University of Virginia Library

1. MARJORIE DAW.

1. I.

MY DEAR SIR: I am happy to assure you that
your anxiety is without reason. Flemming
will be confined to the sofa for three
or four weeks, and will have to be careful at
first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this
kind is always a tedious affair. Fortunately,
the bone was very skilfully set by the surgeon
who chanced to be in the drug-store where
Flemming was brought after his fall, and I
apprehend no permanent inconvenience from
the accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well
physically; but I must confess that the irritable
and morbid state of mind into which he has

fallen causes me a great deal of uneasiness.
He is the last man in the world who ought to
break his leg. You know how impetuous our
friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness
and energy, never content unless he is rushing
at some object, like a sportive bull at a red
shawl; but amiable withal. He is no longer
amiable. His temper has become something
frightful. Miss Fanny Flemming came up from
Newport, where the family are staying for the
summer, to nurse him; but he packed her off
the next morning in tears. He has a complete
set of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes,
piled up near his sofa, to throw at Watkins
whenever that exemplary serving-man appears
with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently
brought Flemming a small basket of lemons.
You know it was a strip of lemon-peel on the
curbstone that caused our friend's mischance.
Well, he no sooner set his eyes upon these lemons
than he fell into such a rage as I cannot
adequately describe. This is only one of his
moods, and the least distressing. At other
times he sits with bowed head regarding his
splintered limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When
this fit is on him — and it sometimes lasts all
day — nothing can distract his melancholy. He
refuses to eat, does not even read the newspapers;
books, except as projectiles for Watkins,
have no charms for him. His state is
truly pitiable.

Now, if he were a poor man, with a family
depending on his daily labor, this irritability and
despondency would be natural enough. But in
a young fellow of twenty-four, with plenty of
money and seemingly not a care in the world,
the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give
way to his vagaries in this manner, he will end
by bringing on an inflammation of the fibula.
It was the fibula he broke. I am at my wits'
end to know what to prescribe for him. I have
anæsthetics and lotions, to make people sleep and
to soothe pain; but I've no medicine that will
make a man have a little common-sense. That
is beyond my skill, but maybe it is not beyond
yours. You are Flemming's intimate friend, his
fidus Achates. Write to him, write to him frequently,
distract his mind, cheer him up, and
prevent him from becoming a confirmed case
of melancholia. Perhaps he has some important

plans disarranged by his present confinement.
If he has you will know, and will know
how to advise him judiciously. I trust your
father finds the change beneficial? I am, my
dear sir, with great respect, etc.

2. II.

My dear Jack: I had a line from Dillon this
morning, and was rejoiced to learn that your
hurt is not so bad as reported. Like a certain
personage, you are not so black and blue as you
are painted. Dillon will put you on your pins
again in two or three weeks, if you will only
have patience and follow his counsels. Did you
get my note of last Wednesday? I was greatly
troubled when I heard of the accident.

I can imagine how tranquil and saintly you
are with your leg in a trough! It is deuced
awkward, to be sure, just as we had promised
ourselves a glorious month together at the seaside;
but we must make the best of it. It is
unfortunate, too, that my father's health renders
it impossible for me to leave him. I think he
has much improved; the sea air is his native

element; but he still needs my arm to lean upon
in his walks, and requires some one more careful
than a servant to look after him. I cannot
come to you, dear Jack, but I have hours of
unemployed time on hand, and I will write you
a whole post-office full of letters if that will
divert you. Heaven knows, I have n't anything
to write about. It is n't as if we were
living at one of the beach houses; then I could
do you some character studies, and fill your
imagination with groups of sea-goddesses, with
their (or somebody else's) raven and blond
manes hanging down their shoulders. You
should have Aphrodite in morning wrapper, in
evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing
suit. But we are far from all that here. We
have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road,
two miles from the hotels, and lead the quietest
of lives.

I wish I were a novelist. This old house,
with its sanded floors and high wainscots, and
its narrow windows looking out upon a cluster
of pines that turn themselves into æolian-harps
every time the wind blows, would be the place in
which to write a summer romance. It should be

a story with the odors of the forest and the breath
of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one
of that Russian fellow's,—what's his name?
— Tourguénieff, Turguenef, Turgenif, Toorguniff,
Turgénjew, — nobody knows how to spell
him. Yet I wonder if even a Liza or an Alexandra
Paulovna could stir the heart of a man
who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder
if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type,
haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort
to you in your present deplorable condition. If
I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf
House and catch one for you; or, better still,
I would find you one over the way.

