University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.

Your letter in reply to my last has occupied
my thoughts all the morning. I do not know
what to think. Do you mean to say that you
are seriously half in love with a woman whom
you have never seen,—with a shadow, a chimera?
for what else can Miss Daw be to you?
I do not understand it at all. I understand
neither you nor her. You are a couple of ethereal
beings moving in finer air than I can breathe
with my commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of
sentiment is something I admire without comprehending.
I am bewildered. I am of the
earth earthy, and I find myself in the incongruous
position of having to do with mere souls,
with natures so finely tempered that I run some
risk of shattering them in my awkwardness. I
am as Caliban among the spirits!

Reflecting on your letter, I am not sure it is

wise in me to continue this correspondence. But
no, Jack; I do wrong to doubt the good sense
that forms the basis of your character. You are
deeply interested in Miss Daw; you feel that she
is a person whom you may perhaps greatly admire
when you know her: at the same time you
bear in mind that the chances are ten to five
that, when you do come to know her, she will
fall far short of your ideal, and you will not care
for her in the least. Look at it in this sensible
light, and I will hold back nothing from you.

Yesterday afternoon my father and myself
rode over to Rivermouth with the Daws. A
heavy rain in the morning had cooled the atmosphere
and laid the dust. To Rivermouth is
a drive of eight miles, along a winding road
lined all the way with wild barberry-bushes. I
never saw anything more brilliant than these
bushes, the green of the foliage and the pink of
the coral berries intensified by the rain. The
colonel drove, with my father in front, Miss Daw
and I on the back seat. I resolved that for the
first five miles your name should not pass my
lips. I was amused by the artful attempts she
made, at the start, to break through my reticence.

Then a silence fell upon her; and then
she became suddenly gay. That keenness which
I enjoyed so much when it was exercised on
the lieutenant was not so satisfactory directed
against myself. Miss Daw has great sweetness
of disposition, but she can be disagreeable. She
is like the young lady in the rhyme, with the
curl on her forehead,
I kept to my resolution, however; but on the
return home I relented, and talked of your mare!
Miss Daw is going to try a side-saddle on Margot
some morning. The animal is a trifle too light
for my weight. By the by, I nearly forgot to
say Miss Daw sat for a picture yesterday to a
Rivermouth artist. If the negative turns out
well, I am to have a copy. So our ends will be
accomplished without crime. I wish, though, I
could send you the ivorytype in the drawing-room;
it is cleverly colored, and would give you
an idea of her hair and eyes, which of course
the other will not.

No, Jack, the spray of mignonette did not

come from me. A man of twenty-eight does n't
enclose flowers in his letters—to another man.
But don't attach too much significance to the
circumstance. She gives sprays of mignonette
to the rector, sprays to the lieutenant. She has
even given a rose from her bosom to your slave.
It is her jocund nature to scatter flowers, like
Spring.

If my letters sometimes read disjointedly, you
must understand that I never finish one at a
sitting, but write at intervals, when the mood is
on me.

The mood is not on me now.