"Spare me O Lord the crowded way, Life's busy mart where men contend, For me the home the tranquil day, A little sock to mend."

I try never to think of an end to my happiness, but somehow the crushing thought comes and stifles me into abject fear. Then my husband brings me my little child and the evil thoughts are kissed away.

Yesterday Carlton's eyes filled with tears of grat.i.tude as I sat nursing our baby before the open grate and running my hand through his thick brown hair as he sat on the floor beside us. We remain long hours in silence watching the pictures in the blazing back logs, then suddenly we embrace to prove mutually that we still have each other.

The river is still a frozen jagged band all down the canon, and the roads are knee deep with snow and ice. I scarcely breathe while Carlton is away in his motor, for fear the wheels will skid and hurl him into endless depths down the mountain side. It is impossible to procure food without his going to the railroad, but each day I try to believe that I don't need nourishment just to see if I can't prevent these precarious errands. We live so naturally and so happily that we are staying on indefinitely in our frozen love bower.

Dr. Harmen leaves tomorrow after weeks of rejuvenating pleasures out here. The nurse will remain to render me such a.s.sistance as I need, though I am so jealous of her care of my son that I shall claim my mother rights as soon as I am strong enough. Junior has his father's eyes with all the softness of the blue periwinkle flower in their splendid depths, and I feel when I hold him in my arms and am held in turn in Carlton's that I can never give either of them up--even to the Almighty. I will never give them up. They are mine and I am theirs--for all eternity.

Adieu sweet friend, MARIANNE.

February 25.

It has come. The bright fire in the grate is a heap of smouldering ashes and all the pictures and dreams are dead. I cannot breathe--I cannot live--I am insane with grief. And the ignorant world teaches of an all merciful G.o.d--an all seeing Father! The irony of it! I cannot live--I must go too. It will be impossible to go on, and on, alone--forever and for all eternity--alone--I cannot--I will not!

They are lying down there in their shrouds--my husband and his faithful Monkaushka with their poor bodies crushed and mangled--O! I cannot tell you more! The machine is an unsightly heap at the bottom of the ravine.

I cannot write--I cannot think and yet I must do both. What have I done but love with all my womanhood and all my motherhood!

After all it was beautiful for him to die and go to heaven while flowers filled his hands. A loud cry has gone up in my soul; an echo as it were of the funereal _Consummatum est_, which is p.r.o.nounced in church on Good Friday at the hour when the _Saviour_ died. And all day I wring my hands helplessly and can do nought but build dungeons and dungeons in the air.

I speak in an altered voice as though my instrument had lost several strings and those that remained were loosened.

Dearest--can you tell me--am I responsible for his death? All during last night I seemed to hear G.o.d's voice asking: "Cain, where is Abel?"

and I wail and beseech: "Am I my brother's keeper?" My soul is guilty--guilty of loving him--guilty of his death, for had I not loved him he would never have known the Black Hills. Oh! if I could but be resigned--if I could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in immeasurable la.s.situde!

I have pressed his lips for the last time, my precious son is at my breast--his long lashes are pressed tightly against his cheeks as if to secure his eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of his young soul to recollect and hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but fleeting. His tiny pink and white ear framed by a stray lock of his hair and outlined by a wrapping of lace from you, would make an artist, a painter, even an old man wildly in love with his perfect little being, and will, please G.o.d, restore me, a mad woman to her senses!

Come to my Black Hills, I am crushed, desolate, heart-broken--come to

MARIANNE.

The Black Hills.

July 2.

One week has pa.s.sed Dear, since you left us--a strange week of readjustment and thought. All of those precious months that you have given me are but another expression of your divine friendship. The poignant grief is gone with you and my grat.i.tude to you can but be shown by the degree of bravery that I now manifest.

Every day this week, my son and I have sat in the sunshine near the two mounds, which my remaining bronze boy has decorated with crocuses from the neighboring ravine. He spends long hours after dark, gathering wild flowers in the moonlight. His devotion to me and my dead love, is the saddest, most boundless tribute that an uncivilized mind could offer.

Silently he goes about his duties; silently he grieves, and more silently he gathers flowers as a tangible evidence of his devotion.

