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Literary Love Letters and Other Stories

R >> Robert Herrick >> Literary Love Letters and Other Stories




You see I am looking for number nine and my four horses. Then I mean to
invite you to my country house, to have a lot of "fat" girls to meet you
who will talk slang at you, and one of them shall marry you--one whose
father is a great newspaper man. And your new papa will start you in the
business of making public opinion. You will play with that, too, but,
then, you will be coining money.

No, not here in Chicago, but if you had talked to me at Sorrento as you
write me from your sanctum on the roof, I might have listened and dreamed.
The sea makes me believe and hope. I love it so! That's why I made mamma
take a house near the lake--to be near a little piece of infinity. Yes, if
you had paddled me out of the harbor at Sorrento, some fine night when the
swell was rippling in, like the groaning of a sleepy beast, and the hills
were a-hush on the shore, then we might have gone on to that place you are
so fond of, "the land east of the sun, and west of the moon."



NO. VIII. BIOGRAPHIC AND JUDICIAL.

(_Eastlake replies analytically_.)

But don't marry him until we are clear on all matters. I haven't finished
your case. And don't marry that foreign-looking cavalier you were riding
with to-day in the park. You are too American ever to be at home over
there. You would smash their fragile china, and you wouldn't understand.
England might fit you, though, for England is something like that dark
green, prairie park, with its regular, bushy trees against a Gainsborough
sky. You live deeply in the fierce open air. The English like that.
However, America must not lose you.

You it was, I am sure, who moved your family in that conventional
pilgrimage of ambitious Chicagoans--west, south, north. Neither your
father nor your mother would have stirred from sober little Grant Street
had you not felt the pressing necessity for a career. Rumor got hold of
you first on the South Side, and had it that you were experimenting with
some small contractor. The explosion which followed reached me even in
Vienna. Did you feel that you could go farther, or did you courageously
run the risk of wrecking him then instead of wrecking yourself and him
later? Oh well, he's comfortably married now, and all the pain you gave
him was probably educative. You may look at his flaunting granite house on
that broad boulevard, and think well of your courage.

Your father died. You moved northward to that modest house tucked in
lovingly under the ample shelter of the millionnaires on the Lake Shore
Drive. I fancy there has always been the gambler in your nerves; that you
have sacrificed your principle to getting a rapid return on your money.
And you have dominated your family: you sent your two brothers to Harvard,
and filled them with ambitions akin to yours. Now you are impatient
because the thin ice cracks a bit.

But I have great faith: you will mend matters by some shrewd deal with the
manipulators at Hoffmeyer's, or by marrying number nine. You will do it
honestly--I mean the marrying; for you will convince him that you love, so
far as love is in you, and you will convince yourself that marriage, the
end of it all, is unselfish, though prosaic. You will accept resignation
with an occasional sigh, feeling that you have gone far, perhaps as far as
you can go. I trust that solution will not come quickly, however, because
I cannot regard it as a brilliant ending to your evolution. For you have
kept yourself sweet and clean from fads, and mean pushing, and the vulgar
machinery of society. You never forced your way or intrigued. You have
talked and smiled and bewitched yourself straight to the point where you
now are. You were eager and curious about pleasures, and the world has
dealt liberally with you.

Were you perilously near the crisis when you wrote me? Did the reflective
tone come because you were brought at last squarely to the mark, because
you must decide what one of the possible conceptions of life you really
want? Don't think, I pray you; go straight on to the inevitable solution,
for when you become conscious you are lost.

Do you wonder that I love you, my hybrid rose; that I follow the heavy
petals as they push themselves out into their final bloom; that I gather
the aroma to comfort my heart in these lifeless pages? I follow you about
in your devious path from tea to dinner or dance, or I wait at the opera
or theatre to watch for a new light in your face, to see your world
written in a smile. You are dark, and winning, and strong. You are pagan
in your love of sensuous, full things. You are grateful to the biting air
as it touches your cheek and sends the blood leaping in glad life. You
love water and fire and wind, elemental things, and you love them with
fervor and passion. All this to the world! Much more intimate to me, who
can read the letters you scrawl for the impudent, careless world. For deep
down in the core of that rose there lies a soul that permeates it all--a
longing, restless soul, one moment revealing a heaven that the next is
shut out in dark despair.