Picture to yourself a large white house just
across the road, nearly opposite our cottage. It
is not a house, but a mansion, built, perhaps, in
the colonial period, with rambling extensions, and
gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides, —
a self-possessed, high-bred piece of architecture,
with its nose in the air. It stands back from the
road, and has an obsequious retinue of fringed
elms and oaks and weeping willows. Sometimes
in the morning, and oftener in the afternoon,
when the sun has withdrawn from that part of

the mansion, a young woman appears on the
piazza with some mysterious Penelope web of
embroidery in her hand, or a book. There is a
hammock over there, — of pineapple fibre, it
looks from here. A hammock is very becoming
when one is eighteen, and has golden hair, and
dark eyes, and an emerald-colored illusion dress
looped up after the fashion of a Dresden china
shepherdess, and is chaussée like a belle of the
time of Louis Quatorze. All this splendor goes
into that hammock, and sways there like a pond-lily
in the golden afternoon. The window of
my bedroom looks down on that piazza, — and
so do I.

But enough of this nonsense, which ill becomes
a sedate young attorney taking his vacation
with an invalid father. Drop me a line,
dear Jack, and tell me how you really are. State
your case. Write me a long, quiet letter. If
you are violent or abusive, I'll take the law to
you.

3. III.

Your letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy
what a fix I am in, — I, who never had a day's
sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs
three tons. It is embalmed in spices and smothered
in layers of fine linen, like a mummy. I
can't move. I have n't moved for five thousand
years. I'm of the time of Pharaoh.

I lie from morning till night on a lounge, staring
into the hot street. Everybody is out of
town enjoying himself. The brown-stone-front
houses across the street resemble a row of particularly
ugly coffins set up on end. A green
mould is settling on the names of the deceased,
carved on the silver door-plates. Sardonic spiders
have sewed up the key-holes. All is silence
and dust and desolation. — I interrupt this a
moment, to take a shy at Watkins with the
second volume of César Birotteau. Missed him!

I think I could bring him down with a copy of
Sainte-Beuve or the Dictionnaire Universel, if I
had it. These small Balzac books somehow
don't quite fit my hand; but I shall fetch him
yet. I've an idea Watkins is tapping the old
gentleman's Château Yquem. Duplicate key of
the wine-cellar. Hibernian swarries in the front
basement. Young Cheops up stairs, snug in his
cerements. Watkins glides into my chamber,
with that colorless, hypocritical face of his
drawn out long like an accordion; but I know
he grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I
have broken my leg. Was not my evil star in
the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend
that dinner at Delmonico's? I did n't come up
altogether for that. It was partly to buy Frank
Livingstone's roan mare Margot. And now I
shall not be able to sit in the saddle these two
months. I'll send the mare down to you at The
Pines, — is that the name of the place?

Old Dillon faneies that I have something on
my mind. He drives me wild with lemons.
Lemons for a mind diseased! Nonsense. I am only as restless as the devil under this confinement,
— a thing I'm not used to. Take a

man who has never had so much as a headache
or a toothache in his life, strap one of his legs in
a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in
the city for weeks, with the hot weather turned
on, and then expect him to smile and purr and
be happy! It is preposterous. I can't be cheerful
or calm.

Your letter is the first consoling thing I have
had since my disaster, ten days ago. It really
cheered me up for half an hour. Send me a
screed, Ned, as often as you can, if you love me.
Anything will do. Write me more about that
little girl in the hammock. That was very
pretty, all that about the Dresden china shepherdess
and the pond-lily; the imagery a little
mixed, perhaps, but very pretty. I did n't suppose
you had so much sentimental furniture in
your upper story. It shows how one may be
familiar for years with the reception-room of his
neighbor, and never suspect what is directly under
his mansard. I supposed your loft stuffed
with dry legal parchments, mortgages and affidavits;
you take down a package of manuscript,
and lo! there are lyrics and sonnets and canzonettas.
You really have a graphic descriptive

touch, Edward Delaney, and I suspect you of
anonymous love-tales in the magazines.

