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Page 26
I have no news for you at all of anyone: all inside the house is a
simmer of peace and quiet, with blinds drawn down against the heat the
whole day long. No callers; and as for me, I never call elsewhere. The
gossips about here eke out a precarious existence by washing each
other's dirty linen in public: and the process never seems to result in
any satisfactory cleansing.
I avoid saying what news I trust to-morrow's post-bag may contain for
me. Every wish I send you comes "from the spleen," which means I am very
healthy, and, conditionally, as happy as is good for me. Pray God bless
my dear Share of the world, and make him get well for his own and my
sake! Amen.
This catches the noon post, an event which always shows I am jubilant,
with a lot of the opposite to a "little death" feeling running over my
nerves. I feel the grass growing _under_ me: the reverse of poor Keats'
complaint. Good-by, Beloved, till I find my way into the provender of
to-morrow's post-bag.
LETTER XXVI.
Oh, wings of the morning, here you come! I have been looking out for you
ever since post came. Roberts is carrying orders into town, and will bring
you this with a touch of the hat and an amused grin under it. I saw you
right on the top Sallis Hill: this is to wager that my eyes have told me
correctly. Look out for me from far away, I am at my corner window: wave
to me! Dearest, this is to kiss you before I can.
LETTER XXVII.
Dearest: I have made a bad beginning of the week: I wonder how it will
end? it all comes of my not seeing enough of you. Time hangs heavy on my
hands, and the Devil finds me the mischief!
I prevailed upon myself to go on Sunday and listen to our new lately
appointed vicar: for I thought it not fair to condemn him on the strength
of Mrs. P----'s terrible reporting powers and her sensuous worship of his
full-blown flowers of speech--"pulpit-pot-plants" is what I call them.
It was not worse and not otherwise than I had expected. I find there are
only two kinds of clerics as generally necessary to salvation in a country
parish--one leads his parishioners to the altar and the other to the
pulpit: and the latter is vastly the more popular among the articulate and
gad-about members of his flock. This one sways himself over the edge of
his frame, making signals of distress in all directions, and with that and
his windy flights of oratory suggests twenty minutes in a balloon-car,
till he comes down to earth at the finish with the Doxology for a
parachute. His shepherd's crook is one long note of interrogation, with
which he tries to hook down the heavens to the understanding of his
hearers, and his hearers up to an understanding of himself. All his
arguments are put interrogatively, and few of them are worth answering.
Well, well, I shall be all the freer for your visit when you come next
Sunday, and any Sunday after that you will: and he shall come in to tea if
you like and talk to you in quite a cultured and agreeable manner, as he
can when his favorite beverage is before him.
I discover that I get "the snaps" on a Monday morning, if I get them at
all. The M.-A. gets them on the Sunday itself, softly but regularly: they
distress no one, and we all know the cause: her fingers are itching for
the knitting which she mayn't do. Your Protestant ignores Lent as a Popish
device, a fond thing vainly invented: but spreads it instead over
fifty-two days in the year. Why, I want to know, cannot I change the
subject?
Sunday we get no post (and no collection except in church) unless we send
down to the town for it, so Monday is all the more welcome: but this I
have been up and writing before it arrives--therefore the "snaps."
Our postman is a lovely sight. I watched him walking up the drive the
other morning, and he seemed quite perfection, for I guessed he was
bringing me the thing which would make me happy all day. I only hope the
Government pays him properly.
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