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MARJORIE DAW by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
I.
DR. DILLON TO EDWARD DELANEY, ESQ., AT THE PINES. NEAR RYE, N.H.
August 8, 1872. My Dear Sir: I am happy to assure you that
your anxiety is without reason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four
weeks, and will have to be careful at first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this kind
is always a tedious affair. Fortunately the bone was very skilfully set by the surgeon
who chanced to be in the drugstore where Flemming was brought after his fall, and I apprehend
no permanent inconvenience from the accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well physically;
but I must confess that the irritable and morbid state of mind into which he has fallen
causes me a great deal of uneasiness. He is the last man in the world who ought to break
his leg. You know how impetuous our friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness
and energy, never content unless he is rushing at some object, like a sportive bull at a
red shawl; but amiable withal. He is no longer amiable. His temper has become something frightful.
Miss *** Flemming came up from Newport, where the family are staying for the summer,
to nurse him; but he packed her off the next morning in tears. He has a complete set of
Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, piled up near his sofa, to throw at Watkins whenever
that exemplary serving-man appears with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently brought
Flemming a small basket of lemons. You know it was a strip of lemon-peel on the curbstone
that caused our friend's mischance. Well, he no sooner set is eyes upon those lemons
than he fell into such a rage as I cannot adequately describe. This is only one of moods,
and the least distressing. At other times he sits with bowed head regarding his splintered
limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When this fit is on him—and it sometimes lasts all
day—nothing can distract his melancholy. He refuses to eat, does not even read the
newspapers; books, except as projectiles for Watkins, have no charms for him. His state
is truly pitiable. Now, if he were a poor man, with a family
depending on his daily labor, this irritability and despondency would be natural enough. But
in a young fellow of twenty-four, with plenty of money and seemingly not a care in the world,
the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give way to his vagaries in this manner, he
will end by bringing on an inflammation of the fibula. It was the fibula he broke. I
am at my wits' end to know what to prescribe for him. I have anaesthetics and lotions,
to make people sleep and to soothe pain; but I've no medicine that will make a man have
a little common-sense. That is beyond my skill, but maybe it is not beyond yours. You are
Flemming's intimate friend, his fidus Achates. Write to him, write to him frequently, distract
his mind, cheer him up, and prevent him from becoming a confirmed case of melancholia.
Perhaps he has some important plans disarranged by his present confinement. If he has you
will know, and will know how to advise him judiciously. I trust your father finds the
change beneficial? I am, my dear sir, with great respect, etc.
II.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING, WEST 38TH STREET, NEW YORK.
August 9, 1872. My Dear Jack: I had a line from Dillon this
morning, and was rejoiced to learn that your hurt is not so bad as reported. Like a certain
personage, you are not so black and blue as you are painted. Dillon will put you on your
pins again in two to three weeks, if you will only have patience and follow his counsels.
Did you get my note of last Wednesday? I was greatly troubled when I heard of the accident.
I can imagine how tranquil and saintly you are with your leg in a trough! It is deuced
awkward, to be sure, just as we had promised ourselves a glorious month together at the
sea-side; but we must make the best of it. It is unfortunate, too, that my father's health
renders it impossible for me to leave him. I think he has much improved; the sea air
is his native element; but he still needs my arm to lean upon in his walks, and requires
some one more careful that a servant to look after him. I cannot come to you, dear Jack,
but I have hours of unemployed time on hand, and I will write you a whole post-office full
of letters, if that will divert you. Heaven knows, I haven't anything to write about.
It isn't as if we were living at one of the beach houses; then I could do you some character
studies, and fill your imagination with groups of sea-goddesses, with their (or somebody
else's) raven and blonde manes hanging down their shoulders. You should have Aphrodite
in morning wrapper, in evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing suit. But we are
far from all that here. We have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road, two miles from
the hotels, and lead the quietest of lives. I wish I were a novelist. This old house,
with its sanded floors and high wainscots, and its narrow windows looking out upon a
cluster of pines that turn themselves into aeolian harps every time the wind blows, would
be the place in which to write a summer romance. It should be a story with the odors of the
forest and the breath of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one of that Russian
fellow's—what's his name?—Tourguenieff, Turguenef, Turgenif, Toorguniff, Turgenjew—nobody
knows how to spell him. Yet I wonder if even a Liza or an Alexandra Paulovna could stir
the heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder if one of our own Yankee
girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort to you in your present
deplorable condition. If I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf House and catch one
for you; or, better still, I would find you one over the way.
