There was no special diffidence in the Doctor's manner this time. His clutch on the letter was distinctly inquisitive, and he read out the opening sentences with almost rhetorical effect.
"Oh, Carl dear, you silly boy, WHY do you persist in
hectoring me so? Don't you understand that I've got only a
certain amount of ingenuity anyway, and if you force me to
use it all in trying to conceal my identity from you, how
much shall I possibly have left to devise schemes for your
amusement? Why do you persist, for instance, in wanting to
see my face? Maybe I haven't got any face! Maybe I lost my
face in a railroad accident. How do you suppose it would
make me feel, then, to have you keep teasing and
teasing.-Oh, Carl!
"Isn't it enough for me just to tell you once for all that
there is an insuperable obstacle in the way of our ever
meeting. Maybe I've got a husband who is cruel to me. Maybe,
biggest obstacle of all, I've got a husband whom I am
utterly devoted to. Maybe, instead of any of these things,
I'm a poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossing day and night
on a very small bed of very big pain. Maybe worse than being
sick I'm starving poor, and maybe, worse than being sick or
poor, I am most horribly tired of myself. Of course if you
are very young and very prancy and reasonably good-looking,
and still are tired of yourself, you can almost always rest
yourself by going on the stage where-with a little rouge
and a different colored wig, and a new nose, and skirts
instead of trousers, or trousers instead of skirts, and age
instead of youth, and badness instead of goodness-you can
give your ego a perfectly limitless number of happy
holidays. But if you were oldish, I say, and pitifully 'shut
in', just how would you go to work, I wonder, to rest your
personality? How for instance could you take your biggest,
grayest, oldest worry about your doctor's bill, and rouge it
up into a radiant, young joke? And how, for instance, out of
your lonely, dreary, middle-aged orphanhood are you going to
find a way to short-skirt your rheumatic pains, and braid
into two perfectly huge pink-bowed pigtails the hair that
you haven't got, and caper round so ecstatically before
the foot-lights that the old gentleman and lady in the front
seat absolutely swear you to be the living image of their
'long lost Amy'? And how, if the farthest journey you ever
will take again is the monotonous hand-journey from your
pillow to your medicine bottle, then how, for instance, with
map or tinsel or attar of roses, can you go to work to solve
even just for your own satisfaction the romantic, shimmering
secrets of-Morocco?
"Ah! You've got me now, you think? All decided in your mind
that I am an aged invalid? I didn't say so. I just said
'maybe'. Likelier than not I've saved my climax for its
proper place. How do you know,-for instance, that I'm not
a-'Cullud Pusson'?-So many people are."
Without signature of any sort, the letter ended abruptly then and there, and as though to satisfy his sense of something left unfinished, the Doctor began at the beginning and read it all over again in a mumbling, husky whisper.
"Maybe she is-'colored'," he volunteered at last.
"Very likely," said Stanton perfectly cheerfully. "It's just those occasional humorous suggestions that keep me keyed so heroically up to the point where I'm actually infuriated if you even suggest that I might be getting really interested in this mysterious Miss Molly! You haven't said a single sentimental thing about her that I haven't scoffed at-now have you?"
"N-o," acknowledged the Doctor. "I can see that you've covered your retreat all right. Even if the author of these letters should turn out to be a one-legged veteran of the War of 1812, you still could say, 'I told you so'. But all the same, I'll wager that you'd gladly give a hundred dollars, cash down, if you could only go ahead and prove the little girl's actual existence."
Stanton's shoulders squared suddenly but his mouth retained at least a faint vestige of its original smile.
"You mistake the situation entirely," he said. "It's the little girl's non-existence that I am most anxious to prove."
Then utterly without reproach or interference, he reached over and grabbed a forbidden cigar from the Doctor's cigar case, and lighted it, and retreated as far as possible into the gray film of smoke.
It was minutes and minutes before either man spoke again. Then at last after much crossing and re-crossing of his knees the Doctor asked drawlingly, "And when is it that you and Cornelia are planning to be married?"
"Next April," said Stanton briefly.
"U-m-m," said the Doctor. After a few more minutes he said, "U-m-m," again.