I shall be a bear until I hear from you again.
Tell me all about your pretty inconnue across the
road. What is her name? Who is she? Who's
her father? Where's her mother? Who's her
lover? You cannot imagine how this will occupy
me. The more trifling the better. My
imprisonment has weakened me intellectually
to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts
quite considerable. I am passing into my second
childhood. In a week or two I shall take to
India-rubber rings and prongs of coral. A silver
cup, with an appropriate inscription, would be a
delicate attention on your part. In the mean
time, write!

4. IV.

The sick pasha shall be amused. Bismillah!
he wills it so. If the story-teller becomes prolix
and tedious, — the bow-string and the sack, and
two Nubians to drop him into the Piscataqua!
But, truly, Jack, I have a hard task. There is
literally nothing here, — except the little girl
over the way. She is swinging in the hammock
at this moment. It is to me compensation for
many of the ills of life to see her now and then
put out a small kid boot, which fits like a glove,
and set herself going. Who is she, and what is
her name? Her name is Daw. Only daughter
of Mr. Richard W. Daw, ex-colonel and banker.
Mother dead. One brother at Harvard, elder
brother killed at the battle of Fair Oaks, nine
years ago. Old, rich family, the Daws. This is
the homestead, where father and daughter pass

eight months of the twelve; the rest of the year in
Baltimore and Washington. The New England
winter too many for the old gentleman. The
daughter is called Marjorie, — Marjorie Daw.
Sounds odd at first, does n't it? But after you
say it over to yourself half a dozen times, you
like it. There's a pleasing quaintness to it,
something prim and violet-like. Must be a nice
sort of girl to be called Marjorie Daw.

I had mine host of The Pines in the witness-box
last night, and drew the foregoing testimony
from him. He has charge of Mr. Daw's vegetable-garden,
and has known the family these
thirty years. Of course I shall make the acquaintance
of my neighbors before many days.
It will be next to impossible for me not to meet
Mr. Daw or Miss Daw in some of my walks.
The young lady has a favorite path to the sea-beach.
I shall intercept her some morning, and
touch my hat to her. Then the princess will
bend her fair head to me with courteous surprise
not unmixed with haughtiness. Will snub
me, in fact. All this for thy sake, O Pasha of
the Snapt Axle-tree!.... How oddly things fall
out! Ten minutes ago I was called down to the

parlor,—you know the kind of parlors in farmhouses
on the coast, a sort of amphibious parlor,
with sea-shells on the mantel-piece and spruce
branches in the chimney-place,—where I found
my father and Mr. Daw doing the antique polite
to each other. He had come to pay his respects
to his new neighbors. Mr. Daw is a tall, slim
gentleman of about fifty-five, with a florid face
and snow-white mustache and side-whiskers.
Looks like Mr. Dombey, or as Mr. Dombey
would have looked if he had served a few years
in the British Army. Mr. Daw was a colonel in
the late war, commanding the regiment in which
his son was a lieutenant. Plucky old boy, backbone
of New Hampshire granite. Before taking
his leave, the colonel delivered himself of an invitation
as if he were issuing a general order.
Miss Daw has a few friends coming, at 4 p. m.,
to play croquet on the lawn (parade-ground) and
have tea (cold rations) on the piazza. Will we
honor them with our company? (or be sent to
the guard-house.) My father declines on the
plea of ill-health. My father's son bows with as
much suavity as he knows, and accepts.

In my next I shall have something to tell you.

I shall have seen the little beauty face to face. I
have a presentiment, Jack, that this Daw is a
rara avis! Keep up your spirits, my boy, until
I write you another letter,—and send me along
word how's your leg.

5. V.

The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as
possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector
of the Episcopal church at Stillwater, and a society
swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked
as if he had swallowed a couple of his buttons,
and found the bullion rather indigestible; the
rector was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly
sort; and the swell from Nahant was a very
weak tidal wave indeed. The women were much
better, as they always are; the two Miss Kingsburys
of Philadelphia, staying at the Sea-shell
House, two bright and engaging girls. But
Marjorie Daw!

