You see, she is nine years my junior. And as I am twenty-nine (rather a ladylike age, isn't it?) you will be able to calculate that she is twenty. And I suppose that it is also twenty years since our respective respected parents regard us as betrothed. Yet, it has never been spoken out openly.
Violet Dicks, commonly called Bean, is indeed pretty. She plays the piano a little, but with such apathy that I have always avoided listening to her other musical achievements, which consist in a little singing and a little concertina playing. However, I must say that there is something like mutual consent in my ignorance of her musical performances. She is very shy, not generally, but in matters musical, and would never dare to sing or to play to a composer, even to an abdicated one. She plays tennis, but is no good at bridge. She writes many unimportant letters, all exceedingly short, and never reads a book, nor anything else. She spends all her pocket-money on dragging her mother to London every time a new musical play comes on. She says she loathes them, but she is always hoping that there will one day be a good one. She is also interested in petty charities, bazaars, garden parties, and so on. And as far as it is possible with her, she is in love with me.
But I do not think that hers is one of those great, magnificent loves we read of in books. She is more a vegetable than a flower; as a flower she is only a violet, as a vegetable only a bean. A green bean. A slender, green bean.
Yet I have a certain tender feeling for her. I should not like her to suffer in the least. I feel myself quite capable of marrying her, and even of being a good husband to her, if it were absolutely necessary. On no account could I let her die from a broken heart. But then, I suppose it would not break.
She is not, like Thirza Ellaline de Jones, of a romantic, passionate nature, nor does she even know that Schopenhauer ever existed. And if it were essential for a lonely soldier like me to exchange ideas with a female, I would rather do it with Bean who has none, than with Thirza Ellaline who has less. As for the reason why I do all these "sanguinary deeds," Thirza Ellaline must excuse me and mind her own business. There exists something which I should call the chastity of patriotic sentiment, and it would be immodest to divulge it.
No, Thirza Ellaline, oh thou of the unphotographable face! In spite of thy private income of £140 (and I add, not because of Bean's income which is probably twenty times bigger, a fact that I could overlook if thou wert a little more photographable and a little less pessimistic) I say nay to thee. Nay—never!
Whereas Bean... It is still: "not yet." But I confess that the idea of her has been growing lately somewhat more familiar. I do not know when, why, nor how that change began. That she wept when she heard the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" performed by the band of the Salvation Army has but little to do with it. Weeping under such stress has happened to more hardened people. Now there comes the news of her growing plump. But it comes as a mere abstraction, for I feel unable to imagine a flat pancake as a round dumpling. No, I don't know why, but there is now something in the word Bean—a meaning—which was not there before. It is but slight, yet it is. Still, can it ever grow as long as there lives the remembrance of another?
Let me tell you how it occurred.
I had finished those Scotch songs and was rather pleased with them. They were written to suit Mitzi's voice, and so one evening I played them to her. The one I preferred, namely, Scott's "Breathes there a man," was unfortunately the one which agreed least with her particular ability. But you ought to have heard her singing "My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here." There was such an ardent longing in her voice, such a desire of seeing again the mountains covered with snow and the "wild-hanging woods," and to hear once more the "loud-pouring torrents." It was all so true, so sincere. I made her sing it again and again. She appreciated Burns' words. She had only to think of the beautiful Austrian Alps which she knew so well. But she understood also my setting of the words. She sang it as I would have done it, had I had a voice and mastered the difficulty of controlling it. She sang it directly out of my own soul. Never was there such a comprehension, such a communion of feelings.