ANENGLISHWOMAN'SLOVE-LETTERS

NEW YORKTHE MERSHON COMPANYPUBLISHERS

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S LOVE-LETTERS. 

EXPLANATION. 

It need hardly be said that the woman by whom these letter were writtenhad no thought that they would be read by anyone but the person to whomthey were addressed. But a request, conveyed under circumstances whichthe writer herself would have regarded as all-commanding, urges thatthey should now be given to the world; and, so far as is possible with adue regard to the claims of privacy, what is here printed presents theletters as they were first written in their complete form and sequence. 

Very little has been omitted which in any way bears upon the devotion ofwhich they are a record. A few names of persons and localities have beenchanged; and several short notes (not above twenty in all), togetherwith some passages bearing too intimately upon events which might berecognized, have been left out without indication of their omission. 

It was a necessary condition to the present publication that theauthorship of these letters should remain unstated. Those who know willkeep silence; those who do not, will not find here any data likely toguide them to the truth. 

The story which darkens these pages cannot be more fully indicated whilethe feelings of some who are still living have to be consulted; nor willthe reader find the root of the tragedy explained in the lettersthemselves. But one thing at least may be said as regards the principalactors--that to the memory of neither of them does any blame belong. They were equally the victims of circumstances, which came whole out ofthe hands of fate and remained, so far as one of the two was concerned, a mystery to the day of her death. 

LETTER I. 

Beloved: This is your first letter from me: yet it is not the first I havewritten to you. There are letters to you lying at love's dead-letteroffice in this same writing--so many, my memory has lost count of them!

This is my confession: I told you I had one to make, and you laughed:--youdid not know how serious it was--for to be in love with you long beforeyou were in love with me--nothing can be more serious than that!

You deny that I was: yet I know when you first really loved me. All atonce, one day something about me came upon you as a surprise: and how, except on the road to love, can there be surprises? And in the surprisecame love. You did not _know_ me before. Before then, it was only theother nine entanglements which take hold of the male heart and occupy ittill the tenth is ready to make one knot of them all. 

In the letter written that day, I said, "You love me. " I could neverhave said it before; though I had written twelve letters to my love foryou, I had not once been able to write of your love for me. Was not_that_ serious?

Now I have confessed! I thought to discover myself all blushes, but myface is cool: you have kissed all my blushes away! Can I ever be ashamedin your eyes now, or grow rosy because of anything _you_ or _I_ think?So!--you have robbed me of one of my charms: I am brazen. Can you loveme still?

You love me, you love me; you are wonderful! we are both wonderful, youand I. 

Well, it is good for you to know I have waited and wished, long beforethe thing came true. But to see _you_ waiting and wishing, when thething _was_ true all the time:--oh! that was the trial! How not suddenlyto throw my arms round you and cry, "Look, see! O blind mouth, why areyou famished?"

And you never knew? Dearest, I love you for it, you never knew! I believea man, when he finds he has won, thinks he has taken the city by assault:he does not guess how to the insiders it has been a weary siege, withflags of surrender fluttering themselves to rags from every wall andwindow! No: in love it is the women who are the strategists: and they haveat last to fall into the ambush they know of with a good grace. 

You must let me praise myself a little for the past, since I can neverpraise myself again. You must do that for me now! There is not a battleleft for me to win. You and peace hold me so much a prisoner, have socaught me from my own way of living, that I seem to hear a pin droptwenty years ahead of me: it seems an event! Dearest, a thousand times, I would not have it be otherwise: I am only too willing to drop out ofexistence altogether and find myself in your arms instead. Giving you mylove, I can so easily give you my life. Ah, my dear, I am yours soutterly, so gladly! Will you ever find it out, you who took so long todiscover anything?

LETTER II. 

Dearest: Your name woke me this morning: I found my lips piping their songbefore I was well back into my body out of dreams. I wonder if the roguesbabble when my spirit is nesting? Last night you were a high tree and Iwas in it, the wind blowing us both; but I forget the rest, --whatever, itwas enough to make me wake happy. 

There are dreams that go out like candle-light directly one opens theshutters: they illumine the walls no longer; the daylight is too strongfor them. So, now, I can hardly remember anything of my dreams:daylight, with you in it, floods them out. 

Oh, how are you? Awake? Up? Have you breakfasted? I ask you a thousandthings. You are thinking of me, I know: but what are you thinking? I amdevoured by curiosity about myself--none at all about you, whom I have allby heart! If I might only know how happy I make you, and just _which_thing I said yesterday is making you laugh to-day--I could cry with joyover being the person I am. 

It is you who make me think so much about myself, trying to find myselfout. I used to be most self-possessed, and regarded it as the crowningvirtue: and now--your possession of me sweeps it away, and I stand cryingto be let into a secret that is no longer mine. Shall I ever know _why_you love me? It is my religious difficulty; but it never rises into adoubt. You _do_ love me, I know. _Why_, I don't think I ever can know. 

You ask me the same question about yourself, and it becomes absurd, because I altogether belong to you. If I hold my breath for a momentwickedly (for I can't do it breathing), and try to look at the worldwith you out of it, I seem to have fallen over a precipice; or rather, the solid earth has slipped from under my feet, and I am off intovacuum. Then, as I take breath again for fear, my star swims up andclasps me, and shows me your face. O happy star this that I was bornunder, that moved with me and winked quiet prophecies at me all throughmy childhood, I not knowing what it meant:--the dear radiant thingnaming to me my lover!

As a child, now and then, and for no reason, I used to be sublimelyhappy: real wings took hold of me. Sometimes a field became fairylandas I walked through it; or a tree poured out a scent that its blossomsnever had before or after. I think now that those must have been momentswhen you too were in like contact with earth, --had your feet in grasswhich felt a faint ripple of wind, or stood under a lilac in a drench offragrance that had grown double after rain. 

When I asked you about the places of your youth, I had some fear offinding that we might once have met, and that I had not remembered it asthe summing up of my happiness in being young. Far off I see somethingundiscovered waiting us, something I could not have guessed atbefore--the happiness of being old. Will it not be something like theevening before last when we were sitting together, your hand in mine, and one by one, as the twilight drew about us, the stars came and tookup their stations overhead? They seemed to me then to be following outsome quiet train of thought in the universal mind: the heavens wereremembering the stars back into their places:--the Ancient of Daysdrawing upon the infinite treasures of memory in his great lifetime. Will not Love's old age be the same to us both--a starry place ofmemories?

Your dear letter is with me while I write: how shortly you are able tosay everything! To-morrow you will come. What more do I want--exceptto-morrow itself, with more promises of the same thing?

You are at my heart, dearest: nothing in the world can be nearer to methan you!

LETTER III. 

Dearest and rightly Beloved: You cannot tell how your gift has pleased me;or rather you _can_, for it shows you have a long memory back to our firstmeeting: though at the time I was the one who thought most of it. 

It is quite true; you have the most beautifully shaped memory inChristendom: these are the very books in the very edition I have longwanted, and have been too humble to afford myself. And now I cannot stopto read one, for joy of looking at them all in a row. I will kiss youfor them all, and for more besides: indeed it is the "besides" whichbrings you my kisses at all. 

Now that you have chosen so perfectly to my mind, I may proffer arequest which, before, I was shy of making. It seems now beneficentlyanticipated. It is that you will not ever let your gifts take the formof jewelry, not after the ring which you are bringing me: _that_, youknow, I both welcome and wish for. But, as to the rest, the world hassupplied me with a feeling against jewelry as a love-symbol. Lookabroad and you will see: it is too possessive, too much like "chains ofoffice"--the fair one is to wear her radiant harness before the world, that other women may be envious and the desire of her master's eye besatisfied! Ah, no!

I am yours, dear, utterly; and nothing you give me would have that sense:I know you too well to think it. But in the face of the present fashion(and to flout it), which expects the lover to give in this sort, and thebeloved to show herself a dazzling captive, let me cherish my ritual ofopposition which would have no meaning if we were in a world of our own, and no place in my thoughts, dearest;--as it has not now, so far as youare concerned. But I am conscious I shall be looked at as your chosen; andI would choose my own way of how to look back most proudly. 

And so for the books more thanks and more, --that they are what I wouldmost wish, and not anything else: which, had they been, they would stillhave given me pleasure, since from you they could come only with a goodmeaning: and--diamonds even--I could have put up with them!

To-morrow you come for your ring, and bring me my own? Yours is herewaiting. I have it on my finger, very loose, with another standingsentry over it to keep it from running away. 

A mouse came out of my wainscot last night, and plunged me in horribledilemma: for I am equally idiotic over the idea of the creature trappedor free, and I saw sleepless nights ahead of me till I had secured achange of locality for him. 

To startle him back into hiding would have only deferred my gettingtruly rid of him, so I was most tiptoe and diplomatic in my doings. Finally, a paper bag, put into a likely nook with some sentimentallypreserved wedding-cake crumbled into it, crackled to me of his arrival. In a brave moment I noosed the little beast, bag and all, and loweredhim from the window by string, till the shrubs took from me the burdenof responsibility. 

I visited the bag this morning: he had eaten his way out, crumbs andall: and has, I suppose, become a fieldmouse, for the hay smellsinvitingly, and it is only a short run over the lawn and a jump over theha-ha to be in it. Poor morsels, I prefer them so much undomesticated!

Now this mouse is no allegory, and the paper bag is _not_ a diamondnecklace, in spite of the wedding-cake sprinkled over it! So don't saythat this letter is too hard for your understanding, or you willfrighten me from telling you anything foolish again. Brains are likejewels in this, difference of surface has nothing to do with the sizeand value of them. Yours is a beautiful smooth round, like a pearl, andmine all facets and flashes like cut glass. And yours so much thebigger, and I love it so much the best! The trap which caught me wasbaited with one great pearl. So the mouse comes in with a meaning tiedto its tail after all!

LETTER IV. 

In all the world, dearest, what is more unequal than love between a manand a woman? I have been spending an amorous morning and want to share itwith you: but lo, the task of bringing that bit of my life into yourvision is altogether beyond me. 

What have I been doing? Dear man, I have been dressmaking! and dress, when one is in the toils, is but a love-letter writ large. You will seeand admire the finished thing, but you will take no interest in thecomposition. Therefore I say your love is unequal to mine. 

For think how ravished I would be if you brought me a coat and told meit was all your own making! One day you had thrown down a meretailor-made thing in the hall, and yet I kissed it as I went by. Andthat was at a time when we were only at the handshaking stage, thepalsied beginnings of love:--_you_, I mean!

But oh, to get you interested in the dress I was making to youto-day!--the beautiful flowing opening, --not too flowing: the elaboratecentral composition where the heart of me has to come, and the wind-upof the skirt, a long reluctant tailing-off, full of commas and colons ofribbon to make it seem longer, and insertions everywhere. I dreamedmyself in it, retiring through the door after having bidden yougood-night, and you watching the long disappearing eloquence of thattail, still saying to you as it vanished, "Good-by, good-by. I love youso! see me, how slowly I am going!"

Well, that is a bit of my dress-making, a very corporate part of myaffection for you; and you are not a bit interested, for I have shownyou none of the seamy side; it is that which interests you malecreatures, Zolaites, every one of you. 

And what have you to show similar, of the thought of me entering intoall your masculine pursuits? Do you go out rabbit-shooting for the loveof me? If so, I trust you make a miss of it every time! That you are asportsman is one of the very hardest things in life that I have to bear. 

Last night Peterkins came up with me to keep guard against any furtherintrusion of mice. I put her to sleep on the couch: but she discardedthe red shawl I had prepared for her at the bottom, and lay at the topmost uncomfortably in a parcel of millinery into which from one end Ihad already made excavations, so that it formed a large bag. Into thefurther end of this bag Turks crept and snuggled down: but every timeshe turned in the night (and it seemed very often) the brown papercrackled and woke me up. So at last I took it up and shook out itscontents; and Pippins slept soundly on red flannel till Nan-nan broughtthe tea. 

You will notice that in this small narrative Peterkins gets three names:it is a fashion that runs through the household, beginning with theMother-Aunt, who on some days speaks of Nan-nan as "the old lady, " andsometimes as "that girl, " all according to the two tempers she has aboutNan-nan's privileged position in regard to me. 

You were only here yesterday, and already I want you again so much, somuch!

 Your never satisfied but always loving. 

LETTER V. 

Most Beloved: I have been thinking, staring at this blank piece of paper, and wondering how _there_ am I ever to say what I have in me here--notwishing to say anything at all, but just to be! I feel that I am livingnow only because you love me: and that my life will have run out, likethis penful of ink, when that use in me is past. Not yet, Beloved, oh, notyet! Nothing is finished that we have to do and be:--hardly begun! I willnot call even this "midsummer, " however much it seems so: it is still onlyspring. 

Every day your love binds me more deeply than I knew the day before: sothat no day is the same now, but each one a little happier than the last. My own, you are my very own! And yet, true as that is, it is not so trueas that I am _your_ own. It is less absolute, I mean; and must be so, because I cannot very well _take_ possession of anything when I am givenover heart and soul out of my own possession: there isn't enough identityleft in me, I am yours so much, so much! All this is useless to say, yetwhat can I say else, if I have to begin saying anything?

Could I truly be your "star and goddess, " as you call me, Beloved, Iwould do you the service of Thetis at least (who did it for a greaterthan herself)--

 "Bid Heaven and Earth combine their charms, And round you early, round you late, Briareus fold his hundred arms To guard you from your single fate. "

But I haven't got power over an eight-armed octopus even: so am merely avery helpless loving nonentity which merges itself most happily in you, and begs to be lifted to no pedestal at all, at all. 

If you love me in a manner that is at all possible, you will see that"goddess" does not suit me. "Star" I would I were now, with a wide eyeto carry my looks to you over this horizon which keeps you invisible. Choose one, if you will, dearest, and call it mine: and to me it shallbe yours: so that when we are apart and the stars come out, our eyes maymeet up at the same point in the heavens, and be "keeping company" forus among the celestial bodies--with their permission: for I have toolively a sense of their beauty not to be a little superstitious aboutthem. Have you not felt for yourself a sort of physiognomy in theconstellations, --most of them seeming benevolent and full of kindregards:--but not all? I am always glad when the Great Bear goes awayfrom my window, fine beast though he is: he seems to growl at me! Nodoubt it is largely a question of names; and what's in a name? In yours, Beloved, when I speak it, more than I can compass!

LETTER VI. 

Beloved: I have been trusting to fate, while keeping silence, thatsomething from you was to come to-day and make me specially happy. And ithas: bless you abundantly! You have undone and got round all I said about"jewelry, " though this is nothing of the sort, but a shrine: so my wordremains. I have it with me now, safe hidden, only now and then it comesout to have a look at me, --smiles and goes back again. Dearest, you must_feel_ how I thank you, for I cannot say it: body and soul I grow too muchblessed with all that you have given me, both visibly and invisibly, andalways perfectly. 

And as for the day: I have been thinking you the most uncurious of men, because you had not asked: and supposed it was too early days yet foryou to remember that I had ever been born. To-day is my birthday! yousaid nothing, so I said nothing; and yet this has come: I trusted mystar to show its sweet influences in its own way. Or, after all, did youknow, and had you asked anyone but me? Yet had you known, you wouldhave wished me the "happy returns" which among all your dear words to meyou do not. So I take it that the motion comes straight to you fromheaven; and, in the event, you will pardon me for having been stillsecretive and shy in not telling what you did not inquire after. _Yours_, I knew, dear, quite long ago, so had no need to ask you for it. And it is six months before you will be in the same year with me again, and give to twenty-two all the companionable sweetness that twenty-onehas been having. 

Many happy returns of _my_ birthday to you, dearest! That is all that mybirthdays are for. Have you been happy to-day, I wonder? and amwondering also whether this evening we shall see you walking quietly inand making everything into perfection that has been trembling just onthe verge of it all day long. 

One drawback of my feast is that I have to write short to you; for thereare other correspondents who on this occasion look for quick answers, and not all of them to be answered in an offhand way. Except you, it isthe coziest whom I keep waiting; but elders have a way with them--evenkind ones: and when they condescend to write upon an anniversary, wehave to skip to attention or be in their bad books at once. 

So with the sun still a long way out of bed, I have to tuck up thesesheets for you, as if the good of the day had already been sufficientunto itself and its full tale had been told. Good-night. It is so hardto take my hands off writing to you, and worry on at the same exercisein another direction. I kiss you more times than I can count: it isalmost really you that I kiss now! My very dearest, my own sweetheart, whom I so worship. Good-night! "Good-afternoon" sounds too funny: isoutside our vocabulary altogether. While I live, I must love you morethan I know!

LETTER VII. 

My Friend: Do you think this a cold way of beginning? I do not: is it notthe true send-off of love? I do not know how men fall in love: but I couldnot have had that come-down in your direction without being your friendfirst. Oh, my dear, and after, after; it is but a limitless friendship Ihave grown into!

I have heard men run down the friendships of women as having little truesubstance. Those who speak so, I think, have never come across a realcase of woman's friendship. I praise my own sex, dearest, for I knowsome of their loneliness, which you do not: and until a certain datetheir friendship was the deepest thing in life I had met with. 

For must it not be true that a woman becomes more absorbed in friendshipthan a man, since friendship may have to mean so much more to her, andcover so far more of her life, than it does to the average man? Howeverbig a man's capacity for friendship, the beauty of it does not fill hiswhole horizon for the future: he still looks ahead of it for the matewho will complete his life, giving his body and soul the complementthey require. Friendship alone does not satisfy him: he makes a biggerclaim on life, regarding certain possessions as his right. 

But a woman:--oh, it is a fashion to say the best women are sure to findhusbands, and have, if they care for it, the certainty before them of afull life. I know it is not so. There are women, wonderful ones, whocome to know quite early in life that no men will ever wish to makewives of them: for them, then, love in friendship is all that remains, and the strongest wish of all that can pass through their souls withhope for its fulfillment is to be a friend to somebody. 

It is man's arrogant certainty of his future which makes him impatientof the word "friendship": it cools life to his lips, he so confidentthat the headier nectar is his due!

I came upon a little phrase the other day that touched me so deeply: itsaid so well what I have wanted to say since we have known each other. Some peasant rhymer, an Irishman, is singing his love's praises, andsinks his voice from the height of his passionate superlatives to callher his "share of the world. " Peasant and Irishman, he knew that hisfortune did not embrace the universe: but for him his love was justthat--his share of the world. 

Surely when in anyone's friendship we seem to have gained our share ofthe world, that is all that can be said. It means all that we can takein, the whole armful the heart and senses are capable of, or that fatecan bestow. And for how many that must be friendship--especially for howmany women!

My dear, you are my share of the world, also my share of Heaven: butthere I begin to speak of what I do not know, as is the way with happyhumanity. All that my eyes could dream of waking or sleeping, all thatmy ears could be most glad to hear, all that my heart could beat fasterto get hold of--your friendship gave me suddenly as a bolt from theblue. 

My friend, my friend, my friend! If you could change or go out of mylife now, the sun would drop out of my heavens: I should see the worldwith a great piece gashed out of its side, --my share of it gone. No, Ishould not see it, I don't think I should see anything ever again, --nottruly. 

Is it not strange how often to test our happiness we harp on sorrow? Ido: don't let it weary you. I know I have read somewhere that great lovealways entails pain. I have not found it yet: but, for me, it does meanfear, --the sort of fear I had as a child going into big buildings. Iloved them: but I feared, because of their bigness, they were likely totumble on me. 

But when I begin to think you may be too big for me, I remember you asmy "friend, " and the fear goes for a time, or becomes that sort of fearI would not part with if I might. 

I have no news for you: only the old things to tell you, the wonder ofwhich ever remains new. How holy your face has become to me: as I saw itlast, with something more than the usual proofs of love for me uponit--a look as if your love troubled you! I know the trouble: I feel it, dearest, in my own woman's way. Have patience. --When I see you so, Ifeel that prayer is the only way given me for saying what my love foryou wishes to be. And yet I hardly ever pray in words. 

Dearest, be happy when you get this: and, when you can, come and give myhappiness its rest. Till then it is a watchman on the lookout. 

"Night-night!" Your true sleepy one. 

LETTER VIII. 

Now _why_, I want to know, Beloved, was I so specially "good" to you in mylast? I have been quite as good to you fifty times before, --if such athing can be from me to you. Or do you mean good _for_ you? Then, dear, Imust 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 somuch. 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. Isuppose 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 andcomplained of this robbery of night and sleep in the night. They were sotired, so tired, they said: and so did the muffawully patter of theirpoor feet. The lambs said most; and the sheep agreed with a huskycroak. 

I said a prayer for them, and went to sleep again as the sound of thelambs died away; but somehow they stick in my heart, those sad sheepdriven along through the night. It was in its degree like the womanhurrying along, who said, "My God, my God!" that summer Sunday morning. These notes from lives that appear and disappear remain endlessly; and Ido not think our hearts can have been made so sensitive to suffering wecan 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, andis underlying all that I think to-day. 

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

"How shall I my true love know" if he does not come often enough to seeme? Sunshine 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 tothe right of the sun there lies a small cloud, filmy and faint, but enoughto cast a shadow somewhere. From this window, high up over the view, Icannot 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 besure. We cannot be sure about the near things in this world; only aboutwhat 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 heartsare in shadow. That is so, even when hearts are as close together asyours and mine: they respond to the same light: but each one has its ownroof 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 canbe 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 yoursorrow my own. 

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

To the sun of love the clouds that cover absence must look like whiteflowers in the green fields of earth, or like doves hovering: and hereaches down and strokes them with his warm beams, making all theirfeathers like gold. 

Some clouds let the gold come through; _mine_, now. --That cloud I sawaway to the right is coming this way toward me. I can see the shadow ofit 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? Itis the same thing in love. I have you now all in my mind's eye; I haveyou 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 bedisappearances and reappearances: and faces now and then showing achange!--You, actually, the last time you came, looking a day older thanthe day before! What was it? Had old age blown you a kiss, or given you awrinkle in the art of dying? Or had you turned over some new leaf, andfound it withered on the other side?

I could not see how it was: I heard you coming--it was spring! The dooropened:--oh, it was autumnal! One day had fallen away like a leaf out ofmy 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 cock-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 itmust be not till something happens to make the new day a strongerimpression than the last. So it would please me to think that youryesterday dropped off as you opened the door; and that, had I peeped andseen you coming up the stairs, I should have seen you looking a dayyounger. 

_That_ means that you age at the sight of me! I think you do. I, I feela 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 hismouth pursed fast to his trumpet!--Nothing else than the gallop-a-gallopof your horse:--it sounds like a kettle boiling over!

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

LETTER X. 

Dearest: Did you find your letter? The quicker I post, the quicker I needto sit down and write again. The grass under love's feet never stopsgrowing: I must make hay of it while the sun shines. 

You say my metaphors make you giddy. --My clear, you, without a metaphorin 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? Ina pie? (I mean to write now until I have made you as giddy as a dancingdervish!) _Your_ letters are much more like blackbirds: and I have a pieof 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 hopeyou don't keep these miserables! Though I fill up my hollow hours withthem, there is no reason why they should fill up yours. " You added thatI was better occupied--and here I am "better occupied" even as you bidme. 

But one can jump best from a spring-board: and how could I jump as faras 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 Ifind disobedience wonderfully sweet. But then, you gave me a law whichyou knew I should disobey:--that is the way the world began. It is notfor 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 thebirds'--and already, with the wings, disobedience has been reached! Makemuch of it! the day will come when I shall wish to obey. There aremoments when I feel a wish taking hold of me stronger than I canunderstand, that you should command me beyond myself--to things I havenot strength or courage for of my own accord. How close, dearest, whenthat 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 forbeing 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! Iam dropping with sleep, but I must just touch you and say good-night. This was our great day of publishing, dearest, _ours_: all the worldknows it; and all admire your choice! I was determined they should. Ihave been collecting scalps for you to hang at your girdle. All thoughtme 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 wasasking this praise. Beloved, I was wearing the magic rose--what you gaveme when we parted: you saying, alas, that you were not to be there. Butyou _were_! Its leaves have not dropped nor the scent of it faded. Ikiss you out of the heart of it. Good-night: come to me in my firstdream!

LETTER XII. 

Dearest: It has been such a funny day from post-time onwards:--congratulations on the great event are beginning to arrive in envelopesand on wheels. Some are very kind and dear; and some are not so--only theordinary seemliness of polite sniffle-snaffle. Just after you had goneyesterday, Mrs. ---- called and was told the news. Of course she knew _of_you: but didn't think she had ever seen you. "Probably he passed you atthe gates, " I said. "What?" she went off with a view-hallo; "thatwell-dressed sort of young fellow in gray, and a mustache, and knowing howto 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 howto 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: Icannot let you off what she said! No tears or sentiment came from herto prevent me laughing: she brisked like an old war-horse at the firstword of it, and blessed God that it had come betimes, that she might bea nurse again in her old age! She is a true "Mrs. Berry, " and is readyto make room for you in my affections for the sake of far-off divineevents, which promise renewed youth to her old bones. 