The company broke up soon after tea, and I
remained to smoke a cigar with the colonel on
the piazza. It was like seeing a picture to see
Miss Marjorie hovering around the old soldier,
and doing a hundred gracious little things for

him. She brought the cigars and lighted the
tapers with her own delicate fingers, in the most
enchanting fashion. As we sat there, she came
and went in the summer twilight, and seemed,
with her white dress and pale gold hair, like
some lovely phantom that had sprung into existence
out of the smoke-wreaths. If she had melted
into air, like the statue of Galatea in the play,
I should have been more sorry than surprised.

It was easy to perceive that the old colonel
worshipped her, and she him. I think the relation
between an elderly father and a daughter
just blooming into womanhood the most beautiful
possible. There is in it a subtile sentiment
that cannot exist in the case of mother and
daughter, or that of son and mother. But this
is getting into deep water.

I sat with the Daws until half past ten, and
saw the moon rise on the sea. The ocean, that
had stretched motionless and black against the
horizon, was changed by magic into a broken
field of glittering ice, interspersed with marvellous
silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isles
of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs
drifting down on us. The Polar Regions in a

June thaw! It was exceedingly fine. What did
we talk about? We talked about the weather—
and you! The weather has been disagreeable
for several days past,—and so have you. I
glided from one topic to the other very naturally.
I told my friends of your accident; how
it had frustrated all our summer plans, and what
our plans were. I played quite a spirited solo on
the fibula. Then I described you; or, rather, I
did n't. I spoke of your amiability, of your
patience under this severe affliction; of your
touching gratitude when Dillon brings you little
presents of fruit; of your tenderness to your
sister Fanny, whom you would not allow to
stay in town to nurse you, and how you heroically
sent her back to Newport, preferring to
remain alone with Mary, the cook, and your
man Watkins, to whom, by the way, you were
devotedly attached. If you had been there,
Jack, you would n't have known yourself. I
should have excelled as a criminal lawyer, if
I had not turned my attention to a different
branch of jurisprudence.

Miss Marjorie asked all manner of leading questions
concerning you. It did not occur to me

then, but it struck me forcibly afterwards, that
she evinced a singular interest in the conversation.
When I got back to my room, I recalled
how eagerly she leaned forward, with her full,
snowy throat in strong moonlight, listening to
what I said. Positively, I think I made her like
you!

Miss Daw is a girl whom you would like immensely,
I can tell you that. A beauty without
affectation, a high and tender nature, — if one
can read the soul in the face. And the old colonel
is a noble character, too.

I am glad the Daws are such pleasant people.
The Pines is an isolated spot, and my resources
are few. I fear I should have found life here
somewhat monotonous before long, with no other
society than that of my excellent sire. It is true,
I might have made a target of the defenceless
invalid; but I have n't a taste for artillery, moi.

6. VI.

For a man who has n't a taste for artillery, it
occurs to me, my friend, you are keeping up a
pretty lively fire on my inner works. But go on.
Cynicism is a small brass field-piece that eventually
bursts and kills the artilleryman.

You may abuse me as much as you like, and
I'll not complain; for I don't know what I
should do without your letters. They are curing
me. I have n't hurled anything at Watkins since
last Sunday, partly because I have grown more
amiable under your teaching, and partly because
Watkins captured my ammunition one night, and
carried it off to the library. He is rapidly losing
the habit he had acquired of dodging whenever
I rub my ear, or make any slight motion with
my right arm. He is still suggestive of the wine-cellar,
however. You may break, you may shatter

Watkins, if you will, but the scent of the
Roederer will hang round him still.

Ned, that Miss Daw must be a charming person.
I should certainly like her. I like her
already. When you spoke in your first letter
of seeing a young girl swinging in a hammock
under your chamber window, I was somehow
strangely drawn to her. I cannot account for it
in the least. What you have subsequently written
of Miss Daw has strengthened the impression.
You seem to be describing a woman I
have known in some previous state of existence,
or dreamed of in this. Upon my word, if you
were to send me her photograph, I believe I
should recognize her at a glance. Her manner,
that listening attitude, her traits of characters, as
you indicate them, the light hair and the dark
eyes, — they are all familiar things to me. Asked
a lot of questions, did she? Curious about me?
That is strange.

