Literary Love Letters and Other Stories by Robert Herrick

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Mrs. Stuart smiled again provokingly. "Yes?"

"Oh, I can't understand!" Her pleading was almost passionate, but still
low and sweet. "I want so much to go on with my lessons with the other
girls. And I want to go out here with all the girls I know."

"We will have them at Winetka. And Stuyvesant Wheelright--you liked him
last summer."

The girl colored deeply. "I don't want him in the house. I had rather go
away. I'll go to Vassar with Mary Archer. You needn't hunt up any man for
me."

"Pray, do you think I would tolerate a college woman in my house? It's
well enough for school-teachers. And what does your painting amount to?
You will paint sufficiently well, I dare say, to sell a few daubs, and so
take the bread and butter from some poor girl. But I am afraid, my dear,
we couldn't admit your pictures to the gallery."

The girl's eyes grew tearful at this tart disdain. "I love it, and papa
has money enough to let me paint 'daubs' as long as I like. Please, please
let me go on with it!"

* * * * *

That afternoon the little caravan started for the deserted summer home at
Winetka, on a high bluff above the sandy lake-shore. It had been bought
years before, when not even the richest citizens dreamed of going East for
the summer. Of late it had been used only rarely, in the autumn or late
spring, or as a retreat in which to rusticate the boys with their tutor.
When filled with a large house-party, it made a jolly place, though not
magnificent enough for the developed hospitalities of Mrs. Stuart.

Old Stuart came home to an empty palace. He had not believed that his
reserved wife would take such high measures, and he felt miserably lonely
after the usual round of elaborate dinners to which he had grown
grumblingly accustomed. His one senile passion was his pride in her, and
he was avaricious of the lost days while she was absent from her usual
victorious post as the mistress of that great house. The next day his
heart sank still lower, for he saw in the Sunday papers a little paragraph
to the effect that Mrs. Stuart had invited a brilliant house-party to her
autumn home in Winetka, and that it was rumored she and her lovely young
daughter would spend the winter in London with their relatives. It made
the old man angry, for he could see with what deliberation she had planned
for a long campaign. Even the comforts of his club were denied him;
everyone knew him and everyone smiled at the little domestic disturbance.
So he asked his secretary, young Spencer, to make his home for the present
in the sprawling, brand-new "palace" that frowned out on the South
Boulevard. Young Spencer accepted, out of pity for the old man; for he
wasn't a toady and he knew his own worth.

People did talk in the clubs and elsewhere about the divided
establishments. It would have been worse had the division come earlier, as
had been predicted often enough, or had Mrs. Stuart ever given in her
younger days a handle for any gossip. But her conduct had been so frigidly
correct that it stood in good service at this crisis. She would not have
permitted a scandal. That also was in the contract.

Of course there was communication between the two camps, the gay polo-
playing, dinner-giving household on the bluff, and the forlorn, tottering
old man with his one aide-de-camp, the blithe young secretary. Now and
then the sons would turn up at the offices down-town, amiably expectant of
large checks. Stuart grimly referred them to their mother. He had some
vague idea of starving the opposition out, but his wife's funds were large
and her credit, as long as there should be no recognized rupture, perfect.

The daughter, Edith, frequently established connections. In some way she
had got permission to take her lessons at the Art Institute. Her mother's
open contempt for her aesthetic impulses had ruined her illusion about her
ability, for Mrs. Stuart knew her ground in painting. But she still loved
the atmosphere of the great studio-room at the Art Institute. She liked
the poor girls and the Western bohemianism and the queer dresses, and
above all she liked to linger over her own little easel, undisturbed by
the creative flurry around, dreaming of woods and soft English gardens and
happy hours along a river where the water went gently, tenderly, on to the
sea. And her sweet eyes, large and black like her mother's, but softer and
gentler, to go with her low voice, would moisten a bit from the dream. "So
nice," he would murmur to her picture, "to sit here and think of the quiet
and rest, such as good pictures always paint. I'd like not to go back with
Thomas to the train--to Winetka where they play polo and dress up and
dance and flirt, but to sail away over the sea----"

Then her eyes would see in the purplish light of her picture a certain
face that meant another life. She would blush to herself, and her voice
would stop. For she couldn't think aloud about him.