Roberts, when he brought me my pony this morning, touched his hat quicktwice over to show that the news brimmed in his body: and a very nicecordial way of showing, I thought it! He was quite ready to talk when Ilet him go; and he gave me plenty of good fun. He used to know you whenhe was in service at the H----s, and speaks of you as being then "agallous young hound, " whatever that may mean. I imagine "gallous" to bea rustic Lewis Carroll compound, made up in equal parts of callousnessand 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 myback, I wonder? There is one I shall forbid her to reveal: it shall bepart of my marriage-portion to show you early that you have got a wifewith a temper!

Here is a whole letter that must end now, --and the great Word nevermentioned! It is good for you to be put upon _maigre_ fare, for once. Iho_l_d my pen back with b_o_th hands: it wants so much to gi_v_e youthe forbidd_e_n treat. Oh, the serpent in the garden! See where it hasunderlined its meaning. Frailty, thy pen is a J pen!

Adieu, adieu, remember me. 

LETTER XIII. 

The letters? No, Beloved, I could not! Not yet. There you have caught mewhere I own I am still shy of you. 

A long time hence, when we are a safely wedded pair, you shall turn themover. It _may_ be a short time; but I will keep them however long. IndeedI must ever keep them; they talk to me of the dawn of my existence, --theearly light before our sun rose, when my love of you was growing and hadnot yet reached its full. 

If I disappoint you I will try to make up for it with something I wrotelong before I ever saw you. To-day I was turning over old things my motherhad treasured for me of my childhood--of days spent with her: things oflaughter as well as of tears; such a dear selection, so quaint and sweet, with moods of her as I dimly remember her to have been. And among them wasthis absurdity, written, and I suppose placed in the mouth of my stocking, the Christmas I stayed with her in France. I remember the time as a greattreat, but nothing of this. "Nilgoes" is "Nicholas, " you must understand!How he must have laughed over me asleep while he read this!

 "Cher père Nilgoes. S'il vous plait voulez vous me donné plus de jeux que des oranges des pommes et des pombons parc que nous allons faire l'arbre de noel cette anné et les jeaux ferait mieux pour l'arbre de Noel. Il ne faut pas dire à petite mere s'il vous plait parce que je ne veut pas quelle sache sil vous voulez venir ce soir du ceil pour que vous pouvez me donner ce que je vous demande Dites bon jour á la St. Viearge est à l'enfant Jeuses et à Ste Joseph. Adieu cher St. Nilgoes. "

I haven't altered the spelling, I love it too well, prophetic of a faultI still carry about me. How strange that little bit of invocation to thedear folk above sounds to me now! My mother must have been teaching methings after her own persuasion; most naturally, poor dear one--thoughthat too has gone like water off my mind. It was one of the troublesbetween her and my father: the compact that I was to be brought up aCatholic was dissolved after they separated; and I am sorry, thinking itunjust to her; yet glad, content with being what I am. 

I must have been less than five when I penned this: I was always aletter-writer, it seems. 

It is a reproach now from many that I have ceased to be: and to them Ifear it is true. That I have not truly ceased, "witness under my handthese presents, "--or whatever may be the proper legal terms for anaffidavit. 

What were _you_ like, Beloved, as a very small child? Should I have lovedyou from the beginning had we toddled to the rencounter; and would my lovehave passed safely through the "gallous young hound" period; and could Ilove you more now in any case, had I _all_ your days treasured up in myheart, instead of less than a year of them?

How strangely much have seven miles kept our fates apart! It seemsuncharacteristic for this small world, --where meetings come about so farabove the dreams of average--to have played us such a prank. 

This must do for this once, Beloved; for behold me busy to-day: with_what_, I shall not tell you. I would like to put you to a test, asladies did their knights of old, and hardly ever do now--fearing, Isuppose, lest the species should altogether fail them at the pinch. Iwould like to see if you could come here and sit with me from beginningto end, _with your eyes shut_: never once opening them. I am not sayingwhether I think curiosity, or affection, would make the attempt toodifficult. But if you were sure you could, you might come hereto-morrow--a day otherwise interdicted. Only know, having come, that ifyou open those dear cupboards of vision and set eyes on things not yetintended to be looked at, there will be confusion of tongues in thisTower we are building whose top is to reach heaven. Will you come? Idon't _say_ "come"; I only want to know--will you?

To-day my love flies low over the earth like a swallow before rain, andtouching the tops of the flowers has culled you these. Kiss them untilthey open: they are full of my thoughts, as the world, to me, is full ofyou. 

LETTER XIV. 

Own Dearest: Come I did not think that you would, or mean that you shouldseriously; for is it not a poor way of love to make the object of it cutan absurd or partly absurd figure? I wrote only as a woman having a secreton the tip of her tongue and the tips of her fingers, and full of alonging to say it and send it. 

Here it is at last: love me for it, I have worked so hard to get it done!And you do not know why and what for? Beloved, it--_this_--is theanniversary of the day we first met; and you have forgotten it already ornever remembered it:--and yet have been clamoring for "the letters"!

On the first anniversary of our marriage, _if you remember it_, you shallhave those same letters: and not otherwise. So there they lie safe tilldoomsday!

The M. -A. Has been very gracious and clear after her little outbreak ofyesterday: her repentances, after I have hurt her feelings, are so gentleand sweet, they always fill me with compunction. Finding that I would goon with the thing I was doing, she volunteered to come and read to me: arequiem over the bone of contention which we had gnawed between us. Wasnot that pretty and charitable? She read Tennyson's Life for a solidhour, and continued it to-day. Isn't it funny that she should take up sucha book?--she who "can't abide" Tennyson or Browning or Shakespeare: onlylikes Byron, I suppose because it was the right and fashionable likingwhen she was young. Yet she is plodding through the Life religiously--onlyskipping the verses. I have come across two little specimens of "Death andthe child" in it. His son, Lionel, was carried out in a blanket one nightin the great comet year, and waking up under the stars asked, "Am I dead?"Number two is of a little girl at Wellington's funeral who saw his chargercarrying his _boots_, and asked, "Shall I be like that after I die?"

A queer old lady came to lunch yesterday, a great traveler, though lameon two crutches. We carefully hid all guide-books and maps, and held ourpeace about next month, lest she should insist on coming too: though Ithink Nineveh was the place she was most anxious to go to, if the M. -A. Would consent to accompany her!

Good-by, dearest of one-year-old acquaintances! you, too, send yourblessing on the anniversary, now that my better memory has reminded youof it! All that follow we will bless in company. I trust you areone-half as happy as I am, my own, my own. 

LETTER XV. 

You told me, dearest, that I should find your mother formidable. It istrue; I did. She is a person very much in the grand pagan style: I admireit, but I cannot flow in that sort of company, and I think she meant tocrush me. You were very wise to leave her to come alone. 

I like her: I mean I believe that under that terribleness she has aheart of gold, which once opened would never shut: but she has notopened it to me. I believe she could have a great charity, that noevil-doing would dismay her: "stanch" sums her up. But I have donenothing wrong enough yet to bring me into her good graces. Loving herson, even, though, I fear, a great offense, has done me no good turn. 

Perhaps that is her inconsistency: women are sure to be inconsistentsomewhere: it is their birthright. 

I began to study her at once, to find _you_: it did not take long. How Icould love her, if she would let me!

You know her far far better than I, and want no advice: otherwise Iwould say--never praise me to her; quote my follies rather! To giveground for her distaste to revel in will not deepen me in her bad booksso much as attempts to warp her judgment. 

I need not go through it all: she will have told you all that is to thepurpose about our meeting. She bristled in, a brave old fighting figure, announcing compulsion in every line, but with all her colors flying. Shewaited for the door to close, then said, "My son has bidden me come, Isuppose it is my duty: he is his own master now. "

We only shook hands. Our talk was very little of you. I showed her all thehorses, the dogs, and the poultry; she let the inspection appear toconclude with myself: asked me my habits, and said I looked healthy. Iowned I felt it. "Looks and feelings are the most deceptive things in theworld, " she told me; adding that "poor stock" got more than its share ofthese. And when she said it I saw quite plainly that she meant me. 

I wonder where she gets the notion: for we are a long-lived race, bothsides of the family. I guessed that she would like frankness, and was asfrank as I could be, pretending no deference to her objections. "Youthink you suit each other?" she asked me. My answer, "He suits me!"pleased her maternal palate, I think. "Any girl might say that!" sheadmitted. (She might indeed!)

This is the part of our interview she will not have repeated to you. 

I was due at Hillyn when she was preparing to go: Aunt N---- came in, and I left her to do the honors while I slipped on my habit. I rode byyour mother's carriage as far as the Greenway, where we branched. Isuppose that is what her phrase means that you quote about my "making atrophy of her, " and marching her a prisoner across the borders beforeall the world!

I do like her: she is worth winning. --Can one say warmer of a futuremother-in-law who stands hostile?

All the same it was an ordeal. I believe I have wept since: for Benjyscratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful whenI came out. Merely paltry self-love, dearest:--I am so little accustomedto not being--liked. 

I think she will be more gracious in her own house. I have her formalword that I am to come. Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and youshall meet me and take me to see her. There is something in heropposition that I can't fathom: I wondered twice was lunacy her notion:she looked at me so hard. 

My mother's seclusion and living apart from us was not on _that_account. I often saw her: she was very dear and sweet to me, and hadquiet eyes the very reverse of a person mentally deranged. My father, Iknow, went to visit her when she lay dying; and I remember we all woremourning. My uncle has told me they had a deep regard for each other:but disagreed, and were independent enough to choose living apart. 

I do not remember my father ever speaking of her to us as children: butI am sure there was no state of health to be concealed. 

Last night I was talking to Aunt N---- about her. "A very dear woman, "she told me, "but your father was never so much alive to her worth asthe rest of us. " Of him she said, "A dear, fine fellow: but not at alleasy to get on with. " Him, of course, I have a continuous recollectionof, and "a fine fellow" we did think him. My mother comes to me morerarely, at intervals. 

Don't talk me down your mother's throat: but tell her as much as she caresto know of this. I am very proud of my "stock" which she thinks "poor"!

Dear, how much I have written on things which can never concern usfinally, and so should not ruffle us while they last! Hold me in yourheart always, always; and the world may turn adamant to me for aught Icare! Be in my dreams to-night!

LETTER XVI. 

But, Dearest: When I think of you I never question whether what I thinkwould be true or false in the eyes of others. All that concerns you seemsto go on a different plane where evidence has no meaning or existence:where nobody exists or means anything, but only we two alone, engaged inbringing about for ourselves the still greater solitude of two into one. Oh, Beloved, what a company that will be! Take me in your arms, fasten meto your heart, breathe on me. Deny me either breath or the light of day: Iam yours equally, to live or die at your word. I shut my eyes to feel yourkisses falling on me like rain, or still more like sunshine, --yet most ofall like kisses, my own dearest and best beloved!

Oh, we two! how wonderful we seem! And to think that there have beenlovers like us since the world began: and the world not able to tell usone little word of it:--not well, so as to be believed--or only alongwith sadness where Fate has broken up the heavens which lay over somepair of lovers. Oenone's cry, "Ah me, my mountain shepherd, " tells usof the joy when it has vanished, and most of all I get it in that songof wife and husband which ends:--

 "Not a word for you, Not a lock or kiss, Good-by. We, one, must part in two; Verily death is this: I must die. "

It was a woman wrote that: and we get love there! Is it only when joy ispast that we can give it its full expression? Even now, Beloved, I breakdown in trying to say how I love you. I cannot put all my joy into mywords, nor all my love into my lips, nor all my life into your arms, whatever way I try. Something remains that I cannot express. Believe, dearest, that the half has not yet been spoken, neither of my love foryou, nor of my trust in you, --nor of a wish that seems sad, but comes in avery tumult of happiness--the wish to die so that some unknown good maycome to you out of me. 

Not till you die, dearest, shall I die truly! I love you now too much foryour heart not to carry me to its grave, though I should die now, and youlive to be a hundred. I pray you may! I cannot choose a day for you todie. I am too grateful to life which has given me to you to say--if Iwere dying--"Come with me, dearest!" Though, how the words tempt me as Iwrite them!--Come with me, dearest: yes, come! Ah, but you kiss me more, Ithink, when we say good-by than when meeting; so you will kiss me most ofall when I have to die:--a thing in death to look forward to! And, tillthen, --life, life, till I am out of my depth in happiness and drown inyour arms!

Beloved, that I can write so to you, --think what it means; what you havemade me come through in the way of love, that this, which I could not havedreamed before, comes from me with the thought of you! You told me to bestill--to let you "worship": I was to write back acceptance of all yourdear words. Are you never to be at my feet, you ask. Indeed, dearest, I donot know how, for I cannot move from where I am! Do you feel where mythoughts kiss you? You would be vexed with me if I wrote it down, so I donot. And after all, some day, under a bright star of Providence, I mayhave gifts for you after my own mind which will allow me to grow proud. Only now all the giving comes from you. It is I who am enriched by yourlove, beyond knowledge of my former self. Are _you_ changed, dearest, byanything I have done?

My heart goes to you like a tree in the wind, and all these thoughts areloose leaves that fly after you when I have to remain behind. Dear lover, what short visits yours seem! and the Mother-Aunt tells me they are mostunconscionably long. --You will not pay any attention to _that_, please:forever let the heavens fall rather than that a hint to such foul effectshould grow operative through me!

This brings you me so far as it can:--such little words off so great abody of--"liking" shall I call it? My paper stops me: it is my last sheet:I should have to go down to the library to get more--else I think I couldnot cease writing. 

More love than I can name. --Ever, dearest, your own. 

LETTER XVII. 

Dearest: Do I not write you long letters? It reveals my weakness. I havethought (it had been coming on me, and now and then had broken out of mebefore I met you) that, left to myself, I should have become a writer ofbooks--I scarcely can guess what sort--and gone contentedly intomiddle-age with that instead of _this_ as my _raison d'être_. 

How gladly I lay down that part of myself, and say--"But for you, I hadbeen this quite other person, whom I have no wish to be now"! Beloved, your heart is the shelf where I put all my uncut volumes, wondering alittle what sort of a writer I should have made; and chiefly wondering, would _you_ have liked me in that character?

There is one here in the family who considers me a writer of the darkestdye, and does not approve of it. Benjy comes and sits most mournfullyfacing me when I settle down on a sunny morning, such as this, to write:and inquires, with all the dumbness a dog is capable of--"What has comebetween us, that you fill up your time and mine with those cat's-clawscratchings, when you should be in your woodland dress running [with] methrough damp places?"

Having written this sentimental meaning into his eyes, and Benjy stillsitting watching me, I was seized with ruth for my neglect of him, andtook him to see his mother's grave. At the bottom of the long walk is ourdog's cemetery:--no tombstones, but mounds; and a dog-rose grows there andflourishes as nowhere else. It was my fancy as a child to have it planted:and I declare to you, it has taken wonderfully to the notion, as if it_knew_ that it had relations of a higher species under its keeping. Benjy, too, has a profound air of knowing, and never scratches for bones there, as he does in other places. What horror, were I to find him digging up hismother's skeleton! Would my esteem for him survive?

When we got there to-day, he deprecated my choice of locality, askingwhat I had brought him _there_ for. I pointed out to him the precisemound which covered the object of his earliest affections, and gatheredyou these buds. Are they not a deep color for wild ones?--if their blushremains a fixed state till the post brings them to you. 

Through what flower would you best like to be passed back, as regardsyour material atoms, into the spiritualized side of nature, when wehave done with ourselves in this life? No single flower quite covers allmy wants and aspirations. You and I would put our heads togetherunderground and evolve a new flower--"carnation, lily, lily, rose"--andsend it up one fine morning for scientists to dispute over and givediabolical learned names to. What an end to our cozy floralcollaboration that would be!

Here endeth the epistle: the elect salutes you. This week, if theauthorities permit, I shall be paying you a flying visit, with wingsfull of eyes, --_and_, I hope, healing; for I believe you are seedy, andthat _that_ is what is behind it. You notice I have not complained. Dearest, how could I! My happiness reaches to the clouds--that is, towhere things are not quite clear at present. I love you no more than Iought: yet far more than I can name. Good-night and good-morning. --Yourstar, since you call me so. 

LETTER XVIII. 

Dearest: Not having had a letter from you this morning, I have read oversome back ones, and find in one a bidding which I have never fulfilled, totell you what I _do_ all day. Was that to avoid the too great length of mytelling you what I _think_? Yet you get more of me this way than that. What I do is every day so much the same: while what I think is alwaysdifferent. However, since you want a woman of action rather than of brain, here I start telling you. 

I wake punctual and hungry at the sound of Nan-nan's drawing of theblinds: wait till she is gone (the old darling potters and tattles: itis her most possessive moment of me in the day, except when I shamheadaches, and let her put me to bed); then I have my hand under mypillow and draw out your last for a reading that has lost count whetherit is the twenty-second or the fifty-second time;--discover new beautiesin it, and run to the glass to discover new beauties in myself, --findthem; Benjy comes up with the post's latest, and behold, my day isbegun!

Is that the sort of thing you want to know? My days are without anaction worth naming: I only think swelling thoughts, and write some ofthem: if ever I do anything worth telling, be sure I run a pen-and-inkrace to tell you. No, it is man who _does_ things; a woman only diddles(to adapt a word of diminutive sound for the occasion), unless, good, fortunate, independent thing, she works for her own living: and that isnot me!

I feel sometimes as if a real bar were between me and a whole conceptionof life; because I have carpets and curtains, and Nan-nan, and Benjy, and last of all you--shutting me out from the realities of existence. 

If you would all leave me just for one full moon, and come back to meonly when I am starving for you all--for my tea to be brought to me inthe morning, and all the paddings and cushionings which bolster me upfrom morning till night--with what a sigh of wisdom I would drop backinto your arms, and would let you draw the rose-colored curtains roundme again!

Now I am afraid lest I have become too happy: I am leaning so far out ofwindow to welcome the dawn, I seem to be tempting a fall--heaven itselfto fall upon me. 

What do I _know_ truly, who only know so much happiness?

Dearest, if there is anything else in love which I do not know, teach itme quickly: I am utterly yours. If there is sorrow to give, give it me!Only let me have with it the consciousness of your love. 

Oh, my dear, I lose myself if I think of you so much. What would lifehave without you in it? The sun would drop from my heavens. I see onlyby you! you have kissed me on the eyes. You are more to me than my ownpoor brain could ever have devised: had I started to invent Paradise, Icould not have invented _you_. But perhaps you have invented me: I amsomething new to myself since I saw you first. God bless you for it!

Even if you were to shut your eyes at me now--though I might go blind, you could not unmake me:--"The gods themselves cannot recall theirgifts. " Also that I am yours is a gift of the gods, I will trust: andso, not to be recalled!

Kiss me, dearest; here where I have written this! I am yours, Beloved. Ikiss you again and again. --Ever your own making. 

LETTER XIX. 

Dearest, Dearest: How long has this happened? You don't tell me the day orthe hour. Is it ever since you last wrote? Then you have been in pain andgrief for four days: and I not knowing anything about it! And you have nohand in the house kind enough to let you dictate by it one small word topoor me? What heartless merrymakings may I not have sent you to worry you, when soothing was the one thing wanted? Well, I will not worry now, then;neither at not being told, nor at not being allowed to come: but I willcome thus and thus, O my dear heart, and take you in my arms. And you willbe comforted, will you not be? when I tell you that even if you had nolegs at all, I would love you just the same. Indeed, dearest, so much ofyou is a superfluity: just your heart against mine, and the sound of yourvoice, would carry me up to more heavens than I could otherwise havedreamed of. I may say now, now that I know it was not your choice, what avoid these last few days the lack of letters has been to me. I wondered, truly, if you had found it well to put off such visible signs for a whilein order to appease one who, in other things more essential, sees yourebellious. But the wonder is over now; and I don't want you to write--nottill a consultation of doctors orders it for the good of your health. Iwill be so happy talking to you: also I am sending you books:--those Iwish you to read; and which now you _must_, since you have the leisure!And I for my part will make time and read yours. Whose do you most want meto read, that my education in your likings may become complete? What Isend you will not deprive me of anything: for I have the beautifulcomplete set--your gift--and shall read side by side with you to realizein imagination what the happiness of reading them for the first time oughtto be. 

Yesterday, by a most unsympathetic instinct, I went out for a long trampon my two feet; and no ache in them came and told me of you! OverSillingford I sat on a bank and looked downhill where went a carter. AndI looked uphill where lay something which might be nothing--or not his. Now, shall I make a fool of myself by pursuing to tell him he may havedropped something, or shall I go on and see? So I went on and saw a coatwith a fat pocket: and by then he was out of sight, and perhaps itwasn't his; and it was very hot and the hill steep. So I minded my ownbusiness, making Cain's motto mine; and now feel so had, being quitesure that it was his. And I wonder how many miles he will have trampedback looking for it, and whether his dinner was in the pocket. 

These unintentional misdoings are the "sins" one repents of all one'slife long: I have others stored away, the bitterest of small things doneor undone in haste and repented of at so much leisure afterwards. Andalways done to people or things I had no grudge against, sometimes evena love for. They are my skeletons: I will tell you of them some day. 

This, dearest, is our first enforced absence from each other; and I feelit almost more hard on me than on you. Beloved, let us lay our heartstogether and get comforted. It is not real separation to know thatanother part of the world contains the rest of me. Oh, the rest of me, the rest of me that you are! So, thinking of you, I can never be tired. I rest yours. 

LETTER XX. 

Yes, Dearest, "Patience!" but it is a virtue I have little enough ofnaturally, and used to be taught to pray for as a child. And I rememberonce really hurting clear Mother-Aunt's feelings by trying to repay herfor that teaching by a little iniquitous laughter at her expense. It wastoo funny for me to feel very contrite about, as I do sometimes over quitesmall things, or I would not be telling it you now (for there are thingsin me I would conceal even from you). I dare say you wouldn't guess it, but the M. -A. Is a most long person over her private devotions. Perhaps itwas her own habit, with the cares of a household sometimes conflicting, which made her recite to me so often her pet legend of a saintly personwho, constantly interrupted over her prayers by mundane matters, became apattern in patience out of these snippings of her godly desires. So, oneday, angels in the disguise of cross people with selfish demands on hertime came seeking to know where in her composition or composureexasperation began: and finding none, they let her return in peace to hermissal, where for a reward all the letters had been turned into gold. "Andthat, my dear, comes of patience, " my aunt would say, till I grew a littletired of the saying. I don't know what experience my uncle had gathered ofher patience under like circumstances: but I notice that to this day hetreads delicately, like Agag, when he knows her to be on her knees; andprefers then to send me on his errands instead of doing them himself. 

So it happened one day that he wanted a particular coat which had been putaway in her clothes-closet--and she was on her knees between him and it, with the time of her Amen quite indefinite. I was sent, said my errandbriefly, and was permitted to fumble out her keys from her pocket whileshe continued to kneel over her morning psalms. 

What I brought to him turned out to be the wrong coat: I went back andknocked for readmittance. Long-sufferingly she bade me to come in. Iexplained, and still she repressed herself, only saying in a tone ofaffliction, "Do see this time that you take the right one!"

After I had made my second selection, and proved it right on my uncle'sperson, the parallelism of things struck me, and I skipped back to myaunt's door and tapped. I got a low wailing "Yes?" for answer--amonosyllabic substitute for the "How long, O Lord?" of a saint indifficulties. When I called through the keyhole, "Are your psalmswritten in gold?" she became really angry:--I suppose because themiracle so well earned had not come to pass. 

Well, dearest, if you have been patient with me over so much aboutnothing, I pray this letter may appear to you written in gold. Why Iwrite so is, partly, that, it is bad for us both to be down in themouth, or with hearts down at heel: and so, since you cannot, I have todo the dancing;--and, partly, because I found I had a bad temper on mewhich needed curing, and being brought to the sun-go-down point of owingno man anything. Which, sooner said, has finally been done; and I amvery meek now and loving to you, and everything belonging to you--not tocome 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 bitfor an excuse) and let me have the nursing of it! It hurts my heart tohave your poor bones crying out for comfort that I am not to bring tothem. I feel robbed of a part of my domestic training, and may neverpick up what I have just lost. And I fear greatly you must have beentruly in pain to have put off Meredith for a day. If I had been at handto read to you, I flatter myself you would have liked him well, andbeen soothed. You must take the will, Beloved, for the deed. I kiss younow, as much as even you can demand; and when you get this I will bethinking 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!--Everyour 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 medirectly that happens. 

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

Arthur, too, like the rest of them, when he came over to give me hisbrotherly blessing, wished to know what you were like. I didn't pretendto remember your outward appearance too well, --told him you looked likea common or garden Englishman, and roused his suspicions by so carelessa championship of my choice. He accused me of being in reality highlysentimental about you, and with having at that moment your portraitconcealed and strung around my neck in a locket. Mother-Aunt stood upfor me against him, declaring I was "too sensible a girl for nonsense ofthat sort. " (It is a little weakness of hers, you know, to resentextremes of endearment towards anyone but herself in those she has"brooded, " and she has thought us hitherto most restrained andproper--as, indeed, have we not been?) Arthur and I exchanged tokens oftruce: 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, " criedI, and up came your little locket like a bucket from a well, for him tohave his first sight of you, my Beloved. He objected that he could notsee faces in a nutshell; and I suppose others cannot: only I. 

