Majorie Daw | Page 9

certainly as strange. You
can conjecture how that passage in your letter of Friday startled me. Is
it possible, than, that two people who have never met, and who are
hundreds of miles apart, can exert a magnetic influence on each other? I
have read of such psychological phenomena, but never credited them. I
leave the solution of the problem to you. As for myself, all other things
being favorable, it would be impossible for me to fall in love with a
woman who listens to me only when I am talking of my friend!
I am not aware that any one is paying marked attention to my fair
neighbor. The lieutenant of the navy--he is stationed at Rivermouth
--sometimes drops in of an evening, and sometimes the rector from
Stillwater; the lieutenant the oftener. He was there last night. I should
not be surprised if he had an eye to the heiress; but he is not formidable.
Mistress Daw carries a neat little spear of irony, and the honest
lieutenant seems to have a particular facility for impaling himself on
the point of it. He is not dangerous, I should say; though I have known
a woman to satirize a man for years, and marry him after all. Decidedly,
the lowly rector is not dangerous; yet, again, who has not seen Cloth of
Frieze victorious in the lists where Cloth of Gold went down?
As to the photograph. There is an exquisite ivory-type of Marjorie, in
passe-partout, on the drawing room mantel-piece. It would be missed at
once if taken. I would do anything reasonable for you, Jack; but I've no

burning desire to be hauled up before the local justice of the peace, on a
charge of petty larceny.
P.S.--Enclosed is a spray of mignonette, which I advise you to treat
tenderly. Yes, we talked of you again last night, as usual. It is
becoming a little dreary for me.
VIII.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 22, 1872.
Your letter in reply to my last has occupied my thoughts all the
morning. I do not know what to think. Do you mean to say that you are
seriously half in love with a woman whom you have never seen-- with
a shadow, a chimera? for what else can Miss Daw to be you? I do not
understand it at all. I understand neither you nor her. You are a couple
of ethereal beings moving in finer air than I can breathe with my
commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of sentiment is something that I
admire without comprehending. I am bewildered. I am of the earth
earthy, and I find myself in the incongruous position of having to do
with mere souls, with natures so finely tempered that I run some risk of
shattering them in my awkwardness. I am as Caliban among the spirits!
Reflecting on your letter, I am not sure that it is wise in me to continue
this correspondence. But no, Jack; I do wrong to doubt the good sense
that forms the basis of your character. You are deeply interested in
Miss Daw; you feel that she is a person whom you may perhaps greatly
admire when you know her: at the same time you bear in mind that the
chances are ten to five that, when you do come to know her, she will
fall far short of your ideal, and you will not care for her in the least.
Look at it in this sensible light, and I will hold back nothing from you.
Yesterday afternoon my father and myself rode over to Rivermouth
with the Daws. A heavy rain in the morning had cooled the atmosphere
and laid the dust. To Rivermouth is a drive of eight miles, along a
winding road lined all the way with wild barberry bushes. I never saw
anything more brilliant than these bushes, the green of the foliage and
the faint blush of the berries intensified by the rain. The colonel drove,
with my father in front, Miss Daw and I on the back seat. I resolved
that for the first five miles your name should not pass my lips. I was
amused by the artful attempts she made, at the start, to break through
my reticence. Then a silence fell upon her; and then she became

suddenly gay. That keenness which I enjoyed so much when it was
exercised on the lieutenant was not so satisfactory directed against
myself. Miss Daw has great sweetness of disposition, but she can be
disagreeable. She is like the young lady in the rhyme, with the curl on
her forehead,
"When she is good, She is very, very good, And when she is bad, she is
horrid!"
I kept to my resolution, however; but on the return home I relented,