"As for Sister and me, we're getting on, and we're not. Sister thinks I've done marvels; I know she has. Marvels of economy and taste in cozying up our room, marvels of sympathy and canny advice that doesn't sound like advice at all. As one-half of a mutual-admiration syndicate I'm a complete success! But as a professional author—hum, hum. Anyway, I'm beginning to poke my inquisitive nose into a little of everything, and you can't tell—something, some day, may come of this. As the Dickens man said—who was he?—I hope it mayn't be human gore. Meanwhile, one thing hits the most casual eye: We're still in the double-room-with-alcove boarding-house stage, and likely to stay there for some time to come."
IV
Susan To Phil
"Your short letter answering my long one has been read and reread and read again. I know it by heart. Everything you say's true—and isn't. I'll try to explain that—for I can't bear you to be doubting me. You are, Phil. I don't blame you, but I do blame myself—for complacency. I've taken too much for granted, as I always do with you and Ambo. You see, I know so intensely that you and Ambo are pure gold—incorruptible!—that I couldn't possibly question anything you might say or do—the fineness of the motive, I mean. If you did murder and were hanged for it, and even if I'd no clue as to why you struck—I should know all the time you must have done it because, for some concealed reason, under circumstances dark to the rest of us, your clear eyes marked it as the one possible right thing to do.
"Yes, I trust you like that, Phil; you and Ambo and Sister and Jimmy. Think of trusting four people like that! How rich I am! And you can't know how passionately grateful! For it isn't blind trusting at all. In each one of you I've touched a soul of goodness. There's no other name for it. It's as simple as fresh air. You're good—you four—good from the center. But, Phil dear, a little secret to comfort you—just between us and the stars: So, mostly, am I.
"Truly, Phil, I'm ridiculously good at the center, and most of the way out. There are things I simply can't do, no matter how much I'd like to; and lots of oozy, opally things I simply can't like at all. I'm with you so far, at least—peacock-proud to be! But we're tremendously different, all the same. It's really this, I think: You're a Puritan, by instinct and cultivation; and I'm not. The clever ones down here, you know, spend most of their spare time swearing by turns at Puritanism and the Victorian Era. Their favorite form of exercise is patting themselves on the back, and this is one of their subtler ways of doing it. But they just rampantly rail; they don't—though they think they do—understand. They mix up every passé narrowness and bigotry and hypocrisy and sentimental cant in one foul stew, and then rush from it, with held noses, screaming "Puritanism! Faugh!" Well, it does, Phil—their stew! So, often, for that matter—and to high heaven—do the clever ones!
"But it isn't Puritanism, the real thing. You see, I know the real thing—for I know you. Ignorance, bigotry, hypocrisy, sentimentalism—such things have no part in your life. And yet you're a Puritan, and I'm not. Something divides us where we are most alike. What is it, Phil?
"May I tell you? I almost dare believe I've puzzled it out.
"You're a simon-Puritan, dear, because you won't trust that central goodness, your own heart; the very thing in you on whose virgin-goldness I would stake my life! You won't trust it in yourself; and when you find it in others, you don't fully trust it in them. You've purged your philosophy of Original Sin, but it still secretly poisons the marrow of your bones. You guard your soul's strength as possible weakness—something that might vanish suddenly, at a pinch. How silly of you! For it's the you-est you, the thing you can never change or escape. Instead of worrying over yourself or others—me?—you could safely spread yourself, Phil dear, all over the landscape, lie back in the lap of Mother Earth and twiddle your toes and smile! Walt Whitman's way! He may have overdone it now and then, posed about it; but I'm on his side, not yours. It's heartier—human-er—more fun! Yes, Master Puritan—more fun! That's a life value you've mostly missed. But it's never too late, Phil, for a genuine cosmic spree.
"Now I've done scolding back at you for scolding at me.—But I loved your sermon. I hope you won't shudder over mine?"