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

How is your poor foot? I suppose, as it is ill, I may send it a kiss bypost and wish it well? I do. Truly, you are to let me know if it givesyou much pain, and I will lie awake thinking of you. This is notsentimental, for if one knows that a friend is occupied over one'ssleeplessness 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 askto 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, Iwith my feet, than you without yours. In _your_ book I have just got tothe smuggling away of General Monk in the perforated coffin, and mysense of history capitulates in an abandonment of laughter. I yield! TheGaul's invasion of Britain always becomes broad farce when he attemptsit. This in clever ludicrousness beats the unintentional comedy ofVictor Hugo's "John-Jim-Jack" as a name typical of Anglo-Saxonchristenings. But Dumas, through a dozen absurdities, knows apparentlyhow to stalk his quarry: so large a genius may play the fool and remainwise. 

You see I have given your author a warm welcome at last: and what aboutyou 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 womanof modern times whom I would care to meet, or could feel honestly boundto look up to:--nowhere will I have her shaking her ringlets at me inDickens or Thackeray. Scott is simply not modern; and Hardy's women, ifthey have nobility in them, get so cruelly broken on the wheel that youget but the wrecks of them at last. It is only his charming baggages whocome to a good ending. 

I like an author who has the courage and self-restraint to leave his noblecreations alive: too many try to ennoble them by death. For my part, if Ihave to go out of life before you, I would gladly trust you to the handsof Clara, or Rose, or Janet, or most of all Vittoria; though, to beaccurate, 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 literaryadmirations, supposing you should die of a snapped ankle? Would you giveme to d'Artagnan for instance? Hardly, I suspect! But either choose mesome proxy hero, or get well and come to me! You will be very welcomewhen 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 isonly lying on your back with one active leg doing nothing, and the otherdying to have done aching, which has made you take this new start ofinquiring within upon everything), since you call on me for aconscientious answer, I say that it stands to reason that I love you morethan you love me, because there is so much more of you to love, let alonefit for loving. 

Do you imagine that you are going to be a cripple for life, and thereforean indifferent dancer in the dances I shall always be leading you, thatyou have started this fit of self-depreciation? Or is it because I havethrown 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 yetallowed to come and see my patient, so can only judge from your lettershow ill you are. That you have been concealing from me almosttreacherously: and only by a piece of abject waylaying did I receive wordto-day of your sleepless nights, and so get the key to your symptoms. Layby Meredith, then, for a while: I am sending you a cargo of Stevensoninstead. 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 amletting my last large bit of shyness of you go; and with a pleasant sortof pain, because I know I have hit on a thing that will please you, I openmy 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 mayevaporate. Yet I know well it will not. 

As for this resurrection pie from love's dead-letter office, you willfind from it at least one thing--how much I depended upon response fromyou before I could become at all articulate. It is you, dearest, fromthe beginning who have set my head and heart free and made me a woman. Iam something quite different from the sort of child I was less than ayear ago when I wrote that small prayer which stands sponsor for allthat 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 shouldget well. Do this one little thing for me, dearest! For you I will doanything: my happiness waits for that. As yet I seem to have donenothing. Oh, but, Beloved, I will! From a reading of the Fioretti, Isign myself as I feel. --Your glorious poor little one. 

THE CASKET LETTERS. 

A. 

 my dear Prince Wonderful, [1]

Pray God 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 itthis has been written afterwards in a small hand. ]

B. 

Dear Prince Wonderful: Now that I have met you I pray that you will be myfriend. I want just a little of your friendship, but that, so much, somuch! 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 myselfof you: but thought of you only as in a fairy tale. Now I am afraid oftrusting my eyes or ears, for fear I should think too much of you beforeI know you really to be true. Do not make me wish so much to be yourfriend, unless you are also going to be true!

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

D. 

Dear Prince Wonderful: _Has_ God blessed you yet and made you come true? Ihave not seen you again, so how am I to know? Not that it is necessary forme 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 asliving, and shall always be your friend. I pray that you may come toknow that. 

E. 

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

F. 

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

 "All I believed is true! I am able yet All I want to get By a method as strange as new: Dare I trust the same to you?"

Fate says, then, you are to be my friend. Fate has said I am yoursalready. That is very certain. Only in real life where things come truewould a book have opened as this has done. 

G. 

Dear Highness: I am sure now, then, that I please you, and that you likeme, perhaps only a little: for you turned out of your way to ride with methough you were going somewhere so fast. How much I wished it when I sawyou coming, but dared not believe it would come true!

"Come true": it is the word I have always been writing, and everything_has_:--you most of all! You are more true each time I see you. So truethat now I will write it down at last, --the truth for you who have comeso true. 

Dear Highness and Great Heart, I love you dearly, though you don't knowit, --quite ever so much; and am going to love you ever so much more, only--please like _me_ a little better first! You on your dear side mustdo something: or, before I know, I may be wringing my hands all alone ona desert island to a bare blue horizon, with nothing in it real orfabulous. 

If I am to love you, nothing but happiness is to be allowed to come ofit. So don't come true too fast without one little wee correspondingwish for me to find that you are! I am quite happy thinking you outslowly: it takes me all day long; the longer the better!

I wonder how often in my life I shall write down that I love you, havingonce written it (I do:--I love you! there [it] is for you, with more tofollow after!); and send you my love as I do now into the greatemptiness of chance, hoping somehow, known or unknown, it may bless youand bring good to you. 

Oh, but 'tis a windy world, and I a mere feather in it: how can I getblown the way I would?

Still I have a superstition that some star is over me which I have notseen yet, but shall, --Heaven helping me. 

And now good-night, and no more, no more at all! I send out an "I loveyou" to be my celestial commercial traveler for me while I fold myselfup and become its sleeping partner. 

Good-night: you are the best and truest that I ever dreamed yet. 

H. 

Dear Highness: I begin not to be able to name you anything, for there isnot a word for you that will do! "Highness" you are: but that leaves gapsand coldnesses without end. "Royal, " yet much more serene than royal:though by that I don't mean any detraction from your royalty, for I neversaw a man carry his invisible crown with so level a head and nohaughtiness at all: and that is the finest royalty of look possible. 

I look at you and wonder so how you have grown to this--to have becomeking so quietly without any coronation ceremony. You have thought morethan you should for happiness at your age; making me, by that one linein your forehead, think you were three years older than you really are. I wish--if I dare wish you anything different--that you were! It makesme uncomfortable to remember that I am--what? Almost half a year yourelder as time flies:--not really, for your brain was born long beforemine began to rattle in its shell. You say quite _old_ things, andquietly, as if you had had them in your mind ten years already. When youtold me about your two old pensioners, the blind man and his wife, whomyou brought to so funny a reconciliation, I felt ("mir war, ich wusztenicht wie") that I would like very much to go blindfold led by you: itstruck me suddenly how happy would be a blindfoldness of perfect trustsuch as one might have with your hands on one. I suppose that is what inreligion is called faith: I haven't it there, my dear; but I have it inyou now. I love you, beginning to understand why: at first I did not. Iam ashamed not to have discovered it earlier. The matter with you isthat you have goodness prevailing in you, an integrity of goodness, Imean:--a different thing from there being a whereabouts for goodness inyou; _that_ we all have in some proportion or another. I was quite rightto love you: I know it now, --I did not when I first did. 

Yesterday I was turning over a silly "confession book" in which a rose waseverybody's favorite flower, manliness the finest quality for a man, andwomanliness for a woman (which is as much as to say that pig is the bestquality for pork, and pork for pig): till I came upon one different fromthe others, and found myself saying "Yes" all down the page. 

I turned over for the signature, and found my own mother's. Was it not astrange sweet meeting? And only then did the memory of her handwritingfrom far back come to me. She died, dear Highness, before I was sevenyears old. I love her as I do my early memory of flowers, as somethingvery sweet, hardly as a real person. 

I noticed she loved best in men and women what they lack most often: in aman, a fair mind; in a woman, courage. "Brave women and fair men, " shewrote. Byron might have turned in his grave at having his dissolutestiff-neck so wrung for him by misquotation. And she--it must have beenbefore the eighties had started the popular craze for him--chose Meredith, my own dear Meredith, for her favorite author. How our tastes would haverun together had she lived!

Well, I know you fair, and believe myself brave--constitutionally, sothat I can't help it: and this, therefore, is not self-praise. Butfairness in a man is a deadly hard acquirement, I begin now to discover. You have it fixed fast in you. 

You, I think, began to do just things consciously, as the burden ofmanhood began in you. I love to think of you growing by degrees till youcould carry your head _so_--and no other way; so that, looking at you, Ican promise myself you never did a mean thing, and never consciously anunjust thing except to yourself. I can just fancy that fault in you. But, whatever--I love you for it more and more, and am proud knowing youand finding that we are to become friends. For it is that, and no lessthan that, now. 

I love you; and me you like cordially: and that is enough. I need notlook behind it, for already I have no way to repay you for the happinessthis brings me. 

I. 

Oh, I think greatly of you, my dear; and it takes long thinking. Notmerely such a quantity of thought, but such a quality, makes so hard aday's work that by the end of it I am quite drowsy. Bless me, dearest; allto-day has belonged to you; and to-morrow, I know, waits to become yourswithout the asking: just as without the asking I too am yours. I wish itwere more possible for us to give service to those we love. I am most gladbecause I see you so often: but I come and go in your life empty-handed, though I have so much to give away. Thoughts, the best I have, I give you:I cannot empty my brain of them. Some day you shall think well of me. --Thatis a vow, dear friend, --you whom I love so much!

J. 

I have not had to alter any thought ever formed about you, Beloved; I haveonly had to deepen it--that is all. You grow, but you remain. I have heardpeople talk about you, generally kindly; but what they think of you isoften wrong. I do not say anything, but I am glad, and so sure that I knowyou better. If my mind is so clear about you, it shows that you are goodfor me. Now for nearly three months I may not see you again; but all thattime you will be growing in my heart; and at the end without another wordfrom you I shall find that I know you better than before. Is that strange?It is because I love you: love is knowledge--blind knowledge, not wantingeyes. I only hope that I shall keep in your memory the kind place you havegiven me. You are almost my friend now, and I know it. You do not knowthat I love you. 

K. 

Beloved: You love me! I know it now, and bless the sun and the moon andthe stars for the dear certainty of it. And I ask you now, O heart thathas opened to me, have I once been unhappy or impatient while this goodthing has been withheld from me? Indeed my love for you has occupied metoo completely: I have been so glad to find how much there is to learn ina good heart deeply unconscious of its own goodness. You have employed meas I wish I may be employed all the days of my life: and now my belovedemployer has given me the wages I did not ask. 

You love me! Is it a question of little or much? Is it not rather anentire new thought of me that has entered your life, as the thought of youentered mine months that seem years ago? It was the seed then, and seemedsmall; but the whole life was there; and it has grown and grown till nowit is I who have become small, and have hardly room in me for the roots:and it seems to have gone so far up over my head that I wonder if thestars know of my happiness. 

They must know of yours too, then, my Beloved: they are no company for mewithout you. Oh, to-day, to-day of all days! how in my heart I shall go onkissing it till I die! You love me: that is wonderful! You love me: andalready it is not wonderful in the least! but belongs to Noah and the arkand all the animals saved up for an earth washed clean and dried, and thenew beginnings of time which have ever since been twisting and turningwith us in safe keeping through all the history of the world. 

"We came over at the Norman conquest, " my dear, as people say trailingtheir pedigree: but there was no ancestral pride about us--it was all forthe love of the thing we did it: how clear it seems now! In the hall hangsa portrait in a big wig, but otherwise the image of my father, of a manwho flouted the authority of James II. Merely because he was so like myfather in character that he could do nothing else. I shall look for younow in the Bayeux tapestries with a prong from your helmet down the middleof your face--of which that line on your forehead is the remainder. Andyou love me! I wonder what the line has to do with that?

By such little things do great things seem to come about: not really. Iknow it was not because I said just what I did say, and did what I didyesterday, that your heart was bound to come for mine. But it was thosesmall things that brought you consciousness: and when we parted I knewthat I had all the world at my feet--or all heaven over my head!

Ah, at last I may let the spirit of a kiss go to you from me, and not beashamed or think myself forward since I have your love. All this time youare thinking of me: a certainty lying far outside what I can see. 

Beloved, if great happiness may be set to any words, it is here! Ifsilence goes better with it, --speak, silence, for me when I end now!

Good-night, and think greatly of me! I shall wake early. 

L. 

Dearest: Was my heart at all my own, --was it my own to give, till you cameand made me aware of how much it contains? Truly, dear, it containednothing before, since now it contains you and nothing else. So I have abrand-new heart to give away: and you, you want it and can't see thatthere it is staring you in the face like a rose with all its petals readyto drop. 

I am quite sure that if I had not met you, I could have loved nobody as Ilove you. Yet it is very likely that I should have loved--sufficiently, asthe way of the world goes. It is not a romantic confession, but it is trueto life: I do so genuinely like most of my fellow-creatures, and am nothappy except where shoulders rub socially:--that is to say, have not untilnow been happy, except dependently on the company and smiles of others. Now, Beloved, I have none of your company, and have had but few of yoursmiles (I could count them all); yet I have become more happy filling upmy solitude with the understanding of you which has made me wise, thanall the rest of fate or fortune could make me. Down comes autumn's sadheart and finds me gay; and the asters, which used to chill me at theirappearing, have come out like crocuses this year because it is thebeginning of a new world. 

And all the winter will carry more than a suspicion of summer with it, just as the longest days carry round light from northwest to northeast, because so near the horizon, but out of sight, lies their sun. So you, Beloved, so near to me now at last, though out of sight. 

M. 

Beloved: Whether I have sorry or glad things to think about, they areaccompanied and changed by thoughts of you. You are my diary:--all goes toyou now. That you love me is the very light by which I see everything. Also I learn so much through having you in my thoughts: I cannot say howit is, for I have no more knowledge of life than I had before:--yet I amwiser, I believe, knowing much more what lives at the root of things andwhat men have meant and felt in all they have done:--because I love you, dearest. Also I am quicker in my apprehensions, and have more joy and morefear in me than I had before. And if this seems to be all about myself, it is all about you really, Beloved!

Last week one of my dearest old friends, our Rector, died: a character youtoo would have loved. He was a father to the whole village, rather sternof speech, and no respecter of persons. Yet he made a very generousallowance for those who did not go through the church door to find theirsalvation. I often went only because I loved him: and he knew it. 

I went for that reason alone last Sunday. The whole village was full ofclosed blinds: and of all things over him Chopin's Funeral March wasplayed!--a thing utterly unchristian in its meaning: wild pagan grief, desolate over lost beauty. "Balder the beautiful is dead, is dead!" itcried: and I thought of you suddenly; you, who are not Balder at all. Too many thorns have been in your life, but not the mistletoe strokedealt by a blind god ignorantly. Yet in all great joy there is theBalder element: and I feared lest something might slay it for me, and mylife become a cry like Chopin's march over mown-down unripened grass, and youth slain in its high places. 

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 theirold man, lying in high state among his books. I did not go. Beloved, Ihave never yet seen death: you have, I know. Do you, I wonder, rememberyour father better than I mine:--or your brother? Are they more livingbecause you saw them once not living? I think death might open our eyes tothose we lived on ill terms with, but not to the familiar and dear. I donot need you dead, to be certain that your heart has mine for its trueinmate 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 formy eyes to see: because, chiefly because, I have not you to look at. ThusI bless myself with you. 

Away over the world west of this and a little bit north is the city ofspires where you are now. Never having seen it I am the more free topicture it as I like: and to me it is quite full of you:--quite greedilyfull, Beloved, when elsewhere you are so much wanted! I send my thoughtsthere 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. Andyet nobody there knows so much about you as I. What you _do_ matters somuch less than what you are. You, who are the clearest heart in all theworld, 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 whenI wake they are there still, and have done nothing but remain true. Whatbetter can I ask of them?

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

O. 

And you, Beloved, what are you thinking of me all this while? Think wellof 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 wewere saying good-by the last time. Then it was, under our laughter andlight words, that I saw suddenly how the thing too great to name hadbecome true, that from friends we were changed into lovers. It seemed themost natural thing to be, and yet was wonderful--for it was I who lovedyou first: a thing I could never be ashamed of, and am now proud toown--for has it not proved me wise? My love for you is the best wisdomthat I have. Good-night, dearest! Sleep as well as I love you, and nobodyin the world will sleep so soundly. 

P. 

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

If I have had doubts, dearest, they have been of myself, lest I might beunworthy of your friendship or love. Suspicions of you I never had. 

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

But even my doubts have been thoughts, Beloved, --sure of you if not alwaysof myself. And if I have looked for you only with doubtful vision, yet Ihave always seen you in as strong a light as my eyes could bear:--blue-moonlight. Beloved, is not twilight: and blue-moonlight has been thelight 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 altogetherbeautiful, with the beauty of major, not of minor poetry, though it wasa minor poet who wrote it. It is of a wood where Apollo has gone inquest 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 clusters. . . . 

 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 massed 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 asthe brighter sunlight could do. And if I speak of doubts, I mean notwilight 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 Inot happy enough to be patiently yours before you know it? Good thingswhich are to be, before they happen are already true. Nothing is so trueas 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 Ibegan wondering to myself was that the word which could ever have coveredmy thoughts of you? I do not know whether you ever charmed me, except inthe sense of charming which means magic and spell-binding. _That_ you didfrom the beginning, dearest. But I think I held you at first in too muchawe to discover charm in you: and at last knew you too much to the depthsto name you by a word so lightly used for the surface of things. Yet now acharm in you, which is not _all_ you, but just a part of you, comes tolight, 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 betterbecause you have some of that divine foolishness which strikes the verywise ones of earth, and makes them kin to weaker mortals who otherwisemight miss their "charm" altogether. 

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

R. 

Beloved: The certainty which I have now that you love me so fills all mythoughts, I cannot understand you being in any doubt on your side. Whatmust I do that I do not do, to show gladness when we meet and sorrow whenwe have to part? I am sure that I make no pretense or disguise, exceptthat 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 youdo your part, you will only have to look up from your books to find mestanding. 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 surelylook truthfully out of its eyes; and even you will read what is there atlast!

Beloved, I kiss your blind eyes, and love them the better for all theirunreadiness to see that I am already their slave. Not a day now but Ithink 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 writethe words, till they become one and the same thing: I can no longer dividetheir 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 greathappiness, so certainly do you love me! Just a breath more of it and Ishould be gone. 

Good-by, dearest, and good-by, and good-by! If you want letters from menow, you must ask for them! That the earth contains us both, and that welove each other, is about all that I have mind enough to take in. I do notthink I can love you more than I do: you are no longer my dream but mygreat waking thought. I am waiting for no blue-moonrise now: my heart hasnot a wish which you do not fulfill. I owe you my whole life, and for anygood to you must pay it out to the last farthing, and still feel myselfyour 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 therehave cried to be taken out, saying they were still too shy to be lookedat. I can't argue with them: they know their own minds best; and you knowmine. 

See what a dignified historic name I have given this letter-box, orchatterbox, 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 verylovable character for second affections to cling to. Richard Feverel wouldnever marry again, so I don't ask for him: as for the rest, they are alltoo excellent for me. They give me the impression of having worncopy-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 ofhis youth--Crossjay, for instance:--there! I have found the very man forme!

But really and truly, are you better? It will not hurt your foot to cometo 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 dreadlest you will find some change in me. I have kept a real white hair toshow you, I drew it out of my comb the other morning: wound up into a curlit becomes quite visible, and it is ivory-white: you are not to think itflaxen, and take away its one wee sentiment! And I make you an offer:--youshall have it if, honestly, you can find in your own head a white one toexchange. 

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

Do not think, because I leave her alone, that I am repaying her coldnessin the same coin. I know that for the present anything I do must offend. Have I demanded your coming too soon? Then stay away another day--ortwo: every day only piles up the joy it will be to have your arms roundme once more. I can keep for a little longer: and the gray hair willkeep, and many to-morrows will come bringing good things for us, whenperhaps your mother's "share of the world" will be over. 

Don't say it, but when you next kiss her, kiss her for me also: I amsorry for all old people: their love of things they are losing is so farmore to be reverenced and made room for than ours of the things whichwill come to us in good time abundantly. 

To-night I feel selfish at having too much of your love: and not a bitof it can I let go! I hope, Beloved, we shall live to see each other'sgray hairs in earnest: gray hairs that we shall not laugh at, as at thisone I pulled. How dark your dear eyes will look with a white setting! Myheart's heart, every day you grow larger round me, and I so muchstronger depending upon you!

I won't say--come for certain, to-morrow: but come if, and as soon as, you can. I seem to see a mile further when I am on the lookout for you:and I shall be long-sighted every day until you come. It is only_doubtful_ hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. I am as happy asthe day is long waiting for you: but the day _is_ long, dearest, nonethe less when I don't see you. 

All this space on the page below is love. I have no time left to put itinto words, or words into it. You bless my thoughts constantly. --Believeme, never your thoughtless. 

LETTER XXIV. 

Dearest: How, when, and where is there any use wrangling as towhich of us loves the other the best ("the better, " I believe, would bethe more grammatical phrase in incompetent Queen's English), and why inthat of all things should we pretend to be rivals? For this at leastseems certain to me, that, being created male and female, no two loverssince the world began ever loved each other quite in the _same_ way: itis not in nature for it to be so. They cannot compare: only to the bestthat is in them they _do_ love each after their kind, --as do we forcertain!

Be sure, then, that I am utterly contented with what I get (and you, Beloved, and you?): nay, I wonder forever at the love you have given me:and if I will to lay mine at your feet, and feel yours crowning mylife, --why, so it is, you know; you cannot alter it! And if you insistthat your love is at _my_ feet, I have only to turn Irish and reply thatit is because I am heels over head in love with you:--and, mark you, that is no pretty attitude for a lady that you have driven me into inorder that I may stick to my "crown"!

Go to, dearest! There is one thing in which I can beat you, and that isin the bandying of words and all verbal conjurings: take this as thelast proof of it and rest quiet. I know you love me a great great dealmore than I have wit or power to love you: and that is just the littlereason why your love mounts till, as I tell you, it crowns me (head orheels): while mine, insufficient and groveling, lies at your feet, andwill till they become amputated. And I can give you, but won't, sixtyother reasons why things are as I say, and are to be left as I say. Andoh, my world, my world, it is with you I go round sunwards, and you makemy evenings and mornings, and will, till Time shuts his wings over us!And now it is doleful business I have to write to you. . . . 

I have dropped to sleep over all this writing of things, and my cheek downon the page has made the paper unwilling to take the ink again:--what apretty compliment to me: and, if you prefer it, what an easy way ofwriting to you! I can send you such any day and be as idle as I like. Andyou will decide about all the above exactly as you and I think best (orshould it be "better" again, being only between us two?). When you getthis, blow your beloved self a kiss in the glass for me, --a great bigshattering blow that shall astonish Mercury behind his window-pane. Good-night, my best--or "better, " for that is what I most want you to be. 

LETTER XXV. 

My Own Beloved: And I never thanked you yesterday for your dear wordsabout the resurrection pie; that comes of quarreling! Well, you must provethem and come quickly that I may see this restoration of health andspirits that you assure me of. You avoid saying that they sent you tosleep; but I suppose that is what you mean. 

Fate meant me only to light upon gay things this morning: listen to thisand guess where it comes from:

 "When March with variant winds was past, And April had with her silver showers Ta'en leif at life with an orient blast; And lusty May, that mother of flowers, Had made the birds to begin their hours, Among the odours ruddy and white, Whose harmony was the ear's delight:

 "In bed at morrow I sleeping lay; Methought Aurora, with crystal een, In at the window looked by day, And gave me her visage pale and green; And on her hand sang a lark from the splene, 'Awake ye lovers from slumbering! See how the lusty morrow doth spring!'"

Ah, but you are no scholar of the things in your own tongue! That isDunbar, a Scots poet contemporary of Henry VII. , just a little bitaltered by me to make him soundable to your ears. If I had not had toleave an archaic word here and there, would you ever have guessed he layoutside this century? That shows the permanent element in all goodpoetry, and in all good joy in things also. In the four centuries sincethat was written we have only succeeded in worsening the meaning ofcertain words, as for instance "spleen, " which now means irritation andvexation, but stood then for quite the opposite--what we should call, Isuppose, "a full heart. " It is what I am always saying--a good digestionis the root of nearly all the good living and high thinking we arecapable of: and the spleen was then the root of the happy emotions as itis now of the miserable ones. Your pre-Reformation lark sang from "afull stomach, " and thanked God it had a constitution to carry it offwithout affectation: and your nineteenth century lark applying the samecode of life, his plain-song is mere happy everyday prose, and notpoetry at all as we try to make it out to be. 

I have no news for you at all of anyone: all inside the house is asimmer of peace and quiet, with blinds drawn down against the heat thewhole day long. No callers; and as for me, I never call elsewhere. Thegossips about here eke out a precarious existence by washing eachother's dirty linen in public: and the process never seems to result inany satisfactory cleansing. 

