An Unknown Lover, Mrs George de Horne Vaizey [best romantic novels in english txt] 📗

entered the room; the second he touched her hand. And Tom is poor; he is plain, he looks as though on occasion he might be abominably disagreeable. Louisa looks upon his cross face, and acknowledges to herself ‘My Lord and King!’—It’s a feel that decides it, not a fact. In the great, big choice of life, reason doesn’t count. Two men have asked me to marry them (You wouldn’t know their names, even if you heard them, so I am betraying no confidence); I should have said ‘no’ in any case, but I might have wanted to say ‘yes’! I didn’t! I felt that as a choice a jump into the river would be preferable, yet from a sane, sensible point of view there was no reason why I should not have fallen in love—and—especially in one case! every obvious reason why I should! I couldn’t for my life tell you what was wrong, except—Everything! I should have hated his very virtues by my own fireside. His ‘little ways’ would have driven me daft, but I can imagine wrapping up those self-same little ways right in the middle of my heart, as the dearest things, the sweetest, the most winsome, if they had belonged to another man!

“Engaged people are a bore to outsiders, but for themselves it must be a good time. To be able to speak out, after bottling it all in; to be left alone in peace, instead of living on odd snatches of conversation in the midst of crowds; to feel sure; to be done with ‘I’,—and become for ever ‘We.’—It must feel so warm, and restful, and rich! It isn’t so much the mere happiness that impresses me; it’s the rest. I wish it were possible to get engaged without being married, then I should arrange it with indecent haste, with an orphan, with a motor car, and we would be happy! He should be clean shaven, and rather plain, but it must be just my special fad in the way of plainness—a trim, slim, sinewy sort. Nothing flabby, an’ you love me!

“I’ve thought of his name sometimes; names count for a good deal. There are moods when I dream of Ralph and feel a fascination for Peter; moods when I have a secret hankering for Guy; moods again when he could not possibly be any one but Jack. People say that if you really love a man, his name does not matter. I’ve known a woman to settle down with ‘Percy,’ and live happily ever after. I’ve heard of another who espoused a ‘Samuel,’ and was apparently content. It is conceivable that I might do the same, but ‘Alfred’ gives me a crawl. It is settled, firm, as the everlasting hills, that I can never belong to Alfred!

“If there is one thing more than another for which I bless my parents, and praise them in the gate, it is that they called me by a durable Christian name. Katherine! It is not beautiful; it is not poetic, but it is at least seemly and discreet. You may take liberties with Katherine, and it will never disgrace you. When you are small and curly-headed you can pose as ‘Kitty Clover’ with beguiling effect. I did myself, for quite a long run. Later on, dropping the Clover, you may be known to schoolmates as Kitty or Kate. There’s a snap about Kate which keeps Pearls and Rubies in their place. Katrine is, as you observe, quite attractive for the days of youth; Katherine is a refuge for old age. Can you imagine anything more appropriate for a spinster lady in a country town?

“The only married couple whom I have studied from the inside was my brother and his wife during that little six months. It seemed quite a perfect thing at the time, but looking back from the sober height of twenty-six, it seems more like a play, than real, serious life. She was only nineteen; a pretty thing; such a babe; poor little, happy Juliet! and Martin was a boy with her. Now, as you say, he is a man. I wonder sometimes—

“We have a visitor staying with us just now. Her name is Grizel Dundas, and she is twenty-eight, and very beautiful or rather plain, according to the hour of the day, and her own mood and intention. Sometimes I suspect that she deliberately makes herself plain, for the fun of confounding people with her beauty an hour later on. Also she may probably turn out to be one of the greatest heiresses in London, or be left with a few hundreds a year, and she is very lazy, and very energetic, and talks like a schoolboy, and looks like a fay, and dresses, oh, Lonely Man! in the most ra-vishing clothes! And she knocks at the door of Martin’s study in his writing hours, and walks bang in. And he doesn’t turn her out!

“That’s Grizel. And if I tried a hundred years I couldn’t describe her better. We were at school together, and she is my most intimate friend, next to Dorothea, but—

“I wish I were a generous, humble-minded person who liked standing aside, and seeing other people succeed where I have failed, and being praised where I’m snubbed, and run after when I’m ignored, but I’m not, and if you think I am, you’d better know once for all that you’re mistaken. There have been times this last week when I’ve hated Grizel, and her works!

“Yesterday we went to a garden party, she, Martin, and I, and they schemed to send me off with a snuffy old man, so that they could be alone. I saw them look at each other, a quick, signalling look, which meant, ‘Get rid of her!’ and he was the first person who came along. Poor, snuffy person, with a termagant on his hands! If you were sitting here, face to face—I should be too proud to tell you this; even to write it to Dorothea would hurt, but to a ghostly shape whom one has never seen, and probably never shall see, it is a relief to blurt out one’s woes!

“Martin looks at Grizel with a look in his eyes which,—which is not like a sorrowing widower! and when I see it I am filled with seventeen contending emotions, like the heroines in the newspaper feuilletons. Jealousy—hideous, aching jealousy, for Juliet, and the past, for myself and the future; disillusionment, in the breaking of an ideal, which, if impracticable, was still beautiful and sweet, the illusion of a lifelong loyalty and devotion; also, and this is worst of all,—something horribly approaching contempt! My love for Martin is as great as ever, but he is no longer the hero, the strong, silent man who loved once and for ever, and went through life waiting patiently for a reunion. He has stepped down from his pedestal and become flesh and blood, and I—oh, Lonely Man!—I am trying to be glad, but it’s a big, big effort! Self looms so large; the self that will intrude into every question. I wanted him to be happy, but in my own way!

“I’m going to stop this minute. You’ll be horrified at the length of this budget, but it’s your own fault. Give a woman an inch, and she’ll take an ell. Wade through it this time, and tell me what you think, but don’t preach! Preaching does me such a lot of harm. Methinks I descry in you a latent tendency to preach; nevertheless, somehow—I can’t think how—you’ve comforted me to-day and so I’m grateful.

“Many happy returns of your twenty-fifth birthday. I am a year older, and feel pleasantly superior.

“Yours sincerely,

“Katrine Beverley.

“PS.—Please go on about ‘The girl you would fancy’ ... I have a fancy to hear!”