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A Duet With an Occasional Chorus

Arthur Conan Doyle

CHAPTER II--THE OVERTURE CONTINUED--IN A MINOR KEY



Woking, June 7th.

My Own Dearest Maude,--How I wish you were here, for I have been
down, down, down, in the deepest state of despondency all day.  I
have longed to hear the sound of your voice, or to feel the touch of
your hand!  How can I be despondent, when in three weeks I shall be
the husband of the dearest girl in England?  That is what I ask
myself, and then the answer comes that it is just exactly on that
account that my wretched conscience is gnawing at me.  I feel that I
have not used you well; I owe you reparation, and I don't know what
to do.

In your last dear letter you talk about being frivolous.  YOU have
never been frivolous.  But I have been frivolous--for ever since I
have learned to love you, I have been so wrapped up in my love, with
my happiness gilding everything about me, that I have never really
faced the prosaic facts of life or discussed with you what our
marriage will really necessitate.  And now, at this eleventh hour, I
realise that I have led you on in ignorance to an act which will
perhaps take a great deal of the sunshine out of your life.  What
have I to offer you in exchange for the sacrifice which you will make
for me?  Myself, my love, and all that I have--but how little it all
amounts to!  You are a girl in a thousand, in ten thousand--bright,
beautiful, sweet, the dearest lady in all the land.  And I an average
man--or perhaps hardly that--with little to boast of in the past, and
vague ambitions for the future.  It is a poor bargain for you, a most
miserable bargain.  You have still time.  Count the cost, and if it
be too great, then draw back even now without fear of one word or
inmost thought of reproach from me.  Your whole life is at stake.
How can I hold you to a decision which was taken before you realised
what it meant?  Now I shall place the facts before you, and then,
come what may, my conscience will be at rest, and I shall be sure
that you are acting with your eyes open.

You have to compare your life as it is, and as it will be.  Your
father is rich, or at least comfortably off, and you have been
accustomed all your life to have whatever you desired.  From what I
know of your mother's kindness, I should imagine that no wish of
yours has ever remained ungratified.  You have lived well, dressed
well, a sweet home, a lovely garden, your collie, your canary, your
maid.  Above all, you have never had anxiety, never had to worry
about the morrow.  I can see all your past life so well.  In the
mornings, your music, your singing, your gardening, your reading.  In
the afternoons, your social duties, the visit and the visitor.  In
the evening, tennis, a walk, music again, your father's return from
the City, the happy family-circle, with occasionally the dinner, the
dance, and the theatre.  And so smoothly on, month after month, and
year after year, your own sweet, kindly, joyous nature, and your
bright face, making every one round you happy, and so reacting upon
your own happiness.  Why should you bother about money?  That was
your father's business.  Why should you trouble about housekeeping?
That was your mother's duty.  You lived like the birds and the
flowers, and had no need to take heed for the future.  Everything
which life could offer was yours.

And now you must turn to what is in store for you, if you are still
content to face the future with me.  Position I have none to offer.
What is the exact position of the wife of the assistant-accountant of
the Co-operative Insurance Office?  It is indefinable.  What are my
prospects?  I may become head-accountant.  If Dinton died--and I hope
he won't, for he is an excellent fellow--I should probably get his
berth.  Beyond that I have no career.  I have some aspirations after
literature--a few critical articles in the monthlies--but I don't
suppose they will ever lead to anything of consequence.

And my income, 400 pounds a year with a commission on business I
introduce.  But that amounts to hardly anything.  You have 50 pounds.
Our total, then, is certainly under 500 pounds.  Have you considered
what it will mean to leave that charming house at St. Albans--the
breakfast-room, the billiard-room, the lawn--and to live in the
little 50 pounds a year house at Woking, with its two sitting-rooms
and pokey garden?  Have I a right to ask you to do such a thing?  And
then the housekeeping, the planning, the arranging, the curtailing,
the keeping up appearances upon a limited income.  I have made myself
miserable, because I feel that you are marrying me without a
suspicion of the long weary uphill struggle which lies before you.  O
Maude, my darling Maude, I feel that you sacrifice too much for me!
If I were a man I should say to you, 'Forget me--forget it all!  Let
our relations be a closed chapter in your life.  You can do better.
I and my cares come like a great cloud-bank to keep the sunshine from
your young life.  You who are so tender and dainty!  How can I bear
to see you exposed to the drudgery and sordid everlasting cares of
such a household!  I think of your graces, your pretty little ways,
the elegancies of your life, and how charmingly you carry them off.
You are born and bred for just such an atmosphere as the one which
you breathe.  And I take advantage of my good-fortune in winning your
love to drag you down, to take the beauty and charm from your life,
to fill it with small and vulgar cares, never-ending and soul-
killing.  Selfish beast that I am, why should I allow you to come
down into the stress and worry of life, when I found you so high
above it?  And what can I offer you in exchange?'  These are the
thoughts which come back and back all day, and leave me in the
blackest fit of despondency.  I confessed to you that I had dark
humours, but never one so hopeless as this.  I do not wish my worst
enemy to be as unhappy as I have been to-day.

