The Schoolmaster's Letters

T sunset the schoolmaster went up to his room to write a letter to her. He always wrote to her at the same time—when the red waves of the sunset, flaming over the sea, surged in at the little curtainless window and flowed over the pages he wrote on.

The light was rose-red and imperial, and spiritual, like his love for her, and seemed almost to dye the words of the letters in its own splendid hues—the letters to her which she never was to see, whose words her eyes never were to read, and whose love and golden fancy and rainbow dreams never were to be so much as known by her.

And it was because she never was to see them that he dared to write them, straight out of his full heart, taking the exquisite pleasure of so telling her what he never could permit himself to tell her face to face. Every evening he wrote thus to her, and the hour so spent glorified the entire day. The rest of the hours—all the other hours of the commonplace day—he was merely a poor schoolmaster with a long struggle before him, one who might not lift his eyes to gaze on a star.

He went through the kitchen and the hall and up the narrow staircase with a glory in his eyes that thus were held from seeing his sordid surroundings. Bob Jackson, the landlady's son, sprawled out before the kitchen door, saw him pass with that rapt face, and chuckled. Bob was ill enough to look at at any time, with his sharp, freckled features and foxy eyes. When he chuckled, his face was that of an unholy imp.

But the schoolmaster took no heed of him. Neither did he heed the girl whom he met in the hall. Her handsome, sullen face flushed crimson under the sting of his utter disregard, and her black eyes followed him up the stairs with a look that was not good to see.

“Sis,” whispered Bob piercingly, “come out here. I've got a joke to tell you; something about the master and his girl. You ain't to let on to him, you know, though. I found it out last night when he was out. That old key of Uncle Jim's was just the thing. He's a softy, and no mistake.”

Upstairs, in his little room, the schoolmaster was writing his letter.


 * “,—How beautiful it is to think that there is nothing to prevent my loving you! There is much—everything—to prevent me from telling you that I love you. But nothing has any right to come between my heart and its own; it is permitted me to love you for ever and ever, and serve and reverence you in secret and silence. For so much, dear, I thank life, even though the price of the permission must always be the secret and the silence.


 * “I love you with all there is of me to love—heart and soul and brain, every fibre of body and spirit thrilling to the wonder and marvel and miracle of it! You do not know it, my sweet, and you must never know it. I am content to love you and be forgotten. It is sweeter to love you and be forgotten than it would be to love any other woman and live in her lifelong remembrance—so humble has love made me, sweet, so great is my sense of my own unworthiness.


 * "“Yet love must find expression in some fashion, dear, else it is only pain; and hence these letters to you which you will never read. I put all my heart into them; they are what is best and noblest of me, the buds of a love that can never bloom openly in the sunshine of your life.


 * “It is a whole summer since I first met you. I had been waiting for you all my life before and did not know it. But I knew it when you came and brought with you a sense of completion and fulfilment. This has been the precious year of my life, the turning point to which all things past tended and all things future must look back. Oh, my dear, I thank you for this year! It has been your royal gift to me, and I shall be rich and great for ever because of it.


 * “There are those in the world who would laugh at me, who would pity me, Una. They would say that the love I have poured out in secret at your feet has been wasted; that I am a poor, weak fool to squander all my treasure of affection on a woman who does not care for me, and who is as far above me as that great white star that is shining over the sea. Oh, my dear, they do not know, they cannot understand. The love I have given you has not left me poorer. It has enriched my life unspeakably.


 * “For all this I thank you, dear; and for all this surely the utmost that I can give of love and reverence and service is not too much?


 * “There are those who strive to forget a hopeless love; to me, the greatest misfortune that life could bring would be that I should forget you. I want to remember you always and love you and long for you.


 * “Dear lady, good-night. The sun has set; there is now but one fiery dimple on the horizon, as if a golden finger had dented it—now it is gone; the mists are coming up over the sea.


 * “A kiss on each of your white hands, dear. To-night I am too humble to lift my thoughts to your lips.”

The schoolmaster folded up his letter and held it against his cheek for a little space, while he gazed out on the silver-shining sea with his dark eyes full of dreams. Then he took from his shabby trunk a little inlaid box and unlocked it with a twisted silver key. It was full of letters—his letters to Una. The first had been written months ago, in the early promise of a northern spring. They linked together the golden weeks of the summer. Now, in the purple autumn, the box was full, and the schoolmaster's term was nearly ended.

