An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 14

And do you understand, Beloved? or must I say more? My freedom has made its nest under my uncle's roof: but I _am_ a quite independent person in other ways besides character.

Well, Pembury was settled on your own initiative: and I looked on proud and glad. Now I have my own little word to add, merely a tail that wags and makes merry over a thing decided and done. Do you forgive me for this: and for the greater offense of being quite shy at having to write it?

My Aunt thanks you for the game: for my part I cannot own that it will taste sweeter to me for being your own shooting. And please, whatever else you do big and grand and dangerous, respect my superst.i.tions and don't shoot any larks this winter. In the spring I would like to think that here or there an extra lark bubbles over because I and my whims find occasional favor in your sight. When I ask great favors you always grant them; and so, Ahasuerus, grant this little one to your beautifully loving.

Give me the credit of being conscious of it, Beloved: postscripts I never _do_ write. I am glad you noticed it. If I find anything left out I start another letter: _this_ is that other letter: it goes into the same envelope merely for company, and signs itself yours in all state.

LETTER LI.

Dearest: It was so nice and comedy to see the Mother-Aunt this morning importantly opening a letter from you all to herself with the pleasure quite unmixed by any inclosure for me, or any other letter in the house _to_ me so far as she was aware. I listened to you with new ears, discovering that you write quite beautifully in the style which I never get from you. Don't, because I admire you in your more formal form, alter in your style to me. I prefer you much, for my own part, formless: and feel nearer to your heart in an unfinished sentence than in one that is perfectly balanced. Still I want you to know that your cordial warmed her dear old heart and makes her not think now that she has let me see too much of you. She was just beginning to worry herself jealously into that belief the last two days: and Arthur's taking to you helped to the same end. Very well; I seem to understand everybody's oddities now,--having made a complete study of yours.

Best Beloved, I have your little letter lying close, and feel dumb when I try to answer. You with your few words make me feel a small thing with all my unpenned rabble about me. Only you do know so very well that I love you better than I can ever write. This is my first letter of the new year: will our letter-writing go on all this year, or will it, as we dearly dream, die a divine death somewhere before autumn?

In any case, I am, dearest, your most happy and loving.

LETTER LII.

My Dearest: Arthur and the friend went off together yesterday. I am glad the latter stayed just long enough after you left for me to have leisure to find him out human. Here is the whole story: he came and unbosomed to me three days ago: and he said nothing about not telling, so I tell you.

As water goes from a duck's back, so go all things worth hearing from me to you.

Arthur had said to him, "Come down for a week," and he had answered, "Can't, because of clothes!" explaining that beyond evening-dress he had only those he stood in. "Well," said Arthur, "stand in them, then; you look all right." "The question is," said his friend, "can I sit down?"

However, he came; and was appalled to find that a man unpacked his trunk, and would in all probability be carrying away his clothes each night to brush them. He, conscious of interiors, a lining hanging in rags, and even a patching somewhere, had not the heart to let his one and only day-jacket go down to the servants' hall to be sniffed over: and so every evening when he dressed for dinner he hid his jacket laboriously under the permanent layers of a linen wardrobe which stood in his room.

I had all this in the frankest manner from him in the hour when he became human: and my fancy fired at the vision. Graves with a fierce eye set on duty probing hither and thither in search after the missing coat; and each night the search becoming more strenuous and the mystery more baffling than ever. It had a funny likeness to the Jack Raikes episode in "Evan Harrington," and pleased me the more thus cropping up in real life.

Well, I demanded there and then to be shown the subject of so much romance and adventure: and had the satisfaction of mending it, he sitting by in his shirt-sleeves the while, and watching delighted and without craven apologies.

I notice it is not his own set he is ashamed of, but only the moneyed, high-sniffing servant-cla.s.s who have no understanding for honorable poverty: and to be misunderstood p.r.i.c.ks him in the thinnest of thin places.