You would laugh in your sleeve, you wretched
old cynic, if you knew how I lie awake nights,
with my gas turned down to a star, thinking of
The Pines and the house across the road. How
cool it must be down there! I long for the salt

smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking
his cheroot on the piazza. I send you and Miss
Daw off on afternoon rambles along the beach.
Sometimes I let you stroll with her under the
elms in the moonlight, for you are great friends
by this time, I take it, and see each other every
day. I know your ways and your manners!
Then I fall into a truculent mood, and would
like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed
anything in the shape of a lover hanging around
the colonial Lares and Penates? Does that lieutenant
of the horse-marines or that young Stillwater
parson visit the house much? Not that I
am pining for news of them, but any gossip of
the kind would be in order. I wonder, Ned, you
don't fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to
do it myself. Speaking of photographs, could n't
you manage to slip one of her cartes-de-visite
from her album, — she must have an album, you
know, — and send it to me? I will return it
before it could be missed. That's a good fellow!
Did the mare arrive safe and sound? It will be
a capital animal this autumn for Central Park.

O — my leg? I forgot about my leg. It's
better.

7. VII.

You are correct in your surmises. I am on
the most friendly terms with our neighbors. The
colonel and my father smoke their afternoon cigar
together in our sitting-room or on the piazza
opposite, and I pass an hour or two of the day or
the evening with the daughter. I am more and
more struck by the beauty, modesty, and intelligence
of Miss Daw.

You ask me why I do not fall in love with her.
I will be frank, Jack: I have thought of that.
She is young, rich, accomplished, uniting in herself
more attractions, mental and personal, than
I can recall in any girl of my acquaintance; but
she lacks the something that would be necessary
to inspire in me that kind of interest. Possessing
this unknown quantity, a woman neither
beautiful nor wealthy nor very young could bring
me to her feet. But not Miss Daw. If we were

shipwrecked together on an uninhabited island,
— let me suggest a tropical island, for it costs no
more to be picturesque,—I would build her a
bamboo hut, I would fetch her bread-fruit and
cocoanuts, I would fry yams for her, I would
lure the ingenuous turtle and make her nourishing
soups, but I would n't make love to her,
—not under eighteen months. I would like to
have her for a sister, that I might shield her and
counsel her, and spend half my income on threadlaces
and camel's-hair shawls. (We are off the
island now.) If such were not my feeling, there
would still be an obstacle to my loving Miss
Daw. A greater misfortune could scarcely befall
me than to love her. Flemming, I am about
to make a revelation that will astonish you. I
may be all wrong in my premises and consequently
in my conclusions; but you shall judge.

That night when I returned to my room after
the croquet party at the Daws', and was thinking
over the trivial events of the evening, I was
suddenly impressed by the air of eager attention
with which Miss Daw had followed my account
of your accident. I think I mentioned this to
you. Well, the next morning, as I went to mail

my letter, I overtook Miss Daw on the road to
Rye, where the post-office is, and accompanied
her thither and back, an hour's walk. The conversation
again turned on you, and again I remarked
that inexplicable look of interest which
had lighted up her face the previous evening.
Since then, I have seen Miss Daw perhaps ten
times, perhaps oftener, and on each occasion I
found that when I was not speaking of you, or
your sister, or some person or place associated
with you, I was not holding her attention. She
would be absent-minded, her eyes would wander
away from me to the sea, or to some distant
object in the landscape; her fingers would play
with the leaves of a book in a way that convinced
me she was not listening. At these moments
if I abruptly changed the theme,—I did it several
times as an experiment,—and dropped some
remark about my friend Flemming, then the
sombre blue eyes would come back to me instantly.

Now, is not this the oddest thing in the world?
No, not the oddest. The effect which you tell
me was produced on you by my casual mention
of an unknown girl swinging in a hammock is

certainly as strange. You can conjecture how
that passage in your letter of Friday startled me.
Is it possible, then, that two people who have
never met, and who are hundreds of miles apart,
can exert a magnetic influence on each other?
I have read of such psychological phenomena,
but never credited them. I leave the solution
of the problem to you. As for myself, all other
things being favorable, it would be impossible for
me to fall in love with a woman who listens to
me only when I am talking of my friend!