I avoid saying what news I trust to-morrow's post-bag may contain forme. Every wish I send you comes "from the spleen, " which means I am veryhealthy, and, conditionally, as happy as is good for me. Pray God blessmy dear Share of the world, and make him get well for his own and mysake! Amen. 

This catches the noon post, an event which always shows I am jubilant, with a lot of the opposite to a "little death" feeling running over mynerves. I feel the grass growing _under_ me: the reverse of poor Keats'complaint. Good-by, Beloved, till I find my way into the provender ofto-morrow's post-bag. 

LETTER XXVI. 

Oh, wings of the morning, here you come! I have been looking out for youever since post came. Roberts is carrying orders into town, and will bringyou this with a touch of the hat and an amused grin under it. I saw youright on the top Sallis Hill: this is to wager that my eyes have told mecorrectly. Look out for me from far away, I am at my corner window: waveto me! Dearest, this is to kiss you before I can. 

LETTER XXVII. 

Dearest: I have made a bad beginning of the week: I wonder how it willend? it all comes of my not seeing enough of you. Time hangs heavy on myhands, and the Devil finds me the mischief!

I prevailed upon myself to go on Sunday and listen to our new latelyappointed vicar: for I thought it not fair to condemn him on the strengthof Mrs. P----'s terrible reporting powers and her sensuous worship of hisfull-blown flowers of speech--"pulpit-pot-plants" is what I call them. 

It was not worse and not otherwise than I had expected. I find there areonly two kinds of clerics as generally necessary to salvation in a countryparish--one leads his parishioners to the altar and the other to thepulpit: and the latter is vastly the more popular among the articulate andgad-about members of his flock. This one sways himself over the edge ofhis frame, making signals of distress in all directions, and with that andhis windy flights of oratory suggests twenty minutes in a balloon-car, till he comes down to earth at the finish with the Doxology for aparachute. His shepherd's crook is one long note of interrogation, withwhich he tries to hook down the heavens to the understanding of hishearers, and his hearers up to an understanding of himself. All hisarguments are put interrogatively, and few of them are worth answering. Well, well, I shall be all the freer for your visit when you come nextSunday, and any Sunday after that you will: and he shall come in to tea ifyou like and talk to you in quite a cultured and agreeable manner, as hecan when his favorite beverage is before him. 

I discover that I get "the snaps" on a Monday morning, if I get them atall. The M. -A. Gets them on the Sunday itself, softly but regularly: theydistress no one, and we all know the cause: her fingers are itching forthe knitting which she mayn't do. Your Protestant ignores Lent as a Popishdevice, a fond thing vainly invented: but spreads it instead overfifty-two days in the year. Why, I want to know, cannot I change thesubject?

Sunday we get no post (and no collection except in church) unless we senddown to the town for it, so Monday is all the more welcome: but this Ihave been up and writing before it arrives--therefore the "snaps. "

Our postman is a lovely sight. I watched him walking up the drive theother morning, and he seemed quite perfection, for I guessed he wasbringing me the thing which would make me happy all day. I only hope theGovernment pays him properly. 

I think this is the least pleasant letter I have ever sent you: shall Itell you why? It was not the sermon: he is quite a forgivable good man inhis way. But in the afternoon that same Mrs. P---- came, got me in acorner, and wanted to unburden herself of invective against your mother, believing that I should be glad, because her coldness to me has becomeknown! What mean things some people can think about one! I heard nothing:but I am ruffled in all my plumage and want stroking. And my love to yourmother, please, if she will have it. It is only through her that I getyou. --Ever your very own. 

LETTER XXVIII. 

Dearest: Here comes a letter to you from me flying in the oppositedirection. I won't say I am not wishing to go; but oh, to be a bird in twoplaces at once! Give this letter, then, a special nesting-place, because Iam so much on the wing elsewhere. 

I shut my eyes most of the time through France, and opened them on asoup-tureen full of coffee which presented itself at the frontier: andthen realized that only a little way ahead lay Berne, with baths, buns, bears, breakfast, and other nice things beginning with B, waiting to makeus clean, comfortable, contented, and other nice things beginning with C. 

Through France I loved you sleepy fashion, with many dreams in between notall about you. But now I am breathing thoughts of you out of a newatmosphere--a great gulp of you, all clean-living and high-thinkingbetween these Alpine royal highnesses with snow-white crowns to theirheads: and no time for a word more about anything except you: you, anddouble-you, --and treble-you if the alphabet only had grace to contain sobeautiful a symbol! Good-by: we meet next, perhaps, out of Lucerne: ifnot, --Italy. 

What a lot I have to go through before we meet again visibly! You willfind me world-worn, my Beloved! Write often. 

LETTER XXIX. 

Beloved: You know of the method for making a cat settle down ina strange place by buttering her all over: the theory being that by thetime she has polished off the butter she feels herself at home? Mymorning's work has been the buttering of the Mother-Aunt with suchthings as will Lucerne her the most. When her instincts are appeased Iam the more free to indulge my own. 

So after breakfast we went round the cloisters, very thick set withtablets and family vaults, and crowded graves inclosed. It proved quite"the best butter. " To me the penance turned out interesting after aperiod of natural repulsion. A most unpleasant addition to sepulchralsentiment is here the fashion: photographs of the departed set into thestone. You see an elegant and genteel marble cross: there on thepedestal above the name is the photo:--a smug man with bourgeoiswhiskers, --a militiaman with waxed mustaches well turned up, --a womanwell attired and conscious of it: you cannot think how indecent lookedthe pretension of such types to the dignity of death and immortality. 

But just one or two faces stood the test, and were justified: a youngman oppressed with the burden of youth; a sweet, toothless grandmotherin a bonnet, wearing old age like a flower; a woman not beautiful butfor her neck which carried indignation; her face had a thwarted look. "Dead and rotten" one did not say of these in disgust and involuntarilyas one did of the others. And yet I don't suppose the eye picks out thefaces that kindled most kindness round them when living, or that one cansee well at all where one sees without sympathy. I think theMother-Aunt's face would not look dear to most people as it does tome, --yet my sight of her is the truer: only I would not put it up on atombstone in order that it might look nothing to those that pass by. 

I wrote this much, and then, leaving the M. -A. To glory in herinnumerable correspondence, Arthur and I went off to the lake, where wehave been for about seven hours. On it, I found it become infinitelymore beautiful, for everything was mystified by a lovely bloomy haze, out of which the white peaks floated like dreams: and the mountainschange and change, and seem not all the same as going when returning. Don't ask me to write landscape to you: one breathes it in, and it isthere ever after, but remains unset to words. 

The T----s whittle themselves out of our company just to the rightamount: come back at the right time (which is more than Arthur and I arelikely to do when our legs get on the spin), and are duly welcome with adiversity of doings to talk about. Their tastes are more the M. -A. 's, and their activities about halfway between hers and ours, so we makerather a fortunate quintette. The M---- trio join us the day afterto-morrow, when the majority of us will head away at once to Florence. Arthur growls and threatens he means to be left behind for a week: andit suits the funny little jealousy of the M. -A. Well enough to see usparted for a time, quite apart from the fact that I shall then be moredependent on her company. She will then glory in overworkingherself, --say it is me; and I shall feel a fiend. No letter at all, dearest, this; merely talky-talky. --Yours without words. 

LETTER XXX. 

Dearest: I cannot say I have seen Pisa, for the majority hadtheir way, and we simply skipped into it, got ourselves bumped down atthe Duomo and Campo Santo for two hours, fell exhausted to bed, andskipped out again by the first train next morning. Over the walls of theCampo Santo are some divine crumbs of Benozzo Gozzoli (don't expect meever to spell the names of dead painters correctly: it is a politenessone owes to the living, but the famous dead are exalted by being speltphonetically as the heart dictates, and become all the better companyfor that greatest of unspelled and spread-about names--Shakspere, Shakspeare, Shakespeare--his mark, not himself). Such a long parenthesisrequires stepping-stones to carry you over it: "crumbs" was the last(wasn't a whole loaf of bread a stepping-stone in one of Andersen'sfairy-tales?): but, indeed, I hadn't time to digest them properly. Letme come back to them before I die, and bury me in that inclosure if youlove me as much then as I think you do now. 

The Baptistry has a roof of echoes that is wonderful, --a mirror of soundhung over the head of an official who opens his mouth for centimes todrop there. You sing notes up into it (or rather you don't, for that ishis perquisite), and they fly circling, and flock, and become a singlechord stretching two octaves: till you feel that you are living insidewhat in the days of our youth would have been called "the sound of agrand Amen. "

The cathedral has fine points, or more than points--aspects: but theItalian version of Gothic, with its bands of flat marbles instead ofmoldings, was a shock to me at first. I only begin to understand it nowthat I have seen the outside of the Duomo at Florence. Curiously enough, it doesn't strike me as in the least Christian, only civic and splendid, reminding me of what Ruskin says about church architecture being reallya dependant on the feudal or domestic. The Strozzi Palace is a beautifulpiece of street-architecture; its effect is of an iron hand which givesyou a buffet in the face when you look up and wonder--how shall I climbin? I will tell you more about insides when I write next. 

I fear my last letter to you from Lucerne may either have strayed, or noteven have begun straying: for in the hurry of coming away I left it, addressed, I _think_, but unstamped; and I am not sure that thatparticular hotel will be Christian enough to spare the postage out of thebill, which had a galaxy of small extras running into centimes, andsuggesting a red-tape rectitude that would not show blindtwenty-five-centime gratitude to the backs of departed guests. So bepatient and forgiving if I seem to have written little. I found two ofyours waiting for me, and cannot choose between them which I find mostdear. I will say, for a fancy, the shorter, that you may ever beencouraged to write your shortest rather than none at all. One word fromyou gives me almost as much pleasure as twenty, for it contains all yoursincerity and truth; and what more do I want? Yon bless me quite. How manyperfectly happy days I owe to you, and seldom dare dream that I have madeany beginning of a return! If I could take one unhappy day out of yourlife, dearest, the secret would be mine, and no such thing should be leftin it. Be happy, beloved! oh, happy, happy, --with me for a partialreason--that is what I wish!

LETTER XXXI. 

Dearest: The Italian paper-money paralyzes my brain: I cannotcalculate in it; and were I left to myself an unscrupulous shopman couldempty me of pounds without my becoming conscious of it till I beheldvacuum. But the T----s have been wonderful caretakers to me: andto-morrow Arthur rejoins us, so that I shall be able to resume my fullactivities under his safe-conduct. 

The ways of the Italian cabbies and porters fill me with terror for thetime when I may have to fall alive and unassisted into their hands: theyhave neither conscience nor gratitude, and regard thievish demands whensatisfied merely as stepping-stones to higher things. 

Many of the outsides of Florence I seemed to know by heart--the PalazzoVecchio for instance. But close by it Cellini's two statues, the Judithand the Perseus, brought my heart up to my mouth unexpectedly. ThePerseus is so out of proportion as to be ludicrous from one point ofview: but another is magnificent enough to make me forgive the scamp hisautobiography from now to the day of judgment (when we shall all beginforgiving each other in great haste, I suppose, for fear of the deviltaking the hindmost!), and I registered a vow on the spot to thateffect:--so no more of him here, henceforth, but good!

There is not so much color about as I had expected: and austerity ratherthan richness is the note of most of the exteriors. 

I have not been allowed into the Uffizi yet, so to-day consoled myselfwith the Pitti. Titian's "Duke of Norfolk" is there, and I loved him, seeing a certain likeness there to somebody whom I--like. A photo of himwill be coming to you. Also there is a very fine Lely-Vandyck of CharlesI. And Henrietta Maria, a quite moral painting, making a triumphantassertion of that martyr's bad character. I imagine he got into heaventhrough having his head cut off and cast from him: otherwise all of himwould have perished along with his mouth. 

Somewhere too high up was hanging a ravishing Botticelli--a Madonna andChild bending over like a wind-blown tree to be kissed by St. John:--acomposition that takes you up in its arms and rocks you as you look atit. Andrea del Sarto is to me only a big mediocrity: there is nothinghere to touch his chortling child-Christ in our National Gallery. 

At Pisa I slept in a mosquito-net, and felt like a bride at the altarunder a tulle veil which was too large for her. Here, for lack of thatluxury, being assured that there were no mosquitoes to be had, I havebeen sadly ravaged. The creatures pick out all foreigners, I think, andonly when they have exhausted the supply do they pass on to the natives. Mrs. T---- left one foot unveiled when in Pisa, and only this morningdid the irritation in the part bitten begin to come out. 

I can now ask for a bath in Italian, and order the necessary things formyself in the hotel: also say "come in" and "thank you. " But just thefew days of that very German _table d'hôte_ at Lucerne, where I talkedgladly to polish myself up, have given my tongue a hybrid way of talkingwithout thinking: and I say "_ja, ja_, " and "_nein_, " and "_der, die, das_, " as often as not before such Italian nouns as I have yet captured. To fall upon a chambermaid who knows French is like coming upon mynative tongue suddenly. 

Give me good news of your foot and all that is above it: I am so doubtfulof its being really strong yet; and its willing spirits will overcome itsome day and do it an injury, and hurt my feelings dreadfully at the sametime. 

Walk only on one leg whenever you think of me! I tell you truly I amwonderfully little lonely: and yet my thoughts are constantly away withyou, wishing, wishing, --what no word on paper can ever carry to you. Itshall be at our next meeting!--All yours. 

LETTER XXXII. 

My Dearest: Florence is still eating up all my time and energies: Ipromised you there should be austerity and self-denial in the matter ofletter-writing: and I know you are unselfish enough to expect even lessthan I send you. 

Girls in the street address compliments to Arthur's complexion:--"beautiful brown boy" they call him: and he simmers over with vanity, andwishes he could show them his boating arms, brown up to the shoulder, aswell. Have you noticed that combination in some of the dearest specimensof young English manhood, --great physical vanity and great mental modesty?and each as transparently sincere as the other. 

The Bargello is an ideal museum for the storage of the best things out ofthe Middle Ages. It opens out of splendid courtyards and staircases, andranges through rooms which have quite a feudal gloom about them; most ofthese are hung with bad late tapestries (too late at least for my taste), so that the gloom is welcome and charming, making even "Gobelins" quitebearable. I find quite a new man here to admire--Pollaiolo, both painterand sculptor, one of the school of "passionate anatomists, " as I callthem, about the time of Botticelli, I fancy. He has one bust of a youngFlorentine which equals Verocchio on the same ground, and charms me evenmore. Some of his subjects are done twice over, in paint and bronze: buthe is more really a sculptor, I think, and merely paints his piece into apicture from its best point of view. 

Verocchio's idea of David is charming: he is a saucy fellow who has gonein for it for the fun of the thing--knew he could bring down a hawk withhis catapult, and therefore why not a Goliath also? If he failed, heneed but cut and run, and everybody would laugh and call him plucky fordoing even that much. So he does it, brings down his big game by goodluck, and stands posing with a sort of irresistible stateliness to suitthe result. He has a laugh something like "little Dick's, " only morefull of bubbles, and is saying to himself, "What a hero they all thinkme!" He is the merriest of sly-dog hypocrites, and has thin, wiry armsand a craney neck. He is a bit like Tom Sawyer in character, more ornateand dramatic than Huckleberry Finn, but quite as much a liar, given agood cause. 

Another thing that has seized me, more for its idea than actual carryingout, is an unnamed terra-cotta Madonna and Child. He is crushing himselfup against her neck, open-mouthed and terrified, and she spreading longfingers all over his head and face. My notion of it is that it is theGodhead taking his first look at life from the human point of view; andhe realizes himself "caught in his own trap, " discovering it to be everso much worse than it had seemed from an outside view. It is a finemodern _zeit-geist_ piece of declamation to come out of the ratherover-sweet della Robbia period of art. 

There seems to have been a rage at one period for commissioning statuesof David: so Donatello and others just turned to and did what they likedmost in the way of budding youth, stuck a Goliath's head at its feet, and called it "David. " Verocchio is the exception. 

We are going to get outside Florence for a week or ten days; it is toohot to be borne at night after a day of tiring activity. So we go to theD----s' villa, which they offered us in their absence; it lies aboutfour miles out, and is on much higher ground: address only your veryimmediately next letter there, or it may miss me. 

There are hills out there with vineyards among them which draw me intowishing to be away from towns altogether. Much as I love what is to befound in this one, I think Heaven meant me to be "truly rural"; whichall falls in, dearest, with what _I_ mean to be! Beloved, how little Isometimes can say to you! Sometimes my heart can put only silence intothe end of a letter; and with that I let this one go. --Yours, and solovingly. 

LETTER XXXIII. 

Beloved: I had your last letter on Friday: all your letters have come intheir right numbers. I have lost count of mine; but I think seven and twopostcards is the total, which is the same as the numbers of clean andunclean beasts proportionately represented in the ark. 

Up here we are out of the deadliness of the heat, and are thankful for it. Vineyards and olives brush the eyes between the hard, upright bars of thecypresses: and Florence below is like a hot bath which we dip into andcome out again. At the Riccardi chapel I found Benozzo Gozzoli, not incrumbs, but perfectly preserved: a procession of early Florentine youths, turning into angels when they get to the bay of the window where the altaronce stood. The more I see of them, the greater these early men seem tome: I shall be afraid to go to Venice soon; Titian will only half satisfyme, and Tintoretto, I know, will be actively annoying: I shall stay in mygondola, as your American lady did on her donkey after riding twentymiles to visit the ruins, of--Carnac, was it not? It is well to have thecourage of one's likings and dislikings, that is the only true culture(the state obtained by use of a "coulter" or cutter)--I cut many thingsseverely which, no doubt, are good for other people. 

Botticelli I was shy of, because of the craze about him among people whoknow nothing: he is far more wonderful than I had hoped, both at theUffizi and the Academia: but he is quite pagan. I don't know why I say"but"; he is quite typical of the world's art-training: Christianity mayget hold of the names and dictate the subjects, but the artist-breedcarries a fairly level head through it all, and, like Pater's Mona Lisa, draws Christianity and Paganism into one: at least, wherever it reachesperfect expression it has done so. Some of the distinctly primitives aredifferent; their works inclose a charm which is not artistic. FraAngelico, after being a great disappointment to me in some of his largeset pictures in the Academia and elsewhere, shows himself lovely in fresco(though I think the "crumb" element helps him). His great Crucifixion isbig altogether, and has so permanent a force in its aloofness from meredrama and mere life. In San Marco, the cells of the monks are quitecharming, a row of little square bandboxes under a broad rafteredcorridor, and in every cell is a beautiful little fresco for the monks tolive up to. But they no longer live there now: all that part of San Marcohas become a peep-show. 

I liked being in Savonarola's room, and was more susceptible to theremains of his presence than I have been to Michel Angelo or anyoneelse's. Michel Angelo I feel most when he has left a thing unfinished;then one can put one's finger into the print of the chisel, and believeanything of the beauty that might have come out of the great stonechrysalis lying cased and rough, waiting to be raised up to life. 

Yesterday Arthur and I walked from here to Fiesole, which we hadneglected while in Florence--six miles going, and more like twelvecoming back, all because of Arthur's absurd cross-country instinct, which, after hours of river-bends, bare mountain tracks, and totteringprecipices, brought us out again half a mile nearer Florence than whenwe started. 

At Fiesole is the only church about here whose interior architecture Ihave greatly admired, austere but at the same time gracious--like aMadonna of the best period of painting. We also went to look at theRoman baths and theater: the theater is charming enough, because it isstill there: but for the baths--oblongs of stone don't interest me justbecause they are old. All stone is old: and these didn't even hold waterto give one the real look of the thing. Too tired, and even more toolazy, to write other things, except love, most dear Beloved. 

LETTER XXXIV. 

Dearest: We were to have gone down with the rest into Florenceyesterday: but soft miles of Italy gleamed too invitingly away on ourright, and I saw Arthur's eyes hungry with the same far-away wish. So Isaid "Prato, " and he ran up to the fattore's and secured a wondrousshandry-dan with just space enough between its horns to toss the two ofus in the direction where we would go. Its gaunt framework was paintedof a bright red, and our feet had only netting to rest on: soconstructed, the creature was most vital and light of limb, taking everyrut on the road with flea-like agility. Oh, but it was worth it!

We had a drive of fourteen miles through hills and villages, andcastellated villas with gardens shut in by formidably high walls--always, a charm: a garden should always have something of the jealous seclusion ofa harem. I am getting Italian landscape into my system, and enjoy it moreand more. 

Prato is a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-downparts of Florence, only more so. The streets were a seething caldron ofcattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in abull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle's-eye waysbristling with agitated horns. 

The cathedral is little and good: damaged, of course, wherever the lastthree centuries have laid hands on it. At the corner of the west frontis an out-door pulpit beautifully put on with a mushroom hood over itshead. The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quiteround or quite flat, and proportions good always. An upholstered priestcoming out to say mass is generally a sickening sight, so wicked andugly in look and costume. The best-behaved people are the low-downbeggars, who are most decoratively devotional. 

We tried to model our exit on a brigand-beggar who came in to askpermission to murder one of his enemies. He got his request granted atone of the side-altars (some strictly local Madonna, I imagine), and hisgratitude as he departed was quite touching. Having studiously copiedhis exit, we want to know whom we shall murder to pay ourselves for ourtrouble. 

It amuses me to have my share of driving over these free and easy andvery narrow highroads. But A. Has to do the collision-shouting and thecries of "Via!"--the horse only smiles when he hears me do it. 

Also did I tell you that on Saturday we two walked from here over toFiesole--six miles there, and ten back: for why?--because we chose to gowhat Arthur calls "a bee-line across country, " having thought we hadsighted a route from the top of Fiesole. But in the valley we lost it, and after breaking our necks over precipices and our hearts downcul-de-sacs that led nowhere, and losing all the ways that were pointedout to us, for lack of a knowledge of the language, we came out againinto view of Florence about half a mile nearer than when we started andproportionately far away from home. When he had got me thoroughlyfoot-sore, Arthur remarked complacently, "The right way to see a countryis to lose yourself in it!" I didn't feel the truth of it then: butapplied to other things I perceive its wisdom. Dear heart, where I havelost myself, what in all the world do I know so well as you?

 Your most lost and loving. 

LETTER XXXV. 

Beloved: Rain swooped down on us from on high during the night, and thecountry is cut into islands: the river from a rocky wriggling stream hasrisen into a tawny, opaque torrent that roars with a voice a mile long andis become quite unfordable. The little mill-stream just below has brokenits banks and poured itself away over the lower vineyards into the river;a lot of the vines look sadly upset, generally unhinged and unstrung, yetI am told the damage is really small. I hope so, for I enjoyed a reallash-out of weather, after the changelessness of the long heat. 

I have been down in Florence beginning to make my farewells to the manythings I have seen too little of. We start away for Venice about the endof the week. At the Uffizi I seem to have found out all my futurefavorites the first day, and very little new has come to me; but most ofthem go on growing. The Raphael lady is quite wonderful; I think she wasin love with him, and her soul went into the painting though he himselfdid not care for her; and she looks at you and says, "See a miracle: hewas able to paint this, and never knew that I loved him!" It iswonderful that; but I suppose it can be done, --a soul pass into a workand haunt it without its creator knowing anything about how it camethere. Always when I come across anything like that which has somethinginner and rather mysterious, I tremble and want to get back to you. Youare the touchstone by which I must test everything that is a little newand unfamiliar. 

From now onwards, dearest, you must expect only cards for a time: it isnot settled yet whether we stop at Padua on our way in or our way out. Iam clamoring for Verona also; but that will be off our route, so Arthurand I may go there alone for a couple of greedy days, which I fear willonly leave me dissatisfied and wishing I had had patience to depend oncoming again--perhaps with you!

Uncle N. Has written of your numerous visits to him, and I understand youhave been very good in his direction. He does not speak of loneliness; andwith Anna and her brood next week or now, he will be as happy as histemperament allows him to be when he has nothing to worry over. 

I am proud to say I have gone brown without freckles. And are you reallyas cheerful as you write yourself to be? Dearest and best, when is yourholiday to begin; and is it to be with me? Does anywhere on earth holdthat happiness for us both in the near future? I kiss you well, Beloved. 

LETTER XXXVI. 

Dearest: Venice is round me as I write! Well, I will not waste my Baedekerknowledge on you, --you too can get a copy; and it is not the panoramicview of things you will be wanting from me: it is my own particular VeniceI am to find out and send you. So first of all from the heart of it I sendyou mine: when I have kissed you I will go on. My eyes have been seeing somuch that is new, I shall want a fresh vocabulary for it all. But mainly Iwant to say, let us be here again together quickly, before we lose anymore of our youth or our two-handed hold on life. I get short of breaththinking of it!

So let it be here, Beloved, that some of our soon-to-be happiness opensand shuts its eyes: for truly Venice is a sleepy place. I am wanting, and taking, nine hours' sleep after all I do!

