I am not going to attempt any sympathy at present over your loss. Maud's telegram from Naples was forwarded on to me here and it gave me a horrid turn. I often used to tease Lucy: I am cat-scratchy to every one, I fear. Why? I don't know: something to do with my internal organs, I dare say. But I became sincerely fond of her, after being perfectly horrid to her when we first met. She seemed to grow on one. I should have liked her always to stay at Englefield.
Heigh ho! I am very much inclined to whimper about myself. I have, been through a ghastly time.... Some day, if I live, I will tell you. Meantime, though I am aching to see you I am going to postpone that happiness, and instead am going round the world with Vicky Masham.
The doctors seem to think—I dare say it is only because they have nothing else to suggest—that if I went on a long sea voyage for about a year—I mean, kept constantly travelling on the sea—I should get quite strong again. Perhaps I shall. I want to give myself every chance—it seems so stupid to die before you're seventy. Also it occurred to me the other day that for a woman to have raved for twenty years about the British Empire and yet never to have seen any part of it outside Great Britain, except Cape Town and Stellenbosch, and once when we went to Jersey from Dinant—was rather silly. So Vicky and I are starting from Marseilles next Sunday in a P. and O., bound for Ceylon, and after that Japan. Not that Japan is British—I believe—but of course we aren't going to be pedantic. Then I suppose we shall "do" Australia and New Zealand—only I'm afraid New Zealand is rather muttony, isn't it? Excessively worthy and all that, but lives chiefly on mutton and stewed tea. However, there are geysers and pink terraces, if you look for them. Then there will be a lovely cruise across the Pacific, and beach-combers and impossibly large oysters that would dine a family of six, and brown people with no morals and beautiful sinuous forms, and finally San Francisco and California. After that—however, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Vicky or I will bombard you with picture post-cards recording our progress, and when—and when I'm quite well and look less like a doomed woman—I will let you know, and, dearest Roger, we will pass the rest of our lives together, or at least not far away from one another. Your children shall be the children of my old age....
Clithy is here, but as soon as I leave for Marseilles he is off again to Russia. He has promised me to look you up when he returns. You will find him now definitely fixed as to appearance. People of his stamp are like that. Between nineteen and twenty-one, they quite quickly assume the figure, face, style by which they are ever after going to be known. He will remind you most of Lord R——, though I assure you there is no innuendo in this. I dare say the L——'s are distant cousins of the Mallards. But Clithy is essentially the aristocratic young peer who may be a fount of wisdom or a hollow fraud with nothing inside an irreproachable exterior. He is a mystery to me. And I am of little interest to him. The only woman I ever heard him mention with anything like a kind look in his eyes was Lucy. The Anne of Denmark nose is still there, undulating and with a bump in the middle; but the rest of the face has grown up more and his hair is a nice dark chestnut brown.—Well, you will see him later, so why waste time in describing him?
As to Vicky Masham.... Of course you want to know why, etc.
Well: Vicky, at the death of her patron saint, Victoria the Good, was left with little more than her pension of £500 a year. She ought to have had ten thousand pounds of her own, but—I dare say you saw the scandal in the papers? She and her sisters gave up much of their means to save their shockingly bad brother from going to prison over some swindle that ... Again why waste words? Maurice could tell you all about it. Well, when I came to the South of France after Aix, last December, I was dreadfully hipped, fighting a certain Terror—a much worse terror than the one you used to write to me about who lived in a Red Crater (rather a distinguished address: "The Red Crater, Iraku"), and who went to Hell by the direct route. I came to Monte Carlo amongst other places and thought if I kept on a veil and wore blue glasses no one would recognize me. In the Rooms I saw Victoria Masham, looking very melancholy—and oh, so old—and quite alone. My heart was touched, I spoke to her and we went to sit on the terrace. I told her my troubles and she told me hers. Result: I struck a bargain. She is to live with me till we have our first quarrel; I am to board her, lodge her, wash her, pay all possible expenses, and give her a little pocket money, over and above. And d'you know, I think it's going to be quite a success! We haven't had a quarrel yet! I've had her teeth beautifully done by an American dentist at Cannes, so my nickname only applies a little—he was too clever not to give the new set a soupçon of horsiness. And I've made her buy a quite wonderful "transformation"—chez Nicole—reddish-brown, streaked with grey.—You'd never guess. She has plumped out a good deal, for although I've a wretched appetite myself I keep a good table, and upon my word when we get to the Colonies I shouldn't wonder if she had shoals of proposals. She never talks about anything but Queen Victoria, but I find that—somehow—awfully soothing—takes me back to the happy old time when I was a care-free girl, proud of my secret engagement to you.
* * * * *
Dear Roger. I have lost all my good looks. That's why I don't want you to see me till I recover them—a little. Meantime, dearest of friends and cousins, if you believe in Anything with a power to save—alas! I don't—pray to it to save me from this terror that hangs over me—especially in the silent watches of the night—and bring me back safe from my world-tour, with at least another ten years of life before me.
Whilst I am away, remember Engledene is entirely at your children's disposal. I have written to the head gardener to see that fresh flowers are sent every now and again to Lucy's grave. You will tell him when? Lucy was a real good sort and I think she came to understand me and forgive....
Ever yours,