Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Yes. What do we do then?”

  “I’ll tell you when we come to it.” But when that stage of his invention was reached, and Laura had placed the inscribed sheets in his hand, his interest had waned, it appeared. Also, his condition had improved.

  “Let’s quit. I thought this game would be more exciting,” he said, sitting up. “I guess,” he added with too much modesty, “I’m not very good at inventing games. I b’lieve I’ll go out to the barn; I think the fresh air — —”

  “Do you feel well enough to go out?” she asked. “You do seem to be all right, though.”

  “Yes, I’m a lot better, I think.” He limped to the door. “The fresh air will be the best thing for me.”

  She did not notice that he carelessly retained her contributions to the game, and he reached his studio with them in his hand. Hedrick had entered the ‘teens and he was a reader: things in his head might have dismayed a Borgia.

  No remotest glimpse entered that head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career — it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before the thing was lived down. Now he had the means, as he believed, to even the score with both sisters at a stroke. To him it was turning a tremendous and properly scathing joke upon them. He did not hesitate.

  * * *

  That evening, as Richard Lindley sat at dinner with his mother, Joe Varden temporarily abandoned his attendance at the table to answer the front doorbell. Upon his return, he remarked:

  “Messenger-boy mus’ been in big hurry. Wouldn’ wait till I git to door.”

  “What was it?” asked Richard.

  “Boy with package. Least, I reckon it were a boy. Call’ back from the front walk, say he couldn’ wait. Say he lef’ package in vestibule.”

  “What sort of a package?”

  “Middle-size kind o’ big package.”

  “Why don’t you see what it is, Richard?” Mrs. Lindley asked of her son. “Bring it to the table, Joe.”

  When it was brought, Richard looked at the superscription with surprise. The wrapper was of heavy brown paper, and upon it a sheet of white notepaper had been pasted, with the address:

  “Richard Lindley, Esq.,

  1218 Corliss Street.”

  “It’s from Laura Madison,” he said, staring at this writing. “What in the world would Laura be sending me?”

  “You might possibly learn by opening it,” suggested his mother. “I’ve seen men puzzle over the outside of things quite as often as women. Laura Madison is a nice girl.” She never volunteered similar praise of Laura Madison’s sister. Mrs. Lindley had submitted to her son’s plans concerning Cora, lately confided; but her submission lacked resignation.

  “It’s a book,” said Richard, even more puzzled, as he took the ledger from its wrappings. “Two little torn places at the edge of the covers. Looks as if it had once had clasps — —”

  “Perhaps it’s the Madison family album,” Mrs. Lindley suggested. “Pictures of Cora since infancy. I imagine she’s had plenty taken.”

  “No.” He opened the book and glanced at the pages covered in Laura’s clear, readable hand. “No, it’s about half full of writing. Laura must have turned literary.” He read a line or two, frowning mildly. “My soul! I believe it’s a novel! She must think I’m a critic — to want me to read it.” Smiling at the idea, he closed the ledger. “I’ll take it upstairs to my hang-out after dinner, and see if Laura’s literary manner has my august approval. Who in the world would ever have thought she’d decide to set up for a writer?”

  “I imagine she might have something to write worth reading,” said his mother. “I’ve always thought she was an interesting-looking girl.”

  “Yes, she is. She dances well, too.”

  “Of course,” continued Mrs. Lindley, thoughtfully, “she seldom says anything interesting, but that may be because she so seldom has a chance to say anything at all.”

  Richard refused to perceive this allusion. “Curious that Laura should have sent it to me,” he said. “She’s never seemed interested in my opinion about anything. I don’t recall her ever speaking to me on any subject whatever — except one.”

  He returned his attention to his plate, but his mother did not appear to agree with him that the topic was exhausted.

  “`Except one’?” she repeated, after waiting for some time.

  “Yes,” he replied, in his habitual preoccupied and casual tone. “Or perhaps two. Not more than two, I should say — and in a way you’d call that only one, of course. Bread, Joe.”

