MY LETTER
That night I went up to my room early. I took pens, ink, and paper
with me--why I took them I had no notion--I took them. I lit all
the wax lights on the mantel, and the wax lights that stood on the
dressing-table. Then I stood before the dressing-table mirror looking
at myself. I can see the reflection of my face still, a pale face with
dark sombre eyes, and lips that curled in a sneer. That was how Gerald
Wilder looked when he was in a rage. I could see now Gerald Wilder, the
assassin and the suicide. I was Gerald Wilder.
Geraldine and I were inextricably entangled--she in the body of a
boy, I in the body of a woman. Was this my punishment for that murder
and that suicide committed long, long ago, this blind maze of the
flesh into which I had been led? I could do one of two things. Leave
Geraldine to-morrow morning, never to see her again, or--stay. If I
left her she would break her heart, and die. I would break my heart,
and die. Then perhaps we might meet, and be happy for ever. Surely, if
all those stars were suns, and if there were worlds round them like our
world, God might give us some little place, some tiny garden out of all
His splendour. He was rich, and owned the whole of space, and He would
give something to two ghosts who had left the world for the love of
each other. That was what would happen if we left each other--we would
grow sick and die, but we would meet on the other side. If we remained
together, I knew that something would happen to separate us for ever,
how I knew this I cannot tell, perhaps it was by instinct.
I turned from the mirror to the table, where I had placed the writing
things. Now I knew why I had brought them up: it seems to me that we
often think when we don't know we are thinking.
I sat down, and took one of the thick sheets of paper stamped in red
with
"THE GABLES,
"ASHWORTH, YORKS,"
and I wrote. This is what I wrote--
"DEAR JAMES,--I know now why you have sent me down here. I have seen
your Geraldine, and I love her, but I must leave her. It will kill
us both, but I have chosen to die. _Can_ you not see that I am your
kith and kin, that I am Gerald Wilder? You have no claim on Geraldine,
for she is a Sinclair, she is the dead Beatrice returned as a Wilder.
I think I see it all now, if one may see anything in such awful
darkness. I know, without knowing exactly _how_ I know it, that if we
part we shall dream of each other till we die, and that then we shall
meet never to be separated, but if we remain together some fearful
thing will happen and divide us, so that we may never meet again.
If I loved your son all would be right, but it is not Gerald I love,
but Geraldine--Beatrice.
I am leaving here early to-morrow morning, going, I don't know where.
I shall write to you.
Signed,
GERALD WILDER."
Then I directed an envelope--
JAMES WILDER, ESQ.,
NO. -- BERKELEY SQUARE,
LONDON.
I put the letter in. I gummed it. Then I began to search for a stamp.
I felt that I must stamp it to add a kind of security to my purpose,
though the post did not leave until noon on the morrow. What a search I
had for that stamp. I rummaged all my dress pockets; at last I found my
purse,--there were two stamps in it.
I stamped the letter carefully. I held it in my hands as I sat
over the fire. Then, without any apparent reason, I tore the letter
slowly up into four pieces, then into eight. Then I placed the pieces
carefully on the burning coals in the grate. I watched the stamp
burning and thought it was a pity to see it burn, for it was worth a
penny. I saw the d e r letters of Wilder stand out white on a bit of
the burnt envelope.
Then I took the poker and poked at the bits of paper ash.
I was thinking.
All my life long I have loved everything beautiful: colours have a
strange fascination for me, you could make me sad quicker with a colour
than a story or a poem; scents and sounds have the same effect, the
smell of violets suddenly transports me to somewhere, I don't know
where, I only know it is elsewhere. I have heard things in music that
no one has ever heard, notes that come up again and again as the
harmony moves to the end of its story, sombre notes full of fate.
I have seen people listening to music and their faces had no more
expression than jugs; I have heard women talking of the opera, utterly
unconscious of the story the music they were listening to was telling
them.
I was sitting by the fire thinking; the bits of burnt paper had flown
up the chimney in a hurry, perhaps the devil had called them. I was
thinking in pictures, and I felt unutterably happy and relieved now
that I had written my letter to James Wilder--and burnt it.
I saw my room in ---- Crescent. The creature that had inhabited that
room was not _I_. I saw the room so distinctly that I saw on a shelf
an old tattered book--Dumas' "Three Musketeers." I used to read it
sometimes at nights, and I used to wonder how it was possible that
the Duke of Buckingham could have loved Anne of Austria in the insane
manner in which he did; now I saw at a glance that such love was quite
possible, and no fable. He loved her because she was unattainable, she
was a Queen; he could never have loved an ordinary woman like that. A
soap bubble is the most beautiful thing in the world because it is so
unattainable, you cannot put it in your pocket.
Then Geraldine suddenly appeared before my mind. Not only Geraldine,
but the thousand and one things that made her up. I have told you
before that colour and scent and sound seem to act as food and drink
to me. This Geraldine had all these in their fullest perfection, like
some strange tropical fruit that no one could imagine till they had
seen. At no point was she imperfect; she was an utter little dunce, but
that was her last and crowning fascination: she could not spell A B ab,
and the problem of what twice thirteen was would have filled her small
brown head with distraction. She could not tell you where Asia was, nor
whether Japan was the capital of China; but neither could one of those
delightful things we read of in the old stories, things that come out
of a fountain and turn into a shower of spray when spoken to.
I was going to stay, then. What on earth made me dream of leaving
_Geraldine_? Did that idea really occur to me? To leave here and get
into a _railway train_ and go back to a place called London--to turn
back out of the seventeenth century into the horrible nineteenth
century, with its railroads and smoke, and telegraphs, just because a
hideous old woman called Reason had told me to do so or it would be
wrong.
I took another sheet of paper and wrote.
DEAR JAMES,--I know now the reason why you sent me here. I have fallen
in love with your mysterious Gerald. Leave us together and have no
fear, lovers never hurt each other, except, perhaps, with kisses. I
shall write to you every other day.--
Yours affectionately,
BEATRICE SINCLAIR.
This letter I gummed up in an envelope. I had no trouble to find a
stamp for it; my purse lay on the table and in it the other stamp. Then
I put the letter on the mantel, and went to bed.