The mountains I love, my beautiful, misty mountains, are a giant wall of earth to-night. I want to get over the wall. I want to sit in that theatre, and after the play I want to be swept along in the street with the surging crowd and go into a gorgeous, glittery place and eat delicious things I have never tasted, wearing the sort of dress I have never seen. I want to live. If but for one hour of life I want my youth. I could be part of that pulsing, beating life, part of that splendid friction—man’s mind stimulating man’s mind.
Back in my room, ready for bed, the light blown out, sitting at the window, I acknowledge to myself that the cause of all the day’s emotional upheaval has been Dicky’s letter. Dicky’s letter that reads:
“In my brave attire I went to meet the hero of my ‘Personal.’ He got cold feet, Caroline. He did not come. He sent a messenger boy. I had written my foolish heart out to him. I had told him the things I tell you. Yes, I know it is reckless to write like that to a man one never saw. Try being a prune and a potato and a slice of bread, though, before you condemn me.
“His letter is the dearest ever, Caroline. I have read it over and over. ‘Little gypsy child of nineteen, will you be just a little disappointed that the messenger boy is there and not I? Will you believe that I am going against my desire when I stay away? It isn’t fair to you that I meet you. It is not fair to the nice little girl homesick for her southland who has never as yet spoken to a man to whom she has not been introduced. The “ad” was just a wager between a man and me. My name will mean nothing to you, but I sign it.’
“The name was Robert Haralson, Caroline. And who can say why things happen as they do? Who can really tell why that door flung open on the Avenue to let an old man out should have stirred me to such rebellion that I who have been well raised by you and dear old mammy should have done such a madcap thing. The name did mean something to me—it brought vague memories—where had I known a Robert Haralson? And—queer world that it is—I got back to my room to find the answer to my question on the table. Mary Tate answered it. When you and good old John squeezed all the money you could out of the thin acres of land that we call home and sent me to school I met Mary. Perhaps you remember. But she was not a special chum. Soon she is coming on to New York for her first visit. She has just left Roseboro and there everybody is talking about Robert Haralson, known at home still as Bobby. Everybody is saying that he was the cleverest and the most popular lad that the town ever raised. A brilliant future was prophesied for him, but he got a wanderlust and went trailing off to the ends of the earth. Roseboro has just discovered that America’s most brilliant writer and playwright, to quote the papers, is none other than the man who as a little lad spilled the family wash—not the clean wash—in front of the Methodist Church as the congregation filed out from a revival service, and almost died of shyness. Roseboro, of course, is shaking congratulatory hands with itself that its prophecy has come true. Everywhere you go they talk of Bobby. Now he seems permanently to have settled in New York and to have found himself. Mary asks me if I have read, ‘Heart of the World.’ It came out anonymously, as did no end of brilliant stories. But as a playwright he can no longer hide behind his anonymity. Mary is coming to New York soon. She wants to meet him. She begs for my assistance. Her letter closes like this: ‘It can be done, Dicky. Gossip says further that shy Bobby Haralson loved one girl like mad. That girl was Caroline Howard.’
“Dear Caroline, I’ve fallen in love with Bobby’s fascinating letters. I’ve fallen in love with his chivalrous protection of me, with his, ‘Little gypsy girl of nineteen.’ Right this minute his card, name, and address lie on my table—and I am lonesomer than I was before I answered the ‘ad’ but—I won’t do what it is in my mind to do. It is your Bobby Haralson.”
The clipping Dicky sent says that Mr. Haralson, who is just [beginning] to be known as Mr. Haralson, is at present one of the most interesting men in American literature. That he has achieved distinction both in fiction and in drama. That it is difficult to say in which he holds the more prominent position, that when so many writers seem to have written themselves out, he never seems to write up to the full extent of his powers, that always there is that sense of power held in reserve.
Dicky sent a clipping from a Roseboro newspaper that tells the story of Bobby’s heroism on shipboard coming from one of the lands of the Far East. I remember that story. It was some years ago. In mid-sea the engines broke down, the boat sprung a leak, and the men were forced to bail the water from the boat. No ship came near, and one night a frightful storm swept the sea. With the boat at the mercy of the waves the firemen deserted the boilers. It was then that the blood of Bobby’s ancestors spoke in him; Old Governor Haralson, Bobby’s grandfather, was a leader of men, could sway them. And father told me that Bobby’s young father in a charge at the battle of Shilo was a figure he never forgot. He said the young Colonel as he swept into battle at the head of his men wore a beautiful, uplifted, unearthly sort of expression and that he, my father, had often heard him say he had never felt the sensation of fear on a battlefield. So I know just how Bobby Haralson loomed above the discouraged men that night, just how steady his voice was when he told them that the firemen had deserted their posts saying it was death to go down into the hold, but that he was going, and if they were men they would follow him. Wet and naked and blistered in the water that was waist-deep in the ship’s hold, death within and death without, with no hope of saving the ship, with no help possible had help been near, struggling to hold their places along the rope line they hauled the buckets of water up, gaining perceptibly then losing again, but sending a song up whether there was the gain of an inch of water or that much loss—a song that rose above the roar of the sea, hungry for what surely seemed its prey, and the hiss of the great boilers.
When we left Roseboro I was fourteen. Bobby must have been eighteen. A fence divided his house from ours. There was a side gate, for the families were intimate, but, mostly, he leaped it. Do I remember Bobby? I have not thought of him in years, but to-night some little door of the brain long closed opens and out of it comes my almost forgotten boy friend Bobby, like a ghost. Why, just that minute I saw his little flashing smile. It came right through the moonlit window as a friendly hand reaches out to one on the street of a strange city.
It must be very late, but how wide awake I am. And how sweet the tuberoses there in the border under my window are. They seem to float in still pools of moonlight. As they pour their heavy fragrance over me the fancy comes, born of the silver, moon-flooded night, I suppose, that they are trying to tell me something.