An Unknown Lover by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (hardest books to read TXT) đ
- Author: Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
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âDonât think me unkind. It seems brutal to write so coldly, especially to-day, when I have just received a letter from Captain Bedford in Egypt, and with it the most wonderful old brass trayâquite the finest specimen of its kind that I have seen. He explains that it is your commission, and sends me quite a genealogical tree of its history. From his letter he sounds a charming man. He says he returns in March. If I had been coming out, we might have travelled by the same boat...
âOh, Jim, I wish I could comeâI wish I could! Itâs hard work looking on, and feeling eternally number three. Do you think I donât want to love too, and to be loved? Do you think it is easy to say âno,â and throw away the chance? If only I could think it right! It is not pride which is hindering me, truly it isnât, it is more like cowardice. We have defied convention, and as a result have created an impossible situation, and I shrink from the probable pain and disillusion of a meeting in the flesh. Your letters have meant a great deal to me; I donât know how I should have come through the last few months without them. For my own sake I should not regret the episode, but it has been hard on you. At the bottom of my heart I guessed all along that it would lead to this. I pretended that I did not, and deliberately shut my eyes, and now I must pay up. I care for you too much to run any more risks. I wonât write again, and please donât answer this. You will hear of my doings through Dorothea, and I shall always care to hear about you; so it is not like saying good-bye.
âDonât be angry with me, Iâm very miserable!
âKatrine.â
âLebong, December 10, 19â.
âKatrine,
âIâm not angry, dear girlâbut youâve got to come! Every word that you write only makes me the more fixed in my determination. I can understand your shyness and your pride, but Iâm hanged if I can understand all this business about disillusion and humiliation. If you find on investigation that Iâm not the man for you, I shall regret it, but I shall feel no humiliation. Why should I? The fact that I do not please your taste, makes me no less a man, nor worthy of esteem. Ifâby a strength of imaginationâI were disappointed in you, the situation would, I admit, be more charged, but being âonly a man,â I emphatically deny your assertion that the sentiment which you have evoked could be evaporated by any outward feature or trait. My dream woman is very dear, but, have no delusions on the pointâshe is not perfect! I have created for myself no plaster saint. You have plenty of faults, my dear, but there is this big difference between them, and those of any woman in existenceâthey are Katrineâs faults!
âI have given my word to speak no word beyond those of friendship for three months after your arrival. If you then decide that I am impossible as a husband, you need fear no unpleasantness. Iâll clear out, exchange into another regiment, apply for leave. You shanât be troubled. After that three monthsâ trial, Iâll take your answer as final, and leave you in peace. Iâve no desire to badger a woman into being my wife. But I demand my chance!
âI think you will come, Katrine. Putting myself out of the question, I think you will come, and Iâll tell you why. It would be rank selfishness on your part to stay in England for the present! Martin has had a rough time of it, but life is opening out for him afresh, and if you love him you wonât stand in his way. How do you suppose he will feel if you are wandering about from boarding-house to boarding-house, or working among strangers? The thought of you will be a continuous shadow over his sun, and thatâs what you have no right to be, if there is any legitimate way of avoiding it. Real happiness is a rare thing, it is holy ground, which ought to be sacred from our touch. Iâd as soon cut off my right hand as cloud a manâs joy in his new-made wife.
âAnd after Martin thereâs Dorothea.
âItâs not a lively life for a woman in a small hill station. It grows monotonous, meeting year after year the same people. Dorotheaâs a brave woman, but the life tells. The boy is delicate also. Thereâs a talk of sending him home to his grandmother. Dorothea wonât leave Middleton; she considers that he needs her more than the child, and I think she is right, but it will be a pill. Thereâs nothing on earth which could cheer and help her more than a visit from you. She has written to you again I know. This time you must not refuse. The climate up here is quite reasonable. You will have no great heat to face.
âAnd so, dear, I think you will come! I know you will come, and, God willing, you shall not regret it.
âThatâs a good idea about Bedford! Heâs a capital chap, and would look after you well. We must see that that comes off. He will stay in Egypt till the last moment, I fancy, and join the ship at Port Said, but, youâd still have ten days together, and he would be useful on landing. He is a good thirty-five, staid, and level-headed. Itâs quite conventional, I suppose? I never know about these things. Book your passage in good time, and cheer Dorothea by the news. Write at once, no! in my present state of health I donât feel up to waiting five whole weeks. I have not been fitâfeverish, sleeplessâso am not in the mood for patience. Cable just one wordâthe name of the steamerâto our code address. When I read that Iâll know that your passage is booked.
