Vistas of New York Part 22

"MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,--I must begin by begging your pardon for writing you this letter. I hope you will forgive it as the strange act of a foolish old woman who wants to tell you some of the things her heart is full of.

"You do not know me--at least, I think it most likely you do not, although I cannot be sure of this, for you may be one of the girls I have seen growing up. And I do not know you for sure; but all the same I have been thinking of you very often in the past few weeks.

I have thought about you so often that at last I have made up my mind to write you this letter. When I first had the idea, I did not want to, but now I have brooded over it so long that I simply must.

"I have been wondering how you will take it, but I can't help that now. I have something to say, and I am going to say it. I have been wondering, too, what you will be like. I suppose that you are young, very young perhaps, for John has always been fond of young people. You are a good woman, I am sure, for John could never have anything to do with a woman who was not good. Young and good I feel sure you will be; and that is all I know about you.

"I cannot even guess how you have been brought up or what your principles are or your ideas of duty. I wish I could. I am very old-fashioned myself, I find, and so very few young people nowadays seem to have the same opinion about serious things that I have. I wish I could be sure you were a sincere Christian. I wish I were certain you held fast to the old ideas of duty and self-sacrifice that have been the honor and the glory of the good women of the past. But I have no right to expect that you will think about all these things just as I do. And I know only too well how weak I am myself and how neglectful I have been in improving my own opportunities. The most I can do is to hope that you will do what I have always tried to do ever since I married John--and long before, too--and that is to make him happy and to watch over him.

"If you are very young perhaps you do not yet know that men are not like us women; they need to be taken care of just like children. It is a blessed privilege to be a mother, but a childless wife can at least be a mother to her husband. That is what I have been trying to do all these years. I have tried to watch over John as though he were my only son. Perhaps if our little girl had lived to grow up I might have seen a divided duty before me. But it pleased G.o.d to take her to Himself when she was only a baby in arms, and He has never given me another. Many a night I have lain awake with my arms aching to clasp that little body again; but the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord! So I have had nothing to draw me away from my duty to John. If you have children some day--and G.o.d grant that you may, for John's heart is set on a boy--if you have children, don't let your love for them draw you away from John. Remember that he was first in your love, and see that he is last also. He will say nothing, for he is good and generous; but he is quick to see neglect, and it would be bitter if he were left alone in his old age.

"You will find out in time that he is very sensitive, for all he is a man and does not complain all the time. So be cheerful always, as it annoys him to see anybody in pain or suffering in any way. It is a great comfort to me now that the disease that is going to take me away from him sooner or later, I cannot know when--that it is sudden and not disfiguring, and that he need not know anything at all about it until it is all over. I have made the doctor promise not to tell him till I am dead.

"You see, John has his worries down-town--not so many now as he used to have, I am thankful to say; and I have tried always to make his home bright for him so that he could forget unpleasant things.

I hope you will always do that, too; it is a wife's duty, I think.

You will forgive my telling you these things, won't you? You see I am so much older than you are, and I have known John for so many years. I have found that it relieves his feelings sometimes to tell me his troubles and to talk over things with me. Of course, I don't know much about business, and I suppose that what I say is of no value; but it soothes him to have sympathy. So I hope you will never be impatient when he wants to tell you about his partners and the clerks and things of that sort. I have seen women foolish enough not to want to listen when their husbands talked about business. I do hope that you are wiser, or, at any rate, that you will take advice from an old woman like me, thinking only of the happiness of the man you have promised to love, honor, and obey.

You will learn in time how good John is. Perhaps you may think you know now--but you can't know that as well as I do.

"You see I am older than John--not so much older, either, only a little more than two years. He doesn't like me to admit it, but it is true; and of late I have been afraid that everybody could see it, for I am past forty now and I feel very old sometimes, while John is as young as ever. He looks just as he did twenty years ago; he has not a gray hair in his head yet. He comes up-stairs to me, after he gets back from the office, with the same boyish step I know so well.

"He was only a boy when I first saw him in the little village school-house. His family had just moved into our neighborhood, and the school he had been to before was not very good, and so I was able to help him with his lessons. The memory of that first winter when we were boy and girl together has always been very precious to me; and I can see him now as he used to come into the school, panting with his hard run to get there in time.

"I don't know when it was that I began to love him, but it was long before he had grown to be a man. That early love of mine gave me many a sorrowful hour in those days, for there were other girls who saw how handsome John was. One girl there was he used to say was pretty, but I never could see it, for she had red hair and freckles--but perhaps John said this to tease me, for he was always fond of a joke. This girl made up to him, and John came near marrying her; but fortunately a new minister came to town and she gave up John and took him. So John came back to me, and that spring we were married.

