The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 127/212

It was Fisbee who caught the first glimpse of a relief expedition clipping

the rough seas on its lively way to rescue them, and, although his first

glimpse of the jaunty pennant of the relieving vessels was over the

shoulder of an iceberg, nothing was surer than that the craft was flying

to them with all good and joyous speed. The iceberg just mentioned

assumed--by no melting process, one may be sure--the form of a long

letter, first postmarked at Rouen, and its latter substance was as

follows:

"Henry and I have always believed you as selfish, James Fisbee, as you are

self-ingrossed and incapable. She has told us of your 'renunciation'; of

your 'forbidding' her to remain with you; how you 'commanded,' after you

had 'begged' her, to return to us, and how her conscience told her she

should stay and share your life in spite of our long care of her, but that

she yielded to your 'wishes' and our entreaty. What have you ever done for

her and what have you to offer her? She is our daughter, and needless to

say we shall still take care of her, for no one believes you capable of

it, even in that miserable place, and, of course, in time she will return

to her better wisdom, her home, and her duty. I need scarcely say we have

given up the happy months we had planned to spend in Dresden. Henry and I

can only stay at home to pray that her preposterous mania will wear itself

out in short order, as she will find herself unfitted for the ridiculous

task which she insists upon attempting against the earnest wishes of us

who have been more than father and mother to her. Of course, she has

talked volumes of her affection for us, and of her gratitude, which we do

not want--we only want her to stay with us. Please, please try to make her

come back to us--we cannot bear it long. If you are a man you will send

her to us soon. Her excuse for not returning on the day we wired our

intention to go abroad at once (and I may as well tell you now that our

intention to go was formed in order to bring affairs to a crisis and to

draw her away from your influence--we always dreaded her visit to you and

held it off for years)--her excuse was that your best friend, and, as I

understand it, your patron, had been injured in some brawl in that

Christian country of yours--a charming place to take a girl like her--and

she would not leave you in your 'distress' until more was known of the

man's injuries. And now she insists--and you will know it from her by the

next mail--on returning to Plattville, forsooth, because she has been

reading your newspaper, and she says she knows you are in difficulties

over it, and it is her moral obligation--as by some wild reasoning of her

own she considers herself responsible for your ruffling patron's having

been alone when he was shot--to go down and help. I suppose he made love

to her, as all the young men she meets always do, sooner or later, but I

have no fear of any rustic entanglements tor her; she has never been

really interested, save in one affair. We are quite powerless--we have

done everything; but we cannot alter her determination to edit your paper

for you. Naturally, she knows nothing whatever about such work, but she

says, with the air of triumphantly quelching all such argument, that she

has talked a great deal to Mr. Macauley of the 'Journal.' Mr. Macauley is

the affair I have alluded to; he is what she has meant when she has said,

at different times, that she was interested in journalism. But she is very

business-like now. She has bought a typewriter and purchased a great

number of soft pencils and erasers at an art shop; I am only surprised

that she does not intend to edit your miserable paper in water-colors. She

is coming at once. For mercy's sake don't telegraph her not to; your

forbiddings work the wrong way. Our only hope is that she will find the

conditions so utterly discouraging at the very start that she will give it

up and come home. If you are a man you will help to make them so. She has

promised to stay with that country girl with whom she contracted such an

incomprehensible friendship at Miss Jennings's.