All this gave him a feeling of utter helplessness and dejection. He harmed no man, wished no man ill. All he wanted was to be allowed to go placidly on his way through life, devoted to his studies, unobtrusive, simple, kindly, and deep in his own affairs. Fight he would if the fight came into the open, but he was unable to make it thus. He was destined to be on the offensive so long as Sweet saw fit to worry him, unless he went direct to Sweet and had it out with him, face to face. And this he had about decided to do when Madge’s letter came.
Madge had known when she left the country that he had given up his Eastern trip because of Sweet’s firing on his cabin from the shelf on Spyglass Mountain. So he had not written her, as California Bill had advised. She had gone on the twenty-seventh of April. Not a word had he received from her in all those days, and often he had found his mind wandering from the abstruse problems on his home-made desk to her, down there in the city in “a swell apartment.” Then came her letter, on the fourteenth of June; and if his heart had been heavy before it turned to a lump of clay as his moist eyes read her message:
“My dear Poet-Astronomer:
“Many matters have prevented me from writing until now. We’ve been so busy, and have had so much fun, that I am sure, if you knew the half of it, you would forgive me. I’ve been living, Joshua—living as I never lived before. Dances, automobile rides, yachting off San Pedro and Coronado Beach, and parties—parties—parties! And my new clothes, Joshua! Oh, if you could only see me! Nothing expensive, of course—that is out of the question. But they’re so pretty, and everybody flatters me so that I’m afraid my head is a little turned.
“But all this means nothing to you, wrapped up as you are in bigger things. I had to start this letter some way, though, and work up to what I have to say. Joshua, it is going to hurt you—what I have to tell you now. And I hate to hurt you. But it is all for the best, I suppose, as Ma always told me when I was a little girl.
“I know it will be better for you that I am going to marry Jack Montgomery. You and I never could be happy together, dear boy, for the simple reason that you are too far above me—too big for me in more ways than one. I am frivolous—more frivolous than I knew throughout all the years on the railroad grade. It took Los Angeles, with its brilliant throngs, dazzling hotels, and everything that has given me pleasure to teach me the shallowness of my nature.
“So, Joshua, I want you to forget me as unworthy of you. You are a dreamer, with an unpractical mind far above the sordid things that I find so interesting. You are young and will soon forget me when you become a great astronomer, which I am sure will happen some day. And then you can find a girl who appreciates you. I am too shallow to do that.
“We haven’t decided what to do with the homestead yet. Ma wants to go back the worst way, but of course Jack wouldn’t approve of my returning for keeps, so, as I said, we are still undecided just what to do. But, please, please, Joshua, forgive me and try to forget me, for really I am not worth your notice.
“I don’t just know whether I love Jack or not, just between you and me, and I shouldn’t be writing this to you about the man I mean to marry. But I have written it, and I hate to scratch things out, and am too lazy to begin my letter over again. So I have written that I don’t know whether I’m in love with him or not, and I’ll let it stand. Sometimes I think I am, he’s so kind and considerate and—oh, so sort of buoyant and happy-go-lucky, you know. And everybody likes him here. And he’s really brilliant, Joshua. But all that aside, he can offer me what I want in life, and I’m selfishly going to take it. Very few girls marry for love these days. A couple who are congenial can learn to like each other almost like love, and that’s what most couples who are successful in marriage are doing nowadays.
“So this is good-by, Joshua, and you don’t know how it hurts me to write it. It will hurt you, too, I know, but if you devote yourself to your work—which I know you will do—you soon will be laughing at yourself for ever thinking that you could tolerate Shanty Madge as a wife. Good-by, then, my poet-astronomer. And please forgive me. You know that I never, never encouraged you in the least. I knew better. I knew I was unworthy of you. Don’t you understand? Write me a good long letter and wish me well. How I wish I could be there on Spyglass Mountain when the big night comes in June!