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Show CHELLING. By May Harris. (A Story of Dubious Impulse.) My Dear Katherine: I went down to Way-bridge Way-bridge Thursday with Chelling, and we talked of you. Not a strange thing, of course, for us to do, but that I should be writing you of will, I dare say, surprise you. Chelling is my excuse as he is my theme, and he deserves, I assure you, the half-hour's half-hour's consideration you will give this letter. Chelling and I hadn't met in some time not since we were all in France three years ago, and you and I, you remember, were foolish enough to be amused by him. To find that he's the same Chelling, in spite of all the changes changes in our point of view, not in him is like a prospector's discovery thai the soil, he didn't oven suspect of a vein of silver, sil-ver, is really a gold mine. All that old sincerity of his we used to think so crude is still there, but its been superimposed by a fine distinction " that mirrors other people as clearly to themselves them-selves as we once thought his crudity mirrored him. In effect, I am proven a fool for having been shortsighted enough once to fancy him one. He sees things with a simplicity, but with a clarity! That is your mistake in your judgment of him the weak spot in your scheme for the future not allowing for his clearness of vision. He won't search for flaws, but his directness will probe if it has the suggestion. Two or three things came into my mind as Chelling and I talked, and the principal thing reiterates itself. If you really loved him, it would be all right for you to marry him, just as it would be natural, in my idea of your philosophy, for you to kill him if you hated him. Knowing you as I do, I expect you to be your normal self which is, to please yourself! I understand you so thoroughly that I could forgive you for being a devil if you were one because of the way you'd make it charming. But Chelling, who docn't understand you in the least, sees you as the ideal woman and tricks you with the investiture of one. I didn't think for a moment that you've posed as a saint to hirn though I do you full justice in Imagining you capable of sustain'-"? the idea if you chose. His regard for you is a reflex of himself, and that's why I'm writing you a plea for Chelling. You haven't, as I see it, the right to marry a man like Chelling. Like me, yes; but in his case, the weapons are unequal. You see, you'd be killing in the end, not his love for you, but his own soul and to kill a soul is worse, isn't It, than to spoil a lifo? You could spoil my lifo, if I'd choose to let you, and you cared to try; I put it brutally, but that's about the way it seems to me, and we don't need disguises. And as for a soul, mine hasn't been of a weight to myself or others that Collin Coll-in 1 r - i . .1 j sideration for 'its growth should bo more than a feather to the scales with you in the balance. That shows you, doesn't it, the manner of man I am? No moral policeman could warn you to keep off the grass of my quality of soul; I myself invite you to trample it it "just divides the desert des-ert from the sown." As I said, you'd simply wreck Chelling, . and I he's too good such men are too few to be sacri ficed to a woman of your temperament. For you are not capable you know it as well as I of sustaining the place he has given you. You are like a paste diamond forgive me, Katherine! in the setting he has made exquisitely of his own purest gold. You have always been a flirt. I, who have known you all your life, recognize it as characteristic charac-teristic of you your attribute just as the sparks fly upward. You wanted admiration as a child do you remember our school days? you wanted it as a girl, and the more you received, the more you craved. It was to satisfy this craving more than your concept of a compelling talent that made you finally go on the stage. To do this, you had to break with your relatives who opposed it, and you did so without, as far as I could ever discover, a single pang. To say that your success in your art has proved your justification, is, of course, an eloquent defense. de-fense. But your art has been in making people admire you, and you have done it so consummately consum-mately that few have understood that your talent as an actress has always been subordinate to your charm as a woman. Analysis, you understand, is a foe to sentiment, but I, who am an analyst by profession, deplore in you the lack of the quality I am supposed to deiide. It is still a weakness on the part of men to wish women to illustrate the feminine virtues and I suppose it is a mqasure of the way 1 regard you that I fortuitously regret your attitude toward Chelling. It isn't difficult for me to remember the- you of ten years ago. It was the real you then, I think; that is, the you I thought you not a part you took up or put down, You were charming, graceful, girlish like (you remember her?) Leonardo's princess, whose profile haunts one's memory far more