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Page 15
Yesterday, by a most unsympathetic instinct, I went out for a long tramp
on my two feet; and no ache in them came and told me of you! Over
Sillingford I sat on a bank and looked downhill where went a carter. And
I looked uphill where lay something which might be nothing--or not his.
Now, shall I make a fool of myself by pursuing to tell him he may have
dropped something, or shall I go on and see? So I went on and saw a coat
with a fat pocket: and by then he was out of sight, and perhaps it
wasn't his; and it was very hot and the hill steep. So I minded my own
business, making Cain's motto mine; and now feel so had, being quite
sure that it was his. And I wonder how many miles he will have tramped
back looking for it, and whether his dinner was in the pocket.
These unintentional misdoings are the "sins" one repents of all one's
life long: I have others stored away, the bitterest of small things done
or undone in haste and repented of at so much leisure afterwards. And
always done to people or things I had no grudge against, sometimes even
a love for. They are my skeletons: I will tell you of them some day.
This, dearest, is our first enforced absence from each other; and I feel
it almost more hard on me than on you. Beloved, let us lay our hearts
together and get comforted. It is not real separation to know that
another part of the world contains the rest of me. Oh, the rest of me,
the rest of me that you are! So, thinking of you, I can never be tired.
I rest yours.
LETTER XX.
Yes, Dearest, "Patience!" but it is a virtue I have little enough of
naturally, and used to be taught to pray for as a child. And I remember
once really hurting clear Mother-Aunt's feelings by trying to repay her
for that teaching by a little iniquitous laughter at her expense. It was
too funny for me to feel very contrite about, as I do sometimes over quite
small things, or I would not be telling it you now (for there are things
in me I would conceal even from you). I dare say you wouldn't guess it,
but the M.-A. is a most long person over her private devotions. Perhaps it
was her own habit, with the cares of a household sometimes conflicting,
which made her recite to me so often her pet legend of a saintly person
who, constantly interrupted over her prayers by mundane matters, became a
pattern in patience out of these snippings of her godly desires. So, one
day, angels in the disguise of cross people with selfish demands on her
time came seeking to know where in her composition or composure
exasperation began: and finding none, they let her return in peace to her
missal, where for a reward all the letters had been turned into gold. "And
that, my dear, comes of patience," my aunt would say, till I grew a little
tired of the saying. I don't know what experience my uncle had gathered of
her patience under like circumstances: but I notice that to this day he
treads delicately, like Agag, when he knows her to be on her knees; and
prefers then to send me on his errands instead of doing them himself.
So it happened one day that he wanted a particular coat which had been put
away in her clothes-closet--and she was on her knees between him and it,
with the time of her Amen quite indefinite. I was sent, said my errand
briefly, and was permitted to fumble out her keys from her pocket while
she continued to kneel over her morning psalms.
What I brought to him turned out to be the wrong coat: I went back and
knocked for readmittance. Long-sufferingly she bade me to come in. I
explained, and still she repressed herself, only saying in a tone of
affliction, "Do see this time that you take the right one!"
After I had made my second selection, and proved it right on my uncle's
person, the parallelism of things struck me, and I skipped back to my
aunt's door and tapped. I got a low wailing "Yes?" for answer--a
monosyllabic substitute for the "How long, O Lord?" of a saint in
difficulties. When I called through the keyhole, "Are your psalms
written in gold?" she became really angry:--I suppose because the
miracle so well earned had not come to pass.
Well, dearest, if you have been patient with me over so much about
nothing, I pray this letter may appear to you written in gold. Why I
write so is, partly, that, it is bad for us both to be down in the
mouth, or with hearts down at heel: and so, since you cannot, I have to
do the dancing;--and, partly, because I found I had a bad temper on me
which needed curing, and being brought to the sun-go-down point of owing
no man anything. Which, sooner said, has finally been done; and I am
very meek now and loving to you, and everything belonging to you--not to
come nearer the sore point.
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