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Literary Love Letters and Other Stories

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




He died the next afternoon, and at the last he looked out on the world and
at her with his final note of intelligence. It was pathetic, a suggestion
of past tenderness defeated, and of defeat in hate, too. She shuddered as
she closed his sad eyes; it was awful to meddle with a man's last
purposes.

The funeral was almost surreptitious; old Dinah, the Leicesters, and the
Edwardses occupied the one carriage that followed him to the graveyard
across the village. They met a hay-cart or two on their way, but no
curious neighbors. Old Oliphant's death aroused no interest in this
village, ridden with summer strangers.

The day was impersonally suave and tender, with its gentle haze and autumn
premonitions. Mr. Leicester said a few equivocal words, while Mrs. Edwards
gazed helplessly into the grave. The others fell back behind the minister.
Between her and her uncle down there something remained unexplained, and
her heart ached.

* * * * *

They spent that night at the Leicesters', for Mrs. Edwards wearily refused
to return to the Oliphant place. Edwards carried the keys over to Slocum,
and told him to take the necessary steps toward settling the old man's
affairs. The next day they returned to the little flat in Harlem. The
Leicesters found their presence awkward, now that there was nothing to do,
and Mrs. Edwards was craving to be alone with her husband, to shut out the
past month from their lives as soon as possible.

These September days, while they both waited in secret anxiety, she clung
to him as she had never before. He was pure, the ideal she had voluntarily
given up, given up for his sake in order that he might have complete
perfection. His delicate sensitiveness kept him from referring to that
painful month, or to possible expectations. She worshipped him the more,
and was thankful for his complete ignorance. Their common life could go on
untainted and noble.

Yet Edwards betrayed his nervous anxiety. His eagerness for the mail every
morning, his early return from business, indicated his troubled mind.

The news came at breakfast-time. Mrs. Edwards handed Slocum's letter
across the table and waited, her face wanly eager. The letter was long; it
took some half-dozen large letter-sheets for the country lawyer to tell
his news, but in the end it came. He had found the will and was happy to
say that Mrs. Edwards was a large, a very large, beneficiary. Edwards read
these closing sentences aloud. He threw down the letter and tried to take
her in his arms. But she tearfully pushed him away, and then, repenting,
clasped his knees.

"Oh, Will! it's so much, so very much," she almost sobbed.

Edwards looked as if that were not an irremediable fault in their good
luck. He said nothing. Already he was planning their future movements.
Under the circumstances neither cared to discuss their happiness, and so
they got little fun from the first bloom.

In spite of Mrs. Edwards's delicate health and her expected confinement
they decided to go abroad. She was feverishly anxious for him to begin his
real work at once, to prove himself; and it might be easier to forget her
one vicious month when the Atlantic had been crossed. They put their
affairs to rights hurriedly, and early in November sailed for France.

The Leicesters were at the dock to bid them God-speed and to chirrup over
their good fortune.

"It's all like a good, old-fashioned story," beamed Mrs. Leicester,
content with romance for once, now that it had arranged itself so
decorously.

"Very satisfactory; quite right," the clergyman added. "We'll see you soon
in Paris. We're thinking of a gay vacation, and will let you know."

Edwards looked fatuous; his wife had an orderly smile. She was glad when
Sandy Hook sank into the mist. She had only herself to avoid now.

They took some pleasant apartments just off the Rue de Rivoli, and then
their life subsided into the complacent commonplace of possession. She was
outwardly content to enjoy with her husband, to go to the galleries, the
opera, to try the restaurants, and to drive.

Yet her life went into one idea, a very fixed idea, such as often takes
hold of women in her condition. She was eager to see him at work. If he
accomplished something--even content!--she would feel justified and
perhaps happy. As to the child, the idea grew strange to her. Why should
she have a third in the problem? For she saw that the child must take its
part in her act, must grow up and share their life and inherit the
Oliphant money. In brief, she feared the yet unborn stranger, to whom she
would be responsible in this queer way. And the child could not repair the
wrong as could her husband. Certainly the child was an alien.

She tried to be tender of her husband in his boyish glee and loafing. She
could understand that he needed to accustom himself to his new freedom, to
have his vacation first. She held herself in, tensely, refraining from
criticism lest she might mar his joy. But she counted the days, and when
her child had come, she said to herself, _then_ he must work.

This morbid life was very different from what she had fancied the rich
future would be, as she looked into the grave, the end of her struggle,
that September afternoon. But she had grown to demand so much more from
_him_; she had grown so grave! His bright, boyish face, the gentle curls,
had been dear enough, and now she looked for the lines a man's face should
have. Why was he so terribly at ease? The world was bitter and hard in its
conditions, and a man should not play.

Late in December the Leicesters called; they were like gleeful sparrows,
twittering about. Mrs. Edwards shuddered to see them again, and when they
were gone she gave up and became ill.

Her tense mind relieved itself in hysterics, which frightened her to
further repression. Then one night she heard herself moaning: "Why did I
have to take all? It was so little, so very little, I wanted, and I had to
take all. Oh, Will, Will, you should have done for yourself! Why did you
need this? Why couldn't you do as other men do? It's no harder for you
than for them." Then she recollected herself. Edwards was holding her hand
and soothing her.

Some weeks later, when she was very ill, she remembered those words, and
wondered if he had suspected anything. Her child came and died, and she
forgot this matter, with others. She lay nerveless for a long time,
without thought; Edwards and the doctor feared melancholia. So she was
taken to Italy for the cold months. Edwards cared for her tenderly, but
his caressing presence was irritating, instead of soothing, to her. She
was hungry for a justification that she could not bring about.

At last it wore on into late spring. She began to force herself back into
the old activities, in order to leave no excuse for further dawdling. Her
attitude became terribly judicial and suspicious.

An absorbing idleness had settled down over Edwards, partly excused to
himself by his wife's long illness. When he noticed that his desultory
days made her restless, he took to loafing about galleries or making
little excursions, generally in company with some forlorn artist he had
picked up. He had nothing, after all, so very definite that demanded his
time; he had not yet made up his mind for any attempts. And something in
the domestic atmosphere unsettled him. His wife held herself aloof, with
alien sympathies, he felt.

So they drifted on to discontent and unhappiness until she could bear it
no longer without expression.

"Aren't we to return to Paris soon?" she remarked one morning as they
idled over a late breakfast. "I am strong now, and I should like to settle
down."

Edwards took the cue, idly welcoming any change.

"Why, yes, in the fall. It's too near the summer now, and there's no
hurry."

"Yes, there _is_ hurry," his wife replied, hastily. "We have lost almost
eight months."

"Out of a lifetime," Edwards put in, indulgently.

She paused, bewildered by the insinuation of his remark. But her mood was
too incendiary to avoid taking offence. "Do you mean that that would be a
_life_, loafing around all day, enjoying this, that, and the other fine
pleasure? That wasn't what we planned."

"No, but I don't see why people who are not driven should drive
themselves. I want to get the taste of Harlem out of my mouth." He was a
bit sullen. A year ago her strict inquiry into his life would have been
absurd. Perhaps the money, her money, gave her the right.

"If people don't drive themselves," she went on, passionately, "they ought
to be driven. It's cowardly to take advantage of having money to do
nothing. You wanted the--the opportunity to do something. Now you have
it."

Edwards twisted his wicker chair into uncomfortable places. "Well, are you
sorry you happen to have given me the chance?" He looked at her coldly, so
that a suspicious thought shot into her mind.

"Yes," she faltered, "if it means throwing it away, I _am_ sorry."

She dared no more. Her mind was so close on the great sore in her gentle
soul. He lit a cigarette, and sauntered down the hotel garden. But the
look he had given her--a queer glance of disagreeable intelligence--
illumined her dormant thoughts.

What if he had known all along? She remembered his meaning words that hot
night when they talked over Oliphant's illness for the first time. And why
had he been so yielding, so utterly passive, during the sordid drama over
the dying man? What kept him from alluding to the matter in any way? Yes,
he must have encouraged her to go on. _She_ had been his tool, and he the
passive spectator. The blind certainty of a woman made the thing assured,
settled. She picked up the faint yellow rose he had laid by her plate, and
tore it slowly into fine bits. On the whole, he was worse than she.

But before he returned she stubbornly refused to believe herself.

* * * * *

In the autumn they were again in Paris, in soberer quarters, which were
conducive to effort. Edwards was working fitfully with several teachers,
goaded on, as he must confess to himself, by a pitiless wife. Not much was
discussed between them, but he knew that the price of the _statu quo_ was
continued labor.

She was watching him; he felt it and resented it, but he would not
understand. All the idealism, the worship of the first sweet months in
marriage, had gone. Of course that incense had been foolish, but it was
sweet. Instead, he felt these suspicious, intolerant eyes following his
soul in and out on its feeble errands. He comforted himself with the trite
consolation that he was suffering from the natural readjustment in a
woman's mind. It was too drastic for that, however.

