_Swanston, Sunday (June 1874)._
DEAR FRIEND,--I fear to have added something to your troubles by telling
you of the grief in which I find myself; but one cannot always come to
meet a friend smiling, although we should try for the best cheer
possible. All to-day I have been very weary, resting myself after the
trouble and fatigue of yesterday. The day was warm enough, but it blew a
whole gale of wind; and the noise and the purposeless rude violence of
it somehow irritated and depressed me. There was good news however,
though the anxiety must still be long. O peace, peace, whither are you
fled and where have you carried my old quiet humour? I am so bitter and
disquiet and speak even spitefully to people. And somehow, though I
promise myself amendment, day after day finds me equally rough and sour
to those about me. But this would pass with good health and good
weather; and at bottom I am not unhappy; the soil is still good although
it bears thorns; and the time will come again for flowers.
_Wednesday._--I got your letter this morning and have to thank you so
much for it. Bob is much better; and I do hope out of danger. To-day has
been more glorious than I can tell you. It has been the first day of
blue sky that we have had; and it was happiness for a week to see the
clear bright outline of the hills and the glory of sunlit foliage and
the darkness of green shadows, and the big white clouds that went
voyaging overhead deliberately. My two cousins from Portobello were
here; and they and I and Maggie ended the afternoon by lying half an
hour together on a shawl. The big cloud had all been carded out into a
thin luminous white gauze, miles away; and miles away too seemed the
little black birds that passed between this and us as we lay with faces
upturned. The similarity of what we saw struck in us a curious
similarity of mood; and in consequence of the small size of the shawl,
we all lay so close that we half pretended, half felt, we had lost our
individualities and had become merged and mixed up in a quadruple
existence. We had the shadow of an umbrella over ourselves, and when any
one reached out a brown hand into the golden sunlight overhead we all
feigned that we did not know whose hand it was, until at last I don't
really think we quite did. Little black insects also passed over us and
in the same half wanton manner we pretended we could not distinguish
them from the birds. There was a splendid sunlit silence about us, and
as Katharine said the heavens seemed to be dropping oil on us, or
honey-dew--it was all so bland.
_Thursday evening_.--I have seen Bob again, and I am charmed at his
convalescence. Le bon Dieu has been _so_ bon this time: here's his
health! Still the danger is not over by a good way; it is so miserable a
thing for reverses.
I hear the wind outside roaring among our leafy trees as the surf on
some loud shore. The hill-top is whelmed in a passing rain-shower and
the mist lies low in the valleys. But the night is warm and in our
little sheltered garden it is fair and pleasant, and the borders and
hedges and evergreens and boundary trees are all distinct in an equable
diffusion of light from the buried moon and the day not altogether
passed away. My dear friend, as I hear the wind rise and die away in
that tempestuous world of foliage, I seem to be conscious of I know not
what breath of creation. I know what this warm wet wind of the west
betokens, I know how already, in this morning's sunshine, we could see
all the hills touched and accentuated with little delicate golden
patches of young fern; how day by day the flowers thicken and the leaves
unfold; how already the year is a-tip-toe on the summit of its finished
youth; and I am glad and sad to the bottom of my heart at the knowledge.
If you knew how different I am from what I was last year; how the
knowledge of you has changed and finished me, you would be glad and sad
also.--Ever your faithful friend,