An Englishwoman's Love-Letters Part 7

After service a sort of processional instinct drew people up to the house: they waited about till permission was given, and went in to look at their old man, lying in high state among his books. I did not go. Beloved, I have never yet seen death: you have, I know. Do you, I wonder, remember your father better than I mine:--or your brother? Are they more living because you saw them once not living? I think death might open our eyes to those we lived on ill terms with, but not to the familiar and dear. I do not need you dead, to be certain that your heart has mine for its true inmate and mine yours.

I love you, I love you: so let good-night bring you good-morning!

N.

At long intervals, dearest, I write to you a secret all about yourself for my eyes to see: because, chiefly because, I have not you to look at. Thus I bless myself with you.

Away over the world west of this and a little bit north is the city of spires where you are now. Never having seen it I am the more free to picture it as I like: and to me it is quite full of you:--quite greedily full, Beloved, when elsewhere you are so much wanted! I send my thoughts there to pick up crumbs for me.

It is a strange blend of notions--wisdom and ignorance combined: for _you_ I seem to know perfectly; but of your life nothing at all. And yet n.o.body there knows so much about you as I. What you _do_ matters so much less than what you are. You, who are the clearest heart in all the world, do what you will, you are so still to me, Beloved.

I take a happy armful of thoughts about you into all my dreams: and when I wake they are there still, and have done nothing but remain true. What better can I ask of them?

You do love me: you have not changed? Without change I remain yours so long as I live.

O.

And you, Beloved, what are you thinking of me all this while? Think well of me, I beg you: I deserve so much, loving you as truly as I do!

So often, dearest, I sit thinking my hands into yours again as when we were saying good-by the last time. Then it was, under our laughter and light words, that I saw suddenly how the thing too great to name had become true, that from friends we were changed into lovers. It seemed the most natural thing to be, and yet was wonderful--for it was I who loved you first: a thing I could never be ashamed of, and am now proud to own--for has it not proved me wise? My love for you is the best wisdom that I have. Good-night, dearest! Sleep as well as I love you, and n.o.body in the world will sleep so soundly.

P.

A few times in my life, Beloved, I have had the Blue-moon-hunger for something which seemed too impossible and good ever to come true: prosaic people call it being "in the blues"; I comfort myself with a prettier word for it. To-day, not the Blue-moon itself, but the Man of it came down and ate plum-porridge with me! Also, I do believe that it burnt his mouth, and am quite reasonably happy thinking so, since it makes me know that you love me as much as ever.

If I have had doubts, dearest, they have been of myself, lest I might be unworthy of your friends.h.i.+p or love. Suspicions of you I never had.

Who wrote that suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds, flying only by twilight?

But even my doubts have been thoughts, Beloved,--sure of you if not always of myself. And if I have looked for you only with doubtful vision, yet I have always seen you in as strong a light as my eyes could bear:-- blue-moonlight. Beloved, is not twilight: and blue-moonlight has been the light I saw you by: it is you alone who can make sunlight of it.

This I read yesterday has lain on my mind since as true and altogether beautiful, with the beauty of major, not of minor poetry, though it was a minor poet who wrote it. It is of a wood where Apollo has gone in quest of his Beloved, and she is not yet to be found:

"Here each branch Sway'd with a glitter all its crowded leaves, And brushed the soft divine hair touching them In ruffled cl.u.s.ters....

Suddenly the moon Smoothed herself out of vapor-drift and made The deep night full of pleasure in the eye Of her sweet motion. Not alone she came Leading the starlight with her like a song: And not a bud of all that undergrowth But crisped and tingled out an ardent edge As the light steeped it: over whose ma.s.sed leaves The portals of illimitable sleep Faded in heaven."

That is love in its moonrise, not its sunrise stage: yet you see.

Beloved, how it takes possession of its dark world, quite as fully as the brighter sunlight could do. And if I speak of doubts, I mean no twilight and no suspicions: nor by darkness do I mean any unhappiness.

My blue-moon has come, leading the starlight with her like a song. Am I not happy enough to be patiently yours before you know it? Good things which are to be, before they happen are already true. Nothing is so true as you are, except my love for you and yours for me. Good-night, good-night.

Sleep well, Beloved, and wake.

