An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 3

LETTER XIII.

The letters? No, Beloved, I could not! Not yet. There you have caught me where I own I am still shy of you.

A long time hence, when we are a safely wedded pair, you shall turn them over. It _may_ be a short time; but I will keep them however long. Indeed I must ever keep them; they talk to me of the dawn of my existence,--the early light before our sun rose, when my love of you was growing and had not yet reached its full.

If I disappoint you I will try to make up for it with something I wrote long before I ever saw you. To-day I was turning over old things my mother had treasured for me of my childhood--of days spent with her: things of laughter as well as of tears; such a dear selection, so quaint and sweet, with moods of her as I dimly remember her to have been. And among them was this absurdity, written, and I suppose placed in the mouth of my stocking, the Christmas I stayed with her in France. I remember the time as a great treat, but nothing of this. "Nilgoes" is "Nicholas," you must understand!

How he must have laughed over me asleep while he read this!

"Cher pere Nilgoes. S'il vous plait voulez vous me donne plus de jeux que des oranges des pommes et des pombons parc que nous allons faire l'arbre de noel cette anne et les jeaux ferait mieux pour l'arbre de Noel. Il ne faut pas dire a pet.i.te mere s'il vous plait parce que je ne veut pas quelle sache sil vous voulez venir ce soir du ceil pour que vous pouvez me donner ce que je vous demande Dites bon jour a la St. Viearge est a l'enfant Jeuses et a Ste Joseph.

Adieu cher St. Nilgoes."

I haven't altered the spelling, I love it too well, prophetic of a fault I still carry about me. How strange that little bit of invocation to the dear folk above sounds to me now! My mother must have been teaching me things after her own persuasion; most naturally, poor dear one--though that too has gone like water off my mind. It was one of the troubles between her and my father: the compact that I was to be brought up a Catholic was dissolved after they separated; and I am sorry, thinking it unjust to her; yet glad, content with being what I am.

I must have been less than five when I penned this: I was always a letter-writer, it seems.

It is a reproach now from many that I have ceased to be: and to them I fear it is true. That I have not truly ceased, "witness under my hand these presents,"--or whatever may be the proper legal terms for an affidavit.

What were _you_ like, Beloved, as a very small child? Should I have loved you from the beginning had we toddled to the rencounter; and would my love have pa.s.sed safely through the "gallous young hound" period; and could I love you more now in any case, had I _all_ your days treasured up in my heart, instead of less than a year of them?

How strangely much have seven miles kept our fates apart! It seems uncharacteristic for this small world,--where meetings come about so far above the dreams of average--to have played us such a prank.

This must do for this once, Beloved; for behold me busy to-day: with _what_, I shall not tell you. I would like to put you to a test, as ladies did their knights of old, and hardly ever do now--fearing, I suppose, lest the species should altogether fail them at the pinch. I would like to see if you could come here and sit with me from beginning to end, _with your eyes shut_: never once opening them. I am not saying whether I think curiosity, or affection, would make the attempt too difficult. But if you were sure you could, you might come here to-morrow--a day otherwise interdicted. Only know, having come, that if you open those dear cupboards of vision and set eyes on things not yet intended to be looked at, there will be confusion of tongues in this Tower we are building whose top is to reach heaven. Will you come? I don't _say_ "come"; I only want to know--will you?

To-day my love flies low over the earth like a swallow before rain, and touching the tops of the flowers has culled you these. Kiss them until they open: they are full of my thoughts, as the world, to me, is full of you.

LETTER XIV.

Own Dearest: Come I did not think that you would, or mean that you should seriously; for is it not a poor way of love to make the object of it cut an absurd or partly absurd figure? I wrote only as a woman having a secret on the tip of her tongue and the tips of her fingers, and full of a longing to say it and send it.

Here it is at last: love me for it, I have worked so hard to get it done!

And you do not know why and what for? Beloved, it--_this_--is the anniversary of the day we first met; and you have forgotten it already or never remembered it:--and yet have been clamoring for "the letters"!

On the first anniversary of our marriage, _if you remember it_, you shall have those same letters: and not otherwise. So there they lie safe till doomsday!

The M.-A. has been very gracious and clear after her little outbreak of yesterday: her repentances, after I have hurt her feelings, are so gentle and sweet, they always fill me with compunction. Finding that I would go on with the thing I was doing, she volunteered to come and read to me: a requiem over the bone of contention which we had gnawed between us. Was not that pretty and charitable? She read Tennyson's Life for a solid hour, and continued it to-day. Isn't it funny that she should take up such a book?--she who "can't abide" Tennyson or Browning or Shakespeare: only likes Byron, I suppose because it was the right and fashionable liking when she was young. Yet she is plodding through the Life religiously--only skipping the verses. I have come across two little specimens of "Death and the child" in it. His son, Lionel, was carried out in a blanket one night in the great comet year, and waking up under the stars asked, "Am I dead?"

