The same spirit makes me love you and him, the same sympathy, the same trust--yet it sometimes seems as if I were a criminal in loving you.You know what he thinks--he is too honest not to have shown you.He has talked to me; he likes you in a way, but you are a foreigner--he says-your life is not my life.'He is not the man for you!' Those were his words.And now he doesn't talk to me, but when I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand times; when he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm a coward at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt him.
Why can't he see? Is it because he's old and we are young? He may consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.
"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these--sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to face the struggle which you have to face.Then I feel quite broken;it is like something giving way in me.Then I think of you, and it is over; but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a coward.It's like the feeling one would have going out into a storm on a dark night, away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the body--which makes it worse.I had to tell you this; you mustn't think of it again, I mean to fight it away and forget that it has ever been there.But Uncle Nic--what am I to do? I hate myself because I am young, and he is old and weak--sometimes I seem even to hate him.I have all sorts of thoughts, and always at the end of them, like a dark hole at the end of a passage, the thought that Iought to give you up.Ought I? Tell me.I want to know, I want to do what is right; I still want to do that, though sometimes I think Iam all made of evil.
"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always has an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws, conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.' What do you say to me now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of everything, and so, that it must be right? I think you would; but can it be Nature to do something which will hurt terribly one whom Ilove and who loves me? If it is--Nature is cruel.Is that one of the 'lessons of life'? Is that what Aunt Constance means when she says: 'If life were not a paradox, we could not get on at all'? I am beginning to see that everything has its dark side; I never believed that before.
"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money --it is horrible that the accident of money should make such difference in our lives.I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't outface that fear in him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his eyes seem to see everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people are the saddest things in the world.I am writing like a wretched coward, but you will never see this letter I suppose, and so it doesn't matter; but if you do, and I pray that you may--well, if I am only worth taking at my best, I am not worth taking at all.I want you to know the worst of me--you, and no one else.
"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel so bruised--so sore.He said: 'It is not so much the money, because there is always mine.' I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and take his money, and you would never let me.One knows very little of anything in the world till trouble comes.You know how it is with flowers and trees; in the early spring they look so quiet and self-contained; then all in a moment they change--I think it must be like that with the heart.I used to think I knew a great deal, understood why and how things came about; I thought self-possession and reason so easy; now I know nothing.And nothing in the world matters but to see you and hide away from that look in Uncle Nic's eyes.Three months ago I did not know you, now I write like this.Whatever Ilook at, I try to see as you would see; I feel, now you are away even more than when you were with me, what your thoughts would be, how you would feel about this or that.Some things you have said seem always in my mind like lights--"A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold, ceaseless hissing.Christian shut the window, and went into her uncle's room.
He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night.When he had finished, and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr.Treffry opened his eyes, and said:
"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up;I can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a vulgar woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!""I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.
"Ay!" said Mr.Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money!
Send her some more, Chris.Wish I were a youngster again; that's a beast of a proverb about a dog and his day.I'd like to go fishing again in the West Country! A fine time we had when we were youngsters.You don't get such times these days.'Twasn't often the fishing-smacks went out without us.We'd watch their lights from our bedroom window; when they were swung aboard we were out and down to the quay before you could say 'knife.' They always waited for us;but your Uncle Dan was the favourite, he was the chap for luck.When I get on my legs, we might go down there, you and I? For a bit, just to see? What d'you say, old girl?"Their eyes met.
"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night;pity you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them.Do you a power of good! You're not looking the thing, my dear."His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested on her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter.After a minute or two of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:
