And then, her voice shaking, she ended with: “I am at loss to comprehend your ideas of humour, Mr. Apthorpe, and I must request that you do not ask me to comprehend any of your moods hereafter!” And then, with head held high, she swept into the door, and we followed her.
We were really proud to know her, for she had done it so beautifully. But we were sorry too, and decided to fix it up when we had time. However, the violets made it worse. I warned Amy against taking them, but she would, since they had an orchid in them, and she wanted to dazzle a girl she doesn’t like but was going to take driving. However, that happened Monday.
At two on Sunday Mr. Kempwood sent me up a little ivory elephant that I had liked, to keep, and a magazine which he loaned me because it had some letters in it from Captain Roger Morris.
Mrs. Amherst Morris had written the article, and it appeared in the Hertfordshire Magazine for November, 1907.
In one letter he said:
“God Almighty grant that some fortunate circumstance will happen to bring about a suspension of hostilities. As for myself, I breathe only: Peace I can have none until I am back with you. How much I miss you! Your repeated marks of tender love and esteem so daily occur to my mind that I am totally unhinged. Only imagine that I, who, as you well know, never thought myself so happy anywhere as under my own roof, have now no home, and am a wanderer from day to day.”
And that did make me feel sorry for him! . . . I think his wife, who Mr. Kempwood says was a famed beauty and a toast of that day (for men drank toasts to women then, if they liked them), must have been kind as well as pretty. For a man may love a woman first for the loveliness of her skin or her eyes or her hair, but he loves her long for only one thing, and that is the beauty of her spirit.
In another letter he called her his “Dearest Life,” which I think must have gratified her, and in this he wrote:
“My chief wish is to spend the remainder of my days with you, whose Prudency is my great comfort, and whose Kindness in sharing with patience and resignation those misfortunes which we have not brought upon ourselves, is never failing.”
I was interested in those letters. I think the way they expressed themselves in other days is fascinating. And shows, perhaps more clearly than anything else, the changes that have come to men and women. . . . Mr. Vernon Castle’s letters to his wife were not at all like that (Evelyn cut some of those out of a magazine), and I am quite sure if a man was in Captain Roger Morris’ circumstances to-day he would write: “Dear old Girl, I do hope things will clear up in a hurry, for I would like to get home, you can bet;” or something like that. You cannot imagine the average New Yorker of to-day calling his wife “Dearest Life.”