Your letters have come each day and will come each day until I lie too, beside my love on the desolate mountain side. Such is your unfailing love and sympathy for me, all unworthy of your months of sacrifice and isolation out here in my new home. My son, bless his precious heart, tried to crawl today but the newly developed feat frightened his baby mind and he cried. Closely almost roughly, I crush him to me a thousand times a day, so fearful am I that he too may go to join infinitude.

You ask me to come back to New York. I must refuse your request. I cannot--I cannot leave my home--the only place worthy of the name that I have ever possessed! Some day, maybe, but not now--it is all too dear and consoling to breathe the same air that sustained me in my perfect happiness.

How can you say: "Don't regret." What do you mean? Regret the only joy that my poor starved soul has ever known? No atom of regret enters my grief--only a great unbounded grat.i.tude to G.o.d, to the world, to Nature, that one perfect year has been saved from out the wreck of time!

Gratefully, MARIANNE.

The Black Hills, September 20.

Two marvelous things have come to me today dear; my son took his first trembling steps alone, and a letter came to me from the man who was my husband. I am trembling with joy over the first and still dazed with lack of understanding of the second. I enclose the letter as I have long since given up trying to think clearly, and must depend upon you, to decide for me any matters of grave import. I am plunged in perplexity; advise me after reading the enclosed letter.

Lovingly, MARIANNE.

New York, Sept. 16.

Dear Marianne:

Six years ago, I found myself, though fond of you, glad when business took me away. We spent that summer in different places, but about October lived together again. I was still fond of you, but at that time found Vera, whose company was very pleasing to me. You and I seemed to be drawn away from each other and we decided to separate at the end of December, when I started on my long cruise.

I felt very, very sorry to leave you, but something told me that it was better to do so. I remember you seemed to feel the same, and we kissed each other goodbye as though we were both sorry for something that had to be.

Leaving the question of dual or multiple personality aside, and putting the matter very simply, I believe that my soul made a right choice in you my wife. I believe that alcohol was necessary for a while to put my body, even at its expense, into a state of conductivity, so that my soul, when I was somewhat alcoholized, could gain some expression; give some glimpses of itself and suggest the trend of my powers. For this reason I believe that some men are made to drink and drug--but that is another subject which I hope to take up with you more fully at some future time.

My soul self has always wanted my wife's soul self, and I believe that if I could have you back, my conquered body self would never need to wander from home. A little more pliability--all you ever lacked, and which your trouble should have brought you, could make it so that we could live together in very perfect harmony. Then I could release a lot of good plays and good writings, much of which I know already has been completed by my subliminal self. I get frequent glimpses of parts of plays, plots and ideas.

You cannot but feel proud of the success of my last book, which ought to show you that I'm getting a grip of myself. My mother and I were _en rapport_ and under the dual personality theory, it is reasonable to suppose that I have been guided by her since her death. I certainly have been guided by G.o.d or by her, and it is reasonable to believe that she is G.o.d's instrument of my guidance.

A young man makes whole ranges of mountains out of tiny mole hills which, when he has learned sense, he will spread under his foot without noticing them. Most of our differences were mere mole hills, dear, which couldn't thwart us now. For we are too big now, to be so easily thwarted. Can't we give each other the chance to prove this to each other?

If you will permit me I will love your child as my own--as every real man ought to love every child, dear little unfinished human beings.

Formerly I thought I knew a good deal; but G.o.d knew better and took me away from you to teach me a few lessons. For they were lessons that I alone needed and G.o.d did not want you to undergo them as well as me.

They were lessons calling for chastis.e.m.e.nt and you didn't need chastising.

I've taken G.o.d's punishment dear, and thanked Him for it. And I believe I'm fit company for you now.

I am coming next Monday to Custer, four miles from where you are, and on Tuesday morning, starting at eight, I shall walk toward your bungalow by way of the path by the river. I am familiar with every inch of the road, as you know I wrote "Treasure-trove" at the Wilson ranch near your canon.

Will you and your little son meet me if only a few yards from your home so that you may judge for yourself if I am fit company for you now.

If you do not meet me--then the will of Allah be done, for I shall turn back.

DONALD.

October 10.