He told me also that he brought only three white ties to last him for seven days: and that Graves placed them out in order of freshness and cleanliness night after night:--first three new ones consecutively, then three once worn. After that, on the seventh day, Graves resigned all further responsibility, and laid out all three of them for him to choose from. On the last three days of his stay he did me the honor to leave his coat out, declaring that my mendings had made it presentable before an emperor. Out of this dates the whole of his character, and I understand, what I did not, why Arthur and he get on together.

Now the house is empty, and your comings will be--I cannot say more welcome: but there will be more room for them to be after my own heart.

Heaven be over us both. Faithfully your most loving.

LETTER LIII.

Beloved: I wish you could have been with me to look out into this garden last night when the spirit moved me there. I had started for bed, but became sensitive of something outside not normal. Whether my ear missed the usual echoes and so guessed a m.u.f.fled world I do not know. To open the door was like slicing into a wedding-cake; then,--where was I to put a foot into that new-laid carpet of ankle-deepness? I hobbled out in a pair of my uncle's. I suppose it is because I know every tree and shrub in its true form that snow seems to pile itself nowhere as it does here: it becomes a garden of entombments. Now and then some heap would shuffle feebly under its shroud, but resurrection was not to be: the Lawson cypress held out great boxing-glove hands for me to shake and set free; and the silence was wonderful. I padded about till I froze: this morning I can see my big hoof-marks all over the place, and Benjy has been scampering about in them as if he found some flavor of me there. The trees are already beginning to shake themselves loose, and the spell is over: but it had a wonderful hold while it lasted. I take a breath back into last night, and feel myself again full of a romance without words that I cannot explain. If you had been there, even, I think I could have forgotten I had you by me, the place was so weighed down with its sense of solitude. It struck eleven while I was outside, and in that, too, I could hear a m.u.f.fle as if snow choked all the belfry lattices and lay even on the outer edge of the bell itself. Across the park there are dead boughs cracking down under the weight of snow; and it would be very like you to tramp over just because the roads will be so impossible.

I heard yesterday a thing which made me just a little more free and easy in mind, though I had nothing sensibly on my conscience. Such a good youth who two years ago believed I was his only possible future happiness, is now quite happy with a totally different sort of person. I had a little letter from him, shy and stately, announcing the event. I thought it such a friendly act, for some have never the grace to unsay their grievances, however much actually blessed as a consequence of them.

With that off my mind I can come to you swearing that there have been no accidents on anybody's line of life through a mistake in signals, or a flying in the face of them, where I have had any responsibility. As for you, and as you know well by now, my signals were ready and waiting before you sought for them. "Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you!" was their giveaway att.i.tude.

I am going down to play s...o...b..a.l.l.s with Benjy. Good-by. If you come you will find this letter on the hall table, and me you will probably hear barking behind the rhododendrons.--So much your most loving.

LETTER LIV.

Beloved: We have been having a great day of tidyings out, rummaging through years and years of acc.u.mulations--things quite useless but which I have not liked to throw away. My soul has been getting such dusty answers to all sorts of doubtful inquiries as to where on earth this, that, and the other lay hidden. And there were other things, the memory of which had lain quite dead or slept, till under the light of day they sprouted hack into life like corn from the grave of an Egyptian mummy.

