The Jessica Letters Part 8

Then, as often when this mood comes upon me, I went out to walk under the hard flaring lights and amid the streaming crowds of Broadway, in order to bring back the sense of mortal illusion and unite myself once more to human existence. The people were pouring from the theatres, and I sought the densest throng. But still I could not awaken in myself the illusion of life. And then suddenly, without warning, there in the noisy brawl of the street, I beheld you standing before me, looking into my face and smiling.

You wore a burning Southern rose upon your breast and were more wondrously and delicately fair than the dream of poets. And there was a smile upon your lips as if to say: "Dear Philip, thou hast put away the pleasures and loveliness of this world as they had been a snaring web of illusion; yet I do but look upon thee, and forthwith thou art pierced with love and know that in this scorned desire of beauty dwells the great reality." I reached out my hand to touch the rose against your heart, but the vision was gone, and all about me was only the tumultuous mockery of the street.

Sweetheart, you have smitten me with remorse. Shall I take from you only happiness, and give in return only this spectral dread? Ah, you shall learn that I am very real, very earthly, capable of love and tenderness and daily duties and quiet human sympathies! I told you of the dualism into which my life, into which, indeed, every man's life, is cast; why will you persist in clinging to that part which is cold and inhuman instead of seizing upon that which is warm and very near by? I would not take you with me into those bleak ways where always there is fear lest our personality be swallowed up in the dark impersonal abyss. I would love you as a man loves a woman and cleaves to her. Nay, more, I perceive dimly in that love a strange reconcilement wherein the dual forces of my nature shall be made one, wherein truth and beauty shall blend together in a kiss, and there shall be no more seeking in obscurity, but only peace.

When the vision faded from me on Broadway, I turned back to my home, and there, before the dawn came, tried to write out in words one thought of the many that thronged upon me. I have almost forgotten the art of making rhymes if ever I knew it.

A RECONCILIATION

All beauteous things the world's allurement knows: Starred Venus, when she droops on Tyrian couch While Evening draws her dusky curtains close, Or pearled from morning bath she seems to crouch;

In bleak November one strayed violet; The rathe spring-beauty scattered wide like snow; The opal in a cirque of diamonds set; Rare silken gowns that rustle as they flow;

The dumb thrush brooding in her lilac hedge; The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight; A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge; The sunrise flaming on an Alpine height;--

All these I've seen, yet never learned, till now In thy sweet smiling, to accord my vow Austere of truth with beauty's charmed delight.

x.x.xII

JESSICA TO PHILIP

WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIX

MY DEAR PHILIP:

You are a magician rather than a lover. And no lover, I think, was ever so subtle at reasoning. At least you do not act the part as I supposed it was played. A lover, I thought, was one who stood at the door of a woman's heart and serenaded till she crept out upon her little balcony of sighs and kissed her hand to him, or shed a tokening bloom upon his upturned countenance. So far as I could imagine, he was prehistoric in the simplicity of his methods. Two things I never suspected: that love is the kind of romantic exegesis you represent it to be, or that every lover, psychically, is a sort of twin phenomenon--that he is _two_ men instead of one! And after he is married, I suppose he will be a domestic _trinity_, but with his G.o.dhead concerned with the affairs of the world at large. I am awed by the revelation; still, it excuses much in my conduct that I had before felt was reprehensible; for I have scarcely faced my own reflection in the gla.s.s since my ignominious capitulation. Something within charged treachery against poor Jessica. But if there are _two_ of you, and only _one_ of me, that fact gives a new and honourable complexion to my part in the transaction.

However, the way you have multiplied yourself and doubled forces upon me may be good masculine tactics, but I am sure it is an unparliamentary advantage you have taken. For you have not only posed as a lover, but with the cunning words of a logician you prove what seemed wrong to be really a sublime right; and what _I_ charged as selfishness, _you_ call "a prayer."

I am confused by your argument; it seems incontestable. But do you know, my Philip, that a woman's convictions are never reached by a mere argument? For they are hidden in her heart, not in her little bias-fold mind. And so, in spite of your sweet reasoning with me, and the a.s.sumption you make of omniscience concerning me, my convictions remain. Only, now, I do not know whether I cherish them against you or against the G.o.d who made me simple and you double.

But granting all you say to be true, that every man has a personal life and at the same time a universal life energy as well, that there is in him a little domestic fortress of love, and a battle power of life apart,--admitting all this, how do you reconcile justice with the fact that you frankly offer only half of your duality for all of Jessica? Have you never suspected that she also has fair kingdoms of thought apart from your science of her? My Prophet, it is you who have discovered them to me!

Love has added a sweet Canaan to my little hemisphere. I have heard invisible birds singing, I have trysted with spirits of the air since I knew you. And I have felt the pangs of a consciousness in me so new and so tender, that I am no longer merely the maid you know, but, dear Master, I am some one else, near and kin to you as life and spirit are kin! What is this strange white s.p.a.ce in my soul that love has made, so real, yet so holy that I dare not myself lift the veil of consciousness before it? And all I know is that I shall meet you there finally heart to heart!--Philip, kiss me! For I am a frightened white-winged stranger in my own new heavens and new earth. I am no longer as you imagine, simply one, but I have a foreign power of life and death in me, and the fact terrifies me.

You declare that there is a difference and a distance between a man's love and a man's mind which account for his dual nature. There is also an intelligence of the heart, more astute, more vital, which divides woman's nature also between the abandon of love and the resentment of understanding. We know, and we do not know, and we _feel_. What we know is of little consequence, what we feel is written upon the faces of each succeeding generation. But what we do _not_ know const.i.tutes that element of mystery in us that makes us also dual. For we feel and suspect further than we can understand. Thus, your faculty for projecting yourself in spirit further than I can follow, excites in me a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment. I am widowed by the loss of the higher half of your ent.i.ty. Can you not see, Philip, it is not your views I combat, your theory about humanitarianism and all that? They are but the geometrical figures of thought in your mind; and I have no wish to disturb your "philosophic proposition." The point is, I love that in you more than I love the lover. And the pa.s.sion with which you cling to it as something apart from our relations.h.i.+p offends me, excites forebodings. Tell me, are "philosophic propositions" alien to love? And after all do you think you are the only one who may claim them? This is a secret,--I have a little diagram of feminine wisdom hid away from you somewhere, founded upon the wit of love. And we shall see which lasts the longer, your proposition or my understanding!

But I must not forget to speak of a matter much more practical just now.

You mentioned the letter that you sent to father,--"The contents you might imagine even if he did not show it to you." Well, he did not show it to me, but from the effect it produced upon him I am obliged to infer that it contained the most iniquitous blasphemies. Philip, I do hope you are not subject to fits of "righteous indignation!" I could welcome a season of secular rage in a man as I could a fierce wind in sultry weather, but this kind of fury that cloaks itself in the guise of outraged piety is very trying. No sooner did father read your letter than he strode in upon me like a grey-bearded firebrand. The offending letter was crushed in his hand, and his gla.s.ses were akimbo on his nose, the way they always are when he is perturbed. I spare you the details, but from the nature of his questions you might have thought he was examining you through me for a licence to preach. I did not try to deceive him in regard to your views, but my own impression of them is so nebulous that the very vagueness of my replies increased his alarm. Nor did I protest at the abuse he heaped upon your absent head. For I know how wickedly and unscrupulously you acted in the felony of my love, and there was a certain humorous satisfaction in hearing father give a "philosophic proposition" to your criminality. My only prayer was that he might not ask me if I loved you. Philip, I would rather live on bread and water a week than confess it to any living man besides yourself. But father has dwelt too long outside the realm of romance to ask that very natural question. Finally I protested feebly: "But how can it vitally affect a woman's happiness whether or not her husband accepts the doctrine of repentance just as you do? Can he not love and cherish his wife even if he does question the veracity of Jonah's whaling experience?" But when I looked up and saw his face, I was ashamed, and ran and kissed him, and straightened his gla.s.ses so that he could see me with both eyes. But, dear Heart, his eyes were too full of tears to fire upon me. And as I sat there upon the arm of his chair, twisting his sacred beard, this is what he told me. When my mother died, he said, and left me a little puckered pink mite in his arms, he had solemnly dedicated me to G.o.d. And he declared, moreover, that he could not be faithless to his vow by giving me in marriage to an infidel. Being an infidel, Philip, is much worse than being a plain heathen; an infidel is a heathen raised to the sixteenth power of iniquity! Now I rarely quote Scripture, for I have too much guile in me to justify the liberty, but I could not refrain from mentioning Abraham's dilemma, it seemed so appropriate to the occasion,--how when he was about to offer up Isaac, he saw a little he-goat suggestively nearby fastened among the thorns; and I suggested that instead of sacrificing me he should take the widow Smith's little Johnnie, who shows even at this early Sabbath-school age a pharisaical apt.i.tude for piety. I pointed out that in the sight of heaven one soul is as worthy, as acceptable, as another. Besides, did not Isaac become a righteous man, even if he was not offered up and did live in this world of temptations an unconscionably long time? But father was not to be reasoned with or comforted. And yesterday, Sunday, he preached impressively from the text, "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?

