Leila is much braver than I. She takes a little walk every morning with her father, and another walk every afternoon with Porter—and she is always talking to lonesome people and sick people; and all the while she wears a little faint shining smile, like an angel's. Yet I used to be quite scornful of Leila, even while I loved her. I thought she was so sweetly and weakly feminine; yet she is steering her little ship through stormy waters, while I have lost my rudder and compass, and all the other things that a mariner needs in a time of storm.
Before the storm.
The fog still hangs over us, and we seem to ride on the surface of a dead sea. Last night there was no moon and to-day Aunt Frances has not appeared. Even Delilah seems to feel depressed by the silence and the stillness—not a sound but the beat of the engines and the hoarse hoot of the horns. This paper is damp as I write upon it, and blots the ink, but—I sha'n't rewrite it, because the blots will make you see me sitting here, with drops of moisture clinging to my coat and to my little hat, and making my hair curl up in a way that it never does in dry weather.
I wonder, if you were here, if you would seem a ghost like all the others. Nothing is real but my thoughts of the things that used to be. I can't believe that I am on my way to London, and that I am going to live with Constance, and go sightseeing with Aunt Frances and Grace, and give up my plans for the—Great Adventure. Aunt Isabelle sat beside me this morning, and we talked about it. She will stay with Aunt Frances and Grace, and we shall see each other every day. I couldn't quite get along at all if it were not for Aunt Isabelle—she is such a mother-person, and she doesn't make me feel, as the rest of them do, that I must be brave and courageous. She just pats my hand and says, "It's going to be all right, Mary dear—it is going to be all right," and presently I begin to feel that it is; she has such a fashion of ignoring the troublesome things of this world, and simply looking ahead to the next. She told me once that heaven would mean to her, first of all, a place of beautiful sounds—and second it would mean freedom. You see she has always been dominated by Aunt Frances, poor thing.
Do you remember how I used to talk of freedom? But now I'm to be a bird in a cage. It will be a gilded cage, of course. Even Grace says that Constance's home is charming—great lovely rooms and massive furniture; and when we begin to go again into society, I am to be introduced to lots of grand folk, and perhaps presented.
And I am to forget that I ever worked in a grubby government office—indeed I am to forget that I ever worked at all.
And I am to forget all of my dreams. I am to change from the Mary Ballard who wanted to do things to the Mary Ballard who wants them done for her. Perhaps when you see me again I shall be nice and clinging and as sweetly feminine as you used to want me to be—Roger Poole.
The mists have cleared, and there's a cloud on the horizon—I can hear people saying that it means a storm. Shall I be afraid? I wonder. Do you remember the storm that came that day in the garden and drove us in? I wonder if we shall ever be together again in the dear old garden?
After the storm.
Last night the storm waked us. It was a dreadful storm, with the wind booming, and the sea all whipped up into a whirlpool.