THE HAND THAT FED ME
29
able, and somewhat better family than your own, a man whom we
shall call Willard.
Am
I warm? When we met, you had already known
Willard for a period of two years. He, a serious fellow, perhaps a
student of law, or already a lawyer, could not help but have serious
intentions. He doesn't laugh very often, your Willard; and when you
do, opening your mouth wide, it disconcerts him. Furthermore, when
you suck pencils in his presence, or show him your tongue, he is more
than a little embarrassed. But what can you do about it? You were
to
marry him. You were then, I should judge, twenty-four, the age
when one begins observing that a woman is not growing any younger.
Besides, you are
used
to him, miserable habit. He is good to you, he's
solid, he looks down on WPA, he smokes cigars. What then? How else
are you to act when this wistful, melancholy, timid, cynical and so
appealing young writer comes along and speaks to you as a man has
never spoken before, and dwells on you, and intimates, and sighs and
stares? It is, after all, shocking to discover that one's fiance is not the
ultimate man on earth, and that another, a man you met. in a base–
ment, who has never. kissed you or walked you through the park, is
capable of preempting the emotions you have already consigned and
wrapped and, furthermore, of providing you with new ones.
N
yet,
krasavitsa moya?
Ellen, if this be true, then your reticence is a tribute! Thank you
for ignoring me, thank you for your silence. For it means you realized,
in those few hours, that going with me would make irrecoverable your
whole past life and its commitments. After all, women have
been
known to keep several men on a string. Thank you for not binding
me. For it means you
f~ared
the string, and where it might lead you.
And what if the string should break? The fear that a string might
break is the fear of love!
But look at all these pages I have written, and where will I
find an envelope large enough? Ellen, unintentionally, merely out of
a desire to say a few things I had not said before, I have invoked
more of the past than I had intended. It has brought me back to that
helpless, pitiful state of mind-I despise it-where a man lives on
promises. I have drugged myself into believing what I believed three
years ago--your promise to call me, to write to me, to see me again.
Now I know you will write, if only a few words, and I know you will
answer me at once.
Always yours,
Joe