persistently than Mona Lisa's dubious smiling. I was almost oh, well! quite in love with you then. To a boy of twenty-two twenty-two you were the ideal a Daphne, shy, immortal, an inspiration for the .first unspoiled devotion a boy gives from the best in him. You didn't want it, and I outgrew later with a wrench the power to give it. "No diver brings up love again" the flawless pearl is found only once. But in some way, though I understand you so fully, though everything is changed, that old time is the perfect thing of my life, and I wish I could blot out the years and be, for my soul's good, the boy I was even if you were out of the question. But I can't over lose you in that way again, and it's my loss and my tragedy. It was the best way, Katherine even if I were as crude as we used to think Chelling. You are a brilliant woman an actress who has achieved the praise that is still the "golden cry" in your ears, but you've deteriorated as a woman from that earlier self that might have been the key the index to the character I thought you were long ago, and that Chelllngs thinks you now. To be popular, to be exploited as an actress whose cleverness was as daring as it was brilliant, bril-liant, has satisfied you perfectly. That a few people of an old-fashioned sort in the little places where you used to live, held up their hands in horror over the roles you took, over the notoriety the press manipulated for you, was nothing to you. Their opinions of you not only didn't tiouble you you didn't even think about their having one. When I met you three years ago in France, after so long a time, I saw you didn't mind the disapproval you might provoke; you were as careless care-less of it as Undine. I, too, you comprehend, had reached a place that if it didn't match yours in brilliancy, at least equaled it in cynical pessimism. I hadn't any illusions about myself or my books. I didn't believe in the milk of human kindness any more than you. We were two of a kind products of arid materialism; and you were much more inter- jw ested in me when you discovered this than ever ,H before. I had acquired analysis; and I studied ijB you frankly. You remember I told you when you 'Wm asked me once the result of my analysis. It ;H wasn't flattering. I pointed out the fact that there Bf" was one direction in which you couldn't advance JH that you'd shut the door. That direction was JH the normal one for every woman love. b's I didn't think you had ever considered its lB existence outside its necessitous part in your 'JB , profession. As a sentiment, as an exaltation of 1B the bnt in human nature, you hadn't considered Wm it. Iu your profession it was a pose assumed ijK as you put on a costume, and I told you that 3H though you could trick an audience at a pinch Wm trick the one person yet you'd never trick your- pH self. )U That's the test, you understand, of the real 1H thing to lose one's self utterly, past finding, in Wm devotion that's single-hearted and real. We quar- B reled, of course; you said my estimate was embit- Vmm tered and I resented the implication. I watched JjjH your manner to Chelling Chelling, who was awk- IB ward, shy and amusing. It was a fine bit of act- IS ing off the stage. We nad discussed him half jjjH contemptuously during those first days before 1B our disagreement, and had wondered that our IfB hostess should have invited so stupid a relation ijjffi cousin, wasn't he? to introduce to" her French ''jjjn in-laws. Old Madame do Silancourt liked him, :(!B I remember, even if he did blush over her droll jB stories and she made them less droll, I noticed, mm when he was by. tjjH But I don't think, In looking back, that any of - ifm us even suspected his real worth it wasn't in us Wm io recognize it until the world flung it into our B faces. I feel sure it was merely the difficulty of fjB attracting him that made you determined to con- 9H quer. He was different from all the men you had IjH ever known he wasn't even aware of your H charm, for it belonged to an atmosphere he didn't jfls comprehend. To bo charming to him it was neces- ifflm sary to abandon your real self to take a role ifflf that appealed to him. You divined it exactly $ (Continued from pace 13) ffflt II (Continued from Page 5) v mm, tho samo phase of temperament that had "drawn 1 my boyish adoration and you gave it the fin ished effect that you gave your other parts. As I've said, it was real to Chelling. It is real to him! and that's the tragedy. He isn't a boy; he can't salve any hurt with a cheap cynicism that merely corrodes, and he isn't the sort who could forget. You embody, you realize, his ideal; and to a man like Chelling do you, can you ' understand what that means? Do you know what j it has already meant to him and to tho world? ' For it is you who, unknowing, have made him j you who gave the impulse that has been so Ifar-reachingly magnificent in its results. You were, you see, an artist of the beautiful unintentionally for without tho inspiration Chelling