An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 2

Now _why_, I want to know, Beloved, was I so specially "good" to you in my last? I have been quite as good to you fifty times before,--if such a thing can be from me to you. Or do you mean good _for_ you? Then, dear, I must be sorry that the thing stands out so much as an exception!

Oh, dearest Beloved, for a little I think I must not love you so much, or must not let you see it.

When does your mother return, and when am I to see her? I long to so much. Has she still not written to you about our news?

I woke last night to the sound of a great flock of sheep going past. I suppose they were going by forced marches to the fair over at Hylesbury: It was in the small hours: and a few of them lifted up their voices and complained of this robbery of night and sleep in the night. They were so tired, so tired, they said: and so did the m.u.f.fawully patter of their poor feet. The lambs said most; and the sheep agreed with a husky croak.

I said a prayer for them, and went to sleep again as the sound of the lambs died away; but somehow they stick in my heart, those sad sheep driven along through the night. It was in its degree like the woman hurrying along, who said, "My G.o.d, my G.o.d!" that summer Sunday morning.

These notes from lives that appear and disappear remain endlessly; and I do not think our hearts can have been made so sensitive to suffering we can do nothing to relieve, without some good reason. So I tell you this, as I would any sorrow of my own, because it has become a part of me, and is underlying all that I think to-day.

I am to expect you the day after to-morrow, but "not for certain"? Thus you give and you take away, equally blessed in either case. All the same, I shall _certainly_ expect you, and be disappointed if on Thursday at about this hour your way be not my way.

"How shall I my true love know" if he does not come often enough to see me? Suns.h.i.+ne be on you all possible hours till we meet again.

LETTER IX.

Beloved: Is the morning looking at you as it is looking at me? A little to the right of the sun there lies a small cloud, filmy and faint, but enough to cast a shadow somewhere. From this window, high up over the view, I cannot see where the shadow of it falls,--further than my eye can reach: perhaps just now over you, since you lie further west. But I cannot be sure. We cannot be sure about the near things in this world; only about what is far off and fixed.

You and I looking up see the same sun, if there are no clouds over us: but we may not be looking at the same clouds even when both our hearts are in shadow. That is so, even when hearts are as close together as yours and mine: they respond to the same light: but each one has its own roof of shadow, wearing its rue with a world of difference.

Why is it? why can no two of us have sorrows quite in common? What can be nearer together than our wills to be one? In joy we are; and yet, though I reach and reach, and sadden if you are sad, I cannot make your sorrow my own.

I suppose sorrow is of the earth earthy: and all that is of earth makes division. Every joy that belongs to the body casts shadows somewhere. I wonder if there can enter into us a joy that has no shadow anywhere? The joy of having you has behind it the shadow of parting; is there any way of loving that would make parting no sorrow at all? To me, now, the idea seems treason! I cling to my sorrow that you are not here: I send up my cloud, as it were, to catch the sun's brightness: it is a kite that I pull with my heart-strings.

To the sun of love the clouds that cover absence must look like white flowers in the green fields of earth, or like doves hovering: and he reaches down and strokes them with his warm beams, making all their feathers like gold.

Some clouds let the gold come through; _mine_, now.--That cloud I saw away to the right is coming this way toward me. I can see the shadow of it now, moving along a far-off strip of road: and I wonder if it is _your_ cloud, with you under it coming to see me again!

When you come, why am I any happier than when I know you are coming? It is the same thing in love. I have you now all in my mind's eye; I have you by heart; have I my arms a bit more round you then than now?

How it puzzles me that, when love is perfect, there should be disappearances and reappearances: and faces now and then showing a change!--You, actually, the last time you came, looking a day older than the day before! What was it? Had old age blown you a kiss, or given you a wrinkle in the art of dying? Or had you turned over some new leaf, and found it withered on the other side?

I could not see how it was: I heard you coming--it was spring! The door opened:--oh, it was autumnal! One day had fallen away like a leaf out of my forest, and I had not been there to see it go!

At what hour of the twenty-four does a day shed itself out of our lives?

Not, I think, on the stroke of the clock, at midnight, or at c.o.c.k-crow.

Some people, perhaps, would say--with the first sleep; and that the "beauty-sleep" is the new day putting out its green wings. _I_ think it must be not till something happens to make the new day a stronger impression than the last. So it would please me to think that your yesterday dropped off as you opened the door; and that, had I peeped and seen you coming up the stairs, I should have seen you looking a day younger.

_That_ means that you age at the sight of me! I think you do. I, I feel a hundred on the road to immortality, directly your face dawns on me.

There's a foot gone over my grave! The angel of the resurrection with his mouth pursed fast to his trumpet!--Nothing else than the gallop-a-gallop of your horse:--it sounds like a kettle boiling over!

