CHAPTER EIGHT.

"Lebong, _June 20, 19--_.

"Katrine,

"Very well. Very well indeed. I understand, and I agree. My birthday is next month, so it fits in all right. Rather a special birthday this time, for I shall be twenty-five. Last year I was _thirty-five_. These things happen sometimes; I've heard of them. When it comes to one's own turn, it's jolly good work. You'll just have time to catch that birthday, if you write off at once. Awfully good of you to worry about my sufferings in being obliged to reply to your--problematically--boring letters! I'll risk it, Katrine! I'll do more than that, I'll promise to own up, and tell you straight, not only when I reach the bored stage, but long before it is even approximately approached. If there is no other advantage in this thundering distance, there is at least this, that we can be honest to the verge of brutality, and there's no earthly sense in a correspondence--(beg pardon!--occasional exchange of letters)--if it is not for our mutual pleasure and profit. Wherefore, Miss Sensitive Conscience, kindly understand that so long as I don't say I am bored I am to be the superlative, the other thing!

"As to your first question, you are not only justified, but it's your bounden duty to open your life to every fresh interest which comes along. There's no greater mistake than to believe that any work can be done the better for deliberately closing the shutters on all other claims. You have a duty to yourself, as well as to that precious Martin, and it is even conceivable that he might fare the better for a little less attention!

"So far as I have gathered facts from Dorothea, Martin lost his wife eight years ago. She was his wife for six short months, and she has been dead eight years. He was a boy at that time; since then he has grown into a man, and a reputation. The Martin who came to you in his grief, and to whom you mortgaged your life, is dead too; as dead as the poor little wife! So long as he was alive, you were a big help to him. He was miserable enough no doubt, poor beggar, but the last extremity of despair was spared him by your love and care. I'd swear to that! But that Martin died, and with him your power.

"Thus far, and no farther! There's a wall, Katrine, between the soul of every brother and sister who was ever created, and sooner or later they come up against it. All the love, and the care, and the patience, and the trying and crying can never scale it. And then one day comes along a vagrant who _doesn't_ cry, doesn't try, perhaps doesn't even care, and before that stranger is an open road. Which is a mystery, dear, and a commonplace. Likewise cussedly unfair.

"Do you mind if I call you `dear'? It's only on paper, and it's so long since I've had any one to endear. It takes off a bit of the loneliness to feel that there is some one in the world to whom one can occasionally show a glimpse of one's heart. It's the only bit of me that has a chance of feeling cold out here--but it's petrifying fast enough. If you object, if it shocks your sense of decorum, well!--I'll write it all the same, but I'll blot it out afterwards. You needn't know anything about it. Pens _will_ blot on this thin paper!

"Don't worry yourself because you are not the world and all to Martin. He would be an odd fellow if you were. It's not in nature that a sister should satisfy a man's heart, and it's no use bucking against nature. Neither need you worry because of his discontent. If you'd ever suffered from a big wound, you'd understand that at the first, one is numbed by the shock; it's only when the knitting up and rebuilding begin that the pain bites deep. Look upon his restlessness and depression as growing pains, and the beginning of his cure. Poor little Katrine! but this sort of thing is confoundedly hard on the looker-on.

"You want to know about myself--and why your eyes look sorry as they watch me turn out on my lone. Well, you know, Katrine--I am--I _was_, thirty-five last birthday; only child, parents gone, relations scattered, strangers to me in all but name. Outside the regiment there is not a soul to count in my life, and at the end of four years, unless the impossible happens, I must leave the regiment and say good-bye to my friends. They offered me a majority in the Blankshire a year ago, but I couldn't bring myself to face the wrench, but as anything is preferable to idleness and the shelf, I shall have to start life again among strangers before I'm forty, with two or three captain fellows swearing vengeance at me for being promoted over their heads! It's not exactly a glowing vista, and the prospect of that forty makes a man think. When he sits alone on a sweltering Indian night, and compares his lot with that of fellows like Middleton, for instance, it is depressing work!

"In one or other department of life a man must have success, if he is to know content. Work counts for a lot, but it must be successful work to make up a whole. A big career appeals to all men--the sense of power, the consciousness that one particular bit of the world's work depends upon him, and would suffer from his absence, but that sort of success hasn't come my way. It's the jolliest regiment in the world, the best set of fellows, but it's been our luck to be `out of things,' and we are hopelessly blocked.

"Then there's the home department! Middleton (I use him as a type) can never ask himself `what is the good,' while he has his wife and that stunning little lad. He has his depressed moods like the rest, but when they come on, Dorothea makes love to him, and the little chap sits on his knee. At such times any nice feeling young photograph ought to sympathise with a lonely fellow who sits by and--looks on!

"What do you suppose made up my last Christmas mail? A bill from the stores, and a picture postcard from an old nurse. This year there'll be a letter from you! I have theories about Christmas letters--especially Christmas letters to fellows abroad. Christmas is a time of special kindliness and love; people who are as a rule most reserved and dignified let themselves go, and show what is in their hearts. I've a fancy just for once to `pittend' as the children say, and write a real Christmassy letter. A fellow in the regiment--Vincent--is just engaged. He met her when he went to S--for his last leave. Prom his descriptions you would imagine she was another Helen of Troy, but I'm told she's quite an ordinary nice girl. The airs he gives himself! A fellow might never have been engaged before. After listening to him steadily for two hours on end the other night, I ventured one on my own account.

"`I wonder,' I said tentatively, `if any girl will ever care enough to be willing to be engaged to me?'

"He ruminated, and sucked his pipe: `Well,' he said slowly, `you're not such a bad old beast!'

"Rather beastly of me all the same to bore you with all this. Forgive me! As Vincent has appointed me his confidant I hear such a lot about the affair that I turned on to it without thinking... The wedding won't come off for another year. When _I'm_ engaged, I'll be married sharp!

"Now here's a subject for discussing in your next letter--Love and marriage! It's a big bill, and--be discursive, please! You can't possibly discuss such questions on one sheet. We know, of course, that you are never to many. You are doomed to dry-nurse Martin for life, whether he wants you or no. (Brutal! Sorry, dear!) Things being as they are at the moment, we may premise that I also am doomed to celibacy, but as onlookers see most of the game, there's no reason why we shouldn't wag our heads together over the follies of lovers, and expatiate on how much better we should have managed things ourselves.

"There's no Cranford reason, I suppose, why a young female should not discuss these things with a person of the opposite sex? Even vowed to celibacy as _you_ are, I expect there are moments when you have dreamed dreams, and seen as in a vision the not impossible He.

"Tell me about him, Katrine! I've a fancy to hear.

"Now the sort of girl _I_ should choose... But this scrawl is too long already. That must keep for another day.

"Salaams!

"Jim Blair."