An Unknown Lover by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (hardest books to read TXT) š
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āSo far as I have gathered facts from Dorothea, Martin lost his wife eight years ago. She was his wife for six short months, and she has been dead eight years. He was a boy at that time; since then he has grown into a man, and a reputation. The Martin who came to you in his grief, and to whom you mortgaged your life, is dead too; as dead as the poor little wife! So long as he was alive, you were a big help to him. He was miserable enough no doubt, poor beggar, but the last extremity of despair was spared him by your love and care. Iād swear to that! But that Martin died, and with him your power.
āThus far, and no farther! Thereās a wall, Katrine, between the soul of every brother and sister who was ever created, and sooner or later they come up against it. All the love, and the care, and the patience, and the trying and crying can never scale it. And then one day comes along a vagrant who doesnāt cry, doesnāt try, perhaps doesnāt even care, and before that stranger is an open road. Which is a mystery, dear, and a commonplace. Likewise cussedly unfair.
āDo you mind if I call you ādearā? Itās only on paper, and itās so long since Iāve had any one to endear. It takes off a bit of the loneliness to feel that there is some one in the world to whom one can occasionally show a glimpse of oneās heart. Itās the only bit of me that has a chance of feeling cold out hereābut itās petrifying fast enough. If you object, if it shocks your sense of decorum, well!āIāll write it all the same, but Iāll blot it out afterwards. You neednāt know anything about it. Pens will blot on this thin paper!
āDonāt worry yourself because you are not the world and all to Martin. He would be an odd fellow if you were. Itās not in nature that a sister should satisfy a manās heart, and itās no use bucking against nature. Neither need you worry because of his discontent. If youād ever suffered from a big wound, youād understand that at the first, one is numbed by the shock; itās only when the knitting up and rebuilding begin that the pain bites deep. Look upon his restlessness and depression as growing pains, and the beginning of his cure. Poor little Katrine! but this sort of thing is confoundedly hard on the looker-on.
āYou want to know about myselfāand why your eyes look sorry as they watch me turn out on my lone. Well, you know, KatrineāI amāI was, thirty-five last birthday; only child, parents gone, relations scattered, strangers to me in all but name. Outside the regiment there is not a soul to count in my life, and at the end of four years, unless the impossible happens, I must leave the regiment and say good-bye to my friends. They offered me a majority in the Blankshire a year ago, but I couldnāt bring myself to face the wrench, but as anything is preferable to idleness and the shelf, I shall have to start life again among strangers before Iām forty, with two or three captain fellows swearing vengeance at me for being promoted over their heads! Itās not exactly a glowing vista, and the prospect of that forty makes a man think. When he sits alone on a sweltering Indian night, and compares his lot with that of fellows like Middleton, for instance, it is depressing work!
āIn one or other department of life a man must have success, if he is to know content. Work counts for a lot, but it must be successful work to make up a whole. A big career appeals to all menāthe sense of power, the consciousness that one particular bit of the worldās work depends upon him, and would suffer from his absence, but that sort of success hasnāt come my way. Itās the jolliest regiment in the world, the best set of fellows, but itās been our luck to be āout of things,ā and we are hopelessly blocked.
āThen thereās the home department! Middleton (I use him as a type) can never ask himself āwhat is the good,ā while he has his wife and that stunning little lad. He has his depressed moods like the rest, but when they come on, Dorothea makes love to him, and the little chap sits on his knee. At such times any nice feeling young photograph ought to sympathise with a lonely fellow who sits by andālooks on!
āWhat do you suppose made up my last Christmas mail? A bill from the stores, and a picture postcard from an old nurse. This year thereāll be a letter from you! I have theories about Christmas lettersāespecially Christmas letters to fellows abroad. Christmas is a time of special kindliness and love; people who are as a rule most reserved and dignified let themselves go, and show what is in their hearts. Iāve a fancy just for once to āpittendā as the children say, and write a real Christmassy letter. A fellow in the regimentāVincentāis just engaged. He met her when he went to Sā for his last leave. Prom his descriptions you would imagine she was another Helen of Troy, but Iām told sheās quite an ordinary nice girl. The airs he gives himself! A fellow might never have been engaged before. After listening to him steadily for two hours on end the other night, I ventured one on my own account.
āāI wonder,ā I said tentatively, āif any girl will ever care enough to be willing to be engaged to me?ā
āHe ruminated, and sucked his pipe: āWell,ā he said slowly, āyouāre not such a bad old beast!ā
āRather beastly of me all the same to bore you with all this. Forgive me! As Vincent has appointed me his confidant I hear such a lot about the affair that I turned on to it without thinking... The wedding wonāt come off for another year. When Iām engaged, Iāll be married sharp!
