formality, for there will be the station-master's wife to observe us; we will walk home along the main street, and we will speak of the most trivial or useful subjects, of the weather in New York, and of Jack more particularly. Out of sheer bravado I will scan your face now and then, but my eyes will not rest there long enough to fall before yours discomfited. When we reach the house father will greet you from his Sinai elevation, with pretty much the same holy-man courtesy Moses would have showed if a heathen Canaanite had appeared to him. And while you two are exchanging platitudes, I will escape into this room of mine, take one glance at my mirror, and then cover my face with my hands for joy and shame while the red waves of love mount as high as they will over it. Ah, Philip, I shall be so glad to see you, and so afraid! But you shall have small satisfaction in either fact, for I do not aim to make it easy for you to win what is already yours in my heart.

P.S.—So you are keeping Jack mured up with you and your magnum opus. No wonder he "crouches in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone." He prefers it to your company. You once told me that you found humanitarians difficult to live with: I wonder what Jack thinks of mystical philosophers in the domestic relation. It almost brings tears to my eyes. And some day in a similar situation I may be driven to seek the cold curbstone for companionship.



XXXV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

It seems to me as I read your letters, my sweet wife to be, that I am only beginning to learn the richness of my fortune. And will you not, when you write to me next time—will you not call me by one of those dear names that you speak in the whispering gallery of your heart? I shall barely receive more than one letter from you now before I come to see you in person and tell over with you face to face the story of our love. Just a few more days and I shall be free.

But for the present I want to talk to you about Jack. Indeed, I feel a little sore on this point. It was you who proposed our adopting him, yet, after your first words of advice, you have left me to work out the situation quite unaided; and now I can see that you are laughing at me. Poor Jack, he was something like a "philosophical proposition" which I had never very thoroughly analysed. One thing, however, begins to grow perfectly clear: my home is no place for him; he is only a shadow in my life and needs to take on substance. Well, I thought at last I had solved the problem—or at least that O'Meara had solved it for me; but here too I was disappointed. Really, you must help me out of this muddle.

Do you remember the note-book of O'Meara's that I told you about? Ever since his death I have been too busy really to look through the volume; but day before yesterday it occurred to me that I might find some information there about Jack's parentage, and with that end in view I spent most of the day deciphering the smeared pages. At first I found everything in the notes except what I wanted, but toward the end of the book I discovered a whole group of memoranda and reflections in which the name Tarrytown occurred again and again. I will read you the notes when I come; without giving many events they tell in a disjointed way a little idyllic episode in the story of his life. He, too, knew love, and was loved. There in that village by the Hudson for a few short months he kept the enemy at bay and was happy. And then, too soon, came the fatal story—the only dated note in the book, I believe:

September 3d: A son was born and she has left me to care for him alone. I had thought that happiness might endure, and this too was illusion. I stand by the tomb and read the graven words: Et ego in Arcadia fui.

And so, yesterday, on a venture I took our little goblin boy with me to Tarrytown, and after some inquiry found that his mother's relations were farm people living on the outskirts of the town. They proved to have been poor but respectable people. At present only the grandfather is living alone in the house, and he is very feeble. He was willing to assume the care of Jack, but I cannot persuade myself to leave the child in those trembling hands. Indeed, when it comes to the issue, I cannot quite decide to let him go entirely from me, for is he not one of the ties that bind me to you? I have brought him back with me to New York—which will only increase your merriment at my expense.

Some day when you have come to live in New York—if this is to be our home—we will go together up the river to Tarrytown, and you shall see the land where O'Meara dreamed his dream of happiness and where your adopted child was born.

And when we go there, I will take you to a bowered nook overhanging the river, where I passed the afternoon reading and thinking of many things. There together we will sit in the shadow of the trees and talk and plan together how our happiness, at least, shall be made to endure; and you shall teach me to lose this haunting sense of illusion in the great reality of love. And as the evening descends and twilight steals upon the ever-flowing water, I will take you in my arms a moment, and this shall be my vow: God do so to me and more also, if any darkness falls from my life upon yours, until our evening, too, has come and the light of this world passes quietly into the dream that lies beyond.