Some days, when the murky twilight came on early, she would steal away
altogether from the gay party in Winetka and spend the night with her
lonely father. They would have a queer, stately dinner for three served in
the grand dining-room by the English butler and footman. Stuart never had
much to say to her; she wasn't his "smart," queenly wife who brought all
people to her feet. When he came to his cigar and his whiskey, she would
take young Spencer to the gallery, where they discussed the new French
pictures, very knowingly, Spencer thought. She would describe for him the
intricacies of a color-scheme of some tender Diaz, and that would lead
them into the leafy woods about Barbizon and other realms of sentiment.

When they returned to the library she would feel that there were
compensations for this dreary separation at Winetka and that her enormous
home had never been so nice and comfortable before. As she bade the two
men good-night, her father would come to the door, rubbing his eyes and
forlorn over his great loss, and to her murmured "Good-night" he would
sigh, "so like her mother." "Quite the softest voice in the world,"
thought Spencer.

Once in her old little tower room that she still preferred to keep,
covered with her various attempts at sea, and sky, and forest, she was
blissfully conscious of independence, so far from Stuyvesant Wheelright
and his mother--quite an ugly old dame with no better manners than the
plain Chicago people (who despised them all as "pork-packers" and "shop-
keepers," nevertheless).

On one of these visits late in October, Edith had found her father ailing
from a cold. He asked her, shamefacedly, to tell her mother that "he was
very bad." Mrs. Stuart, leaving the house-party in full go, started at
once for the town-house. Old Stuart had purposely stayed at home on the
chances that his wife would relent. When she came in, she found him lying
in the same morning-room, where hostilities had begun three months before.
He grew confused, like an erring school-boy, as his wife kissed him and
asked after his health in a neutral sort of way. He made out that he was
threatened with a complication of diseases that might finally end him.

"Well, what can I do for you now," Mrs. Stuart said, with business-like
directness.

"Spencer's looking after things pretty much. He's honest and faithful, but
he ain't got any head like yours, Beatty, and times are awful hard. People
won't pay rents, and I don't dare to throw 'em out. Stores and houses
would lie empty these days. Then there's the North Shore Electric--I was a
fool to go in so heavy the Fair year and tie up all my money. I s'pose you
know the bonds ain't reached fifty this fall. I'm not so tremendously
wealthy as folks think."

Mrs. Stuart exactly comprehended this sly speech; she knew also that there
was some truth in it.

"Say, Beatty, it's so nice to have you here!" The old man raised himself
and capered about like a gouty old house-dog.

He made the most of his illness, for he suspected that it was a condition
of truce, not a bond of peace. While he was in bed Mrs. Stuart drove to
the city each day and, with Spencer's help, conducted business for long
hours. She had had experience in managing large charities; she knew
people, and when a tenant could pay, with a little effort, he found Madam
more pitiless than the old shop-keeper. Every afternoon she would take her
stenographer to Stuart's room and consult with him.

"Ain't she a wonder?" the old man would exclaim to Spencer, in new
admiration for his wife. And Spencer, watching the stately, authoritative
woman day after day as she worked quickly, exactly, with the repose and
dignity of a perfect machine, shivered back an unwilling assent.

"She's marvellous!"

All accidents played into the hands of this masterful woman. Her own
presence in town kept her daughter at Winetka _en evidence_ for Stuyvesant
Wheelright and Mrs. Wheelright. For Mrs. Stuart had determined upon him
as, on the whole, the most likely arrangement that she could make. He was
American, but of the best, and Mrs. Stuart was wise enough to prefer the
domestic aristocracy. So to her mind affairs were not going badly. The
truce would conclude ultimately in a senile capitulation; meantime, she
could advance money for the household in London.

When Stuart had been nursed back into comparative activity, the grand
dinners began once more--a convenient rebuttal for all gossip. The usual
lists of distinguished strangers, wandering English story-tellers in
search of material for a new "shilling shocker," artists suing to paint
her or "Mademoiselle l'Inconnue," crept from time to time into the genial
social column of the newspaper.

Stuart spent the evenings in state on a couch at the head of the drawing-
room, where he usually remained until the guests departed. In this way he
got a few words with his wife before she sent him to bed. One night his
enthusiasm over her bubbled out.

"You're a great woman, Beatty!" She looked a little pale, but otherwise
unworn by her laborious month. It was not blood that fed those even
pulses.

"You will not need my help now. You can see to your business yourself,"
she remarked.

"Say, Beatty, you won't leave me again, will you!" he quavered,
beseechingly. "I need you these last years; 'twon't be for long."