Picture to yourself a large white house just across the road, nearly opposite our cottage.
It is not a house, but a mansion, built, perhaps, in the colonial period, with rambling extensions,
and gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides—a self-possessed, high-bred piece
of architecture, with its nose in the air. It stands back from the road, and has an obsequious
retinue of fringed elms and oaks and weeping willows. Sometimes in the morning, and oftener
in the afternoon, when the sun has withdrawn from that part of the mansions, a young woman
appears on the piazza with some mysterious Penelope web of embroidery in her hand, or
a book. There is a hammock over there—of pineapple fibre, it looks from here. A hammock
is very becoming when one is eighteen, and has golden hair, and dark eyes, and an emerald-colored
illusion dress looped up after the fashion of a Dresden china shepherdess, and is chaussee
like a belle of the time of Louis Quatorze. All this splendor goes into that hammock,
and sways there like a pond-lily in the golden afternoon. The window of my bedroom looks
down on that piazza—and so do I. But enough of the nonsense, which ill becomes
a sedate young attorney taking his vacation with an invalid father. Drop me a line, dear
Jack, and tell me how you really are. State your case. Write me a long, quite letter.
If you are violent or abusive, I'll take the law to you.
III.
JOHN FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY.
August 11, 1872. Your letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy
what a fix I am in—I, who never had a day's sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs
three tons. It is embalmed in spices and smothered in layers of fine linen, like a mummy. I can't
move. I haven't moved for five thousand years. I'm of the time of Pharaoh.
I lie from morning till night on a lounge, staring into the hot street. Everybody is
out of town enjoying himself. The brown-stone-front houses across the street resemble a row of
particularly ugly coffins set up on end. A green mould is settling on the names of the
deceased, carved on the silver door-plates. Sardonic spiders have sewed up the key-holes.
All is silence and dust and desolation.—I interrupt this a moment, to take a shy at
Watkins with the second volume of Cesar Birotteau. Missed him! I think I could bring him down
with a copy of Sainte-Beuve or the Dictionnaire Universel, if I had it. These small Balzac
books somehow do not quite fit my hand; but I shall fetch him yet. I've an idea that Watkins
is tapping the old gentleman's Chateau Yquem. Duplicate key of the wine-cellar. Hibernian
swarries in the front basement. Young Cheops up stairs, snug in his cerements. Watkins
glides into my chamber, with that colorless, hypocritical face of his drawn out long like
an accordion; but I know he grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I have broken
my leg. Was not my evil star in the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend that dinner
at Delmonico's? I didn't come up altogether for that. It was partly to buy Frank Livingstone's
roan mare Margot. And now I shall not be able to sit in the saddle these two months. I'll
send the mare down to you at The Pines—is that the name of the place?
Old Dillon fancies that I have something on my mind. He drives me wild with lemons. Lemons
for a mind diseased! Nonsense. I am only as restless as the devil under this confinement—a
thing I'm not used to. Take a man who has never had so much as a headache or a toothache
in his life, strap one of his legs in a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in the
city for weeks, with the hot weather turned on, and then expect him to smile and purr
and be happy! It is preposterous. I can't be cheerful or calm.
Your letter is the first consoling thing I have had since my disaster, ten days ago.
It really cheered me up for half an hour. Send me a screed, Ned, as often as you can,
if you love me. Anything will do. Write me more about that little girl in the hammock.
That was very pretty, all that about the Dresden china shepherdess and the pond-lily; the imagery
a little mixed, perhaps, but very pretty. I didn't suppose you had so much sentimental
furniture in your upper story. It shows how one may be familiar for years with the reception-room
of his neighbor, and never suspect what is directly under his mansard. I supposed your
loft stuffed with dry legal parchments, mortgages, and affidavits; you take down a package of
manuscript, and lo! there are lyrics and sonnets and canzonettas. You really have a graphic
descriptive touch, Edward Delaney, and I suspect you of anonymous love-tales in the magazines.
