One portrait in the photograph-book has so special an attraction for her, that I took it out and put it in a little upright frame, which she keeps on her dressing-table. This slight act of kindness has, it appears, particularly touched her heart; and yesterday, when I mentioned that I should be despatching my letter to you this morning, she begged me to ask you to be sure and go to see the original of this beloved portrait, a certain Miss Clara Montressor, who is at present playing at one of the London theatres. The theatre in question is called the Thespian; you may perhaps know it, but I am so deplorably ignorant of such matters that I really do not know whether I am talking to you of a first-rate or a fifth-rate establishment. I disguised my ignorance, for Mrs. Jenkins's harmless enthusiasm and true believership amuses me so much that I would not snub her for the world; and when she assured me that she has heard tell that Miss Clara Montressor is quite the finest actress in existence, I did not allow her to perceive that I had never heard Miss Clara Montressor's name. If you can at all conveniently get anywhere near to confirming Mrs. Jenkins's belief, pray do so; at all events, let your reply to this contain an assurance that you have beheld the prodigy. I should not like baby's nurse to be prejudiced against baby's papa by supposing that he could be in London without seeing Miss Clara Montressor and appreciating the advantage as it deserves.
This young lady is one craze; but Mrs. Jenkins has another, rather an abstract one, for she has never seen its object, who is no less a person than the famous actor, Bryan Duval. She has followed his career with most amusing zeal, and has told me all about his best characters and his peculiar points, until I feel that he too is an old acquaintance. How heartily you would have laughed if you could have been present, unseen, at baby's bedtime yesterday! I had just heard a piece of information which I knew would be productive of unbounded delight to Mrs. Jenkins, and I took that favourable opportunity, when she is always thoroughly disposed for a chat, to tell her about it. She had been rather low all day--she sometimes is, I observe, when she gets a letter from her husband (he is not like you, Alston, though she loves him)--and I knew I should cheer her up by telling her, what no doubt you know as well as we know it here, that Bryan Duval is coming to New York. You never saw anything so absurd as her delight, which appeared to be thoroughly shared by baby, judging by the kicking and crowing of that young lady in consequence of the additional dangling and tossing which her nurse bestowed upon her in her pleasure. I told her not only that she could go to see him, but that she might accompany me--we can manage to put baby in commission for that little time--and I even hinted at the possibility of her unknown idol presenting himself in the flesh at our house. I suppose you will have made this gentleman's acquaintance in London; do be sure and tell me if so, and whether he is really the very charming man in society which he has the name of being here. Mrs. Sinclair said, in speaking of him to-day, that he was one of the very few great actors whom it did to know off the stage, but that he was thoroughly satisfactory. 'So unlike either authors or painters, you know,' added Mrs. Sinclair, in that bored manner of hers; 'they never do, dear, out of print and off canvas; but Bryan Duval is charming!' Charming doesn't mean very much, for every one says it, and everybody means by it something different from what everybody else means. If you say Bryan Duval is 'charming,' I shall know the value of the verdict, and be quite sure that I shall find him so, for of course we shall know him here, whether you have made his acquaintance in London or not. If you have, dear Alston, give him a letter of introduction to me, for I really think I am slightly bitten by the popular enthusiasm, and though I cannot say, like Mrs. Sinclair, that I am 'dying to know him,' it would be very pleasant, and I should at once call upon his wife, of whom I have heard a great deal.
I have nothing particularly interesting to communicate respecting household affairs; everything is going on very well and very quietly. Of course, my dearest Alston, you will expect that this letter should contain some reference to the commission with which you charged Mr. Warren on the day of your departure, and which he immediately fulfilled. Will you pardon me if I make my reference to it a brief one in proportion to its importance and to the large share which I know it has had in your thoughts? Our parting is too new, the sense of its inevitable duration weighs too heavily upon me. I am obliged to set my face too steadfastly to overcome the nervousness, the anxiety, and the loneliness involved in dwelling upon it to admit of my saying all that I feel, or even any part of it, with regard to the contents of the letter which your friend handed to me. If I said all, if I said any, it would come to the same thing--that letter is like you, Alston; it is an absolute fulfilment, a complete realisation of the estimate which I have formed of you. If by any horrible decree of Fate the occasion should ever arise on which it would be my doom and my duty to act upon the instructions, and to carry out the provisions, contained in that letter, I should do so with a proud and full sense that they are worthy of you, that they are such last words, such last instructions, as, if I could have chosen, I should have asked of you. And now I must pass away from this subject. I am unequal to saying more about it. When I can say what I have felt, with my head on your shoulder and my hand in yours, you will know what the receipt and the reading of that letter was to me. The other commission with which you charged Mr. Warren, I fear, I received in a different spirit--one which made it difficult for me to bow my own will completely to yours, to substitute your judgment unrepiningly for my own. Happily no occasion has yet arisen to oblige me to have recourse to Mr. Warren's advice or assistance. I have needed neither. All external matters, with which alone he could have any concern, have passed along very smoothly, nor can I, at present, foresee any possible contingency in which it would be necessary for me to apply to him; should any such arise, you may rest assured that I shall strictly conform to your instructions. It was rather hard for me, my dear husband, to be told by that one friend of yours, concerning whom we are not entirely of one opinion, that my letters to you were to pass through his hands. Did I not know that you are quite above such a futile and foolish exercise of power, such experimenting in the pliability of the human will, had we not often discussed the contemptible folly of the patient Griselda, and quite made up our minds as to what we thought of Geraint, I might have supposed for a moment that you had imposed this restriction upon me as a sort of test, as well as a significant hint to me that thus far and no farther I might go in our domestic relations. I might have thought you meant to say, 'I like Warren, you don't; you will have to give in to my liking.' This would have been a calculation and an act of a domestic tyrant; therefore an impossibility to you. I accept the restriction in a perfectly frank and candid spirit, and absolute loyalty towards you. Some day you will perhaps tell me--when you find that I am capable of being more of a companion to you than I have hitherto been--what is the precise nature of your present business, and the exact character of the complication which has rendered it necessary that my letters should not go direct from your own house in New York to your own address in London; and I have no doubt that I shall entirely recognise the force of the reason. If, however, you should never tell me, if for any reason conceivable or unconceivable by me it should remain impossible for you to confide this to me, I shall be perfectly satisfied that the motive not to be explained is one which does no discredit to you, and is wholly uninfluenced with any slight to me. And now, dear Alston, I pass from the subject either for ever or until such time as you choose to resume it. I wonder if you will be provoked with my pertinacity if I tell you that I have discovered that Mr. Warren has very few such partial friends as you are. The fact is, he is not much liked by men, and he is, generally speaking, as much disliked by their wives as he is by me. I think no polish of manner, no external surface, brightness, or gallantry of that kind which, when looked into by a keen-eyed woman, is much more insulting than complimentary, has ever enabled him to conceal from women in general the sentiment which all right-minded women must resent, and which would render neglect, even rudeness, from Mr. Warren, the most acceptable line of treatment he could adopt towards a woman. Mrs. Sinclair was talking of him yesterday. I did not introduce the subject, and I kept my own opinion to myself. I should regard it as a kind of side wind of disloyalty to you, my dearest, if I allowed anybody but yourself to know the difference that exists between us on that point, to suspect that your friend was not my friend. Mrs. Sinclair spoke of him pretty roundly, and saying a great many things which were untrue, I daresay, she said one in which I believed. It was that Mr. Warren was, in her opinion, an unsafe friend and an exceedingly dangerous enemy. I pray that we may never have him for an enemy! I wish to God, and with a growing earnestness, that we had never had him for a friend!