"Oh, you are strong and quite well again," she asserted, not unkindly.

"Will a hundred thousand do?" he pleaded. "Times are bad and ready money
is scarce, as you know."

"Sell the electric bonds," she replied, sitting down, as if to settle the
matter.

"Sell them bonds at fifty?" The old shop-keeper grew red in the face.

"What's that!" she remarked, disdainfully. "What have I given?" Her
husband said nothing. "As I told you when we first talked the matter over,
I have done my part to the exact letter of the law. You admit I have been
a good and faithful wife, don't you? You know," a note of passion crept
into her colorless voice, "You know that there hasn't been a suggestion of
scandal with our home. I married you, young, beautiful, admired; I am
handsome now." She drew herself up disdainfully. "I have not wanted for
opportunity, I think you might know; but not one man in all the world can
boast I have dropped an eyelash for his words. Not one syllable of favor
have I given any man but you. Am I not right?"

Stuart nodded.

"Then what do you haggle for over a few dollars? Have I ever given you
reason to repent our arrangement? Have I not helped you in business, in
social matters put you where you never could go by yourself? And do you
think my price is high?"

"Money is so scarce," Stuart protested, feebly.

"Suppose it left you only half a million, all told! What's that, in
comparison to what I have given? Think of that. I don't complain, but you
know we women estimate things differently. And when we sell ourselves, we
name the price; and it matters little how big it is,"

Her scorn pierced the old man's somewhat leathery sensibilities.

"Well, if it's a question of price, when is it going to end--when shall I
have paid up? Next year you'll want half a million hard cash."

"There is no end."

The next morning, Mrs. Stuart returned to Winetka; the rupture threatened
to prolong itself indefinitely. Stuart found it hard to give in
completely, and it made him sore to think that their marriage had remained
a business matter for over twenty years. And yet it was hard to face death
without all the satisfaction money could buy him. The crisis came,
however, in an unexpected manner.

One morning Stuart found his daughter waiting for him at his office. She
had slipped away from Winetka, and taken an early train.

"What's up, Ede?"

"Oh, papa!" the young girl gasped "They make me so unhappy, every day, and
I can't stand it. Mamma wants me to marry Stuyvesant Wheelright, and he's
there all the time."

"Who's he?" Stuart asked, sharply. His daughter explained briefly.

"He is what mamma calls 'eligible'; he is a great swell in New York, and I
don't like him. Oh, papa, I can't be a _grande dame_, like mamma, can I?
Won't you tell her so, papa? Make up with her; pay her the money she wants
for Aunt Helen, and then perhaps she'll let me paint."

"No, you're not the figure your mother is, and never will be," Stuart
said, almost slightingly. "I don't think, Ede, you'll ever make a great
lady like her."

"I don't think she is very happy," the girl bridled, in her own defence.

"Well, perhaps not, perhaps not. But who do you want to marry, anyway? You
had better marry someone, Ede, 'fore I die."

"I don't know--that is, it doesn't matter much just now. I should like to
go to California, perhaps, with the Stearns girls. I want to paint, just
daubs, you know--I can't do any better. But you tell mamma I can't be a
great swell. I shouldn't be happy, either."'

The old man resolved to yield. That very afternoon he drove out to Winetka
along the lake shore. He had himself gotten up in his stiffest best. He
held the reins high and tight, his body erect in the approved form; while
now and then he glanced back to see if the footmen were as rigid as my
lady demanded. For Mrs. Stuart loved good form, and he felt nervously
apprehensive, as if he were again suing for her maiden favors. He was
conscious, too, that he had little enough to offer her--the last months
had brought humility. Beside him young Spencer lolled, enjoying, with a
free heart, his day off in the gentle, spring-like air. Perhaps he divined
that his lady would not need so much propitiation.

They surprised a party just setting forth from the Winetka house as they
drove up with a final flourish. Their unexpected arrival scattered the
guests into little, curious groups; everyone anticipated immediate
dissolution. They speculated on the terms, and the opinion prevailed that
Stuart's expedition from town indicated complete surrender. Meanwhile
Stuart asked for an immediate audience, and husband and wife went up at
once to Mrs. Stuart's little library facing out over the bluff that
descended to the lake.

"Well, Beatty," old Stuart cried, without preliminary effort, "I just
can't live without you--that's the whole of it." She smiled. "I ain't much
longer to live, and then you're to have it all. So why shouldn't you take
what you want now?" He drew out several checks from his pocket-book.

