Peter got up from his chair, his eyes alight with pleasure. He went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of port and a wine glass. These—like the pyjamas—constituted part of the hall-mark of civilization.
He had bought the wine with the intention of drinking to the health of his published book, but the inclination had passed. There is something unsatisfactory about toasts drunk in solitude.
But now Peter knocked the red seal from the cork and drew it from the bottle. He reseated himself at the table and poured the wine into the glass. He lifted it in his right hand, holding the letter in his left. He approached the glass to the letter, then raised it to his lips.
“To my Unknown Lady!” he said.
Ten minutes later Peter pulled pen, ink, and paper towards him. Oh, the joy of answering this letter, the luxury of it!
And then he began to write, very simply and directly, attempting no well-turned thought or phrase, but writing as he would have spoken, from his heart.
“May 18th.
“Can you, I wonder, have the smallest conception of what your letter means to me? If you have, then perhaps you will realize that my ‘thank you’ holds in the fullest sense all that those two words can express. Yet please believe that the cry you have detected in my writing escaped from me unawares. Consciously to have made such a plaint would to my mind have savoured of cowardice. May the gods guard me from it!
“Does not Emerson say, ‘It is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it; it will tell itself’? Dare I believe that you possess that right, that the same spiritual law which has made you conscious of a mind-rapport between us has given you the key to it? I accept your offer from my heart. The condition shall be strictly observed.
“Truly you do not greatly flatter my power of intuition when you imagine me possessed of sufficient intelligence to discover that you are neither an autograph-hunter nor anything akin to it. I should be a base dullard had such a thought crossed my mind.
“That my book pleases you affords me intense pleasure. Fresh life will be instilled into my future work by the hope that one day you will read it.
“My pen is halting. I write as I should speak, and my tongue is unaccustomed to speech with a woman of gentle birth. Fate has made of me a recluse—a hermit. I do not revile her. She gives me compensations of which your letter and offer are not the least. Will you write again?
“Robin Adair.
“P.S.—I am sorry you dislike pseudonyms. This is one.”
Peter re-read the letter carefully. He put it in an envelope which he addressed “To my Unknown Critic.” He enclosed this in a second envelope, on which he wrote the address he had been given. This again he enclosed with a brief letter to his publishers, asking them to post the enclosure in London. The next day he would take it in to the market-town.
Peter leant back in his chair. Then he poured himself out a second glass of wine, which he drank slowly.
This was a gala night.