GRAYSMILL, August 2d.
Now that's the kind of letter I like to have! Only my heart sickens
for thee. At each word I hear your voice; at every pause, the little
ripples that run away with it so sweetly. I cannot even find it in
me to scold you for your many follies. Young woman, I don't approve
of you, but you are the sweetest creature that ever walked this
earth. Thanks be where thanks are due that I am a woman; you would
have been my bane had I been born a man!
But, to be serious, I have been thinking things out; you must leave
your mother, Constance, and come to me. You have lived this kind of
life long enough; and--believe me, my dearest--you are not strong
enough to bear it longer unharmed.
Shall I be a little cruel to you? Well, my own, I think that if you
looked into your heart, searchingly and truly, as you always declare
you know not how, you would find that it is more cowardice than duty
binds you to Mrs. Rayner. She bore you, you say, she brought you
up--Good Lord! and how! If you were not a pearl among women, what
would you be by this time? No, you know as well as I do that it is
cowardice, not duty, prevents you from taking this step.
I shall never forget what you said to me once, when first I knew
you; it was in Florence, and we were leaning out of window in my
room. I remember it the better because it was during this
conversation that I ventured to put my arm round your waist for the
first time.
"Now I call this pleasant!" you said. "Here am I looking out of
window with a nice girl's arm round my waist, and right away from my
mother. She doesn't even know where I am!"
I loved my mother so much that this shocked me extremely, and I told
you so. You flushed, I remember, and cried:--
"Oh, but you don't know what my life is! You don't know what it is
to long with all your might to get away from somebody, somebody who
has hung over you ever since you were born, so that she seemed to
stand between you and the very air you breathed." And then you told
me about your marriage; how, in order to be free from her, you took
the husband, rich and infamous, into whose arms she threw you in
your innocence; how, at the end of a few months, you returned home
doubly a slave, to be crushed, year in, year out, by love that
showed itself almost as hate; bound now in such a way that if any
other love were offered you, you could not take it.
And how old are you now? Twenty-four. Still her puppet, her doll,
for that is what you are; she dresses and undresses you from morning
till night, then struts up and down the streets of Europe, showing
her pretty plaything. You say she has no thought but you, loves you
so much that it would break her heart if you left her. Look here,
Constance: you knew my mother; you know then what it means to live
nobly and truly in the light of a greater goodness than the world
yet understands. God, or whoever made you, made your soul very
white; how dare you let the smuts fall upon it? How dare you tread
among falsehoods, you that have heard of Truth?
Try, my dearest, try to be brave; surely it is the duty of each one
of us to live the noblest life he can. The world is so beautiful! It
is only ourselves and our mistakes that lie foul upon it. When the
most holy of human ties, defying nature, becomes the bane of those
it binds, it is better to break it than to let one's life cast a
daily blot, as it were, on the sanctity of motherhood and the love
of the child.
Come to me; live with me in peace awhile! We will think and read
together, master ourselves, and find some path to tread. I, too, am
in need of resolution. Whilst my dear mother lived, she held me by
the hand. You know how, when two walk together, the weaker
unconsciously leaves it to the stronger to lead the way? Well, so it
was with me; and now I must learn to find my path alone. I know now
what she meant when she said that the first use to which a man must
put his courage is to being himself.
All good be with you, dear heart.