Write to me, my own darling Maude, and tell me all you think, your
very inmost soul, in this matter.  Am I right?  Have I asked too much
of you?  Does the change frighten you?  You will have this in the
morning, and I should have my answer by the evening post.  I shall
meet the postman.  How hard I shall try not to snatch the letter from
him, or to give myself away.  Wilson has been in worrying me with
foolish talk, while my thoughts were all of our affairs.  He worked
me up into a perfectly homicidal frame of mind, but I hope that I
kept on smiling and was not discourteous to him.  I wonder which is
right, to be polite but hypocritical, or to be inhospitable but
honest.

Good-bye, my own dearest sweetheart--all the dearer when I feel that
I may lose you.--Ever your devoted

FRANK.

St. Albans, June 8th.

Frank, tell me for Heaven's sake what your letter means!  You use
words of love, and yet you talk of parting.  You speak as if our love
were a thing which we might change or suppress.  O Frank, you cannot
take my love away from me.  You don't know what you are to me, my
heart, my life, my all.  I would give my life for you willingly,
gladly--every beat of my heart is for you.  You don't know what you
have become to me.  My every thought is yours, and has been ever
since that night at the Arlingtons'.  My love is so deep and strong,
it rules my whole life, my every action from morning to night.  It is
the very breath and heart of my life--unchangeable.  I could not
alter my love any more than I could stop my heart from beating.  How
could you, could you suggest such a thing!  I know that you really
love me just as much as I love you, or I should not open my heart
like this.  I should be too proud to give myself away.  But I feel
that pride is out of place when any mistake or misunderstanding may
mean lifelong misery to both of us.  I would only say good-bye if I
thought your love had changed or grown less.  But I know that it has
not.  O my darling, if you only knew what terrible agony the very
thought of parting is, you would never have let such an idea even for
an instant, on any pretext, enter your mind.  The very possibility is
too awful to think of.  When I read your letter just now up in my
room, I nearly fainted.  I can't write.  O Frank, don't take my love
away from me.  I can't bear it.  Oh no, it is my everything.  If I
could only see you now, I know that you would kiss these heart-
burning tears away.  I feel so lonely and tired.  I cannot follow all
your letter.  I only know that you talked of parting, and that I am
weary and miserable.

MAUDE.

(COPY OF TELEGRAM)
From Frank Crosse, to Miss Maude Selby,
The Laurels, St. Albans
Coming up eight-fifteen, arrive midnight.

June 10th.

How good of you, dear old boy, to come racing across two counties at
a minute's notice, simply in order to console me and clear away my
misunderstandings.  Of course it was most ridiculous of me to take
your letter so much to heart, but when I read any suggestion about
our parting, it upset me so dreadfully, that I was really incapable
of reasoning about anything else.  Just that one word PART seemed to
be written in letters of fire right across the page, to the exclusion
of everything else.  So then I wrote an absurd letter to my boy, and
the dear came scampering right across the South of England, and
arrived at midnight in the most demoralised state.  It was just sweet
of you to come, dear, and I shall never forget it.

I am so sorry that I have been so foolish, but you must confess, sir,
that you have been just a little bit foolish also.  The idea of
supposing that when I love a man my love can be affected by the size
of his house or the amount of his income.  It makes me smile to think
of it.  Do you suppose a woman's happiness is affected by whether she
has a breakfast-room, or a billiard-board, or a collie dog, or any of
the other luxuries which you enumerated?  But these things are all
the merest trimmings of life.  They are not the essentials.  YOU and
your love are the essentials.  Some one who will love me with all his
heart.  Some one whom I can love with all my heart.  Oh the
difference it makes in life!  How it changes everything!  It
glorifies and beautifies everything.  I always felt that I was
capable of a great love--and now I have it.

Fancy your imagining that you had come into my life in order to
darken it.  Why, you ARE my life.  If you went out of it, what would
be left?  You talk about my happiness before I met you--but oh, how
empty it all was!  I read, and played, and sang as you say, but what
a void there was!  I did it to please mother, but there really seemed
no very clear reason why I should continue to do it.  Then you came,
and everything was changed.  I read because you are fond of reading
and because I wanted to talk about books with you.  I played because
you are fond of music.  I sang in the hope that it might please you.
Whatever I did, you were always in my mind.  I tried and tried to
become a better and nobler woman, because I wanted to be worthy of
the love you bore me.  I have changed, and developed, and improved
more in the last three months than in all my life before.  And then
you come and tell me that you have darkened my life.  You know better
now.  My life has become full and rich, for Love fills my life.  It
is the keynote of my nature, the foundation, the motive power.  It
inspires me to make the most of any gift or talent that I have.  How
could I tell you all this if I did not know that your own feeling was
as deep.  I could not have given the one, great, and only love of my
life in exchange for a half-hearted affection from you.  But you will
never again make the mistake of supposing that any material
consideration can affect our love.

