Part 8 (1/2)

LETTER XXIII.

GRAYSMILL, January 1st.

My pretty sweet, I have had much happiness to-day. First of all, a letter from you at breakfast, and one from Gabriel, then, suns.h.i.+ne all the morning, and all the morning a song in my heart; to-day I shall see him!

I set off immediately after early dinner, and walked across the Common to the Thatched Cottage. I cannot tell you what it was to me to catch sight of the chimney and the purling smoke again; I had to stand still and wait a while, my heart thumped so. (A fool, eh?) I crept noiselessly into the house, and through the hall, then stealthily opened the study door. There he sat on the ground by the fire, with his back to me, reading, of course.

”What a careless person!” said I, softly; ”he'll blind himself one of these days.”

Up he jumped.

”Emilia!” he cried, ”dear Emilia!” and, catching me by both wrists, swung my arms up and down and to and fro.

”You faithless thing,” said he, ”you false friend, I hate you!”

Here Richard Norton ran in from the kitchen, with the teapot in his hand, followed by Jane; they both covered me with welcomes and reproaches. I was very happy, I a.s.sure you. We went into the kitchen and had early tea, talking all the while and all together. Gabriel was in one of his impish moods, and made me laugh till I cried. The first thing I thought, when I had time to think, was that I had been a fool to keep away so long and allow myself to grow sentimental; that it was altogether much more healthful for me to be in his dear company.

I came home in a much better frame of mind, although Gabriel insisted on walking nearly as far as Graysmill with me, and said as we parted:

”You must never again leave me for so long, Emilia; I am lost without you, I am, indeed.”

I turned from him, half wis.h.i.+ng he had not said this, feeling a little giddy, a little less strong; but, as I ran along, something hit me on the shoulder. I looked behind me, and there he stood, like an imp of mischief, pelting me with pine-cones, which it seems he had collected in his pocket for that purpose. So I had to laugh, and was cured again.

The year has at least begun well.

Adieu, my sweetest. Things are often not so bad as we imagine. With this truism I take my leave of you.

Your EMILIA.

I think I forgot to send a New Year's wish to Mrs. Rayner. For you, my love, again all the good that this world holds. May it rain upon you in ceaseless showers!

LETTER XXIV.

GRAYSMILL, January 15th.

I have grown unutterably selfish. I only remembered this morning that you had asked me to send you those books. To think that a day should have come when I could forget to do something you had asked me! I have seen to it, with much penitence. Forgive me!

Your Emilia is a miserable specimen; she despises herself very much.

I go up and down all day like something that has lost its balance, neither have I any. One hour I am absolutely happy; the next I am biting the dust. One day I say to myself, I will never walk or talk or read or sit alone with him again,--and perhaps for that one day I keep my word. But then, the next, I do all I meant not to do, I pine for it till I bring it about. And when I have sat beside him a little while, doing my lessons, the Greek loses its hold of my poor brain, my head swims, I make a blunder; then he laughs and says he cannot understand how such an apparently clever woman can have such a sieve for a brain. I laugh, and tell him he's unmannerly. Then we both laugh, and I am well until I am ill again.

It is only since I knew Gabriel that I know how to laugh. I don't mean to say that I never laughed before. Do you remember how we sometimes screamed up in my room at Florence? I remember, too, as a child, going into wild fits of laughter, and mamma and I having to wipe each other's eyes. But these days were few and far between. I have learned to laugh with my years. Very fine wit is lost upon me, and I have certainly no native humour of my own; but I do know how to laugh about nothing at all, how to make merry over the thorns of life! Laughter was not meant for the joyful; it was made for us, the sombre of soul, to save our heart-strings here and there; like the song of a lark in the sky, to bid us lift our eyes from the dust of the road.

Sometimes, when I have been laughing very much, and then remember my pain, I see the vision of a child that dances on a grave-mound in the sun.

Sweet, I'll go on to-morrow.