When I came home this afternoon there was my letter. I could have told Bobby that Marsville young women were hopelessly ancient at twenty-five, that nobody ever looked at them after they were thirty. Instead, I told him about the drummer who tried to flirt with me on the train. In my effort to get rid of him I moved all over the coach and finally took the last seat, to have him take the last seat opposite. I wrote Bobby that I thought of moving into the Pullman, but that the trip was short and my economic soul balked at the suggestion.
[Bobby] answers:
New York, October 4th.
Dear Lady of the Unlavender Scented Memories:
Please send that picture. You have moved to the very last seat in the car and I have picked up my traps and followed you. Will you send it, or are you going to move into the Pullman?
Yours as ever,
B.H.
October 7th.
Saturday. In the Garden. Sunset.
I was up with the day this morning. At sunrise I had breakfasted and was in the lumbering old hack bumping over the miles that end with the trolley that carries us these days into our mountain city and metropolis twenty miles away from this little town. I went in to do my fall shopping, hat and coat suit and some other needed little things. There’s a new woman’s outfitter that has stimulated shopping marvellously. I saw some stunning things, and I bought—a white silk evening gown, very modern, very clinging, very beautiful. There’s a cunning little fringe of crystal beads on the short sleeves. The dear little skimpy sash-ends have the crystal fringe, too. When I moved about in it and tried it on, the funny little waves of happiness ran up and down my spine and thrilled my knees just as if I really had my hand on the doorknob of that Magic Palace I first divined that day at Edna Kennedy’s. Something pagan stirred in me with the tinkle of my barbaric finery. I bought white silk stockings and white satin slippers, too. I spent every penny of three months’ hard work, and I borrowed my fare on the trolley from our butcher. If he had not been on I suppose I would have asked the conductor for a loan. The Bible says take no thought of the morrow. I did not. But to-morrow, when icy winds blow, with what shall I be clothed? I shan’t worry now. It is too warm and lovely. If I should spend my winter in the state asylum, and I do seem headed that way, my old suit will be quite stylish enough.
There are some La France roses blooming, as lovely ones as I have ever had. I get up from the garden seat and catch their pink satin faces to me and bury my face in their fragrant hearts. I whisper to them: “My poor foolish darlings, why do you bloom so late? Do you not know that all this wonderfulness of warmth, this semblance of summer, is a deception? Do you not know that winter is at hand? What is this absurd thing blooming in my heart as satiny pink and perfumed as they? The amethyst light has gone from the hills; gray and quiet they wrap their night robes of mist about them and wait for the morning. And the sky, still tender, waits for the stars. And I—for what do I wait?”
October 8th.
Sunday. Garden. Sunset.