The Jessica Letters Part 9

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

x.x.xV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

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

But for the present I want to talk to you about Jack. Indeed, I feel a little sore on this point. It was you who proposed our adopting him, yet, after your first words of advice, you have left me to work out the situation quite unaided; and now I can see that you are laughing at me.

Poor Jack, he was something like a "philosophical proposition" which I had never very thoroughly a.n.a.lysed. One thing, however, begins to grow perfectly clear: my home is no place for him; he is only a shadow in my life and needs to take on substance. Well, I thought at last I had solved the problem--or at least that O'Meara had solved it for me; but here too I was disappointed. Really, you must help me out of this muddle.

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

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

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

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

And when we go there, I will take you to a bowered nook overhanging the river, where I pa.s.sed the afternoon reading and thinking of many things.

There together we will sit in the shadow of the trees and talk and plan together how _our_ happiness, at least, shall be made to endure; and you shall teach me to lose this haunting sense of illusion in the great reality of love. And as the evening descends and twilight steals upon the ever-flowing water, I will take you in my arms a moment, and this shall be my vow: G.o.d do so to me and more also, if any darkness falls from my life upon yours, until our evening, too, has come and the light of this world pa.s.ses quietly into the dream that lies beyond.

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

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

_Flumina amem silvasque inglorius_,

and his pathetic envy of those

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

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

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

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

Shall I bring happiness to you when I come?

A CODICIL TO LETTER x.x.xIV

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

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

And about the kisses, you understand of course, dear Philip, that I am incapable of determining them really! I only contemplated the possibility when distance made it an impossibility. Still, you cannot fail to know that I love you, that it would even break my heart if you did not come!

For, Philip, a woman's heart is like the Scriptures, apparently full of contradictions, but really it is the symbol of our everlasting truth, if only you have the wisdom to understand it.

And another thing, Philip, the more I think of it, the more I am scandalised by the way you drag that poor goblin child about. My heart yearns for him and his solitude in the midst of your philosophies. You have made a perfect jumping-jack of him for your lordly amus.e.m.e.nt, and it isn't fair. Bring him with you to Morningtown. I charge you. And remember, don't lose him or philosophise him out of existence on the way. I have talked with father about the boy, and he is primed with religious zeal to s.n.a.t.c.h this tender brand from your burning.

x.x.xVI

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Just a note, sweet lady, to bid you expect me on the afternoon train Thursday--and is not that a long while from to-day? And please do not come to the station. I would not have our meeting chilled by the curious eyes of that station-master's wife; I remember the scrutiny of her gaze too well. And as for our greeting--you have made a very pretty story out of that, but have you not omitted Philip from the account? Is it not just possible that he may mar all Jessica's nicely laid plans? I have a suspicion that, in his crude masculine way, he may prefer to translate into fact what Jessica finds so easy to contemplate in words. I feel a bit uncertain as to how he will behave as a lover; the role is new to him, and he may be awkward and a bit vehement.

Yes, I will bring Jack and leave him to be brooded under your kind maternal feathers. You will love him for the pathos of his eyes and for his quaint ways.

[2] It is unnecessary to say that the spelling throughout these letters has been corrected for the press.

[3] Alluding to a request not found in this correspondence.

The Third Part

which shows how the editor again visits Jessica in the country, and how love is buffeted between philosophy and religion.

x.x.xVII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

WRITTEN ON RETURNING FROM HIS VISIT TO MORNINGTOWN

Here I am back in my own room, in this solitude of books; and how different is this home-coming from that other when I brought with me only bitterness and despair!

Shall I tell you, sweetheart, some of the things I learned during my three days in Morningtown? First of all, I discovered that you are clothed with wonderful beauty. In a dim way I knew this before, but the full mystery of your loveliness was not revealed to me until this third time. Can it be that love has transformed you a little and added grace to grace, or is it only my vision that has been purged of its earthly dulness? I could love a homely woman whose spirit was fair, but to love one who is altogether beautiful, in whose perfect grace I can find no spot or blemish--that is the miracle of my blessedness. There was a strange light in your eyes that haunts me yet. Such a light I have seen on a lonely pool when the evening sunlight slanted upon it from over the brown hills of autumn, but nowhere else. My soul would bathe in that pure water and be baptised into the new faith.

For my faith, of which I boasted so valiantly, has changed since I have seen you. Faith, I had thought, was a form of insight into the illusion of earthly things, of transient joys and fears. And always a little dread would creep into my heart lest love, too, should prove to be such an illusion, the last great deception of all, binding the bewildered soul in a web of phantom desires. So I still felt as I walked with you that first evening out into the circle of your trees. And there, dear Jessica, in the waiting silence and the grey shadows of that seclusion I put my arms about you and would have drawn you to my heart. Ah, shall I not remember the wild withdrawing of your eyes as I stooped over your face! And then with a cry of defiance and one swift bound, you tore yourself loose from me and ran like a frightened dryad deeper into the forest. That was a mad chase, and forever and forever I shall see your lithe form darting on before me through the mingled shadow and light. And when at last I caught you and held you fast, shall I not remember how you panted and fluttered against me like a bird in the first terror of captivity! And then, suddenly, you were still, and looked up into my face, and in your eyes I beheld the wonder of a strange mystery which no words can name. Only I knew that my dread was forever at end. It was for a second--nay, an eternity, I think--as if we two were rapt out of the world, out of ourselves, into some infinite abysm of life. It was as if the splendour of the apocalypse broke upon us, and poured upon our eyes the ineffable whiteness of heaven.

I knew in that instant that love is not an illusion, but the one reality, the one power that dispels illusion, the very essence of faith. I shuddered when the vision pa.s.sed; but its memory shall never fade. So much I learned on that day.

And I also learned, or thought I learned, that your father's real objection to my suit lay not so much in his hostility to my views, as in his fear of losing you out of his life. And as I talked with him, even plead with him, I was filled with pity and with something like remorse for the sorrow I was to bring upon his heart. He is a saint, dear Love, but very human. You have said that I acted like a robber toward you. I could smile at your fury, but to your father I do indeed play the robber's part.