A Literary Courtship/Chapter 4
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I HAVE often speculated as to why Brunt had so much feeling about that letter. I never felt quite sure whether it was the handwriting or only Fate. As nearly everything in the world is Fate,—everything, at least, but out and out pigheadedness—I suppose that it was Fate that did it. Still John was always a little conceited about his discrimination in regard to handwriting, and Miss Lamb's was about the best I have ever seen. It had not only style and legibility, but unusual individuality. I only wish I could show it to you, but naturally I have not the originals of her letters.
There! Now, I have got ahead of my story! For I had meant to convey the impression at this point, that that was the end of the correspondence, as I am sure it ought to have been. I was intending to go on and give, with a few light touches, a sketch of Brunt as a society man; for he was quite stunning when he laid himself out, and I did not know but that I could remember some of the hits he made at the Van Deusenberg dinner the very next evening. But now that you know the correspondence went on, you will, of course, be in a hurry to hear about that, and you will not want to be told what Brunt was saying to some other girl whom you are not interested in. I think myself that a story is always a bore when it interrupts itself. Only I wish you had been at the dinner, as I was, to hear the discussion on Spoils. A hostess would have been mortified to have given a dinner that year, in the course of which Spoils did not get talked about. They were comparing the book with something of Thackeray's, and Brunt would not hear of its holding a candle to Thackeray. In the heat of discussion, he said such severe things about the new novel that my neighbor confided to me that it only showed how jealous all the men were of Lilian Leslie Lamb!
Three weeks elapsed before the next letter came, and it was much more of a surprise to Brunt and me than it can possibly he to you, since you are prepared for it. The letter was a thick one, and I could hardly wait for John to put in an appearance at my office, which he had proposed doing that morning as he was expecting to hear from the Sandersons in regard toa ninth edition. I knew Miss Lamb's writing directly, of course. No one could ever mistake it. Brunt was as surprised as I had counted upon his being, and he let the Sandersons' letter wait while he opened the Colorado one.
"Poems, by Jove!" he cried, and his face fell. "Ten to one they're trash."
As he spoke a half-sheet slipped to the floor and I picked it up. It was a poem to "The Solitary Sandpiper," beginning:
Prettiest fancy ever taught to fly."
I thought the verses mighty good, and I was pleased, afterward, when I found that John liked them too.
"Are they her poems?" I asked.
"She says not," he growled, "but here, I will read you what she writes." Which he proceeded to do, with occasional comments thrown in.
The letter began, "My dear Miss Lamb," without any allusion to the name being assumed, which I thought in very good taste.
The letter went on as follows:
"How you will regret the courtesy with which you responded to my first letter, when you find that it has brought upon you another, and a far more troublesome one. I can imagine your consternation at sight of the enclosed poems, and I am well aware that my conduct in sending them to you is unjustifiable. When I say that Tam sacrificing your convenience on the altar ofa friendship of my own it will hardly seem to mitigate the wrong. Nevertheless, I throw niyself upon your mercy. These poems are the work of one of my friends. She has written them from time to time in years past as a congenial exercise of her faculties rather than from any more ambitious motive. They seem to me to be not without value. My judgment, to be sure, does not count for much; yet hitherto I have known no one to whom I was willing to submit it in this matter. Ever since your letter came I have been possessed with the desire to have you see my friend's poems. I speak of her thus impersonally, in consideration of her wish to conceal her identity,—a feeling with which you, my dear Miss Lamb, must surely sympathize."
At this point the reader coughed slightly, but resumed:
"My friend's reticence in this respect is due to her extreme modesty—"
"Please observe that she does not, at this point, pursue the comparison," John remarked in parenthesis—
"to her extreme modesty, which indeed is so fixed that it partakes of the nature of obstinacy. Yet a taste of success would certainly be a very deep gratification to one whose life has made her more familiar with disappointment and suffering than with brighter experiences. Will you, then, do me the favor which I ask? Will you read the poems I send you, and then, if your opinion of them should be favorable, will you give me a word of advice as to the best disposition to be made of them? The four poems enclosed are, I think, fairly representative of the whole collection. I am aware that we cannot expect their publication to prove a lucrative venture. The most we hope is, that they may pay their own way. We shall not look for an immediate reply. Should you be so good as to accede to my request, let me beg you to do so at such time as shall render the service least burdensome to you.
"Do you take any stock in the friend, Jack?" I asked.
"Not much," said he, with a sceptical scowl.
"You know she said in the first letter that she hadn't any talents."
"She said she didn't boast any."
"Great Scott! Jack, what a memory you have!"
He was reading the poems with very respectful interest I thought, handing them to me as he finished them. Besides the "Sandpiper," there was a fanciful little love song, a sonnet which I couldn't make much of, and the "Ballad of the Prairie Schooner," which has since become so popular. I could see that Brunt was a good deal impressed, and I didn't wonder. He read them all through several times and then he read the letter again. He always had a way of going on just as though I had not been by, which made everything very free and easy between us.
"Well, what do you think of them?" I asked, when he had had time to take them all in.
"I think them good," saidhe. "If the rest average as high, I should think they might stand on their own legs."
"Shall you write and tell her so?"
"What I should like would be to see the lot. But, confound it! that would involve a regular correspondence, and I should feel like a sneak and a villain."
"You don't want to make a clean breast of it?"
"No, I don't," he answered curtly.
"You might refer her to your friend, John Brunt. I'm sure if she has read your essay on "Verse versus Verse," she will have confidence in your judgment."
"Not such a bad idea," said John.
"An uncommonly good idea, if you would give a fellow his dues," said I.
"The handwriting is rather a hitch"
"Haven't you got a fellow copying for you somewhere? Make him write the Brunt letters."
"He can't sign for me."
"You can sign for yourself. You write your name very differently from anything else. There is something quite reckless about your capital 'J,' and you wouldn't give Browning or Bismarck such a genial 'B' as you put into Brunt."
On second thoughts, however, he concluded that he would rather risk detection than do anything so roundabout as have an amanuensis, and, after much consultation, we agreed that if he continued to write extra small in his character as Miss Lamb, and if he were to exaggerate his own hand when it came time to assume the more familiar rôle of John Brunt, there would be nothing to excite suspicion. And events justified our confidence.
In his next letter, John, in the character of Miss Lamb, asked to be addressed.
"Care of F. Dickson, Esq.,"
which I thought indicated a greater impatience to receive his correspondent's future letters than literary people usually feel when appealed to in such a matter.