I shall be a bear until I hear from you again. Tell me all about your pretty inconnue across
the road. What is her name? Who is she? Who's her father? Where's her mother? Who's her
lover? You cannot imagine how this will occupy me. The more trifling, the better. My imprisonment
has weakened me intellectually to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts quite considerable.
I am passing into my second childhood. In a week or two I shall take to India rubber
rings and prongs of coral. A silver cup, with an appropriate inscription, would be a delicate
attention on your part. In the mean time, write!
IV.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 12, 1872. The sick pasha shall be amused. Bismillah!
he wills it so. If the story-teller becomes prolix and tedious—the bow-string and the
sack, and two Nubians to drop him into the Piscataqua! But truly, Jack, I have a hard
task. There is literally nothing here—except the little girl over the way. She is swinging
in the hammock at this moment. It is to me compensation for many of the ills of life
to see her now and then put out a small kid boot, which fits like a glove, and set herself
going. Who is she, and what is her name? Her name is Daw. Only daughter if Mr. Richard
W. Daw, ex-colonel and banker. Mother dead. One brother at Harvard, elder brother killed
at the battle of Fair Oaks, ten years ago. Old, rich family, the Daws. This is the homestead,
where father and daughter pass eight months of the twelve; the rest of the year in Baltimore
and Washington. The New England winter too many for the old gentleman. The daughter is
called Marjorie—Marjorie Daw. Sounds odd at first, doesn't it? But after you say it
over to yourself half a dozen times, you like it. There's a pleasing quaintness to it, something
prim and violet-like. Must be a nice sort of girl to be called Marjorie Daw.
I had mine host of The Pines in the witness-box last night, and drew the foregoing testimony
from him. He has charge of Mr. Daw's vegetable-garden, and has known the family these thirty years.
Of course I shall make the acquaintance of my neighbors before many days. It will be
next to impossible for me not to meet Mr. Daw or Miss Daw in some of my walks. The young
lady has a favorite path to the sea-beach. I shall intercept her some morning, and touch
my hat to her. Then the princess will bend her fair head to me with courteous surprise
not unmixed with haughtiness. Will snub me, in fact. All this for thy sake, O Pasha of
the Snapt Axle-tree!... How oddly things fall out! Ten minutes ago I was called down to
the parlor—you know the kind of parlors in farm-houses on the coast, a sort of amphibious
parlor, with sea-shells on the mantel-piece and spruce branches in the chimney-place—where
I found my father and Mr. Daw doing the antique polite to each other. He had come to pay his
respects to his new neighbors. Mr. Daw is a tall, slim gentleman of about fifty-five,
with a florid face and snow-white mustache and side-whiskers. Looks like Mr. Dombey,
or as Mr. Dombey would have looked if he had served a few years in the British Army. Mr.
Daw was a colonel in the late war, commanding the regiment in which his son was a lieutenant.
Plucky old boy, backbone of New Hampshire granite. Before taking his leave, the colonel
delivered himself of an invitation as if he were issuing a general order. Miss Daw has
a few friends coming, at 4 p.m., to play croquet on the lawn (parade-ground) and have tea (cold
rations) on the piazza. Will we honor them with our company? (or be sent to the guard-house.)
My father declines on the plea of ill-health. My father's son bows with as much suavity
as he knows, and accepts. In my next I shall have something to tell
you. I shall have seen the little beauty face to face. I have a presentiment, Jack, that
this Daw is a rara avis! Keep up your spirits, my boy, until I write you another letter—and
send me along word how's your leg.
V.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 13, 1872. The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as
possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector of the Episcopal Church at Stillwater, and
a society swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a couple of
his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the rector was a pensive youth,
of the daffydowndilly sort; and the swell from Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed.
The women were much better, as they always are; the two Miss Kingsburys of Philadelphia,
staying at the Seashell House, two bright and engaging girls. But Marjorie Daw!
The company broke up soon after tea, and I remained to smoke a cigar with the colonel
on the piazza. It was like seeing a picture, to see Miss Marjorie hovering around the old
soldier, and doing a hundred gracious little things for him. She brought the cigars and
lighted the tapers with her own delicate fingers, in the most enchanting fashion. As we sat
there, she came and went in the summer twilight, and seemed, with her white dress and pale
gold hair, like some lovely phantom that had sprung into existence out of the smoke-wreaths.
