An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 13

LETTER XLVI.

Dearest: To-day I came upon a strange spectacle: poor old Nan-nan weeping for wounded pride in me. I found her st.i.tching at raiment of needlework that is to be mine (piles of it have been through her fingers since the word first went out; for her love a.s.serts that I am to go all home-made from my old home to my new one--wherever that may be!). And she was weeping because, as I slowly got to understand, from one particular quarter too little attention had been paid to me:--the kow-tow of a ceremonious reception into my new status had not been deep enough to make amends to her heart for its partial loss of me.

Her deferential recognition of the change which is coming is pathetic and full of etiquette; it is at once so jealous and so unselfish.

Because her sense of the proprieties will not allow her to do so much longer, she comes up to my room and makes opportunity to scold me over quite slight things:--and there I am, meeker under her than I would be to any relative. So to-day I had to bear a statement of your mother's infirmities rigorously outlined in a way I could only pretend to be deaf to until she had done. Then I said, "Nan-nan, go and say your prayers!"

And as she stuck her heels down and refused to go, there I left the poor thing, not to prayer, I fear, but to desolate weeping, in which love and pride will get more firmly entangled together than ever.

I know when I go up to my room next I shall find fresh flowers put upon my table: but the grievous old dear will be carrying a sore heart that I cannot comfort by any words. I cannot convince her that I am not hiding in myself any wounds such as she feels on my behalf.

I write this, dearest, as an indirect answer to yours,--which is but Nan-nan's woe writ large. If I could persuade your two dear and very different heads how very slightly wounded I am by a thing which a little waiting will bring right, I could give it even less thought than I do.

Are you keeping the truce in spirit when you disturb yourself like this?

Trust me, Beloved, always to be candid: I will complain to you when I feel in need of comfort. Be comforted yourself, meanwhile, and don't shape ghosts of grief which never do a goose-step over me! Ah well, well, if there is a way to love you better than I do now, only show it me! Meantime, think of me as your most contented and happy-go-loving.

LETTER XLVII.

Dearest: I am haunted by a line of quotation, and cannot think where it comes from:

"Now sets the year in roaring gray."

Can you help me to what follows? If it is a true poem it ought now to be able to sing itself to me at large from an outer world which at this moment is all gray and roaring. To-day the year is bowing itself out tempestuously, as if angry at having to go. Dear golden year! I am sorry to see its face so changed and withering: it has held so much for us both. Yet I am feeling vigorous and quite like spring. All the seasons have their marches, with buffetings and border-forays: this is an autumn march-wind; before long I shall be out into it, and up the hill to look over at your territory and you being swept and garnished for the seven devils of winter.

"Roaring gray" suggests Tennyson, whom I do very much a.s.sociate with this sort of weather, not so much because of pa.s.sages in "Maud" and "In Memoriam" as because I once went over to Swainston, on a day such as this when rooks and leaves alike hung helpless in the wind; and heard there the story of how Tennyson, coming over for his friend's funeral, would not go into the house, but asked for one of Sir John's old hats, and with that on his head sat in the garden and wrote almost the best of his small lyrics:

"Nightingales warbled without, Within was weeping for thee."

The "old hat" was mentioned as something humorous: yet an old glove is the most accepted symbol of faithful absence: and why should head rank lower than hand? What creatures of convention we are!

There is an old notion, quite likely to be true, that a nightcap carries in it the dreams of its first owner, or that anything laid over a sleeper's head will bring away the dream. One of the stories which used to put a lump in my throat as a child was of an old backwoodsman who by that means found out that his dog stole hams from the storeroom. The dog was given away in disgrace, and came to England to die of a broken heart at the sight of a cargo of hams, which, at their unpacking, seemed like a monstrous day of judgment--the bones of his misdeeds rising again reclothed with flesh to reproach him with the thing he had never forgotten.

I wonder how long it was before I left off definitely choosing out a story for the pleasure of making myself cry! When one begins to avoid that luxury of the fledgling emotions, the first leaf of youth is flown.

To-day I look almost jovially at the decay of the best year I have ever lived through, and am your very middle-aged faithful and true.

LETTER XLVIII.

Dearest: If anybody has been "calling me names" that are not mine, they do me a fine injury, and you did well to purge the text of their abuse. I agree with no authority, however immortal, which inquires "What's in a name?" expecting the answer to be a snap of the fingers. I answer with a snap of temper that the blood, boots, and bones of my ancestors are in mine! Do you suppose I could have been the same woman had such names as Amelia or Bella or Cinderella been clinging leechlike to my consciousness through all the years of my training? Why, there are names I can think of which would have made me break down into side-ringlets had I been forced to wear them audibly.

The effect is not so absolute when it is a second name that can be tucked away if unpresentable, but even then it is a misfortune. There is C----, now, who won't marry, I believe, chiefly because of the insane "Annie"

with which she was smitten at the baptismal font by an afterthought. She regards it as a taint in her const.i.tution which orders her to a lonely life lest worse might follow. And apply the consideration more publicly: do you imagine the Prince of Wales will be the same sort of king if, when he comes to the throne, he calls himself King Albert Edward in florid Continental fas.h.i.+on, instead of "Edward the Seventh," with a right hope that an Edward the Eighth may follow after him, to make a neck-and-neck race of it with the Henries? I don't know anything that would do more to knit up the English const.i.tution: but whenever I pa.s.s the Albert Memorial I tremble lest filial piety will not allow the thing to be done.