Yes, keep the cottage by the sea for one more dream. Perchance I shall
find something stable, eternal, something better than discontent and
striving; for the sea is great and makes peace.



NO. IX. CRITICISM.

(_Miss Armstrong vindicates herself by scorning._)

You are a tissue of phrases. You feel only words. You love! What mockery
to hear you handle the worn, old words! You have secluded yourself in
careful isolation from the human world you seem to despise. You have no
right to its passions and solaces. Incarnate selfishness, dear friend, I
suspect you are. You would not permit the disturbance of a ripple in the
contemplative lake of your life such as love and marriage might bring.

Pray what right may you have to stew me in a saucepan up on your roof, and
to send me flavors of myself done up nicely into little packages labelled
deceitfully "love"? It is lucky that this time you have come across a
woman who has played the game before, and can meet you point by point. But
I am too weary to argue with a man who carries two-edged words, flattery
on one side and sneers on the reverse. Mark this one thing, nevertheless:
if I should decide to sell myself advantageously next season I should be
infinitely better than you,--for I am only a woman.

E. A.



NO. X. THE LIMITATION OF LIFE.

(_Eastlake summarizes, and intends to conclude._)

My lady, my humor of to-day makes me take up the charges in your last
letters; I will define, not defend, myself. You fall out with me because I
am a dilettante (or many words to that one effect), and you abuse me
because I deal in the form rather than the matter of love. Is that not
just to you?

In short, I am not as your other admirers, and the variation in the
species has lost the charm of novelty.

Believe me that I am honest to-day, at least; indeed, I think you will
understand. Only the college boy who feeds on Oscar Wilde and sentimental
pessimism has that disease of indifference with which you crudely charge
me. It is a kind of chicken-pox, cousin-French to the evils of literary
Paris. But I must not thank God too loudly, or you will think I am one
with them at heart.

No, I am in earnest, in terrible earnest, about all this--I mean life and
what to do with it. That is a great day when a man comes into his own, no
matter how paltry the pittance may be the gods have given him--when he
comes to know just how far he can go, and where lies his path of least
resistance. That I know. I am tremendously sure of myself now, and, like
your good business men, I go about my affairs and dispose of my life with
its few energies in a cautious, economical way.

What is all this I make so much to-do about? Very little, I confess, but
to me more serious than L's and sky-scrapers; yes, than love. Mine is an
infinite labor: first to shape the true tool, and then to master the
material! I grant you I may die any day like a rat on a housetop, with
only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one
or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall
accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have
moulded something; life will have justified itself to me, or I to life.
But that is not our problem to-day.

Why do I isolate myself? Because a few pursuits in life are great
taskmasters and jealous ones. A wise man who had felt that truth wrote
about it once. I must husband my devotions: love, except the idea of love,
is not for me; pleasure, except the idea of pleasure, is too keen for me;
energy, except the ideas energy creates, is beyond me. I am limited,
definite, alone, without you.

I confess that two passions are greater than any man, the passion for God
and the passion of a great love. They send a man hungry and naked into the
street, and make his subterfuges with existence ridiculous. How rarely
they come! How inadequate the man who is mistaken about them! We peer into
the corners of life after them, but they elude us. There are days of
splendid consciousness, and we think we have them--then----

No, it is foolish, _bête_, dear lady, to be deceived by a sentiment;
better the comfortable activities of the world. They will suit you best;
leave the other for the dream hidden in a glass of champagne.

But let me love you always. Let me fancy you, when I walk down these
gleaming boulevards in the silent evenings, as you sit flashingly lovely
by some soft lamplight, wrapped about in the cotton-wools of society. That
will reconcile me to the roar of these noonday streets. The city exists
for _you_.



NO. XI. UNSATISFIED.

(_Miss Armstrong wills to drift_.)

... Come to Sorrento....



NO. XII. THE ILLUSION.

(_Eastlake resumes some weeks later. He has put into Bar Harbor on a
yachting trip. He sits writing late at night by the light of the binnacle
lamp_.)