I am not aware that any one is paying marked
attention to my fair neighbor. The lieutenant
of the navy—he is stationed at Rivermouth—
sometimes drops in of an evening, and sometimes
the rector from Stillwater; the lieutenant
the oftener. He was there last night. I would
not be surprised if he had an eye to the heiress;
but he is not formidable. Mistress Daw carries
a neat little spear of irony, and the honest lieutenant
seems to have a particular facility for
impaling himself on the point of it. He is not
dangerous, I should say; though I have known
a woman to satirize a man for years, and marry
him after all. Decidedly, the lowly rector is not

dangerous; yet, again, who has not seen Cloth
of Frieze victorious in the lists where Cloth of
Gold went down?

As to the photograph. There is an exquisite
ivorytype of Marjorie, in passe-partout, on the
drawing-room mantel-piece. It would be missed
at once, if taken. I would do anything reasonable
for you, Jack; but I've no burning desire
to be hauled up before the local justice of the
peace, on a charge of petty larceny.

P. S.—Enclosed is a spray of mignonette,
which I advise you to treat tenderly. Yes, we
talked of you again last night, as usual. It is
becoming a little dreary for me.

8. VIII.

Your letter in reply to my last has occupied
my thoughts all the morning. I do not know
what to think. Do you mean to say that you
are seriously half in love with a woman whom
you have never seen,—with a shadow, a chimera?
for what else can Miss Daw be to you?
I do not understand it at all. I understand
neither you nor her. You are a couple of ethereal
beings moving in finer air than I can breathe
with my commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of
sentiment is something I admire without comprehending.
I am bewildered. I am of the
earth earthy, and I find myself in the incongruous
position of having to do with mere souls,
with natures so finely tempered that I run some
risk of shattering them in my awkwardness. I
am as Caliban among the spirits!

Reflecting on your letter, I am not sure it is

wise in me to continue this correspondence. But
no, Jack; I do wrong to doubt the good sense
that forms the basis of your character. You are
deeply interested in Miss Daw; you feel that she
is a person whom you may perhaps greatly admire
when you know her: at the same time you
bear in mind that the chances are ten to five
that, when you do come to know her, she will
fall far short of your ideal, and you will not care
for her in the least. Look at it in this sensible
light, and I will hold back nothing from you.

Yesterday afternoon my father and myself
rode over to Rivermouth with the Daws. A
heavy rain in the morning had cooled the atmosphere
and laid the dust. To Rivermouth is
a drive of eight miles, along a winding road
lined all the way with wild barberry-bushes. I
never saw anything more brilliant than these
bushes, the green of the foliage and the pink of
the coral berries intensified by the rain. The
colonel drove, with my father in front, Miss Daw
and I on the back seat. I resolved that for the
first five miles your name should not pass my
lips. I was amused by the artful attempts she
made, at the start, to break through my reticence.

Then a silence fell upon her; and then
she became suddenly gay. That keenness which
I enjoyed so much when it was exercised on
the lieutenant was not so satisfactory directed
against myself. Miss Daw has great sweetness
of disposition, but she can be disagreeable. She
is like the young lady in the rhyme, with the
curl on her forehead,
I kept to my resolution, however; but on the
return home I relented, and talked of your mare!
Miss Daw is going to try a side-saddle on Margot
some morning. The animal is a trifle too light
for my weight. By the by, I nearly forgot to
say Miss Daw sat for a picture yesterday to a
Rivermouth artist. If the negative turns out
well, I am to have a copy. So our ends will be
accomplished without crime. I wish, though, I
could send you the ivorytype in the drawing-room;
it is cleverly colored, and would give you
an idea of her hair and eyes, which of course
the other will not.

No, Jack, the spray of mignonette did not

come from me. A man of twenty-eight does n't
enclose flowers in his letters—to another man.
But don't attach too much significance to the
circumstance. She gives sprays of mignonette
to the rector, sprays to the lieutenant. She has
even given a rose from her bosom to your slave.
It is her jocund nature to scatter flowers, like
Spring.

If my letters sometimes read disjointedly, you
must understand that I never finish one at a
sitting, but write at intervals, when the mood is
on me.

