P.S. Am just up again from such a sweet sunny spacious after-luncheon
stroll in the garden. You'll think it very vulgar of me, but I continue
to find it ravishing.
_To A. F. de Navarro._
Lamb House,
Rye.
Monday--Small hours--1.30 a.m.
[Feb. 27. 1899].
My dear Don Tony,
You can't say I overwhelm you with acknowledgments, din my gratitude
into your ear or make you curse the day you suffered a kindly impulse to
an intensely susceptible friend to get the better of your appreciation
of a quiet life. No--you can do none of these things. On the other hand
you can perhaps complete your graceful generosity by remembering that
your admirable little Xmas memento was accompanied with a "Now hold your
tongue!" almost as admirable in its distinguished consideration as the
felicitous object itself. It was, clearly, that you felt: "Oh yes, _of
course_ you're charmed: a qui le dites-vous? But for heaven's sake,
thanked to satiety as I am on all sides, don't set your ponderous
machinery in motion to drop the last straw!" So I've put out the fires
and stopped the wheels and paid off the stokers till now. I've held my
tongue like an angel, but I've thought of you--and of your matchless
mate--like--well, if not _a_, at least, _the_ devil, and at last the
whole shop insists on beginning again to hum. I cherish your so
periodical and so munificent thoughts of me as one of the good things of
this world of worries. Nothing ever touches me more. I am finally going
abroad for three months--on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the little
sensitive blank record, in its little green sheath, accompanies me--to
drink in Impressions--in the usual itinerant shrine of your gifts: my
left-hand upper waistcoat-pocket. There are vulgar things--a watch, an
eyeglass, seven-and-sixpence--in the other pockets; but nothing but
_you_ in that one. Voila. I go to Italy after more than 5 years
interlude.
* * * * *
Drama--tableau! My dear Tony, you are literally my saviour. The above
row of stars represents midnight emotions and palpitations of no mean
order. As I finished the line just before the stars I became aware that
a smell of smoke, a sense of burning that had worried me for the
previous hour, had suddenly very much increased and that the room was
full of it. _De fil en aiguille_, and in much anxiety, I presently
discovered that the said smoke was coming up through the floor between
the painted dark-green planks (_dark_ green!) of the margin--outside of
matting and rugs, and under a table near the fireplace. To assure myself
that there was no source of flame in the room below, and then to go up
and call my servant, do you see? (he long since snoring in bed--for it's
now 2.15 a.m.) was the work of a moment. With such tools as we could
command we hacked and pried and sawed and tore up a couple of
planks--from which volumes of smoke issued!! Do you see the midnight
little flurry? Bref, we got _at_ it--a charred,
smouldering--_long_-smouldering, I suppose--beam under, or almost under,
the hearthstone and in process of time kindled--that is heated to
smoking-point by its temperature (that of the hearth,) which was very
high. We put him out, we made him stop, with soaked sponges--and then
the relief: even while gazing at the hacked and smashed and disfigured
floors. Now my man is gone to bed, and I, rather enlivened for immediate
sleep, sit and watch by the scene of the small scare and finish my
letter to you: really, you know, to grasp your hand, to hang upon your
neck, in gratitude, you being at the bottom of the whole thing. I sat up
late in the first instance to write to you, because I knew I shouldn't
have time to-morrow: and it was because I did so that I was saved a much
worse later alarm. Two or three hours hence the smoke would have
penetrated to the rest of the house and we should have started up to
"fly round" to a much livelier tune.
Bravo, then, again, dear indispensable man! How I feel with magnificent
Mrs Tony--for if you're such an "A no. 1" guardian-angel to my house,
what are you to your own? The only thing is that I was going to write to
you of two or three other things and this stupid little accident has
smoked them all out. I've lent this really most amiable little old house
to Jonathan Sturges while I'm away--and he's to come as soon as he can.
He has been wretched, as you know, with poisonous influenza, but I went
up to town to see him a few days since, and he seemed really mending. He
was here a long time in the autumn and the early winter and our
conversation hung and hovered about you. Good night--it's 2.45 and all's
well. I _must_ turn in. I grovel before your wife--and take endless
liberties with your son--and am yours--after all this--more than
ever--much as _that_ was--