* * * * *
BLACKDEEP FEN, 3_rd_ _December_ 1838.
Your letter made me feel unhappy. I am afraid something is on your mind.
What is the matter? I was not well before I went to Homerton the last
time, but maybe it was not London that upset me. If you cannot leave, I
shall come. Let me hear by the next post.
* * * * *
HOMERTON, 5_th_ _December_ 1838.
I told Charles I was expecting you. He said that your sudden
determination seemed odd. ‘Your mother,’ he added, ‘is a woman who acts
upon impulses. She ought always to take time for consideration. This is
hardly the proper season for travelling.’ I asked him if he would let me
go to Blackdeep. He replied that, unless there was some particular
reason for it, my proposal was as unwise as yours. What am I to do? A
particular reason! It is a particular reason that I pine for my mother.
Can there be any reason more particular than a longing for the sight of a
dear face, for kisses and embraces? You must counsel me.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 15_th_ _December_ 1838.
As Charles imagines I am carried away by what he calls impulses, I did
not answer your letter at once, and I have been thinking as much as I
can. I am not a good hand at it. Your dear father had a joke against
me. ‘Rachel, you can’t think; but never mind, you can do much better
without thinking than other people can with it.’ I wish I had gone
straight to you at once, and yet it was better I did not. It would have
put Charles out, and this would not have been pleasant for either you or
me. I would not have you at Blackdeep now for worlds. The low fever has
broken out, and to-day there were two funerals. Parson preached a sermon
about it; it was a judgment from God. Perhaps it is, but why did it take
your father three years ago? It is all a mystery, and it looks to me
sometimes as if here on earth there were nothing but mystery. I have
just heard that parson is down with the fever himself.
Do let me have a long letter at once.
* * * * *
HOMERTON, 20_th_ _December_ 1838.
A Mrs. Perkins has been here. She sat with me for an hour. She spends
her afternoons in going her rounds among her friends, as she calls them,
but she does not care for them, nor do they care for her. She looks and
speaks like a woman who could not care for anybody, and yet perhaps there
may be somewhere a person who could move her.
I am so weary of the talk of my neighbours. It is so different from what
we used to have at Blackdeep. Oh me! those evenings when father came in
at dark, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornley came afterwards and we had supper at
eight, and father and Mr. Thornley smoked their pipes and drank our
home-brewed ale and we had all the news—how much Mr. Thornley had got for
his malt, how that pig-headed old Stubbs wouldn’t sell his corn, and how
when he began to thresh it and the ferrets were brought, a hundred rats
were killed and bushels of wheat had been eaten.
You ask me what is the matter. I do not deny I am not quite happy, but
it would be worse than useless to dwell upon my unhappiness and try to
give you reasons for it. London, in the winter, most likely does not
suit me. I shall certainly see you in the spring, and then I hope I
shall be better.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP FEN, _Christmas Day_, 1838.
As a rule it is right to hide our troubles, but it is not right that you
should hide yours from me. You are my firstborn child and my only
daughter. There are girls who are very good, but between their mothers
and them there is a wall. They do what they are bid; they are kind, but
that is all. They live apart from those that bore them. I would not
give a straw for such duty and love. I gathered one of our Christmas
roses this morning. We have taken great care to keep them from being
splashed and spoilt. There was not a speck on it. I put it in water and
could not take my eyes off it. Its white flower lay spread open and I
could look right down into it. I thought of you. When you were a little
one—ay, and after you were out of short frocks—you never feared to show
me every thought in your mind, you always declared that if you had wished
to hide anything from me, it would have been of no use to try. What a
blessing that was to me! How dreadful it would be if, now that you are
married, you were to change! I am sure you will not and cannot.
* * * * *
HOMERTON, 1_st_ _January_ 1839.
The New Year! What will happen before the end of it? I feel as if it
must be something strange. I have just read your last letter again, and
I cannot hold myself in. My dearest mother, I confess I am wretched. It
might be supposed that misery like mine would express itself with no
effort, but it is not so: it would be far easier to describe ordinary
things. I am afraid also to talk about it, lest that which is dim and
shapeless should become more real.
Since the day we were married Charles and I have never openly quarrelled.