If she had melted into air, like the statue of Galatea in the play, I should have been
more sorry than surprised. It was easy to perceive that the old colonel
worshipped her and she him. I think the relation between an elderly father and a daughter just
blooming into womanhood the most beautiful possible. There is in it a subtile sentiment
that cannot exist in the case of mother and daughter, or that of son and mother. But this
is getting into deep water. I sat with the Daws until half past ten, and
saw the moon rise on the sea. The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against
the horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice, interspersed with
marvellous silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isle of Shoals loomed up like a group
of huge bergs drifting down on us. The Polar Regions in a June thaw! It was exceedingly
fine. What did we talk about? We talked about the weather—and you! The weather has been
disagreeable for several days past—and so have you. I glided from one topic to the other
very naturally. I told my friends of your accident; how it had frustrated all our summer
plans, and what our plans were. I played quite a spirited solo on the fibula. Then I described
you; or, rather, I didn't. I spoke of your amiability, of your patience under this severe
affliction; of your touching gratitude when Dillon brings you little presents of fruit;
of your tenderness to your sister ***, whom you would not allow to stay in town to nurse
you, and how you heroically sent her back to Newport, preferring to remain alone with
Mary, the cook, and your man Watkins, to whom, by the way, you were devotedly attached. If
you had been there, Jack, you wouldn't have known yourself. I should have excelled as
a criminal lawyer, if I had not turned my attention to a different branch of jurisprudence.
Miss Marjorie asked all manner of leading questions concerning you. It did not occur
to me then, but it struck me forcibly afterwards, that she evinced a singular interest in the
conversation. When I got back to my room, I recalled how eagerly she leaned forward,
with her full, snowy throat in strong moonlight, listening to what I said. Positively, I think
I made her like you! Miss Daw is a girl whom you would like immensely,
I can tell you that. A beauty without affectation, a high and tender nature—if one can read
the soul in the face. And the old colonel is a noble character, too.
I am glad that the Daws are such pleasant people. The Pines is an isolated spot, and
my resources are few. I fear I should have found life here somewhat monotonous before
long, with no other society than that of my excellent sire. It is true, I might have made
a target of the defenceless invalid; but I haven't a taste for artillery, moi.
VI.
JOHN FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY.
August 17, 1872. For a man who hasn't a taste for artillery,
it occurs to me, my friend, you are keeping up a pretty lively fire on my inner works.
But go on. Cynicism is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman.
You may abuse me as much as you like, and I'll not complain; for I don't know what I
should do without your letters. They are curing me. I haven't hurled anything at Watkins since
last Sunday, partly because I have grown more amiable under your teaching, and partly because
Watkins captured my ammunition one night, and carried it off to the library. He is rapidly
losing the habit he had acquired of dodging whenever I rub my ear, or make any slight
motion with my right arm. He is still suggestive of the wine-cellar, however. You may break,
you may shatter Watkins, if you will, but the scent of the Roederer will hang round
him still. Ned, that Miss Daw must be a charming person.
I should certainly like her. I like her already. When you spoke in your first letter of seeing
a young girl swinging in a hammock under your chamber window, I was somehow strangely drawn
to her. I cannot account for it in the least. What you have subsequently written of Miss
Daw has strengthened the impression. You seem to be describing a woman I have known in some
previous state of existence, or dreamed of in this. Upon my word, if you were to send
me her photograph, I believe I should recognize her at a glance. Her manner, that listening
attitude, her traits of character, as you indicate them, the light hair and the dark
eyes—they are all familiar things to me. Asked a lot of questions, did she? Curious
about me? That is strange. You would laugh in your sleeve, you wretched
old cynic, if you knew how I lie awake nights, with my gas turned down to a star, thinking
of The Pines and the house across the road. How cool it must be down there! I long for
the salt smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking his cheroot on the piazza. I send
you and Miss Daw off on afternoon rambles along the beach. Sometimes I let you stroll
with her under the elms in the moonlight, for you are great friends by this time, I
take it, and see each other every day. I know your ways and your manners! Then I fall into
a truculent mood, and would like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed anything in the
shape of a lover hanging around the colonel Lares and Penates? Does that lieutenant of
the horse-marines or that young Stillwater parson visit the house much? Not that I am
pining for news of them, but any gossip of the kind would be in order. I wonder, Ned,
you don't fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to do it myself. Speaking of photographs,
couldn't you manage to slip one of her cartes-de-visite from her album—she must have an album, you
know—and send it to me? I will return it before it could be missed. That's a good fellow!