Sweet lady, a few hours ago we slipped in here past the dark shore of your
village, in almost dead calm, just parting the heavy waters with our prow.
It was the golden set of the summer afternoon: a thrush or two were
already whistling clear vespers in he woods; all else was fruitfully calm.

And then, in the stillness of the ebb, we floated together, you and I,
round that little lighthouse into the sheltering gloom of the woods. Then
we drifted beyond it all, in serene solution of this world's fret! To-
morrows you may keep for another.

This night was richly mine. You brought your simple self, undisturbed by
the people who expect of you, without your little airs of experience. I
brought incense, words, devotion, and love. And I treasure now a few pure
tones, some simple motions of your arm with the dripping paddle, a few
pure feelings written on your face. That is all, but it is much. We got
beyond necessity and the impertinent commonplace of Chicago. We had
ourselves, and that was enough.

And to-night, as I lie here under the cool, complete heavens, with only a
twinkling cottage light here and there in the bay to remind me of unrest,
I see life afresh in the old, simple, eternal lines. These are _our_ days
of full consciousness.

Do you remember that clearing in the woods where the long weeds and grass
were spotted with white stones--burial-place it was--their bright faces
turned ever to the sunshine and the stars? They spoke of other lives than
yours and mine. Forgotten little units in our disdainful world, we pass
them scornfully by. Other lives, and perhaps better, do you think? For
them the struggle never came which holds us in a fist of brass, and
thrashes us up and down the pavement of life. Perhaps--can you not, at one
great leap, fancy it?--two sincere souls could escape from this brass
master, and live, unmindful of strife, for a little grave on a hillside in
the end? They must be strong souls to renounce that cherished hope of
triumph, to be content with the simple, antique things, just living and
loving--the eternal and brave things; for, after all, what you and I burn
for so restlessly is a makeshift ambition. We wish to go far, "to make the
best of ourselves." Why not, once for all, rely upon God to make? Why not
live and rejoice?

And the little graves are not bad: to lie long years within sound of this
great-hearted ocean, with the peaceful, upturned stones bearing this full
legend, "This one loved and lived...." Forgive me for making you sad.
Perhaps you merely laugh at the intoxication your clear air has brought
about. Well, dearest lady, the ships are striking their eight bells for
midnight, the gayest cottages are going out, light by light, and somewhere
in the still harbor I can hear a fisherman laboriously sweeping his boat
away to the ocean. Away!--that is the word for us: I, in this boat
southward, and ever away, searching in grim fashion for an accounting with
Fate; you, in your intrepid loveliness, to other lives. And if I return
some weeks hence, when I have satisfied the importunate business claims,
what then? Shall we slip the cables and drift quietly out "to the land
east of the sun and west of the moon"?



NO. XIII. SANITY.

(_Eastlake refuses Miss Armstrong's last invitation, continues, and
concludes_.)

Last night was given to me for insight. You were brilliantly your best,
and set in the meshes of gold and precious stones that the gods willed for
you. There was not a false note, not an attribute wanting. Over your head
were mellow, clear, electric lights that showed forth coldly your
faultless suitability. From the exquisitely fit pearls about your neck to
the scents of the wine and the flowers, all was as it should be. I watched
your face warm with multifold impressions, your nostrils dilate with
sensuousness, appreciation, your pagan head above the perfect bosom; about
you the languid eyes of your well-fed neighbors.

The dusky recesses of the rooms, heavy with opulent comfort, stretched
away from our long feast. There you could rest, effectually sheltered from
the harsh noises of the world. And I rejoiced. Each minute I saw more
clearly things as they are. I saw you giving the nicest dinners in
Chicago, and scurrying through Europe, buying a dozen pictures here and
there, building a great house, or perhaps, tired of Chicago, trying your
luck in New York; but always pressing on, seizing this exasperating life,
and tenaciously sucking out the rich enjoyments thereof! For the gold has
entered your heart.

What splendid folly we played at Sorrento! If you had deceived yourself
with a sentiment, how long would you have maintained the illusion? When
would the morning have come for your restless eyes to stare out at the
world in longing and the unuttered sorrow of regret? Ah, I touch you but
with words! The cadence of a phrase warms your heart, and you fancy your
emotion is supreme, inevitable. Nevertheless, you are a practical goddess:
you can rise beyond the waves toward the glorious ether, but at night you
sink back. 'Tis alluring, but--eternal?

