The Spinster Book Part 11

A woman never really writes to the man she loves. She simply records her fleeting moods--her caprice, her tenderness, and her dreams. Because of this, she is often misunderstood. If the letter of to-day is different from that of yesterday, her lover, in his heart at least, accuses her of fickleness.

A man's letters to a girl are very frequently shown to her most intimate friend, if they are sufficiently ardent, but a man never shows the letters of a woman he truly cares for, unless he feels the need of some other masculine intellect to a.s.sist him in comprehending the lady of his heart.

"Nothing feeds the flame like a letter. It has intent, personality, secrecy." But that is love indeed which stands the test of long separation--and letters.

[Sidenote: A Single Drop of Ink]

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the old Egyptian sorcerer promised to reveal the past and foretell the future. The single drop of ink with which a lover writes may sadly change the blissful future of which he dreams.

The written word is so sadly different from that which is spoken! The malicious demon concealed in the ink bottle delights in wrecking love.

Misunderstandings and long silences follow in rapid succession, tenderness changes to coldness, and love to bitter regret.

Someone has said that the true test of congeniality is not a matter of tastes, but of humour. If two people find the same things amusing, their comrades.h.i.+p is a foregone conclusion, but even so, it requires unusual insight to distinguish the playful parts of a letter from the serious pa.s.sages. If the separated lovers would escape the pit of destruction, let all jokes be plainly marked with a cross or a star.

A letter is an unfair thing. It follows its own mood blindly without reference to others. If penned in sadness it often makes a sunny day a cloudy one, and if written in jest it may be as inopportune as mirth at a funeral.

[Sidenote: Misunderstood]

A letter betraying anger and hurt pride may often crystallise a yielding mood into determination and summon evil spirits which love cannot banish. The letter asking forgiveness may cross the path of the one which puts an end to everything. It would seriously test the power of the Egyptian to foretell what might result from a single letter, written in all love and tenderness, perhaps, but destined to be completely misunderstood.

Old love letters often mean tears, because they have been so wrongly read. Later years, with fine irony, sometimes bring new understanding of the loving heart behind the faulty lines. After all, it is the inexpressible atmosphere of a letter which is felt, rather than the meaning which the phrases ostensibly convey.

[Sidenote: The Postman]

Tender secrets are concealed in the weather-worn bag of the postman. The lovers may hide their hearts from all but him. Parents, guardians, and even mature maiden aunts may be successfully diverted, but not the postman!

He knows that the girl who eagerly watches for him in the morning has more than a pa.s.sing interest in the mail. He knows where her lover is, how often he writes, when she should have a letter, and whether all is well.

Sometimes, too, he knows that it is better to take a single letter to the house three or four times in succession, rather than to leave it in the hands of one to whom it is not addressed.

Blessed be the countless Cupids in the uniform of the postal service!

The little blind G.o.d is wont to a.s.sume strange forms, apparently at will. But no stern parent could suspect that his sightless eyes were concealed behind the spectacles of a sedate postman, nor that his wicked arrows were hidden under piles of letters.

The uninitiated wonder "what there is to write about." A man may have seen a girl the evening before, and yet a bulky letter comes in the afternoon. And what mysterious interest can make one write three or four times a week?

Where is the girl whose love letter was left in p.a.w.n because she could not find her purse? The grizzled veteran never collects the "two cents due" on the love letters that are a little overweight. He would not put a value upon anything so precious, and he is seldom a cynic--perhaps because, more than anyone else, he is the dispenser of daily joy.

The reading of old love letters is in some way a.s.sociated with hair-cloth trunks, mysterious attics, and rainy days. The writers may be unknown and the hands that laid them away long since returned to dust, but the interest still remains.

[Sidenote: Dead Roses]

Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle fingers that open the long folded pages--the violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate fragrance to the yellowed spot on which they lay. The ink is faded and the letter much worn, as though it had lain next to some youthful breast, to be read in silence and solitude until the tender words were graven upon the heart in the exquisite script of Memory.

The phrasing has a peculiar quaintness, old fas.h.i.+oned, perhaps, but with a grace and dignity all its own. Through the formal, stately sentences the hidden sweetness creeps like the crimson vine upon the autumn leaves. Brave hearts they had, those lovers of the past, who were making a new country in the wilderness, and yet there was an unsuspected softness--the other "soul side" which even a hero may have, "to show a woman when he loves her."