At this point in my letter, dearest Alston, I was interrupted by a visit, and now I fear that I shall have to finish this up hurriedly in time for the mail. My unexpected visitor was Thornton Carey. He sat with me a long time. I didn't like to hint to him that his coming was a little imprudent, in one sense, as curtailing my time for writing to you--that, however, I can take up again; in another sense, his visit was exceedingly apropos. You will be delighted to hear how admirably your generous intentions towards him have been realised. Can I ever thank you sufficiently for all you have done for him, indeed for every one dear to me, from my father to the merest acquaintance whom I have ever recommended to your good offices? Thornton looks remarkably well, and so far from complaining of hard work in his new office, he says he hasn't half enough to do but judging from the account he gave me of his duties, I should say most men would consider they had a tolerably fair share of labour and responsibility in his post of librarian at New Orleans. He has taken to his occupation with enthusiasm; in that respect (only) he reminded me very strongly of Tom Pinch, when he set to work so vehemently about making a catalogue of his unknown employer's books in the Temple chambers. He seems to have grown fond of the very outside of his charge; and when we were talking of our childish days together, and I reminded him of the awful quarrel we had because he tore the red-and-gold cover of my Arabian Nights, he regarded me with the most comical horror, as though I had suddenly dug up and brought to light the corpse of a victim, and produced it in the sight of its murderer, after the fashion of, 'You don't mean to say, Helen,' he said, 'that even in my most cub-like and uncivilised days I ever tore a book?' I laughed as I little thought I should ever laugh during your absence; but I thought we were both very near tears occasionally during our interview, for, of course, we talked of our friendlessness until we respectively found the best of all friends in you. I wonder if Thornton Carey has any chance of being a great man some day--in his own studious scientific line, I mean? How nice it would be if he did turn into a great man, and it was all your doing--for so it would be! No man could work without tools; you have put his into his hand. Do you know even I had no notion how hopeless he was, how severely he felt the restriction of poverty, and that narrow sphere from which there seemed no chance of escape, until you opened the barrier with the golden key? I suppose I understand most things better now; and though I always felt very much for him, and had a dim notion that he was a case of what I have heard you call 'wasted force,' I have only come to see it clearly since he has been talking to me.
How earnestly I thank you for all your goodness to my old friend! It seems, he says, the most absurd of all possible ideas that he could ever be able to express his feelings otherwise than by, or even by, words. There is small chance that he should ever be able to prove his gratitude or repay his obligation to you--not that he ever wishes it ever to be repaid; I do believe him to be one of those few noble men who can bear obligation nobly; but should the opportunity ever come, he would snatch at it gladly. He said a great deal to me which I feel I cannot repeat, partly because he would not like it, and partly because you could not bear it. I never met any one who can so ill endure to be thanked as you, my dear Alston. I have seen you carry that sometimes to an almost ungracious extent. So when Thornton meets you he will not try to thank you--he will leave that to me; you will accept the substitute, won't you?
We had one more laugh, he and I, before I had to send him away, in order that I might get time just to finish this. It was over our recollections of the time when we took great delight in the fable of the Lion and the Mouse. He and I differed in opinion in those days--he wanted to be the lion, I preferred being the mouse; we agreed just now that Fate had turned us both into mice, and put the kindest of lions in our way. May God keep him from any net, or any need of nibblers!
Of course I am looking out very anxiously for all sorts of details about your daily life. I should like to know that you are exceedingly comfortable, very well looked after, and enjoying yourself when you are not immersed in business; but I don't think I want to hear that you like London very much, that you find the time flies, and that your quarters are sufficiently snug to prevent your remembering home very constantly, and missing me at every turn. This is not small-minded, is it? And even if it were, you would not care, Alston, for it has nothing to do with my mind, but everything to do with my heart. I do not say, for my own part,
'There is na luck about the house,'
but there is no joy, and there is a constant sense of waiting; nothing seems particularly well worth doing, and my life, comfortable, well-ordered, and not useless as it is, has established itself on asize very dead level. I am not going to mope, however, or to be discontented, or anything but cheerful, than what you would have me, until the time comes when the waiting will be over, and I can say, once more,
'His very foot has music in't
As he comes up the stair.'