And, like the waves, her enthusiasm had its ebb-tides. Days of profound discouragement came over her, when arrows she thought sure to pierce his armor glanced harmless away and left him smiling.
Left him smiling. So she thought. But it was not so. Our little heroine stood upon a volcano.
When she was with the Don, there was something about him which told her what she could say to him, what not. But the paper on which he wrote was like other paper, and gave no warning. How could she, so far away, see the dark look that came into his face as he read this in one of her letters:
“How can you,” she had said, at the close of an impassioned burst on the beneficence of the Creator, as evinced in the beauties of nature,—“how can you, as you look upon that beautiful, shining river, and the rosy clouds that float above it, and breathe this balmy air of spring,—how can you lift your eyes from such a scene of loveliness and bounteous plenty as surrounds you,—how dare you raise your eyes to heaven and say, there is no God!”
She could not see his look when he read that. All she saw was something like this:
“I cannot pretend to argue with such a wonderful little theologian as you,—I who know nothing of theology. But where did you get the notion that I was an atheist? I could almost wish I were one, for the mere happiness of being converted by you. In point of fact, I am nothing of the kind. How could I be? I need not look at the rosy sunset, or the smiling fields about me, to learn that there is a God. I have but to gaze into my own heart, and upon your image imprinted there. A fool might say that land and sea came by chance; but my Mary! Her arguments are not needed. She herself is all-sufficient proof, to me at least, that there exists, somewhere, a Divine Artificer. So don’t call names. It isn’t fair. Atheist, deist, infidel, old Nick,—what arrow can I send back in retort? Arrows I have,—a quiver full to bursting,—but all are labelled angel!”
How was she to know that she stood upon a precipice? But Charley saw that all was not well. Looking up from a letter he was reading (his face was red from a sudden stoop to snatch, unobserved, some violets that had fluttered out as he unfolded it). Looking up from this letter—
But Charley had his troubles, too, of which I must tell you before we go an inch further.
Between him and Alice, as well, a controversy raged. But in the case of this couple it was Charley that did all the arguing.
The proposition that young Frobisher maintained, in letter after letter, was this: that when a girl had promised to marry a fellow, she should never thereafter write to him without telling him somewhere—he did not care a fig (not he!) whether it was in the beginning, or the end, or the middle of the letter—that she loved him; just for the sake of cheering a fellow up, you know, away down here in the country, and all that. He would be satisfied even with a postscript of three words (he would), if you would but let him name the words, etc., etc. After this she had never written a letter without a postscript; but whether from the love of teasing, which is innate in cats and young women, when they have a mouse or a man in their power, or from genuine maidenly modesty, she never said, in plain English, exactly what Charley wished to hear; as, P.S.—Unreasonable old goose, or, How could I? or, I wonder if I do? or, What do you think? But they were the merriest letters that ever were seen, and made Charley so happy (for all his grumbling) that at this period of his life he used to wake up a dozen times a night, smiling to himself, all in the dark; then float off again into a dreamland populous with postscripts of the most maudlin description. “Do you know,” said he, in one of his letters, “that never once in my whole life has a woman said to me, I love you?”