November 15.
Dear Judy:
Betsy and I are just back from a GIRO in our new motor car. It
undoubtedly does add to the pleasure of institution life. The car of its
own accord turned up Long Ridge Road, and stopped before the gates of
Shadywell. The chains were up, and the shutters battened down, and the
place looked closed and gloomy and rain-soaked. It wore a sort of fall
of the House of Usher air, and didn't in the least resemble the cheerful
house that used to greet me hospitably of an afternoon.
I hate to have our nice summer ended. It seems as though a section of
my life was shut away behind me, and the unknown future was pressing
awfully close. Positively, I'd like to postpone that wedding another six
months, but I'm afraid poor Gordon would make too dreadful a fuss. Don't
think I'm getting wobbly, for I'm not. It's just that somehow I need
more time to think about it, and March is getting nearer every day. I
know absolutely that I'm doing the most sensible thing. Everybody,
man or woman, is the better for being nicely and appropriately and
cheerfully married. But oh dear! oh dear! I do hate upheavals, and this
is going to be such a world-without-end upheaval! Sometimes when the
day's work is over, and I'm tired, I haven't the spirit to rise and meet
it.
And now especially since you've bought Shadywell, and are going to be
here every summer, I resent having to leave. Next year, when I'm far
away, I'll be consumed with homesickness, thinking of all the busy,
happy times at the John Grier, with you and Betsy and Percy and our
grumbly Scotchman working away cheerfully without me. How can anything
ever make up to a mother for the loss of 107 children?
I trust that Judy, junior, stood the journey into town without upsetting
her usual poise. I am sending her a bit giftie, made partly by myself
and chiefly by Jane. But two rows, I must inform you, were done by the
doctor. One only gradually plumbs the depths of Sandy's nature. After a
ten-months' acquaintance with the man, I discover that he knows how to
knit, an accomplishment he picked up in his boyhood from an old shepherd
on the Scotch moors.
He dropped in three days ago and stayed for tea, really in almost his
old friendly mood. But he has since stiffened up again to the same man
of granite we knew all summer. I've given up trying to make him out. I
suppose, however, that any one might be expected to be a bit down with
a wife in an insane asylum. I wish he'd talk about it once. It's awful
having such a shadow hovering in the background of your thoughts and
never coming out into plain sight.
I know that this letter doesn't contain a word of the kind of news that
you like to hear. But it's that beastly twilight hour of a damp November
day, and I'm in a beastly uncheerful mood. I'm awfully afraid that I
am developing into a temperamental person, and Heaven knows Gordon can
supply all the temperament that one family needs! I don't know where
we'll land if I don't preserve my sensibly stolid, cheerful nature.
Have you really decided to go South with Jervis? I appreciate your
feeling (to a slight extent) about not wanting to be separated from a
husband; but it does seem sort of hazardous to me to move so young a
daughter to the tropics.
The children are playing blind man's buff in the lower corridor. I think
I'll have a romp with them, and try to be in a more affable mood before
resuming my pen.