Now of all this I had an instance in the village the day before yesterday.

At the corner house by the post-office, as I went by, a bird opened his bill and sang a note, and down, down, down, down he went over a golden scale: pitched afresh, and dropped down another; and then up, up, up, over the range of both. Then he flung back his s.h.a.ggy head and laughed. "In all my father's realm there are no such bells as these!" It was the laughing jacka.s.s. "Who gave you your name?" "My G.o.dfathers and my G.o.dmothers in my baptism." Well, _his_ will have _that_ to answer for, however safely for the rest he may have eschewed the world, the flesh, and the devil. Poor bird, to be set to sing to us under such a burden:--of which, unconscious failure, he knows nothing.

Here I have remembered for you a bit of a poem that took hold of me some while ago and touched on the same unkindness: only here the flower is conscious of the wrong done to it, and looks forward to a day of juster judgment:--

"What have I done?--Man came (There's nothing that sticks like dirt), Looked at me with eyes of blame, And called me 'Squinancy-wort!'

What have I done? I linger (I cannot say that I live) In the happy lands of my birth; Pa.s.sers-by point with the finger: For me the light of the sun Is darkened. Oh, what would I give To creep away, and hide my shame in the earth!

What have I done?

Yet there is hope. I have seen Many changes since I began.

The web-footed beasts have been (Dear beasts!)--and gone, being part of some wider plan.

Perhaps in His infinite mercy G.o.d will remove this man!"

Now I am on sentiment and unjust judgments: here is another instance, where evidently in life I did not love well enough a character n.o.bler than this capering and accommodating boy Benjy, who toadies to all my moods.

Calling at the lower farm, I missed him whom I used to nickname "Manger,"

because his dog-jaws always refused to smile on me. His old mistress gave me a pathetic account of his last days. It was the muzzling order that broke his poor old heart. He took it as an accusation on a point where, though of a melancholy disposition, his reputation had been spotless. He never lifted his head nor smiled again. And not all his mistress' love could explain to him that he was not in fault. She wept as she told it me.

Good-by, dearest, and for this letter so full of such little worth call me what names you like; and I will go to Jemima, Keziah, and Kerenhappuch for the patience in which they must have taken after their father when he so named them, I suppose for a discipline.

My Beloved, let my heart come where it wants to be. Twilight has been on me to-day, I don't know why; and I have not written it off as I hoped to do.--All yours and nothing left.

LETTER XLIX.

Dearest: I suppose your mother's continued absence, and her unexplanation of her further stay, must be taken for unyielding disapproval, and tells us what to expect of February. It is not a cordial form of "truce": but since it lets me see just twice as much of you as I should otherwise, I will not complain so long as it does not make you unhappy. You write to her often and kindly, do you not?

Well, if this last letter of hers frees you sufficiently, it is quite settled at this end that you are to be with us for Christmas:--read into that the warmest corners of a heart already fully occupied. I do not think of it too much, till I am a.s.sured it is to be.

Did you go over to Pembury for the day? Your letter does not say anything: but your letters have a wonderful way with them of leaving out things of outside importance. I shall hear from the rattle of returning fire-engines some day that Hatterling has been burned down: and you will arrive cool the next day and say, "Oh yes, it is so!"

I am sure you have been right to secure this pledge of independence to yourself: but it hurts me to think what a deadly offense it may be both to her tenderness for you and her pride and stern love of power. To realize suddenly that Hatterling does not mean to you so much as the power to be your own master and happy in your own way, which is altogether opposite to _her_ way, will be so much of a blow that at first you will be able to do nothing to soften it.

February fill-d.y.k.e is likely to be true to its name, this coming one, in all that concerns us and our fortunes. Meanwhile, if at Pembury you brought things any nearer settlement, and are not coming so soon as to-morrow, let me know: for some things of "outside importance" do affect me unfavorably while in suspense. I have not your serene determination to abide the workings of Kismet when once all that can be done is done.

The sun sets now, when it does so visibly, just where Pembury _is_. I take it as an omen. In your diary to-morrow you may write down in the business column that you have had a business letter from _me_, or as near to one as I can go:--chiefly for that it requires an answer on this matter of "outside importance," which otherwise you will altogether leave out. But you will do better still to come. My whole heart goes out to fetch you: my dearest dear, ever your own.

LETTER L.

Beloved: No, not Browning but Tennyson was in my thoughts at our last ride together: and I found myself shy, as I have been for a long time wis.h.i.+ng to say things I could not. What has never entered your head to ask becomes difficult when I wish to get it spoken. So I bring Tennyson to tell you what I mean:--

"Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?

Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saay."

The tune of this kept me silent all the while we galloped: this and Pembury, a name that glows to me now like the New Jerusalem.