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Page 3
And so for the books more thanks and more,--that they are what I would
most wish, and not anything else: which, had they been, they would still
have given me pleasure, since from you they could come only with a good
meaning: and--diamonds even--I could have put up with them!
To-morrow you come for your ring, and bring me my own? Yours is here
waiting. I have it on my finger, very loose, with another standing
sentry over it to keep it from running away.
A mouse came out of my wainscot last night, and plunged me in horrible
dilemma: for I am equally idiotic over the idea of the creature trapped
or free, and I saw sleepless nights ahead of me till I had secured a
change of locality for him.
To startle him back into hiding would have only deferred my getting
truly rid of him, so I was most tiptoe and diplomatic in my doings.
Finally, a paper bag, put into a likely nook with some sentimentally
preserved wedding-cake crumbled into it, crackled to me of his arrival.
In a brave moment I noosed the little beast, bag and all, and lowered
him from the window by string, till the shrubs took from me the burden
of responsibility.
I visited the bag this morning: he had eaten his way out, crumbs and
all: and has, I suppose, become a fieldmouse, for the hay smells
invitingly, and it is only a short run over the lawn and a jump over the
ha-ha to be in it. Poor morsels, I prefer them so much undomesticated!
Now this mouse is no allegory, and the paper bag is _not_ a diamond
necklace, in spite of the wedding-cake sprinkled over it! So don't say
that this letter is too hard for your understanding, or you will
frighten me from telling you anything foolish again. Brains are like
jewels in this, difference of surface has nothing to do with the size
and value of them. Yours is a beautiful smooth round, like a pearl, and
mine all facets and flashes like cut glass. And yours so much the
bigger, and I love it so much the best! The trap which caught me was
baited with one great pearl. So the mouse comes in with a meaning tied
to its tail after all!
LETTER IV.
In all the world, dearest, what is more unequal than love between a man
and a woman? I have been spending an amorous morning and want to share it
with you: but lo, the task of bringing that bit of my life into your
vision is altogether beyond me.
What have I been doing? Dear man, I have been dressmaking! and dress,
when one is in the toils, is but a love-letter writ large. You will see
and admire the finished thing, but you will take no interest in the
composition. Therefore I say your love is unequal to mine.
For think how ravished I would be if you brought me a coat and told me
it was all your own making! One day you had thrown down a mere
tailor-made thing in the hall, and yet I kissed it as I went by. And
that was at a time when we were only at the handshaking stage, the
palsied beginnings of love:--_you_, I mean!
But oh, to get you interested in the dress I was making to you
to-day!--the beautiful flowing opening,--not too flowing: the elaborate
central composition where the heart of me has to come, and the wind-up
of the skirt, a long reluctant tailing-off, full of commas and colons of
ribbon to make it seem longer, and insertions everywhere. I dreamed
myself in it, retiring through the door after having bidden you
good-night, and you watching the long disappearing eloquence of that
tail, still saying to you as it vanished, "Good-by, good-by. I love you
so! see me, how slowly I am going!"
Well, that is a bit of my dress-making, a very corporate part of my
affection for you; and you are not a bit interested, for I have shown
you none of the seamy side; it is that which interests you male
creatures, Zolaites, every one of you.
And what have you to show similar, of the thought of me entering into
all your masculine pursuits? Do you go out rabbit-shooting for the love
of me? If so, I trust you make a miss of it every time! That you are a
sportsman is one of the very hardest things in life that I have to bear.
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