January 5, 1916.
[MY DEAREST ONE:]
What pictures! What happiness. What a proud
Richard!
On top of my writing yesterday that I had had no sketches of
yours, and no kodaks of Hope, eight came to-night, and oh! I
am so proud, so homesick. What a wonderful nurse and mother
you are! Was ever there anything so lovable? And that she
should be ours, to hold and to love, and to make happy. These
last eight days in Paris, in and out, have made me so homesick
for those I love, that you will never
know what the delays meant. I felt just the way poor women
feel who kidnap babies. In the parks I know the nurse-maids
are afraid of me. I stick my head under the hoods of the baby
carriages, and stop and stand watching them at play. And
tonight when all these beautiful pictures came, I was the
happiest father anywhere.
The delay was no one's fault, not mine anyway, nor can I
blame anyone. These people are splendid. They are willing to
do anything for one, but it takes time. When they are
fighting for their lives and have not seen their own babies in
a year, that you want to see yours is only natural and to
oblige you they can't see why they should upset the whole war.
But now it looks less as though I would have to call it a
failure. And Hope may be proud of me, and you may be proud of
me, and I will have enough ammunition to draw on for many
articles and letters, and another book.
It has been a cruel time; and when I tell you how I
worked to get it over, and to be back with you, you will
understand many things. The most important of all will be how
I love you. Only wait until I can lay eyes on you, you will
just take one look and know that it couldn't be helped, that
the delay was the work of others, that, all I wanted was my
Bessie and my Hope.
How heavy she will be, if she is anything like the
picture of her on the coverlet, she is a prize baby. And if
she is anything like as beautiful as in the baby carriage she
is an angel straight from God. I want to sit in the green
chair and have you on one knee and her majesty on the other,
and have her climb over me, and pull my hair and bang my nose,
and in time to know how I love you both.
Goodnight, dear heart, I wish you had had yourself in the
picture. I have three in the summer time with you holding her
and that is the way I like to see you, that is the way I think
of you. I love you, and I love her for making you so happy,
and I love her for her sake, and because she is ours : and
has tied us tighter and closer even than it has ever been. I
love you so that I can't write about it, and I am going to do
nothing all spring but just sit around, and be in everybody's
way, watching you together.
How jealous I am of you, and homesick for you. Of
course, she knows "mamma" is you ; and to look at you when
they ask, "Where's mother?" Who else could be her mother but
the dearest woman in the world, and the one who loves her so,
and in so wonderful a way. She is beautiful beyond all things
human I know. If ever a woman deserved a beautiful daughter,
you do, for you are the best of mothers, and you know how
"to care greatly."
Good-night, my precious, dear one, and God keep you, as
He will, and help me to keep you both happy. What you give me
you never will know.
RICHARD.