And now we won't be serious any longer.  Dear mother was very much
astounded by your tumultuous midnight arrival, and equally
precipitate departure next morning.  Dear old boy, it was so nice of
you!  But you won't ever have horrid black humours and think
miserable things any more, will you?  But if you must have dark days,
now is your time, for I can't possibly permit any after the 30th.--
Ever your own

MAUDE.

Woking, June 11th.

My Own Dearest Girlie,--How perfectly sweet you are!  I read and re-
read your letter, and I understand more and more how infinitely your
nature is above mine.  And your conception of love--how lofty and
unselfish it is!  How could I lower it by thinking that any worldly
thing could be weighed for an instant against it!  And yet it was
just my jealous love for you, and my keenness that you should never
be the worse through me, which led me to write in that way, so I will
not blame myself too much.  I am really glad that the cloud came, for
the sunshine is so much brighter afterwards.  And I seem to know you
so much better, and to see so much more deeply into your nature.  I
knew that my own passion for you was the very essence of my soul--oh,
how hard it is to put the extreme of emotion into the terms of human
speech!--but I did not dare to hope that your feelings were as deep.
I hardly ventured to tell even you how I really felt.  Somehow, in
these days of lawn-tennis and afternoon tea, a strong strong passion,
such a passion as one reads of in books and poems, seems out of
place.  I thought that it would surprise, even frighten you, perhaps,
if I were to tell you all that I felt.  And now you have written me
two letters, which contain all that I should have said if I had
spoken from my heart.  It is all my own inmost thought, and there is
not a feeling that I do not share.  O Maude, I may write lightly and
speak lightly, perhaps, sometimes, but there never was a woman,
never, never in all the story of the world, who was loved more
passionately than you are loved by me.  Come what may, while the
world lasts and the breath of life is between my lips, you are the
one woman to me.  If we are together, I care nothing for what the
future may bring.  If we are not together, all the world cannot fill
the void.

You say that I have given an impulse to your life:  that you read
more, study more, take a keener interest in everything.  You could
not possibly have said a thing which could have given me more
pleasure than that.  It is splendid!  It justifies me in aspiring to
you.  It satisfies my conscience over everything which I have done.
It must be right if that is the effect.  I have felt so happy and
light-hearted ever since you said it.  It is rather absurd to think
that _I_ should improve you, but if you in your sweet frankness say
that it is so, why, I can only marvel and rejoice.

But you must not study and work too hard.  You say that you do it to
please me, but that would not please me.  I'll tell you an anecdote
as a dreadful example.  I had a friend who was a great lover of
Eastern literature, Sanskrit, and so on.  He loved a lady.  The lady
to please him worked hard at these subjects also.  In a month she had
shattered her nervous system, and will perhaps never be the same
again.  It was impossible.  She was not meant for it, and yet she
made herself a martyr over it.  I don't mean by this parable that it
will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine.  But I do
mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's.  A dainty rapier
is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting
down trees all the same.

Rupton Hale, the architect, one of the few friends I have down here,
has some most deplorable views about women.  I played a round of the
Byfleet Golf Links with him upon Wednesday afternoon, and we
discussed the question of women's intellects.  He would have it that
they have never a light of their own, but are always the reflectors
of some other light which you cannot see.  He would allow that they
were extraordinarily quick in assimilating another person's views,
but that was all.  I quoted some very shrewd remarks which a lady had
made to me at dinner.  'Those are the traces of the last man,' said
he.  According to his preposterous theory, you could in conversation
with a woman reconstruct the last man who had made an impression to
her.  'She will reflect you upon the next person she talks to,' said
he.  It was ungallant, but it was ingenious.

Dearest sweetheart, before I stop, let me tell you that if I have
brought any happiness into your life, you have brought far, far more
into mine.  My soul seemed to come into full being upon the day when
I loved you.  It was so small, and cramped, and selfish, before--and
life was so hard, and stupid, and purposeless.  To live, to sleep, to
eat, for some years, and then to die--it was so trivial and so
material.  But now the narrow walls seem in an instant to have
fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches around me.  And everything
appears beautiful.  London Bridge, King William Street, Abchurch
Lane, the narrow stair, the office with the almanacs and the shining
desks, it has all become glorified, tinged with a golden haze.  I am
stronger:  I step out briskly and breathe more deeply.  And I am a
better man too.  God knows there was room for it.  But I do try to
make an ideal, and to live up to it.  I feel such a fraud when I
think of being put upon a pedestal by you, when some little hole
where I am out of sight is my true place.  I am like the man in
Browning who mourned over the spots upon his 'speckled hide,' but
rejoiced in the swansdown of his lady.  And so, my own dear sweet
little swansdown lady, good-night to you, with my heart's love now
and for ever from your true lover,

FRANK.

Saturday!  Saturday!  Saturday! oh, how I am longing for Saturday,
when I shall see you again!  We will go on Sunday and hear the banns
together.
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