Outside coming over the flats from Padua, she looked something like amanufacturing town at its ablutions, --a smoky chimney well to the fore:but get near to her and you find her standing on turquoise, her feet setabout with jaspers, and with one of her eyes she ravishes you: and allher campanile are like the "thin flames" of "souls mounting up to God. "

That is from without: within she becomes too sensuous and civic in hersplendor to let me think much of souls. "Rest and be indolent" is themotto for the life she teaches. The architecture is the song of thelotos-eater built into stone--were I in a more florid mood I would havesaid "swan-song, " for the whole stands finished with nothing more to beadded: it has sung itself out: and if there is a moral to it all, nodoubt it is in Ruskin, and I don't wont to read it just now. 

What I want is you close at hand looking up at all this beauty, andsmiling when I smile, which is your way, as if you had no opinions ofyour own about anything in which you are not a professor. So you willwrite and agree that I am to have the pleasure of this return to lookforward to? If I know that, I shall be so much more reconciled to allthe joy of the things I am seeing now for the first time: and shall seeso much better the second, Beloved, when your eyes are here helping me. 

Here is love, dearest! help yourself to just as much as you wish for;though all that I send is good for you! No letter from you sinceFlorence, but I am neither sad nor anxious: only all the more yourloving. 

LETTER XXXVII. 

Beloved: The weather is as gray as England to-day, and much rainier. Tofeel it on my cheeks and be back north with that and warmer things, Iwould go out in it in the face of protests, and had to go alone--notArthur even being in the mood just then for a patriotic quest of theuncomfortable. I had myself oared into the lagoons across a racing currentand a driving head-wind which made my gondolier bend like a distressedpoplar over his oar; patience on a monument smiling at backsheesh--"allcomes to him who knows. "

Of course, for comfort and pleasure, and everything but economy, we havepicked up a gondolier to pet: we making much of him, and he much out ofus. He takes Arthur to a place where he can bathe--to use his ownexpression--"cleanly, " that is to say, unconventionally; and thisappropriately enough is on the borders of a land called "the Garden ofEden" (being named so after its owners). He--"Charon, " I call him--islarge and of ruddy countenance, and talks English in blinkers--that isto say, gondola English--out of which he could not find words to summonme a cab even if it were not opposed to his interests. Still there areno cabs to be called in Venice, and he is teaching us that the shortestway is always by water. If Arthur is not punctually in his gondola by 7A. M. , I hear a call for the "Signore Inglese" go up to his window; andit is hungry Charon waiting to ferry him. 

Yesterday your friend Mr. C---- called and took me over to Murano in abeautiful pair-oared boat that simply flew. There I saw a wonderful apsefilled with mosaic of dull gold, wherein is set a blue-black figure ofthe Madonna, ten heads high and ten centuries old, which almost made mebecome a Mariolatrist on the spot. She stands leaning up the bend withtwo pale hands lifted in ghostly blessing. Underfoot the floor is allmosaic, mountainous with age and earthquakes; the architecture classicin the grip of Byzantine Christianity, which is like the spirit of Godmoving on the face of the waters, or Ezekiel prophesying to the drybones. 

The Colleoni is quite as much more beautiful in fact and seen full-sizeas I had hoped from all smaller reproductions. A fine equestrian figurealways strikes one as enthroned, and not merely riding; if I can't getthat, I consider a centaur the nobler creature with its human body setdown into the socket of the brute, and all fire--a candle burning atboth ends: which, in a way, is what the centaur means, I imagine?

Bellini goes on being wonderful, and for me beats Raphael's BlenheimMadonna period on its own ground. I hear now that the Raphael lady Iraved over in Florence is no Raphael at all, --which accounts for itbeing so beautiful and interesting--to _me_, I hasten to add. Raphael'sstudied calmness, his soul of "invisible soap and imperceptible water, "may charm some; me it only chills or leaves unmoved. 

Is this more about art than you care to hear? I have nothing to sayabout myself, except that I am as happy as a cut-in-half thing can be. Is it any use sending kind messages to your mother? If so, my heart isfull of them. Bless you, dearest, and good-night. 

LETTER XXXVIII. 

Dearest: St. Mark's inside is entirely different from anything I hadimagined. I had expected a grove of pillars instead of these wonderfulbreadths of wall; and the marble overlay I had not understood at all tillI saw it. My admiration mounts every time I enter: it has a differentgloom from any I have ever been in, more joyous and satisfying, not in theleast moody as our own Gothic seems sometimes to be; and saints instead ofdevils look at you solemn-eyed from every corner of shade. 

A heavy rain turns the Piazza into a lake: this morning Arthur had tocarry me across. Other foolish Englishwomen were shocked at such means, and paddled their own leaky canoes, or stood on the brink and lookedmiserable. The effect of rain-pool reflections on the inside of St. Mark's is noticeable, causing it to bloom unexpectedly into freshsubtleties and glories. The gold takes so sympathetically to any leasttint of color that is in the air, and counts up the altar candles evenunto its furthest recesses and cupolas. 

I think before I leave Venice I shall find about ten Tintorettos which Ireally like. Best of all is that Bacchus and Ariadne in the Ducal Palace, of which you gave me the engraving. His "Marriage of St. Catherine, " whichis there also, has all Veronese's charm of color and what I call his"breeding"; and in the ceiling of the Council Chamber is one splendidfigure of a sea-youth striding a dolphin. 

Last evening we climbed the San Giorgio campanile for a sunset view ofVenice; it is a much better point of view than the St. Mark's one, andwe were lucky in our sunset. Venice again looked like a beautifiedfactory town, blue and blue with smoke and evening mists. Down below inthe church I met a delightful Capuchin priest who could talk French, anda poor, very young lay-brother who had the holy custody of the eyesheavily upon his conscience when I spoke to him. I was so sorry for him!

The Mother-Aunt is ill in bed; but as she is at the present momentreceiving three visitors, you will understand about how ill. The factis, she is worn to death with sight-seeing. I can't stop her; while sheis on her legs it is her duty, and she will. The consequence is I getrushed through things I want to let soak into me, and have to go again. My only way of getting her to rest has been by deserting her; and then Icome back and receive reproaches with a meek countenance. 

Mr. C---- has been good to us and cordial, and brings his gondola oftento our service. A gondola and pair has quite a different motion from aone-oared gondola; it is like riding a seahorse instead of a sea-camel--almost exciting, only it is so soft in its prancings. 

He took A. And myself into the procession which welcomed the crowned headslast Wednesday; the hurly-burly of it was splendid. We tore down the GrandCanal from end to end, almost cheek by jowl with the royalties; the M. -A. Was quite jubilant when she heard we had had such "good places. " Hundredsof gondolas swarmed round; many of them in the old Carpaccio rig-outs, very gorgeous though a little tawdry when taken out of the canvas. Hut therush and the collisions, and the sound of many waters walloping under thebellies of the gondolas, and the blows of fighting oars--regularunderwater wrestling matches--made it as vivid and amusing as a prolongedOxford and Cambridge boat-race in fancy costume. Our gondoliers streamedwith the exertion, and looked like men fighting a real battle, and yetenjoyed it thoroughly. Violent altercations with police-boats don't rufflethem at all; at one moment it looks daggers drawn; at the next it isshrugs and smiles. Often, from not knowing enough of Italian and Italianways, I get hot all over when an ordinary discussion is going on, thinkingthat blows are about to be exchanged. The Mother-Aunt had hung a wonderfulsatin skirt out of window for decoration; and when she leaned over it in abodice of the same color, it looked as if she were sitting with her legsout as well! I suppose it was this peculiar effect that, when the King andQueen came by earlier in the morning, won for her a special bow and smile. 

I must hurry or I shall miss the post that I wish to catch. There seemslittle chance now of my getting you in Venice; but elsewhere perhaps youwill drop to me out of the clouds. 

 Your own and most loving. 

LETTER XXXIX. 

My Own, Own Beloved: Say that my being away does not seem too long? I havenot had a letter yet, and that makes me somehow not anxious butcompunctious; only writing to you of all I do helps to keep me in goodconscience. Not the other foot gone to the mender's, I hope, with the sameobstructive accompaniments as went to the setting-up again of the last? IfI don't hear soon, you will have me dancing on wires, which cost as muchby the word as a gondola by the hour. 

Yesterday we went to see Carpaccio at his best in San Giorgio diSchiavone: two are St. George pictures, three St. Jeromes, and two of someother saint unknown to me. The St. Jerome series is really a homily on thelove and pathos of animals. First is St. Jerome in his study with a sortof unclipped white poodle in the pictorial place of honor, all alone on afloor beautifully swept and garnished, looking up wistfully to his masterbusy at writing (a Benjy saying, "Come and take me for a walk, there's agood saint!"). Scattered among the adornments of the room are smallbronzes of horses and, I think, birds. So, of course, these being histastes, when St. Jerome goes into the wilderness, a lion takes to him, andaccompanies him when he pays a call on the monks in a neighboringmonastery. Thereupon, holy men of little faith, the entire fraternity taketo their heels and rush upstairs, the hindermost clinging to the skirts ofthe formermost to be hauled the quicker out of harm's way. And all thewhile the lion stands incorrectly offering the left paw, and Jerome withshrugs tries to explain that even the best butter wouldn't melt in hisdear lion's mouth. After that comes the tragedy. St. Jerome lies dying inexcessive odor of sanctity, and all the monks crowd round him with prayersand viaticums, and the ordinary stuffy pieties of a "happy death, " whileJerome wonders feebly what it is he misses in all this to-do for which hecares so little. And there, elbowed far out into the cold, the lion liesand lifts his poor head and howls because he knows his master is beingtaken from him. Quite near to him, fastened to a tree, a queer, nondescript, crocodile-shaped dog runs out the length of its tether tocomfort the disconsolate beast: but _la bête humaine_ has got thewhip-hand of the situation. In another picture is a parrot that has justmimicked a dog, or called "Carlo!" and then laughed: the dog turns hishead away with a sleek, sheepish, shy look, exactly as a sensitive dogdoes when you make fun of him. 

These are, perhaps, mere undercurrents of pictures which are quiteglorious in color and design, but they help me to love Carpaccio todistraction; and when the others lose me, they hunt through all theCarpaccios in Venice till they find me!

Love me a little more if possible while I am so long absent from you! WhatI do and what I think go so much together now, that you will take what Iwrite as the most of me that it is possible to cram in, coming back to youto share everything. 

Under such an Italian sky as to-day how I would like to see your face!Here, dearest, among these palaces you would be in your peerage, for Ithink you have some southern blood in you. 

Curious that, with all my fairness, somebody said to me to-day, "But youare not quite English, are you?" And I swore by the nine gods of myancestry that I was nothing else. But the look is in us: my father had aforeign air, but made up for it by so violent a patriotism that Uncle N. Used to call him "John Bull let loose. "

My love to England. Is it showing much autumn yet? My eyes long for greenfields again. Since I have been in Italy I had not seen one until theother day from the top of St. Giorgio Maggiore, where one lies in hidingunder the monastery walls. 

All that I see now quickens me to fresh thoughts of you. Yet do not expectme to come back wiser: my last effort at wisdom was to fall in love withyou, and there I stopped for good and all. There I am still, everythingincluded: what do you want more? My letter and my heart both threaten tobe over-weight, so no more of them this time. Most dearly do I love you. 

LETTER XL. 

Beloved: If two days slip by, I don't know where I am when I come towrite; things get so crowded in such a short space of time. Where I leftoff I know not: I will begin where I am most awake--your letter which Ihave just received. 

That is well, dearest, that is well indeed: a truce till February! Andsince the struggle then must needs be a sharp one--with only one end, aswe know, --do not vex her now by any overt signs of preparation as if youassumed already that her final arguments were to be as so much chaffbefore the wind. You do not tell me _what_ she argues, and I do not ask. She does not say I shall not love you enough!

To answer businesslike to your questions first: with your forgiveness westay here till the 25th, and get back to England with the last of themonth. Does that seem a very cruel, far-off date? Others have the wish tostay even longer, and it would be no fairness to hurry them beyond acertain degree of reasonableness with my particular reason forimpatience, seeing, moreover, that in your love I have every help forremaining patient. It is too much to hope, I suppose, that the "truce"sets you free now, and that you could meet us here after all, and prolongour stay indefinitely? I know one besides myself who would be glad, andwould welcome an outside excuse dearly. 

For, oh, the funniness of near and dear things! Arthur's heart is laidup with a small love affair, and it is the comicalest of internalmaladies. He is screwing up courage to tell me all about it, and I writein haste before my mouth is sealed by his confidences. I fancy I knowthe party, an energetic little mortal whom we met at Lucerne, whereArthur lingered while we came on to Florence. She talked vaguely ofbeing in Venice some time this autumn; and the vagueness continues. Arthur, in consequence, roams round disconsolately with no interest butin hotel books. And for fear lest we should gird up his loins and draghim away with us out of Paradisal possibilities, he is forever praisingVenice as a resting-place, and saying he wants to be nowhere else. Thebathing just keeps him alive; but when put to it to explain what charmshim since pictures do not, and architecture only slightly, he says inexemplary brotherly fashion that he likes to see me completing myeducation and enthusiasms, --and does not realize with how foreign anair that explanation sits upon his shoulders. 

I saw to-day a remnant of your patron saint, and for your saketransferred a kiss to it, Italian fashion, with my thumb and the sign ofthe cross. I hope it will do you good. Also, I have been up among thegalleries of St. Mark's, and about the roof and the west front wheresomebody or another painted his picture of the bronze horses. 

The pigeons get to recognize people personally, and grow more intimateevery time we come. I even conceive they make favorites, for I had threepecking food out of my mouth to-day and refusing to take it in any otherfashion, and they coo and say thank you before and after every seed theytake or spill. They are quite the pleasantest of all the Italianbeggars--and the cleanest. 

Your friend pressed us in to tea yesterday: I think less for the sake ofgiving us tea than that we should see his palace, or rather his firstfloor, in which alone he seems to lose himself. I have no idea formeasurements, but I imagine his big sala is about eighty feet long andperhaps twenty-five feet across, with a flat-beamed roof, windows ateach end, and portières along the walls of old blue Venetian linen: aplace in which it seems one could only live and think nobly. His faceseems to respond to its teachings. What more might not an environmentlike that bring out in you? Come and let me see! I have hopes springingas I think of things that you may be coming after all; and that that iswhat lay concealed under the gayety of your last paragraph. Then I ammore blessed even than I knew. What, you are coming? So well I do loveyou, my Beloved!

LETTER XLI. 

Dearest: This letter will travel with me: we leave to-day. Ourmovements are to be too restless and uncomfortable for the next few daysfor me to have a chance of quiet seeing or quiet writing anywhere. AtRiva we shall rest, I hope. 

Yesterday a storm began coming over towards evening, and I thought tomyself that if it passed in time there should be a splendid sunset ofsmolder and glitter to be seen from the Campanile, and perhaps by goodchance a rainbow. 

I went alone: when I got to the top the rain was pelting hard; so thereI stayed happily weather-bound for an hour looking over Venice "silveredwith slants of rain, " and watching umbrellas scuttering below with toesbeneath them. The golden smolder was very slow in coming: it lay overthe mainland and came creeping along the railway track. Then came theglitter and the sun, and I turned round and found my rainbow. But itwasn't a bow, it was a circle: the Campanile stood up as it were aspoke in the middle, --the lower curve of the rainbow lay on the groundof the Piazzetta, cut off sharp by the shadow of the Campanile. It wasworth waiting an hour to see. The islands shone mellow and bright in theclearance with the storm going off black behind them. Good-by, Venice!

 * * * * *

Verona began by seeming dull to me; but it improves and unfolds beautifulcorners of itself to be looked at: only I am given so little time. TheTombs of the Della Scalas and the Renaissance façade of the Consiglio arewhat chiefly delight me. I had some quiet hours in the Museo, where I fellin love with a little picture by an unknown painter, of Orpheus charmingthe beasts in a wandering green landscape, with a dance of fauns in thedistance, and here and there Eurydice running;--and Orpheus in Hades, andthe Thracian women killing him, and a crocodile fishing out his head, andmermaids and ducks sitting above their reflections reflecting. 

Also there is one beautiful Tobias and the Angel there by a painterwhose name I most ungratefully forget. I saw a man yesterday carryingfishes in the market, each strung through the gills on a twig of myrtle:that is how Tobias ought to carry his fish: when a native customsuggests old paintings, how charming it always is!

 Riva. 

We have just got here from Verona. In the matter of the garden at leastit is a Paradise of a place. A great sill of honeysuckle leans out frommy window: beyond is a court grown round with creepers, and beyond thatthe garden--such a garden! The first thing one sees is an arcade ofvines upon stone pillars, between which peep stacks of roses, going offa little from their glory now, and right away stretches an alley ofgreen, that shows at the end, a furlong off, the blue glitter of water. It is a beautifully wild garden: grass and vegetables and trees androses all grow in a jungle together. There are little groves of bambooand chestnut and willow; and a runnel of water is somewhere--I can hearit. It suggests rest, which I want; and so, for all its difference, suggests you, whom also I want, --more, I own it now, than I have said!But that went without saying, Beloved, as it always must if it is to bethe truth and nothing short of the truth. 

While this has been waiting to go, your letter has been put into my hands. I am too happy to say words about it, and can afford now to let this go asit is. The little time of waiting for you will be perfect happiness now;and your coming seems to color all that is behind as well. I have had agood time indeed, and was only wearying with the plethora of my enjoyment:but the better time has been kept till now. We shall be together day afterday and all day long for at least a month, I hope: a joy that has neverhappened to us yet. 

Never mind about the lost letter now, dearest, dearest: Venice was alittle empty just one week because of it. I still hope it will come; butwhat matter?--I know _you_ will. All my heart waits for you. --Your mostglad and most loving. 

LETTER XLII. 

Dearest: I saw an old woman riding a horse astride: and I was convinced onthe spot that this is the rightest way of riding, and that the sidesaddlewas a foolish and affected invention. The horse was fine, and so was theyoung man leading it: the old woman was upright and stately, with a widehat and full petticoats like a Maximilian soldier. 

This was at Bozen, where we stayed for two nights, and from which I havebrought a cold with me: it seems such an English thing to have, that Ifeel quite at home in the discomfort of it. It had been such wonderfulweather that we were sitting out of doors every evening up to 9. 30 P. M. Without wraps, and on our heads only our "widows' caps. " (The M. -A. Persists in a style which suggests that Uncle N. Has gone to a betterworld. ) Mine was too flimsy a work of fiction, and a day before I had beenfor a climb and got wet through, so a chill laid its benediction on myhead, and here I am, --not seriously incommoded by the malady, but by theremedy, which is the M. -A. Full of kind quackings and fierce tyranny if Ido but put my head out of window to admire the view, whose best is alittle round the corner. 

I had no idea Innsbruck was so high up among the mountains: snows are onthe peaks all around. Behind the house-tops, so close and near, lies aquarter circle of white crests. You are told that in winter creaturescome down and look in at the windows: sometimes they are called wolves, sometimes bears--any way the feeling is mediæval. 

Hereabouts the wayside shrines nearly always contain a crucifix, whereasin Italy that was rare--the Virgin and Child being the most common. Iremarked on this, which I suppose gave rise to a subsequent observationof the M. -A. 's: "I think the Tyrolese are a _good_ people: they are notgiven over to Mariolatry like those poor priest-ridden Italians. " Ithink, however, that they merely have that fundamental grace, religioussimplicity, worshiping--just what they can get, for yesterday I saw twodear old bodies going round and telling their beads before the bronzestatues of the Maximilian tomb--King Arthur, Charles the Bold, etc. Isuppose, by mere association, a statue helps them to pray. 

The national costume does look so nice, though not exactly beautiful. Ilike the flat, black hats with long streamers behind and a gold tassel, and the spacious apron. Blue satin is a favorite style, always silk orsatin for Sunday best: one I saw of pearl-white brocade. 

Since we came north we have had lovely weather, except the one day ofwhich I am still the filterings: and morning along the Brenner Pass wasperfect. I think the mountains look most beautiful quite early, atsunrise, when they are all pearly and mysterious. 

We go on to Zurich on Thursday, and then, Beloved, and then!--so thismust be my last letter, since I shall have nowhere to write to with yourushing all across Europe and resting nowhere because of my impatienceto have you. The Mother-Aunt concedes a whole month, but Arthur willhave to leave earlier for the beginning of term. How little my twodearest men have yet seen of each other! Barely a week lies between us:this will scarcely catch you. Dearest of dearests, my heart waits onyours. 

LETTER XLIII. 

My Dearest: See what an effect your "gallous young hound" episode has hadon me. I send it back to you roughly done into rhyme. I don't knowwhether it will carry; for, outside your telling of it, "Johnnie Kigarrow"is not a name of heroic sound. What touches me as so strangely completeabout it is that you should have got that impression and momentaryromantic delusion as a child, and now hear, years after, of hisdisappearing out of life thus fittingly and mysteriously, so that his namewill fix its legend to the countryside for many a long day. I would liketo go there some day with you, and standing on Twloch Hill imagine all thecountry round as the burial-place of the strong man on whose knees mybeloved used to play when a child. 

It must have been soon after this that your brother died: truly, dearest, from now, and strangely, this Johnnie Kigarrow will seem moreto me than him; touching a more heroic strain of idea, and stiffeningfibers in your nature that brotherhood, as a rule, has no bearing on. 

A short letter to-day, Beloved, because what goes with it is so long. This is the first time I have come before your eyes as anything but aletter-writer, and I am doubtful whether you will care to have so muchall about yourself. Yet for that very reason think how much I loveddoing it! I am jealous of those days before I knew you, and want to haveall their wild-honey flavor for myself. Do remember more, and tell me!Dearest heart, it was to me you were coming through all your scampersand ramblings; no wonder, with that unknown good running parallel, thatmy childhood was a happy one. May long life bless you, Beloved!

(_Inclosure. _)

 My brother and I were down in Wales, And listened by night to the Welshman's tales; He was eleven and I was ten. We sat on the knees of the farmer's men After the whole day's work was done: And I was friends with the farmer's son. His hands were rough as his arms were strong, His mouth was merry and loud for song; Each night when set by the ingle-wall He was the merriest man of them all. I would catch at his beard and say All the things I had done in the day-- Tumbled bowlders over the force, Swum in the river and fired the gorse-- "Half the side of the hill!" quoth I:-- "Ah!" cried he, "and didn't you die?"

 "Chut!" said he, "but the squeak was narrow! Didn't you meet with Johnnie Kigarrow?" "No!" said I, "and who will he be? And what will be Johnnie Kigarrow to me?" The farmer's son said under his breath, "Johnnie Kigarrow may be your death Listen you here, and keep you still-- Johnnie Kigarrow bides under the hill; Twloch barrow stands over his head; He shallows the river to make his bed; Bowlders roll when he stirs a limb; And the gorse on the hills belongs to him! And if so be one fires his gorse, He's out of his bed, and he mounts his horse. Off he sets: with the first long stride He is halfway over the mountain side: With his second stride he has crossed the barrow, And he has you fast, has Johnnie Kigarrow!"

 Half I laughed and half I feared; I clutched and tugged at the strong man's beard, And bragged as brave as a boy could be-- "So? but, you see, he didn't catch me!"

 Fear caught hold of me: what had I done? High as the roof rose the farmer's son: How the sight of him froze my marrow! "I, " he cried, "am Johnnie Kigarrow!"

 Well, you wonder, what was the end? Never forget;--he had called me "friend"! Mighty of limb, and hard, and blown; Quickly he laughed and set me down. "Heh!" said, he, "but the squeak was narrow, Not to be caught by Johnnie Kigarrow!"

 Now, I hear, after years gone by, Nobody knows how he came to die. He strode out one night of storm: "Get you to bed, and keep you warm!" Out into darkness so went he: Nobody knows where his bones may be. 

 Only I think--if his tongue let go Truth that once, --how perhaps _I_ know. Twloch river, and Twloch barrow, Do you cover my Johnnie Kigarrow?

LETTER XLIV. 

Dearest: I have been doing something so wise and foolish: mentally wise, I mean, and physically foolish. Do you guess?--Disobeying your partinginjunction, and sitting up to see eclipses. 

It was such a luxury to do as I was _not_ told just for once; to feelthere was an independent me still capable of asserting itself. My beliefis that, waking, you hold me subjugated: but, once your godhead has puton its spiritual nightcap, and begun nodding, your mesmeric influencerelaxes. Up starts resolution and independence, and I breathe desolatelyfor a time, feeling myself once more a free woman. 

'Twas a tremulous experience, Beloved; but I loved it all the more forthat. How we love playing at grief and death--the two things that mustcome--before it is their due time! I took a look at my world for threemost mortal hours last night, trying to see you _out_ of it. And oh, howclose it kept bringing me! I almost heard you breathe, and was foreverwondering--Can we ever be nearer, or love each other more than we do?For _that_ we should each want a sixth sense, and a second soul: and itwould still be only the same spread out over larger territory. I preferto keep it nesting close in its present limitations, where it feels likea "growing pain"; children have it in their legs, we in our hearts. 

I am growing sleepy as I write, and feel I am sending you a dullletter, --my penalty for doing as you forbade. 