Did the mare arrive safe and sound? It will be a capital animal this autumn for Central
Park. Oh—my leg? I forgot about my leg. It's better.
VII.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMIMG.
August 20, 1872. You are correct in your surmises. I am on
the most friendly terms with our neighbors. The colonel and my father smoke their afternoon
cigar together in our sitting-room or on the piazza opposite, and I pass an hour or two
of the day or the evening with the daughter. I am more and more struck by the beauty, modesty,
and intelligence of Miss Daw. You asked me why I do not fall in love with
her. I will be frank, Jack; I have thought of that. She is young, rich, accomplished,
uniting in herself more attractions, mental and personal, than I can recall in any girl
of my acquaintance; but she lacks the something that would be necessary to inspire in me that
kind of interest. Possessing this unknown quality, a woman neither beautiful nor wealthy
nor very young could bring me to her feet. But not Miss Daw. If we were shipwrecked together
on an uninhabited island—let me suggest a tropical island, for it costs no more to
be picturesque—I would build her a bamboo hut, I would fetch her bread-fruit and cocoanuts,
I would fry yams for her, I would lure the ingenuous turtle and make her nourishing soups,
but I wouldn't make love to her—not under eighteen months. I would like to have her
for a sister, that I might shield her and counsel her, and spend half my income on old
threadlace and camel's-hair shawls. (We are off the island now.) If such were not my feeling,
there would still be an obstacle to my loving Miss Daw. A greater misfortune could scarcely
befall me than to love her. Flemming, I am about to make a revelation that will astonish
you. I may be all wrong in my premises and consequently in my conclusions; but you shall
judge. That night when I returned to my room after
the croquet party at the Daw's, and was thinking over the trivial events of the evening, I
was suddenly impressed by the air of eager attention with which Miss Daw had followed
my account of your accident. I think I mentioned this to you. Well, the next morning, as I
went to mail my letter, I overtook Miss Daw on the road to Rye, where the post-office
is, and accompanied her thither and back, an hour's walk. The conversation again turned
to you, and again I remarked that inexplicable look of interest which had lighted up her
face the previous evening. Since then, I have seen Miss Daw perhaps ten times, perhaps oftener,
and on each occasion I found that when I was not speaking of you, or your sister, or some
person or place associated with you, I was not holding her attention. She would be absent-minded,
her eyes would wander away from me to the sea, or to some distant object in the landscape;
her fingers would play with the leaves of a book in a way that convinced me she was
not listening. At these moments if I abruptly changed the theme—I did it several times
as an experiment—and dropped some remark about my friend Flemming, then the sombre
blue eyes would come back to me instantly. Now, is not this the oddest thing in the world?
No, not the oddest. The effect which you tell me was produced on you by my casual mention
of an unknown girl swinging in a hammock is certainly as strange. You can conjecture how
that passage in your letter of Friday startled me. Is it possible, than, that two people
who have never met, and who are hundreds of miles apart, can exert a magnetic influence
on each other? I have read of such psychological phenomena, but never credited them. I leave
the solution of the problem to you. As for myself, all other things being favorable,
it would be impossible for me to fall in love with a woman who listens to me only when I
am talking of my friend! I am not aware that any one is paying marked
attention to my fair neighbor. The lieutenant of the navy—he is stationed at Rivermouth—sometimes
drops in of an evening, and sometimes the rector from Stillwater; the lieutenant the
oftener. He was there last night. I should not be surprised if he had an eye to the heiress;
but he is not formidable. Mistress Daw carries a neat little spear of irony, and the honest
lieutenant seems to have a particular facility for impaling himself on the point of it. He
is not dangerous, I should say; though I have known a woman to satirize a man for years,
and marry him after all. Decidedly, the lowly rector is not dangerous; yet, again, who has
not seen Cloth of Frieze victorious in the lists where Cloth of Gold went down?
