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.
January 20th.
I distinguished myself to-day! It came on to pour while I was at the
Cottage, and, in spite of a certain caution that has crept into my
actions of late, I stayed there the whole afternoon.
Jane was actually making herself a new dress, so I offered to help
her, and we sewed by lamplight at the kitchen table, it being a very
dark afternoon. Gabriel joined us after a while; he thought we
looked so cosy that he brought his books and sat at the table too,
just opposite me.
You have never really loved any man, you, so perhaps you don't know
what it is to be afraid of your own eyes, because you feel that
every time they rest on that thing you love, your poor heart runs
and looks out of window.
I seldom look at Gabriel now,--I dare not. But there he sat opposite
me, poring over his book. Jane was bent over her sewing. I forgot
her, and I forgot my work too; it slipped from my fingers and fell
into my lap. Suddenly he raised his head,--it seemed as if all the
blood in my body rushed to my face; he had caught me all unguarded;
what he might not know was laid bare before him. With a dull, wide
gaze he stared at me, then bent over his book again; he had not seen
me; he had merely looked up to get a better view, as it were, of
something he had in mind.
Then I, too, bent my head low, for hot tears stood in my silly eyes,
and, to my surprise, I felt a soft hand tuck my hair behind my ears,
caressingly. I looked up and saw a world of pity in Jane Norton's
face. When presently Gabriel left the room to fetch another volume,
I said:
"Jane, he must never know it."
"My child," she answered, speaking as softly as I had done, "there
is no fear that he should learn it from _me_."
"From me, then?" asked I; "is it so plain?"
"You are as pale as the table," she said. "Take care of yourself,
Em,--don't be unhappy, all's well."
Just then Gabriel came in, and I left soon after. You see what an
enemy I am to myself.
Good night, dearest; I am your
EMILIA.