Few of us can risk being romantic. The penalty is too dreadful. To be
successful, we must maintain the key of our loveliest enthusiasm without
stimulants. You need the stimulants. You imagined that you were tired,
that rest could come in a lover's arms. Better the furs that are soft
about your neck, for they never grow cold. Perchance the lover will come,
also, as a prince with his princedom. It will be comfortable to have your
cake and the frosting, too. If not, take the frosting; go glittering on
with your pulses full of the joys, until you are old and fagged and the
stupid world refuses to revolve. Remember my sure word that you were meant
for dinners, for power and pleasure and excitement. Trust no will-o'-the-
wisp that would lead you into the stony paths of romance.

Some days in the years to come I shall enter at your feasts and watch you
in admiration and love. (For I shall always love you.) Then will stir in
your heart a mislaid feeling of some joy untasted. But you will smile
wisely, and marvel at my exact judgment. You will think of another world
where words and emotions alone are alive, where it is always high tide,
and you will be glad that you did not force the gates. For life is not
always lyric. Farewell.



NO. XIV. THAT OTHER WORLD.

(_Miss Armstrong writes with a calm heart_.)

I have but a minute before I must go down to meet _him_. Then it will be
settled. I can hear his voice now and mother's. I must be quick.

So you tested me and found me wanting in "inevitableness." I was too much
clay, it seems, and "pagan." What a strange word that is! You mean I love
to enjoy; and, perhaps you are right, that I need my little world. Who
knows? One cannot read the whole story--even you, dear master--until we
are dead. We can never tell whether I am only frivolous and sensuous, or
merely a woman who takes the best substitute at hand for life. I do not
protest, and I think I never shall. I, too, am very sure--_now_. You have
pointed out the path and I shall follow it to the end.

But one must have other moments, not of regret, but of wonder. Did you
have too little faith? Am I so cheap and weak? Before you read this it
will all be over.... Now and then it seems I want only a dress for my
back, a bit of food, rest, and your smile. But you have judged otherwise,
and perhaps you are right. At any rate, I will think so. Only I know that
the hours will come when I shall wish that I might lie among those little
white gravestones above the beach.

CHICAGO, November, 1893.



A QUESTION OF ART

I

John Clayton had pretty nearly run the gamut of the fine arts. As a boy at
college he had taken a dilettante interest in music, and having shown some
power of sketching the summer girl he had determined to become an artist.
His numerous friends had hoped such great things for him that he had been
encouraged to spend the rest of his little patrimony in educating himself
abroad. It took him nearly two years to find out what being an artist
meant, and the next three in thinking what he wanted to do. In Paris and
Munich and Rome, the wealth of the possible had dazzled him and confused
his aims; he was so skilful and adaptable that in turn he had wooed almost
all the arts, and had accomplished enough trivial things to raise very
pretty expectations of his future powers. He had enjoyed an uncertain
glory among the crowd of American amateurs. When his purse had become
empty he returned to America to realize on his prospects.

On his arrival he had elaborately equipped a studio in Boston, but as he
found the atmosphere "too provincial" he removed to New York. There he was
much courted at a certain class of afternoon teas. He was in full bloom of
the "might do," but he had his suspicions that a fatally limited term of
years would translate the tense into "might have done." He argued,
however, that he had not yet found the right _milieu_; he was fond of that
word--conveniently comprehensive of all things that might stimulate his
will. He doubted if America ever could furnish him a suitable _milieu_ for
the expression of his artistic instincts. But in the meantime necessity
for effort was becoming more urgent; he could not live at afternoon teas.

Clayton was related widely to interesting and even influential people. One
woman, a distant cousin, had taken upon herself his affairs.

"I will give you another chance," she said, in a business-like tone, after
he had been languidly detailing his condition to her and indicating
politely that he was coming to extremities. "Visit me this summer at Bar
Harbor. You shall have the little lodge at the Point for a studio, and you
can take your meals at the hotel near by. In that way you will be
independent. Now, there are three ways, any one of which will lead you out
of your difficulties, and if you don't find one that suits you before
October, I shall leave you to your fate."

