"You and a hundred distant hills, Jim! Then days--and nights, and nights and days--and summers and winters of joy!

"Some time this will come to pa.s.s--it must--and we shall call it heaven! And we shall rejoice that we were strong to keep the faith through the days of trial and longing so that we could reach it and be worthy of it.

"And, when this shall come, I can never know fear again--fear that London will make you cease to love me--that some other woman may gain possession of you--that the artist in you may crush out and starve the lover. There will be but one thought of fear then, and that will be that you may die and leave me, but this will not be hopeless, for I too can die!

"Oh, do you remember that first day--that wonderful, anguished, bewildering first day--then that night when I kissed you? When I think of sickening fear I always remember that time. Two weeks before the London newspapers had chronicled your visit to Colmere Abbey 'to paint the portrait of the novelist, Lady Frances Webb,' but you were deceiving the newspapers, for you had lost your power to paint!

"It was quite early in the morning of that eighth or ninth day of blessed dalliance, when the canvas still showed itself accusingly bare, that you threw down your brush and declared you were going back to London, 'because--because Colmere Abbey had robbed your hands of their power.'

"And what did I do when you told me this terrible thing? I said, wickedly and without shame, 'Would you go away and leave me all alone in idleness?'

"'Idleness?' you repeated, pretending not to understand.

"'Neither can I do any work--since you came to Colmere!'

"You stood quite still beside the easel for a breathless moment, then:

"'Do _I_--keep _you_--from working?' you asked.

"Your face tried to look sorry and amazed, but the triumph showed through and glorified your dear eyes.

"'Then certainly I must go away--at once--to-day,' you kept on, but you came straight across the room and placed your hands upon my shoulders. 'Just this once--just one time, sweetheart, then I'll go straight away and never see you again!'

"And that night, true to your promise, you did go away, but I followed you to the gates--and when I saw horses ready saddled there to take you away from me, the high resolves I had made came fluttering to earth. I put my hands up to your face and kissed you. During all the giddy joy of that day's confessional I had kept from doing this, but--not when I saw you leaving!

"'I wish that this kiss could mark your cheek--and let all the world know that you are mine,' I whispered, shivering against you in that first madness of fear over losing you.

"'You've made a mark!' you laughed fondly. 'A mark that I shall carry all the days of my life.'

"But I was still fearful.

"'You may know that you are marked, but how will the world--how will other women know that you are mine?'

"'The world shall know it,' you declared, brushing back my hair and kissing me again. 'There will never be another woman in my life--and some day, when I can paint your portrait, it will certainly know then.

To me you are so very beautiful.'"

Another letter was just a note, addressed to London, and evidently written in great haste to catch a delayed post-bag.

"Oh, my dear, that orange tree of ours--that you and I planted together that day--is putting out tiny blossoms! Do you suppose it is a happy omen, Jim? How I have worked with it through this dreary winter--and now to think that it is blooming!

"Your dear hands have touched it! It is a living thing which can receive my caresses and repay their tenderness by growing tall and strong and beautiful--like you. Do you wonder that I love it?

"When you come again I shall take you out to see it, and we shall walk softly up to the shelf where it stands--so carefully, to keep from jarring a single leaf--and we shall separate the branches, still very carefully, to look down at the little new stems. And, Jim--Jim--the blossoms will be like starry young eyes looking up at us! The pink, faintly-showing glow will be as delicate as a tiny cheek, when sleep has flushed it--and the petals will close over our fingers with all the clinging softness of a helpless little clutch!

"We will be very happy for a little while, but, because I am savage and resentful over our delayed joy, I shall cry on your shoulder and say it's cruel--_cruel_--that you and I have only this plant to love together."

After this came two or three more, like it, then I reached for one which brought a misty wetness to my eyes. The lover was gone--quite gone--and the woman had seemed to feel that they would meet no more.

... "At other times I remember all the months which have gone by since then--and the miles of dark water which roll between your land and mine. G.o.d pity the woman who has a lover across the sea!