  “What two, Richard?”

  “Cora,” he said, with gentle simplicity, “and me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MRS. LINDLEY HAD arranged for her son a small apartment on the second floor, and it was in his own library and smoking-room that Richard, comfortable in a leather-chair by a reading-lamp, after dinner, opened Laura’s ledger.

  The first page displayed no more than a date now eighteen months past, and the line:

  “Love came to me to-day.”

  The next page was dated the next day, and, beneath, he read:

  “That was all I could write, yesterday. I think I was too excited to write. Something seemed to be singing in my breast. I couldn’t think in sentences — not even in words. How queer it is that I had decided to keep a diary, and bound this book for it, and now the first thing I have written in it was that! It will not be a diary. It shall be your book. I shall keep it sacred to You and write to You in it. How strange it will be if the day ever comes when I shall show it to You! If it should, you would not laugh at it, for of course the day couldn’t come unless you understood. I cannot think it will ever come — that day! But maybe —— No, I mustn’t let myself hope too much that it will, because if I got to hoping too much, and you didn’t like me, it would hurt too much. People who expect nothing are never disappointed — I must keep that in mind. Yet every girl has a right to hope for her own man to come for her some time, hasn’t she? It’s not easy to discipline the wanting to hope — since yesterday!

  “I think I must always have thought a great deal about you without knowing it. We really know so little what we think: our minds are going on all the time and we hardly notice them. It is like a queer sort of factory — the owner only looks in once in a while and most of the time hasn’t any idea what sort of goods his spindles are turning out.

  “I saw You yesterday! It seems to me the strangest thing in the world. I’ve seen you by chance, probably two or three times a month nearly all my life, though you so seldom come here to call. And this time wasn’t different from dozens of other times — you were just standing on the corner by the Richfield, waiting for a car. The only possible difference is that you had been out of town for several months — Cora said so this morning — and how ridiculous it seems now, didn’t even know it! I hadn’t noticed it — not with the top part of my mind, but perhaps the deep part that does the real thinking had noticed it and had mourned your absence and was so glad to see you again that it made the top part suddenly see the wonderful truth!”

  Lindley set down the ledger to relight his cigar. It struck him that Laura had been writing “very odd Stuff,” but interesting; and certainly it was not a story. Vaguely he recalled Marie Bashkirtseff: hadn’t she done something like this? He resumed the reading:

  “You turned and spoke to me in that lovely, cordial, absent-minded way of yours — though I’d never thought (with the top part) what a lovely way it was; and for a moment I only noticed how nice you looked in a light gray suit, because I’d only seen you in black for so long, while you’d been in mourning for your brother.”

  Richard, disturbed by an incredible idea, read these last words over and then dismissed the notion as nonsense.

  “. . . While you’d been in mourning for your brother — and it struck me that light
gray was becoming to you. Then such a queer thing happened: I felt the great kindness of your eyes. I thought they were full of — the only word that seems to express it at all is charity — and they had a sweet, faraway look, too, and I’ve always thought that a look of wistful kindness was the loveliest look in the world — and you had it, and I saw it and then suddenly, as you held your hat in your hand, the sunshine on your hair seemed brighter than any sunshine I had ever seen — and I began to tremble all over. I didn’t understand what was the matter with me or what had made me afraid with you not of you — all at once, but I was so hopelessly rattled that instead of waiting for the car, as I’d just told you I meant to, I said I’d decided to walk, and got away — without any breath left to breathe with! I couldn’t have gotten on the car with you — and I couldn’t have spoken another word.

  “And as I walked home, trembling all the way, I saw that strange, dazzling sunshine on your hair, and the wistful, kind look in your eyes — you seemed not to have taken the car but to have come with me — and I was uplifted and exalted oh, so strangely — oh, how the world was changing for me! And when I got near home, I began to walk faster, and on the front path I broke into a run and rushed in the house to the piano — and it was as if my fingers were thirsty for the keys! Then I saw that I was playing to you and knew that I loved you.