āNow hereās a subject for discussing in your next letterāLove and marriage! Itās a big bill, andābe discursive, please! You canāt possibly discuss such questions on one sheet. We know, of course, that you are never to many. You are doomed to dry-nurse Martin for life, whether he wants you or no. (Brutal! Sorry, dear!) Things being as they are at the moment, we may premise that I also am doomed to celibacy, but as onlookers see most of the game, thereās no reason why we shouldnāt wag our heads together over the follies of lovers, and expatiate on how much better we should have managed things ourselves.
āThereās no Cranford reason, I suppose, why a young female should not discuss these things with a person of the opposite sex? Even vowed to celibacy as you are, I expect there are moments when you have dreamed dreams, and seen as in a vision the not impossible He.
āTell me about him, Katrine! Iāve a fancy to hear.
āNow the sort of girl I should choose... But this scrawl is too long already. That must keep for another day.
āSalaams!
āJim Blair.ā
āCumly, July 10, 19ā.
āDear Captain Blair,
āIām in a grumbly mood this morning. Do you mind? Something annoyed me yesterday, and this is the lachrymose aftermath. Iām sorry, for your sake as well as my own, for itās mail day, and itās now or never to catch that birthday! Perhaps a morningās writing will work it āoffā better than any other distraction which this place affords. Itās easy for you away at the other side of the world to sentimentalise over my āCranfordā home, but if I had been asked to state the spot of all others in which I would not choose to live, it would be just such a derelict little hamlet as that in which fate has dumped me. Itās a pretty little place, built on the side of a hill, with a precipitous High Street which is dangerous to drive down, and puffy to walk up. There is a church at the top, a chapel at the bottom, and a bank half-way; likewise a linen draperās shop, which serves the purpose of a ladyās club, for no self-respecting woman allows a morning to pass without popping in at āVerneyās.ā If the stock does not supply what one wants (it rarely does!) there is always āa startling lineā in something else, and a smell of flannel thrown in. āWe are out of white gloves this morning, but I have a very fine line in unbleached calico!ā Mr Verney is a deacon of the chapel; Mrs Verney was in the millinery, and has hankerings after the church. We notice a general tendency among the maidens of dissent to appear at the parish church, what time they possess new garments or hats... After we have bought our packets of needles, or a box of pins, we meet our friends in the front shop, and gossip. Such a lot of talk, about such little, little things! There are days when itās amusing enough; days when itās the driest dust. Last year a friend of mine started a āThankfulness Society,ā as a cure for the grumbling and discontent which is apt to engulf spinsters in a country place. Each member was presented with a little book, and was bound to inscribe therein the special causes of thankfulness which had occurred during each day. I refused to join. I said if I ceased to grumble it would have a demoralising effect on my character. No use to grumble? Fiddlesticks! Every use! As a dear old American friend used to say: āWhen you feel like scratching, itās not a mite of use rolling your eyes, and trying to be a saintājust let yourself go, and be right down ugly for a few minutes, and it will be a heap better for you, and every one concerned!ā The secretary was shocked. She said if one realised oneās blessings, one would not wish to grumble... I said that considered as a trial the grumbler was not in it, compared with the persistent optimist. Nothing on earth is more embittering than to live with a persistently amiable person. Imagine living with a certificated optimist bound over to be thankful through thick and thin, when the soot falls, the soup is singed, and the new dress does not come home! ... Imagine the conversation, the maddening serenity of the smile! Optimists are admirable in calamity, but in the simple aggravations of daily life they are just the most depressing creatures upon earth!
āWell, Iām sorry! Now Iāve had my growl, and (Yankee again!) feel as āgood as pie,ā You might as well know what a grumbling, discontented wretch I am, and if you ask me why this special fit attacked me just this special morning, well, I know, but Iām not going to tell. Iāll answer another question insteadā
āYou ask me what I think about love, getting engaged, married, all the rest of it. I am only a looker on, and must always be, but it does interest me all the same! I have marvelled with every one else over the nature of that indefinable something which draws two people together, and which has nothing on earth to do with suitability as understood by the people. John may be a model of excellence; amiable, rich, handsome, devoted, but on their first meeting it is settled in Louisaās mind as irrevocably as the trump of doom that he would never do! She knew it at a flash, the moment he
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