"Cumly, _January 2, 19--_.
"Dear Autocrat,
"I _We_ done it! I've given in, and sent off the cable. By now you
will have seen it, and be either chortling with triumph, or wishing
remorsefully that you'd left well alone. I hope it's the former,
because, to be candid, I'm chortling myself. Oh, I'm so glad! I wanted
so _badly_ to say `yes.' It _was_ clever of you to make it appear so
clearly my duty to do just the one thing I wanted above all others!
"Hurrah! For a whole year I am free. The office, the surgery, the
kitchen, and the stage, can retire gracefully into the background. I'm
going out to India with a box full of new clothes, to stay with my
dearest friend, and have a good time. Inadvertently also to meet a nice
man...
"Oh, Jim, I _hope_ you are nice--my kind of nice! I hope, hope, hope
with all my heart that I shall tumble right in love with you the moment
we meet, and that you'll do ditto with me, and that we'll go on tumbling
all our lives.
"I've no pride left this morning; I'm so excited and glad. Martin put
his arm round me on Wednesday when I told him of my cable, and swung me
off my feet. `Now everything is perfect!' he said. `You will be happy
as well as I.' And he has been so dear and generous, insisting that he
owes me no end of money for my work for him, and I have been to town to
buy clothes, Lonely Man, scrumptious clothes, with Grizel to help,
because I should like--Dorothea--to see me look nice!
"Grizel is the most bracing person to shop with. When you think it's
extravagant, she calls it cheap, and when you are wondering if you
_dare_ have one, she orders a dozen, and just for once in a way, when
you've been careful all your life, it _is_ lovely to go a bust.
Besides--
"My bridesmaid's kit is Grizel's present, and seems stretching to
immense proportions. A dress for the ceremony, and a dress for the
evening, and a hat and a cloak, and fal-lals of every description. Do
you think the regiment will give some function to let me show them off?
Now that my own future no longer casts its shadow over the whole
landscape, I am immensely enjoying the engaged couple. They are so
deliriously gay and young, and happy and hopeful; and the nice part
about it is--it is going to last! I feel _sure_ it will, for through
his long experience of sorrow and loss Martin has learned how to give
the one all-important thing that is necessary to a woman's happiness.
Have you the slightest idea what it is? You will smile at the sentiment
of women, and say `Love, of course,' but it isn't love, at least it is
not necessarily included in that term. Many a man honestly loves his
wife, and yet succeeds in making her miserable. No! it is just a
simple, homely quality without which the grandest of passions is
incomplete! _Tenderness_! Tenderness means kindness and understanding,
and sympathy, and imagination, and patience--above all, _patience_!
When a man is in love he thinks a woman perfect, but she isn't, she is
an irrational, inconsequent creature, whose mate will have need of
patience every day of his life, and sometimes many times a day. Of
course there _do_ exist female paragons, calm, correct creatures, with
smooth hair and chiselled features, who are always serene and
self-contained, but then they are also independent of tenderness. This
grows complicated! I'd better drop pretence and confess at once that
when I talk generalities I really mean You and Me, the two people who
are at the back of _all_ generalities!
"I am erratic and variable... On Tuesday, for no tangible cause, I feel
bubbling over with happiness; on Wednesday, for an equally logical
reason, I crave for death. On occasions I can be exasperatingly
contrary. I know it all the time, and am furious with myself, but that
only makes me worse! On after reflection I either pray and fast, or in
brazen fashion excuse myself on the score of electric influences! After
all, why shouldn't I? We are the most sensitive of machines, and if
climatic disturbances affect the wires at a distance of thousands of
miles, why should _We_ pass unscathed? I sometimes think we are too
hard on our own moods and tempers, but they are trying enough in any
case for the other person. The question of the hour is this--Could
_You_ be tender to _Me_???
"Only four weeks and I'm off! It will be more convenient for me to
leave directly after the wedding, and if 'twere done, 'twere well done
quickly. Grizel's _trousseau_ is reaching the acute stage, and I
thought I was busy enough helping her, without starting a second on my--
"What _am_ I saying! I must be mad. You understand that I trust to
that three months' truce, and that I promise nothing--nothing. I only
_hope_!
"_Au revoir_, Jim. To-morrow I shall be tearing my hair for writing all
this, but the mail will have gone... It will be too late.
"Katrine.
"P.S. A happy new year, Jim, _Will_ it be happy?"