So this goes into hiding: listens to us all the while we talk; and comes out afterwards with all its blushes stale, to be rouged up again and sent off the moment your back is turned. No, better!--to be slipped into your pocket and carried home to yourself _by_ yourself. How, when you get to your destination and find it, you will curse yourself that you were not a speedier postman!

LETTER X.

Dearest: Did you find your letter? The quicker I post, the quicker I need to sit down and write again. The gra.s.s under love's feet never stops growing: I must make hay of it while the sun s.h.i.+nes.

You say my metaphors make you giddy.--My clear, you, without a metaphor in your composition, do that to me! So it is not for you to complain; your curses simply fly back to roost. Where do you pigeon-hole them? In a pie? (I mean to write now until I have made you as giddy as a dancing dervis.h.!.+) _Your_ letters are much more like blackbirds: and I have a pie of them here, twenty-four at least; and when I open it they sing "Chewee, chewee, chewee!" in the most scared way!

Your last but three said most solemnly, just as if you meant it, "I hope you don't keep these miserables! Though I fill up my hollow hours with them, there is no reason why they should fill up yours." You added that I was better occupied--and here I am "better occupied" even as you bid me.

But one can jump best from a spring-board: and how could I jump as far as your arms by letter, if I had not yours to jump from?

So you see they are kept, and my disobedience of you has begun: and I find disobedience wonderfully sweet. But then, you gave me a law which you knew I should disobey:--that is the way the world began. It is not for nothing that I am a daughter of Eve.

And here is our world in our hands, yours and mine, now in the making.

Which day are the evening and the morning now? I think it must be the birds'--and already, with the wings, disobedience has been reached! Make much of it! the day will come when I shall wish to obey. There are moments when I feel a wish taking hold of me stronger than I can understand, that you should command me beyond myself--to things I have not strength or courage for of my own accord. How close, dearest, when that day comes, my heart will feel itself to yours! It feels close now: but it is to your feet I am nearest, as yet. Lift me! There, there, Beloved, I kiss you with all my will. Oh, dear heart, forgive me for being no more than I am: your freehold to all eternity!

LETTER XI

Oh, Dearest: I have danced and I have danced till I am tired! I am dropping with sleep, but I must just touch you and say good-night.

This was our great day of publis.h.i.+ng, dearest, _ours_: all the world knows it; and all admire your choice! I was determined they should. I have been collecting scalps for you to hang at your girdle. All thought me beautiful: people who never did so before. I wanted to say to them, "Am I not beautiful? I am, am I not?" And it was not for myself I was asking this praise. Beloved, I was wearing the magic rose--what you gave me when we parted: you saying, alas, that you were not to be there. But you _were_! Its leaves have not dropped nor the scent of it faded. I kiss you out of the heart of it. Good-night: come to me in my first dream!

LETTER XII.

Dearest: It has been such a funny day from post-time onwards:-- congratulations on the great event are beginning to arrive in envelopes and on wheels. Some are very kind and dear; and some are not so--only the ordinary seemliness of polite sniffle-snaffle. Just after you had gone yesterday, Mrs. ---- called and was told the news. Of course she knew _of_ you: but didn't think she had ever seen you. "Probably he pa.s.sed you at the gates," I said. "What?" she went off with a view-hallo; "that well-dressed sort of young fellow in gray, and a mustache, and knowing how to ride? Met us in the lane. _Well_, my dear, I _do_ congratulate you!"

And whether it was by the gray suit, or the mustache, or the knowing how to ride that her congratulations were so emphatically secured, I know not!

Others are yet more quaint, and more to my liking. Nan-nan is Nan-nan: I cannot let you off what she said! No tears or sentiment came from her to prevent me laughing: she brisked like an old war-horse at the first word of it, and blessed G.o.d that it had come betimes, that she might be a nurse again in her old age! She is a true "Mrs. Berry," and is ready to make room for you in my affections for the sake of far-off divine events, which promise renewed youth to her old bones.

Roberts, when he brought me my pony this morning, touched his hat quick twice over to show that the news brimmed in his body: and a very nice cordial way of showing, I thought it! He was quite ready to talk when I let him go; and he gave me plenty of good fun. He used to know you when he was in service at the H----s, and speaks of you as being then "a gallous young hound," whatever that may mean. I imagine "gallous" to be a rustic Lewis Carroll compound, made up in equal parts of callousness and gallantry, which most boys are, at some stage of their existence.

What tales will you be getting of me out of Nan-nan, some day behind my back, I wonder? There is one I shall forbid her to reveal: it shall be part of my marriage-portion to show you early that you have got a wife with a temper!

Here is a whole letter that must end now,--and the great Word never mentioned! It is good for you to be put upon _maigre_ fare, for once. I ho_l_d my pen back with b_o_th hands: it wants so much to gi_v_e you the forbidd_e_n treat. Oh, the serpent in the garden! See where it has underlined its meaning. Frailty, thy pen is a J pen!

Adieu, adieu, remember me.