Number two is of a little girl at Wellington's funeral who saw his charger carrying his _boots_, and asked, "Shall I be like that after I die?"

A queer old lady came to lunch yesterday, a great traveler, though lame on two crutches. We carefully hid all guide-books and maps, and held our peace about next month, lest she should insist on coming too: though I think Nineveh was the place she was most anxious to go to, if the M.-A.

would consent to accompany her!

Good-by, dearest of one-year-old acquaintances! you, too, send your blessing on the anniversary, now that my better memory has reminded you of it! All that follow we will bless in company. I trust you are one-half as happy as I am, my own, my own.

LETTER XV.

You told me, dearest, that I should find your mother formidable. It is true; I did. She is a person very much in the grand pagan style: I admire it, but I cannot flow in that sort of company, and I think she meant to crush me. You were very wise to leave her to come alone.

I like her: I mean I believe that under that terribleness she has a heart of gold, which once opened would never shut: but she has not opened it to me. I believe she could have a great charity, that no evil-doing would dismay her: "stanch" sums her up. But I have done nothing wrong enough yet to bring me into her good graces. Loving her son, even, though, I fear, a great offense, has done me no good turn.

Perhaps that is her inconsistency: women are sure to be inconsistent somewhere: it is their birthright.

I began to study her at once, to find _you_: it did not take long. How I could love her, if she would let me!

You know her far far better than I, and want no advice: otherwise I would say--never praise me to her; quote my follies rather! To give ground for her distaste to revel in will not deepen me in her bad books so much as attempts to warp her judgment.

I need not go through it all: she will have told you all that is to the purpose about our meeting. She bristled in, a brave old fighting figure, announcing compulsion in every line, but with all her colors flying. She waited for the door to close, then said, "My son has bidden me come, I suppose it is my duty: he is his own master now."

We only shook hands. Our talk was very little of you. I showed her all the horses, the dogs, and the poultry; she let the inspection appear to conclude with myself: asked me my habits, and said I looked healthy. I owned I felt it. "Looks and feelings are the most deceptive things in the world," she told me; adding that "poor stock" got more than its share of these. And when she said it I saw quite plainly that she meant me.

I wonder where she gets the notion: for we are a long-lived race, both sides of the family. I guessed that she would like frankness, and was as frank as I could be, pretending no deference to her objections. "You think you suit each other?" she asked me. My answer, "He suits me!"

pleased her maternal palate, I think. "Any girl might say that!" she admitted. (She might indeed!)

This is the part of our interview she will not have repeated to you.

I was due at Hillyn when she was preparing to go: Aunt N---- came in, and I left her to do the honors while I slipped on my habit. I rode by your mother's carriage as far as the Greenway, where we branched. I suppose that is what her phrase means that you quote about my "making a trophy of her," and marching her a prisoner across the borders before all the world!

I do like her: she is worth winning.--Can one say warmer of a future mother-in-law who stands hostile?

All the same it was an ordeal. I believe I have wept since: for Benjy scratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful when I came out. Merely paltry self-love, dearest:--I am so little accustomed to not being--liked.

I think she will be more gracious in her own house. I have her formal word that I am to come. Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and you shall meet me and take me to see her. There is something in her opposition that I can't fathom: I wondered twice was lunacy her notion: she looked at me so hard.

My mother's seclusion and living apart from us was not on _that_ account. I often saw her: she was very dear and sweet to me, and had quiet eyes the very reverse of a person mentally deranged. My father, I know, went to visit her when she lay dying; and I remember we all wore mourning. My uncle has told me they had a deep regard for each other: but disagreed, and were independent enough to choose living apart.

I do not remember my father ever speaking of her to us as children: but I am sure there was no state of health to be concealed.

Last night I was talking to Aunt N---- about her. "A very dear woman,"

she told me, "but your father was never so much alive to her worth as the rest of us." Of him she said, "A dear, fine fellow: but not at all easy to get on with." Him, of course, I have a continuous recollection of, and "a fine fellow" we did think him. My mother comes to me more rarely, at intervals.

Don't talk me down your mother's throat: but tell her as much as she cares to know of this. I am very proud of my "stock" which she thinks "poor"!

Dear, how much I have written on things which can never concern us finally, and so should not ruffle us while they last! Hold me in your heart always, always; and the world may turn adamant to me for aught I care! Be in my dreams to-night!

LETTER XVI.