 | My third book |  |
Four Letters from Helen Hamilton.
Cast them in, for the fire is faint;
The fire is faint and the frost is strong,
And these old letters have lived too long.
FRANCES BROWN.
Leave, gentle wax; and manners, blame us not:
To know our enemies' minds, we rip their hearts;
Their papers are more lawful.
SHAKSPEARE (King Lear).
1. LETTER THE FIRST.
IT is a rainy summer day, good Cousin Jane, and
that is why I find time to commence my promised
series of letters to you. I have been here three weeks
already, and have scarcely put pen to paper, save to
announce my safe arrival to father and mother; but
to-day I have drawn the cosiest of easy-chairs to the
pleasantest of windows, and, with my port-folio on my
knee, I feel just in the mood for writing to you. A
fancy strikes me to make you, who have not seen me
during the five years since your marriage, a pen-picture
of myself. For once, some power shall give me
the wondrous gift
“To see ourselves as others see us,”
your benefit. Eight years ago, when I was seventeen,
you and I graduated at Madame D'Arblay's together.
You know what I was then, young, hopeful,
enthusiastic, and—you see I am going to be honest—
beautiful. What an enchanted life seemed opening
before me—a path wherein should be perpetually
springing up roses of love and hope, whose buds I
was to gather for my bosom, whose fragrance was to
surround me eternally. You know, too, what I was
Fosdick, and I stood your bridesmaid.
You know that at twenty I had changed a little
from what I was at seventeen. Only a little, it is true.
My beauty was fresh and riant as ever; still I wore
the roses of love and hope in my bosom, but I had
found out there were now and then thorns among
them. The world did not look quite so much like
Eden, and I had learned one lesson—I do think it is
the most sorrowful one a young heart can learn—the
fashionable measure of social importance, reckoning
a man's worth by his dollars and cents.
Since then you have not seen me. We have only
corresponded at rare intervals; but I know your old
love for me is warm in your heart, and I know you
were thoroughly in earnest when you begged me to
sit down in this quiet country place and give you an
account of myself. I will be faithful, Cousin Jane, no
matter how often my cheek may crimson with shame
at the unveiling of my heart.
The five years since you went off with Charley Fosdick—by
the way, you say you've never regretted it,
though he is only a country doctor in that out-of-the-way
town—those five years have all been passed by
me in one desperate struggle to get married—suitably
married—married to please papa and mamma, who
have lived, for my sake, beyond their means, and are
so ambitious to see me what they call well established.
I said the years have all been passed thus, and yet
not quite all. I stopped once by the wayside, in my
long climbing up this weary mountain of social position,
to dream a dream. I believe I was almost in
love. In society I met one who was in the world,
to you? You know whom I mean, for I remember
your writing me, when his first book came out, that
you had read it, and how charmed you were with its
grace, its simple pathos; how thrilled by the utterances
of a deep, strong heart, making itself heard now
and then amid the flowers and the sunshine. You
can not think how strange it was to see him in the
gay circles of our set, with his bright, earnest eyes,
his sweet smile, and his calm forehead. Withal, he
wore such shocking clothes—a threadbare black suit,
always the same. It was at Mrs. Emerson's I met
him first; you know what a woman she is to surround
herself with lions; and then, for a while, every one
took him up, and he was quite the fashion, only mammas
took especial care that their daughters should
have no opportunity to fall in love with him. They
need not have done this, for Mr. Wyndham would
have been harder to win than any lady of them all.
I think he accepted the patronizing invitations extended,
at first, solely for the sake of studying human
life in a new phase. He was miles above their patronage,
and he would have been as little cast down by
their ceasing to invite him altogether as he was elevated
by their extending to him their condescending
courtesy in the first place. He was a noble man,
Cousin Jane.
I was twenty-three that winter. My nature had
become pretty well incrusted with worldliness. I was
tired, though, of the dull routine in which I moved.
My naturally restless spirit longed for change and excitement.
For a time, in his acquaintance, it found
both. I don't know how I managed to attract him to
thought in all this review of my past life—that I had
power to charm that lofty heart, that keen intellect,
that sensitive, æsthetic nature. I think he understood
all my capabilities. He saw what I might have been,
brought up in another sphere, where wealth and style
were less omnipotent. And I, oh! Cousin Jane, an
angel's wing seemed to brush the dust from my heart,
and make it fit for the pure anthems of heaven to echo
through it.
For a time I forgot “the world, the flesh, and the
devil.” I gave up my shopping expeditions; I ceased
to frequent Broadway; I went to half a dozen successive
parties without a new dress; I returned to my
old passion for poetry and music; I went backward
over “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome.” In short, I was well-nigh in love.
But what was I, that Philip Wyndham should gild
me with the refined alchemy of his fancy—should
pour out at my feet the sweet incense of his praise?
Those were enchanted months in which I met him so
frequently. A new glory lay on land and sea; the skies
were bluer and the stars brighter. I never thought,
however, of marriage. The idea that he would seek
me as his wife never entered my head. Candidly, I
should have thought myself as unworthy of the honor
as I was unfit to be a poor man's wife.
It was a strange place to listen to the secret of a poet's
love, but never did sweeter words flood a woman's
heart with joy than his soul uttered to mine one destiny-marked
night, in an alcove of a fashionable parlor,
with the music of Strauss's aerial waltzes flooding
the air, and the silken billows rolling past us in the
whereon diamonds flashed and flowers were flung with
lavish hands, to die, breathing out their fragrance.
With this mirth, and song, and dance about us, our
souls talked to each other—our two souls, in all that
crowd, utterly alone. I say our souls, for the words
we said were no lip utterance merely; our hearts
forced the naked truth to our lips.
I shall not tell you with what phrases he told me
that he loved me. That must be my own cherished
secret. I answered him frankly. I was impelled to
speak all the truth. I told him what a new joy I had
found in his presence. I told him if he had met me
when I was less worldly, I might have loved him;
but now, style, and fashion, and luxury had grown a
necessity to me, and I could not give them up. I
should marry, sometime, a man who would give me
these, and I should try to forget all that I had ever felt
for him. What do you think he answered me?
“I pity you, Helen Hamilton; I pity you far more
than I do myself. I have loved you indeed with all
the strength, all the passion of my heart; still for me,
time and nature will bring solace; but for you—you,
who are smothering all your holiest hopes, all your
best instincts, under the silken panoply of fashion,
there will come, when it is too late, an awakening. I
know you better than you know yourself. I know
how your heart will cry out, one day, in its despair,
for a love cast away and trodden under foot; for you
do love me, Helen. I know how you will recoil in
very bitterness from the rich and fashionable husband
you will choose, and in that hour may God shield you
from sorrow and from sin.”
I have never looked on his face since that night,
Cousin Jane. For months after that I was very sick,
scarcely able to leave my bed, and when I recovered
he had left New York, and gone I do not know where,
for another lion had taken his place at Mrs. Emerson's
reunions, and he was nearly forgotten.
Two summers and two winters have past since then,
and I am not married yet. I can see mamma is beginning
to be alarmed lest I never shall be. Last winter,
however, came an admirer after her own heart—
Lionel Fitz-Herbert. He had just returned from
abroad. He is a son of one of the richest families on
Fifth Avenue, and quite the fashion. He certainly
paid me a great deal of attention, but he did not propose;
nor, though, I confess to you, Cousin Jane, I
used all my arts, could I by any means succeed in
bringing him to the point. I can draw his portrait
for you with ease. It will not be a Rembrandt. There
are no strong lights and shadows in his character.
This is he—Mrs. Charley Fosdick, Mr. Lionel Fitz-Herbert:
A small, smooth head, with well-brushed brown
hair; small, though very regular features; clear red
and white complexion; small hands and feet; short,
slight figure, dressed in the height of fashion, and an
echo-like manner and conversation, formed, you may
be sure, in the best society. He has no particular vices,
no particular principles, no particular ideas. Add to
this a fortune almost unlimited, and the finest turn-out
in New York, and you have a very good idea of the
young gentleman for whose admiration a score of pretty
women—your cousin Helen Hamilton among the
rest—have angled desperately all winter.
This spring I became out of patience with it all. I
did not want to go to Saratoga; I hate it, the hot,
dusty place, and I persuaded mamma—I assure you it
was a work of difficulty—to let me come here and stay
with Caddie. You never saw my cousin Caddie. She
was a splendid girl, educated in Boston, refined, gifted,
handsome. We thought, at the time, that she threw
herself away when she married William Ripley, young,
poor, and resolved to be a farmer, but since I have
been here I have changed my mind. Will is handsome,
gentlemanly, well-educated—one of nature's noblemen,
in short; just the one to round her life into
fullness and harmony. I do not think I ever saw so
happy a couple. Despite her many cares and her two
children, Caddie is as young and gay as at sixteen.
Perhaps you don't know that this village, where
their pretty place, Hillside, is located, was my mother's
birth-place. Grandfather Weaver's old home, Oakland,
they call it, is about half a mile from here. The
house is tenantless now, but in excellent, repair, and the
old oak-trees around it are worthy of an English park.
I pass a great many hours under the shade of those
trees, or sitting in the wide veranda which surrounds
the old house, dreaming strange dreams about my
mother's youth; about my own life; the destiny which
seems so long in coming to me; which I sometimes
have a curious presentiment that I shall meet here.
I had no idea that I should like a country life so
well. This is my first experience of it, for Saratoga,
and Newport, and Long Branch are not country. I
am beginning to think that country people are better
than the denizens of the town. They have more time
to think. Life seems here a more solemn, a more earnest
carriages and point lace, seem so worthless when one
walks under the oaks and larches, and looks up through
their boughs to the everlasting sky, or hears the clear
bird-songs pulsing downward. Will and Caddie seem
to me—though their help is not numerous, and they
have to spend not a few hours of every day at work
with their own hands—to live far more intellectual
lives than most of our fashionable idlers on Fifth Avenue.
There is scarcely a good book, the utterance
of a strong, true soul, that does not find its way to Hill-side.
There are some of these whose acquaintance I
have made here for the first time, for which I feel that
I shall be better all my life.
“Helen — Nellie — Nell!” That is Caddie's voice
calling me. I guess it is mail-time, and I must run
down stairs and see what has come for me. Then I'll
come up again and finish my letter for you.
Oh, Cousin Jane, what shall I do? I am in sore
perplexity. There was no letter for me, but Will had
received two, and there are to be two visitors at Hill-side.
Whom do you think? The first is he whom I
have not seen for more than two years—Philip Wyndham.
It seems he has always been a friend of Will's,
and he is coming here, he writes, for a little peace and
rest, a little of the comforts of true friendship, and to
finish off a book which he had promised to give the
publishers in September. He does not know that I
am here, and as he is coming to-morrow there is no
time to tell him. Indeed, if there were ever so much
time, why should he be told? It is not probable that
he would avoid me. I am nothing to him now. Is
from its long trance a silent sleeper in my heart to
mock me with words against which I may not close
my ears; to look at me with eyes before which my
soul will quiver with agony? But he will never know
it. He will never know that this strange ghost of the
past is not dead utterly; that it folds its shroud about
it sometimes, and rises up in the midnight with its
still, accusing eyes. After all, it shall not rise. I will,
I must control myself. Philip Wyndham can be nothing
to me; I can be nothing to him. I will teach my
heart not to quicken its pulses at the sound of his
name. Perhaps our second visitor will help me.
Who do you think he is, Cousin Jane? No other
than my admirer of this winter, Mr. Lionel Fitz-Herbert.
It seems he, too, knows Will; in fact, they
were in college together. He has ascertained my
whereabouts from my mother, and written to ask Will
and Caddie for permission to come down here and
make a visit. They are too hospitable to refuse. But
he will not arrive till next week. In the mean time,
I shall have been seven days under the same roof with
Philip Wyndham. But why do I speculate on that?
my life-path leads otherwhere.
It seems, then, that Mr. Fitz-Herbert was more impressed
with my attractions than I feared. He is evidently
coming here solely on my account. The probable
result will be an engagement. This will completely
satisfy papa and mamma in their ambitious
views for me, and it will insure me, for life, the possession
of all the luxuries that have become so necessary.
Well—I say well, and it shall be well. I will
not let my foolish fancies make it ill.
I must close, to send you this letter by the evening
mail, but I will write again soon, and keep you advised
of the progress of this drama, whose result will
determine the hereafter of your cousin,
2. LETTER THE SECOND.
Oh, what a morning it is, Cousin Jane! Your heart
drinks in the incense of many such, I doubt not, but
to me, who have lived in the city all my life, each
jubilant sunrising comes like a new revelation of
power and beauty. I wish mamma could look out
of my window. The landscape she would see would
delight the heart of a painter. Hills, and dells, and
woodland, and, in the distance, the bright river winding
along like a thread of silver light. Blessed be
God for summer. I do not think I have so rejoiced
in the dewy freshness of any morning since I have
been here. And yet I am not very happy. I rose
early to tell you this. I have much to say to you;
but, though I have sat here half an hour, my pen has
only traveled over these few lines.
Philip Wyndham came yesterday in the ten o'clock
train. I was busy all the first part of the morning
helping Caddie; that is, I put little beautifying touches
here and there which she had not time to give. I
filled every vase with the sweet June roses and the
other early flowers which thrive so well in Caddie's
garden. The parlor looked charmingly when I had
and fastened sprays of roses in with the ribbons
which looped back the snowy muslin curtains.
Then I went to Philip Wyndham's room. I knew
he would never know it, and so I indulged myself in
making it beautiful for him. I filled it with such
flowers as I remembered to have heard him say he
loved — bright, sweet-scented ones — roses, and heliotropes,
and geraniums. I scattered over the dressing-bureau
little articles of virtu from my own room, and
on the table I put a handsome port-folio full of all varieties
of stationery.
At length, when I could find nothing more to do,
I went to my room. There I took counsel with myself.
I called my heart to account for its foolish flutterings.
I bade my fingers cease their nervous trembling.
I chided my voice into calmer, less faltering
tones. You know I told you that I never loved Philip
Wyndham; that is, not well enough to give up wealth
and luxury for his sake. I reminded myself of this
fact, and then I remembered my other lover. I reflected
that a few months would probably see me Mrs.
Lionel Fitz-Herbert, and there was no reason I should
suffer my fancies to run riot about another. To be
sure, I never could, by any possibility, wax romantic
about Mr. Fitz-Herbert, but it was pleasant to contemplate
the future he could give me—so luxurious, so
free from care—to imagine myself presiding in my
stately mansion, or driving down town with my liveried
servants and my faultless equipage.
“Ah! Helen Hamilton,” I said to myself, “you are
a girl of sense. Poetry and romance are delightful
condiments at the banquet of life, but very unsubstantial
Wyndham with calm indifference. I would not even
bestow a single extra adornment upon my toilet. I
put on a fresh, simple white muslin, with a blue ribbon
about my waist. Then I twined a few red roses
in my hair. As I did so, the face reflected in the mirror
arrested my gaze. It was as beautiful as ever;
perhaps a careless observer would have said it was as
youthful; but I could see it had grown old and worldly.
There was a proud curl to the lip; a haughty,
half-sarcastic gleam to the eye, which I did not like.
They had come there since Philip Wyndham saw me
last. The spirit had not become meeker in the past
two years—more chastened, more womanly. It had
grown proud, defiant, self-loving. Well, I could not
help it. He would read the change, perhaps he would
despise it, but why should the future Mrs. Lionel Fitz-Herbert
care for Philip Wyndham's scorn?
Just then I heard a step coming up the graveled
walk that thrilled me with the old memories which
rose, ghost-like, at its echoes. I went down stairs and
stood in the parlor as he and Will came up the steps.
Caddie met them at the door. I heard her joyful welcome,
and then they came in. I thought—perhaps I
was mistaken, Cousin Jane — but I thought Philip
Wyndham grew a shade paler as he saw me. His
voice did not falter. He came to me and extended
his hand.
“This is indeed a surprise, Miss Hamilton.”
I was quite as cool and self-possessed as he. Caddie
knows little of my acquaintance with him. I only
told her we had met several times in New York, and
I know, shrewd observer as she is, she saw no clew by
which to guess our past.
Now, Cousin Jane, that man is nothing to me. When
I might have been his wife, I refused him without a
moment's hesitation. And yet he has made me more
than half miserable with his indifference already. He
does not avoid me at all. He talks with me, when it
comes in his way, as easily and as agreeably as with
Will or Caddie, but he hardly seems to know whether
I am in the room or out of it. It must be my vanity
that is wounded. We women do not like to find our
captives quite so free and heart-whole. However indifferent
we may feel to the victim, we do not like to
find the chains we forged all broken.
