I had thought to send our goblin boy into the country as you bade me, but for a while I am keeping him here. He sleeps in a cot beside me, and in the day, when not at school or crouching in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone, he sits in a great chair by the window. Often when I look up from my book his eyes are fixed on me with a kind of mute appealing wonder. Somehow I could not let him go. He seems a link between us in our separation; and while my thoughts are set upon rebuking the errors of humanitarianism it will be well to have this object of human pity before my eyes.

I wonder if you comprehend what a strange wistful letter you have written. You are no longer merely the maid I knew, and my ways of thought excite in you a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment—so you say. Once more, dear girl, we will talk of all this when I come. Until that happy day, wait, and fortify your love with trust.

XXXIV

JESSICA TO PHILIP

I have a number of terms, my Philip, with which I might begin this letter, but I have not yet the courage to call you by such dear names beyond the whispering gallery of my own heart.

And you wonder how I have concealed my romantic deflections from father. Indeed, I am sure he has noticed a heavenly-mindedness in me for some time past; but out of the sanctity of his own heart he probably attributed this improvement to the chastening effects of a particularly gloomy course of religious reading that he has insisted upon my undertaking this winter. And, after all, father is not so far wrong as to my spiritual state, for when love becomes a woman’s vocation, she carries blessings in her eyes and all her moods tiptoe reverently like young novices who follow one another down a cathedral aisle. This life of the heart becomes her piety, I think, and the highest form of religion of which she is capable. Jessica begins to magnify herself, you see! A kingdom of heaven has been set up within me, dear creator, and naturally I feel this extension of my boundaries.

But do not expect me to tell father “the whole truth,”—how you first fascinated me with editorial magnanimity, then baited me with compliments, and later with deepest confidences, and finally slipped into my Arcadia disguised as a philosopher, but, when you had got entire possession, declared yourself a victorious lover! I wonder that you can contemplate the record you have made in this matter without blushing!

As for your “infidelity,” and what you call your “faith,” I think father will denounce them both as blasphemous. Religion to father is something more than “the poetry he believes in.” It has the definition of experience, miracles, and a whole body of spiritual phenomena quite as real to him as your upper-chamber existence is to you. Only father has this advantage of you, he has a real Divinity, with all the necessary attributes of a man’s God. His “voice of happiness” speaks to him from the stars, and he does not call it an echo, as you do, of a fair voice within your own heart. Father gets his salvation from the outside of his warring elements; you speak to your own seas, “Peace be still!” As for me, between you, I stand winking at Heaven; and I say: “It is evident that neither of them understands this mystery of life; I will not try to comprehend. I will be good when I can, and diplomatic when I must, and leave the rest to heaven and earth and nature.” Meanwhile, I advise you not to quote your pagan authorities to father. If the very worst comes, you may say that you have almost scriptural proof of my affections,—and mind you say affections, father could not bear the romantic inflection of such a term as love. It sounds too secular, carnal, to him.

You ask me if I will consent to abandon such a life as our forest offers and come with you into “this great solitude of people” which you call New York. Philip, when a man holds a starling in his hand he does not ask the bird whether it will stay here or wing yonder, but he carries it with him where he will; and the starling sings, no less in one place than in another, because its nature is to sing. But, I think, dear Master, the motive which prompts the song in the cage is not the same as the impulse to sing in the forest. So it is with me. If we live here among the trees, where their green waves make a summer sea high in the heavens above our heads, I could be as content as any bird is. But if you make our home in the city, or in the midst of a desert for that matter, I could not withhold one thought from your happiness, for love has transformed me, adapted life itself to a new purpose. I have been “called,” and I have no will to resist, because my heart tells me there is goodness in the purpose, a little necklace of womanly virtues for me. When I think of pain, and sorrow, my eyes are holden, I can see only the fair form of love sanctified, and I can hear only your voice calling me to fulfil a destiny which you yourself do not understand. And as all these things approach, beloved, father’s God is more to me than your fine illusion. I wish for guardian angels, I feel the need of a Virgin Mary and of all the lady mothers in heaven to bless me.

But I have been telling you only of my inner life. Outwardly I shall ever be capable of the most heathen manifestations. For instance, loving as I do, how do you account for this personal animosity I feel toward you, almost a madness of fear at the thought of your approaching visit? There is something that has never been finished in this affair of our hearts. Perhaps it is that really you have never kissed me. Well, I find it as easy to write of kisses as to review a sentimental romance, but actually there is some instinct in me stronger than mind against the fact, do you understand? Philip, you have no idea of the depths of feminine treachery! Did I ever intimate a willingness to do such a thing? I do not say that I wish to kiss another, but I affirm that it would be easier for me to kiss my father’s presiding elder—and heaven knows he is a didactic monster of head and whiskers! It is not that I do not love you, but that I do!