An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 5

After I had made my second selection, and proved it right on my uncle's person, the parallelism of things struck me, and I skipped back to my aunt's door and tapped. I got a low wailing "Yes?" for answer--a monosyllabic subst.i.tute for the "How long, O Lord?" of a saint in difficulties. When I called through the keyhole, "Are your psalms written in gold?" she became really angry:--I suppose because the miracle so well earned had not come to pa.s.s.

Well, dearest, if you have been patient with me over so much about nothing, I pray this letter may appear to you written in gold. Why I write so is, partly, that, it is bad for us both to be down in the mouth, or with hearts down at heel: and so, since you cannot, I have to do the dancing;--and, partly, because I found I had a bad temper on me which needed curing, and being brought to the sun-go-down point of owing no man anything. Which, sooner said, has finally been done; and I am very meek now and loving to you, and everything belonging to you--not to come nearer the sore point.

And I hope some day, some day, as a reward to my present submission, that you will sprain your ankle in my company (just a very little bit for an excuse) and let me have the nursing of it! It hurts my heart to have your poor bones crying out for comfort that I am not to bring to them. I feel robbed of a part of my domestic training, and may never pick up what I have just lost. And I fear greatly you must have been truly in pain to have put off Meredith for a day. If I had been at hand to read to you, I flatter myself you would have liked him well, and been soothed. You must take the will, Beloved, for the deed. I kiss you now, as much as even you can demand; and when you get this I will be thinking of you all over again.--When do I ever leave off? Love, love, love till our next meeting-, and then more love still, and more!--Ever your own.

LETTER XXI.

Dearest: I am in a simple mood to-day, and give you the benefit of it: I shall become complicated again presently, and you will hear from me directly that happens.

The house only emptied itself this morning; I may say emptied, for the remainder fits like a saint into her niche, and is far too comfortable to count. This is C----, whom you only once met, when she sat so much in the background that you will not remember her. She has one weakness, a thirst between meals--the blameless thirst of a rabid teetotaler. She hides cups of cold tea about the place, as a dog its bones: now and then one gets spilled or sat on, and when she hears of the accident, she looks thirsty, with a thirst which only _that_ particular cup of tea could have quenched. In no other way is she any trouble: indeed, she is a great dear, and has the face of a Madonna, as beautiful as an apocryphal gospel to look at and "make believe" in.

Arthur, too, like the rest of them, when he came over to give me his brotherly blessing, wished to know what you were like. I didn't pretend to remember your outward appearance too well,--told him you looked like a common or garden Englishman, and roused his suspicions by so careless a champions.h.i.+p of my choice. He accused me of being in reality highly sentimental about you, and with having at that moment your portrait concealed and strung around my neck in a locket. Mother-Aunt stood up for me against him, declaring I was "too sensible a girl for nonsense of that sort." (It is a little weakness of hers, you know, to resent extremes of endearment towards anyone but herself in those she has "brooded," and she has thought us. .h.i.therto most restrained and proper--as, indeed, have we not been?) Arthur and I exchanged tokens of truce: in a little while off went my aunt to bed, leaving us alone.

Then, for he is the one of us that I am most frank with: "Arthur," cried I, and up came your little locket like a bucket from a well, for him to have his first sight of you, my Beloved. He objected that he could not see faces in a nutsh.e.l.l; and I suppose others cannot: only I.

He, too, is gone. If you had been coming he would have spared another day--for to-day _was_ planned and dated, you will remember--and we would have ridden halfway to meet you. But, as fate has tripped you, and made all comings on your part indefinite, he sends you his hopes for a later meeting.

How is your poor foot? I suppose, as it is ill, I may send it a kiss by post and wish it well? I do. Truly, you are to let me know if it gives you much pain, and I will lie awake thinking of you. This is not sentimental, for if one knows that a friend is occupied over one's sleeplessness one feels the comfort.

I am perplexed how else to give you my company: your mother, I know, could not yet truly welcome me; and I wish to be as patient as possible, and not push for favors that are not offered. So I cannot come and ask to take you out in _her_ carriage, nor come and carry you away in mine.

We must try how fast we can hold hands at a distance.

I have kept up to where you have been reading in "Richard Feverel,"

though it has been a scramble: for I have less opportunity of reading, I with my feet, than you without yours. In _your_ book I have just got to the smuggling away of General Monk in the perforated coffin, and my sense of history capitulates in an abandonment of laughter. I yield! The Gaul's invasion of Britain always becomes broad farce when he attempts it. This in clever ludicrousness beats the unintentional comedy of Victor Hugo's "John-Jim-Jack" as a name typical of Anglo-Saxon christenings. But Dumas, through a dozen absurdities, knows apparently how to stalk his quarry: so large a genius may play the fool and remain wise.

You see I have given your author a warm welcome at last: and what about you and mine? Tell me you love his women and I will not be jealous.