"John was not rich then; he had his way to make, but when an old family friend offered him a place in New York City he hesitated. He did not want to take me away from my mother; he has always been so good to me. But mother would not hear of it; and so we came to this big city, and John succeeded from the very first. It was not ten years before he was taken into the firm; and now for two years he has been at the head of it. I doubt if there is another man as young as he is in all New York at the head of so large a business.

"When we first came to New York we boarded; and then after a while we found a little house in Grove Street. It was there baby was born and there she died; and perhaps that is why I was so ungrateful as to be sorry when John bought this big house here on Gramercy Park.

He said he wanted his wife to have as good a house as anybody else. Of course, I ought to have known that a man of John's prominence could not go on living in Grove Street; he had to take his position in the world. He let me have my own way about furnishing this house, although he did pretend to scold me for not spending enough money. I have been very happy here, although I will not say that I have never regretted the little house where my only child died; but, of course, I never told this to John, and it has always pleased me to see the pride he took in this handsome house.

And now in a few weeks or a few months I shall leave it forever, and I leave him also.

"But I must not talk about myself any more. It is about John I wanted to speak. I meant to tell you how good he is and how he deserves to be loved with your whole heart. I intended to ask you to take care of him as I have tried to do, to watch over him, to comfort him, to sympathize with him, to be truly his helpmate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE FLUNG HERSELF INTO HIS ARMS]

"Especially must you watch over him, for he will not take care of himself. For instance, he is so busy all day that he will forget to eat any luncheon unless you keep at him; and if he goes without his lunch sometimes he has bad attacks of indigestion. And even when it is raining he does not always think to take his overshoes or even his umbrella; and he ought to be particular, because he is threatened with rheumatism. If he has a cold, send for Dr.

Cheever at once, and John seems to catch cold very easily; once, three years ago, he came near having pneumonia. You must see that he changes his flannels early in the fall; he will never do it unless you get them out for him. You will have to look after him as if he were a baby; and that is one reason why I am writing this long, long letter, just to tell you what you will have to do.

"Perhaps I had another reason, too--the joy I take always in talking about him and in praising him and in telling how good he is. I hope he has been happy with me all these years, and I know I have been very happy with him. It may be very fanciful in me, but I like the idea that these words of mine praising him will be read after my death. If you love him, as I hope you do, with your whole heart and soul, you will understand why I have written this and you will forgive me.

"Yours sincerely,

"SARAH BLACKSTOCK."

Before the young bride had read the half of this unexpected communication her eyes had filled with tears, and when she came to the end her face was wet.

She stood silently in the center of the room where the minister had left her, and she held the open sheets of the letter in her hand. Then the front door was closed with a jar to be felt all over the house; and in a moment she had heard her husband's footsteps in the hall.

"John!" she cried.

When he came to the door she flung herself into his arms, sobbing helplessly.

"Oh, John," she managed to say, at last. "Your first wife was an angel!

I don't believe I can ever be as good as she was. But you will love me too--won't you, dear?"

(1897)

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Shortest

Day in the Year]

The snow was still falling steadily, although it had already thickly carpeted the avenue. It was a soft, gentle snow, sifting down calmly and clinging moistly to the bare branches of the feeble trees, which stood out starkly sheathed in white, spectral in the grayness of the late afternoon. Gangs of men were clearing the cross-paths at the corners and shoveling the sodden drifts into carts of various sizes, impressed into sudden service. It was not yet dusk, but the street-lamps had been lighted; and the tall hotel almost opposite was already illuminated here and there by squares of yellow.

Elinor stood at the window of her aunt's house, gazing out, and yet not seeing the occasional carriages and the frequent automobiles that filled the broad avenue before her. The Christmas wreath that hung just over her head was scarcely more motionless than she was, as she stared straight before her, unconscious of anything but the deadness of her own outlook on life.

She looked very handsome in her large hat and her black furs, which set off the pallor of her face, relieved by the deep eyes, now a little sunken, and with a dark line beneath them. She took no notice of the laborers as they stood aside to allow her aunt's comfortable carriage to draw up before the door. She did not observe the laughing children at an upper window of the house exactly opposite, highly excited at the vision of a huge Christmas tree which towered aloft in a cart before the door.

She was waiting for Aunt Cordelia to take her to a tea, and then to a studio, where her portrait was to be shown to a few of her friends.

Her thoughts were not on any of these things; they were far away from wintry New York. Her thoughts were centered on the new-made grave in distant Panama, in which they had buried the man she loved less than a week ago.

And it was just a year ago to-day, on the twenty-second of December, the shortest day in the year, that she had promised to be his wife. Only a year--and it seemed to her that those twelve months had made up most of her life. What were the score of years that had gone before in comparison with the richness of those happy twelve months, when life had at last seemed worth while?

As a girl she had wondered sometimes what life was for, and why men and women had been sent on this earth. What was the purpose of it all? But this question had never arisen again since she had met him; or, rather, it had been answered, once for all. Life was love; that was plain enough to her. At last her life had taken on significance, since she had yielded herself to his first kiss, and since the depth of her own pa.s.sion had been revealed to her swiftly and unexpectedly.

As she looked back at his unexpected appeal to her, and as she remembered that when he had told her his love and asked her to be his they had met only ten days before and had spoken to each other less than half a dozen times, she realized that it was her fate which had brought them together. Although she did not know it, she had been waiting for him, as he had been waiting for her. She was his mate, and he was hers, chosen out of all others--a choice foreordained through all eternity.

Their wooing was a precious secret, shared by no one else. They knew it themselves, and that was enough; and perhaps the enforced mystery made the compact all the sweeter. Ever since they had plighted their troth she had gone about with joy in her heart and with her head in a heaven of hope, hardly aware that she was touching the earth. All things were glad around her; and a secret song of happiness was forever caroling in her ears.

And yet she knew that it might be years before he could claim her, for he was only now beginning his professional career as an engineer. He had just been appointed to a good place on the ca.n.a.l. His chief was encouraging, and put responsibilities on him; he had felt sure that he would have a chance to show what he could do. And she had been almost angry how any one could ever doubt that he would rise to the head of his profession. She had told him that she would wait seven years, and twice seven years, if need be.

Aunt Cordelia was hoping that she would make a splendid match. Within a week after John Grant had said good-by she had rejected Reggie Eames, whom her aunt had been encouraging for a year or two. She liked Reggie well enough; he was a good fellow. When he had asked her if there was another suitor standing in his way, she had looked him in the face and told him that there was; and Reggie had taken it like a man, and had made a point of being nice to her ever since, whenever they met in society.

As she stood there at the window she gave a slight start and nodded pleasantly to Reggie, who had bowed as he pa.s.sed the house on the way to the Union Club. And then the avenue, with all its pa.s.sers-by, its carriages and automobiles, its shoveling laborers and its falling snow, its Christmas greens and its lighted windows, faded again from her vision, as she tried to imagine that unseen grave far away in Panama.

She wished that she could have been with him--that they could have had those last few hours together. She had had so little of him, after all.

An unexpected summons had come to him less than a week after they were engaged; and he had gone at once. Of course, he had written by every steamer, but what were letters when she was longing for the clasp of his arms? And every month, on the twenty-second, there had come a bunch of violets, with the single word "Sweetheart." He had laughed when he told her that the twenty-second of December was the shortest day in the year--which was not very promising if they expected to be "as happy as the day is long"!

The months had gone, one after another; she had not seen him again; and now she would never see him again. He had been hoping for leave of absence early in the spring; and she had been looking forward to it. He had written that he did not know how the work would get along without him, but he did know that he could not get along without her. Hereafter she would have to get along without him; and she had never longed for him so much, wanted him, needed him.

The long years to come stretched out before her vision, as she stood there in the window, lovely in her youthful beauty; and she knew that for her they would be desolate, barren, and empty years. The flame of love burned within her as fiercely as ever; but there was now nothing for it to feed on but a memory; yet the fire was hot in its ashes.

She opened her heavy furs, for she felt as if they were stifling her.

She knew that they had been admired by her friends, and even envied by some of them. Aunt Cordelia had given them to her for Christmas, insisting on her wearing them as soon as they came home, since they were so becoming.

Aunt Cordelia meant to be kind; she had always meant to be kind, ever since Elinor had come to her as an orphan of ten. Her kindness was a little exacting at times; and her narrow matrimonial ambitions Elinor could not help despising. What did it profit a girl to make a splendid match, if she did not marry the one man she was destined to love?

The furs were beautiful, and they were costly. Were they the price of her freedom? Was it due to these expensive things she did not really want that she had not been able to take John Grant for her husband a month or a week after he had asked her?