As to the photograph. There is an exquisite ivory-type of Marjorie, in passe-partout,
on the drawing room mantel-piece. It would be missed at once if taken. I would do anything
reasonable for you, Jack; but I've no burning desire to be hauled up before the local justice
of the peace, on a charge of petty larceny. P.S.—Enclosed is a spray of mignonette,
which I advise you to treat tenderly. Yes, we talked of you again last night, as usual.
It is becoming a little dreary for me.
VIII.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 22, 1872. Your letter in reply to my last has occupied
my thoughts all the morning. I do not know what to think. Do you mean to say that you
are seriously half in love with a woman whom you have never seen—with a shadow, a chimera?
for what else can Miss Daw to be you? I do not understand it at all. I understand neither
you nor her. You are a couple of ethereal beings moving in finer air than I can breathe
with my commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of sentiment is something that I admire without
comprehending. I am bewildered. I am of the earth earthy, and I find myself in the incongruous
position of having to do with mere souls, with natures so finely tempered that I run
some risk of shattering them in my awkwardness. I am as Caliban among the spirits!
Reflecting on your letter, I am not sure that it is wise in me to continue this correspondence.
But no, Jack; I do wrong to doubt the good sense that forms the basis of your character.
You are deeply interested in Miss Daw; you feel that she is a person whom you may perhaps
greatly admire when you know her: at the same time you bear in mind that the chances are
ten to five that, when you do come to know her, she will fall far short of your ideal,
and you will not care for her in the least. Look at it in this sensible light, and I will
hold back nothing from you. Yesterday afternoon my father and myself rode
over to Rivermouth with the Daws. A heavy rain in the morning had cooled the atmosphere
and laid the dust. To Rivermouth is a drive of eight miles, along a winding road lined
all the way with wild barberry bushes. I never saw anything more brilliant than these bushes,
the green of the foliage and the faint blush of the berries intensified by the rain. The
colonel drove, with my father in front, Miss Daw and I on the back seat. I resolved that
for the first five miles your name should not pass my lips. I was amused by the artful
attempts she made, at the start, to break through my reticence. Then a silence fell
upon her; and then she became suddenly gay. That keenness which I enjoyed so much when
it was exercised on the lieutenant was not so satisfactory directed against myself. Miss
Daw has great sweetness of disposition, but she can be disagreeable. She is like the young
lady in the rhyme, with the curl on her forehead, "When she is good,
She is very, very good, And when she is bad, she is horrid!"
I kept to my resolution, however; but on the return home I relented, and talked of your
mare! Miss Daw is going to try a side-saddle on Margot some morning. The animal is a trifle
too light for my weight. By the bye, I nearly forgot to say that Miss Daw sat for a picture
yesterday to a Rivermouth artist. If the negative turns out well, I am to have a copy. So our
ends will be accomplished without crime. I wish, though, I could send you the ivorytype
in the drawing-room; it is cleverly colored, and would give you an idea of her hair and
eyes, which of course the other will not. No, Jack, the spray of mignonette did not
come from me. A man of twenty-eight doesn't enclose flowers in his letters—to another
man. But don't attach too much significance to the circumstance. She gives sprays of mignonette
to the rector, sprays to the lieutenant. She has even given a rose from her *** to your
slave. It is her jocund nature to scatter flowers, like Spring.
If my letters sometimes read disjointedly, you must understand that I never finish one
at a sitting, but write at intervals, when the mood is on me.
The mood is not on me now.
IX.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 23, 1872. I have just returned from the strangest interview
with Marjorie. She has all but confessed to me her interest in you. But with what modesty
and dignity! Her words elude my pen as I attempt to put them on paper; and, indeed, it was
not so much what she said as her manner; and that I cannot reproduce. Perhaps it was of
a piece with the strangeness of this whole business, that she should tacitly acknowledge
to a third party the love she feels for a man she has never beheld! But I have lost,
through your aid, the faculty of being surprised. I accept things as people do in dreams. Now
that I am again in my room, it all appears like an illusion—the black masses of Rembrandtish
shadow under the trees, the fireflies whirling in Pyrrhic dances among the shrubbery, the
sea over there, Marjorie sitting on the hammock! It is past midnight, and I am too sleepy to
write more. Thursday Morning.
My father has suddenly taken it into his head to spend a few days at the Shoals. In the
meanwhile you will not hear from me. I see Marjorie walking in the garden with the colonel.
I wish I could speak to her alone, but shall probably not have an opportunity before we
leave.
X.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 28, 1872. You were passing into your second childhood,
were you? Your intellect was so reduced that my epistolary gifts seemed quite considerable
to you, did they? I rise superior to the sarcasm in your favor of the 11th instant, when I
notice that five days' silence on my part is sufficient to throw you into the depths
of despondency. We returned only this morning from Appledore,
that enchanted island—at four dollars per day. I find on my desk three letters from
you! Evidently there is no lingering doubt in your mind as to the pleasure I derive from
your correspondence. These letters are undated, but in what I take to be the latest are two
passages that require my consideration. You will pardon my candor, dear Flemming, but
the conviction forces itself upon me that as your leg grows stronger your head becomes
weaker. You ask my advice on a certain point. I will give it. In my opinion you could do
nothing more unwise that to address a note to Miss Daw, thanking her for the flower.
It would, I am sure, offend her delicacy beyond pardon. She knows you only through me; you
are to her an abstraction, a figure in a dream—a dream from which the faintest shock would
awaken her. Of course, if you enclose a note to me and insist on its delivery, I shall
deliver it; but I advise you not to do so. You say you are able, with the aid of a cane,
to walk about your chamber, and that you purpose to come to The Pines the instant Dillon thinks
you strong enough to stand the journey. Again I advise you not to. Do you not see that,
every hour you remain away, Marjorie's glamour deepens, and your influence over her increases?
You will ruin everything by precipitancy. Wait until you are entirely recovered; in
any case, do not come without giving me warning. I fear the effect of your abrupt advent here—under
the circumstances. Miss Daw was evidently glad to see us back
again, and gave me both hands in the frankest way. She stopped at the door a moment this
afternoon in the carriage; she had been over to Rivermouth for her pictures. Unluckily
the photographer had spilt some acid on the plate, and she was obliged to give him another
sitting. I have an intuition that something is troubling Marjorie. She had an abstracted
air not usual with her. However, it may be only my fancy.... I end this, leaving several
things unsaid, to accompany my father on one of those long walks which are now his chief
medicine—and mine!
XI.
EDWARD DELANY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 29, 1972. I write in great haste to tell you what has
taken place here since my letter of last night. I am in the utmost perplexity. Only one thing
is plain—you must not dream of coming to The Pines. Marjorie has told her father everything!
I saw her for a few minutes, an hour ago, in the garden; and, as near as I could gather
from her confused statement, the facts are these: Lieutenant Bradly—that's the naval
officer stationed at Rivermouth—has been paying court to Miss Daw for some time past,
but not so much to her liking as to that of the colonel, who it seems is an old fiend
of the young gentleman's father. Yesterday (I knew she was in some trouble when she drove
up to our gate) the colonel spoke to Marjorie of Bradly—urged his suit, I infer. Marjorie
expressed her dislike for the lieutenant with characteristic frankness, and finally confessed
to her father—well, I really do not know what she confessed. It must have been the
vaguest of confessions, and must have sufficiently puzzled the colonel. At any rate, it exasperated
him. I suppose I am implicated in the matter, and that the colonel feels bitterly towards
me. I do not see why: I have carried no messages between you and Miss Daw; I have behaved with
the greatest discretion. I can find no flaw anywhere in my proceeding. I do not see that
anybody has done anything—except the colonel himself.
It is probable, nevertheless, that the friendly relations between the two houses will be broken
off. "A plague o' both your houses," say you. I will keep you informed, as well as I can,
of what occurs over the way. We shall remain here until the second week in September. Stay
where you are, or, at all events, do not dream of joining me....Colonel Daw is sitting on
the piazza looking rather wicked. I have not seen Marjorie since I parted with her in the
garden.
XII.
