There is trouble somewhere behind and I think there is trouble ahead.
Premonitions are for nervous or over-sanguine ladies; but if some lady will kindly lend me one of her premonitions, I shall admit that I have it and on the strength of it—or the weakness—declare my belief that the mystery of the ferns is going to uncover some curious and funny things.
As to the rest of Mr. Blackthorne's letter: after these days of turbulence, I have come to see my way clear to interpret it thus: a great man, holding a great place in the world, offered his best to a stranger and the stranger, as the great man believes, turned his back on it. That is the grievance, the insult. If anything could be worse, it is my seeming discourtesy to Mrs. Blackthorne, since the invitation came also from her. In a word, here is a genius who strove to advance my work and me, and he feels himself outraged in his kindness, his hospitality, his friendship and his family—in all his best.
But of course that is the hardest of all human things to stand. Men who have treated each other but fairly well or even badly in ordinary matters often in time become friends. But who of us ever forgives the person that slights our best? Out of a rebuff like that arises such life-long unforgiveness, estrangement, hatred, that Holy Writ itself doubtless for this very reason took pains to issue its warning—no pearls before swine! And perhaps of all known pearls a great native British pearl is the most prized by its British possessor!
The reaction, then, from Mr. Blackthorne's best has been his worst: if I did not merit his best, I deserve his worst; hence his last letter. God have mercy on the man who deserved that letter! You will have observed that his leading trait as revealed in all his letters is enormous self-love. That's because he is a genius. Genius has to have enormous self-love. Beware the person who has none! Without self-love no one ever wins any other's love.
Thus the mighty English archer with his mighty bow shot his mighty arrow—but at an innocent person.
Still the arrow of this letter, though it misses me, kills my plans. The first trouble will be Tilly. Our marriage had been finally fixed for June, and our plans embraced a wedding journey to England and the acceptance of the invitation of the Blackthornes. The prospect of this wonderful English summer—I might as well admit it—was one thing that finally steadied all her wavering as to marriage.
Now the disappointment: no Blackthornes, no English celebrities to greet us as American celebrities, no courtesies from critics, no lawns, no tea nor toast nor being toasted. Merely two unknown, impoverished young Yankee tourists, trying to get out of chilly England what can be gotten by anybody with a few, a very few, dollars.
But Tilly dreads disappointment as she dreads disease. To her disappointment is a disease in the character of the person who inflicts the disappointment. Once I tried to get you to read one of Balzac's masterpieces, The Magic Skin. I told you enough about it to enable you to understand what I now say: that ever since I became engaged to Tilly I have been to her as a magic skin which, as she cautiously watches it, has always shrunk a little whenever I have encountered a defeat or brought her a disappointment. No later success, on the contrary, ever re-expands the shrunken skin: it remains shrunken where each latest disappointment has left it.
Now when I tell her of my downfall and the collapse of the gorgeous summer plans!