He is really good: he spends his evenings at home and does not seem to
desire entertainment elsewhere. He likes to see me well-dressed and does
not stint in house expenditure, although he examines it carefully and
pays a good many of the bills himself by cheque. He has been promoted to
be manager of the bank, and takes up his new duties to-day. Mrs.
Perkins, whose husband is one of the partners, told me that he had said
that there is nobody in the bank equal to Charles for sound sense and
business ability; that everything with which he has to do goes right; he
is always calm, never in a hurry, and never betrayed into imprudence.
This I can well believe. As you know, Jim asked him a month ago in much
excitement for advice about Fordham, who owed him £200. Jim had heard
there was something wrong. Charles put the letter in the desk and did
not mention it to me again till a week afterwards, when he asked me to
tell Jim the next time I wrote to Blackdeep that he need not worry
himself, as Fordham was quite safe. It is certainly a comfort to a woman
that her husband is a strong man and that he is much respected by his
employers. Of what have I to complain? O mother, life here is so dull!
This is not the right word; it is common, but if you can fill it up with
my meaning, there is no better. It will then be terrible. There is
hardly a flower in the garden, although not a weed is permitted. The
sooty laurels unchanging through winter and summer I hate. Some flowers
I am sure would grow, but Charles does not care for them. Neatness is
what he likes, and if the beds are raked quite smooth, if the grass is
closely shaven and trimmed and not a grain of gravel in the path is
loose, he is content. He cannot endure the least untidiness in the
house. If papers are left lying loosely about, he silently puts them
evenly together. He brings all his office ways into the dining-room; the
pens must never be put aside unwiped and the ink-bottles must be kept
filled to a certain height. We do not get much sun at any time of day in
Homerton, and we face the west. Charles wishes the blinds to be drawn
when it shines, so that it may not fade the curtains. We have few books
excepting Rees’s cyclopædia, and they are kept in a glazed case. If I
look at one I have to put it back directly I have done with it. I saw
this place before I was married, but it did not look then as it looks
now, and I did not comprehend how much Blackdeep was a part of me. The
front door always open in daytime, the hollyhocks down to the gate, the
strawberry beds, the currant and gooseberry bushes, the lilacs, roses,
the ragged orchard at the back, the going in and out without ‘getting
ready,’ our living-room with Jim’s pipes and tobacco on the mantel-shelf,
his gun over it, his fishing-tackle in the corner—I little understood
that such things and the ease which is felt when our surroundings grow to
us make a good part of the joy of life. When I came to Blackdeep for my
holiday and lifted the latch, it was just as if a stiff, tight band round
my chest dropped from me. I have nothing to do here. We keep three
servants indoors. I would much rather have but two and help a little
myself. They are good servants, and the work seems to go by mechanism
without my interference. I suggested to Charles that, as they were not
fully employed, we should get rid of one, but he would not consent. He
preferred, he said, paid service. To me the dusting of my room, paring
apples, or the cooking of any little delicacy, is not service. The cook
asks for orders in the morning; the various dishes are properly prepared;
but if I were Charles, and my wife understood her business, I should like
to taste her hand in them. I never venture into the kitchen. ‘The
advantage of paid service,’ added Charles, ‘is that if it is inefficient
you can reprimand or dismiss.’ Nothing in me finds exercise. I want to
work, to laugh, to expect. There was always something going on at
Blackdeep, no two days alike. I never got up in the morning knowing what
was before me till bedtime. That outlook too from my window, how I miss
it!—the miles and miles of distance, the rainbow arch in summer complete
to the ground, the sunlight, the stormy wind, the stars from the point
overhead to the horizon far away—I hardly ever see them here.
You will exclaim ‘Is this all?’ If you were here you would think it
enough, but it— The clock is striking one. Charles is to be at home to
lunch. He is going to buy the house and is to meet the owner this
afternoon, an old man who lives about ten minutes’ walk from us. Charles
thinks the purchase will be a good investment and that another house
might be built on part of the garden.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 15_th_ _January_ 1839.
I am not surprised you find London dull, but I grieve that it has taken
such an effect on you. I hoped that, as you are young, you would get
used to the bricks and mortar and the smoke.