There are other treasures to be found with the letters--old daguerreotypes, in ornate cases, showing the girlish, sweet face of her who is a grandmother now, or perhaps a soldier in the trappings of war, the first of a valiant line.

There are songs which are never sung, save as a quavering lullaby to some mite who will never remember the tune, and fragments of nocturnes or simple melodies, which awaken the past as surely as the lost sh.e.l.l brings to the traveller inland the surge and thunder of the distant sea.

[Sidenote: The Mysteries of Life and Death]

All the mysteries of life and death are woven in with the letters; those pathetic remembrances which the years may fade but never destroy. There are old school books, dog-eared and musty, sc.r.a.ps of rich brocade and rustling taffeta, the yellowed sampler which was the daily trial of some little maid, and the first white robe of someone who has grown children of his own.

[Sidenote: Memory's Singing]

Give Memory an old love letter and listen to her singing. There is quiet at first, as though she were waiting for some step to die away, or some childish laughter to cease. Then there is a hushed arpeggio, struck from strings which are old and worn, but sweet and tender still.

Sometimes the song is of an old farmhouse on the western plains, where life meant struggle and bitter privation. Brothers and sisters, in the torn, faded clothes which were all they had; father's tremulous "G.o.d bless you," when someone went away. Mother's never-ending toil, and the day when her roughened hands were crossed upon her breast, at rest for the first time, while the children cried in wonder and fear.

Then the plaintive minor swells for a moment into the full major chord, when Love, the King, in royal purple, took possession of the desolate land. Corn huskings and the sound of "Money Musk," scarlet ears and stolen kisses under the harvest moon, youth and laughter, and the eternal, wavering hope for better things. Long years of toil, with interludes of peace and divine content, little voices, and sometimes a little grave. Separation and estrangement, trust and misgiving, heartache and defeat.

[Sidenote: A Magic in the Strings]

The tears may start at Memory's singing, but as the song goes on there comes peace, for there is a magic in the strings which changes sadness into something sweet. Memory's eyes are deep and tender and her heart is full of compa.s.sion. So the old love letters bring happiness after all--like the smile which sometimes rests upon the faces of the dead.

An Inquiry into Marriage

[Ill.u.s.tration]

An Inquiry into Marriage

[Sidenote: Like a Grape]

Marriage appears to be somewhat like a grape. People swallow a great deal of indifferent good for the sake of the lurking bit of sweetness and never know until it is too late whether the venture was wise.

Chaucer compared it to a crowded church. Those left on the outside are eager to get in, and those caught inside are straining every nerve to get out. There are many, in this year of grace, who have safely made their escape, but, unfortunately, the happy ones inside say little about it, and do not seem anxious to get out.

Fate takes great pleasure in confusing the inquiring spinster. Some of the disappointed ones will advise her never to attempt it, and in the voluble justification which follows, she sees clearly that the discord was not entirely caused by the other. Her friends, who have been married a year or so, regard her with evident pity, and occasionally suggest, delicately enough, to be sure, that she could never have had a proposal.

[Sidenote: The Consistent Lady]

Among her married friends who are more mature, there is usually one who chooses her for a confidant. This consistent lady will sob out her unhappiness on the girl's shoulder, and the next week ask her why she doesn't get married. Sometimes she invites the girl to her house to meet some new and attractive man--with the memory of those bitter tears still in her heart.

A girl often loses a friend by heartily endorsing the things the weeper says of her husband. The fact that he is an inconsiderate brute is frequently confided to the kindly surface of a clean s.h.i.+rt-waist, regardless of laundry bills. The girl remarks dispa.s.sionately that she has noticed it; that he never considers the happiness of his wife, and she doesn't see how the tearful one stands it. Behold the instant and painful transformation! It is very hard to be a popular spinster when one has many married friends.

That interesting pessimist, Herr Arthur Schopenhauer, advocates universal polygamy upon the theory that all women would thus be supported. To the unprejudiced observer who reads the comic papers and goes to afternoon receptions, it would seem that each woman should have several husbands, to pay her bills and see that she is suitably escorted to various social affairs.

[Sidenote: Seven Husbands]

If a woman had seven husbands, for instance, it is possible that some one of them would be willing to take her out whenever she wanted to go.

If she yearned for a sealskin coat or a diamond pin and no one of them was equal to the occasion, a collection could be taken up. Two or three might contribute to the good cause and be so beautifully rewarded with smiles and favourite dishes that the remainder of the husbands would be inspired to do something in the same line.