There, he is going down stairs now. I am going
down too. Why not? Though he is nothing to me,
there is no reason I should not hear him declare what
this beautiful morning has said to his soul. I know
what a look of inspiration will beam from his earnest
face. But, look you, he shall not know this. I will
say some provoking, ridiculous thing; something that
shall make him feel that what he does and says is
nothing to me, even as what I do and say is nothing
to him.
I shall not send you this letter yet. I will leave it
open till Mr. Fitz-Herbert comes. You shall see how
I will welcome him.
June 26th.
Well, Cousin Jane, Lionel Fitz-Herbert came yesterday,
by the same train that brought Philip Wyndham
a week before. You shall hear all about it. In the
first place, you will want to know how I got along
with Mr. Wyndham seven mortal days. Well, I had
very little to do with him. The forenoons he has
spent in his room, writing diligently, as I suppose, on
autumn. Afternoons he has been for the most part
with Will. They have taken together long drives,
and been off on fishing excursions from which Caddie
and I were excluded. But I have seen enough of him
to give me more than one heart-thrill, yet I am unhappy
at his indifference no longer. I chose my own
path, and I must walk in it. It is strange, though,
what an influence this man has over me. If I were
with him always I couldn't help being good. His
earnestness is infectious. He makes one see life as he
sees it. In his presence it seems a solemn thing.
Wealth and station look like mere tinsel. They are
shorn of charms, and nothing on earth seems worth
the staining our souls with its dust. One cares only
to live the life heaven appoints—to live it simply, earnestly,
honestly, until this life on earth shall lose itself
and be absorbed in the fullness of the life of heaven.
You have felt something of this influence in his
books; you would feel it still more if you could see
him. I do not think I would have him stoop from
his lofty height to a poor butterfly of fashion such as
I. It would be like the kingly eagle mating with the
peacock. I know myself. I could not always live
on the enchanted mountains. I should come down
into the valleys sometimes, and then I should want
the luxuries that he could not give me. You see I
must marry Lionel Fitz-Herbert. And this brings
me back to his coming.
“I suppose you'll beautify Mr. Fitz-Herbert's room
for him?” said Caddie, standing by my side after
breakfast. I blushed, for Philip Wyndham had heard
her question, and was looking at me keenly.
“Not I, indeed. I'm not sure that the gentleman
cares for flowers; and, any way, I have all I can do
to beautify myself.”
I came up stairs and made an elaborate toilet. I
did all that art could do to enhance my attractions,
and I was well satisfied with the result. When the
visitor came I met him at the door. I received him
with much empressement.
I could see that he was highly elated. When we
walked into the parlor together, Philip Wyndham
looked at us both with one of his quick, analytic
glances. Then an expression passed over his face
which made me angry. It seemed to me it was compassion.
I remembered the tones in which he said to
me, long ago,
“I pity you, Helen Hamilton.”
Well, I think I made Mr. Fitz-Herbert's day a pleasant
one. I certainly devoted myself to him with most
flattering assiduity. I can see him now from the window.
He is walking to and fro in the garden, now and
then dashing the dew-drops from a shrub in his path
with a dainty cane about the size of my little finger.
His complexion looks bright; I guess he rested well.
His hair is smooth as the hat he has just lifted to bow
to Caddie, who spoke to him from the door. N.B.—
When I am his wife I will tumble his hair up. It
would kill me to sit opposite to it, day after day, so
uniformly smooth.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that Mr. Wyndham dresses
better than he used. Will says his books bring him
in eight or nine hundred dollars a year now. To be
sure, this would hardly find me in silk dresses, but
with it he manages to clothe his outer man with a
in bread and butter.
But I must go down. My carpet knight has paused
in his walk to cast a languishing glance up to my
window. I shall send this letter off to-day, and when
there's any thing new I'll write to you again. My
heart loves, and sends you its blessing with as warm
a tenderness as when, on your bridal morning, you
kissed through your tears your cousin,
3. LETTER THE THIRD.
Who would have thought a whole month would
pass before I wrote you again, you fond, true-hearted
Cousin Jane! And now I have so much to tell, but
I must tell it briefly, for I have another letter to write
to-day.