"Of course _you_ are the heathen, Philip, and of course _I_ am the "vain thing." But that is not father's idea. The vain thing you imagine is that he will give his consent to our marriage! Well, you may settle it between you! All I know is that now I am predestined, but not in the dedicated deaconess direction!

JESSICA, THE BRAVE.

P.S.--What do you think, _our_ little forest is for sale. And oh, Philip, if some vandal buys my dear trees and cuts them down, my very life will die of grief! They are my brothers. And if a man built a house there and asked me to marry him, I would, if he were as ugly as old Jeremiah! (I suppose all the prophets were like this, their writings produce that impression!) And my father would consent, even if the bridegroom were a heathen instead of a prophet. For he would be obliged to attend religious services at Morningtown, and father does not believe any man can long remain under the drippings of his sanctuary without being forgiven. And I do not either. G.o.d would have mercy upon him somehow!

x.x.xIII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

Your letter, dearest Jessica, and your father's came by the same post, and the sensation they gave me was as if some moral confusion had befallen the elements and summer were mingled with winter in the same sky. Not that his letter was anything but kind and dignified, but it seemed to remove you and your life so far away from me. I confess I had some fears that he might insist on the little we have seen or, as the world judges, know of each other; it had not occurred to me that my "infidelity" would block my path to happiness--so little do the people I commonly meet reck of that matter. I have been accusing the world all along of indifference to the spirit and to theology, and now, by a sort of poetical irony, I am blocked in my progress toward happiness by meeting one who adheres to an old-world belief in these things. The burden of his reply was in these words: "I cannot conceive that my daughter should give her heart to a man who was not strong in the faith in which she has herself been nurtured. I would gladly be otherwise convinced, but from all I can learn you are of those who trust rather in the pride of intellect than in the humility of Christian faith. "Why, my fair Jesuit, have you concealed your love as well as this! I think no one could live in the same house with me without hearing the bird that sings in my breast. You must tell your father the whole truth.

Meanwhile I will write to him as best I can, but the real debate I must leave until I come to Morningtown. And how shall I persuade him that I have faith or that my faith is in any way an equivalent for his belief in the Christian dogma? Will he listen to me if I say that a man may believe the whole catechism and yet have no faith? Mankind, as I regard them, are divided into two pretty distinct cla.s.ses: those to whom the visible world is real and the invisible world unreal or at best a shadow of the visible, and those to whom this visible realm with all its life is mere illusion whereas the spirit alone is the eternal reality. Faith is just this perception of the illusion enwrapping all these phenomena that to those without faith seem so real; faith is the voluntary turning away of the spirit from this illusion toward the infinite reality. It is because I find among the men of to-day no perception of this illusion that I deny the existence of faith in the world. It is because men have utterly lost the sense of this illusion that religion has descended into this Simony of the humanitarians. How shall I tell your father this? I think we should do better to discuss household economy than religion.