The mood is not on me now.

9. IX.

I have just returned from the strangest interview
with Marjorie. She has all but confessed
to me her interest in you. But with
what modesty and dignity! Her words elude
my pen as I attempt to put them on paper; and,
indeed, it was not so much what she said as her
manner; and that I cannot reproduce. Perhaps
it was of a piece with the strangeness of this
whole business, that she should tacitly acknowledge
to a third party the love she feels for a man
she has never beheld! But I have lost, through
your aid, the faculty of being surprised. I accept
things as people do in dreams. Now that
I am again in my room, it all appears like an
illusion, — the black masses of Rembrandtish
shadow under the trees, the fire-flies whirling
in Pyrrhic dances among the shrubbery, the sea
over there, Marjorie sitting on the hammock!

It is past midnight, and I am too sleepy to
write more.

Thursday Morning.

My father has suddenly taken it into his head
to spend a few days at the Shoals. In the mean
while you will not hear from me. I see Marjorie
walking in the garden with the colonel. I wish
I could speak to her alone, but shall probably
not have an opportunity before we leave.

10. X.

You were passing into your second childhood,
were you? Your intellect was so reduced that
my epistolary gifts seemed quite considerable to
you, did they? I rise superior to the sarcasm
in your favor of the 11th instant, when I notice
that five days' silence on my part is sufficient to
throw you into the depths of despondency.

We returned only this morning from Appledore,
that enchanted island, — at four dollars
per day. I find on my desk three letters from
you! Evidently there is no lingering doubt in
your mind as to the pleasure I derive from your
correspondence. These letters are undated, but
in what I take to be the latest are two passages
that require my consideration. You will pardon
my candor, dear Flemming, but the conviction
forces itself upon me that as your leg grows
stronger your head becomes weaker. You ask

my advice on a certain point. I will give it. In
my opinion you could do nothing more unwise
than to address a note to Miss Daw, thanking
her for the flower. It would, I am sure, offend
her delicacy beyond pardon. She knows you only
through me; you are to her an abstraction, a
figure in a dream, — a dream from which the
faintest shock would awaken her. Of course, if
you enclose a note to me and insist on its delivery,
I shall deliver it; but I advise you not to
do so.

You say you are able, with the aid of a cane, to walk about your chamber, and that you purpose
to come to The Pines the instant Dillon
thinks you strong enough to stand the journey.
Again I advise you not to. Do you not see that,
every hour you remain away, Marjorie's glamour
deepens, and your influence over her increases?
You will ruin everything by precipitancy. Wait
until you are entirely recovered; in any case, do
not come without giving me warning. I fear the
effect of your abrupt advent here — under the
circumstances.

Miss Daw was evidently glad to see us back
again, and gave me both hands in the frankest

way. She stopped at the door a moment, this
afternoon, in the carriage; she had been over
to Rivermouth for her pictures. Unluckily the
photographer had spilt some acid on the plate,
and she was obliged to give him another sitting.
I have an intuition that something is troubling
Marjorie. She had an abstracted air not usual
with her. However, it may be only my fancy.
.... I end this, leaving several things unsaid,
to accompany my father on one of those long
walks which are now his chief medicine, — and
mine!

11. XI.

I write in great haste to tell you what has
taken place here since my letter of last night.
I am in the utmost perplexity. Only one thing
is plain, — you must not dream of coming to
The Pines. Marjorie has told her father everything!
I saw her for a few minutes, an hour
ago, in the garden; and, as near as I could
gather from her confused statement, the facts
are these: Lieutenant Bradly — that's the naval
officer stationed at Rivermouth — has been paying
court to Miss Daw for some time past, but
not so much to her liking as to that of the colonel,
who it seems is an old friend of the young
gentleman's father. Yesterday (I knew she was
in some trouble when she drove up to our gate)
the colonel spoke to Marjorie of Bradly, — urged
his suit, I infer. Marjorie expressed her dislike
for the lieutenant with characteristic frankness,

and finally confessed to her father — well, I
really do not know what she confessed. It must
have been the vaguest of confessions, and must
have sufficiently puzzled the colonel. At any
rate, it exasperated him. I suppose I am implicated
in the matter, and that the colonel feels
bitterly towards me. I do not see why: I have
carried no messages between you and Miss Daw;
I have behaved with the greatest discretion. I
can find no flaw anywhere in my procceding. I
do not see that anybody has done anything, —
except the colonel himself.

