An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 18

One, I remember, for no reason unless because she had a brown face, I mistook from a distance for my Aunt Dolly, and bounded into the room where she was sitting, with a cry of rapture. And it was my earliest conscious test of politeness, when I found out my mistake, not to cry over it in the kind but very inferior presence to that one I had hoped for.

I suppose, also, that many sights which have no meaning to children go, happily, quite out of memory; and that what our early years leave for us in the mind's lavender are just the t.i.t-bits of life, or the first blows to our intelligence--things which did matter and mean much.

Corduroys come early into my life,--their color and the queer earthy smell of those which particularly concerned me: because I was picked up from a fall and tenderly handled by a rough working-man so clothed, whom I regarded for a long time afterward as an adorable object. He and I lived to my recognition of him as a wizened, scrubby, middle-aged man, but remained good friends after the romance was over. I don't know when the change in my sense of beauty took place as regards him.

Anything unusual that appealed to my senses left exaggerated marks. My father once in full uniform appeared to me as a giant, so that I screamed and ran, and required much of his kindest voice to coax me back to him.

Also once in the street a dancer in fancy costume struck me in the same way, and seemed in his red tunic twice the size of the people who crowded round him.

I think as a child the small ground-flowers of spring took a larger hold upon me than any others:--I was so close to them. Roses I don't remember till I was four or five; but crocus and snowdrop seem to have been in my blood from the very beginning of things; and I remember likening the green inner petals of the snowdrop to the skirts of some ballet-dancing dolls, which danced themselves out of sight before I was four years old.

Snapdragons, too, I remember as if with my first summer: I used to feed them with bits of their own green leaves, believing faithfully that those mouths must need food of some sort. When I became more thoughtful I ceased to make cannibals of them: but I think I was less convinced then of the digestive process. I don't know when I left off feeding snapdragons: I think calceolarias helped to break me off the habit, for I found they had no throats to swallow with.

In much the same way as sights that have no meaning leave no traces, so I suppose do words and sounds. It was many years before I overheard, in the sense of taking in, a conversation by elders not meant for me: though once, in my innocence, I hid under the table during the elders'

late dinner, and came out at dessert, to which we were always allowed to come down, hoping to be an amusing surprise to them. And I could not at all understand why I was scolded; for, indeed, I had _heard_ nothing at all, though no doubt plenty that was unsuitable for a child's ears had been said, and was on the elders' minds when they upbraided me.

Dearest, such a long-ago! and all these smallest of small things I remember again, to lay them up for you: all the child-parentage of me whom you loved once, and will again if ever these come to you.

Bless my childhood, dearest: it did not know it was lonely of you, as I know of myself now! And yet I have known you, and know you still, so am the more blest.--Good-night.

LETTER LXXI.

I used to stand at the foot of the stairs a long time, when by myself, before daring to start up: and then it was always the right foot that went first. And a fearful feeling used to accompany me that I was going to meet the "evil chance" when I got to the corner. Sometimes when I felt it was there very badly, I used at the last moment to shut my eyes and walk through it: and feel, on the other side, like a pilgrim who had come through the waters of Jordan.

My eyes were always the timidest things about me: and to shut my eyes tight against the dark was the only way I had of meeting the solitude of the first hour of bed when Nan-nan had left me, and before I could get to sleep.

I have an idea that one listens better with one's eyes shut, and that this and other things are a remnant of our primitive existence when perhaps the ears of our arboreal ancestors kept a lookout while the rest of their senses slept. I think, also, that the instinct I found in myself, and have since in other children, to conceal a wound is a similar survival. At one time, I suppose, in the human herd the damaged were quickly put out of existence; and it was the self-preservation instinct which gave me so keen a wish to get into hiding when one day I cut my finger badly--something more than a mere scratch, which I would have cried over and had bandaged quite in the correct way. I remember I sat in a corner and pretended to be nursing a rag doll which I had knotted round my hand, till Nan-nan noticed, perhaps, that I looked white, and found blood flowing into my lap. And I can recall still the overcoming comfort which fell upon me as I let resolution go, and sobbed in her arms full of pity for myself and scolding the "naughty knife" that had done the deed. The rest of that day is lost to me.

Yet it is not only occasions of happiness and pain which impress themselves. When the mind takes a sudden stride in consciousness,--that, also, fixes itself. I remember the agony of shyness which came on me when strange hands did my undressing for me once in Nan-nan's absence: the first time I had felt such a thing. And another day I remember, after contemplating the head of Judas in a pictorial puzzle for a long time, that I seized a brick and pounded him with it beyond recognition:--these were the first vengeful beginnings of Christianity in me. All my history, Bible and English, came to me through picture-books. I wept tenderly over the endangered eyes of Prince Arthur, yet I put out the eyes of many kings, princes, and governors who incurred my displeasure, scratching them with pins till only a white blur remained on the paper.

All this comes to me quite seriously now: I used to laugh thinking it over. But can a single thing we do be called trivial, since out of it we grow up minute by minute into a whole being charged with capacity for gladness or suffering?

Now, as I look back, all these atoms of memory are dust and ashes that I have walked through in order to get to present things. How I suffer, how I suffer! If you could have dreamed that a human body could contain so much suffering, I think you would have chosen a less dreadful way of showing me your will: you would have given me a reason why I have to suffer so.

Dearest, I am broken off every habit I ever had, except my love of you. If you would come back to me you could shape me into whatever you wished. I will be different in all but just that one thing.

LETTER LXXII.

Here in my pain, Beloved, I remember keenly now the one or two occasions when as a small child I was consciously a cause of pain to others. What an irony of life that once of the two times when I remember to have been cruel, it was to Arthur, with his small astonished baby-face remaining a reproach to me ever after! I was hardly five then, and going up to the nursery from downstairs had my supper-cake in my hand, only a few mouthfuls left. He had been having his bath, and was sitting up on Nan-nan's knee being got into his bed clothes; when spying me with my cake he piped to have a share of it. I dare say it would not have been good for him, but of that I thought nothing at all: the cruel impulse took me to make one mouthful of all that was left. He watched it go without crying; but his eyes opened at me in a strange way, wondering at this sudden lesson of the hardness of a human heart. "All gone!" was what he said, turning his head from me up to Nan-nan, to see perhaps if she too had a like surprise for his wee intelligence. I think I have never forgiven myself that, though Arthur has no memory of it left in him: the judging remembrance of it would, I believe, win forgiveness to him for any wrong he might now do me, if that and not the contrary were his way with me: so unreasonably is my brain scarred where the thought of it still lies. G.o.d may forgive us our trespa.s.ses by marvelous slow ways; but we cannot always forgive them ourselves.

The other thing came out of a less personal greed, and was years later: Arthur and I were collecting eggs, and in the loft over one of the out-houses there was a swallow's nest too high up to be reached by any ladder we could get up there. I was intent on getting the _eggs_, and thought of no other thing that might chance: so I spread a soft fall below, and with a long pole I broke the floor of the nest. Then with a sudden stir of horror I saw soft things falling along with the clay, tiny and feathery. Two were killed by the breakage that fell with them, but one was quite alive and unhurt. I gathered up the remnants of the nest and set it with the young one in it by the loft window where the parent-birds might see, making clumsy strivings of pity to quiet my conscience. The parent-birds did see, soon enough: they returned, first up to the rafters, then darting round and round and crying; then to where their little one lay helpless and exposed, hung over it with a nibbling movement of their beaks for a moment, making my miserable heart bound up with hope: then away, away, shrieking into the July suns.h.i.+ne.

Once they came back, and shrieked at the horror of it all, and fled away not to return.

I remained for hours and did whatever silly pity could dictate: but of course the young one died: and I--_cleared away all remains that n.o.body might see_! And that I gave up egg-collecting after that was no penance, but choice. Since then the poignancy of my regret when I think of it has never softened. The question which pride of life and love of make-believe till then had not raised in me, "Am I a G.o.d to kill and to make alive?"

was answered all at once by an emphatic "No," which I never afterward forgot. But the grief remained all the same, that life, to teach me that blunt truth, should have had to make sacrifice in the mote-hung loft of three frail lives on a clay-altar, and bring to nothing but pain and a last miserable dart away into the bright suns.h.i.+ne the spring work of two swift-winged intelligences. Is man, we are told to think, not worth many sparrows? Oh, Beloved, sometimes I doubt it! and would in thought give my life that those swallows in their generations might live again.

Beloved, I am letting what I have tried to tell you of my childhood end in a sad way. For it is no use, no use: I have not to-day a glimmer of hope left that your eyes will ever rest on what I have been at such deep trouble to write.

If I were being punished for these two childish things I did, I should see a side of justice in it all. But it is for loving you I am being punished: and not G.o.d himself shall make me let you go! Beloved, Beloved, all my days are at your feet, and among them days when you held me to your heart. Good-night; good-night always now!

LETTER LXXIII.

Dearest: I could never have made any appeal _from_ you to anybody: all my appeal has been _to_ you alone. I have wished to hear reason from no other lips but yours; and had you but really and deeply confided in me, I believe I could have submitted almost with a light heart to what you thought best:--though in no way and by no stretch of the imagination can I see you coming to me for the last time and _saying_, as you only wrote, that it was best we should never see each other again.

You could not have said that with any sound of truth; and how can it look truer frozen into writing? I have kissed the words, because you wrote them; not believing them. It is a suspense of unbelief that you have left me in, oh, still dearest! Yet never was sad heart truer to the fountain of all its joy than mine to yours. You had only to see me to know that.

Some day, I dream, we shall come suddenly together, and you will see, before a word, before I have time to gather my mind back to the bodily comfort of your presence, a face filled with thoughts of you that have never left it, and never been bitter:--I believe never once bitter. For even when I think, and convince myself that you have wronged yourself--and so, me also,--even then: oh, then most of all, my heart seems to break with tenderness, and my spirit grow more famished than ever for the want of you! For if you have done right, wisely, then you have no longer any need of me: but if you have done wrong, then you must need me. Oh, dear heart, let that need overwhelm you like a sea, and bring you toward me on its strong tide! And come when you will I shall be waiting.

LETTER LXXIV.

Dearest and Dearest: So long as you are still this to my heart I trust to have strength to write it; though it is but a ghost of old happiness that comes to me in the act. I have no hope now left in me: but I love you not less, only more, if that be possible: or is it the same love with just a weaker body to contain it all? I find that to have definitely laid off all hope gives me a certain relief: for now that I am so hopeless it becomes less hard not to misjudge you--not to say and think impatiently about you things which would explain why I had to die like this.

Dearest, nothing but love shall explain anything of you to me. When I think of your dear face, it is only love that can give it its meaning.

If love would teach me the meaning of this silence, I would accept all the rest, and not ask for any joy in life besides. For if I had the meaning, however dark, it would be by love speaking to me again at last; and I should have your hand holding mine in the darkness forever.

Your face, Beloved, I can remember so well that it would be enough if I had your hand:--the meaning, just the meaning, why I have to sit blind.

LETTER LXXV.

Dearest: There is always one possibility which I try to remember in all I write: even where there is no hope a thing remains _possible_:--that your eye may some day come to rest upon what I leave here. And I would have nothing so dark as to make it seem that I were better dead than to have come to such a pa.s.s through loving you. If I felt that, dearest, I should not be writing my heart out to you, as I do: when I cease doing that I shall indeed have become dead and not want you any more, I suppose. How far I am from dying, then, now!

So be quite sure that if now, even now,--for to-day of all days has seemed most dark--if now I were given my choice--to have known you or not to have known you,--Beloved, a thousand times I would claim to keep what I have, rather than have it taken away from me. I cannot forget that for a few months I was the happiest woman I ever knew: and that happiness is perhaps only by present conditions removed from me. If I have a soul, I believe good will come back to it: because I have done nothing to deserve this darkness unless by loving you: and if _by_ loving you, I am glad that the darkness came.

Beloved, you have the yes and no to all this: _I_ have not, and cannot have. Something that you have not chosen for me to know, you know: it should be a burden on your conscience, surely, not to have shared it with me. Maybe there is something I know that you do not. In the way of sorrow, I think and wish--yes. In the way of love, I wish to think--no.

Any more thinking wearies me. Perhaps we have loved too much, and have lost our way out of our poor five senses, without having strength to take over the new world which is waiting beyond them. Well, I would rather, Beloved, suffer through loving too much, than through loving too little. It is a good fault as faults go. And it is _my_ fault, Beloved: so some day you may have to be tender to it.