Q.

Beloved: I heard somebody yesterday speak of you as "charming"; and I began wondering to myself was that the word which could ever have covered my thoughts of you? I do not know whether you ever charmed me, except in the sense of charming which means magic and spell-binding. _That_ you did from the beginning, dearest. But I think I held you at first in too much awe to discover charm in you: and at last knew you too much to the depths to name you by a word so lightly used for the surface of things. Yet now a charm in you, which is not _all_ you, but just a part of you, comes to light, when I see you wondering whether you are really loved, or whether, Beloved, I only _like_ you rather well!

Well, if you will be so "charming," I am helpless: and can do nothing, nothing, but pray for the blue-moon to rise, and love you a little better because you have some of that divine foolishness which strikes the very wise ones of earth, and makes them kin to weaker mortals who otherwise might miss their "charm" altogether.

Truly, Beloved, if I am happy, it is because I am also your most patiently loving.

R.

Beloved: The certainty which I have now that you love me so fills all my thoughts, I cannot understand you being in any doubt on your side. What must I do that I do not do, to show gladness when we meet and sorrow when we have to part? I am sure that I make no pretense or disguise, except that I do not stand and wring my hands before all the world, and cry "Don't go!"--which has sometimes been in my mind, to be kept _not_ said!

Indeed, I think so much of you, my dear, that I believe some day, if you do your part, you will only have to look up from your books to find me standing. If you did, would you still be in doubt whether I loved you?

Oh, if any apparition of me ever goes to you, all my thoughts will surely look truthfully out of its eyes; and even you will read what is there at last!

Beloved, I kiss your blind eyes, and love them the better for all their unreadiness to see that I am already their slave. Not a day now but I think I may see you again: I am in a golden uncertainty from hour to hour.

I love you: you love me: a mist of blessing swims over my eyes as I write the words, till they become one and the same thing: I can no longer divide their meaning in my mind. Amen: there is no need that I should.

S.

Beloved: I have not written to you for quite a long time: ah, I could not.

I have nothing now to say! I think I could very easily die of this great happiness, so certainly do you love me! Just a breath more of it and I should be gone.

Good-by, dearest, and good-by, and good-by! If you want letters from me now, you must ask for them! That the earth contains us both, and that we love each other, is about all that I have mind enough to take in. I do not think I can love you more than I do: you are no longer my dream but my great waking thought. I am waiting for no blue-moonrise now: my heart has not a wish which you do not fulfill. I owe you my whole life, and for any good to you must pay it out to the last farthing, and still feel myself your debtor.

Oh, Beloved, I am most poor and most rich when I think of your love.

Good-night; I can never let thought of you go!

Beloved: These are almost all of them, but not quite; a few here and there have cried to be taken out, saying they were still too shy to be looked at. I can't argue with them: they know their own minds best; and you know mine.

See what a dignified historic name I have given this letter-box, or chatterbox, or whatever you like to call it. But "Resurrection Pie" is _my_ name for it. Don't eat too much of it, prays your loving.

LETTER XXIII.

Saving your presence, dearest, I would rather have Prince Otto, a very lovable character for second affections to cling to. Richard Feverel would never marry again, so I don't ask for him: as for the rest, they are all too excellent for me. They give me the impression of having worn copy-books under their coats, when they were boys, to cheat punishment: and the copy-books got beaten into their systems.

You must find me somebody who was a "gallous young hound" in the days of his youth--Crossjay, for instance:--there! I have found the very man for me!

But really and truly, are you better? It will not hurt your foot to come to me, since I am not to come to you? How I long to see you again, dearest! it is an age! As a matter of fact, it is a fortnight: but I dread lest you will find some change in me. I have kept a real white hair to show you, I drew it out of my comb the other morning: wound up into a curl it becomes quite visible, and it is ivory-white: you are not to think it flaxen, and take away its one wee sentiment! And I make you an offer:--you shall have it if, honestly, you can find in your own head a white one to exchange.

Dearest, I am not _hurt_, nor do I take seriously to heart your mother's present coldness. How much more I could forgive her when I put myself in her place! She may well feel a struggle and some resentment at having to give up in any degree her place with you. All my selfishness would come to the front if that were demanded of me.