I sat up from half-past one to a quarter to five to see our shadow goover heaven. I didn't see much, the sky was too piebald: but I was notdisappointed, as I had never watched the darkness into dawn like thatbefore: and it was interesting to hear all the persons awaking:--cocksat half-past four, frogs immediately after, then pheasants and variousothers following. I was cuddled close up against my window, throned in abig arm-chair with many pillows, a spirit-lamp, cocoa, bread and butter, and buns; so I fared well. Just after the pheasants and the firstquerulous fidgetings of hungry blackbirds comes a soft pattering alongthe path below: and Benjy, secretive and important, is fussing his wayto the shrubbery, when instinct or real sentiment prompts him to look upat my window; he gives a whimper and a wag, and goes on. I try topersuade myself that he didn't see me, and that he does this, othermornings, when I am not thus perversely bolstered up in rebellion, andpeering through blinds at wrong hours. Isn't there something pathetic inthe very idea that a dog may have a behind-your-back attachment of thatsort?--that every morning he looks up at an unresponsive blank, andwags, and goes by?

I heard him very happy in the shrubs a moment after: he and a pheasant, I fancy, disputing over a question of boundaries. And he comes in forbreakfast, three hours later, looking positively _fresh, _ and wants toknow why I am yawning. 

Most mornings he brings your letter up to my room in his mouth. It isold Nan-nan's joke: she only sends up _yours_ so, and pretends it isBenjy's own clever selection. I pretend that, too, to him; and he thinkshe is doing something wonderful. The other morning I was--well, Benjyhears splashing: and tires of waiting--or his mouth waters. An extra canof hot water happens to stand at the door; and therein he deposits histreasure (mine, I mean), and retires saying nothing. The consequence is, when I open three minutes after his scratch, I find you all ungummed andswimming, your beautiful handwriting bleared and smeared, so that no eyebut mine could have read it. Benjy's shame when I showed him what hehad done was wonderful. 

How it rejoices me to write quite foolish things to you!--that I _can_helps to explain a great deal in the up-above order of things, which Inever took in when I was merely young and frivolous. One must havetouched a grave side of life before one can take in that Heaven is notopposed to laughter. 

My eye has just caught back at what I have written; and the "littledeath" runs through me, just because I wrote "grave side. " It shouldn't, but loving has made me superstitious: the happiness seems too great; howcan it go on? I keep thinking--this is not life: you are too much forme, my dearest!

Oh, my Beloved, come quickly to meet me to-day: this morning! Ride over;I am willing it. My own dearest, you must come. If you don't, what shallI believe? That Love cannot outdo space: that when you are away I cannotreach you by willing. But I can: come to me! You shall see my arms opento you as never before. What is it?--you must be coming. I have morelove in me after all than I knew. 

Ah, I know: I wrote "grave side, " and all my heart is in arms againstthe treason. With us it is not "till death us do part": we leap italtogether, and are clasped on the other side. 

My dear, my dear, I lay my head down on your heart: I love you! I postthis to show how certain I am. At twelve to-day I shall see you. 

LETTER XLV. 

Beloved: I look at this ridiculous little nib now, running like a plowalong the furrows! What can the poor thing do? Bury its poor black, bluntlittle nose in the English language in order to tell you, in all sorts ofroundabout ways, what you know already as well as I do. And yet, thoughthat is all it can do, you complain of not having had a letter! Not had aletter? Beloved, there are half a hundred I have not had from you! Do yousuppose you have ever, any one week in your life, sent me as many as Iwanted?

Now, for once, I did hold off and didn't write to you: because there wassomething in your last I couldn't give any answer to, and I hoped youwould come yourself before I need. Then I hoped silence would bring you:and now--no!--instead of your dear peace-giving face I get this complaint!

Ah, Beloved, have you in reality any complaint, or sorrow that I can setat rest? Or has that little, little silence made you anxious? I do cometo think so, for you never flourish your words about as I do: so, believing that, I would like to write again differently; only it is truerto let what I have written stand, and make amends for it in all haste. Ilove you so infinitely well, how could even a year's silence give you anydoubt or anxiety, so long as you knew I was not ill?

"Should one not make great concessions to great grief even when it isunreasonable?" I cannot answer, dearest: I am in the dark. Great griefcannot be great without reasons: it should give them, and you should judgeby them:--you, not I. I imagine you have again been face to face withfierce, unexplained opposition. Dearest, if it would give you happiness, Iwould say, make five, ten, twenty years' "concession, " as you call it. Butthe only time you ever spoke to me clearly about your mother's mind towardme, you said she wanted an absolute surrender from you, not covered onlyby her lifetime. Then though I pitied her, I had to smile. A twenty years'concession even would not give rest to her perturbed spirit. I praytruly--having so much reason for your sake to pray it--"God rest her soul!and give her a saner mind toward both of us. "

Why has this come about at all? It is not February yet: and _our_ planshave been putting forth no buds before their time. When the day comes, and you have said the inevitable word, I think more calm will followthan you expect. _You_, dearest, I do understand: and the instinct oftenderness you have toward a claim which yet fills you with the sense ofits injustice. I know that you can laugh at her threat to make you poor;but not at hurting her affections. Did your asking for an "answer" meanthat I was to write so openly? Bless you, my own dearest. 

LETTER XLVI. 

Dearest: To-day I came upon a strange spectacle: poor old Nan-nan weepingfor wounded pride in me. I found her stitching at raiment of needleworkthat is to be mine (piles of it have been through her fingers since theword first went out; for her love asserts that I am to go all home-madefrom my old home to my new one--wherever that may be!). And she wasweeping because, as I slowly got to understand, from one particularquarter too little attention had been paid to me:--the kow-tow of aceremonious reception into my new status had not been deep enough tomake amends to her heart for its partial loss of me. 

Her deferential recognition of the change which is coming is patheticand 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 muchlonger, she comes up to my room and makes opportunity to scold me overquite slight things:--and there I am, meeker under her than I would beto any relative. So to-day I had to bear a statement of your mother'sinfirmities rigorously outlined in a way I could only pretend to be deafto 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 poorthing, not to prayer, I fear, but to desolate weeping, in which love andpride will get more firmly entangled together than ever. 

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

I write this, dearest, as an indirect answer to yours, --which is butNan-nan's woe writ large. If I could persuade your two dear and verydifferent heads how very slightly wounded I am by a thing which a littlewaiting 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 Ifeel in need of comfort. Be comforted yourself, meanwhile, and don'tshape 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 itme! 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 itcomes 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 beable to sing itself to me at large from an outer world which at thismoment is all gray and roaring. To-day the year is bowing itself outtempestuously, as if angry at having to go. Dear golden year! I am sorryto see its face so changed and withering: it has held so much for usboth. Yet I am feeling vigorous and quite like spring. All the seasonshave their marches, with buffetings and border-forays: this is an autumnmarch-wind; before long I shall be out into it, and up the hill to lookover at your territory and you being swept and garnished for the sevendevils of winter. 

"Roaring gray" suggests Tennyson, whom I do very much associate withthis sort of weather, not so much because of passages in "Maud" and "InMemoriam" as because I once went over to Swainston, on a day such asthis when rooks and leaves alike hung helpless in the wind; and heardthere 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 ofhis small lyrics:

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

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

There is an old notion, quite likely to be true, that a nightcap carriesin it the dreams of its first owner, or that anything laid over asleeper's head will bring away the dream. One of the stories which usedto put a lump in my throat as a child was of an old backwoodsman who bythat means found out that his dog stole hams from the storeroom. The dogwas given away in disgrace, and came to England to die of a broken heartat the sight of a cargo of hams, which, at their unpacking, seemed likea monstrous day of judgment--the bones of his misdeeds rising againreclothed with flesh to reproach him with the thing he had neverforgotten. 

I wonder how long it was before I left off definitely choosing out astory for the pleasure of making myself cry! When one begins to avoidthat 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 everlived 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 dome a fine injury, and you did well to purge the text of their abuse. Iagree with no authority, however immortal, which inquires "What's in aname?" expecting the answer to be a snap of the fingers. I answer with asnap of temper that the blood, boots, and bones of my ancestors are inmine! Do you suppose I could have been the same woman had such names asAmelia or Bella or Cinderella been clinging leechlike to my consciousnessthrough all the years of my training? Why, there are names I can think ofwhich would have made me break down into side-ringlets had I been forcedto wear them audibly. 

The effect is not so absolute when it is a second name that can be tuckedaway 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. Sheregards it as a taint in her constitution which orders her to a lonelylife 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, whenhe comes to the throne, he calls himself King Albert Edward in floridContinental fashion, instead of "Edward the Seventh, " with a right hopethat an Edward the Eighth may follow after him, to make a neck-and-neckrace of it with the Henries? I don't know anything that would do more toknit up the English constitution: but whenever I pass the Albert MemorialI 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 hisbill and sang a note, and down, down, down, down he went over a goldenscale: pitched afresh, and dropped down another; and then up, up, up, overthe range of both. Then he flung back his shaggy head and laughed. "In allmy father's realm there are no such bells as these!" It was the laughingjackass. "Who gave you your name?" "My godfathers and my godmothers in mybaptism. " Well, _his_ will have _that_ to answer for, however safely forthe rest he may have eschewed the world, the flesh, and the devil. Poorbird, to be set to sing to us under such a burden:--of which, unconsciousfailure, he knows nothing. 

Here I have remembered for you a bit of a poem that took hold of me somewhile ago and touched on the same unkindness: only here the flower isconscious of the wrong done to it, and looks forward to a day of justerjudgment:--

 "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; Passers-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 God 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 nobler thanthis 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 gaveme a pathetic account of his last days. It was the muzzling order thatbroke his poor old heart. He took it as an accusation on a point where, though of a melancholy disposition, his reputation had been spotless. Henever lifted his head nor smiled again. And not all his mistress' lovecould 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 mewhat names you like; and I will go to Jemima, Keziah, and Kerenhappuch forthe patience in which they must have taken after their father when he sonamed them, I suppose for a discipline. 

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

LETTER XLIX. 

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

Well, if this last letter of hers frees you sufficiently, it is quitesettled at this end that you are to be with us for Christmas:--read intothat the warmest corners of a heart already fully occupied. I do not thinkof it too much, till I am assured 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 ofoutside importance. I shall hear from the rattle of returning fire-enginessome day that Hatterling has been burned down: and you will arrive coolthe next day and say, "Oh yes, it is so!"

I am sure you have been right to secure this pledge of independence toyourself: but it hurts me to think what a deadly offense it may be both toher tenderness for you and her pride and stern love of power. To realizesuddenly that Hatterling does not mean to you so much as the power to beyour 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 donothing to soften it. 

February fill-dyke is likely to be true to its name, this coming one, inall that concerns us and our fortunes. Meanwhile, if at Pembury youbrought things any nearer settlement, and are not coming so soon asto-morrow, let me know: for some things of "outside importance" do affectme unfavorably while in suspense. I have not your serene determination toabide 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_. Itake it as an omen. In your diary to-morrow you may write down in thebusiness column that you have had a business letter from _me_, or asnear to one as I can go:--chiefly for that it requires an answer on thismatter of "outside importance, " which otherwise you will altogetherleave out. But you will do better still to come. My whole heart goes outto fetch you: my dearest dear, ever your own. 

LETTER L. 

Beloved: No, not Browning but Tennyson was in my thoughts at our last ridetogether: and I found myself shy, as I have been for a long time wishingto say things I could not. What has never entered your head to ask becomesdifficult when I wish to get it spoken. So I bring Tennyson to tell youwhat I mean:--

 "Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy? Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saäy. "

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

And do you understand, Beloved? or must I say more? My freedom has madeits nest under my uncle's roof: but I _am_ a quite independent person inother ways besides character. 

Well, Pembury was settled on your own initiative: and I looked on proudand glad. Now I have my own little word to add, merely a tail that wagsand makes merry over a thing decided and done. Do you forgive me forthis: and for the greater offense of being quite shy at having to writeit?

My Aunt thanks you for the game: for my part I cannot own that it willtaste sweeter to me for being your own shooting. And please, whateverelse you do big and grand and dangerous, respect my superstitions anddon't shoot any larks this winter. In the spring I would like to thinkthat here or there an extra lark bubbles over because I and my whimsfind occasional favor in your sight. When I ask great favors you alwaysgrant them; and so, Ahasuerus, grant this little one to your beautifullyloving. 

 * * * * *

Give me the credit of being conscious of it, Beloved: postscripts Inever _do_ write. I am glad you noticed it. If I find anything left outI start another letter: _this_ is that other letter: it goes into thesame envelope merely for company, and signs itself yours in all state. 

LETTER LI. 

Dearest: It was so nice and comedy to see the Mother-Aunt thismorning importantly opening a letter from you all to herself with thepleasure quite unmixed by any inclosure for me, or any other letter inthe house _to_ me so far as she was aware. I listened to you with newears, discovering that you write quite beautifully in the style which Inever get from you. Don't, because I admire you in your more formalform, alter in your style to me. I prefer you much, for my own part, formless: and feel nearer to your heart in an unfinished sentence thanin one that is perfectly balanced. Still I want you to know that yourcordial warmed her dear old heart and makes her not think now that shehas let me see too much of you. She was just beginning to worry herselfjealously into that belief the last two days: and Arthur's taking to youhelped to the same end. Very well; I seem to understand everybody'soddities now, --having made a complete study of yours. 

Best Beloved, I have your little letter lying close, and feel dumb whenI try to answer. You with your few words make me feel a small thing withall my unpenned rabble about me. Only you do know so very well that Ilove you better than I can ever write. This is my first letter of thenew year: will our letter-writing go on all this year, or will it, as wedearly dream, die a divine death somewhere before autumn?

In any case, I am, dearest, your most happy and loving. 

LETTER LII. 

My Dearest: Arthur and the friend went off together yesterday. I am gladthe latter stayed just long enough after you left for me to have leisureto find him out human. Here is the whole story: he came and unbosomed tome three days ago: and he said nothing about not telling, so I tell you. As water goes from a duck's back, so go all things worth hearing from meto you. 

Arthur had said to him, "Come down for a week, " and he had answered, "Can't, because of clothes!" explaining that beyond evening-dress he hadonly those he stood in. "Well, " said Arthur, "stand in them, then; youlook all right. " "The question is, " said his friend, "can I sit down?"However, he came; and was appalled to find that a man unpacked histrunk, and would in all probability be carrying away his clothes eachnight to brush them. He, conscious of interiors, a lining hanging inrags, and even a patching somewhere, had not the heart to let his oneand only day-jacket go down to the servants' hall to be sniffed over:and so every evening when he dressed for dinner he hid his jacketlaboriously under the permanent layers of a linen wardrobe which stoodin his room. 

I had all this in the frankest manner from him in the hour when hebecame human: and my fancy fired at the vision. Graves with a fierce eyeset on duty probing hither and thither in search after the missing coat;and each night the search becoming more strenuous and the mystery morebaffling than ever. It had a funny likeness to the Jack Raikes episodein "Evan Harrington, " and pleased me the more thus cropping up in reallife. 

Well, I demanded there and then to be shown the subject of so muchromance and adventure: and had the satisfaction of mending it, hesitting by in his shirt-sleeves the while, and watching delighted andwithout craven apologies. 

I notice it is not his own set he is ashamed of, but only the moneyed, high-sniffing servant-class who have no understanding for honorablepoverty: and to be misunderstood pricks him in the thinnest of thinplaces. 

He told me also that he brought only three white ties to last him forseven days: and that Graves placed them out in order of freshness andcleanliness night after night:--first three new ones consecutively, thenthree once worn. After that, on the seventh day, Graves resigned allfurther responsibility, and laid out all three of them for him to choosefrom. On the last three days of his stay he did me the honor to leave hiscoat out, declaring that my mendings had made it presentable before anemperor. Out of this dates the whole of his character, and I understand, what I did not, why Arthur and he get on together. 

Now the house is empty, and your comings will be--I cannot say morewelcome: but there will be more room for them to be after my own heart. 

Heaven be over us both. Faithfully your most loving. 

LETTER LIII. 

Beloved: I wish you could have been with me to look out into this gardenlast night when the spirit moved me there. I had started for bed, butbecame sensitive of something outside not normal. Whether my ear missedthe usual echoes and so guessed a muffled world I do not know. To open thedoor was like slicing into a wedding-cake; then, --where was I to put afoot into that new-laid carpet of ankle-deepness? I hobbled out in a pairof my uncle's. I suppose it is because I know every tree and shrub in itstrue form that snow seems to pile itself nowhere as it does here: itbecomes a garden of entombments. Now and then some heap would shufflefeebly under its shroud, but resurrection was not to be: the Lawsoncypress held out great boxing-glove hands for me to shake and set free;and the silence was wonderful. I padded about till I froze: this morning Ican see my big hoof-marks all over the place, and Benjy has beenscampering about in them as if he found some flavor of me there. The treesare already beginning to shake themselves loose, and the spell is over:but it had a wonderful hold while it lasted. I take a breath back intolast night, and feel myself again full of a romance without words that Icannot explain. If you had been there, even, I think I could haveforgotten I had you by me, the place was so weighed down with its sense ofsolitude. It struck eleven while I was outside, and in that, too, I couldhear a muffle as if snow choked all the belfry lattices and lay even onthe outer edge of the bell itself. Across the park there are dead boughscracking down under the weight of snow; and it would be very like you totramp over just because the roads will be so impossible. 

I heard yesterday a thing which made me just a little more free and easyin mind, though I had nothing sensibly on my conscience. Such a good youthwho two years ago believed I was his only possible future happiness, isnow quite happy with a totally different sort of person. I had a littleletter from him, shy and stately, announcing the event. I thought it sucha friendly act, for some have never the grace to unsay their grievances, however much actually blessed as a consequence of them. 

With that off my mind I can come to you swearing that there have been noaccidents on anybody's line of life through a mistake in signals, or aflying in the face of them, where I have had any responsibility. As foryou, and as you know well by now, my signals were ready and waitingbefore you sought for them. "Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you!" wastheir giveaway attitude. 

I am going down to play snowballs with Benjy. Good-by. If you come youwill find this letter on the hall table, and me you will probably hearbarking behind the rhododendrons. --So much your most loving. 

LETTER LIV. 

Beloved: We have been having a great day of tidyings out, rummagingthrough years and years of accumulations--things quite useless but which Ihave not liked to throw away. My soul has been getting such dusty answersto all sorts of doubtful inquiries as to where on earth this, that, andthe other lay hidden. And there were other things, the memory of which hadlain quite dead or slept, till under the light of day they sprouted hackinto life like corn from the grave of an Egyptian mummy. 

Very deep in one box I found a stealthy little collection of secretplaythings which it used to be my fond belief that nobody knew of butmyself. It may have been Anna's graspingness, when four years ofseniority gave her double my age, or Arthur's genial instinct fordestructiveness, which drove me into such deep concealment of my dearestidols. But, whether for those or more mystic reasons, I know I had dollswhich I nursed only in the strictest privacy and lavished my firmestlove upon. It was because of them that I bore the reproach of being buta lukewarm mother of dolls and careless of their toilets; the truthbeing that my motherly passion expended itself in secret on certainoutcasts of society whom others despised or had forgotten. They, ontheir limp and dissolute bodies, wore all the finery I could find topile on them: and one shady transaction done on their behalf I remembernow without pangs. There was one creature of state whom an inconsideraterelative had presented to Anna and myself in equal shares. Of courseAnna's became more and more lionlike. I had very little love for thebone of contention myself, but the sense of injustice rankled in me. Soone day, at an unclothing, Anna discovered that certain undergarmentswere gone altogether away. She sat aghast, questioned me, and, when Irefused to disgorge, screamed down vengeance from the authorities. I wasmorally certain I had taken no more than my just share, and resolutionsat on my lips under all threats. For a punishment the whole ownershipof the big doll was made over to Anna: I was no worse off, and was verycontented with my obstinacy. To-day I found the beautifully wroughtbodice, which I had carried beyond reach of even the supreme court ofappeal, clothing with ridiculous looseness a rag-doll whose headtottered on its stem like an over-ripe plum, and whose legs had nodeportment at all: and am sending it off in charitable surrender toAnna to be given, bag and rag, to whichever one of the children shelikes to select. 

Also I found:--would you care to have a lock of hair taken from the headof a child then two years old, which, bright golden, does not match whatI have on now in the least? I can just remember her: but she is much ofa stranger to both of us. Why I value it is that the name and date onthe envelope inclosing it are in my mother's handwriting: and I suppose_she_ loved very much the curly treasure she then put away. Some of theother things, quite funny, I will show you the next time you come over. How I wish that vanished mite had mixed some of her play-hours withyours:--you only six miles away all the time: had one but known!--Nowgrown very old and loving, always your own. 

LETTER LV. 

Beloved: I am getting quite out of letter-writing, and it is your doing, not mine. No sooner do I get a line from you than you rush over in personand take the answer to it out of my mouth!

I have had six from you in the last week, and believe I have onlyexchanged you one: all the rest have been nipped in the bud by yourarrivals. My pen turns up a cross nose whenever it hears you coming now, and declares life so dull as not to be worth living. Poor dinky littleOthello! it shall have its occupation again to-day, and say just what itlikes. 

It likes you while you keep away: so that's said! When I make it write"come, " it kicks and tries to say "don't. " For it is an industriousminion, loves to have work to do, and never complains of overhours. Itis a sentimental fact that I keep all its used-up brethren in aninclosure together, and throw none of them away. If once they haveridden over paper to you, I turn them to grass in their old age. I letthis out because I think it is time you had another laugh at me. 

Laugh, dearest, and tell me that you have done so if you want to make mea little more happy than I have been this last day or two. There hasbeen too much thinking in the heads of both of us. Be empty-headed foronce when you write next: whether you write little or much, I am surealways of your full heart: but I cannot trust your brain to the samepressure: it is such a Martha to headaches and careful about so manythings, and you don't bring it here to be soothed as often as youshould--not at its most needy moments, I mean. 

Have you made the announcement? or does it not go till to-day? I am notsorry, since the move comes from her, that we have not to wait now tillFebruary. You will feel better when the storm is up than when it is onlylooming. This is the headachy period. 

Well. Say "well" with me, dearest! It is going to be well: waiting hasnot suited us--not any of us, I think. Your mother is one in a thousand, I say that and mean it:--worth conquering as all good things are. Iwould not wish great fortune to come by too primrosy a way. "Canst thoudraw out Leviathan with a hook?" Even so, for size, is the share of theworld which we lay claim to, and for that we must be toilers of thedeep. --Always, Beloved, your truest and most loving. 

LETTER LVI. 

My Own Own Love: You have given me a spring day before the buds begin, --the weather I have been longing for! I had been quite sad at heart thesecold wet days, really _down_;--a treasonable sadness with you stillanywhere in the world (though where in the world have you been?). Springseemed such a long way off over the bend of it, with you unable to come;and it seems now another letter of yours has got lost. (Write it again, dearest, --all that was in it, with any blots that happened to come:--therewas a dear smudge in to-day's, with the whirlpool mark of your thumb quiteclear on it, --delicious to rest my face against and feel _you_ there. )

And so back to my spring weather: all in a moment you gave me a wholeweek of the weather I had longed after. For you say the sun has beenshining on you: and I would rather have it there than here if it refusesto be in two places at once. Also my letters have pleased you. When theydo, I feel such a proud mother to them! Here they fly quick out of thenest; but I think sometimes they must come to you broken-winged, withso much meant and all so badly put. 

How can we ever, with our poor handful of senses, contrive to expressourselves perfectly? Perhaps, --I don't know:--dearest, I love you! Ikiss you a hundred times to the minute. If everything in the world weredark round us, could not kisses tell us quite well all that we wish toknow of each other?--me that you were true and brave and so beautifulthat a woman must be afraid looking at you:--and you that I was just myvery self, --loving and--no! just loving: I have no room for anythingmore! You have swallowed up all my moral qualities, I have none left: Iam a beggar, where it is so sweet to beg. --Give me back crumbs ofmyself! I am so hungry, I cannot show it, only by kissing you a hundredtimes. 

Dear share of the world, what a wonderful large helping of it you are tome! I alter Portia's complaint and swear that "my little body isbursting with this great world. " And now it is written and I look at it, it seems a Budge and Toddy sort of complaint. I do thank Heaven that theGodhead who rules in it for us does not forbid the recognition of theludicrous! C---- was telling me how long ago, in her own dull Protestanthousehold, she heard a riddle propounded by some indiscreet soul who didnot understand the prudish piety which reigned there: and saw suchshocked eyes opening all round on the sound of it. "What is it, " wasasked, "that a common man can see every day but that God never sees?""His equal" is the correct answer: but even so demure and proper asupport to thistly theology was to the ears that heard it as the hand ofUzzah stretched out intrusively and deserving to be smitten. As forC----, a twinkle of wickedness seized her, she hazarded "A joke" to bethe true answer, and was ordered into banishment by the head of thatGod-fearing household for having so successfully diagnosed the familyskeleton. 

As for skeletons, why your letter makes me so happy is that the onewhich has been rubbing its ribs against you for so long seems to havegiven itself a day off, or crumbled to dissolution. And you are yourselfagain, as you have not been for many a long day. I suppose there hasbeen thunder, and the air is cleared: and I am not to know any of thatside of your discomforts?