The young man appeared interested.

"You can model something--that's your line, isn't it?"

Clayton nodded meekly. He had resolved to become a sculptor during his
last six months in Italy.

"And so put you on your feet, professionally." Clayton sighed. "Or you can
find some rich patron or patroness who will send you over for a couple of
years more until your _chef d' oeuvre_ makes its appearance." Her pupil
turned red, and began to murmur, but she kept on unperturbed. "Or, best of
all, you can marry a girl with some money and then do what you like." At
this Clayton rose abruptly.

"I haven't come to that," he growled.

"Don't be silly," she pursued. "You are really charming; good character;
exquisite manners; pleasant habits; success with women. You needn't feel
flattered, for this is your stock in trade. You are decidedly interesting,
and lots of those girls who are brought there every year to get them in
would be glad to make such an exchange. You know everybody, and you could
give any girl a good standing in Boston or New York. Besides, there is
your genius, which may develop. That will be thrown in to boot; it may
bear interest."

Clayton, who had begun by feeling how disagreeable his situation was when
it exposed him to this kind of hauling over, ended by bursting into a
cordial laugh at the frank materialism with which his cousin presented his
case. "Well," he exclaimed, "it's no go to talk to you about the claims
and ideals of art, Cousin Della, but I will accept your offer, if only for
the sake of modelling a bust of 'The Energetic Matron (American).'"

"Of course, I don't make much of ideals in art and all that," replied his
cousin, "but I will put this through for you, as Harry says. You must
promise me only one thing: no flirting with Harriet and Mary. Henry has
been foolish and lost money, as you know, and I cannot have another beggar
on my hands!"



II

By the end of July Clayton had found out two things definitely; he was
standing in his little workshop, pulling at his mustache and looking
sometimes at a half-completed sketch, and sometimes at the blue stretch of
water below the cliff. The conclusions were that he certainly should not
become interested in Harriet and Mary, and, secondly, that Mount Desert
made him paint rather than model.

"It's no place," he muttered, "except for color and for a poet. A man
would have to shut himself up in a cellar to escape those glorious hills
and the bay, if he wanted to work at that putty." He cast a contemptuous
glance at a rough bust of his Cousin Della, the only thing he had
attempted. As a solution of his hopeless problem he picked up a pipe and
was hunting for some tobacco, preparatory to a stroll up Newport, when
someone sounded timidly at the show knocker of the front door.

"Is that you, Miss Marston?" Clayton remarked, in a disappointed tone, as
a middle-aged woman entered.

"The servants were all away," she replied, "and Della thought you might
like some lunch to recuperate you from your labors." This was said a
little maliciously, as she looked about and found nothing noteworthy going
on.

"I was just thinking of knocking off for this morning and taking a walk.
Won't you come? It's such glorious weather and no fog," he added,
parenthetically, as if in justification of his idleness.

"Why do you happen to ask me?" Miss Marston exclaimed, impetuously. "You
have hitherto never paid any more attention to my existence than if I had
been Jane, the woman who usually brings your lunch." She gasped at her own
boldness. This was not coquettishness, and was evidently unusual.

"Why! I really wish you would come," said the young man, helplessly. "Then
I'll have a chance to know you better."

"Well! I will." She seemed to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane
Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member of
her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger
children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the odd
members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston hated in a
slow, rebellious manner. From always having just too little money to live
independently, she had been forced to accept invitations for long visits
in uninteresting places. As a girl and a young woman, she had shown a
delicate, retiring beauty that might have been made much of, and in spite
of gray hair, thirty-five years, and a somewhat drawn look, arising from
her discontent, one might discover sufficient traces of this fading beauty
to idealize her. All this summer she had watched the wayward young artist
with a keen interest in the fresh life he brought among her flat
surroundings. His buoyancy cheered her habitual depression; his eagerness
and love of life made her blood flow more quickly, out of sympathy; and
his intellectual alertness bewildered and fascinated her. She was still
shy at thirty-five, and really very timid and apologetic for her
commonplaceness; but at times the rebellious bitterness at the bottom of
her heart would leap forth in a brusque or bold speech. She was still
capable of affording surprise.

"Won't I spoil the inspiration?" she ventured, after a long silence.

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