Jim came in and I had to stop. The Lynn coach is set fast in the snow
near the turnpike at the top of our lane, and he is going to help dig it
out. I will take up my pen again. You are no worse off than thousands
of country girls who are obliged to live in streets narrower than those
in Homerton. I cannot help boding you are not quite free with me. I do
beseech you to hide nothing. There must even now be something the matter
beyond what I have heard. I cannot say any more at present. My head is
in a whirl. May be you will have a child. That will make all the
difference to you.
* * * * *
HOMERTON, 20_th_ _January_ 1839.
How shall I begin? I must tell the whole truth. Mother, mother, I have
made a great mistake, the one great mistake of life. I have mistaken the
man with whom I am to live. Charles and I were engaged for two years. I
have discovered nothing new in him. I was familiar with all his ways and
thought them all good. I compared him with other men who were
extravagant and who had vices, and I considered myself fortunate. He was
cool, but how much better it was to be so than to have a temper, for I
should never hear angry words from him which cannot be forgotten? I
remembered how measured my uncle Robert’s speech was, how quiet he was,
and yet no two human beings could have been more devoted to one another
than uncle and aunt. Charles’s quietude seemed so like uncle’s. Charles
was very methodical. He always came to see me on the same days, at the
same hours, and stayed the same time. It provoked me at first, but I
said to myself that he was not a creature of fits and starts and that I
could always depend on him.
He always kissed me when we met and when we parted. I do not remember
that he ever had me in his arms, and I never felt he was warm and eager
when we were alone together; but I had heard of men and women who married
for what they called love, and in a twelvemonth it had vanished and there
was nothing left. Of many small particulars I took but little notice.
When we chose the furniture I wanted bright-coloured curtains, but he did
not like them and bought dark red, gloomy stuff. I tried to think they
were the best because they would not show the London dirt. I had a
bonnet with scarlet trimmings which suited my black hair, but he asked me
to change them for something more sober, because they made me
conspicuous. Again I thought he was right, and that what might do for
the country might not be proper in town. Trifles! and yet to me now what
a meaning they have! Two years—and everything is changed, although, as I
have just said, I have found out nothing new! The quietude is absence of
emotion, different in its root from uncle Robert’s serenity. It is the
deadly sameness of a soul to which nothing is strange and wonderful and a
woman’s heart is not so interesting as an advertisement column in the
newspaper. He never cares to look into mine. I do not pretend that
there is anything remarkable in it, but if he were to open it he would
find something worth having. This absence of curiosity to explore what
is in me kills me. What must the bliss of a wife be when her husband
searches her to her inmost depths, when she sees tender questions in his
eyes, when he asks her _do you really feel so_? and she looks at him and
replies _and you_? I could endure the uneventfulness of outward life if
anything not unpleasant _happened_ between me and Charles. Nothing
happens. Something happens in my relationship to my dog. I pat him and
he is pleased; he barks for joy when I go out. I cannot live with
anybody with whom I am always on exactly the same even terms—no rising,
no falling, mere stagnation. I am dead, but it is death without its
sleep and peace. Fool, fool that I was! I cannot go on. What shall I
do? If Charles drank I might cure or tolerate him; if he went after
another woman I might win him back. I can lay hold of nothing.
A child? Ah no! I have longed unspeakably for a child sometimes, but
not for one fathered by him.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 24_th_ _January_ 1839.
I knew it all, but I dared not speak till you had spoken. Your letter
came when we were at breakfast. I could not open it, for my heart told
me what was in it. Jim wondered why I let it lie on the table, and I
made some excuse. After breakfast I took it upstairs into my own room
and sat down by the bed, your father’s bed, and cried and prayed. If he
were alive he would have helped me, or if no help could have been found
he would have shared my sorrow. It is dreadful that, no matter what my
distress may be, he cannot speak. What counsel can I send you? I have
had much to do with affliction, but not such as yours. My love for you
is of no use. I will be still. I have always found, when I am in great
straits and my head is confused, I must hold my tongue and do nothing.
If I do not move, a way may open out to me. Meantime, live in the
thought of Blackdeep and of me. It will do you no harm and may keep you
from sinking.
* * * * *
HOMERTON, 30_th_ _January_ 1839.
No complaint, no reproof. You might have told me it was perhaps my
fault.
