Mary.
The second note was written shortly before his return, and was a mere postscript to a letter on business. Had she covered reams of paper with her protestations, she could not have expressed her tender devotion more strongly than in these few lines:—
Do not call me stupid for leaving on the table the little bit of paper I was to enclose. This comes of being in love at the fag-end of a letter of business. You know you say they will not chime together. I had got you by the fire-side with the gigot smoking on the board, to lard your bare ribs, and behold, I closed my letter without taking the paper up, that was directly under my eyes! What had I got in them to render me so blind? I give you leave to answer the question, if you will not scold; for I am
Yours most affectionately,
Mary.
Imlay’s absence was brief, nor did he again leave Mary until the following August. In April their child, a daughter, was born, whom Mary called Fanny in memory of her first and dearest friend. Despite her past imprudences, she was so well that she remained in bed but a day. Eight days later she was out again. Though she felt no ill effects at the time, her rashness had probably something to do with her illness when her second child was born. These months at Havre were a pleasant oasis in the dreary desert of her existence. To no parched, sun-weary traveller have the cooling waters of the well and the shade of the palm-tree been more refreshing and invigorating than domestic pleasures were to Mary. Years before she had told Mr. Johnson they were among her most highly cherished joys, nor did they prove less desirable when realized than they had in anticipation. She seems to have had a house of her own in Havre, and to have seen a little of the Havrais, whom she found “ugly without doubt,” and their houses smelling too much of commerce. They were, in a word, bourgeois. But her husband and child were all the society she wanted. With them any wilderness would have been a paradise. Her affection increased with time, and Imlay, though discovered not to be a demigod, grew ever dearer to her. Her love for her child, which she confessed was at first the effect of a sense of duty, developed soon into a deep and tender feeling. With Imlay’s wants to attend to, the little Fanny, at one time ill with small-pox, to nurse, and her book on the Revolution to write, the weeks and months passed quickly and happily. In August Imlay was summoned to Paris, and at once the sky of her paradise was overcast. She wrote to him,—
“You too have somehow clung round my heart. I found I could not eat my dinner in the great room, and when I took up the large knife to carve for myself, tears rushed into my eyes. Do not, however, suppose that I am melancholy, for, when you are from me, I not only wonder how I can find fault with you, but how I can doubt your affection.”
CHAPTER IX.
IMLAY’S DESERTION.
1794-1795.