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Marjorie Daw

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

May, 1999 [Etext #1757]

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Transcript prepared by Susan L. Farley.

Majorie Daw

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

DR. DILLON TO EDWARD DELANEY, ESQ., AT THE PINES.

NEAR RYE, N.H.

August 8, 1872.

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

drugstore 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

lemonpeel on the curbstone that caused our friend's mischance.

Well, he no sooner set is eyes upon those lemons than he fell into

such a rage as I cannot adequately describe. This is only one of

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 anaesthetics 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.

II.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING, WEST 38TH STREET,

NEW YORK.

August 9, 1872.

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 to 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 sea-side; 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 that 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 haven't anything to write about. It isn'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 blonde

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 aeolian 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?--Tourguenieff, Turguenef,

Turgenif, Toorguniff, Turgenjew--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 mansions, 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

chaussee 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 the 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, quite letter. If you are violent or abusive, I'll

take the law to you.

III.

JOHN FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY.

August 11, 1872.

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 haven'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 Cesar 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 do not quite fit my hand; but I shall fetch him yet. I've

an idea that Watkins is tapping the old gentleman's Chateau 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 didn'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 fancies 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 didn'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!

IV.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 12, 1872.

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 if Mr. Richard W. Daw, ex-colonel and

banker. Mother dead. One brother at Harvard, elder brother killed

at the battle of Fair Oaks, ten 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,

doesn'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 farm-houses 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.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 13, 1872.

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 Seashell 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 smokewreaths. 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 Isle 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 didn'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 wouldn'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 that 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 haven't a taste for

artillery, moi.

VI.

JOHN FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY.

August 17, 1872.

For a man who hasn'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 haven'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 character, 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 colonel 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, couldn'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.

Oh--my leg? I forgot about my leg. It's better.

VII.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMIMG.

August 20, 1872.

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 asked 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 quality, 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 wouldn'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 old threadlace 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 Daw's, 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 to 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, than, 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

should 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 ivory-type 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.

VIII.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 22, 1872.

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 to be 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 that 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 that 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 faint blush of the 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,

"When she is good,

She is very, very good,

And when she is bad, she is horrid!"

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 bye, I nearly forgot to say that 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 doesn'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.

IX.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 23, 1872.

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 fireflies

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 meanwhile 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.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 28, 1872.

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 that 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!

XI.

EDWARD DELANY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 29, 1972.

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 fiend 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 proceeding. 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.

XII.

EDWARD DELANEY TO THOMAS DILLON, M.D., MADISON

SQUARE, NEW YORK.

August 30, 1872.

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 cooperation, 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.

XIII.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

August 31, 1872.

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

devotedly, 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.

XIV.

TELEGRAMS.

September 1, 1872.

- TO EDWARD DELANEY.

Letter received. Dillon be hanged. I think I ought to be on the

ground.

J. F.

2. - TO JOHN FLEMMING.

Stay where you are. You would only complicated matters. Do not move

until you hear from me.

E. D.

3. - TO EDWARD DELANEY.

My being at The Pines could be kept secret. I must see her.

J. F.

4. - TO JOHN FLEMMING.

Do not think of it. It would be useless. R. W. D. has locked M. in

her room. You would not be able to effect and interview.

E. D.

5. - TO EDWARD DELANEY.

Locked her in her room. Good God. That settles the question. I

shall leave by the twelve-fifteen express.

J. F.

XV.

THE ARRIVAL.

On the second day of September, 1872, 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.

XVI.

EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.

September 1, 1872.

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 that you entered into the spirit of the thing. I had no

idea, until within a few days, that you were taking matters au

grand serieux.

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 doesn'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 oh, dear Jack, there isn't any piazza,

there isn't any hammock--there isn't any Marjorie Daw!

Project Gutenberg Etext of Marjorie Daw by Thomas Bailey Aldrich