You will remember our little angelic visitors of the dove house, so faithful to one another and so happy as they chased the summer flies. You will recollect the pleasure he gave us with his song, always rather saddened, whilst she brooded over her mysteries in the little clay cup on the joist. Old Noah had occasion to go into the upper storey of the dove house and carelessly (for it was nothing but carelessness) left the hatch open. I did not notice anything for several days, then, going up myself, found the swallow dead. She must have flown up, attracted by the light, and have beaten her life out on the window-panes. He, poor fellow, had flown away. I pray that neither you nor your husband should ever know his sorrow. My best regards to the gentleman with the beautiful name, your husband.
Your affectionate Father,
Charles Dunnock.
P.S. It gives me peculiar pleasure to inscribe Mrs. Grandison on the envelope.
Anne smiled as she finished the letter, but her heart was troubled; never before had her father been so intimate with her—never had he revealed so much of himself. Her love for him came back to her, a sudden shock astonishing her, for it was a love of which she had hardly suspected the existence, while at the same moment she thought: “He can afford to write to me like this now I am safely married and he is in no danger of my coming back.”
Soon her emotion passed, and she looked around her with renewed excitement. “How lovely the blue sky and the blossom of the oleander!” The waiter was standing beside her setting out the coffee-pot and the milk jug, the cups and saucers, the two hot rolls, wrapped in napkins, and the four thin bricks of lustreless sugar. She picked up her husband’s letter and glanced at the envelope.
“How happy it will make Grandison to have a friendly letter from Richard!” she thought, recognizing the handwriting, and she sat wondering if, after all the letters they had written to him and the postcards they had sent, he still remained cold and unforgiving.
“He loved Grandison; he cared for nobody else, and yet Grandison never gave him any happiness and never showed him any consideration. I cannot bear to think of his feelings after they parted in anger on my account. But this letter must be to say that he has become reconciled to the marriage; he would not write otherwise.”
Richard had sent a wedding present, but when they had gone to the studio they found it locked, and after the third or fourth fruitless visit the concierge had told them that he had gone away.
Anne looked again at the letter, and saw that it bore an English stamp and that the postmark was Dry Coulter; Richard must have gone home suddenly on a surprise visit.
“It is strange how real Dry Coulter is to me! I was unhappy while I was living there, yet all my memories of it are beautiful, and nowhere else in the world seems so real as that village. Are the English elms more beautiful than the olives? Is the song of the blackbird as lovely as Fleury’s flute? Why do I remember every detail of my life before my marriage and nothing of the things that happen to me now? Nothing is real to me now but Grandison, my happiness in him is such that I can enjoy no other beauty.”