EDWARD DELANEY TO THOMAS DILLON, M.D., MADISON SQUARE, NEW YORK.
August 30, 1872. My Dear Doctor: If you have any influence
over Flemming, I beg of you to exert it to prevent his coming to this place at present.
There are circumstances, which I will explain to you before long, that make it of the first
importance that he should not come into this neighborhood. His appearance here, I speak
advisedly, would be disastrous to him. In urging him to remain in New York, or to go
to some inland resort, you will be doing him and me a real service. Of course you will
not mention my name in this connection. You know me well enough, my dear doctor, to be
assured that, in begging your secret cooperation, I have reasons that will meet your entire
approval when they are made plain to you. We shall return to town on the 15th of next
month, and my first duty will be to present myself at your hospitable door and satisfy
your curiosity, if I have excited it. My father, I am glad to state, has so greatly improved
that he can no longer be regarded as an invalid. With great esteem, I am, etc., etc.
XIII.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 31, 1872. Your letter, announcing your mad determination
to come here, has just reached me. I beseech you to reflect a moment. The step would be
fatal to your interests and hers. You would furnish just cause for irritation to R. W.
D.; and, though he loves Marjorie devotedly, he is capable of going to any lengths if opposed.
You would not like, I am convinced, to be the means of causing him to treat her with
severity. That would be the result of your presence at The Pines at this juncture. I
am annoyed to be obliged to point out these things to you. We are on very delicate ground,
Jack; the situation is critical, and the slightest mistake in a move would cost us the game.
If you consider it worth the winning, be patient. Trust a little to my sagacity. Wait and see
what happens. Moreover, I understand from Dillon that you are in no condition to take
so long a journey. He thinks the air of the coast would be the worst thing possible for
you; that you ought to go inland, if anywhere. Be advised by me. Be advised by Dillon.
XIV.
TELEGRAMS. September 1, 1872.
1.—TO EDWARD DELANEY. Letter received. Dillon be hanged. I think
I ought to be on the ground. J. F. 2.—TO JOHN FLEMMING.
Stay where you are. You would only complicated matters. Do not move until you hear from me.
E. D. 3.—TO EDWARD DELANEY.
My being at The Pines could be kept secret. I must see her. J. F.
4.—TO JOHN FLEMMING. Do not think of it. It would be useless. R.
W. D. has locked M. in her room. You would not be able to effect and interview. E. D.
5.—TO EDWARD DELANEY. Locked her in her room. Good God. That settles
the question. I shall leave by the twelve-fifteen express. J. F.
XV.
THE ARRIVAL.
On the second day of September, 1872, as the down express, due at 3.40, left the station
at Hampton, a young man, leaning on the shoulder of a servant, whom he addressed as Watkins,
stepped from the platform into a hack, and requested to be driven to "The Pines." On
arriving at the gate of a modest farm-house, a few miles from the station, the young man
descended with difficulty from the carriage, and, casting a hasty glance across the road,
seemed much impressed by some peculiarity in the landscape. Again leaning on the shoulder
of the person Watkins, he walked to the door of the farm-house and inquired for Mr. Edward
Delaney. He was informed by the aged man who answered his knock, that Mr. Edward Delaney
had gone to Boston the day before, but that Mr. Jonas Delaney was within. This information
did not appear satisfactory to the stranger, who inquired if Mr. Edward Delaney had left
any message for Mr. John Flemming. There was a letter for Mr. Flemming if he were that
person. After a brief absence the aged man reappeared with a Letter.
XVI.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
September 1, 1872. I am horror-stricken at what I have done!
When I began this correspondence I had no other purpose than to relieve the tedium of
your sick-chamber. Dillon told me to cheer you up. I tried to. I thought that you entered
into the spirit of the thing. I had no idea, until within a few days, that you were taking
matters au grand serieux. What can I say? I am in sackcloth and ashes.
I am a pariah, a dog of an outcast. I tried to make a little romance to interest you,
something soothing and idyllic, and, by Jove! I have done it only too well! My father doesn't
know a word of this, so don't jar the old gentleman any more than you can help. I fly
from the wrath to come—when you arrive! For oh, dear Jack, there isn't any piazza,
there isn't any hammock—there isn't any Marjorie Daw!