How little my two
dearest men have yet seen of each other! Barely a week lies between us:
this will scarcely catch you. Dearest of dearests, my heart waits on
yours.
LETTER XLIII.
My Dearest: See what an effect your "gallous young hound" episode has had
on me. I send it back to you roughly done into rhyme. I don't know
whether it will carry; for, outside your telling of it, "Johnnie Kigarrow"
is not a name of heroic sound. What touches me as so strangely complete
about it is that you should have got that impression and momentary
romantic delusion as a child, and now hear, years after, of his
disappearing out of life thus fittingly and mysteriously, so that his name
will fix its legend to the countryside for many a long day. I would like
to go there some day with you, and standing on Twloch Hill imagine all the
country round as the burial-place of the strong man on whose knees my
beloved used to play when a child.
It must have been soon after this that your brother died: truly,
dearest, from now, and strangely, this Johnnie Kigarrow will seem more
to me than him; touching a more heroic strain of idea, and stiffening
fibers in your nature that brotherhood, as a rule, has no bearing on.
A short letter to-day, Beloved, because what goes with it is so long.
This is the first time I have come before your eyes as anything but a
letter-writer, and I am doubtful whether you will care to have so much
all about yourself.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124