  “I love you!

  “How different everything is now from everything before. Music means what it never did: Life has leaped into blossom for me. Everywhere there is colour and radiance that I had never seen — the air is full of perfume. Dear, the sunshine that fell upon your head has spread over the world!

  “I understand, as I never understood, that the world — so dazzling to me now — was made for love and is meaningless without it. The years until yesterday are gray — no, not gray, because that was the colour You were wearing — not gray, because that is a beautiful colour. The empty years until yesterday had no colour at all. Yes, the world has meaning only through loving, and without meaning there is no real life. We live only by loving, and now that this gift of life has come to me I love all the world. I feel that I must be so kind, kind, kind to everybody! Such an odd thing struck me as my greatest wish. When I was little, I remember grandmother telling me how, when she was a child in pioneer days, the women made the men’s clothes — homespun — and how a handsome young Circuit Rider, who was a bachelor, seemed to her the most beautifully dressed man she had ever seen. The women of the different churches made his clothes, as they did their husbands’ and brothers.’ you see — only better! It came into my head that that would be the divinest happiness that I could know — to sew for you! If you and I lived in those old, old times — you look as if you belonged to them, you know, dear — and You were the young minister riding into the settlement on a big bay horse — and all the girls at the window, of course! — and I sewing away at the homespun for you! — I think all the angels of heaven would be choiring in my heart — and what thick, warm clothes I’d make you for winter! Perhaps in heaven they’ll let some of the women sew for the men they love — I wonder!

  “I hear Cora’s voice from downstairs as I write. She’s often so angry with Ray, poor girl. It does not seem to me that she and Ray really belong to each other, though they say so often that they do.”

  Richard having read thus far with a growing, vague uneasiness, looked up, frowning. He hoped Laura had no Marie Bashkirtseff idea of publishing this manuscript. It was too intimate, he thought, even if the names in it were to be disguised.

  . . . “Though they say so often that they do. I think Ray is in love with her, but it can’t be like this. What he feels must be something wholly different — there is violence and wildness in it. And they are bitter with each other so often — always `getting even’ for something. He does care — he is frantically `in love’ with her, undoubtedly, but so insanely jealous. I suppose all jealousy is insane. But love is the only sanity. How can what is insane be part of it? I could not be jealous of You. I owe life to you — I have never lived till now.”

  The next writing was two days later:

  . . . . “To-day as I passed your house with Cora, I kept looking at the big front door at which you go in and out so often — your door! I never knew that just a door could look so beautiful! And unconsciously I kept my eyes on it, as we walked on, turning my head and looking and looking back at it, till Cora suddenly burst out laughing, and said: `Well, Laura!’ And I came to myself — and found her looking at me. It was like getting back after a journey, and for a second I was a little dazed, and Cora kept on laughing at me, and I felt myself getting red. I made some silly excuse about thinking your house had been repainted — and she laughed louder than ever. I was afraid then that she understood — I wonder if she could have? I hope not, though I love her so much I don’t know why I would rather she didn’t know, unless it is just my feeling about it. It is a guardian feeling — that I must keep for myself, the music of these angels singing in my heart — singing of You. I hope she did not understand — and I so fear she did. Why should I be so afraid?” . . .

  . . . . “Two days since I have talked to You in your book after Cora caught me staring at your door and laughed at me — and ten minutes ago I was sitting beside the actual You on the porch! I am trembling yet. It was the first time you’d come for months and months; and yet you had the air of thinking it rather a pleasant thing to do as you came up the steps! And a dizzy feeling came over me, because I wondered if it was seeing me on the street that day that put it into your head to come. It seemed too much happiness — and risking too much — to let myself believe it, but I couldn’t help just wondering. I began to tremble as I saw you coming up our side of the street in the moonlight — and when you turned in here I was all panic — I nearly ran into the house. I don’t know how I found voice to greet you. I didn’t seem to have any breath left at all. I was so relieved when Cora took a chair between us and began to talk to you, because I’m sure I couldn’t have. She and poor Ray had been having one of their quarrels and she was punishing him. Poor boy, he seemed so miserable — though he tried to talk to me — about politics, I think, though I’m not sure, because I couldn’t listen much better than either of us could talk. I could only hear Your voice — such a rich, quiet voice, and it has a sound like the look you have — friendly and faraway and wistful. I have thought and thought about what it is that makes you look wistful. You have less to wish for than anybody else in the world because you have Yourself. So why are you wistful? I think it’s just because you are!

