"Why, you don't suppose if he were alive he could ever hold up his head again, with these letters being read by everybody?" Mrs. Touchett protested. "It must have been horrible enough to know they'd been written to him; but to publish them! No man could have done it and no woman could have told him to--""Oh, come, come," Dresham judicially interposed; "after all, they're not love-letters.""No--that's the worst of it; they're unloved letters," Mrs. Touchett retorted.
"Then, obviously, she needn't have written them; whereas the man, poor devil, could hardly help receiving them.""Perhaps he counted on the public to save him the trouble of readingthem," said young Hartly, who was in the cynical stage.
Mrs. Armiger turned her reproachful loveliness to Dresham. "From the way you defend him, I believe you know who he is."Everyone looked at Dresham, and his wife smiled with the superior air of the woman who is in her husband's professional secrets. Dresham shrugged his shoulders.
"What have I said to defend him?"
"You called him a poor devil--you pitied him.""A man who could let Margaret Aubyn write to him in that way? Of course I pity him.""Then you MUST know who he is," cried Mrs. Armiger, with a triumphant air of penetration.
Hartly and Flamel laughed and Dresham shook his head. "No one knows; not even the publishers; so they tell me at least.""So they tell you to tell us," Hartly astutely amended; and Mrs. Armiger added, with the appearance of carrying the argument a point farther, "But even if HE'S dead and SHE'S dead, somebody must have given the letters to the publishers.""A little bird, probably," said Dresham, smiling indulgently on her deduction.
"A little bird of prey then--a vulture, I should say--" another man interpolated.
"Oh, I'm not with you there," said Dresham, easily. "Those letters belonged to the public.""How can any letters belong to the public that weren't written to the public?" Mrs. Touchett interposed.
"Well, these were, in a sense. A personality as big as Margaret Aubyn's belongs to the world. Such a mind is part of the general fund of thought. It's the penalty of greatness--one becomes a monument historique. Posterity pays the cost of keeping one up, but on condition that one is always open to the public.""I don't see that that exonerates the man who gives up the keys of the sanctuary, as it were.""Who WAS he?" another voice inquired.
"Who was he? Oh, nobody, I fancy--the letter-box, the slit in the wall through which the letters passed to posterity. . . .""But she never meant them for posterity!""A woman shouldn't write such letters if she doesn't mean them to be published. . . .""She shouldn't write them to such a man!" Mrs. Touchett scornfully corrected.
"I never keep letters," said Mrs. Armiger, under the obvious impression that she was contributing a valuable point to the discussion.
There was a general laugh, and Flamel, who had not spoken, said, lazily, "You women are too incurably subjective. I venture to say that most men would see in those letters merely their immense literary value, their significance as documents. The personal side doesn't count where there's so much else.""Oh, we all know you haven't any principles," Mrs. Armiger declared; and Alexa Glennard, lifting an indolent smile, said: "I shall never write you a love-letter, Mr. Flamel."Glennard moved away impatiently. Such talk was as tedious as the buzzing of gnats. He wondered why his wife had wanted to drag him on such a senseless expedition. . . . He hated Flamel's crowd-- and what business had Flamel himself to interfere in that way, standing up for the publication of the letters as though Glennard needed his defence? . . .
Glennard turned his head and saw that Flamel had drawn a seat to Alexa's elbow and was speaking to her in a low tone. The other groups had scattered, straying in twos along the deck. It came over Glennard that he should never again be able to see Flamel speaking to his wife without the sense of sick mistrust that now loosened his joints. . . .
Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, surprised her husband by an unexpected request.
"Will you bring me those letters from town?" she asked.
"What letters?" he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark.