He was in the habit of leaving her in the evenings of the opera. The light
was too much for her eyes, and she was often tired. One wet April night,
when he returned late, he found her up, sitting by the window that
overlooked the steaming boulevard. Somehow his soul was rebellious, and
when she asked him about the opera he did not take the pains to lie.

"Oh, I haven't been there," he muttered, "I am beastly tired of it all.
Let's get out of it; to St. Petersburg or Norway--for the summer," he
added, guiltily.

Now that the understanding impended she trembled, for hitherto she had
never actually known. In suspicion there was hope. So she almost
entreated.

"We go to Vienna next winter anyway, and I thought we had decided on
Switzerland for the summer."

"You decided! But what's the use of keeping up the mill night and day?
There's plenty of opportunity over there for an educated gentleman with
money, if what you are after is a 'sphere' for me."

"You want to--to go back now?"

"No, I want to be let alone."

"Don't you care to pay for all you have had? Haven't you any sense of
justice to Uncle Oliphant, to your opportunities?"

"Oliphant!" Edwards laughed, disagreeably. "Wouldn't he be pleased to have
an operetta, a Gilbert and Sullivan affair, dedicated to him! No. I have
tried to humor your idea of making myself famous. But what's the use of
being wretched?" The topic seemed fruitless. Mrs. Edwards looked over to
the slight, careless figure. He was sitting dejectedly on a large
fauteuil, smoking. He seemed fagged and spiritless. She almost pitied him
and gave in, but suddenly she rose and crossed the room.

"We've made ourselves pretty unhappy," she said, apologetically, resting
her hand on the lapel of his coat. "I guess it's mostly my fault, Will. I
have wanted so much that you should do something fine with Uncle
Oliphant's money, with _yourself_. But we can make it up in other ways."

"What are you so full of that idea for?" Edwards asked, curiously. "Why
can't you be happy, even as happy as you were in Harlem?" His voice was
hypocritical.

"Don't you know?" she flashed back. "You _do_ know, I believe. Tell me,
did you look over those papers on the davenport that night Uncle James
fainted?"

The unexpected rush of her mind bewildered him. A calm lie would have set
matters to rights, but he was not master of it.

"So you were willing--you knew?"

"It wasn't my affair," he muttered, weakly, but she had left him.

He wandered about alone for a few days until the suspense became
intolerable. When he turned up one afternoon in their apartments he found
preparations on foot for their departure.

"We're going away?" he asked.

"Yes, to New York."

"Not so fast," he interrupted, bitterly. "We might as well face the matter
openly. What's the use of going back there?"

"We can't live here, and besides I shall be wanted there."

"You can't do anything now. Talk sensibly about it. I will not go back."

She looked at him coldly, critically. "I cabled Slocum yesterday, and we
must live somehow."

"You--" but she laid her hand on his arm. "It makes no difference now, you
know, and it can't be changed. I've done everything."

CHICAGO, August, 1895.



A REJECTED TITIAN


"John," my wife remarked in horrified tones, "he's coming to Rome!"

"Who is coming to Rome--the Emperor?"

"Uncle Ezra--see," she handed me the telegram. "Shall arrive in Rome
Wednesday morning; have Watkins at the Grand Hotel."

I handed the despatch to Watkins.

"Poor uncle!" my wife remarked.

"He will get it in the neck," I added, profanely.

"They ought to put nice old gentlemen like your uncle in bond when they
reach Italy," Watkins mused, as if bored in advance. "The _antichitàs_ get
after them, like--like confidence-men in an American city, and the same
old story is the result; they find, in some mysterious fashion, a
wonderful Titian, a forgotten Giorgione, cheap at _cinque mille lire_.
Then it's all up with them. His pictures are probably decalcomanias, you
know, just colored prints pasted over board. Why, we _know_ every picture
in Venice; it's simply _impossible_--"

Watkins was a connoisseur; he had bought his knowledge in the dearest
school of experience.

"What are you going to do, Mr. Watkins?" my wife put in. "Tell him the
truth?"

"There's nothing else to do. I used up all my ambiguous terms over that
daub he bought in the Piazza di Spagna--'reminiscential' of half a dozen
worthless things, 'suggestive,' etc. I can't work them over again."
Watkins was lugubrious.

