Part 11 (2/2)
Ever since I began writing this narrative I have been impatient to reach this moment, but now that I am here, I hesitate. It is no common matter to put down the secret imaginings of a woman's soul.
We all lead double lives: that which our friends and neighbours know, and that which is invisible within us. Acquaintance gives us the outward aspects of our neighbours, with friends.h.i.+p we penetrate a little way into the deeper life, but when we love there is no glen too secret for us, no upland too elusive, and we wors.h.i.+p at the altars of the eternal woods. Long before I knew Anthy well I knew something of her deeper life, something more than that which looked out of her still eyes or marked her quiet countenance. The quality of Anthy's silences were a sign: and I surprised once the look she had when walking alone in a country road. People who are shallow, or whose inner lives are hara.s.sed by forms of fear (”most men,” as Th.o.r.eau says, ”live lives of quiet desperation”) rarely care to be silent, rarely wish to be alone with themselves; but it is the sign of a n.o.ble nature that it has made terms with itself.
One of the tragedies of life, perhaps the supreme tragedy, is that we should be unable to follow those we love to their serenest heights. I once knew a man who had lived for twenty years with a woman, and never got beyond what he could see with the eyes of the flesh. The gate to the uplands of the soul long stood open to him (and stands open now no more); he pa.s.sed that way, too, but he never went in.
I do not wish to imply that Anthy was a mere dreamer. She was not, decidedly; but she had, always, her places of retirement. From a child she had friends of her own imagining. The first of them I have already referred to, a certain Richard and Rachel who came out through the wall near the stairway in her father's house, to be the confidants of a lonely child. Others came later as she grew older. I know the names of some of them, and just what they meant to Anthy at particular moments in her life. They came to her, as friends come to us in real life, as we are ripe for them.
It was some time after her father's death, when she felt very much alone, that Anthy wrote her first letter to Mr. Lincoln. Her father had made Lincoln one of the most vivid characters of her girlhood: a portrait of him hung over the mantel in the living-room, and there was another at the office. One day, almost involuntarily, she began a letter:
DEAR MR. LINCOLN: I wish you were here. My father knew you well and trusted you more than he trusted any other man. He used to say that no other American who ever lived had such an understanding of the hearts of people as you had. I think you would understand some of the troubles I am now having with the _Star_, and that you would help me to be sensible and strong. When I was in college I thought I had begun to know something, but since I have come back here I feel like a very small girl again. I don't _know_ enough to run the _Star_, and yet I cannot let it go----
[Ill.u.s.tration: _She turned around quickly--but there was no one there to see_]
Once started, she poured out her very heart to Mr. Lincoln: and having completed the letter she folded it, placed it in an envelope, on which she wrote ”Abraham Lincoln,” and going to the mantel slipped it behind Mr. Lincoln's picture. Then she turned around quickly, looked all about--but there was no one there to see. She told me long afterward that it seemed at first a little absurd to be actually writing letters to Mr. Lincoln, but that it relieved her mind and made her feel more cheerful in her loneliness. After that it became an almost daily practice for her to pour out her thoughts and difficulties to Mr.
Lincoln. And the place behind the portrait was the post office. She said that sometimes during the busiest parts of the day the thought would suddenly flash across her mind that she would tell Mr. Lincoln this or that, and it gave her a curious deep sense of comfort. Each evening she destroyed the letter she had written on the day before--destroyed them all, except those which lie here on my desk.
I am sure that this practice meant a great deal in Anthy's life. One cannot know much about any great human being, think what he would do under this or that circ.u.mstance, or what he would say if he were here, without coming to be something like him. We are strangely influenced in this world by those whom we admire most. Harriet and I know a little old maid--I have written about her elsewhere--who has thought so much about the Carpenter of Nazareth that she has come to be wonderfully like Him.
It would be impossible for any one to understand Anthy, or, indeed, the life of the _Star_, or Nort, without knowing of the deep inner forces which were influencing her. I know now why she maintained through all the earlier days, those trying days, the front of quiet courage.
And so I come to the letter open here on my desk. It is the one that Anthy wrote on the night that Nort went home with her for the first time. It is not a long letter, and was evidently written hastily at the little table I have so often seen, at which I once sat quietly for a long time, where one may easily glance up at the portrait over the mantel. It is the first letter in which she ever referred at any great length to Nort. And this is the letter:
DEAR MR. LINCOLN: Well, we have had a wonderful day! We finished the setting of the poetry, of which I told you, early in the afternoon, but the last paper was not folded until after nine o'clock this evening.
I am uncertain whether we have done wisely or not. My father would never have dreamed of anything so _different_, and Ed Smith will probably be horrified. We may have been too easily carried away by our irrepressible Vagabond, but if I had the decision to make again, I should do exactly what I have done. It's a sort of Declaration of Independence!
Our Vagabond came home with me this evening. Probably I should not have let him, but there's no harm done: he didn't know, most of the time, whether I was with him or he was alone. What a dreamer he is, anyway! We started talking about the _Star_, but no one heavenly body will long satisfy him. He soon soared away in the blue firmament, touched lightly upon a constellation or two, and was getting ready to settle the problems of the universe--when we arrived at the gate. I had some trouble to get him down to solid earth again. _He is no tramp printer_, of that I am certain. He has completely won over Uncle Newt, and his way with Fergus pa.s.seth understanding. Fergus trots around like a collie dog, rather cross, but faithful. David looks at him with that contemplative, humorous, philosophical expression he has, and isn't the least bit fooled. As for me, what _shall_ I do with him and Ed Smith and Uncle Newt all in the office together! One can see that he has some fine qualities and impractical ideas--only he needs some one to take care of him and keep him out of mischief. He deserves the comment which Miss Bacon, our Latin professor, used to make in her dry way about some of the men who called on the girls at college: ”Very interesting, very interesting, but very young.” What a spectacle he was when he came to us first!
It is a pity that a man like that, so full of ideas and enthusiasm, should be so irresponsible! He has a very fine head and really wonderful eyes!
To-morrow promises to be an interesting day. I wonder what we shall hear from our poetry!
Your friend, A. D.
I have always thought that Nort was a little abashed at the way in which he talked to Anthy on that first evening, though he never admitted it in so many words. And an incident occurred the next day that caused him to take a new att.i.tude toward her. Up to this time he had treated her just like any other member of the staff, with easy, off-hand freedom. One of the visitors inquired:
”May I see the proprietor of the _Star_?”
Fergus replied: ”Miss Doane will be here in a few minutes.”
It struck Nort all in a heap. She _was_ the proprietor, and, therefore, his employer. It gave him a curious, and rather unpleasant, twinge inside somewhere; yes, and it hurt a little, but wound up by being irresistibly funny. She was his ”boss,” this girl, she actually paid him his wages. She could discharge him, too, by George! He stopped suddenly and went off into a wild shout of laughter. Fergus took his pipe out of his mouth, held it a moment while he looked Nort over, and then, slowly nodding his head but saying never a word, put it back again.
Now, if there was anything in this world that irked the Nort of those days it was the feeling of restraint, of being reined in. All that day, in spite of varied excitements which followed the publication of the poetry, Nort was overcome from time to time by the thought of Anthy as his ”boss,” and, in spite of all he could do, there were other feelings, curious, inexplicable feelings, mingled with the amus.e.m.e.nt he felt.
It was inevitable that Nort should somehow act upon the impulse of this new thought. His eager mind played with it, suggesting a thousand amusing plans. Here was a situation that had possibilities.
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