"You can cable your folks at once and go ahead. You've been the best sort
of wife, as you said, and--I guess I owe you more'n I've paid for your
puttin' up with an old fellow like me all these years."

Mrs. Stuart had a new sensation of pity for his pathetic surrender.

"There's one thing, Beatty," he continued, "so long as I live you'll own I
oughter rule in my own house, manage the boys, and that." Mrs. Stuart
nodded. "Now I want you to come back with me and break up this party."

Mrs. Stuart took the checks.

"You've made it a bargain, Beatty. You said I was to pay your family what
you wanted, and you were to obey me at that price?"

"Well," replied Mrs. Stuart, good-humoredly. "We'll all go up to-morrow.
Isn't that early enough?"

"That ain't all, Beatty. You can't make everybody over; you couldn't brush
me up much; you can't make a grand lady out of Edith."

Mrs. Stuart looked up inquiringly.

"Now you've had your way about your family, and I want you to let Ede
alone."

"Why?"

"She doesn't want that Wheelright fellow, and if you think it over you'll
see that she couldn't do as you have. She ain't the sort."

Mrs. Stuart twitched at the checks nervously.

"I sort of think Spencer wants her; in fact, he said so coming out here."

"Impertinent puppy!"

"And I told him he could have her, if she wanted him. I don't think I
should like to see another woman of mine live the sort of life you have
with me. It's hard on 'em." His voice quivered.

Beatrice, Lady Stuart of Winetka, as they called her, stood silently
looking out to the lake, reviewing "the sort of life she had lived" from
the time she had made up her mind to take the shop-keeper's millions to
this moment of concession. It was a grim panorama, and she realized now
that it had not meant complete satisfaction to either party. Her twenty or
more frozen years made her uncomfortable. While they waited, young Spencer
and Miss Stuart came slowly up the terraced bluff.

"Well, John," Mrs. Stuart smiled kindly. "I think this is the last
payment,--in full. Let's go down to congratulate them."

CHICAGO, March, 1895.

A PROTHALAMION

_The best man has gone for a game of billiards with the host. The maid of
honor is inditing an epistle to one who must fall. The bridesmaids have
withdrawn themselves, each with some endurable usher, to an appropriate
retreat upon the other coasts of the veranda. The night is full of
starlight in May. The lovers discover themselves at last alone._

_He._ What was that flame-colored book Maud was reading to young Bishop?

_She. The Dolly Dialogues_; you remember we read them in London when they
came out.

_He._ What irreverent literature we tolerate nowadays! I suppose it's the
aftermath of agnosticism.

_She._ It didn't occur to me that it was irreligious.

_He._ Irreverent, I said--the tone of our world.

_She._ But how I love that world of ours--even the _Dolly Dialogues_!

_He_. Because you love it, this world you feel, you are reverent toward
it. I have hated it so many years; it carried so much pain with it that I
thought every expression of life was pain, and now, now, if it were not
for Maud and the _Dolly Dialogues_, these last days would seem to launch
us afresh upon quite another world.

_She_. Yes, another world, where there is a new terror, a strange, inhuman
terror that I never thought of before, the terror of death.

_He_. Why, what a perversity! You think of immortality as so real, so
sure! Relief from that terror of death is the proper fruit of your firm
belief.

_She_. But I never cared before about the shape, the form, the kind of
that other life. I was content to believe it quite different from this,
for I knew this so well, enjoyed it so much. When the jam-pot should be
empty, I did not want another one just like it. But now....

_He_. I know. And I lived so much a stranger to the experiences I could
have about me that I was indifferent to what came after. Now, what I am,
what I have, is so precious that I cannot believe in any change which
should let me know of this life as past and impossible. That would be "the
supreme grief of remembering in misery the happy days that have been."

_She._ It makes me shiver; it is so blasphemous to hate the state of being
of a spirit. That would seem to degrade love, if through love we dread to
lose our bodies.

_He._ Strange! You have come to this confession out of a trusting religion
and I from doubt--at the best indifference. You are ashamed to confess
what seems to you wholly blasphemous against that noble faith and prayer
of a Christian; and I find an invigorating pleasure in your blasphemy.
There is no conceivable life of a spirit to compare with the pain, even,
of the human body; it is better to suffer than to know no difference.