I always have to reflect on what I am about to say to him. I go through
my sentences to the end before I open my lips. He dislikes exaggeration,
and checks me if I use a strong word; but surely life sometimes needs
strong words, and those which are tame may be further from the truth than
those which burn. When he first began to think about buying the house, I
was surprised and talked with less restraint than is usual with me.
After a little while he said that I had not contributed anything definite
to a settlement of the question. I dare say I had not, but it is natural
to me to speak even when I do not pretend to settle questions. He seems
to think that speech is useless unless for a distinct, practical purpose.
At Blackdeep almost everything that comes into my head finds its way to
my tongue. The repression here is unbearable.
Last night it rained, and Charles’s overcoat was a little wet at the
bottom. He asked that it might be put to the fire. Directly he came
down in the morning he felt his coat and at breakfast said in his slow
way, ‘My coat has not been dried.’ I replied that I was very sorry, that
I had quite forgotten it, and that it should be dried before he was ready
to start. I jumped up, brought it into the room and hung it on a chair
on the hearth-rug. He did not thank me and appeared to take no notice.
‘I am indeed very sorry,’ I repeated. He then spoke. ‘I do not care
about the damp: it is the principle involved. I have observed that you
do not endeavour systematically to impress my requests on your mind. If
you were to take due note of them at the time they are made, and say them
aloud two or three times to yourself, they would not escape your memory.
Forgetfulness is never an excuse in business, and I do not see why it
should be at home.’ ‘O Charles!’ I cried, ‘do not talk about principles
in such a trifle; I simply forgot. I should be more likely to forget my
cloak than your coat.’ He did not answer me, but opened a couple of
letters, finished his breakfast, and then began to write at the desk. I
went upstairs, and when I returned to the breakfast room he had gone. In
the evening he behaved as if nothing had passed between us. He would
have thought it ridiculous if such a reproof had unsettled a clerk at the
bank, and why should it unsettle me? The clerk expects to be taught his
lesson daily. So does every rational being.
Nothing! nothing! I can imagine Mrs. Perkins’ contempt if I were to
confide in her. ‘As good a husband as ever lived. What do you want, you
silly creature? I suppose it’s what they call passion. You should have
married a poet. You have made an uncommonly good match and ought to be
thankful.’ A poet! I know nothing of poets, but I do know that if
marriage for passion be folly, there is no true marriage without it.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 7_th_ _February_ 1839.
I am no clearer now than I was a fortnight ago. I wish I could talk to
somebody, and then perhaps my thoughts would settle themselves. Last
Sunday I made up my mind I would come to you at all costs; then I
doubted, and this morning again I was going to start at once. Now my
doubts have returned. Jim notices how worried I am, and I make excuses.
I cannot rest while I am not able to do more than put you off by praying
you to bear your lot patiently. It is so hard to stand helpless and
counsel patience. Could you give him up and live here? I am held back,
though, from this at present. I am not sure what might happen if you
were to leave him. Perhaps he would be able to force you to return. You
have no charge to make against him which anybody but myself would
understand.
I must still wait for the light which I trust will be given me. It is
wonderful how sometimes it strikes down on me suddenly and sometimes
grows by degrees like the day over Ingleby Fen. I lay in bed late this
morning, for I hadn’t slept much, and watched it as it spread, and I
thought of my Esther in London who never sees the sunrise.
* * * * *
HOMERTON, 14_th_ _February_ 1839.
There is hardly anything to record—no event, that is to say—and yet I
have been swept on at a pace which frightens me. The least word or act
urges me more than a blow. Yesterday I made up my accounts and was ten
shillings short. I went over them again and again and could not get them
right. I was going to put into the cash-box ten shillings of my own
money, but I thought there might be some mistake and that Charles, who
always examines my books, would find it out, and that it would be worse
for me if he had discovered what I had done than if I had let them tell
their own tale. After dinner he asked for them, counted my balance, and
at once found out there was ten shillings too little. I said I knew it
and supposed I had forgotten to put down something I had spent.
