Fennel and Rue | Page 8

we
supposed he must get lots of letters about his story and never paid any
attention to them. We did not realize what we had done till I got your
letter yesterday. Then we saw it all, and ever since we have been trying
to think what to do, and I do not believe either of us has slept a moment.
We have come to the conclusion that there was only one thing we could
do, and that was to tell you just exactly how it happened and take the
consequences. But there is no reason why more than one person should
be brought into it, and so I will not let my friend sign this letter with me,
but I will put my own name alone to it. You may not think it is my real
name, but it is; you can find out by writing to the postmaster here. I do
not know whether you will publish it as a fraud for the warning of
others, but I shall not blame you if you do. I deserve anything. Yours
truly, "JERUSHA PEREGRINE BROWN."
If Verrian had been an older man life might have supplied him with the
means of judging the writer of this letter. But his experience as an
author had not been very great, and such as it was it had hardened and
sharpened him. There was nothing wild or whirling in his mood, but in
the deadly hurt which had been inflicted upon his vanity he coldly and
carefully studied what deadlier hurt he might inflict again. He was of
the crueller intent because he had not known how much of personal

vanity there was in the seriousness with which he took himself and his
work. He had supposed that he was respecting his ethics and aesthetics,
his ideal of conduct and of art, but now it was brought home to him that
he was swollen with the conceit of his own performance, and that,
however well others thought of it, his own thought of it far outran their
will to honor it. He wished to revenge himself for this consciousness as
well as the offence offered him; of the two the consciousness was the
more disagreeable.
His mother, dressed for the street, came in where he sat quiet at his
desk, with the editor's letters and the girl's before him, and he mutely
referred them to her with a hand lifted over his shoulder. She read them,
and then she said, "This is hard to bear, Philip. I wish I could bear it for
you, or at least with you; but I'm late for my engagement with Mrs.
Alfred, as it is--No, I will telephone her I'm detained and we'll talk it
over--"
"No, no! Not on any account! I'd rather think it out for myself. You
couldn't help me. After all, it hasn't done me any harm--"
"And you've had a great escape! And I won't say a word more now, but
I'll be back soon, and then we--Oh, I'm so sorry I'm going."
Verrian gave a laugh. "You couldn't do anything if you stayed, mother.
Do go!"
"Well--" She looked at him, smoothing her muff with her hand a
moment, and then she dropped a fond kiss on his cheek and obeyed
him.

IV
Verrian still sat at his desk, thinking, with his burning face in his hands.
It was covered with shame for what had happened to him, but his
humiliation had no quality of pity in it. He must write to that girl, and
write at once, and his sole hesitation was as to the form he should give
his reply. He could not address her as Dear Miss Brown or as Dear
Madam. Even Madam was not sharp and forbidding enough; besides,
Madam, alone or with the senseless prefix, was archaic, and Verrian
wished to be very modern with this most offensive instance of the latest
girl. He decided upon dealing with her in the third person, and trusting
to his literary skill to keep the form from clumsiness.
He tried it in that form, and it was simply disgusting, the attitude stiff

and swelling, and the diction affected and unnatural. With a quick
reversion to the impossible first type, he recast his letter in what was
now the only possible shape.
"MY DEAR MISS BROWN,--The editor of the American Miscellany
has sent me a copy of his recent letter to you and your own reply, and
has remanded to me an affair which resulted from my going to him
with your request to see the close of my story now publishing in his
magazine.
"After giving the matter my best thought, I have concluded that it will
be well to enclose all the exhibits to you, and I now