"Tell him the truth as straight as you can; it's the best medicine." I was
Uncle Ezra's heir; naturally, I felt for the inheritance.

"Well," my wife was invariably cheerful, "perhaps he has found something
valuable; at least, one of them may be; isn't it possible?"

Watkins looked at my wife indulgently.

"He's been writing me about them for a month, suggesting that, as I was
about to go on to Venice, he would like to have me see them; such
treasures as I should find them. I have been waiting until he should get
out. It isn't a nice job, and your uncle--"

"There are three of them, Aunt Mary writes: Cousin Maud has bought one,
with the advice of Uncle Ezra and Professor Augustus Painter, and Painter
himself is the last one to succumb."

"They have all gone mad," Watkins murmured.

"Where did Maudie get the cash?" I asked.

"She had a special gift on coming of age, and she has been looking about
for an opportunity for throwing it away"--my wife had never sympathized
with my cousin, Maud Vantweekle. "She had better save it for her
trousseau, if she goes on much more with that young professor. Aunt Mary
should look after her."

Watkins rose to go.

"Hold on a minute," I said. "Just listen to this delicious epistle from
Uncle Ezra."

"'... We have hoped that you would arrive in Venice before we break up our
charming home here. Mary has written you that Professor Painter has joined
us at the Palazzo Palladio, complementing our needs and completing our
circle. He has an excellent influence for seriousness upon Maud; his fine,
manly qualities have come out. Venice, after two years of Berlin, has
opened his soul in a really remarkable manner. All the beauty lying loose
around here has been a revelation to him--'"

"Maud's beauty," my wife interpreted.

"'And our treasures you will enjoy so much--such dashes of color, such
great slaps of light! I was the first to buy--they call it a Savoldo, but
I think no third-rate man could be capable of so much--such reaching out
after infinity. However, that makes little difference. I would not part
with it, now that I have lived these weeks with so fine a thing. Maud won
a prize in her Bonifazio, which she bought under my advice. Then Augustus
secured the third one, a Bissola, and it has had the greatest influence
upon him already; it has given him his education in art. He sits with it
by the hour while he is at work, and its charm has gradually produced a
revolution in his character. We had always found him too Germanic, and he
had immured himself in that barbarous country for so long over his Semitic
books that his nature was stunted on one side. His picture has opened a
new world for him. Your Aunt Mary and I already see the difference in his
character; he is gentler, less narrowly interested in the world. This
precious bit of fine art has been worth its price many times, but I don't
think Augustus would part with it for any consideration now that he has
lived with it and learned to know its power.'"

"I can't see why he is coming to Rome," Watkins commented at the end. "If
they are confident that they know all about their pictures, and don't care
anyway who did them, and are having all this spiritual love-feast, what in
the world do they want any expert criticism of their text for? Now for
such people to buy pictures, when they haven't a mint of money! Why don't
they buy something within their means really fine--a coin, a Van Dyck
print? I could get your uncle a Whistler etching for twenty-five pounds; a
really fine thing, you know--"

This was Watkins's hobby.

"Oh, well, it won't be bad in the end of the hall at New York; it's as
dark as pitch there; and then Uncle Ezra can leave it to the Metropolitan
as a Giorgione. It will give the critics something to do. And I suppose
that in coming on here he has in mind to get an indorsement for his
picture that will give it a commercial value. He's canny, is my Uncle
Ezra, and he likes to gamble too, like the rest of us. If he should draw a
prize, it wouldn't be a bad thing to brag of."

Watkins called again the next morning.

"Have you seen Uncle Ezra?" my wife asked, anxiously.

"No. Three telegrams. Train was delayed--I suppose by the importance of
the works of art it's bringing on."

"When do you expect him?"

"About noon."

"Mr. Watkins," my wife flamed out, "I believe you are just shirking it, to
meet that poor old man with his pictures. You ought to have been at the
station, or at least at the hotel. Why, it's twelve now!"

Watkins hung his head.

"I believe you are a coward," my wife went on. "Just think of his arriving
there, all excitement over his pictures, and finding you gone!"

"Well, well," I said, soothingly, "it's no use to trot off now, Watkins;
stay to breakfast. He will be in shortly. When he finds you are out at the
hotel he will come straight on here, I am willing to bet."

Watkins looked relieved at my suggestion.

"I believe you meant to run away all along," my wife continued, severely,
"and to come here for refuge."

Watkins sulked.

