My Dear Philip:
See how you shame me! For this long while I have wished to begin my letters thus, but I waited, hoping you would entreat me to do so. I expected you to provide an excuse. I thought my own pleasure would wear the genial air of a concession to your wishes. Indeed, the way you wait for me to be obliged to do such things of my own accord, fills me with superstitious anxieties. It is as if you had some unfair foreknowledge of the natural order of events. You would take things for granted, and thus produce an hypnotic effect by your convictions so strong as to compel my conformity. But I console myself with the reflection that all this is mental. You terrify only my intelligence with your strange sorcery. And for this reason I shall always escape your bondage, for I am too wise to concede my familiar territory to such an overbearing foreign power.
However, I must not forget the prime object I have in writing this letter. It is to tell you that the little box of childish things, which you must have received already and wondered at, are not for the literary editor of The Gazette, but for Jack, sent with the hope that they may in some measure comfort his sad heart. I went so far as to purchase material for the promised set of jackets, when suddenly I remembered that I was ignorant of both his age and size. You have never told me that, though you have given me such a real picture of him that I could almost trust my imagination to cut those garments to fit him!
Your account of O’Meara’s death affected me deeply. With what sublime abandon does such a man let go his soul into the mystery of that silence which we call eternity!
Is it not strange how the same impressions come to many, but by different ways! “It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence,” you said, and the sentence recalled a somewhat similar experience of my own on Cumberland Island, where father and I went last summer for a short vacation. One day, leaving the group of happy bathers to their surf, I climbed up inland among the sand-hills, that lie along the shore like the white pillows of fabulous sea-gods. Presently I came upon one of those great sand-pits that stretch along the Island, deep and wide like mighty graves. Far below me a whole forest stood in ghostly silence, with every whitening limb lifted in supplication, as if all had died in a terrified struggle with the engulfing sands. Unawares, I had happened upon one of Nature’s griefs—and I do not know how to tell you, but the sight of it aged me. Of a sudden this death of the trees seemed a far-off part of my own experience. I was swept out of this contesting, energetic world into a still region where great events come to pass in silence, and inevitably. And so real was the illusion that, as I turned to hurry back, it seemed to me that centuries had passed since I saw the same little tuft of flowers like a group of purple fairies nodding to me from the top of a tall cliff. And so I stood there confused by the significance of this silence, so incredible that even the winds could not shake it. I felt so near and kin to death that I became “alien” to all the living world about me. For the first time in my life, I lost the sense of God, which is always a kind of mental protection against the terrors of infinity. There was nothing to pray to, only the sea on one side and this grave on the other, with a little trembling life between.
Thus you will understand that not only have I had a similar experience to your own upon the occasion of O’Meara’s death, but that for once I came into your region of shades and terrors. I was like one on the point of dissolution, and almost my soul escaped into your dim habitation. From your letters I had already learned how near together love and death stood in your consciousness. Each is an exit through which your spirit is ever ready to pass. And for the moment, crowded in with skeleton shadows there, you seemed sensibly near me. I was divided between fear and love. But the blood of life in me always triumphs,—and then it was that I made my first flight in consciousness from you. I kissed my hand to the twilight and ran! I am sure you were there, Philip, a cold-lipped spirit-lover seeking my mortal life. And, oh my Heart! is it wrong that I would love and be loved in the flesh? I do not object to spirituality, only it must have a visible presence and a warm cheek.
P. S.—But, dear Philip, how am I to reconcile this tender charity to Jack with your anti-humanitarian views? Is a man’s heart so divided from his philosophy? Or do you intend to make a mystic of that poor child, so that he may escape the woes of his condition? I am curious to see what you will do with him. Also, I shall certainly defend him against your Nirvana doctrines if I suspect you of juggling with his soul.
XXVII
PHILIP TO JESSICA
Dear, teasing, rare Jessica: