“I have long wanted, and often tried, to write to you again. I do not know now whether I may or whether I ought. If this letter should come to another man’s wife, if it should fall into your hands in such changed circumstances that you will scarcely remember the writer’s name—and I cannot hide from myself that all this may be the case—then forgive me, Mary, and put it in the fire without further thought. It will not be for you, in your new life, but for someone else whom you will have forgotten, though I can never forget her. But if you are still little Mary Peveril as you used to be, oh, read it! and try to throw your thoughts back to the time when you knew me—when we used to meet. You were not much more than a child. How much I have thought of that time; how often and often I have gone over it in my thoughts I need not tell you. You were badly used, dear Mary. I was wrong—I will say it humbly on my knees if you like: having got your promise and your heart—for I did have that, if only for a little while—nothing could have justified me in appearing for one moment to place you otherwise than first in all I did or said. I will not excuse myself by saying how much startled I was by the sight of Miss Martindale, nor how anxious I was to know whether my mother had any share, or what share she had, in her disappearance from our house. I will say nothing about all that, but only that I was wrong, wrong without any excuse. Had I thought of what I was risking by my curiosity, I would have bitten my tongue out sooner than have asked a single question. Do you think, could you think, that I would have sacrificed you to the old foolish business which was over years before? I was an utter fool, I allow, but not such a fool as that. Therefore, Mary dear, dearest, whom I have always thought of, listen to me again; take me back again! I will beg your pardon a hundred and a thousand times. I will humbly do whatever penance you may appoint me; but listen to me now. You would not listen to me at first—and perhaps I was not so ready at first to acknowledge how wrong I was. I have had five long years to think of it, and I see it all. You were rightly angry, dear, and I was wrong; and if ever man repented, I have repented. Mary, Mary! take me back!
“I have been wandering about the world all this time, working and doing well enough. I can offer you something better now than the little cottage we once spoke of, though that would have been Paradise. I am leaving along with this letter, and hope to arrive in England almost as soon. I do not ask you to write—unless indeed you would, of your own sweet kindness—one word—to Chester Street? But even if you don’t do that, I will go to Russell Square in the hope of finding you. Mary! don’t break my heart. You liked me once. If I knew what to say that would move you, I would make this letter miles long; but I don’t know what more to say, except that I love you better than ever, and no one but you; and that I am coming back to England for you, for you only—half hopeless, only determined to try once more. Perhaps by the time you have read this I may be at your door.
“Ever and ever yours,
“George Durham.”
“Mary!” cried some one calling me; “Mary, what is the matter? Have you bad news, my dear? Mary! Good gracious, the child will faint! Mary, don’t you hear me?”
“Oh, hush, hush!” I cried, not knowing what I said. “Hark! listen! is that him at the door?”
It was not him just then; and after a little while the curtains stopped going round, and the floor and the Square and everything about grew solid and steady, and I came to myself. To myself, yes—but not to the same self as had been sitting so sadly holding my old lady’s hand. What a change all in a moment! If I had not been so happy, I should have been ashamed to think that a man’s letter could all in a moment make such a change in a woman’s life. It is demoralising to the last degree—it comes in the way of all the proper efforts of education and independent thought, and everything that is most necessary and elevating. If in a moment, without any virtue of yours, without any exertion of yours, you are to have your existence all altered for you—the greyness turned into brightness, the labour into ease, the poverty into wealth—how is it to be supposed that you can be trained aright? It is demoralising: but it is very pleasant. Oh, the change in one half-hour!
But I should find it very difficult to explain to anyone how it was that I behaved like a rational creature at this moment, and did not take a bad turn and torture him and myself with objections. It was not wisdom on my part; I think it was the absolute suddenness of the whole transaction. Had he left me more time to think, or prepared me for his reception, my pride and my delicacy would have come in, and probably I should have thrown away both his happiness and my own. But fortunately he arrived that very afternoon, before the first excitement was over, and hearing that Miss Peveril was at home, and that the servants had not been forbidden to admit him, walked upstairs when I was not thinking, and took possession of me as if there had been no doubt on the subject. Mrs Tufnell was begging me to write to him at the very moment. I had shown her my letter, and she was full of excitement about it. “Be an honest girl, Mary,” she was saying: “a girl should not worry a man like that: you ought to be frank and open, and send him a word to meet him when he comes home. Say you are as fond of him as he is of you——”
“No, I could not—I could not,” I was beginning to say; when suddenly something overshadowed us, and a big, ringing voice said behind me, “How could she? Let us be reasonable.” Reasonable! After that there was no more to say.
But if it had not all passed like a dream; if he had not been so sudden; if he had taken more time and more, care—the chances are, I know, that I should have behaved like a fool, and hesitated and questioned, and been proud and been foolish. As it was, I had to be honest and happy—there was no time for anything else.