We waited in suspense, straining our ears to hear the sound of a cab
stopping in the street. At last one did pull up. My wife made no pretence
of indifference, but hurried to the window.

"It's Uncle Ezra, with a big, black bundle. John, run down--No! there's a
facchino."

We looked at each other and laughed.

"The three!"

Our patron of art came in, with a warm, gentle smile, his tall, thin
figure a little bent with the fatigue of the journey, his beard a little
grayer and dustier than usual, and his hands all a-tremble with nervous
impatience and excitement. He had never been as tremulous before an
opinion from the Supreme Court. My wife began to purr over him soothingly;
Watkins looked sheepish; I hurried them all off to breakfast.

The omelette was not half eaten before Uncle Ezra jumped up, and began
unstrapping the oil-cloth covering to the pictures. There was
consternation at the table. My wife endeavored soothingly to bring Uncle
Ezra's interest back to breakfast, but he was not to be fooled. My Uncle
Ezra was a courageous man.

"Of course you fellows," he said, smiling at Watkins, in his suave
fashion, "are just whetting your knives for me, I know. That's right. I
want to know the worst, the hardest things you can say. You can't destroy
the intrinsic _worth_ of the pictures for us; I have lived with mine too
long, and know how precious it is!"

At last the three pictures were tipped up against the wall, and the
Madonnas and saints in gold, red, and blue were beaming out insipidly at
us. Uncle Ezra affected indifference. Watkins continued with the omelette.
"We'll look them over after breakfast," he said, severely, thus getting us
out of the hole temporarily.

After breakfast my wife cooked up some engagement, and hurried me off. We
left Uncle Ezra in the hands of the physician. Two hours later, when we
entered, the operation had been performed--we could see at a glance--and
in a bloody fashion. The pictures were lying about the vast room as if
they had been spat at. Uncle Ezra smiled wanly at us, with the courage of
the patient who is a sceptic about physicians.

"Just what I expected," he said, briskly, to relieve Watkins, who was
smoking, with the air of a man who has finished his job and is now cooling
off. "Mr. Watkins thinks Painter's picture and Maud's are copies,
Painter's done a few years ago and Maud's a little older, the last
century. My Savoldo he finds older, but repainted. You said cinque cento,
Mr. Watkins?"

"Perhaps, Mr. Williams," Watkins answered, and added, much as a dog would
give a final shake to the bird, "_Much_ repainted, hardly anything left of
the original. There may be a Savoldo underneath, but you don't see it."
Watkins smiled at us knowingly. My wife snubbed him.

"Of course, Uncle Ezra, _that's_ one man's opinion. I certainly should not
put much faith in one critic, no matter how eminent he may be. Just look
at the guide-books and see how the 'authorities' swear at one another.
Ruskin says every man is a fool who can't appreciate his particular love,
and Burckhardt calls it a daub, and Eastlake insipid. Now, there are a set
of young fellows who think they know all about paint and who painted what.
They're renaming all the great masterpieces. Pretty soon they will
discover that some tenth-rate fellow painted the Sistine Chapel."

Watkins put on an aggrieved and expostulatory manner. Uncle Ezra cut in.

"Oh! my dear! Mr. Watkins may be right, quite right. It's his business to
know, I am sure, and I anticipated all that he would say; indeed, I have
come off rather better than I expected. There is old paint in it
somewhere."

"Pretty far down," Watkins muttered. My wife bristled up, but Uncle Ezra
assumed his most superb calm.

"It makes no difference to me, of course, as far as the _worth_ of the
work of art is concerned. I made up my mind before I came here that my
picture was worth a great deal to me, much more than I paid for it." There
was a heroic gasp. Watkins interposed mercilessly, "And may I ask, Mr.
Williams, what you did give for it?"

Uncle Ezra was an honest man. "Twenty-five hundred lire," he replied,
sullenly.

"Excuse me" (Watkins was behaving like a pitiless cad), "but you paid a
great deal too much for it, I assure you. I could have got it for----"

"Mr. Watkins," my wife was hardly civil to him, "it doesn't matter much
what you could have got it for."

"No," Uncle Ezra went on bravely, "I am a little troubled as to what this
may mean to Maud and Professor Painter, for you see their pictures are
copies."

"Undoubted modern copies," the unquenchable Watkins emended.

"Maud has learned a great deal from her picture. And as for Painter, it
has been an education in art, an education in life. He said to me the
night before I came away, 'Mr. Williams, I wouldn't take two thousand for
that picture; it's been the greatest influence in my life.'"

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