Indeed, outside him I don't know where to find a written English woman of modern times whom I would care to meet, or could feel honestly bound to look up to:--nowhere will I have her shaking her ringlets at me in d.i.c.kens or Thackeray. Scott is simply not modern; and Hardy's women, if they have n.o.bility in them, get so cruelly broken on the wheel that you get but the wrecks of them at last. It is only his charming baggages who come to a good ending.

I like an author who has the courage and self-restraint to leave his n.o.ble creations alive: too many try to enn.o.ble them by death. For my part, if I have to go out of life before you, I would gladly trust you to the hands of Clara, or Rose, or Janet, or most of all Vittoria; though, to be accurate, I fear they have all grown too old for you by now.

And you? have you any men to offer me in turn out of your literary admirations, supposing you should die of a snapped ankle? Would you give me to d'Artagnan for instance? Hardly, I suspect! But either choose me some proxy hero, or get well and come to me! You will be very welcome when you do. Sleep is making sandy eyes at me: good-night, dearest.

LETTER XXII.

Why, my Beloved: Since you put it to me as a point of conscience (it is only lying on your back with one active leg doing nothing, and the other dying to have done aching, which has made you take this new start of inquiring within upon everything), since you call on me for a conscientious answer, I say that it stands to reason that I love you more than you love me, because there is so much more of you to love, let alone fit for loving.

Do you imagine that you are going to be a cripple for life, and therefore an indifferent dancer in the dances I shall always be leading you, that you have started this fit of self-depreciation? Or is it because I have thrown Meredith at your sick head that you doubt my tact and my affection, and my power patiently to bear for your sake a good deal of cold shoulder?

Dearest, remember I am doctoring you from a distance: and am not yet allowed to come and see my patient, so can only judge from your letters how ill you are. That you have been concealing from me almost treacherously: and only by a piece of abject waylaying did I receive word to-day of your sleepless nights, and so get the key to your symptoms. Lay by Meredith, then, for a while: I am sending you a cargo of Stevenson instead. You have been truly unkind, trying to read what required effort, when you were fit for nothing of the sort.

And lest even Stevenson should be too much for you, and wanting very much, and perhaps a little bit jealously, to be your most successful nurse, I am letting my last large bit of shyness of you go; and with a pleasant sort of pain, because I know I have hit on a thing that will please you, I open my hands and let you have these, and with them goes my last blush: henceforth I am a woman without a secret, and all your interest in me may evaporate. Yet I know well it will not.

As for this resurrection pie from love's dead-letter office, you will find from it at least one thing--how much I depended upon response from you before I could become at all articulate. It is you, dearest, from the beginning who have set my head and heart free and made me a woman. I am something quite different from the sort of child I was less than a year ago when I wrote that small prayer which stands sponsor for all that follows. How abundantly it has been answered, dearest Beloved, only I know: you do not!

Now my prayer is not that you should "come true," but that you should get well. Do this one little thing for me, dearest! For you I will do anything: my happiness waits for that. As yet I seem to have done nothing. Oh, but, Beloved, I will! From a reading of the Fioretti, I sign myself as I feel.--Your glorious poor little one.

THE CASKET LETTERS.

A.

my dear Prince Wonderful,[1]

Pray G.o.d bless ---- ---- and make him come true for my sake. Amen.

_R.S.V.P._

[Footnote 1: The MS. contained at first no name, but a blank; over it this has been written afterwards in a small hand.]

B.

Dear Prince Wonderful: Now that I have met you I pray that you will be my friend. I want just a little of your friends.h.i.+p, but that, so much, so much! And even for that little I do not know how to ask.

Always to be _your_ friend: of that you shall be quite sure.

C.

Dear Prince Wonderful: Long ago when I was still a child I told myself of you: but thought of you only as in a fairy tale. Now I am afraid of trusting my eyes or ears, for fear I should think too much of you before I know you really to be true. Do not make me wish so much to be your friend, unless you are also going to be true!

Please come true now, for mine and for all the world's sake:--but for mine especially, because I thought of you first! And if you are not able to come true, don't make me see you any more. I shall always remember you, and be glad that I have seen you just once.

D.

Dear Prince Wonderful: _Has_ G.o.d blessed you yet and made you come true? I have not seen you again, so how am I to know? Not that it is necessary for me to know even if you do come true. I believe already that you are true.

If I were never to see you again I should be glad to think of you as living, and shall always be your friend. I pray that you may come to know that.

E.

Dear Highness: I do not know what to write to you: I only know how much I wish to write. I have always written the things I thought about: it has been easy to find words for them. Now I think about you, but have no words:--no words, dear Highness, for you! I could write at once if I knew you were my friend. Come true for me: I will have so much to tell you then!

F.

Dear Highness: If I believe in fairy tales coming true, it is because I am superst.i.tious. This is what I did to-day. I shut my eyes and took a book from the shelf, opened it, and put my fingers down on a page. This is what I came to: