Englishwoman's Love Letters
Page 16Dearest: Did you find your letter? The quicker I post, the quicker I need
to sit down and write again. The grass under love's feet never stops
growing: I must make hay of it while the sun shines.
You say my metaphors make you giddy.--My clear, you, without a metaphor
in your composition, do that to me! So it is not for you to complain;
your curses simply fly back to roost. Where do you pigeon-hole them? In
a pie? (I mean to write now until I have made you as giddy as a dancing
dervish!) Your letters are much more like blackbirds: and I have a pie
"Chewee, chewee, chewee!" in the most scared way!
Your last but three said most solemnly, just as if you meant it, "I hope
you don't keep these miserables! Though I fill up my hollow hours with
them, there is no reason why they should fill up yours." You added that
I was better occupied--and here I am "better occupied" even as you bid
me.
But one can jump best from a spring-board: and how could I jump as far
So you see they are kept, and my disobedience of you has begun: and I
find disobedience wonderfully sweet. But then, you gave me a law which
you knew I should disobey:--that is the way the world began. It is not
for nothing that I am a daughter of Eve.
And here is our world in our hands, yours and mine, now in the making.
Which day are the evening and the morning now? I think it must be the
birds'--and already, with the wings, disobedience has been reached! Make
moments when I feel a wish taking hold of me stronger than I can
understand, that you should command me beyond myself--to things I have
not strength or courage for of my own accord. How close, dearest, when
that day comes, my heart will feel itself to yours! It feels close now:
but it is to your feet I am nearest, as yet. Lift me! There, there,
Beloved, I kiss you with all my will. Oh, dear heart, forgive me for
being no more than I am: your freehold to all eternity!