Still I _do_ know. You have been writing your letters with pressed lipsfor a month past: and I have been a mere toy-thing, and no helpmate toyou at all at all. Oh, why will she not love me? I know I am lovableexcept to a very hard heart, and hers is not: it is only like yours, reserved in its expression. It is strange what pain her prejudice hasbeen able to drop into my cup of happiness; and into yours, dearest, Ifear, even more. 

Oh, I love you, I love you! I am crying with it, having no words todeclare to you what I feel. My tears have wings in them: firstsemi-detached, then detached. See, dearest, there is a rain-stain tomake this letter fruitful of meaning!

It is sheer convention--and we, creatures of habit--that tears don'tcome kindly and easily to express where laughter leaves off and asomething better begins. Which is all very ungrammatical and entirelyme, as I am when I get off my hinges too suddenly. 

Amen, amen! When we are both a hundred we shall remember all this verypeaceably; and the "sanguine flower" will not look back at us lessbeautifully because in just one spot it was inscribed with woe. And ifwe with all our aids cannot have patience, where in this midge-bittenworld is that virtue to find a standing?

I kiss you--how? as if it were for the first or the last time? No, butfor all time, Beloved! every time I see you or think of you sums up myworld. Love me a little, too, and I will be as contented as I am yourloving. 

LETTER LVII. 

Come to me! I will not understand a word you have written till you come. Who has been using your hand to strike me like this, and why do you lendit? Oh, if it is she, you do not owe her _that_ duty! Never write suchthings:--speak! have you ever found me not listen to you, or hard toconvince? Dearest, dearest!--take what I mean: I cannot write over thisgulf. Come to me, --I will believe anything you can _say_, but I canbelieve nothing of this written. I must see you and hear what it is youmean. Dear heart, I am blind till I set eyes on you again! Beloved, I havenothing, nothing in me but love for you: except for that I am empty!Believe me and give me time; I will not be unworthy of the joy of holdingyou. I am nothing if not _yours_! Tell this to whoever is deceiving you. 

Oh, my dearest, why did you stay away from me to write so? Come and put anend to a thing which means nothing to either of us. You love me: how canit have a meaning?

Can you not hear my heart crying?--I love nobody but you--do not knowwhat love is without you! How can I be more yours than I am? Tell me, andI will be!

Here are kisses. Do not believe yourself till you have seen me. Oh, thepain of having to _write_, of not having your arms round me in my misery!I kiss your dear blind eyes with all my heart. --My Love's most loved andloving. 

LETTER LVIII. 

No, no, I cannot read it! What have I done that you will notcome to me? They are mad here, telling me to be calm, that I am not togo to you. I too am out of my mind--except that I love you. I knownothing except that. Beloved, only on my lips will I take my dismissalfrom yours: not God himself can claim you from me till you have done methat justice. Kiss me once more, and then, if you can, say we must part. You cannot!--Ah, come here where my heart is, and you cannot!

Have I never told you enough how I love you? Dearest, I have no wordsfor all my love: I have no pride in me. Does not this alone tellyou?--You are sending me away, and I cry to you to spare me. Can I loveyou more than that? What will you have of me that I have not given? Oh, you, the sun in my dear heavens--if I lose you, what is left of me?Could you break so to pieces even a woman you did not love? And me you_do_ love, --you _do_. Between all this denial of me, and all thissilence of words that you have put your name to, I see clearly that youare still my lover. --Your writing breaks with trying not to say it: yousay again and again that there is no fault in me. I swear to you, dearest, there is none, unless it be loving you: and how can you meanthat? For what are you and I made for unless for each other? With allour difference people tell us we are alike. We were shaped for eachother from our very birth. Have we not proved it in a hundred days ofhappiness, which have lifted us up to the blue of a heaven higher thanany birds ever sang? And now you say--taking on you the blame for thevery life-blood in us both--that the fault is yours, and that your faultis to have allowed me to love you and yourself to love me!

Who has suddenly turned our love into a crime? Beloved, is it a sin thathere on earth I have been seeing God through you? Go away from me, and Heis gone also. Ah, sweetheart, let me see you before all my world turnsinto a wilderness! Let me know better why, --if my senses are to be emptiedof you. My heart can never let you go. Do you wish that it should?

Bring your own here, and see if it can tell me that! Come and listen tomine! Oh, dearest heart that ever beat, mine beats so like yours thatonce together you shall not divide their sound!

Beloved, I will be patient, believe me, to any words you can say: but Icannot be patient away from you. If I have seemed to reproach you, donot think that now. For you are to give me a greater joy than I ever hadbefore when you take me in your arms again after a week that has spelleddreadful separation. And I shall bless you for it--for this present paineven--because the joy will be so much greater. 

Only come: I do not live till you have kissed me again. Oh, my beloved, how cruel love may seem if we do not trust it enough! My trust in you hascome back in a great rush of warmth, like a spring day after frost. Ialmost laugh as I let this go. It brings you, --perhaps before I wake: Ishall be so tired to-night. Call under my window, make me hear in mysleep. I will wake up to you, and it shall be all over before the rest ofthe world wakes. There is no dream so deep that I shall not hear you outof the midst of it. Come and be my morning-glory to-morrow without fail. Iwill rewrite nothing that I have written--let it go! See me out of deepwaters again, because I have thought so much of you! I have come throughclouds and thick darkness. I press your name to my lips a thousand times. As sure as sunrise I say to myself that you will come: the sun is nottruer to his rising than you to me. 

Love will go flying after this till I sleep. God bless you!--and me also;it is all one and the same wish. --Your most true, loving, and dearfaithful one. 

LETTER LIX. 

I have to own that I know your will now, at last. Without seeing you I amconvinced: you have a strong power in you to have done that! You have toldme the word I am to say to you: it is your bidding, so I say it--Good-by. But it is a word whose meaning I cannot share. 

Yet I have something to tell you which I could not have dreamed if ithad not somehow been true: which has made it possible for me to believe, without hearing you speak it, that I am to be dismissed out of yourheart. --May the doing of it cost you far less pain than I am fearing!

You did not come, though I promised myself so certainly that you would:instead came your last very brief note which this is to obey. Still Iwatched for you to come, believing it still and trusting to silence onmy part to bring you more certainly than any more words could do. Andat last either you came to me, or I came to you: a bitter last meeting. Perhaps your mind too holds what happened, if so I have got truly atwhat your will is. I must accept it as true, since I am not to see youagain. I cannot tell you whether I thought it or dreamed it, but itseems still quite real, and has turned all my past life into a mockery. 

When I came I was behind you; then you turned and I could see yourface--you too were in pain: in that we seemed one. But when I touchedyou and would have kissed you, you shuddered at me and drew back yourhead. I tell you this as I would tell you anything unbelievable that Ihad heard told of you behind your back. You see I am obeying you atlast. 

For all the love which you gave me when I seemed worthy of it I thankyou a thousand times. Could you ever return to the same mind, I shouldbe yours once more as I still am; never ceasing on my side to be yourlover and servant till death, and--if there be anything more--after aswell. 

My lips say amen now: but my heart cannot say it till breath goes out ofmy body. Good-by: that means--God be with you. I mean it; but He seems tohave ceased to be with me altogether. Good-by, dearest. I kiss your heartwith writing for the last time, and your eyes, that will see nothing morefrom me after this. Good-by. 

Note. --All the letters which follow were found lying looselytogether. They only went to their destination after the writer's death. 

LETTER LX. 

To-day, dearest, a letter from you reached me: a fallen star which hadlost its way. It lies dead in my bosom. It was the letter that lost itselfin the post while I was traveling: it comes now with half a dozenpostmarks, and signs of long waiting in one place. In it you say, "We havebeen engaged now for two whole months; I never dreamed that two moonscould contain so much happiness. " Nor I, dearest! We have now beenseparated for three; and till now I had not dreamed that time could socreep, to such infinitely small purpose, as it has in carrying me from themoment when I last saw you. 

You were so dear to me, Beloved; _that_ you ever are! Time changesnothing in you as you seemed to me then. Oh, I am sick to touch yourhands: all my thoughts run to your service: they seem to hear you call, only to find locked doors. 

If you could see me now I think you would open the door for a littlewhile. 

If they came and told me--"You are to see him just for five minutes, andthen part again"--what should I be wanting most to say to you? Nothing--only "Speak, speak!" I would have you fill my heart with your voice thewhole time: five minutes more of you to fold my life round. It wouldmatter very little what you said, barring the one thing that remains neverto be said. 

Oh, could all this silence teach me the one thing I am longing to know!--why am I unworthy of you? If I cannot be your wife, why cannot I see youstill, --serve you if possible? I would be grateful. 

You meant to be generous; and wishing not to wound me, you said that"there was no fault" in me. I realize now that you would not have saidthat to the woman you still loved. And now I am never to know what partin me is hateful to you. I must live with it because you would not tellme the truth!

Every day tells me I am different from the thing I wish to be--yourlove, the woman you approve. 

I love you, I love you! Can I get no nearer to you ever for all thisstraining? If I love you so much, I must be moving toward what you wouldhave me be. In our happiest days my heart had its growing pains, --growingto be as you wished it. 

Dear, even the wisest make mistakes, and the tenderest may be hardwithout knowing: I do not think I am unworthy of you, if you knew all. 

Writing to you now seems weakness: yet it seemed peace to come in hereand cry to you. And when I go about I have still strength left, and tryto be cheerful. Nobody knows, I think nobody knows. No one in the houseis made downcast because of me. How dear they are, and how little I canthank them! Except to you, dearest, I have not shown myself selfish. 

I love you too much, too much: I cannot write it. 

LETTER LXI. 

You are very ill, they tell me. Beloved, it is such kindness inthem to have regard for the wish they disapprove and to let me know. Knowledge is the one thing needful whose lack has deprived me of myhappiness: the express image of sorrow is not so terrible as theforeboding doubt of it. Not because you are ill, but because I knowsomething definitely about you, I am happier to-day: a little nearer toa semblance of service to you in my helplessness. How much I wish youwell, even though that might again carry you out of my knowledge! And, though death might bring you nearer than life now makes possible, I prayto you, dearest, not to die. It is not right that you should die yet, with a mistake in your heart which a little more life might clear away. 

Praying for your dear eyes to remain open, I realize suddenly how muchhope still remains in me, where I thought none was left. Even yourillness I take as a good omen; and the thought of you weak as a childand somewhat like one in your present state with no brain for deepthinking, comes to my heart to be cherished endlessly: there you lie, Beloved, brought home to my imagination as never since the day weparted. And the thought comes to the rescue of my helpless longing--thatit is as little children that men get brought into the kingdom ofHeaven. Let that be the medicine and outcome of your sickness, my ownBeloved! I hold my breath with hope that I shall have word of you whenyour hand has strength again to write. For I know that in sleeplessnights and in pain you will be unable not to think of me. If you maderesolutions against that when you were well, they will go now that youare laid weak; and so some power will come back to me, and my heart willnever be asleep for thinking that yours lies awake wanting it:--nor everbe at rest for devising ways by which to be at the service of yourconscious longing. 

Ah, my own one Beloved, whom I have loved so openly and so secretly, ifyou were as I think some other men are, I could believe that I had givenyou so much of my love that you had tired of me because I had made nofavor of it but had let you see that I was your faithful subject andservant till death: so that after twenty years you, chancing upon anempty day in your life, might come back and find me still yours;--asto-morrow, if you came, you would. 

My pride died when I saw love looking out of your eyes at me; and it hasnot come back to me now that I see you no more. I have no wish that itshould. In all ways possible I would wish to be as I was when you lovedme; and seek to change nothing except as you bid me. 

LETTER LXII. 

So I have seen you, Beloved, again, after fearing that I never should. Aday's absence from home has given me this great fortune. 

The pain of it was less than it might have been, since our looks did notmeet. To have seen your eyes shut out their recognition of me would havehurt me too much: I must have cried out against such a judgment. But youpassed by the window without knowing, your face not raised: so littlechanged, yet you have been ill. Arthur tells me everything: he knows Imust have any word of you that goes begging. 

Oh, I hope you are altogether better, happier! An illness helps somepeople: the worst of their sorrow goes with the health that breaks downunder it; and they come out purged into a clearer air, and are madewhole for a fresh trial of life. 

I hear that you are going quite away; and my eyes bless this chance tohave embraced you once again. Your face is the kindest I have everseen: even your silence, while I looked at you, seemed a grace insteadof a cruelty. What kindness, I say to myself, even if it be mistakenkindness, must have sealed those dear lips not to tell me of my unworth!

Oh, if I could see once into the brain of it all! No one but myself knowshow good you are: how can I, then, be so unworthy of you? Did you think Iwould not surrender to anything you fixed, that you severed us socompletely, not even allowing us to meet, and giving me no way to comeback to you though I might come to be all that you wished? Ah, dear face, how hungry you have made me!--the more that I think you are not yet sohappy as I could wish, --as I could make you, --I say it foolishly:--yet ifyou would trust me, I am sure. 

Oh, how tired loving you now makes me! physically I grow weary with theache to have you in my arms. And I dream, I dream always, the shadows offormer kindness that never grow warm enough to clasp me before Iwake. --Yours, dearest, waking or sleeping. 

LETTER LXIII. 

Do you remember, Beloved, when you came on your birthday, you said I wasto give you another birthday present of your own choosing, and I promised?And it was that we were to do for the whole day what _I_ wished: you werenot to be asked to choose. 

You said then that it was the first time I had ever let you have yourway, which was to see me be myself independently of you:--as if such aself existed. 

You will never see what I write now; and I did not do then any of thethings I most wished: for first I wished to kneel down and kiss yourhands and feet; and you would not have liked that. Even now that youlove me no more, you would not like me to do such a thing. A woman cannever do as she likes when she loves--there is no such thing until heshows it her or she divines it. I loved you, I loved you!--that was allI could do, and all I wanted to do. 

You have kept my letters? Do you read them ever, I wonder? and do theytell you differently about me, now that you see me with new eyes? Ah no, you dare not look at them: they tell too much truth! How can love-lettersever cease to be the winged things they were when they first came? I fancymine sick to death for want of your heart to rest on; but never lessloving. 

If you would read them again, you would come back to me. Those littlethroats of happiness would be too strong for you. And so you lay them ina cruel grave of lavender, --"Lavender for forgetfulness" might beanother song for Ophelia to sing. 

I am weak with writing to you, I have written too long: this is twiceto-day. 

I do not write to make myself more miserable: only to fill up my time. 

When I go about something definite, I can do it:--to ride, or read aloudto the old people, or sit down at meals with them is very easy; but Icannot make employment for myself--that requires too much effort ofinvention and will: and I have only will for one thing in life--to getthrough it: and no invention to the purpose. Oh, Beloved, in the grave Ishall lie forever with a lock of your hair in my hand. I wonder if, beyond there, one sees anything? My eyes ache to-day from the brain, which is always at blind groping for you, and the point where I missedyou. 

LETTER LXIV. 

Dearest: It is dreadful to own that I was glad at first to know that youand your mother were no longer together, glad of something that must meanpain to you! I am not now. When you were ill I did a wrong thing: from hersomething came to me which I returned. I would do much to undo that actnow; but this has fixed it forever. With it were a few kind words. I couldnot bear to accept praise from her: all went back to her! Oh, poor thing, poor thing! if I ever had an enemy I thought it was she! I do not think sonow. Those who seem cold seldom are. I hope you were with her at the last:she loved you beyond any word that was in her nature to utter, and theyoung are hard on the old without knowing it. We were two people, she andI, whose love clashed jealously over the same object, and we both failed. She is the first to get rest. 

LETTER LXV. 

My Dear: I dream of you now every night, and you are always kind, alwaysjust as I knew you: the same without a shadow of change. 

I cannot picture you anyhow else, though my life is full of the silenceyou have made. My heart seems to have stopped on the last beat the sightof your handwriting gave it. 

I dare not bid you come back now: sorrow has made me a stranger tomyself. I could not look at you and say "I am your Star":--I could notbelieve it if I said it. Two women have inhabited me, and the one herenow is not the one you knew and loved: their one likeness is that theyboth have loved the same man, the one certain that her love wasreturned, and the other certain of nothing. What a world of differencelies in that!

I lay hands on myself, half doubting, and feel my skeleton pushing tothe front: my glass shows it me. Thus we are all built up: bones are atthe foundations of our happiness, and when the happiness wears thin, they show through, the true architecture of humanity. 

I have to realize now that I have become the greatest possible failurein life, --a woman who has lost her "share of the world": I try to shapemyself to it. 

It is deadly when a woman's sex, what was once her glory, reveals itselfto her as an all-containing loss. I realized myself fully only when Iwas with you; and now I can't undo it. --You gone, I lean against ashadow, and feel myself forever falling, drifting to no end, a Francescawithout a Paolo. Well, it must be some comfort that I do not drag youwith me. I never believed myself a "strong" woman; your lightest wishshaped me to its liking. Now you have molded me with your own image andsuperscription, and have cast me away. 

Are not the die and the coin that comes from it only two sides of thesame form?--there is not a hair's breadth anywhere between theirsurfaces where they lie, the one inclosing the other. Yet part them, andthe light strikes on them how differently! That is a mere condition oflight: join them in darkness, where the light cannot strike, and theyare the same--two faces of a single form. So you and I, dear, when weare dead, shall come together again, I trust. Or are we to come back toeach other defaced and warped out of our true conjunction? I think not:for if you have changed, if soul can ever change, I shall be meltedagain by your touch, and flow to meet all the change that is in you, since my true self is to be you. 

Oh, you, my Beloved, do you wake happy, either with or without thoughtsof me? I cannot understand, but I trust that it may be so. If I couldhave a reason why I have so passed out of your life, I could endure itbetter. What was in me that you did not wish? What was in you that Imust not wish for evermore? If the root of this separation was in you, if in God's will it was ordered that we were to love, and, withoutloving less, afterwards be parted, I could acquiesce so willingly. Butit is this knowing nothing that overwhelms me:--I strain my eyes forsight and can't see; I reach out my hands for the sunlight and am givengreat handfuls of darkness. I said to you the sun had dropped out of myheaven. --My dear, my dear, is this darkness indeed you? Am I in the moldwith my face to yours, receiving the close impression of a misery inwhich we are at one? Are you, dearest, hungering and thirsting for me, as I now for you?

I wonder what, to the starving and drought-stricken, the taste of deathcan be like! Do all the rivers of the world run together to the lipsthen, and all its fruits strike suddenly to the taste when the longdeprivation ceases to be a want? Or is it simply a ceasing of hunger andthirst--an antidote to it all?

I may know soon. How very strange if at the last I forget to think ofyou!

LETTER LXVI. 

Dearest: Every day I am giving myself a little more pain than I need--forthe sake of you. I am giving myself your letters to read again day by dayas I received them. Only one a day, so that I have still something left tolook forward to to-morrow: and oh, dearest, what _unanswerable_ thingsthey have now become, those letters which I used to answer so easily!There is hardly a word but the light of to-day stands before it like adrawn sword, between the heart that then felt and wrote so, and mine as itnow feels and waits. 

All your tenderness then seems to be cruelty now: only _seems_, dearest, for I still say, I _do_ say that it is not so. I know it is not so: I, who know nothing else, know that! So I look every day at one of thesemonstrous contradictions, and press it to my heart till it becomesreconciled with the pain that is there always. 

Indeed you loved me: that I see now. Words which I took so much forgranted then have a strange force now that I look back at them. You didlove: and I who did not realize it enough then, realize it now when youno longer do. 

And the commentary on all this is that one letter of yours which I sayover and over to myself sometimes when I cannot pray: "There is no faultin you: the fault is elsewhere; I can no longer love you as I did. Allthat was between us must be at an end; for your good and mine the onlyright thing is to say good-by without meeting. I know you will notforget me, but you will forgive me, even because of the great pain Icause you. You are the most generous woman I have known. If it wouldcomfort you to blame me for this I would beg you to do it: but I knowyou better, and ask you to believe that it is my deep misfortune ratherthan my fault that I can be no longer your lover, as, God knows, I wasonce, I dare not say how short a time ago. To me you remain, what Ialways found you, the best and most true-hearted woman a man could prayto meet. "

This, dearest, I say and say: and write down now lest you have forgottenit. For your writing of it, and all the rest of you that I have, goeswith me to my grave. How superstitious we are of our own bodies afterdeath!--I, as if I believed that I should ever rise or open my ears toany sound again! I do not, yet it comforts me to make sure that certainthings shall go with me to dissolution. 

Truly, dearest, I believe grief is a great deceiver, and that no onequite quite wishes not to exist. I have no belief in future existence;yet I wish it so much--to exist again outside all this failure of mylife. For at present I have done you no good at all, only evil. 

And I hope now and then, that writing thus to you I am not writingaltogether in vain. If I can see sufficiently at the last to say--Sendhim these, it will be almost like living again: for surely you will loveme again when you see how much I have suffered, --and suffered because Iwould not let thought of you go. 

Could you dream, Beloved, reading _this_ that there is bright sunlightstreaming over my paper as I write?

LETTER LXVII. 

Do you forgive me for coming into your life, Beloved? I do not know inwhat way I can have hurt you, but I know that I have. Perhaps withoutknowing it we exchange salves for the wounds we have given and received?Dearest, I trust those I send reach you: I send them, wishing till I growweak. My arms strain and become tired trying to be wings to carry them toyou: and I am glad of that weariness--it seems to be some virtue that hasgone out of me. If all my body could go out in the effort, I think Ishould get a glimpse of your face, and the meaning of everything then atlast. 

I have brought in a wild rose to lay here in love's cenotaph, among allmy thoughts of you. It comes from a graveyard full of "little deaths. " Iremember once sending you a flower from the same place when love wasstill fortunate with us. I must have been reckless in my happiness to dothat!

Beloved, if I could speak or write out all my thoughts, till I hademptied myself of them, I feel that I should rest. But there is no_emptying_ the brain by thinking. Things thought come to be thoughtagain over and over, and more and fresh come in their train: childrenand grandchildren, generations of them, sprung from the old stock. Ihave many thoughts now, born of my love for you, that never came when wewere together, --grandchildren of our days of courtship. Some of them areset down here, but others escape and will never see your face!

If (poor word, it has the sound but no hope of a future life): still, IF you should ever come back to me and want, as you would want, to know something of the life in between, --I could put these lettersthat I keep into your hands and trust them to say for me that no dayhave I been truly, that is to say _willingly_, out of your heart. WhenRichard Feverel comes back to his wife, do you remember how she takeshim to see their child, which till then he had never seen--and itslikeness to him as it lies asleep? Dearest, have I not been as true toyou in all that I leave here written?

If, when I come to my finish, I get any truer glimpse of your mind, andam sure of what you would wish, I will leave word that these shall besent to you. If not, I must suppose knowledge is still delayed, not thatit will not reach you. 

Sometimes I try still not to wish to die. For my poor body's sake Iwish Well to have its last chance of coming to pass. It is the unhappyunfulfilled clay of life, I think, which robbed of its share of thingsset ghosts to walk: mists which rise out of a ground that has not workedout its fruitfulness, to take the shape of old desires. If I leave aghost, it will take _your_ shape, not mine, dearest: for it will be "astrees walking" that the "lovers of trees" will come back to earth. Browning did not know that. Someone else, not Browning, has worded itfor us: a lover of trees far away sends his soul back to the countrythat has lost him, and there "the traveler, marveling why, halts on thebridge to hearken how soft the poplars sigh, " not knowing that it is thelover himself who sighs in the trees all night. That is how the ghostsof real love come back into the world. The ghosts of love and the ghostsof hatred must be quite different: these bring fear, and those none. Come to me, dearest, in the blackest night, and I will not be afraid. 

How strange that when one has suffered most, it is the poets (those whoare supposed to _sing_) who best express things for us. Yet singing is thething I feel least like. If ever a heart once woke up to find itself fullof tune, it was mine; now you have drawn all the song out of it, emptiedit dry: and I go to the poets to read epitaphs. I think it is theircruelty that appeals to me:--they can sing of grief! O hard hearts!

Sitting here thinking of you, my ears have suddenly become wide open tothe night-sounds outside. A night-jar is making its beautiful burr inthe stillness, and there are things going away and away, telling me thewhereabouts of life like points on a map made for the ear. You, too, are_somewhere_ outside, making no sound: and listening for you I heardthese. It seemed as if my brain had all at once opened and caught a newsense. Are you there? This is one of those things which drop to us withno present meaning: yet I know I am not to forget it as long as I live. 

Good-night! At your head, at your feet, is there any room for me to-night, Beloved?

LETTER LXVIII. 

Dearest: The thought keeps troubling me how to give myself to you most, ifyou should ever come back for me when I am no longer here. These poorletters are all that I can leave: will they tell you enough of my heart?

Oh, into that, wish any wish that you like, and it is there already! Myheart, dearest, only moves in the wish to be what you desire. 

Yet I am conscious that I cannot give, unless you shall choose to take:and though I write myself down each day your willing slave, I cry mywares in a market where there is no bidder to hear me. 

Dearest, though my whole life is yours, it is little you know of it. My wish would be to have every year of my life blessed by yourconsciousness of it. Barely a year of me is all that you have, truly, toremember: though I think five summers at least came to flower, andwithered in that one. 

I wish you knew my whole life: I cannot tell it: it was too full ofinfinitely small things. Yet what I can remember I would like to tellnow: so that some day, perhaps, perhaps, my childhood may here and therebe warmed long after its death by your knowledge coming to it anddiscovering in it more than you knew before. 

How I long, dearest, that what I write may look up some day and meet youreye! Beloved, _then_, however faded the ink may have grown, I think thespirit of my love will remain fresh in it:--I kiss you on the lips withevery word. The thought of "good-by" is never to enter here: it is _Areviderci_ for ever and ever:--"Love, love, " and "meet again!"--the wordswe put into the thrush's song on a day you will remember, when all theworld for us was a garden. 

Dearest, what I can tell you of older days, --little things they must be--Iwill: and I know that if you ever come to value them at all, theirlittleness will make them doubly welcome:--just as to know that you wereonce called a "gallous young hound" by people whom you plagued when a boy, was to me a darling discovery: all at once I caught my childhood'simaginary comrade to my young spirit's heart and kissed him, brow andeyes. 

Good-night, good-night! To-morrow I will find you some earliest memory:the dew of Hermon be on it when you come to it--if ever!

Oh, Beloved, could you see into my heart now, or I into yours, timewould grow to nothing for us; and my childhood would stay unwritten!

From far and near I gather my thoughts of you for the kiss I cannotgive. Good-night, dearest. 

LETTER LXIX. 

Beloved: I remember my second birthday. I am quite sure of it, because mythird I remember so infinitely well. --Then I was taken in to see Arthurlying in baby bridal array of lace fringes and gauze, and received in myarms held up for me by Nan-nan the awful weight and imperial importance ofhis small body. 

I think from the first I was told of him as my "brother": cousin I havenever been able to think him. But all this belongs to my third: on mysecond, I remember being on a floor of roses; and they told me if Iwould go across to a clipboard and pull it open there would be somethingthere waiting for me. And it was on all-fours that I went all eagernessacross great patches of rose-pattern, till I had butted my way through adoor left ajar, and found in a cardboard box of bright tinsel andflowers two little wax babes in the wood lying. 

I think they gave me my first sense of color, except, perhaps, therose-carpet which came earlier, and they remained for quite a long timethe most beautiful thing I knew. It is strange that I cannot rememberwhat became of them, for I am sure I neither broke nor lost them, --perhapsit was done for me: Arthur came afterward, the tomb of many of my earlyjoys, and the maker of so many new ones. He, dearest, is the one, the onlyone, who has seen the tears that belong truly to you: and he blesses mewith such wonderful patience when I speak your name, allowing that perhapsI know better than he. And after the wax babies I had him for my thirdbirthday. 

LETTER LXX. 

Beloved: I think that small children see very much as animals must do:just the parts of things which have a direct influence on their lives, andno memory outside that. I remember the kindness or frowns of faces inearly days far more than the faces themselves: and it is quite a distinctand later memory that I have of standing within a doorway and watching mymother pass downstairs unconscious of my being there, --and _then_, for thefirst time, studying her features and seeing in them a certain solitudeand distance which I had never before noticed:--I suppose because I hadnever before thought of looking at her when she was not concerned with me. 

It was this unobservance of actual features, I imagine, which made methink all gray-haired people alike, and find a difficulty in recognizingthose who called, except generically as callers--people who kissed me, and whom therefore I liked to see. 

One, I remember, for no reason unless because she had a brown face, Imistook from a distance for my Aunt Dolly, and bounded into the roomwhere she was sitting, with a cry of rapture. And it was my earliestconscious test of politeness, when I found out my mistake, not to cry overit 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 usin the mind's lavender are just the tit-bits of life, or the first blowsto our intelligence--things which did matter and mean much. 

Corduroys come early into my life, --their color and the queer earthysmell of those which particularly concerned me: because I was picked upfrom a fall and tenderly handled by a rough working-man so clothed, whomI regarded for a long time afterward as an adorable object. He and Ilived 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 whenthe change in my sense of beauty took place as regards him. 

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

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

I think as a child the small ground-flowers of spring took a larger holdupon me than any others:--I was so close to them. Roses I don't remembertill I was four or five; but crocus and snowdrop seem to have been in myblood from the very beginning of things; and I remember likening thegreen inner petals of the snowdrop to the skirts of some ballet-dancingdolls, 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 feedthem with bits of their own green leaves, believing faithfully thatthose mouths must need food of some sort. When I became more thoughtfulI ceased to make cannibals of them: but I think I was less convincedthen of the digestive process. I don't know when I left off feedingsnapdragons: I think calceolarias helped to break me off the habit, forI found they had no throats to swallow with. 

In much the same way as sights that have no meaning leave no traces, soI suppose do words and sounds. It was many years before I overheard, inthe 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 tocome down, hoping to be an amusing surprise to them. And I could not atall understand why I was scolded; for, indeed, I had _heard_ nothing atall, though no doubt plenty that was unsuitable for a child's ears hadbeen said, and was on the elders' minds when they upbraided me. 

Dearest, such a long-ago! and all these smallest of small things Iremember again, to lay them up for you: all the child-parentage of me whomyou 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 Iknow of myself now! And yet I have known you, and know you still, so amthe 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 wentfirst. And a fearful feeling used to accompany me that I was going to meetthe "evil chance" when I got to the corner. Sometimes when I felt it wasthere very badly, I used at the last moment to shut my eyes and walkthrough it: and feel, on the other side, like a pilgrim who had comethrough the waters of Jordan. 

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

I have an idea that one listens better with one's eyes shut, and that thisand other things are a remnant of our primitive existence when perhaps theears of our arboreal ancestors kept a lookout while the rest of theirsenses slept. I think, also, that the instinct I found in myself, and havesince in other children, to conceal a wound is a similar survival. At onetime, I suppose, in the human herd the damaged were quickly put out ofexistence; and it was the self-preservation instinct which gave me so keena wish to get into hiding when one day I cut my finger badly--somethingmore than a mere scratch, which I would have cried over and had bandagedquite in the correct way. I remember I sat in a corner and pretended to benursing a rag doll which I had knotted round my hand, till Nan-nannoticed, perhaps, that I looked white, and found blood flowing into mylap. And I can recall still the overcoming comfort which fell upon me as Ilet resolution go, and sobbed in her arms full of pity for myself andscolding the "naughty knife" that had done the deed. The rest of that dayis lost to me. 

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

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

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

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

LETTER LXXII. 

Here in my pain, Beloved, I remember keenly now the one or two occasionswhen as a small child I was consciously a cause of pain to others. What anirony of life that once of the two times when I remember to have beencruel, it was to Arthur, with his small astonished baby-face remaining areproach to me ever after! I was hardly five then, and going up to thenursery from downstairs had my supper-cake in my hand, only a fewmouthfuls left. He had been having his bath, and was sitting up onNan-nan's knee being got into his bed clothes; when spying me with my cakehe piped to have a share of it. I dare say it would not have been good forhim, but of that I thought nothing at all: the cruel impulse took me tomake 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 suddenlesson 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 alike surprise for his wee intelligence. I think I have never forgivenmyself that, though Arthur has no memory of it left in him: the judgingremembrance of it would, I believe, win forgiveness to him for any wronghe might now do me, if that and not the contrary were his way with me: sounreasonably is my brain scarred where the thought of it still lies. Godmay forgive us our trespasses by marvelous slow ways; but we cannot alwaysforgive 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 theout-houses there was a swallow's nest too high up to be reached by anyladder we could get up there. I was intent on getting the _eggs_, andthought of no other thing that might chance: so I spread a soft fallbelow, and with a long pole I broke the floor of the nest. Then with asudden 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 thenest and set it with the young one in it by the loft window where theparent-birds might see, making clumsy strivings of pity to quiet myconscience. The parent-birds did see, soon enough: they returned, firstup to the rafters, then darting round and round and crying; then towhere their little one lay helpless and exposed, hung over it with anibbling movement of their beaks for a moment, making my miserable heartbound up with hope: then away, away, shrieking into the July sunshine. Once they came back, and shrieked at the horror of it all, and fled awaynot to return. 

I remained for hours and did whatever silly pity could dictate: but ofcourse the young one died: and I--_cleared away all remains that nobodymight 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 hasnever softened. The question which pride of life and love of make-believetill then had not raised in me, "Am I a god to kill and to make alive?"was answered all at once by an emphatic "No, " which I never afterwardforgot. But the grief remained all the same, that life, to teach me thatblunt truth, should have had to make sacrifice in the mote-hung loft ofthree frail lives on a clay-altar, and bring to nothing but pain and alast miserable dart away into the bright sunshine the spring work of twoswift-winged intelligences. Is man, we are told to think, not worth manysparrows? Oh, Beloved, sometimes I doubt it! and would in thought give mylife that those swallows in their generations might live again. 

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

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

LETTER LXXIII. 

Dearest: I could never have made any appeal _from_ you to anybody: all myappeal has been _to_ you alone. I have wished to hear reason from no otherlips but yours; and had you but really and deeply confided in me, Ibelieve I could have submitted almost with a light heart to what youthought best:--though in no way and by no stretch of the imagination can Isee 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 itlook truer frozen into writing? I have kissed the words, because youwrote them; not believing them. It is a suspense of unbelief that youhave left me in, oh, still dearest! Yet never was sad heart truer to thefountain of all its joy than mine to yours. You had only to see me toknow 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 bodilycomfort of your presence, a face filled with thoughts of you that havenever left it, and never been bitter:--I believe never once bitter. Foreven when I think, and convince myself that you have wronged yourself--andso, me also, --even then: oh, then most of all, my heart seems to breakwith tenderness, and my spirit grow more famished than ever for the wantof you! For if you have done right, wisely, then you have no longer anyneed of me: but if you have done wrong, then you must need me. Oh, dearheart, let that need overwhelm you like a sea, and bring you toward me onits 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 tohave strength to write it; though it is but a ghost of old happiness thatcomes to me in the act. I have no hope now left in me: but I love you notless, only more, if that be possible: or is it the same love with just aweaker body to contain it all? I find that to have definitely laid off allhope gives me a certain relief: for now that I am so hopeless it becomesless hard not to misjudge you--not to say and think impatiently about youthings which would explain why I had to die like this. 

Dearest, nothing but love shall explain anything of you to me. When Ithink 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 allthe rest, and not ask for any joy in life besides. For if I had themeaning, 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 Ihad 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 Iwrite: even where there is no hope a thing remains _possible_:--that youreye may some day come to rest upon what I leave here. And I would havenothing so dark as to make it seem that I were better dead than to havecome to such a pass through loving you. If I felt that, dearest, I shouldnot be writing my heart out to you, as I do: when I cease doing that Ishall indeed have become dead and not want you any more, I suppose. Howfar I am from dying, then, now!

So be quite sure that if now, even now, --for to-day of all days hasseemed most dark--if now I were given my choice--to have known you ornot to have known you, --Beloved, a thousand times I would claim to keepwhat I have, rather than have it taken away from me. I cannot forgetthat for a few months I was the happiest woman I ever knew: and thathappiness is perhaps only by present conditions removed from me. If Ihave a soul, I believe good will come back to it: because I have donenothing 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 cannothave. Something that you have not chosen for me to know, you know: itshould be a burden on your conscience, surely, not to have shared itwith me. Maybe there is something I know that you do not. In the way ofsorrow, 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 havelost our way out of our poor five senses, without having strength totake over the new world which is waiting beyond them. Well, I wouldrather, Beloved, suffer through loving too much, than through loving toolittle. 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. 

LETTER LXXVI. 

Dearest: I feel constantly that we are together still: I cannot explain. When I am most miserable, even so that I feel a longing to fly out ofreach of the dear household voices which say shy things to keep mecheerful, --I feel that I have you in here waiting for me. Heart's heart, in my darkest, it is you who speak to me!

As I write I have my cheek pressed against yours. None of it is true:not a word, not a day that has separated us! I am yours: it is only thepoor five senses part of us that spells absence. Some day, some day youwill answer this letter which has to stay locked in my desk. Some day, I mean, an answer will reach me:--without your reading this, your answerwill come. Is not your heart at this moment answering me?

Dearest, I trust you: I could not have dreamed you to myself, thereforeyou must be true, quite independently of me. You as I saw you once withopen eyes remain so forever. You cannot make yourself, Beloved, not to bewhat you are: you have called my soul to life if for no other reason thanto bear witness of you, come what may. No length of silence can make atruth once sounded ever cease to be: borne away out of our hearing itmakes its way to the stars: dispersed or removed it cannot be lost. I too, for truth's sake, may have to be dispersed out of my present self whichshuts me from you: but I shall find you some day, --you who made me, youwho every day make me! A part of you cut off, I suffer pain because I _am_still part of you. If I had no part in you I should suffer nothing. But Ido, I do. One is told how, when a man has lost a limb, he still feelsit, --not the pleasure of it but the pain. Dearest, are you aware of menow?

Because I am suffering, you shall not think I am entirely miserable. Buthere and now I am all unfinished ends. Desperately I need faith at timesto tell me that each shoot of pain has a point at which it assuagesitself and becomes healing: that pain is not endurance wasted; but thatI and my weary body have a goal which will give a meaning to all this, somehow, somewhere: never, I begin to fear, here, while this body hascharge of me. 

Dearest, I lay my heart down on yours and cry: and having worn myselfout with it and ended, I kiss your lips and bless God that I have knownyou. 

I have not said--I never could say it--"Let the day perish wherein Lovewas born!" I forget nothing of you: you are clear to me, --all but onething: why we have become as we are now, one whole, parted and sentdifferent ways. And yet so near! On my most sleepless nights my pillowis yours: I wet your face with my tears and cry, "Sleep well. "

To-night also, Beloved, sleep well! Night and morning I make you myprayer. 

LETTER LXXVII. 

My own one beloved, my dearest dear! Want me, please want me! I will keepalive for you. Say you wish me to live, --not come to you: don't say thatif you can't--but just wish me to live, and I will. Yes, I will doanything, even live, if you tell me to do it. I will be stronger than allthe world or fate, if you have any wish about me at all. Wish well, dearest, and surely the knowledge will come to me. Wish big things of me, or little things: wish me to sleep, and I will sleep better because of it. Wish anything of me: only not that I should love you better. I can't, dearest, I can't. Any more of that, and love would go out of my body andleave it clay. If you would even wish _that_, I would be happy at findinga way to do your will below ground more perfectly than any I found on it. Wish, wish: only wish something for me to do. Oh, I could rest if I hadbut your little finger to love. The tyranny of love is when it makes nobidding at all. That you have no want or wish left in you as regards meis my continual despair. My own, my beloved, my tormentor and comforter, my ever dearest dear, whom I love so much!

LETTER LXXVIII. 

To-night, Beloved, the burden of things is too much for me. Come to me somehow, dear ghost of all my happiness, and take me in yourarms! I ache and ache, not to belong to you. I do: I must. It is onlyour senses that divide us; and mine are all famished servants waitingfor their master. They have nothing to do but watch for you, and pretendthat they believe you will come. Oh, it is grievous!

Beloved, in the darkness do you feel my kisses? They go out of me insharp stabs of pain: they must go _somewhere_ for me to be delivered ofthem only with so much suffering. Oh, how this should make me hate you, if that were possible: how, instead, I love you more and more, andshall, dearest, and will till I die!

I _will_ die, because in no other way can I express how much I love you. I am possessed by all the despairing words about lost happiness that thepoets have written. They go through me like ghosts: I am haunted bythem: but they are bloodless things. It seems when I listen to all theother desolate voices that have ever cried, that I alone have blood inme. Nobody ever loved as I love since the world began. 

There, dearest, take this, all this bitter wine of me poured out until Ifeel in myself only the dregs left: and still in them is the fire andthe suffering. 

No: but I will be better: it is better to have known you than not. Giveme time, dearest, to get you to heart again! I cannot leave you likethis: not with such words as these for "good-night!"

Oh, dear face, dear unforgettable lost face, my soul strains up to lookfor you through the blind eyes that have been left to torment me becausethey can never behold you. Very often I have seen you looking grieved, shutting away some sorrow in yourself quietly: but never once angry orimpatient at any of the small follies of men. Come, then, and look at mepatiently now! I am your blind girl: I must cry out because I cannot seeyou. Only make me believe that you yet think of me as, when you sounbelievably separated us, you said you had always found me--"thedearest and most true-hearted woman a man could pray to meet. " Beloved, if in your heart I am still that, separation does not matter. I canwait, I can wait. 

I kiss your feet: even to-morrow may bring the light. God bless you! Ipray it more than ever; because to me to-night has been so very dark. 

LETTER LXXIX. 

Dearest: I have not written to you for three weeks. At last I am betteragain. You seem to have been waiting for me here: always wondering when Iwould come back. I do come back, you see. 

Dear heart, how are you? I kiss your feet; you are my one only happiness, my great one. Words are too cold and cruel to write anything for me. Picture me: I am too weak to write more, but I have written this, and amso much better for it. 

Reward me some day by reading what is here. I kiss, because of you, thispaper which I am too tired to fill any more. 

Love, nothing but love! Into every one of these dead words my heart hasbeen beating, trying to lay down its life and reach to you. 

LETTER LXXX. 

A secret, dearest, that will be no secret soon: before I am done withtwenty-three I shall have passed my age. Beloved, it hurts me more than Ican say that the news of it should come to you from anyone but me: forthis, though I write it, is already a dead letter, lost like a predestinedsoul even in the pains that gave it birth. Yes, it does pain me, frightensme even, that I must die all by myself, and feeling still so young. Ithought I should look forward to it, but I do not; no, no, I would givemuch to put it off for a time, until I could know what it will mean for meas regards you. Oh, if you only knew and _cared, _ what wild comfort Imight have in the knowledge! It seems strange that if I were going awayfrom the chance of a perfect life with you I should feel it with less painthan I feel this. The dust and the ashes of life are all that I have tolet fall: and it is bitterness itself to part with them. 

How we grow to love sorrow! Joy is never so much a possession--it goesover us, incloses us like air or sunlight; but sorrow goes into us andbecomes part of our flesh and bone. So that I, holding up my hand to thesunshine, see sorrow red and transparent like stained glass between meand the light of day, sorrow that has become inseparably mine, and isthe very life I am wishing to keep!

Dearest, will the world be more bearable to you when I am out of it? It isselfish of me not to wish so, since I can satisfy you in this so soon!Every day I will try to make it my wish: or wish that it may be so whenthe event comes--not a day before. Till then let it be more bearable thatI am still alive: grant me, dearest, that one little grace while I live!

Bearable! My sorrow _is_ bearable, I suppose, because I do bear it fromday to day: otherwise I would declare it not to be. Don't suffer as Ido, dearest, unless that will comfort you. 

One thing is strange, but I feel quite certain of it: when I heard that Icarried death about in me, scarcely an arm's-length away, I thoughtquickly to myself that it was not the solution of the mystery. Othersmight have thought that it was: that because I was to die so soon, therefore I was not fit to be your wife. But I know it was not that. Iknow that whatever hopes death in me put an end to, you would have marriedme and loved me patiently till I released you, as I am to so soon. 

It is always this same woe that crops up: nothing I can ever think canaccount for what has been decreed. That too is a secret: mine comes tomeet it. When it arrives shall I know?

And not a word, not a word of this can reach you ever! Its uses arewrung out and drained dry to comfort me in my eternal solitude. 

Good-night; very soon it will have to be good-by. 

LETTER LXXXI. 

Beloved: I woke last night and believed I had your arms round me, and thatall storms had gone over me forever. The peace of your love had inclosedme so tremendously that when I was fully awake I began to think that whatI held was you dead, and that our reconciliation had come at that greatcost. 

Something remains real of it all, even now under the full light of day:yet I know you are not dead. Only it leaves me with a hope that at thelesser cost of my own death, when it comes, happiness may break in, andthat whichever of us has been the most in poor and needy ignorance willknow the truth at last--the truth which is an inseparable need for allhearts that love rightly. 

Even now to me the thought of you is a peace passing _all_ understanding. Beloved, Beloved, Beloved, all the greetings I ever gave you gather here, and are hungry to belong to you by a better way than I have ever dreamed. I am yours, till something more than death swallows me up. 

LETTER LXXXII. 

Dearest: If you will believe any word of mine, you must not believe that Ihave died of a broken heart should science and the doctors bring about afulfillment of their present prophesyings concerning me. 

I think my heart has held me up for a long time, not letting me knowthat I was ill: I did not notice. And now my body snaps on a stem thathas grown too thin to hold up its weight. I am at the end of twenty-twoyears: they have been too many for me, and the last has seemed a uselesswaste of time. It is difficult not to believe that great happiness mighthave carried me over many more years and built up for me in the end arenewed youth: I asked that quite frankly, wishing to know, and was toldnot to think it. 

So, dearest, whatever comes, whatever I may have written to fill up myworst loneliness, be sure, if you care to be, that though my life waswholly yours, my death was my own, and comes at its right natural time. Pity me, but invent no blame to yourself. My heart has sung of you evenin the darkest days; in the face of everything, the blankness ofeverything, I mean, it has clung to an unreasoning belief that in spite ofappearances all had some well in it, above all to a conviction that--perhaps without knowing it--you still love me. Believing _that, _ itcould not break, could not, dearest. Any other part of me, but not that. 

Beloved, I kiss your face, I kiss your lips and eyes: my mind melts intokisses when I think of you. However weak the rest of me grows, my loveshall remain strong and certain. If I could look at you again, how in amoment you would fill up the past and the future and turn even my griefinto gold! Even my senses then would forget that they had ever beenstarved. Dear "share of the world, " you have been out of sight, but Ihave never let you go! Ah, if only the whole of me, the double doubtingpart of me as well, could only be so certain as to be able to give wingsto this and let it fly to you! Wish for it, and I think the knowledgewill come to me!

Good-night! God brings you to me in my first dream: but the longing sokeeps me awake that sometimes I am a whole night sleepless. 

LETTER LXXXIII. 

I am frightened, dearest, I am frightened at death. Not onlyfor fear it should take me altogether away from you instead of to you, but for other reasons besides, --instincts which I thought gone but amnot rid of even yet. No healthy body, or body with power of enjoyment init, wishes to die, I think: and no heart with any desire still livingout of the past. We know nothing at all really: we only think webelieve, and hope we know; and how thin that sort of conviction getswhen in our extremity we come face to face with the one immovable factof our own death waiting for us! That is what I have to go through. Yeteven the fear is a relief: I come upon something that I can meet atlast; a challenge to my courage whether it is still to be found here inthis body I have worn so weak with useless lamentations. If I had yourhand, or even a word from you, I think I should not be afraid: butperhaps I should. It is all one. Good-by: I am beginning at last to feela meaning in that word which I wrote at your bidding so long-ago. Oh, Beloved, from face to feet, good-by! God be with you wherever you go andI do not!

LETTER LXXXIV. 

Dearest: I am to have news of you. Arthur came to me last night, and toldme that, if I wished, he would bring me word of you. He goes to-morrow. Heput out the light that I might not see his face: I felt what was there. 

You should know this of him: he has been the dearest possible of humanbeings to me since I lost you. I am almost not unblessed when I have himto speak to. Yet we can say so little together. I guess all he means. Anendless wish to give me comfort:--and I stay selfish. The knowledge thathe would stolidly die to serve me hardly touches me. 

Oh, look kindly in his eyes if you see him: mine will be looking at youout of his!

LETTER LXXXV. 

Good-morning, Beloved; there is sun shining. I wonder if Arthur is withyou yet?

If faith could still remove mountains, surely I should have seen youlong ago. But if I were to see you now, I should fear that it meant youwere dead. 

That the same world should hold you and me living and unseen by eachother is a great mystery. Will love ever explain it?

I wish I could bid the sun stand still over your meeting with Arthur sothat I might know. We were so like each other once. Time has worn itoff: but he is like what I was. Will you remember me well enough torecognize me in him, and to be a little pitiful to my weak longing for aword this one last time of all? Beloved, I press my lips to yours, andpray--speak!

LETTER LXXXVI. 

Dearest: To-day Arthur came and brought me your message: I have at myheart your "profoundly grateful remembrances. " Somewhere else unansweredlies your prayer for God to bless me. To answer that, dearest, is not inHis hands but in yours. And the form of your message tells me it will notbe, --not for this body and spirit that have been bound together so long intruth to you. 

I set down for you here--if you should ever, for love's sake, sendand make claim for any message back from me--a profoundly gratefulremembrance; and so much more, so much more that has never failed. 

Most dear, most beloved, you were to me and are. Now I can no longerhold together: but it is my body, not my love that has failed. 

 * * * * *

[Transcriber's Notes:

--Though this book was published anonymously, it was later revealed to beby Laurence Housman. 

--In Letter XLIII "roughtly" was corrected to "roughly"

--In Letter XXXVI "sort" was corrected to "short"

--In Letter LXX, "elder's" was corrected to "elders'"

--In Letter LXXVIII "unforgetable" was corrected to "unforgettable"]