He took out the letters reverently and looked over them, now and then murmuring below his breath some passages scattered through the written pages. He had laid bare his heart in those letters, writing out what he never could have told to her, even if his love had been known and returned, for dead and gone generations of stern, repressed forefathers laid their unyielding fingers of reserve on his lips, and the shyness of dreamy, book-bred youth stemmed the language of eye and tone.


 * “Sometimes I let myself dream. And in those dreams you love me, and we go out to meet life together. I have dreamt that you kissed me—dreamt it so reverently that the dream did your womanhood no wrong. I have dreamt that you put your hands in mine and said: 'I love you.' Oh, the rapture of it!”


 * “We may give all we will if we do not ask for a return. There should be no barter in love. If, by reason of the greatness of my love for you, I were to ask your love in return, I should be a base creature. It is only because I am content to love and serve for the sake of loving and serving that I have the right to love you.”


 * “I have the memory of a blush of yours—a rose of the years that will bloom for ever in my garden of remembrance. To-night you blushed when I came upon you suddenly among the flowers. You were startled—perhaps I had broken too rudely on some girlish musing; and straightway your round, pale curve of cheek and your white arch of brow were made rosy as with the dawn of a beautiful sunrise. I shall see you for ever as you looked at that time. In my mad moments I shall dream, knowing all the while that it is only a dream, that you blushed with delight at my coming. I shall be able to picture for evermore how you would look at one you loved.”


 * “Do you know how beautiful you are, Una? Let me tell you, dear. You are tall, yet you have to lift your eyes a little to meet mine. Such dear eyes, Una! They are dark-blue, and when you smile they are like wet violets, in sunshine. But when you are pensive they are more lovely still—for the spirit and enchantment of the sea at twilight pass into them then. Your hair has the gloss and brownness of ripe nuts, and your face is always pale. Your lips have a trick of falling apart in a half-smile when you listen. They told me before I knew you that you were pretty. Pretty! The word is cheap and tawdry. You are beautiful, with the beauty of a pearl, or a star, or a white flower.”


 * “Do you remember our first meeting! It was one evening last spring. You were in your garden. The snow had not all gone; but your hands were full of pale, early flowers. You wore a white shawl over your shoulders and head. Your face was turned upward a little, listening to a robin's call in the leafless trees above you. I thought God had never made anything so lovely and love deserving. I loved you from that moment, Una.”


 * “This is your birthday. The world has been glad of you for twenty years. This morning I went far afield to a long, lonely valley lying to the west, girt round about with dim old pines, where feet of men seldom tread, and there I searched until I found some rare flowers meet to offer you. I sent them to you with a little book, an old book. A new book, savouring of the shop and market-place, however beautiful it might be, would not do for you. So I sent the book that was my mother's. She read it and loved it—the faded rose-leaves she placed in it are there still. At first, dear, I almost feared to send it. Would you miss its meaning! Would you laugh a little at the shabby volume with its pencil marks and its rose leaves? But I knew you would not; I knew you would understand.”


 * “This evening I read to you the poem which you had asked me to read. You sat before me with your brown head leaning on your hands, and your eyes cast down. I stole dear glances at you between the lines. When I finished I put a red, red rose from your garden between the pages and crushed the book close on it. That poem will always be dear to me, stained with the life-blood of a rose-like hour.”


 * “I do not know which is the sweeter, your laughter or your sadness. When you laugh you make me glad; but when you are sad I want to share in your sadness and soothe it. I think I am nearer to you in your sorrowful moods.”


 * “To-day I met you by accident at the turn of the lane. Nothing told me that you were coming—not even the wind, that should have known. I was sad; and then all at once I saw you, and wondered how I could have been sad. You walked past me with a smile, as if you had tossed me a rose. I stood and watched you out of sight. That meeting was the purple gift the day gave me.”


 * “To-day I tried to write a poem to you, Una; but I could not find words fine enough, as a lover could find no raiment dainty enough for his bride. The old words other men have used in singing to their loves seemed too worn and common for you. I wanted only new words, crystal clear, or coloured only by the iris of the light, not words that have been steeped and stained with all the hues of other men's thoughts. So I burnt the verses that were so unworthy of you.”


 * “To-day I saw you when you did not see me. I was walking on the shore, and as I came round a rock you were sitting on the other side. I drew back a little and looked at you. Your hands were clasped over your knee; your hat had fallen back, and the sea-wind was ruffling your hair. Your face was lifted to the sky, your lips were parted, your eyes were full of light. You seemed to be listening to something that made you happy. I crept gently away, that I might not mar your dream. Of what were you thinking, Una?”