[Illustration: "Maybe she is-'colored,'" he volunteered at last]
The second "U-m-m" seemed to irritate Stanton unduly. "Is it your head that's spinning round?" he asked tersely. "You sound like a Dutch top!"
The Doctor raised his hands cautiously to his forehead. "Your story does make me feel a little bit giddy," he acknowledged. Then with sudden intensity, "Stanton, you're playing a dangerous game for an engaged man. Cut it out, I say!"
"Cut what out?" said Stanton stubbornly.
The Doctor pointed exasperatedly towards the big box of letters. "Cut those out," he said. "A sentimental correspondence with a girl who's-more interesting than your fiancée!"
"W-h-e-w!" growled Stanton, "I'll hardly stand for that statement."
"Well, then lie down for it," taunted the Doctor. "Keep right on being sick and worried and-." Peremptorily he reached out both hands towards the box. "Here!" he insisted. "Let's dump the whole mischievous nonsense into the fire and burn it up!"
With an "Ouch," of pain Stanton knocked the Doctor's hands away. "Burn up my letters?" he laughed. "Well, I guess not! I wouldn't even burn up the wall papers. I've had altogether too much fun out of them. And as for the books, the Browning, etc.-why hang it all, I've gotten awfully fond of those books!" Idly he picked up the South American volume and opened the fly-leaf for the Doctor to see. "Carl from his Molly," it said quite distinctly.
"Oh, yes," mumbled the Doctor. "It looks very pleasant. There's absolutely no denying that it looks very pleasant. And some day-out of an old trunk, or tucked down behind your library encyclopedias-your wife will discover the book and ask blandly, 'Who was Molly? I don't remember your ever saying anything about a "Molly".-Just someone you used to know?' And your answer will be innocent enough: 'No, dear, someone whom I never knew!' But how about the pucker along your spine, and the awfully foolish, grinny feeling around your cheek-bones? And on the street and in the cars and at the theaters you'll always and forever be looking and searching, and asking yourself, 'Is it by any chance possible that this girl sitting next to me now-?' And your wife will keep saying, with just a barely perceptible edge in her voice, 'Carl, do you know that red-haired girl whom we just passed? You stared at her so!' And you'll say, 'Oh, no! I was merely wondering if-' Oh yes, you'll always and forever be 'wondering if'. And mark my words, Stanton, people who go about the world with even the most innocent chronic question in their eyes, are pretty apt to run up against an unfortunately large number of wrong answers."
"But you take it all so horribly seriously," protested Stanton. "Why you rave and rant about it as though it was actually my affections that were involved!"
"Your affections?" cried the Doctor in great exasperation. "Your affections? Why, man, if it was only your affections, do you suppose I'd be wasting even so much as half a minute's worry on you? But it's your imagination that's involved. That's where the blooming mischief lies. Affection is all right. Affection is nothing but a nice, safe flame that feeds only on one special kind of fuel,-its own particular object. You've got an 'affection' for Cornelia, and wherever Cornelia fails to feed that affection it is mercifully ordained that the starved flame shall go out into cold gray ashes without making any further trouble whatsoever. But you've got an 'imagination' for this make-believe girl-heaven help you!-and an 'imagination' is a great, wild, seething, insatiate tongue of fire that, thwarted once and for all in its original desire to gorge itself with realities, will turn upon you body and soul, and lick up your crackling fancy like so much kindling wood-and sear your common sense, and scorch your young wife's happiness. Nothing but Cornelia herself will ever make you want-Cornelia. But the other girl, the unknown girl-why she's the face in the clouds, she's the voice in the sea; she's the glow of the sunset; she's the hush of the June twilight! Every summer breeze, every winter gale, will fan the embers! Every thumping, twittering, twanging pulse of an orchestra, every-. Oh, Stanton, I say, it isn't the ghost of the things that are dead that will ever come between you and Cornelia. There never yet was the ghost of any lost thing that couldn't be tamed into a purring household pet. But-the-ghost-of-a-thing-that-you've-never-yet-found? That, I tell you, is a very different matter!"