“We have made a compromise about the Cathedral. I am to go to vespers if I like, as my theological opinions are not in Mrs. Holmby’s keeping. She will walk with me to the Cathedral, leave me at the bottom of the steps, do her shopping or take a gentle walk, and return for me when the service is over. It only lasts three-quarters of an hour, and Mrs. Holmby always has shopping of some kind on her hands, as she does all her own marketing, and buys everything in the smallest quantities. I suppose by this means she makes more out of your handsome allowance for my board—or fancies she does.”
There were more letters in the same strain, and Castellani’s name appeared often in relation to his operas; but there was no further mention of social intercourse. The letters grew somewhat fretful in tone, and there were repeated complaints of Mrs. Holmby. There were indications of fitful spirits—now enthusiasm, now depression.
“I have at least discovered that I am no genius,” she wrote. “When I attempt to improvise, the poverty of my ideas freezes me; and yet music with me is a passion. Those vesper services in the Cathedral are my only consolation in this great dull town.
“No, dear Jack, I am not home-sick. I have to finish my musical education. I am tired of nothing, except Mrs. Holmby.”
After this there was an interval. The next letter was dated six months later. It was on a different kind of paper, and it was written from Evian, on the Lake of Geneva. Even the character of the penmanship had altered. It had lost its girlish dash, and something of its firmness. The strokes were heavier, but yet bore traces of hesitation. It was altogether a feebler style of writing.
The letter began abruptly:
“I know that you have been kind to me, John—kinder, more merciful than many brothers would have been under the same miserable circumstances; but nothing you can do can make me anything else than what I have made myself—the most wretched of creatures. When I walk about in this quiet place, alone, and see the beggars holding out their hands to me, maimed, blind, dumb perhaps, the very refuse of humanity, I feel that their misery is less than mine. They were not brought up to think highly of themselves, and to look down upon other people, as I was. They were never petted and admired as I was. They were not brought up to think honour the one thing that makes life worth living—to feel the sting of shame worse than the sting of death. They fall into raptures if I give them a franc—and all the wealth of the world would not give me one hour of happiness. You tell me to forget my misery. Forget—now! No, I have no wish to leave this place. I should be neither better nor happier anywhere else. It is very quiet here. There are no visitors left now in the neighbourhood. There is no one to wonder who I am, or why I am living alone here in my tiny villa. The days go by like a long weary dream, and there are days when the gray lake and the gray mountains are half hidden in mist, and when all Nature seems of the same colour as my own life.
“I received the books you kindly chose for me, a large parcel. There is a novel among them which tells almost my own story. It made me shed tears for the first time since you left me at Lausanne. Some people say they find a relief in tears, but my tears are not of that kind. I was ill for nearly a week after reading that story. Please don’t send me any more novels. If they are about happy people they irritate me; if they are sorrowful stories they make me just a shade more wretched than I am always. If you send me books again let them be the hardest kind of reading you can get. I hear there is a good book on natural history by a man called Darwin. I should like to read that.—Gratefully and affectionately your sister,
M. F.”
This letter was dated October. The next was written in November from the same address.