When the fire was out of her brain, she wrote to Cecil a gay matter-of-fact letter, insisting upon the end of the engagement, but promising to write as regularly as if nothing had happened.
“And nothing really has, you know,” she added, “except that we are no longer babies. You are thirty years older—with your wonderful Oxford!—than the little boy I popped corn with and sponged after a fight for the honour of Britain; and I am a most practical person with not an ounce of romance in me”—(she had less than an atom at the moment of writing)—“and quite determined to make no mistakes with my life. So many girls do, Cecil; you can’t think! Four of the girls that came out about the same time as Tiny are married and divorced. It seems to me quite terrible that people should marry in that reckless manner, knowing next to nothing of the world and less of each other! In each case it was the man’s fault—they usually drank; but the girls, it seems to me, were as much to blame for not making as sure as one can that the men they expected to live their lives with—I suppose they did—had character and principles they could respect. I have been brought up in a very old-fashioned way, and nothing would induce me to get a divorce, so I shall hesitate a long while before I take the final step. Of course you will not misunderstand me—we are such firmly knit friends we never could misunderstand each other, I think—I know as well as if I had seen you every day for the last eight years that you would never give any woman cause for divorce; but if we happened to have different tastes in all things, we should be just as unhappy as if you were a little Western savage. And we probably have, for our civilisations are as opposite as the poles. I have been as carefully reared as all Californian girls of my class, but those that know me best tell me that I am Californian clear into my marrow; so I am, doubtless, as little like an English girl as if I were a Red Indian. But what is the use of all this (attempted) analysis? Of course you will come to California to see me one of these days, and as I shall not marry for years, if ever, we shall meet in plenty of time to find out whether or not we were wise to break our engagement. Meanwhile, we are both free. I insist upon that, and, you know, I always would have my own way.”
Lee was extremely proud of this epistle, particularly of the touch about racial differences, and its general essay-like flavour; she was ambitious to stand well with so terrible an intellect as Lord Maundrell’s. She could not fascinate him across seven thousand miles—she exchanged a glance of mysterious confidence with her mirror, her nostrils expanding slightly—but she could command and hold his attention until those seven thousand miles were wrought into the past with the years of separation. She glanced at her mirror again.
His second reply was equally prompt. He accepted her decree, of course. She had exercised her woman’s privilege, and he was bound to respect it; but he held her to her promise that the correspondence should continue exactly as before; and, indeed, after the first two paragraphs of his letter, there was nothing to indicate that the correspondence had been agitated for a moment. It was not exactly relief that breathed through the letter, for Cecil’s mind seemed without vulgarity; but the alacrity with which he took up the broken thread, after having tied the knot with a double loop, made Lee laugh outright.
“He’s really wonderfully decent,” she thought, “considering that he has been harrowed for a month with the prospect of a scrawny, yellow, and lank-haired wife. What a fright I must have been! And, of course, he has that tin-type. Fate would never have been so kind as to let him lose it!”
CHAPTER XXII
CECIL finished his Oxford epoch, taking his double first and crowning his athletic career as stroke of his college eight. He wrote to Lee that he was a wreck mentally, and was going on a tour round the world to shoot big game; he should eventually land in California, where he expected she would have a grizzly for him. He hoped for tigers in India, lions and elephants in Africa, and buffalo in the “Western” United States. He should also take a run through South America. When he had finished with the grizzly, he should feel a man once more, not a worn-out intellect.
“It would be quite dreadful not to have gone through Oxford,” he confessed, “for nothing else moulds a man’s brain into shape—if he’s got one. How odd and unfinished your American men must be! I understand that few of those who go to the Universities take the whole course—which is a kindergarten compared to ours—and that the majority scorn education after eighteen; but I am more than willing to forget all I ever knew for at least two years. After that, of course, I shall think seriously of what I am to do with my life. I did not tell you, I think, that my grandmother is dead, and that I am not quite a pauper. I feel reasonably sure that the political life will be my choice, and I shall manage to learn something of each of our colonies that I visit.”
Lee understood Ned Geary, Tom Brannan and more than one other of the men who had given her opportunity to study them. At times she was sure that she knew Randolph, leaf by leaf. The habit in which the average American lives may be said to be an illuminated manuscript of himself, profusely illustrated with drawings by the author. When he is not disclosing his inmost mind, he is criticising life, within the narrow horizon of his experience, from the personal view-point; which reflections are as self-revealing as annotations by the ambitious editor of a great poet. There was no mystery about any of them for Lee, and, like all bright imaginative girls, she loved mystery. She felt that it would be long before she could understand the least of Cecil, particularly if he was anything like Lord Arrowmount. It is true that he had often written at great length, and by no means ignored the sacred subject of himself; but there was always a magnificent reach about Cecil, and a corresponding lack of ingenuousness.
She wondered if she had given him the same suggestion of a complex mind and nature, and one day re-read his letters. The first fifteen or twenty contained references to the episodes of their brief companionship. Later, these episodes seemed quite forgotten. And he not only demanded no return of confidences, he evinced no curiosity. In all his letters there was not a reference to her inner life. Occasionally he asked what she was reading, and if she were happy in her new home; that was all.