I SENT A LETTER TO MY LOVE
Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:
Dreary, weary with the long day's work:
Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:
Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;
When, in a moment just a knock, call, cry,
Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!--
"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I.
"I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.
_The Householder._
The gas was not carried up to the attics of No. 22 Canning Street.
Late-comers had to stumble in the dark up the last flight of stairs,
and bark their shins over the brooms and pails which Beatrice
invariably left standing about on the landing. One evening in April
Lettice was sitting at work, brow buried in her hands, tensely courting
the Muse, when she was startled by a sudden tremendous clatter. The
door burst open and Denis fell into the room, in company with a mop and
a banister brush.
"Dear, dear!" said Lettice with her usual inadequacy.
"I wish you'd not keep an ironmonger's shop on your landing," said
Denis, annoyed, and rubbing his knee.
"You, you--you are so _violent_!" Lettice protested in her pianissimo
drawl. She went outside for a moment. "There, I've put them all away
in the cupboard, so you won't have to break your poor nose when you go
home," she consoled him. "Now, how nice it is to see you again! And
what have you been doing with yourself all this long time?"
"Selling four monoplanes to the War Office," said Denis, with the
simple satisfaction of bygone days. "What do you think of that?"
"No! have you really?"
"A man I used to know in the Sappers came over to Dent-de-lion and
fixed up the order last Saturday. It's been in the air for some
time, but of course I couldn't say anything till it was settled.
Wandesforde's awful pleased. It's no end of a leg-up for us."
"Four all at once!" cooed his sympathetic hostess.
"Yes, the Government's rather keen on the Air Service these days.
There's a lot goin' on we don't hear anything about--a lot; and they
don't mean to be caught napping."
"Did your friend tell you that?" asked Lettice, interested, as always,
in politics.
Denis nodded. "He did. And more. He was askin' me, among other things,
what percentage of our civilian flyers would volunteer in case of a
war."
"Oh! What did you say?"
"I said all, of course--every man jack of 'em who wasn't needed as an
instructor at home."
"You'd go yourself?"
"Rather so! What do you take me for? I should join up with the R.F.C.
at once. Oh, it's coming, and they know it's coming; that's been
obvious ever since Agadir. The only question is, when. I hope I shan't
smash myself first. I'd be sorry to be out of the fun."
He lapsed into silence, leaning back in the big chair which Lettice
kept on purpose for him, his long legs extended half across the hearth.
How many months was it since he had last filled that place? Lettice had
not so much as seen him since the Olympia day; but neither by word nor
look did she remind him of the gap. She was an adept at taking things
for granted. It was enough to see him sitting there, the same old
Denis, talking in the same old way. And yet, not quite the same. Even
in his silence there was a new quality. He had matured; he had lived
through the wreck of an ideal, and built up his faith again, steady and
sure, upon a rock.
Lettice put away her papers with delicate neatness, and sat down in
a low chair with her needlework--not a green dragon this time, but a
pair of combinations, which she darned serenely under the masculine
eye. Denis had a nice mind, he would never see. Now if it had been a
certain other person--Lettice made a graceful figure, soft brown hair
and hazel eyes, long throat and little head, slight drooping shoulders
and slim waist, set off by the soft gray-blue silk of her dress.
She was fond of that peculiarly soft and feminine fabric known to
dressmakers as crêpe de Chine. She could not spend much on her clothes,
but she chose and wore them with that French fineness and perfection of
detail which she, in common with her sisters, had learned from their
foreign upbringing.
"Well, I didn't come here to talk about German invasions," said Denis,
rousing himself. "The fact is, I'm rather badly worried about Gardiner,
Lettice. I didn't like that last piece of news at all. Did you?"
"You've not heard anything fresh?" asked Lettice quickly, her work
dropping in her lap.
"Not a syllable; and can't till June. That's the worst of it; it's such
a deadly long time. I'd half thought of running down there and lookin'
up little Scott--he's quite a decent little chap, and he'd know. But I
suppose it wouldn't do."
"I suppose not," agreed Lettice, who was, as has been said, a dandy
in affairs of honor. She made her funny little pause to collect words
before she got rid of her next speech. "I suppose if it had gone any
further we should have heard by now."
"Heard?"
"The prison people would have let us know."
"Let us know what?"
"Why, if he'd been ill, or gone off his head, or anything of that sort."
"You think there's a danger of his going off his head?"
"Well, that's what you're talking about, isn't it?"
"No," said Denis, "I'd not got so far as that." He regarded her
thoughtfully. "I wish you'd tell me how it strikes you, Lettice. I
can't see my way at all."
"There's nothing to tell," said Lettice, a trifle restless at being
asked to explain the obvious. "He must have been off his balance to
hit a warder, mustn't he? And when that begins, with anybody like him,
you never know where it will stop. He isn't any too steady."
(Certainly there was no one like Lettice for pulling things off
pedestals. Hitting a warder--it didn't sound nearly so bad as
assaulting an officer!)
"Well, I've known Gardiner five and twenty years, and I'd never have
called him unsteady. Hard as nails, more like."
"So he is that too."
"Now what on earth do you mean?"
"Well, of course he'd be hard so long as he hadn't anything to face he
really minded, wouldn't he? And till this he didn't, did he? It's what
you said yourself--he's always been lucky. But if you get him off his
guard he's rather unusually sensitive. Look at the way he feels pain!"
"I never saw him feel pain. In my company he's always been brutally
robust."
"Well, but can't you _tell_ he would, by the set of his lips?"
"No," said Denis, "I can't. I've not your imagination."
To this Lettice made no reply, unless one might count the slight
derisive lift of her chin. She never would take up the personal
question. She would never, if she could help it, say: "I thought." She
was sometimes driven to say, "I did," but even then she kept to the
bald facts, uncolored by her personality. Denis, shifting in his chair
to a more convenient angle, continued to regard her with attention, in
which now mingled some amusement.
"Oh ah," he said, "you were there when he damaged his hand, weren't
you? I'd forgotten. How long was it you stayed on at Rochehaut after I
left?"
"About six weeks."
"And you were actin' as his secretary all that time?"
"Part of it."
"Of course that accounts."
"Accounts what _for_?" asked Lettice unwisely, with her little air of
distraction.
"For the sympathetic insight you display," said Denis, now openly
smiling. Lettice had chaffed him all her life; it was a new thing for
him to turn the tables. "He swears it was you sent him back, and I
believe him now. You've eased my mind quite a lot. He won't go under.
He may knock out a warder or so, but he'll come through all right in
the end--with such backin'!"
"Rubbish," said Lettice with acerb decision. She folded her work, got
up, lighted a small paraffin lamp and carried it outside. Denis watched
her hang it on the wall above the stairs.
"Is that a gentle hint to me to be off?" he asked, still smiling, as
she reëntered. "Because if so I'm not takin' any. I'll go when my time
comes, but there's ten minutes yet."
"It's not for you at all, it's for Dot O'Connor."
"For Dot O'Connor!"
"She always tumbles over the brooms worse than you did," Lettice
explained, "so I give her a light on the stairs when I'm expecting her
to supper. I'd have given you one, too, if I'd known you were coming."
She had banished Denis's smile. He shifted in his chair once more, but
this time away from her. "Dot O'Connor!" he repeated for the third
time, in that altered voice. "Do you mean Mrs. Trent?"
"She doesn't like being called that now."
"Do you see much of her?"
"So so," said Lettice. She had mentioned Dorothea, not to get away from
Denis's chaff--that would have been too cruel--but of set purpose,
because there was something she had to say before he went. "Will you
stay and have supper with us? I _think_ there'll be enough to go round,
if you aren't too hungry."
"No, Lettice."
"I don't see why you shouldn't."
"Don't you?"
His tone was not encouraging, but it made not a pin's difference to
Lettice; her difficulties came always from within, not from without,
and once she had made up her mind to speak all the king's horses and
all the king's men would not have stopped her. She did not imagine that
she could move Denis, but there were certain things he ought to know,
and which, in justice to Dorothea, she meant to set before him. They
would not move him now, but he would not forget them; and in time to
come they might sink in and soften his judgment.
"I don't see why you shouldn't forgive her," she pronounced.
"I'd rather not discuss it."
"Very well, don't you say anything, but will you listen?" Denis moved
restlessly in his chair. "You're too hard on her," said Lettice,
hitting straight and hard. "You will treat her as a woman, when she's
only a child. And you don't realize what marrying a--a beast like that
does to a girl. It bruises her innocence. It's like tearing open the
eyes of a blind kitten. You can't expect her to see right and wrong
like other people." So far beyond herself had Lettice been carried by
that potent loosener of tongues, a sense of injustice! She went on with
the same resolute candor: "Besides, there's another thing. She loves
you. And she can love; you won't meet what she has to give twice in a
lifetime. I know"--Lettice spoke with an effort; it was as near to an
avowal as she could go, and the fact that she thought her cause worth
such a sacrifice added tenfold to the weight of her words--"I know
she's often made me ashamed of my stockishness. Are you prepared to
throw all that away?"
She had finished, and she stopped. Denis sat silent, staring into the
fire and pulling absently at his forelock, a trick he had when deep
in thought. The soft sounds of Lettice's business did not break the
stillness of the room. The alarm clock which Denis had given her to
get up by in the morning (Lettice had long been mortally afraid of
the alarm, and she still handled it as gingerly as if she expected it
to explode) ticked on through the stillness. It struck seven; Denis
glanced at his watch, and got up.
"I must go," he said confusedly. "I--I'd no idea it was so late."
He took his hat and stick, and Lettice thought he was really going then
and there, without another word; but he thought better of it, and from
the landing came back and stood in the doorway, visibly struggling with
himself. "You--you mustn't think I mind what you said, Lettice," he got
out. "I'd always listen to you. But I can't do this--I can't--"
Lettice looked him in the face. "She would have something to forgive
you now," she said deliberately.
"No, she would not," said Denis with equal deliberation; and he met her
eyes, fair and square. "But that's not anything to do with it. It's not
a question of forgiveness. It's--I--oh, I _can't_ do it, Lettice--I
can't explain--"
"Well--" said Lettice, summing up with that sad, vague word which looks
back, unsatisfied, over the past, and forward, unhopeful, towards the
future. And that was all she learned, then or for many months to come,
of Denis's feelings for Dorothea, of his wanderings in the wilderness,
of the manner of his deliverance. Not till many months later, in alien
scenes, in unimaginable circumstances, in a different world, did he
reopen that subject.
He straightened himself, glancing again at his watch. "I really must
go. I'm dinin' with the Wandesfordes, to celebrate, and I'll never hear
the last of it if I'm late. Wandesforde always thinks he can do the
funny dog about Irish people--silly ass. Wish you were coming too."
"Me?" asked Lettice, opening her eyes.
"You. It's not much fun sittin' here alone and thinkin' about
things--is it?" said Denis; and to her wide amazement he put a
brotherly arm round her and kissed her cheek. Lettice turned slowly and
deeply pink; not on account of the kiss, however. She took her lamp
and stood torch-bearer to light him down the stairs. When the quick
military tread had reached the lower landing she was turning back to
her room, but a quick scuffle in the cupboard and a breathless voice
stopped her.
"Lettice--wait!"
And Dorothea scrambled out from among the brooms and brushes, bringing
a shower of them with her. "Oh, bother!" said she, turning to stuff
them back unceremoniously, and precipitating a fresh avalanche. Lettice
found her voice again.
"You--you've got a black on your nose," she remarked originally.
"So would any one have, in this horrid little hole! I'd just reached
the landing when your door opened, and I bundled straight in here, and
all the things fell every which way, and I had to clutch them up in
both hands all the time. I made sure you'd hear."
"I did," said Lettice, "but I thought it was Black Maria."
"Well, I'd _be_ Black Maria if I could, I know you'd like me better,"
retorted Dorothea, expending the last of her temper in a spiteful kick
at a pail, and slamming the door before more disasters could happen.
"But oh, Lettice, oh, Lettice, isn't it glorious news?"
"You heard what we were saying?"
"Well, of course. How could I help it? You can't put your fingers in
your ears when you're holding up six brooms and a mop. I heard every
word. And I don't care! I don't care a scrap! Oh, I am so glad!"
"Glad?" Lettice repeated. She had not known quite what to expect;
certainly not this. How the child's eyes were sparkling!
"Well, of course!" she cried. "Didn't _you_ hear? Didn't you see
what he was like? Oh! now I know that's all right I don't care about
anything else--I don't care _what_ happens, so long as that doesn't!"
She flung herself down on the rug with a tempestuous sigh, and tried to
dry her eyes on a wisp of lace. That proving inadequate, she rummaged
through half a dozen pockets and dragged out a dingy red square which
had evidently been used as an oil rag. She held it out by the corners.
"Oh dear, I must have stolen Turner's--oh dear, I wish I could manage
to hit something between a doily and a duster--never mind, a hanky's
a hanky," said she, and blew her nose and dried her tears forthwith.
Then, looking up sharply, "Lettice! why don't you say something? Aren't
you pleased too?"
"O-oh, oh yes," said Lettice hastily; "only you see I'd had time to get
over it before you came."
"I shan't get over it--I shan't ever get over it," murmured Dorothea,
nestling round to gaze into the fire. "You don't know how awful it's
been to feel _that_ on me. I'd rather I killed him than see that
woman--Do you know, Lettice, I do think there must be a God after
all. I didn't ever use to, but ever since that Olympia day I've been
praying, oh! so hard, that He'd save Denis--I didn't see how even God
could stop him then, but there wasn't anything else I could do, and I
just had to do something. And now you see he has. He didn't tell you
anything about how it happened?" Lettice shook her head. "Oh, well,
that doesn't really matter, it's his being saved that counts," said
Dorothea, relapsing again into one of her boneless attitudes, and
smiling rosily over clasped hands into the fire.
"Did you hear--" began Lettice.
"What he said about me? Oh yes. Well, of course I'd love to have him
forgive me, but I know he couldn't possibly, and anyway I don't matter
about," said Dorothea, her voice softened into dreams. "It's him--it's
him. It does mean such a lot, Lettice! It isn't only that he is what
he used to be, what I thought he never could be again; it's ever so
much more than that. Denis wasn't made to think of women as he thought
of--of me and Mrs. Byrne. He was made to marry, Lettice. Can't you see
how perfectly sweet he'd be to his wife?--yes, and to his boys and
girls too; how he'd love them (I expect he'd have a pet little girl,
and call her Letty), and how they'd all adore him? He's one of those
men who--who only truly _mellow_ in their own homes. If he could only
find some nice girl who'll love him--no, not better than me, nobody
ever could do that, but well enough to make up to him for the horrid
little wretch I've been--I wish you would, Lettice, but I'm afraid
that's past praying for."
"Me?" said Lettice. "I don't think that would do."
"Why not?" demanded Dorothea. Lettice failing to reply at once, she
whisked round suddenly, with an eel-like twist. "Why do you say it like
that? Why aren't you gladder? Is there anything wrong? There is, there
is! Oh, Lettice, what is it?"
She was kneeling up now, and had seized Lettice's hands. "You're making
me spill the milk, and I can't get _any_ more," Lettice warned her;
but she was not to be diverted. "You've been worried for ages, only
I've been such a blind donkey thinking of Denis I haven't noticed," she
cried. "Why did he say you oughtn't to be let sit alone and think? What
did he mean? Lettice--oh, Lettice! is it about Mr. Gardiner? Have you
any bad news? Oh, don't, don't tell me I've done that too!"
Lettice freed herself summarily. Dorothea had room in her little head
for but one idea at a time, and therefore was apt to overlook what lay
under her little nose; but, her attention once aroused, she was keen on
a scent, and her intuition, the prerogative of semi-civilized minds,
had a way of landing her dead on the truth. Now there were certain
things which Denis might be permitted to see, but which Dorothea might
not--no! not on any account.
"There isn't any news at all, if you want to know," she said. "He hit a
warder, so all his letters and things have been stopped off."
"But isn't Denis going to visit him quite soon?"
"That's stopped too."
"Oh!" said Dorothea blankly, "oh dear! I see."
She did see, only too plainly. Oh, what a little donkey she had been!
But who would ever have imagined that Lettice--and with Mr. Gardiner,
of all people! oh, how could she? She did, though, no doubt about that,
and with Lettice that would mean a dreadfully big thing, the whole of
her life, and--oh, good gracious! how she would simply hate to have
any one know! Oh, she mustn't, she mustn't be allowed to guess! All
this passed through Dorothea's mind in the space of half-a-second, and
under the stimulus of that last thought she pulled herself round, with
a mighty effort, to ask as innocently as she could: "Did--did Denis
know about this the day of the show?"
"He'd just heard."
"Oh," said Dorothea, "oh, I wonder he didn't strike me to the ground!
Oh, how wicked, how wicked I've been!"
There was nothing visible but the red handkerchief. Lettice looked
at her sharply; but the pose was so natural, and any pose seemed so
foreign to Dorothea, and Lettice so much wanted to be taken in, that
she was. Not wholly; but she stuck her head in the sand and refused to
see her own doubts. And behind the red handkerchief Dorothea, too much
overwhelmed to cry, sat among the ruins which she had pulled down on
her own head and wondered helplessly when she _would_ see the end of
all the harm she had done. "I was so happy about Denis, and now there's
this!" Her love for Denis had been a sort of sublimated selfishness,
but now she was thinking about other people--about Lettice, yes, and
about Gardiner, though there she was all at sea. "I don't know what
I've done to him, but it must be something very bad for Lettice to be
like this!" she reflected. "But, oh dear! after all, what should I feel
like if it were Denis in prison? And what would he feel like himself?
And Mr. Gardiner's led such a free sort of out-of-doors life--"
In the depths below a bell rang; Beatrice's feet pounded up from the
basement. They came on from flight to flight, up the bare boards to
the attics, and ended with a single bang on the door. "Miss Lettus, 's
a letter for you!" Lettice went with her soft, unhurried step to take
it in. She carried it to the lamp, and stood arrested, staring at the
envelope.
Dorothea was sitting up, her dark hair tumbling about her eyes. "Oh,
Lettice, what is it?"
"From the prison," said Lettice, opening the envelope and drawing
out the enclosure with a steady hand. From across the room Dorothea
could see that it was not in Gardiner's handwriting; and then she saw
Lettice's face change, and her heart turned over in her breast.
"_Lettice--!_"
"What?" said Lettice, absorbed. "O-oh no, it's all right; it's only
that--he's hurt his hand--"
Dorothea turned her face to the wall and said her prayers.
This was the letter which Lettice received:
DEAR MISS SMITH,--I have permission to write you a short
note on business.
I am anxious about my hotel. It has been in the hands of a
caretaker all winter; but for the summer season I had arranged
for my housekeeper to come back, and most of the servants. The
housekeeper is a trustworthy person, and quite competent to run
the place herself; but I can't very well give her carte blanche
with my banking account, and I'm sure she wouldn't accept it
if I did. What I want is somebody to sign checks, manage the
correspondence, and act as figurehead. Practically what you
did last year. Will you take it on again? I should have every
confidence in you, and of course it is your proper place. As far
as I know at present, I propose, if it suits you, to be married
as soon as I leave in October, and go out to Rochehaut for the
winter. Please let me know if this fits in with your views.
I must apologize for my writing, but I have been laid up in
hospital with a touch of the old trouble in my hand. When I come
out, I believe I am to go on the farm. The governor has most
kindly remitted the rest of my punishment, and I shall be allowed
to see a visitor next month as usual. Will you let Merion-Smith
know, if you are writing to him?
Sincerely,
H. C. GARDINER.
Dorothea at first had turned her eyes scrupulously away; but they were
back now, and searching Lettice's face for news. That face wore a
decidedly queer and pensive look. She refolded the letter with careful
exactness.
"Well? What does he say?"
"O-oh, he wants me to go out to Rochehaut and look after his old hotel."
"Then he's all right? He isn't ill or anything? Denis won't have to be
anxious any more?"
"He's in hospital, but it's nothing much." Lettice read out what
Gardiner said about his hand, and the description of her duties as
well. But she did not read those sentences of barefaced impudence
which transformed an apparently decorous business communication into a
proposal of marriage. Dorothea drew a long breath.
"And you'll do it, Lettice? You'll go? Oh! _may_ I come too? I won't be
intense, truly I won't, and perhaps I might even help you a little--I
would love to do something for Mr. Gardiner, to try and make up for all
the harm I've done him! You are going yourself, anyhow, aren't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so," said Lettice, with a long-suffering air.
This was in the month of April, 1914.