_She._ But "the resurrection of the body": perhaps the creed, word for
word without interpretation, would not mean that empty life which we
moderns have grown to consider the supreme and liberal conception of
existence.

_He._ Resurrection in a purified form fit for the bliss, whatever one of
all the many shapes men have dreamed it may vision itself in!

_She._ But this love of life, this excessive joy, must fade away. The
record of the world is not that we keep that. Think of the old people who
dream peacefully of death, after knowing all the fulness of this life.
Think of the wretches who pray for it. That vision of the life of spirits
which is so dreadful to us has been the comfort of the ages. There must be
some inner necessity for it. Perhaps with our bodies our wills become worn
out.

_He_. That, I think, is the mystery--the wearing out, which is death. For
death occurs oftener in life than we think; I know so many dead people who
are walking about. As for sick people, physicians say that in a long
illness they never have to warn a patient of the coming end. He knows it,
subtly, from some dim, underground intimation. Without acknowledging it,
he arranges himself, so to speak, for the grave, and comforts himself with
those visions that religion holds out. Or does he comfort himself?

But apart from the dying, there are so many out of whose bodies and
spirits life is ebbing. It may have been a little flood-tide, but they
know it is going. You see it on their faces. They become dull. That
leprosy of death attacks their life, joint by joint. They lay aside one
pleasure, one function, one employment of their minds after another.
The machine may run on, but the soul is dying. That is what I call _death
in life_.

THE EPISODE OF LIFE.

Jack Lynton is becoming stone like that. His is a case in point, and a
good one, because the atrophy is coming about not from physical disease,
or from any dissipation. You would call him sane and full of fire. He was.
He married three years ago. Their life was full, too, like ours, and
precious. They did not throw it away; they were wise guardians of all its
possibilities. The second summer--I was with them, and Jack has told me
much besides--Mary began talking, almost in joke, of these matters, of
what one must prepare for; of second marriages, and all that. We chatted
in as idle fashion as do most people over the utterly useless topics of
life. One exquisite September day, all steeped in the essence of
sunshine--misty everywhere over the fields--how well I remember it!--she
spoke again in jest about something that might happen after her death. I
saw a trace of pain on Jack's face. She saw it, and was sad for a moment.
Now I know that all through that late summer and autumn those two were
fighting death in innuendoes. They were not morbid people, but death went
to bed with them each night.

Of course, this apprehension, this miasma, came in slowly, like those
autumn sea-mists; appearing once a month, twice this week--a little
oftener each time.

Jack is a sensible man; he does not shy at a shadow. His nerves are
tranquil, and respond as they ought. They went about the business of life
as joyfully as you or I, and in October we were all back in town. Now,
Mary is dying; the doctor sees it now. I do not mean that he should have
known it before. _She_ knew it, and _she_ noted how the life was fading
away until the time came when what was so full of action, of feeling, of
desire, was merely a shell--impervious to sensation.

And Jack is dying, too--his health is good enough, but pain which he
cannot master is killing him into numbness. He watches each joy, each
experience with which they were both tremulous, depart. And do you suppose
it is any comfort for those two honest souls to believe that their spirits
will recognize each other in some curious state that has dispensed with
sense? Do you suppose that a million of years of a divine communion would
make up for one spoken word, for even a shade of agony that passes across
Mary's face?

_She_. If God should change their souls in that other world, then perhaps
their longings would be quite different; so that what we think of with
chill they would accept as a privilege.

_He_. In other words, those two, who have learned to know each other in
human terms, who have loved and suffered in the body, will have ended
their page? Some strange transformation into another two? Why not simply
an end to the book? Would that not be easier?

_She_. If one had the courage to accept these few years of life and ask
for no more.

_He_. I think that it is cowardice which makes one accept the ghostly
satisfaction of a surviving spirit.

WHEN THE BODY IN LIFE FEELS THE SPIRIT.

_She_. But have you never forgotten the body, dreamed what it would be to
feel God? You have known those moments when your soul, losing the sense of
contact with men or women, groped alone, in an enveloping calm, and knew
content. I have had it in times of intoxication from music--not the
personal, passionate music of to-day, but some one or two notes that sink
the mazy present into darkness. I knew that my senses were gone for the
time, and in their place I held a comfortable consciousness of power.
There have been other times--in Lent, at the close of the drama of
Christ--beside the sea--after a long dance--illusory moments when one
forgot the body and wondered.

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