But if chance—I dared not say Death—decreed that in this world I should never see Robbie? Then the human liking and earthly possibility could never merge into the divine romance. The quest my soul was created for would be over: Eternity would not be Love. Yet, I was a woman—and I loved the word "marry"—and the Stranger was my chief human liking and earthly possibility—and this world's happiness was worth possessing even though emptiness lay beyond.
So if Robbie is not given to you, said Reason, the Stranger will be a glorious second-best. "Glorious Second-Best." dinned Reason in my heart, and a whole crowd took up the echo: snobbery and sanity, and pride and probability, and intellectual sympathy and physical delight.
But first I would search the world for Robbie.
* * * * * * *
Suddenly my heart learned that Robbie, wherever he was, knew that I was musing thus: knew that I was toying with notions of Tawborough, and over his deathbed was meditating eventual treason. Suddenly my heart understood how his own was aching. The magnitude of my vileness sickened me. I could find no sleep, nor heart to sleep. All night I heard him crying out, saw his dear face wistful with doubt. I told him it was not true, that I loved him and him only. He did not hear me; I could not make him hear me; I knew that his heart was still aching.
I got out of bed, wrapped my dressing-gown around me, went through into the boudoir, and wrote in my Diary this following letter. (The inkpot was empty, and even if I had had the courage to take my candle and to go through the long dark corridor and down the stairs in search of ink, I should not have gone. For time was precious. I knew that, magically, each word as I wrote it would bring ease and comfort to Robbie somewhere far away, and my heart could not abide that his own should suffer for one moment longer. So I snatched a pencil, glad for Robbie's sake to mar the neat inky well-beloved uniformity of my eight years' diaries, and scrawled feverishly at the frantic dictation of my passionate heart. Today, as I copy, the pencil is faded, and the page the hardest to decipher in all the record):
To Robert Grove,
Wheresoever You Are, my Dear!—How sorrowful you are tonight, how evil am I since I am the cause! But I write post-haste to send you tidings of comfort, to tell you there is no other in my heart but you, to send you my everlasting love. You came to me Christmas Night, and you came for ever. There has been no other, nor ever can. What can the man do that cometh after the king?
My friend who is causing you such grief, you know who he is—tho' 'tis nine years now since the moment I knew you—tho' you have never seen him nor (in earthly way) even heard his name—I know that you know. He is Lord Tawborough, my cousin and my benefactor, and my very dear friend, tho' much older and cleverer than I. But do understand, dear Robbie, that the respect and affection in which I hold him are only the reflection of his generosity and loving kindness to me. It is he who gave me my education, gave me my good fortune, who has always been far, far too kind to me. And now that, here in this land, I have met with him again, I like him better than ever. How could I not?
There is "like" for him and for you my whole girl's aching LOVE. Even when I am looking at my kind friend's face, suddenly I will stop the working of my mind and will turn to look for you, trying to grope out where in this world at the exact moment you are; and God always helps me to make a picture which I know is near reality. At this moment I can see you—vaguely—dreamily—in a bright city whose name I do not know, but where often I have sojourned in dreams. I cannot actually touch you now: for our meeting-place is not in cities or houses or streets or fields; rather we go to meet each other in the skies and oh! Robbie! my spirit! my soul! what a meeting we have, how happy, how jubilant, how full of the glory which is not of the earth, unutterable, something I cannot speak, or say, or write; something only which tears my heart into a thousand particles of agony, which is the divinest, wildest, fiercest, holiest, sweetest joy of all. The agony of love, Robbie, how it wounds! The moments when, in vision, I cannot invoke your face, how cruelly long they seem! Then betimes your dear face forms among the mists of all my wildness and restlessness and smiles upon me in a peace that is infinite, and passeth all men's understanding. Now, Robbie, know that this is no earthly thing I have, you have, but a thing entirely of the soul, a gift entirely of God. It should leave us tolerant and truthful, ever knowing that no other friends (however dear) can ever endanger it, even conceive of its meaning; and ever waiting for its supreme fulfilment.
Can I have this for any but you? Can any but you have this for me? Why, my Robbie, can you ask?
I stretch out my arms through the unknown to reach you. I would comfort you, cover you with eternal kisses. Stretch your dear arms out too, put them around me, crush me against your breast.
Come to me now, and come to me soon for the time that will be for ever.
Mary of Christmas Night.