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Englishwoman's Love-Letters, An

<h2>LETTER LIX.</h2> I have to own that I know your will now, at last. Without seeing you I am convinced: you have a strong power in you to have done that! You have told me 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 it had 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 your heart.—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 I watched for you to come, believing it still and trusting to silence on my part to bring you more certainly than any more words could do. And at 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 at what your will is. I must accept it as true, since I am not to see you again. I cannot tell you whether I thought it or dreamed it, but it seems 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 your face—you too were in pain: in that we seemed one. But when I touched you and would have kissed you, you shuddered at me and drew back your head. I tell you this as I would tell you anything unbelievable that I had heard told of you behind your back. You see I am obeying you at last. For all the love which you gave me when I seemed worthy of it I thank you a thousand times. Could you ever return to the same mind, I should be yours once more as I still am; never ceasing on my side to be your lover and servant till death, and—if there be anything more—after as well. My lips say amen now: but my heart cannot say it till breath goes out of my body. Good-by: that means—God be with you. I mean it; but He seems to have ceased to be with me altogether. Good-by, dearest. I kiss your heart with writing for the last time, and your eyes, that will see nothing more from me after this. Good-by. <div> </div> <blockquote>Note.—All the letters which follow were found lying loosely together. They only went to their destination after the writer's death. </blockquote> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>LETTER LX.</h2> To-day, dearest, a letter from you reached me: a fallen star which had lost its way. It lies dead in my bosom. It was the letter that lost itself in the post while I was traveling: it comes now with half a dozen postmarks, and signs of long waiting in one place. In it you say, "We have been engaged now for two whole months; I never dreamed that two moons could contain so much happiness." Nor I, dearest! We have now been separated for three; and till now I had not dreamed that time could so creep, to such infinitely small purpose, as it has in carrying me from the moment when I last saw you. You were so dear to me, Beloved; that you ever are! Time changes nothing in you as you seemed to me then. Oh, I am sick to touch your hands: 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 little while. If they came and told me—"You are to see him just for five minutes, and then 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 the whole time: five minutes more of you to fold my life round. It would matter very little what you said, barring the one thing that remains never to 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 you still,—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 said that to the woman you still loved. And now I am never to know what part in me is hateful to you. I must live with it because you would not tell me the truth! Every day tells me I am different from the thing I wish to be—your love, the woman you approve. I love you, I love you! Can I get no nearer to you ever for all this straining? If I love you so much, I must be moving toward what you would have me be. In our happiest days my heart had its growing pains,—growing to be as you wished it. Dear, even the wisest make mistakes, and the tenderest may be hard without 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 here and cry to you. And when I go about I have still strength left, and try to be cheerful. Nobody knows, I think nobody knows. No one in the house is made downcast because of me. How dear they are, and how little I can thank them! Except to you, dearest, I have not shown myself selfish. I love you too much, too much: I cannot write it. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>LETTER LXI.</h2> You are very ill, they tell me. Beloved, it is such kindness in them 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 my happiness: the express image of sorrow is not so terrible as the foreboding doubt of it. Not because you are ill, but because I know something definitely about you, I am happier to-day: a little nearer to a semblance of service to you in my helplessness. How much I wish you well, even though that might again carry you out of my knowledge! And, though death might bring you nearer than life now makes possible, I pray to 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 much hope still remains in me, where I thought none was left. Even your illness I take as a good omen; and the thought of you weak as a child and somewhat like one in your present state with no brain for deep thinking, comes to my heart to be cherished endlessly: there you lie, Beloved, brought home to my imagination as never since the day we parted. And the thought comes to the rescue of my helpless longing—that it is as little children that men get brought into the kingdom of Heaven. Let that be the medicine and outcome of your sickness, my own Beloved! I hold my breath with hope that I shall have word of you when your hand has strength again to write. For I know that in sleepless nights and in pain you will be unable not to think of me. If you made resolutions against that when you were well, they will go now that you are laid weak; and so some power will come back to me, and my heart will never be asleep for thinking that yours lies awake wanting it:—nor ever be at rest for devising ways by which to be at the service of your conscious longing. Ah, my own one Beloved, whom I have loved so openly and so secretly, if you were as I think some other men are, I could believe that I had given you so much of my love that you had tired of me because I had made no favor of it but had let you see that I was your faithful subject and servant till death: so that after twenty years you, chancing upon an empty day in your life, might come back and find me still yours;—as to-morrow, if you came, you would. My pride died when I saw love looking out of your eyes at me; and it has not come back to me now that I see you no more. I have no wish that it should. In all ways possible I would wish to be as I was when you loved me; and seek to change nothing except as you bid me. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>LETTER LXII.</h2> So I have seen you, Beloved, again, after fearing that I never should. A day'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 not meet. To have seen your eyes shut out their recognition of me would have hurt me too much: I must have cried out against such a judgment. But you passed by the window without knowing, your face not raised: so little changed, yet you have been ill. Arthur tells me everything: he knows I must have any word of you that goes begging. Oh, I hope you are altogether better, happier! An illness helps some people: the worst of their sorrow goes with the health that breaks down under it; and they come out purged into a clearer air, and are made whole for a fresh trial of life. I hear that you are going quite away; and my eyes bless this chance to have embraced you once again. Your face is the kindest I have ever seen: even your silence, while I looked at you, seemed a grace instead of a cruelty. What kindness, I say to myself, even if it be mistaken kindness, 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 knows how good you are: how can I, then, be so unworthy of you? Did you think I would not surrender to anything you fixed, that you severed us so completely, not even allowing us to meet, and giving me no way to come back 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 so happy as I could wish,—as I could make you,—I say it foolishly:—yet if you would trust me, I am sure. Oh, how tired loving you now makes me! physically I grow weary with the ache to have you in my arms. And I dream, I dream always, the shadows of former kindness that never grow warm enough to clasp me before I wake.—Yours, dearest, waking or sleeping. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>LETTER LXIII.</h2> Do you remember, Beloved, when you came on your birthday, you said I was to 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 were not to be asked to choose. You said then that it was the first time I had ever let you have your way, which was to see me be myself independently of you:—as if such a self existed. You will never see what I write now; and I did not do then any of the things I most wished: for first I wished to kneel down and kiss your hands and feet; and you would not have liked that. Even now that you love me no more, you would not like me to do such a thing. A woman can never do as she likes when she loves—there is no such thing until he shows it her or she divines it. I loved you, I loved you!—that was all I could do, and all I wanted to do. You have kept my letters? Do you read them ever, I wonder? and do they tell 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-letters ever cease to be the winged things they were when they first came? I fancy mine sick to death for want of your heart to rest on; but never less loving. If you would read them again, you would come back to me. Those little throats of happiness would be too strong for you. And so you lay them in a cruel grave of lavender,—"Lavender for forgetfulness" might be another song for Ophelia to sing. I am weak with writing to you, I have written too long: this is twice to-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 aloud to the old people, or sit down at meals with them is very easy; but I cannot make employment for myself—that requires too much effort of invention and will: and I have only will for one thing in life—to get through it: and no invention to the purpose. Oh, Beloved, in the grave I shall 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 missed you. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>LETTER LXIV.</h2> Dearest: It is dreadful to own that I was glad at first to know that you and your mother were no longer together, glad of something that must mean pain to you! I am not now. When you were ill I did a wrong thing: from her something came to me which I returned. I would do much to undo that act now; but this has fixed it forever. With it were a few kind words. I could not 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 so now. 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 the young are hard on the old without knowing it. We were two people, she and I, whose love clashed jealously over the same object, and we both failed. She is the first to get rest. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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