CHAPTER NINE.

"Cumly, _July 10, 19--_.

"Dear Captain Blair,

"I'm in a grumbly mood this morning. Do you mind? Something annoyed me yesterday, and this is the lachrymose aftermath. I'm sorry, for your sake as well as my own, for it's mail day, and it's now or never to catch that birthday! Perhaps a morning's writing will work it `off' better than any other distraction which this place affords. It's easy for you away at the other side of the world to sentimentalise over my `Cranford' home, but if I had been asked to state the spot of all others in which I would _not_ choose to live, it would be just such a derelict little hamlet as that in which fate has dumped me. It's a pretty little place, built on the side of a hill, with a precipitous High Street which is dangerous to drive down, and puffy to walk up. There is a church at the top, a chapel at the bottom, and a bank half-way; likewise a linen draper's shop, which serves the purpose of a lady's club, for no self-respecting woman allows a morning to pass without popping in at `Verney's.' If the stock does not supply what one wants (it rarely does!) there is always `a startling line' in something else, and a smell of flannel thrown in. `We are out of white gloves this morning, but I have a very fine line in unbleached calico!' Mr Verney is a deacon of the chapel; Mrs Verney was in the millinery, and has hankerings after the church. We notice a general tendency among the maidens of dissent to appear at the parish church, what time they possess new garments or hats... After we have bought our packets of needles, or a box of pins, we meet our friends in the front shop, and gossip. Such a lot of talk, about such little, little things! There are days when it's amusing enough; days when it's the driest dust. Last year a friend of mine started a `Thankfulness Society,' as a cure for the grumbling and discontent which is apt to engulf spinsters in a country place. Each member was presented with a little book, and was bound to inscribe therein the special causes of thankfulness which had occurred during each day. I refused to join. I said if I ceased to grumble it would have a demoralising effect on my character. No use to grumble? Fiddlesticks! _Every_ use! As a dear old American friend used to say: `When you feel like scratching, it's not a mite of use rolling your eyes, and trying to be a saint--just let yourself go, and be right down _ugly_ for a few minutes, and it will be a heap better for you, and every one concerned!' The secretary was shocked. She said if one realised one's blessings, one would not _wish_ to grumble... I said that considered as a trial the grumbler was not in it, compared with the persistent optimist. Nothing on earth is more embittering than to live with a persistently amiable person. Imagine living with a certificated optimist bound over to be thankful through thick and thin, when the soot falls, the soup is singed, and the new dress does _not_ come home! ... Imagine the conversation, the maddening serenity of the smile! Optimists are admirable in calamity, but in the simple aggravations of daily life they are just the most depressing creatures upon earth!

"Well, I'm sorry! Now I've had my growl, and (Yankee again!) feel as `good as pie,' You might as well know what a grumbling, discontented wretch I am, and if you ask me why this special fit attacked me just this special morning, well, I _know_, but I'm not going to tell. I'll answer another question instead--

"You ask me what I think about love, getting engaged, married, all the rest of it. I am only a looker on, and must always be, but it _does_ interest me all the same! I have marvelled with every one else over the nature of that indefinable something which draws two people together, and which has nothing on earth to do with suitability as understood by the people. John may be a model of excellence; amiable, rich, handsome, devoted, but on their first meeting it is settled in Louisa's mind as irrevocably as the trump of doom that he would never _do_! She knew it at a flash, the moment he entered the room; the second he touched her hand. And Tom is poor; he is plain, he looks as though on occasion he might be abominably disagreeable. Louisa looks upon his cross face, and acknowledges to herself `My Lord and King!'--It's a _feel_ that decides it, not a fact. In the great, big choice of life, reason doesn't count. Two men have asked me to marry them (You wouldn't know their names, even if you heard them, so I am betraying no confidence); I should have said `no' in any case, but I might have _wanted_ to say `yes'! I didn't! I felt that as a choice a jump into the river would be preferable, yet from a sane, sensible point of view there was no reason why I should not have fallen in love--and--especially in one case! every obvious reason why I _should_! I couldn't for my life tell you what was wrong, except--_Everything_! I should have hated his very virtues by my own fireside. His `little _ways_' would have driven me daft, but I can imagine wrapping up those self-same little ways right in the middle of my heart, as the dearest things, the sweetest, the most winsome, if they had belonged to another man!