Will, and Caddie, and I are all alone again. Our
two guests are gone. Mr. Wyndham went first. It
is a week since he left. We went on, during his stay,
much as before. I bestowed my chief attention on
Mr. Fitz-Herbert, and yet I listened to every word
that Wyndham said. His is a noble soul. I am
proud that he loved me once. Jane, when I saw Lionel
Fitz-Herbert in the city, I did not know him. I
was dazzled by his gold and his name; I did not look
into his heart. Give me the country for knowing a
man as he is. Under the solemn sky, under the century-old
trees, with the free winds fanning the dust
and conventional disguises. Only the true
and the real can lift up its face to those solemn heavens.
Well, I saw Fitz-Herbert as he was; nay, perhaps
he seemed to me even feebler and tamer than he is
when Philip Wyndham walked beside him with his
tall stature, his lofty port, his clear, far-seeing eyes;
above all, his high, far-seeing soul. But, despite this,
I persevered in my resolve to be the rich man's wife.
“I never would, I never could marry a poor man,” I
said to Caddie, when she asked me what I meant to
do.
One week ago Philip Wyndham left. He held my
hand in his for a moment when he bade me good-by.
We chanced to be all alone. He looked earnestly
into my eyes, and then he said,
“Miss Hamilton, if I could I would say God bless
you in the path you have chosen, but I can not. You
will have to account to Him for every crushed down
impulse for good, every stifled aspiration. I suppose
we shall never meet again, but I know you will forgive
my sincerity when you remember how truly I
was your friend.”
Oh, Jane, it seemed to me, in that moment, as if I
would have given every hour of my splendid future,
with its station, and wealth, and luxury, just to have
been folded to his heart—just to have heard him say,
“Helen, I trust you.” But he went away, and resolutely
I banished this longing. I would marry Lionel
Fitz-Herbert. This would make my parents happy.
It would relieve all papa's embarrassments. In short,
it was the only rational course for me to pursue. That
more lively.
It was three days before he proposed to me. The
decisive moment came at evening. We had been over
to Oakland, and were pacing to and fro under the
trees. I do not know exactly what he said. I was
sensible he was asking me to marry him. I had, in
my mind, a prettily framed acceptance. Listen to
what I said. It was not I, surely; was it my guardian
angel speaking through my lips?
“Mr. Fitz-Herbert, until this very moment I have
meant to marry you, but I know now that I can not.
Do not be angry with me. Do not think that I have
done you wrong. I should do you ten times greater
wrong were I to perjure myself at the altar—to give
you my hand when my heart can never, never love
you. If you had asked me when we were both in
town—when the gaslight glowed above us, and diamonds
sparkled and repartees flashed by us, I should
have been your wife; but here, under this everlasting
sky, I must tell you the truth—I love another.”
I stopped. The influence within, which forced me
to speak, was gone. I looked at my auditor. I could
not have thought those smooth, small features could
have worn such an expression of impotent rage or
vindictive hate as crossed them there in the moonlight.
May I never see its like again. It passed away as
suddenly as it came, and then, in utter silence, he offered
me his arm, and we walked back to Hillside.
The next morning he left.
Oh, Jane, what shall I say to you? How shall I
make you feel the wild, glad sense of freedom that has
been with me ever since? Thank God, thank God
The scales have fallen from my eyes. All the wealth,
all the splendor in the world could not now buy my
life, my heart, my free, independent self. Out here
where the sun shines, the winds blow, the birds sing,
and the dew-drops sparkle brighter than any diamonds,
I am glad, I am glad.
And yet, Jane, there is an under-current of sadness.
Low down in the deep heart of this mighty anthem
of joy which all nature seems chorusing together, I
can hear the half-smothered echo of a wail, and my
heart joins in it. Not for the vanished dream of pomp,
and pride, and splendor; not for the stately house, with
its velvet canopies, its gilded cornices, its gold and silver.
Once in life I had laid at my feet a pearl of
great price. I did not stoop to pick it up, and now it
can never sparkle on my bosom. I may go sorrowing
and mourning all the days of my life, but I can not
light again the ashes of a deal hope. Jane, I know
now that I love Philip Wyndham; that I have loved
him long with a love that is stronger than life or death.
