I have faced it. I love Bobby. To love—it is to give. Bobby’s wife must give. The hands that take into their keeping that precious thing—his genius—what tender, comprehending hands they must be. There’ll be times, lots of ’em, when Bobby’s wife will have to do all the loving for two. There’ll be times when he will thrust her out, and if she sits whimpering on the doorstep that it’s cold out there, heaven help her—how he’ll hate her. There’ll be times when the work presses, when he’s distrait—knows she’s there just as he knows the [house furnishings] are there, bed near centre of room, bureau against west wall, light above——If she gets frightened at the wilted leaves and jerks his love for her out of his body to look at the roots too often, then heaven help you, Robert Haralson.
Bobby, Bobby, I’d know at a glance—without a glance. When you opened the door I’d feel, Bobby. Sometimes her tired-out man child quivering with his day’s toil asks mother love of his wife. She’s got to be counsellor, comforter, friend—comrade with whom to forget life’s cares. Out of all the world she’s got to be the one woman that is his need. I am your need! If disaster stripped you of all that the world has showered on you, if it reduced you to the hurdy-gurdy man who grinds his organ under your window—Bobby, Bobby, would Dicky love the gathering of the pennies?
April 28th.
Morning.
Bobby wires again: “What are you up to, Caroline, that you didn’t let me know you were here, that Dicky didn’t know; that Elliott wasn’t told it was Dicky with me; that you were so naughty in the Square the other night as to laugh at my confusion? Little girl with eyes like moonflowers, all right for youse. And mum’s the word.”
“Her eyes, full and clear, with their white-encircled, gray irises, are like moonflowers.” That’s what Bobby says on page 131 about his heroine. And back in one of his first letters to me, “Please turn to page 131 of the book and try to think whose eyes I tried to describe.”
April 28th.
Noon.
On the heels of Bobby’s telegram I have this letter from him.
To-day, Wednesday.
My Dear Caroline Howard:
Please hurry up and get all the sea air you want, and go up to Boston and let them show you Milk Street and the Youth’s Companion building (that’s all there is there). Oh, I forgot the beautiful men. Look ’em over! I’ve seen ’em. They all carry a black network bag with a MS. play, and Emerson, and two watercress sandwiches for lunch in it. All right for youse. Do you know I have an idea that you’ll meet your fate up there among the Baked Beans. I’m told those Apollo “Belvidears” always take to a girl that’s both intelligent and good looking. Get that? Well, I won’t send you a wedding present—so, there!