Just now I am forcibly detained in New York by a number of petty duties, but in a few days I shall set forth on my second pilgrimage to Morningtown. Shall I have any wit to persuade your father that my "infidelity" is not the unpardonable sin, or that my love for you is sufficient to cover even that sin and a host of others? And how will Jessica meet me? She will not look now, I trust, for that cloven hoof which I never had and those a.s.s's ears which, alas! I did flourish so portentously. Why, Jessica, according to your own words you will have a strange double lover to greet, and I think it would be mathematically correct if you gave two kisses in return for every one. It will be a new rendering of Catullus's _Da Basia_.

And so your little forest is for sale. Could I buy that faerie land, sweetheart, and build therein a hidden house and over its threshold carry a sweet bride! Ah, you have rewritten the sacred story of Eden. Not for the love of woman should I be driven from the happy garden, but brought by woman's grace from the desert into the circle of perfect Paradise.

Together we should hearken to the singing of birds; together, we should bend over the bruised flowers and look up into the green majesty of the trees; and sometimes, it might be, as we walked together hand in hand in the cool of the evening,--sometimes, it might be, we should hear the voice of our own happiness speaking to us from the shadows and deem that it was G.o.d. May angels and ministers of grace enfold you in their mercy for this dream of rapture you have given me! It shall feed my imagination in dreams until I come to you and learn in your arms the more "sober certainty of waking bliss."

Yet, withal, would you be willing to forego your "brothers," as you call the trees, and this vision of hidden peace? Would it pain you to leave them and come with me into this great solitude of people which we call New York? How in that idyllic retreat should I keep my heart and mind on the stern purpose I have set before me? There, indeed, the world and all the concerns of mankind would sink so far from my care, would fade into the mist of such utter illusion, that I know not how I could write with seriousness about them. I need not the happiness of love's isolation, but the rude contact of affairs, yet with love's encouragement, to hold me within practical ideas. So it seems to me now, but I would not mar the beauty of your life. Of this and many more things we will talk together when I come.

I have given up my old comfortable quarters in the----and have taken a couple of cheap rooms here at----. For some months I shall not be writing for money and I wished not to eat unnecessarily into my small savings. One room is a mere closet where I sleep, the other is pretty large, but still crowded immoderately with my books. I am hard at work on a book I have had in mind for several years,--the history and significance of humanitarianism. I need not tell you what the gist of that _magnum opus_ is to be, and, dear sceptic, trust me it will be put into such a form as to stir up a pother whether with or without ultimate results. I have learned enough from the despised trade of journalism to manage that. When I return from Morningtown I shall give myself up utterly to composition.

Two or three months ought to suffice for the work, for the material is already well in hand; and at the end of that time my pen shall turn to making money again. I have no anxiety about gaining a modest income--and can you imagine what that means to you and me?

I had thought to send our goblin boy into the country as you bade me, but for a while I am keeping him here. He sleeps in a cot beside me, and in the day, when not at school or crouching in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone, he sits in a great chair by the window. Often when I look up from my book his eyes are fixed on me with a kind of mute appealing wonder. Somehow I could not let him go. He seems a link between us in our separation; and while my thoughts are set upon rebuking the errors of humanitarianism it will be well to have this object of human pity before my eyes.

I wonder if you comprehend what a strange wistful letter you have written.

You are no longer merely the maid I knew, and my ways of thought excite in you a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment--so you say. Once more, dear girl, we will talk of all this when I come. Until that happy day, wait, and fortify your love with trust.

x.x.xIV

JESSICA TO PHILIP

I have a number of terms, my Philip, with which I might begin this letter, but I have not yet the courage to call you by such dear names beyond the whispering gallery of my own heart.

And you wonder how I have concealed my romantic deflections from father.

Indeed, I am sure he has noticed a heavenly-mindedness in me for some time past; but out of the sanct.i.ty of his own heart he probably attributed this improvement to the chastening effects of a particularly gloomy course of religious reading that he has insisted upon my undertaking this winter.

And, after all, father is not so far wrong as to my spiritual state, for when love becomes a woman's vocation, she carries blessings in her eyes and all her moods tiptoe reverently like young novices who follow one another down a cathedral aisle. This life of the heart becomes her piety, I think, and the highest form of religion of which she is capable. Jessica begins to magnify herself, you see! A kingdom of heaven has been set up within me, dear creator, and naturally I feel this extension of my boundaries.

But do not expect me to tell father "the whole truth,"--how you first fascinated me with editorial magnanimity, then baited me with compliments, and later with deepest confidences, and finally slipped into my Arcadia disguised as a philosopher, but, when you had got entire possession, declared yourself a victorious lover! I wonder that you can contemplate the record you have made in this matter without blus.h.i.+ng!

As for your "infidelity," and what you call your "faith," I think father will denounce them both as blasphemous. Religion to father is something more than "the poetry he believes in." It has the definition of experience, miracles, and a whole body of spiritual phenomena quite as real to him as your upper-chamber existence is to you. Only father has this advantage of you, he has a real Divinity, with all the necessary attributes of a man's G.o.d. His "voice of happiness" speaks to him from the stars, and he does not call it an echo, as you do, of a fair voice within your own heart. Father gets his salvation from the outside of his warring elements; you speak to your own seas, "Peace be still!" As for me, between you, I stand winking at Heaven; and I say: "It is evident that neither of them understands this mystery of life; I will not try to comprehend. I will be good when I can, and diplomatic when I must, and leave the rest to heaven and earth and nature." Meanwhile, I advise you not to quote your pagan authorities to father. If the very worst comes, you may say that you have almost scriptural proof of my affections,--and mind you say affections, father could not bear the romantic inflection of such a term as love. It sounds too secular, carnal, to him.

You ask me if I will consent to abandon such a life as our forest offers and come with you into "this great solitude of people" which you call New York. Philip, when a man holds a starling in his hand he does not ask the bird whether it will stay here or wing yonder, but he carries it with him where he will; and the starling sings, no less in one place than in another, because its nature is to sing. But, I think, dear Master, the motive which prompts the song in the cage is not the same as the impulse to sing in the forest. So it is with me. If we live here among the trees, where their green waves make a summer sea high in the heavens above our heads, I could be as content as any bird is. But if you make our home in the city, or in the midst of a desert for that matter, I could not withhold one thought from your happiness, for love has transformed me, adapted life itself to a new purpose. I have been "called," and I have no will to resist, because my heart tells me there is goodness in the purpose, a little necklace of womanly virtues for me. When I think of pain, and sorrow, my eyes are holden, I can see only the fair form of love sanctified, and I can hear only your voice calling me to fulfil a destiny which you yourself do not understand. And as all these things approach, beloved, father's G.o.d is more to me than your fine illusion. I wish for guardian angels, I feel the need of a Virgin Mary and of all the lady mothers in heaven to bless me.

But I have been telling you only of my inner life. Outwardly I shall ever be capable of the most heathen manifestations. For instance, loving as I do, how do you account for this personal animosity I feel toward you, almost a madness of fear at the thought of your approaching visit? There is something that has never been finished in this affair of our hearts.

Perhaps it is that really you have never kissed me. Well, I find it as easy to write of kisses as to review a sentimental romance, but actually there is some instinct in me stronger than mind against the fact, do you understand? Philip, you have no idea of the depths of feminine treachery!

Did I ever intimate a willingness to do such a thing? I do not say that I _wish_ to kiss another, but I affirm that it would be easier for me to kiss my father's presiding elder--and heaven knows he is a didactic monster of head and whiskers! It is not that I do not love you, but that I do!

Do you know what will happen when you come to Morningtown? I will meet you at the station, not as Jessica, but as the demure little home-made daughter of the Methodist minister here; we will greet each other with blighting formality, for there will be the station-master's wife to observe us; we will walk home along the main street, and we will speak of the most trivial or useful subjects, of the weather in New York, and of Jack more particularly. Out of sheer bravado I will scan your face now and then, but my eyes will not rest there long enough to fall before yours discomfited. When we reach the house father will greet you from his Sinai elevation, with pretty much the same holy-man courtesy Moses would have showed if a heathen Canaanite had appeared to him. And while you two are exchanging plat.i.tudes, I will escape into this room of mine, take one glance at my mirror, and then cover my face with my hands for joy and shame while the red waves of love mount as high as they will over it. Ah, Philip, I shall be _so_ glad to see you, and so afraid! But you shall have small satisfaction in either fact, for I do not aim to make it easy for you to win what is already yours in my heart.