Very deep in one box I found a stealthy little collection of secret playthings which it used to be my fond belief that n.o.body knew of but myself. It may have been Anna's graspingness, when four years of seniority gave her double my age, or Arthur's genial instinct for destructiveness, which drove me into such deep concealment of my dearest idols. But, whether for those or more mystic reasons, I know I had dolls which I nursed only in the strictest privacy and lavished my firmest love upon. It was because of them that I bore the reproach of being but a lukewarm mother of dolls and careless of their toilets; the truth being that my motherly pa.s.sion expended itself in secret on certain outcasts of society whom others despised or had forgotten. They, on their limp and dissolute bodies, wore all the finery I could find to pile on them: and one shady transaction done on their behalf I remember now without pangs. There was one creature of state whom an inconsiderate relative had presented to Anna and myself in equal shares. Of course Anna's became more and more lionlike. I had very little love for the bone of contention myself, but the sense of injustice rankled in me. So one day, at an unclothing, Anna discovered that certain undergarments were gone altogether away. She sat aghast, questioned me, and, when I refused to disgorge, screamed down vengeance from the authorities. I was morally certain I had taken no more than my just share, and resolution sat on my lips under all threats. For a punishment the whole ownership of the big doll was made over to Anna: I was no worse off, and was very contented with my obstinacy. To-day I found the beautifully wrought bodice, which I had carried beyond reach of even the supreme court of appeal, clothing with ridiculous looseness a rag-doll whose head tottered on its stem like an over-ripe plum, and whose legs had no deportment at all: and am sending it off in charitable surrender to Anna to be given, bag and rag, to whichever one of the children she likes to select.

Also I found:--would you care to have a lock of hair taken from the head of a child then two years old, which, bright golden, does not match what I have on now in the least? I can just remember her: but she is much of a stranger to both of us. Why I value it is that the name and date on the envelope inclosing it are in my mother's handwriting: and I suppose _she_ loved very much the curly treasure she then put away. Some of the other things, quite funny, I will show you the next time you come over.

How I wish that vanished mite had mixed some of her play-hours with yours:--you only six miles away all the time: had one but known!--Now grown very old and loving, always your own.

LETTER LV.

Beloved: I am getting quite out of letter-writing, and it is your doing, not mine. No sooner do I get a line from you than you rush over in person and take the answer to it out of my mouth!

I have had six from you in the last week, and believe I have only exchanged you one: all the rest have been nipped in the bud by your arrivals. My pen turns up a cross nose whenever it hears you coming now, and declares life so dull as not to be worth living. Poor d.i.n.ky little Oth.e.l.lo! it shall have its occupation again to-day, and say just what it likes.

It likes you while you keep away: so that's said! When I make it write "come," it kicks and tries to say "don't." For it is an industrious minion, loves to have work to do, and never complains of overhours. It is a sentimental fact that I keep all its used-up brethren in an inclosure together, and throw none of them away. If once they have ridden over paper to you, I turn them to gra.s.s in their old age. I let this out because I think it is time you had another laugh at me.

Laugh, dearest, and tell me that you have done so if you want to make me a little more happy than I have been this last day or two. There has been too much thinking in the heads of both of us. Be empty-headed for once when you write next: whether you write little or much, I am sure always of your full heart: but I cannot trust your brain to the same pressure: it is such a Martha to headaches and careful about so many things, and you don't bring it here to be soothed as often as you should--not at its most needy moments, I mean.

Have you made the announcement? or does it not go till to-day? I am not sorry, since the move comes from her, that we have not to wait now till February. You will feel better when the storm is up than when it is only looming. This is the headachy period.

Well. Say "well" with me, dearest! It is going to be well: waiting has not suited us--not any of us, I think. Your mother is one in a thousand, I say that and mean it:--worth conquering as all good things are. I would not wish great fortune to come by too primrosy a way. "Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook?" Even so, for size, is the share of the world which we lay claim to, and for that we must be toilers of the deep.--Always, Beloved, your truest and most loving.

LETTER LVI.

My Own Own Love: You have given me a spring day before the buds begin,-- the weather I have been longing for! I had been quite sad at heart these cold wet days, really _down_;--a treasonable sadness with you still anywhere in the world (though where in the world have you been?). Spring seemed such a long way off over the bend of it, with you unable to come; and it seems now another letter of yours has got lost. (Write it again, dearest,--all that was in it, with any blots that happened to come:--there was a dear smudge in to-day's, with the whirlpool mark of your thumb quite clear on it,--delicious to rest my face against and feel _you_ there.)