Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

X

Oh, what nonsense everything seems,—everything of the nature of differences, of arguments, on a clear morning up among the hills. I am ashamed of what I wrote about Nancy; ashamed of my eagerness and heat about a thing that does not matter. On the hills this morning, as I was walking in the sunshine, it seemed to me that I met God. And He took me by the hand, and let me walk with Him. And He showed me how beautiful the world is, how beautiful the background He has given us, the spacious, splendid background on which to paint our large charities and loves. And I looked across the hilltops, golden, utterly peaceful, and amazement filled me in the presence of that great calm at the way I flutter through my days and at the noise I make. Why should I cry out before I am hurt? flare up into heat and clamor? The pure light up there made it easy to see clearly, and I saw that I have been silly and ungrateful. Forgive me. You know best about Nancy, you who have seen her; and I, just come down from that holy hour on the hills, am very willing to love her. I will not turn my back upon a ready friend. She can have no motive but a good one. Roger, I am a blunderer, a clumsy creature with not one of my elemental passions bound down yet into the decent listlessness of chains. But I shall grow better, grow more worthy of you. Not a day shall pass without my having been a little wiser than the day before, a little kinder, a little more patient. I wish you had been with me this morning. It was so still and the sky so clear that I sat on the old last year's grass as warmly as in summer. I felt irradiated with life and love; light shining on to every tiresome incident of life and turning it into beauty, love for the whole wonderful world, and all the people in it, and all the beasts and flowers, and all the happy living things. Indeed blessings have been given me in full measure, pressed down and running over. In the whole of that little town at my feet, so quiet, so bathed in lovely light, there was not, there could not be, another being so happy as myself. Surely I am far too happy to grudge accepting a kindness? I tell you I marvel at the energy of my protest yesterday. Perhaps it was—oh Roger, after those hours on the hills I will be honest, I will pull off the veil from feelings that the female mind generally refuses to uncover—perhaps the real reason, the real, pitiful, mean reason was that I felt sure somehow from your description of her that Nancy's blouses must be very perfect things, things beyond words very perfect. And I was jealous of her blouses. There now. Good-by.