âOh, my Katrineâsorry! Iâll be more carefulâ
âYours,
âJ.C.D. Blair.â
Cable message from Katrine Beverley to Dorothea Middleton: âAccept invitation. Sail by Bremen.â
âCumly, January 2, 19â.
âDear Autocrat,
âI We done it! Iâve given in, and sent off the cable. By now you will have seen it, and be either chortling with triumph, or wishing remorsefully that youâd left well alone. I hope itâs the former, because, to be candid, Iâm chortling myself. Oh, Iâm so glad! I wanted so badly to say âyes.â It was clever of you to make it appear so clearly my duty to do just the one thing I wanted above all others!
âHurrah! For a whole year I am free. The office, the surgery, the kitchen, and the stage, can retire gracefully into the background. Iâm going out to India with a box full of new clothes, to stay with my dearest friend, and have a good time. Inadvertently also to meet a nice man...
âOh, Jim, I hope you are niceâmy kind of nice! I hope, hope, hope with all my heart that I shall tumble right in love with you the moment we meet, and that youâll do ditto with me, and that weâll go on tumbling all our lives.
âIâve no pride left this morning; Iâm so excited and glad. Martin put his arm round me on Wednesday when I told him of my cable, and swung me off my feet. âNow everything is perfect!â he said. âYou will be happy as well as I.â And he has been so dear and generous, insisting that he owes me no end of money for my work for him, and I have been to town to buy clothes, Lonely Man, scrumptious clothes, with Grizel to help, because I should likeâDorotheaâto see me look nice!
âGrizel is the most bracing person to shop with. When you think itâs extravagant, she calls it cheap, and when you are wondering if you dare have one, she orders a dozen, and just for once in a way, when youâve been careful all your life, it is lovely to go a bust. Besidesâ
âMy bridesmaidâs kit is Grizelâs present, and seems stretching to immense proportions. A dress for the ceremony, and a dress for the evening, and a hat and a cloak, and fal-lals of every description. Do you think the regiment will give some function to let me show them off? Now that my own future no longer casts its shadow over the whole landscape, I am immensely enjoying the engaged couple. They are so deliriously gay and young, and happy and hopeful; and the nice part about it isâit is going to last! I feel sure it will, for through his long experience of sorrow and loss Martin has learned how to give the one all-important thing that is necessary to a womanâs happiness. Have you the slightest idea what it is? You will smile at the sentiment of women, and say âLove, of course,â but it isnât love, at least it is not necessarily included in that term. Many a man honestly loves his wife, and yet succeeds in making her miserable. No! it is just a simple, homely quality without which the grandest of passions is incomplete! Tenderness! Tenderness means kindness and understanding, and sympathy, and imagination, and patienceâabove all, patience! When a man is in love he thinks a woman perfect, but she isnât, she is an irrational, inconsequent creature, whose mate will have need of patience every day of his life, and sometimes many times a day. Of course there do exist female paragons, calm, correct creatures, with smooth hair and chiselled features, who are always serene and self-contained, but then they are also independent of tenderness. This grows complicated! Iâd better drop pretence and confess at once that when I talk generalities I really mean You and Me, the two people who are at the back of all generalities!
âI am erratic and variable... On Tuesday, for no tangible cause, I feel bubbling over with happiness; on Wednesday, for an equally logical reason, I crave for death. On occasions I can be exasperatingly contrary. I know it all the time, and am furious with myself, but that only makes me worse! On after reflection I either pray and fast, or in brazen fashion excuse myself on the score of electric influences! After all, why shouldnât I? We are the most sensitive of machines, and if climatic disturbances affect the wires at a distance of thousands of miles, why should We pass unscathed? I sometimes think we are too hard on our own moods and tempers, but they are trying enough in any case for the other person. The question of the hour is thisâCould You be tender to Me???
âOnly four weeks and Iâm off! It will be more convenient for me to leave directly after the wedding, and if âtwere done, âtwere well done quickly. Grizelâs trousseau is reaching the acute stage, and I thought I was busy enough helping her, without starting a second on myâ
âWhat am I saying! I must be mad. You understand that I trust to that three monthsâ truce, and that I promise nothingânothing. I only hope!
âAu revoir, Jim. To-morrow I shall be tearing my hair for writing all this, but the mail will have gone... It will be too late.
âKatrine.
âP.S. A happy new year, Jim, Will it be happy?â
âCumly, January 7, 19â.
âDear Captain Blair,
âThis follows quickly to retract everything that I said last week! If I had not already spent so much on cables, and if it were not so difficult to explain, I should have sent a flying order to
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