I hardly know how to breathe for joy! To know that I shall see you, hear
your dear voice, hold your hand again! He heard me singing in the
kitchen this morning and asked what I was yowling about. I should have
liked to tell him. Think of his face if I had said: “My lover is coming
home and I am singing for joy!” I said meekly that I was sorry if it
disturbed him, and he said in his courteous way that it didn’t matter to
him if I liked to hear the sound of my own voice, but the girl would
probably think I was mad. I said I didn’t care what the girl thought of
me, and he answered: “That’s just the trouble with you. You don’t care.
You’re right up in the air.” So I am—so I am! Right above the clouds,
Petra darling, up in the golden sunlight, where nothing can touch me.
He’s quite right for once, if he did but know it.
Darling, we must be very careful when you come. I don’t know how I shall
manage to keep the happiness out of my eyes and voice. But he won’t
notice—he never notices how I’m feeling. Besides, he will monopolise
you with his precious book. It’s really out at last, and he’s clucking
over it like a hen that’s laid an egg. People say to me: “So your
husband has written a book, Mrs. Harrison. So clever of him. Fancy a man
knowing such a lot about cooking! What exciting meals you must have.
Aren’t you afraid he’ll poison himself sometimes with those queer
toadstools and things?” And I smile and say, “Oh, but my husband would
never make a stupid mistake. He knows so much about them, you see.”
That’s quite true, too. He doesn’t make mistakes about things—only
about people. He never gets anything right about me—not one single
thing. But then he really _cares_ about mushrooms and takes trouble to
study them.
I wonder how his first wife put up with him. She was a homely sort of
person, from all accounts—the sort that are good housekeepers and
mothers and all that. I think, if I’d ever had a child I could have been
happier, but he has never given me one, and doesn’t seem to want to. I’m
glad of that now—since I met you. It would be terrible to have his
child now—it would seem like a sort of treason to you, beloved. Don’t
be afraid, dearest. He never touches me—you know what I mean—and I
wouldn’t let him. I don’t let him even give me his usual morning peck if
I can help it. I don’t refuse, of course—that would make him suspicious
at once. I just happen to be busy and keep out of his way. He’s glad, I
think, because he always used to grumble at any demonstration and say,
“That’ll do, that’ll do”—though he’ll let the cat swarm all over him
and knead bread on his chest for hours together. I suppose he thinks a
woman’s feelings don’t matter as much as a cat’s!
But I don’t know why I bother about him at all, when you, you, you are
the one thing filling my heart. Oh, my darling, my Petra, my heart’s
heart! You are coming back. Nothing else is of importance in the whole
world. The sun’s shining and everything is happy. I went out to do some
shopping to-day—silly, trivial things for the house—and I could have
kissed the bread and the potatoes as I put them into my basket, just for
joy that you and I and they exist in the same world together! Petra,
beloved, you and I, you and I—oh, darling, isn’t it wonderful!
Your happy
LOLO