treachery, that really maddened him past forgiveness.




XXIII.

During the summer he spent at York Harbor I was only forty minutes away
at Kittery Point, and we saw each other often; but this was before the
last time at Riverdale. He had a wide, low cottage in a pine grove
overlooking York River, and we used to sit at a corner of the veranda
farthest away from Mrs. Clemens's window, where we could read our
manuscripts to each other, and tell our stories, and laugh our hearts out
without disturbing her. At first she had been about the house, and there
was one gentle afternoon when she made tea for us in the parlor, but that
was the last time I spoke with her. After that it was really a question
of how soonest and easiest she could be got back to Riverdale; but, of
course, there were specious delays in which she seemed no worse and
seemed a little better, and Clemens could work at a novel he had begun.
He had taken a room in the house of a friend and neighbor, a fisherman
and boatman; there was a table where he could write, and a bed where he
could lie down and read; and there, unless my memory has played me one of
those constructive tricks that people's memories indulge in, he read me
the first chapters of an admirable story. The scene was laid in a
Missouri town, and the characters such as he had known in boyhood; but as
often as I tried to make him own it, he denied having written any such
story; it is possible that I dreamed it, but I hope the MS. will yet be
found. Upon reflection I cannot believe that I dreamed it, and I cannot
believe that it was an effect of that sort of pseudomnemonics which I
have mentioned. The characters in the novel are too clearly outlined in