‘Forgotten again?’ he replied; ‘it is unsatisfactory: there is evident
want of method.’ He locked the box and book in the desk and read the
newspaper while I sat and worked. Next day I remembered the servant had
half-a-sovereign to pay the greengrocer, and I had not seen her since I
gave it to her. When Charles returned from the bank my first words were,
‘O Charles, I know all about the half-sovereign: I am so glad.’ Would
not you have acknowledged you were glad too? He looked at me just as he
did the night before. I believe he would rather I had lost the money.
‘Your explanation,’ was his response, ‘makes no difference: in fact it
confirms my charge of lack of system. I have brought you some tablets
which I wish you to keep in your pocket, and you must note in them every
outgoing at the time it is made. These items are then to be regularly
adjusted, and transferred afterwards.’ I could not restrain myself.
‘Charles, Charles,’ I cried, ‘do not _charge_ me, as if I had committed a
crime. For mercy’s sake, soften! I have confessed I was careless; can
you not forgive?’ ‘It is much easier,’ was the answer, ‘to confess and
regret than to amend. I am not offended, and as to forgiveness I do not
quite comprehend the term. It is one I do not often use. What is done
cannot be undone. If you will alter your present habit, forgiveness,
whatever you may mean by it, becomes superfluous.’ His lips shut into
their usual rigidity. Not a muscle in them would have stirred if I had
kissed them with tears. No tears rose; I was struck into hardness equal
to his own, and with something added. I _hated_ him. ‘Henceforward,’ I
said to myself, ‘I will not submit or apologise; there shall be war.’
16_th_ _February_ 1839.
I left my letter unfinished. War? How can I make war or continue at
war? I could not keep up the struggle for a week. I am so framed that I
must make peace with those with whom I have disagreed or I must fly. I
would take nine steps out of the ten—nay, the whole ten which divide me
from dear friends; I would say that this or that was not my meaning. I
would abandon all arguing and wash away differences with sheer affection.
Toward Charles I cannot stir. Sometimes, although but seldom, my brother
Jim and I have quarrelled. Five minutes afterwards we have been in one
another’s arms and the angry words were as though they had never been
spoken. Forgiveness is not a remission of consequences on repentance.
It is simply love, a love so strong that in its heat the offence
vanishes. Without love—and so far Charles is right—forgiveness even of
the smallest mistake is impossible.
It is a thick, dark fog again this morning. At Blackdeep most likely it
is bright sunlight.
Charles does not seem to suspect that his indifference has any effect on
me. I suppose he is unable to conceive my world or any world but his
own. If he were at Blackdeep now and the sun were shining, would it be
to him a glowing, blessed ball of fire?
He may have just as much right to complain of me as I have to complain of
him. He sets store on the qualities necessary for his business, and he
knows what store the partners set on those qualities in him. No doubt
they are of great importance to everybody. It must be hard for him to
live with a woman who takes so little interest in city affairs and makes
so much of what to him is of no importance. He looks down upon me as
though I were not able to talk on any subject which, for its
comprehension, requires intelligence. If he had married Miss Stagg, who
has doubled the drapery business at Ely, they might have agreed together
very well.
This is true, but I come back to myself. The virtues are not enough for
me. Life with them alone is not worth the trouble of getting up in the
morning. I thirst for you: I shall come, whatever may happen.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 20_th_ _February_ 1839.
I cannot write an answer to your letter. You must come. I could not
make up my mind last night, but this morning the light, the direction, as
my mother used to say, was like a star. How you remind me of her! not in
your lot but in your ways, and she had your black hair. She was a
stranger to these parts. Where your grandfather first saw her I do not
know, but she was from the hill country in the far south-west. She never
would hear anything against our flats. When folk asked her if she did
not miss the hills, she turned on them as if she had been born in the
Fens and said she had found something in them better than hills. But how
I do wander on! That has nothing to do with you now, although I could
tell you, if it were worth while, how it came into my head. I shall look
out for you this week.
* * * * *
LOMBARD STREET, 14_th_ _March_ 1839.
DEAR ESTHER,—You have now been away three weeks and I shall be glad to
hear when you intend to return. Your mother I hope is better, and if she
is not, I trust you will see that your absence cannot be indefinitely
prolonged. I am writing at the Bank, and your reply marked ‘Private’
should be addressed here. Some changes, now almost completed, are being
made in the lower rooms at Homerton which will give me one for any
business of my own.—Your affectionate husband,