GRAYSMILL, November 8th.
My little dear Constance, first and foremost I am freezing, and have
got a red nose, I'm certain. Is it cold with you also? The week has
been a full one. Uncle George's eldest daughter was married the day
before yesterday, and there were great festivities in the family.
The marriage should have taken place last June, but was postponed
owing to the grandfather's death.
What extraordinary creatures we are! I cannot tell you how many
Emilias were at that wedding. Something in me was touched by the
sight of a large family assembled from far and wide, excited and
united for the moment by a common sentiment; something in me was
lonely beyond description, for I was not of them; and whereas I
smiled and made merry in a white gown and felt the tears come to my
eyes when the little bride went forth under a shower of rice, I was
nevertheless looking on at the smiles and tears of the others with
doubt and cynicism rampant in my heart.
Poor little bride! I wondered how much she thought she loved him,
how much he cared for her; and where her smiles and her golden
dreams would be this time next year, poor little white thing, veiled
in ignorance.
It is not altogether a bad world, for all that. I certainly have not
found it so; but then it has been my good fortune to draw near the
hearts and brains of some very dear mortals. I cannot tell you how
fond I have grown of this creature,--Gabriel Norton, I mean. I can
say this openly to you, because you are sensible and know me, and
will not think at once, because he is a man and I a woman, that
there is any question here of sentiments exceeding friendship. We
are neither of us children; he is three or four years older than I,
I should imagine,--twenty-nine or thirty, or thereabouts.
For aught I know, he may already have loved and lost as I have; and
were it even possible that I should ever love again, I hardly think
that Gabriel would be the man. Anyway, we are excellent friends, and
I believe that my companionship has become as precious to him as his
is to me. We meet now every two or three days, and walk together,
either before breakfast or after early dinner.
Did your ears burn on Wednesday? I told him a great deal about you.
We had been having one of our customary argumentative conversations,
principally about marriage, more especially still about the horrors
of false marriages, and this led me to tell him that the best friend
I have on earth is infamously bound for the whole of her dear life
by a marriage contracted before she was seventeen years old. He
thinks, dearest, with me, that you ought to face the horrors of the
divorce court rather than linger on in chains, and certainly listen
no longer to the considerations, pecuniary and otherwise, which
influence your mother.
I fancy, from the way in which he spoke, that his father and mother
were not happy together; he has therefore not had in his life the
blessing that was mine,--the daily contemplation of an absolutely
perfect union. Indeed, he hardly seems to believe in the possibility
of ideal marriages, and declares that he himself will certainly
never marry unless some law is passed whereby men and women shall be
able to bind themselves for a limited number of years, at the
expiration of which they may either renew the bond or go free. I
laughed when he said this, for I thought he was jesting; so he was,
partly, yet more than half in earnest.
"No, no," said he; "I shall never marry. I had sooner not break the
laws of my country, but if it came to be a question between breaking
them or the laws of true morality, I should not hesitate in my
choice. Love without marriage is a sin against society; marriage
without love is a sin against Nature."
Of course he is right. How my mother would have loved him! Do you
remember her invectives against marriage? It was the very perfection
of the tie between her and my father that filled her with
indignation and regret whenever she looked about her and beheld, on
all sides, the parody of her heaven.
Good-bye. You are getting very lazy, Mrs. Norris. How dare you leave
me letterless so long?