"_Am_ I sorry that I sent you away? You ask me this--yet how can you!

How many letters I have written, bidding you, nay _begging_ you to come back--how many times have I dropped them into the post-bag in the hall--then, after an hour's thought, have run in terror and s.n.a.t.c.hed them out again!

"I am trying so hard to be good! Can I hold out--just a little while longer? I am going to die young, remember, and that is the one hope which consoles me! It used to be that I shrank from the medical men who told me this--who told me with their pitying eyes and grave looks--but now I welcome their gravity. Sir Humphrey Davy has written a letter to my husband, advising him to send me off to Italy for this incoming winter--but I shall not go! 'I fear that dread phthisis in the rigor of English cold,' he writes--but for me it can not come too soon!

"... Yet all the time the knowledge haunts me that our lives are pa.s.sing! I can not bear it! I spend the hours out in the garden--where the sun-dial tells me--all _silently_--of the day's wearing on.

"Since you went away I can not listen to the sound of the clock in the hall. That chime--that holy trustful chime--'O Lord, our G.o.d, be Thou our Guide,' shames the unholy prayer on my lips.

"Then the clock ticks, ticks, ticks--all day--all night--on, and on, and on--to remind me of our hearts' wearying beats! Does this thought ever come to madden you? That our hearts have only so many times to throb in this life--and when we are apart every pulsation is wasted?"

I thrust this letter back into its place--then hastily closed down the desk. The sensation of reading a thing like that is not pleasant. She had written with an awful, _awful_ pain in her heart--and she had lived before the days of anesthetics!

"Women don't feel things like that--now," I muttered, as I crossed the room and lowered the curtain. "They--they have too many other things to divert them, I suppose!"

I knew, however, that I was judging everybody by myself, and certainly _I_ had never known an awful hurt like that.

"Why, I could listen to a _taximeter_ tick--for a whole year--while Guilford was away from me, and I don't believe it would make me nervous for a sight of him."

I was considerably disgusted with myself for my callousness as I came to this conclusion, however, and I sat down in the window, overlooking the tiny strip of rose-garden to think it out. Presently I crossed the room again to the desk.

_"I'm_ not going to jest at scars--even if I haven't felt a wound!" I decided, once and for always.

I opened the desk then and gathered up the letters, packet by packet, tying them into one big bundle.

"Publish these--heart-throbs!"

I was so furious that I could have gagged Uncle Lancelot if he had opened his mouth--which he didn't dare do! In this respect he and grandfather are very much like living relatives. They'll argue with you through ninety-nine years of indecision, but once you've made up your mind irrevocably they close their lips into a sullen silence--saving their breath for "I told you so!"

"I don't see how anybody could have thought of such blasphemy!" I kept on. "It would be like a vivisection! That's what people want though, nowadays--they won't have just a book! They want to be present at a clinic!--They want to see others' hearts writhe--because they have no feelings of their own!"

Then, after my thoughts had had time to get away from the past up into the present and project themselves, somewhat spitefully, into the future, I made another decision, slamming the desk lid to accentuate it.

"I shall not publish them myself--nor ever give anybody else a chance to publish them!" I declared. "By rights they are not really mine! I am just their guardian, because Aunt Patricia couldn't take them on her journey with her--and some day I shall take them on a journey with me. To Colmere Abbey--that dream-house of mine! That's the thing to do! And burn them on the hearth in the library, where she likely burned his--if she did burn them! Of course I can't run the risk of what the next generation might do!"

This last thought tormented me as I fell asleep.

"No, I can not hand those letters down to my daughters," I decided drowsily, being in that hazy state where the mind traverses unheard-of fields--unheard-of for waking thought--and queer little twisting decisions come. "They would _never_ be able to understand!"

I was aroused by this hypothesis into sudden wakefulness.

"Of course they could not understand--me or my feelings!" I muttered, sitting up in bed and facing the darkness defiantly. "They _could_ not--if--_if_ they were Guilford's daughters, too!"

CHAPTER V