It is probable, nevertheless, that the friendly
relations between the two houses will be broken
off. “A plague o' both your houses,” say you.
I will keep you informed, as well as I can, of
what occurs over the way. We shall remain
here until the second week in September. Stay
where you are, or, at all events, do not dream of
joining me..... Colonel Daw is sitting on
the piazza looking rather wicked. I have not
seen Marjorie since I parted with her in the
garden.

12. XII.

My dear Doctor: If you have any influence
over Flemming, I beg of you to exert it to prevent
his coming to this place at present. There
are circumstances, which I will explain to you
before long, that make it of the first importance
that he should not come into this neighborhood.
His appearance here, I speak advisedly, would be
disastrous to him. In urging him to remain in
New York, or to go to some inland resort, you
will be doing him and me a real service. Of
course you will not mention my name in this
connection. You know me well enough, my
dear doctor, to be assured that, in begging your
secret co-operation, I have reasons that will meet
your entire approval when they are made plain
to you. We shall return to town on the 15th
of next month, and my first duty will be to

present myself at your hospitable door and satisfy
your curiosity, if I have excited it. My
father, I am glad to state, has so greatly improved
that he can no longer be regarded as
an invalid. With great esteem, I am, etc., etc.

13. XIII.

Your letter, announcing your mad determination
to come here, has just reached me. I beseech
you to reflect a moment. The step would
be fatal to your interests and hers. You would
furnish just cause for irritation to R. W. D.;
and, though he loves Marjorie tenderly, he is
capable of going to any lengths if opposed. You
would not like, I am convinced, to be the means
of causing him to treat her with severity. That
would be the result of your presence at The Pines
at this juncture. I am annoyed to be obliged to
point out these things to you. We are on very
delicate ground, Jack; the situation is critical,
and the slightest mistake in a move would cost
us the game. If you consider it worth the
winning, be patient. Trust a little to my sagacity.
Wait and see what happens. Moreover,
I understand from Dillon that you are in

no condition to take so long a journey. He
thinks the air of the coast would be the worst
thing possible for you; that you ought to go
inland, if anywhere. Be advised by me. Be
advised by Dillon.

14. XIV.
Telegrams.

15. XV.
The Arrival.

On the second of September, 187-, as the down
express due at 3.40 left the station at Hampton,
a young man, leaning on the shoulder of a servant,
whom he addressed as Watkins, stepped
from the platform into a hack, and requested to
be driven to “The Pines.” On arriving at the
gate of a modest farm-house, a few miles from
the station, the young man descended with difficulty
from the carriage, and, casting a hasty
glance across the road, seemed much impressed
by some peculiarity in the landscape. Again
leaning on the shoulder of the person Watkins,
he walked to the door of the farm-house and inquired
for Mr. Edward Delaney. He was informed
by the aged man who answered his knock,
that Mr. Edward Delaney had gone to Boston the
day before, but that Mr. Jonas Delaney was within.
This information did not appear satisfactory

to the stranger, who inquired if Mr. Edward Delaney
had left any message for Mr. John Flemming.
There was a letter for Mr. Flemming, if
he were that person. After a brief absence the
aged man reappeared with a Letter.

16. XVI.

I am horror-stricken at what I have done!
When I began this correspondence I had no other
purpose than to relieve the tedium of your sick-chamber.
Dillon told me to cheer you up. I
tried to. I thought you entered into the spirit of
the thing. I had no idea, until within a few days,
that you were taking matters au sérieux.

What can I say? I am in sackcloth and ashes.
I am a pariah, a dog of an outcast. I tried to
make a little romance to interest you, something
soothing and idyllic, and, by Jove! I have done it
only too well! My father does n't know a word
of this, so don't jar the old gentleman any more
than you can help. I fly from the wrath to come
— when you arrive! For O, dear Jack, there
is n't any colonial mansion on the other side of
the road, there is n't any piazza, there is n't any
hammock, — there is n't any Marjorie Daw!!