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 pæan 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.
“How funny little girls are!
From the time they’re little bits of things
they talk about marriage whom they are going
to marry, what sort of person it will be. I think
Cora and I began when she was about five and I not
seven. And as girls grow up, I don’t believe
there was ever one who genuinely expected to be an
old maid. The most unattractive young girls discuss
and plan and expect marriage just as much as the prettier
and gayer ones. The only way we can find out
that men don’t want to marry us is by their
not asking us. We don’t see ourselves very
well, and I honestly believe we all think way
deep down that we’re pretty attractive.
At least, every girl has the idea, sometimes, that
if men only saw the whole truth they’d think
her as nice as any other girl, and really nicer than
most others. But I don’t believe I have
any hallucinations of that sort about myself left.
I can’t imagine now any
man seeing anything in me that would make him care
for me. I can’t see anything about me to
care for, myself. Sometimes I think maybe I could
make a man get excited about me if I could take a
startlingly personal tone with him from the beginning,
making him wonder all sorts of you-and-I perhapses but
I couldn’t do it very well probably oh,
I couldn’t make myself do it if I could do it
well! And I shouldn’t think it would have
much effect except upon very inexperienced men yet
it does! Now, I wonder if this is a streak of
sourness coming out; I don’t feel bitter I’m
just thinking honestly, I’m sure.
“Well, here I am facing it:
all through my later childhood, and all through my
girlhood, I believe what really occupied me most with
the thought of it underlying all things else, though
often buried very deep was the prospect
of my marriage. I regarded it as a certainty:
I would grow up, fall in love, get engaged, and be
married of course! So I grew up and
fell in love with You but it stops there,
and I must learn how to be an Old Maid and not let
anybody see that I mind it. I know this is the
hardest part of it, the beginning: it will get
easier by-and-by, of course. If I can just manage
this part of it, it’s bound not to hurt so much
later on.
“Yes, I grew up and fell in
love with You for you will always be You.
I’ll never, never get over that, my dear!
You’ll never, never know it; but I shall love
You always till I die, and if I’m still Me after
that, I shall keep right on loving you then, of course.
You see, I didn’t fall in love with you just
to have you for myself. I fell in love with You!
And that can never bother you at all nor ever be a
shame to me that I love unsought, because you won’t
know, and because it’s just an ocean of good-will,
and every beat of my heart sends a new great wave
of it toward you and Cora. I shall find happiness,
I believe, in service I am sure there will
be times when I can serve you both. I love you
both and I can serve her for You and you for her.
This isn’t a hysterical mood, or a fit of `exaltation’:
I have thought it all out and I know that I can live
up to it. You are the best thing that can ever
come into her life, and everything I can do shall be
to keep you there. I must be very, very careful
with her, for talk and advice do not influence her
much. You love her she has accepted
you, and it is beautiful for you both. It must
be kept beautiful. It has all become so clear
to me: You are just what she has always needed,
and if by any mischance she lost you I do not know
what would become ”
“Good God!” cried Richard.
He sprang to his feet, and the heavy book fell with
a muffled crash upon the floor, sprawling open upon
its face, its leaves in disorder. He moved away
from it, staring at it in incredulous dismay.
But he knew.