  “I heard Cora asking you why you hadn’t come to see us for so long, and then she said: `Is it because you dislike me? You look at me, sometimes, as if you dislike me!’ And I wished she hadn’t said it. I had a feeling you wouldn’t like that `personal’ way of talking that she enjoys — and that — oh, it didn’t seem to be in keeping with the dignity of You! And I love Cora so much I wanted her to be finer — with You. I wanted her to understand you better than to play those little charming tricks at you. You are so good, so high, that if she could make a real friend of you I think it would be the best thing for her that could happen. She’s never had a man-friend. Perhaps she was trying to make one of you and hasn’t any other way to go about it. She can be so really sweet, I wanted you to see that side of her.

  “Afterwhile, when Ray couldn’t bear it any longer to talk to me, and in his desperation brazenly took Cora to the other end of the porch almost by force, and I was left, in a way, alone with you what did you think of me? I was tongue-tied! Oh, oh, oh! You were quiet — but I was dumb! My heart wasn’t dumb — it hammered! All the time I kept saying to myself such a jumble of things. And into the jumble would come such a rapture that You were there — it was like a paean of happiness — a chanting of the glory of having You near me — I was mixed up! I could play all those confused things, but writing them doesn’t tell it. Writing them would only be like this: `He’s here, he’s here! Speak, you little fool! He’s here, he’s here!
He’s sitting beside you! speak, idiot, or he’ll never come back! He’s here, he’s beside you you could put out your hand and touch him! Are you dead, that you can’t speak? He’s here, he’s here, he’s here!’

  “Ah, some day I shall be able to talk to you — but not till I get more used to this inner song. It seems to will that nothing else shall come from my lips till it does!

  “In spite of my silence — my outward woodenness — you said, as you went away, that you would come again! You said `soon’! I could only nod but Cora called from the other end of the porch and asked: `How soon?’ Oh, I bless her for it, because you said, `Day after to-morrow.’ Day after tomorrow! Day after to-morrow! Day after tomorrow!

  . . . . “Twenty-one hours since I wrote — no, sang — `Day after to-morrow!’ And now it is `To-morrow!’ Oh, the slow, golden day that this has been! I could not stay in the house — I walked — no, I winged! I was in the open country before I knew it — with You! For You are in everything. I never knew the sky was blue, before. Until now I just thought it was the sky. The whitest clouds I ever saw sailed over that blue, and I stood upon the prow of each in turn, then leaped in and swam to the next and sailed with it! Oh, the beautiful sky, and kind, green woods and blessed, long, white, dusty country road! Never in my life shall I forget that walk — this day in the open with my love — You! To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow!”

  The next writing in Laura’s book was dated more than two months later:

  . . . . “I have decided to write again in this book. I have thought it all out carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that it can do no harm and may help me to be steady and sensible. It is the thought, not its expression, that is guilty, but I do not believe that my thoughts are guilty: I believe that they are good. I know that I wish only good. I have read that when people suffer very much the best thing is for them to cry. And so I’ll let myself write out my feelings — and perhaps get rid of some of the silly self-pity I’m foolish enough to feel, instead of going about choked up with it. How queer it is that even when we keep our thoughts respectable we can’t help having absurd feelings like self-pity, even though we know how rotten stupid they are! Yes, I’ll let it all out here, and then, some day, when I’ve cured myself all whole again, I’ll burn this poor, silly old book. And if I’m not cured before the wedding, I’ll burn it then, anyhow.