 * “I must leave you soon: Sometimes I think I cannot bear it. Oh, Una, how selfish it is of me to wish that you might love me! Yet I do wish it, although I have nothing to offer you but a great love and all my willing work of hand and brain. If you loved me, I fear I should be weak enough to do you the wrong of wooing you. I want you so much, dear!"

The schoolmaster added the last letter to the others and locked the box. When he unlocked it again, two days later, the letters were gone.

He gazed at the empty box with dilated eyes. At first he could not realise what had happened. The letters could not be gone! He must have made a mistake, have put them in some other place! With trembling fingers he ransacked his trunk. There was no trace of the letters. With a groan he dropped his face in his hands and tried to think.

His letters were gone—those precious letters, held almost too sacred for his own eyes to read after they were written—had been stolen from him! The inmost secrets of his soul had been betrayed. Who had done this hideous thing?

He rose and went downstairs. In the farmyard he found Bob tormenting his dog. Bob was happy only when he was tormenting something. He never had been afraid of anything in his life before; but now absolute terror took possession of him at sight of the schoolmaster's face.

“Bob, where are my letters?” said the schoolmaster.

“I didn't take 'em, sir!” cried Bob, crumpling up visibly in his sheer terror.

“I didn't. I never touched 'em! It was sis. I told her not to—I told her you'd be awful angry; but she wouldn't listen to me. It was sis took 'em. Ask her, if you don't believe me.”

The schoolmaster believed him. Nothing was too horrible to believe just then. “What has she done with them?” he said hoarsely.

“She—she sent 'em to Una Clifford,” whimpered Bob. “I told her not to. She's wild with you, 'cause you went to see Una and wouldn't go with her. She thought Una would be wild with you for writing 'em, 'cause the Cliffords are so proud and think themselves above everybody else. So she sent 'em. I—I told her not to.”

The schoolmaster said not another word. He turned his back on the whining boy and went to his room. He felt sick with shame. The indecency of the whole thing revolted him. It was as if his naked heart had been torn from his breast and held up to the jeers of a vulgar world by the merciless hand of a scorned and jealous woman. He felt stunned as if by a physical blow.

After a time his fierce anger and shame died into a calm desperation. The deed was done beyond recall. It only remained for him to go to Una, tell her the truth, and implore her pardon. Then he must go from her sight and presence for ever.

It was dusk when he went to her home. They told him that she was in the garden, and he found her there, standing at the curve of the box walk, among the last, late blooming flowers of the summer.

Have you thought from his letters that she was a wonderful woman of marvellous beauty? Not so. She was a sweet and slender slip of girlhood, with girlhood's own charm and freshness. There were thousands like her in the world—thank God for it!—but only one like her in one man's eyes.

He stood before her mute with shame, his boyish face white and haggard. She had blushed crimson all over her dainty paleness at sight of him, and laid her hand quickly on the bosom of her white gown. Her eyes were downcast and her breath came shortly.

He thought her silence the silence of anger and scorn. He wished that he might fling himself in the dust at her feet.

“Una—Miss Clifford—forgive me!” he stammered miserably. “I—I did not send them. I never meant that you should see them. A shameful trick has been played upon me. Forgive me!”

“For what am I to forgive you?” she asked gravely. She did not look up, but her lips parted in the little half-smile he loved. The blush was still on her face.

“For my presumption,” he whispered: “I—I could not help loving you, Una. If you have read the letters you know all the rest.”

“I have read the letters, every word,” she answered, pressing her hand a little more closely to her breast. “Perhaps I should not have done so, for I soon discovered that they were not meant for me to read. I thought at first you had sent them, although the writing of the address on the packet did not look like yours; but even when I knew you did not I could not help reading them all. I do not know who sent them; but I am very grateful to the sender.”

“Grateful?” he said wonderingly.

“Yes. I have something to forgive you; but not—not your presumption. It is your blindness, I think—and—and your cruel resolution to go away and never tell me of your—your love for me. If it had not been for the sending of these letters I might never have known. How can I forgive you for that?”

“Una!” he said. He had been very blind; but he was beginning to see. He went a step nearer and took her hands. She threw up her head and gazed, blushingly, steadfastly, into his eyes. From the folds of her gown she drew forth the little packet of letters and kissed it.

“Your dear letters!” she said bravely. “They have given me the right to speak out. I will speak out! I love you, dear! I will be content to wait through long years until you can claim me. I—I have been so happy since your letters came!”

He put his arms round her and drew her head close to his. Their lips met.