TWO LETTERS, A TELEGRAM, AND A FINALE
“New York, September 10.
“Dearest Marian:
“Is it not time to break silence? Three months have passed since we quarrelled on the eve of your departure for the mountains. I wrote twice during the first week. You did not answer. Pride forbade my risking another rebuff.
“Frequently I have been so desperate that it has consoled me to run into needless danger. Often, during the summer, I have swum out beyond the breakers when there was a heavy undertow. I have taken automobile tours by myself, speeding at seventy miles an hour over narrow roads along mountainsides.
“These foolhardy adventures were backed by what must seem to you an unaccountable desire for revenge. I pictured your face as you read an account of my death; gloated over the horror in your eyes when they scanned the ghastly details.
“I invented such news items as these: ‘Blake’s body was cast up on the beach, horribly gashed by the rocks’; or, ‘The automobile leaped into a chasm. Blake, clinging to the wheel, was crushed into an unrecognizable mass when the car turned turtle.’
“This desire to punish you for your neglect seems a barbarous instinct or a childish whim, as you choose. But, ashamed of it as I may be, and struggle against it as I will, such a thought is often with me.
“Take this morning, for instance: alighting from the train at Jersey City, I stopped to admire the huge locomotive which has been lately put on the morning express. I laid my hand on one bulky cylinder. ‘What if this monster should explode with me standing here!’ I thought. ‘What if one side of my face and my right arm were blown off! What would she say, my little Princess of Indifference, far away in her mountain fastness?’
“I gave imagination its head. It soon seemed as if the horrible thing had really happened. They picked me up, conscious and suffering frightfully. Before I slipped into merciful oblivion the awful truth was apparent to me—my right arm was gone and the right side of my face was terribly scalded by the blinding steam.
“Weeks grew into months. The day before the bandages were to be removed from my face I escaped from the hospital. I took a night express to Montreal. From Montreal I plunged into the wilderness, anywhere to get away from the sight of man, where, slowly and painfully, with my untrained left arm, I built a hut on the side of a mountain. Besides the rough furniture I installed a typewriter and a framed photograph of you. Just these two things with which to start life over again.
“Here I learned with difficulty to typewrite with one hand. At first it baffled me to devise some way of depressing the shift key. Then I attached a rough contrivance for working the shift key with my foot. Finally I became fairly expert, and began to submit magazine stories, with some success.
“Often I dreamed of a footstep outside my cabin, of the swish of skirts, of a cry, and somebody rushing across the floor. Two hands, unmistakably yours, pressed my eyes—my good eye on the good side of my face and my useless eye on the useless side of my face. Then I seemed to play a gruesome hide-and-seek, twisting, turning, dodging—ever striving to keep the undamaged side of my face toward you, concealing the stricken side from your eyes.
“That’s enough of such rubbish. Fancies, made morbid by your long silence, have run away with me. Forgive me. But have mercy, and write!
“I have stopped running risks in the water. I observe the legal rate of speed in my car. But I have not given up an equally hazardous adventure—loving you.
“Forever and ever yours,
“John.”
“Paul Smith’s, Adirondacks, N. Y.,
September 14.
“My Own Silly John:
“Your letter gave me the shivers. Forgive me. I have been thoughtless and brutal. Your letter was so graphic, your description of your make-believe accident in the train-sheds so real, that I cannot get it out of my mind, I love you, love you, love you! I shall leave here two weeks from to-morrow. I’d leave to-night if it were not for Mother, who is not well enough yet to travel. That fictitious cabin on the mountainside with you blinded and alone frightened me. Be careful, John; be careful, you dear, dear thing!
“Always yours,
“Marian.”
(Telegram)
“Noonday Club, New York,
September 24.
“Marian Blackmar:
“Paul Smith’s, Adirondacks, N. Y.
“The cabin on the mountain was not fictitious. Neither was the explosion of the locomotive, which happened three months ago. I gave an assumed name at the hospital. Do not try to find me. There is nothing left worth finding. I want to be remembered as I was when we parted. Good-bye.
“John.”
The Finale
An October moon shone through the scarlet leaves of a Canadian forest. Shadows from the thinning branches fell across the clearing where John Blake’s cabin clung to the side of a mountain. The light from a shaded lamp, within, fell upon a typewriter with its singular attachment for depressing the shift key.
Before the machine John sat, bowed in thought, his right sleeve hanging empty. He was thinking of the letter which he had written to Marian Blackmar, and which he had enclosed with a note to the steward of the Noonday Club, to be mailed from New York, for the sake of the postmark, of the telegram which had been relayed through the same club.
The autumn wind coaxed the logs in the fireplace. The responsive flames lighted with a warm glow the photographed features of the beautiful girl in the oval frame.
There was a footstep outside the cabin, the swish of skirts, a cry, and somebody rushing across the floor. Two hands, unmistakably hers, were pressed over his eyes, the good eye and the bad eye alike. Two lips, every now and then interrupting themselves against his, wept and laughed and pleaded and made-believe scold, and finally persuaded John that no life can be disfigured where love dwells.
Running Down Vimy 