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Page 30
"Sincerely yours."
There were four or five more of this sort, sometimes only a day or two,
sometimes a month apart; always with some definite reason for the
writing, flowers or books to thank him for, a walk to arrange, an
invitation to dinner. Charming, bright, friendly notes, with the happy
atmosphere of a perfect understanding between them, of mutual interests
and common enthusiasms.
"She was very different from the other," the boy's mother sighed, as she
took up an unread letter--there were but two more. There was no harm in
reading such letters as these, she thought with relief, and noticed as
she drew the paper from the envelope that the postmark was two months
later.
"You want me to write once that I love you"--that is the way it began.
The woman who read dropped it suddenly as if it had burned her. Was it
possible? Her light-hearted boy, whose short life she had been so sure
had held nothing but a boy's, almost a child's, joys and sorrows! The
other affair was surprise enough, and a sad surprise, yet after all it
had not touched him deeply, she felt certain of that; but this was
another question. She knew instinctively that if love had grown from
such a solid foundation as this sweet and happy and reasonable
friendship with this girl, whose warm heart and deep soul shone through
her clear and simple words, it would be a different love from anything
that other poor, flimsy child could inspire. "L'amiti�, c'est l'amour
sans ailes." But sometimes when men and women have let the quiet, safe
god Friendship fold his arms gently around them, he spreads suddenly a
pair of sinning wings and carries them off--to heaven--wherever he
wills it, and only then they see that he is not Friendship, but Love.
She picked up the letter again and read on:
"You want me to write once that I love you, so that you may read it with
your eyes, if you may not hear it with your ears. Is that it--is that
what you want, dear? Which question is a foolish sort of way for me to
waste several drops of ink, considering that your letter is open before
me. And your picture just back of it, your brown eyes looking over the
edge so eagerly, so actually alive that it seems very foolish to be
making signs to you on paper at all. How much simpler just to say half a
word and then--then! Only we two can fill up that dash, but we can fill
it full, can't we? However, I'm not doing what you want, and--will you
not tell yourself, if I tell you something? To do what you want is just
the one thing on earth I like most to do. I think you have magnetized me
into a jelly-fish, for at times I seem to have no will at all. I believe
if you asked me to do the Chinese kotow, and bend to the earth before
you, I'd secretly be dying to do it. But I wouldn't, you know, I
promise you that. I give you credit for liking a live woman, with a will
of her own, better than a jelly-fish. And anyway I wouldn't--if you
liked me for it or not--so you see it's no use urging me. And still I
haven't done what you want--what was it now? Oh, to tell you that--but
the words frighten me, they are so big. That I--I--I--love you. Is it
that? I haven't said it yet, remember. I'm only asking a question. Do
you know I have an objection to sitting here in cold blood and writing
that down in cold ink? If it were only a little dark now, and your
shoulder--and I could hide my head--you can't get off for a minute? Ah,
I am scribbling along light-heartedly, when all the time the sword of
Damocles is hanging over us both, when my next letter may have to be
good-by for always. If that fate comes you will find me steady to stand
by you, to help you. I will say those three little words, so little and
so big, to you once again, and then I will live them by giving up what
is dearest to me--that's you, dear--that your 'conduct' may not be
'unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.' You must keep your word. If
the worst comes, will you always remember that as an American woman's
patriotism. There could be none truer. I could send you marching off to
Cuba--and how about that, is it war surely?--with a light heart, knowing
that you were giving yourself for a holy cause and going to honor and
fame, though perhaps, dear, to a soldier's death. And I would pray for
you and remember your splendid strength, and think always of seeing you
march home again, and then only your mother could be more proud than I.
That would be easy, in comparison. Write me about the war--but, of
course, you would not be sent.
"Now here is the very end of my letter, and I haven't yet said it--what
you wanted. But here it Is, bend your head, from away up there, and
listen. Now--do you hear--I love you. Good-by, good-by, I love you."
The papers rustled softly in the silent room, and the boy's mother, as
she put the letter back, kissed it, and it was as if ghostly lips
touched hers, for the boy had kissed those words, she knew.
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