Chel-ling received from the idea he has assumed of j ou ho would probably always have been the Cholling we first knew. Now he's the world's; and it's in recognition of this, of his worth to ' humanity at large, of the example and power of I his exquisite and wonderful personality and the message it is capable of sounding' for good and j truth that I appeal to you. It was piquant, wasn't it, to drag ft little American Amer-ican clergyman captive at your chariot wheels, and you amused yourself with the amusement j your foreign friends had in the process. Later, when you had to take him at the serious valua tion of the world at large, when it was present to you that he had a scope of goodness that had ; brought him reverence as well as fame you be came serious. To accept what he offered was a qustion no longer laughable. It was a triumph J to have achieved the distinction of being the woman Chelling cared for Chelling, the mystic, the philosopher; the clergyman whose singleness of purpose was recognized and acclaimed. That wonderful work of his In the northern wilds gave him fame but his life could bear any scrutiny. It was flawless and fine as a diamond. "This is Chelling; as you well know I've merely outlined. You can give in your mental appraise-I appraise-I ment the fuller color the toning of the shades, tho finer touches, that make him so wonderful ;J a figure of truth and sincerity in this age that so j' wonderfully lacks such attributes. f The pride of having inspired this develop- ;i ment of his ought to be enough for you even if ! you must keep tho secret of it always for your self alone. The reverse of the medal would be the loss of the things you've inspired; for if you fail him if he discovers, as he will discover, that you've merely tricked him, that you're, after all, dif- . ferent to the woman he thinks you he'll lose his grip. If you really loved him, I can think of nothing finer than your renunciation of him for that reason giving him up that he might not lose the vital spark that has kindled all this the spark of his love for you. I am frank he would lose it; he couldn't lielp it, for you you haven't studied women of your own. type for nothing, and you will recognize the truth of what I say you couldn't keep up the fiction! Even if you loved him, you couldn't! and God knows I can't fancy your loving him! There couldn't be a stranger idea than that of your being in love with Cholling! Though I don't doubt the recognition of his r "odness could touch you to an emotional phase of feeling that would be as strong as It would be evanescent. Its passing, pass-ing, however, would be as certain as any of the inevitable things of life. You are not the type of woman who would merge her life In her husband's, and that is what Chelling anticipates what you have promised to do. It is an unwarranted draft on the future, and one you know you can't honor. . It wouldn't be so bad if you were marrying a man like me a man who knows you through and through who makes allowances, who wouldn't keep you straining at a leash of his own superlative goodness. You'd probably have made me a very dutiful wife because of the freedom I'd have allowed. But with Chelling it would be a bondage of the spirit. Don't deceive yourself .that a mftsk is easy to wear. It slips off and then there is demolition. I speak from experience, but with a difference. differ-ence. My wreckage has concerned myself alone, and I wasn't of much value even to that self. But Chellmg ! Don't let him go to wreck! I speak to the best In you in this effort of mine, ""o lose you now would be unhappiness to him, but nothing to what it would be later on. He can bear it now, if it is merely the loss of you personally for he can still keep can't you see? his belief, his faith in you which has become a beautiful possession to him; a part, and the best part, of his life. We are all of us such 'failures "that I suppose to see someone doing and being the things one could have wished to do one's self makes the longing all the greater to do tho best possible to keep him on the way. I don't know how you'll take this letter. Its honesty is as bare as a sword out of the scabbard scab-bard but at least I beg you to believe It Is drawn in a worthy cause. And not altogether, Katherlne, against you! If I didn't think you'd read my appeal clearly enough to fully understand, I wouldn't make it. It's with me less a cowardice than a virtue, since, after all, I love you and always have For each man kills the thing he loves, 13y each let this be heard, The coward does It with a kiss, The bravo man with a sword. You'll never forgive me for this letter, but also you'll never, I think and feol sure, marry Chelling. After all, you see, I do expect the response. It's the answer of the you Chelling and I both idealized into existence, and it's from that subliminal sub-liminal consciousness that I expect the pardon you won't, of your superficial self, over wish to givo. Faithfully yours, JOHN GREER. Town Topics. |