But I will not waste my future in weak repining; I
will trust in God, and be thankful that I am not all
unworthy of a love that once was mine—thankful that
I am still free to cherish one blessed memory; and perhaps,
when the shrouding mists of time shall roll away
and disclose the distant hills of heaven, standing together
on those glory-crowned hill-tops, Philip Wyndham
may know my best self for what it is.
I said I had another letter to write. It is to papa
and mamma. I am going to entreat them to come
down here next week. I must have them share the
glories of this unrivaled summer. They love me too
hear again from your cousin
4. LETTER THE FOURTH.
You will be surprised at the date of this letter, Cousin
Jane, and yet not more so than I am. All this past
delicious month seems like a dream. I am not awake
enough yet to explain it, so I will give you the outlines,
and you must fill up the picture with fancy
touches.
My parents came. Tears were in their eyes when
they kissed me. I think there was a strange sweetness
to them both in coming back, after nearly thirty
years, to the dear haunts of their days of love, and romance,
and wooing. Never have I seen them so happy,
so free from care. Their souls asserted themselves
here. They grew tenderer to each other, to me, to
every earthly thing. They opened their hearts to the
blessed influences of sunrise and moonrise, bird-songs
and dew-falls. I waited until there had been time for
the free country wind to sweep from their memory all
the dust and care of the soiling town. Then I told
them of Mr. Fitz-Herbert's proposal and my answer.
Mamma was the first to speak.
“You are a good girl, Helen. God forbid that we
should wish you to give your hand without your
heart—we, who know what love is.” She looked with
filling eyes upon papa.
Then, Jane, I pressed my advantage. I besought
its living for the world, its worriment about ways and
means; to come here, where they would have enough
to live in comfort, where mother's vacant girlhood
home waited for them. They listened with more readiness
than I had feared. You behold the result in the
dating of this epistle. Father is growing young in his
freedom from care and trouble, and dear mother tells
me, with tears in her eyes, that this is the best life she
has ever known. As for me, I can hardly realize my
own happiness. I must lay down my pen now, and
go out among those magnificent oaks, in whose tops
the golden arrows of sunset are quivering, until I feel
through all my heart the exultant consciousness that
this dear home is my very own.
Oh, what shall I say to you now, out of my full
heart, dear Cousin Jane? It is almost midnight, and
yet I must conclude this letter before I sleep. To
think that since I laid down my pen, four hours ago,
my destiny has come to me. I was pacing along under
the trees, my eyes cast down, when suddenly I felt rather
than saw that I was no longer alone. I looked up,
and there, right in my path, stood Philip Wyndham.
“What! are you visiting now at Hillside?” I asked,
very abruptly, saying the first thing that came into my
head in my confusion.
“No, not exactly; that is, I shall stay there, but I
came on purpose to see you, Helen.”
And then, walking by my side under the oaks, he
said once more words which you may not hear; which
are only his and mine in all the world. Once more
my pearl of great price lay gleaming at my feet, and
seems that Caddie, that keen-eyed Caddie, did suspect
our secret after all, and so she gave him a hint of my
rejection of Mr. Fitz-Herbert, and that I had persuaded
my parents to come to Oakland to live, and then he
came up to see me. I know the look with which Caddie
will say to me to-morrow,
“I thought you never would marry a poor man,
Helen.”
And I shall answer,
“I am not going to. I shall marry the richest man
I ever knew; rich in faith, hope, genius, and a millionaire
in love.”
Oh, Jane, God was merciful. He did not require me
to wait till the Beyond for the fruition of my hopes.
Even here has He crowned me with the largess of his
blessing. Philip is mine and I am his. I ask no more
of life, only I pray God to keep my heart meek and
pure, a fit temple for the love He has sent to dwell in it.
Before the October moon has waned, you and Charley
will come to my simple bridal. I shall wear no
costly robes, no glittering ornaments, but truth and
love will make me fair to the dear eyes whose light
outshines for me all the diamonds in all the world. I
shall be crowned by woman's holiest crown. I am
happy. There is no undercurrent of wailing now in
the great glad chorus of nature—no sheeted ghost in
the still chamber of my heart. I am blessed beyond
all I could ask or hope. Has not this been the golden
summer of my life? And now, at the close of this
last chapter of my maidenhood's romance, I must write
the name which will soon be mine no longer—
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