All this I thought yesterday while I sat alone and read once more the sad record of O'Meara's ruin. He did not stay long in Tarrytown, it seems, after his loss, but came back to New York, bringing Jack with him, in the hope that this care might keep him from the old disgrace. Alas, and alas, you know the end! Sometimes apparently the vision of those peaceful days returned to him with piercing sweetness. Above all he associated them—so one may surmise from a number of memoranda—with a new meaning he began to discover in his beloved Virgil. For, somehow, the story of the AEneid became a symbol to him of the illusion of life. Especially the last bewildered, shadowy fight of Turnus, driven by some inner frenzy to his destruction, grew to be the tragedy of his own fall. Many verses from those books he quotes with comments only too clear. And is there not a touch of strange pathos in this memory of his summer joy?—

There the meaning of the Georgics was opened to me as it never was before. The stately lines of precept and the sunny pictures of the loetas segetes seemed to connect themselves with the smiling scenes about us. The little village lay among broad farm-checkered hills, and the garden behind my house stretched back to the brow of a deep slope. In the cool shadows of the beech trees that edged this hill I used to lie and read through the long summer mornings; and often I would look up from the page, disturbed by the hoarse cawing of the crows as they flew up from the woods or fields nearby and flapped heavily across the valley. The effect of their flight was simple, but laid hold on the imagination in a peculiar manner. As they flew in a horizontal line the sloping hillside appeared to drop away beneath them like the subsiding of a great wave. It was just the touch needed to add a sense of mystic instability to the earth and to subtilise the prosaic farmland into the realm of illusion. Looking at the fields in this glorified light I first understood the language of the poet:

Flumina amem silvasque inglorius,

and his pathetic envy of those

Too happy husbandmen, if but they knew The wonders of their state!

And when wearied of this wider scene I turned to the garden itself, still I was in Virgil's haunted world. Some distance from the house was a group of apple trees, under whose protecting branches stood a row of beehives; and nearby, in a tiny rustic arbor, I could sit through many a golden hour and read, while the hum of bees returning home with their burden of honey sounded in my ears. It was there I learned to enjoy the levium spectacula rerum, as he calls the story of his airy tribes; and there in that great quiet of nature,—so wide and solemn that it seemed a reproach against the noisy activities of men,—I learned what the poet meant to signify in those famous lines with which he closes his account of the warring bees:

These mighty battles, all this tumult of the breast, With but a little scattered earth are brought to rest.

In this way Jack's father learned the illusion of life by looking back on his happy days. I did not mean to fill my letter with this long extract from his note-book, nor would I end with such ill-omened words. Dear girl, I too have learned the deception of life in other ways. Teach me, when I come to you, the great reality. In all O'Meara's memoranda after his return to New York I could find only a single direct allusion to the woman he loved. It was very brief: "On this day two years ago she said I made her happy!"

Shall I bring happiness to you when I come?



A CODICIL TO LETTER XXXIV

JESSICA TO PHILIP. WRITTEN BEFORE THE RECEIPT OF THE PRECEDING LETTER FROM PHILIP

Think of this,—I love you, but I do not know you. I only know your heart, your mind, that part of you which meets me in spirit like the light from some distant star that slips across my window sill at evening. But you, oh! Philip, I do not know you. You are a stranger whom I have seen only twice in my life. Do not be angry, my beloved, I do love you; but cannot you understand that I must get used to the idea of your being some one very real? These are thoughts forced upon me by your approaching visit, and so I ask a favour: Do not tell me when to expect you. If you threaten me with the identical day of your coming, I will vanish from the face of the earth! But if you come upon me unawares, I shall have been spared that consciousness of confession face to face involved by a deliberate welcome. And if you come thus, I shall not have time to retire behind my instinctive defence against you. You see that I plan in your favour, that I wish to be unrestrainedly glad when you come.