"Engaged people are a bore to outsiders, but for themselves it must be a good time. To be able to speak out, after bottling it all in; to be left alone in peace, instead of living on odd snatches of conversation in the midst of crowds; to feel _sure_; to be done with `I',--and become for ever `We.'--It must feel so warm, and restful, and rich! It isn't so much the mere happiness that impresses me; it's the _rest_. I wish it were possible to get engaged without being married, then I should arrange it with indecent haste, with an orphan, with a motor car, and we _would_ be happy! He should be clean shaven, and rather plain, but it must be just my special fad in the way of plainness--a trim, slim, sinewy sort. Nothing flabby, an' you love me!

"I've thought of his name sometimes; names count for a good deal. There are moods when I dream of Ralph and feel a fascination for Peter; moods when I have a secret hankering for Guy; moods again when he could not possibly be any one but Jack. People say that if you really love a man, his name does not matter. I've known a woman to settle down with `Percy,' and live happily ever after. I've heard of another who espoused a `Samuel,' and was apparently content. It is conceivable that I might do the same, but `Alfred' gives me a crawl. It is settled, firm, as the everlasting hills, that I can never belong to Alfred!

"If there is one thing more than another for which I bless my parents, and praise them in the gate, it is that they called me by a durable Christian name. Katherine! It is not beautiful; it is not poetic, but it is at least seemly and discreet. You may take liberties with Katherine, and it will never disgrace you. When you are small and curly-headed you can pose as `Kitty Clover' with beguiling effect. I did myself, for quite a long run. Later on, dropping the Clover, you may be known to schoolmates as Kitty or Kate. There's a snap about Kate which keeps Pearls and Rubies in their place. Katrine is, as you observe, quite attractive for the days of youth; Katherine is a refuge for old age. Can you imagine anything more appropriate for a spinster lady in a country town?

"The only married couple whom I have studied from the _inside_ was my brother and his wife during that little six months. It seemed quite a perfect thing at the time, but looking back from the sober height of twenty-six, it seems more like a play, than real, serious life. She was only nineteen; a pretty thing; such a babe; poor little, happy Juliet! and Martin was a boy with her. Now, as you say, he is a man. I wonder sometimes--

"We have a visitor staying with us just now. Her name is Grizel Dundas, and she is twenty-eight, and very beautiful or rather plain, according to the hour of the day, and her own mood and intention. Sometimes I suspect that she deliberately _makes_ herself plain, for the fun of confounding people with her beauty an hour later on. Also she may probably turn out to be one of the greatest heiresses in London, or be left with a few hundreds a year, and she is very lazy, and very energetic, and talks like a schoolboy, and looks like a fay, and dresses, oh, Lonely Man! in the most ra-vishing clothes! And she knocks at the door of Martin's study in his writing hours, and walks bang in. _And he doesn't turn her out_!

"That's Grizel. And if I tried a hundred years I couldn't describe her better. We were at school together, and she is my most intimate friend, next to Dorothea, but--

"I wish I were a generous, humble-minded person who _liked_ standing aside, and seeing other people succeed where I have failed, and being praised where I'm snubbed, and run after when I'm ignored, but I'm not, and if you think I am, you'd better know once for all that you're mistaken. There have been times this last week when I've _hated_ Grizel, and her works!

"Yesterday we went to a garden party, she, Martin, and I, and they schemed to send me off with a snuffy old man, so that they could be alone. I saw them look at each other, a quick, signalling look, which meant, `_Get rid of her_!' and he was the first person who came along. Poor, snuffy person, with a termagant on his hands! If you were sitting here, face to face--I should be too proud to tell you this; even to write it to Dorothea would hurt, but to a ghostly shape whom one has never seen, and probably never shall see, it is a relief to blurt out one's woes!

"Martin looks at Grizel with a look in his eyes which,--which is _not_ like a sorrowing widower! and when I see it I am filled with seventeen contending emotions, like the heroines in the newspaper _feuilletons_. Jealousy--hideous, aching jealousy, for Juliet, and the past, for myself and the future; disillusionment, in the breaking of an ideal, which, if impracticable, was still beautiful and sweet, the illusion of a lifelong loyalty and devotion; also, and this is worst of all,--something horribly approaching contempt! My love for Martin is as great as ever, but he is no longer the hero, the strong, silent man who loved once and for ever, and went through life waiting patiently for a reunion. He has stepped down from his pedestal and become flesh and blood, and I--oh, Lonely Man!--I am _trying_ to be glad, but it's a big, big effort! Self looms so large; the self that _will_ intrude into every question. I wanted him to be happy, _but in my own way_!

"I'm going to stop this minute. You'll be horrified at the length of this budget, but it's your own fault. Give a woman an inch, and she'll take an ell. Wade through it this time, and tell me what you think, but don't _preach_! Preaching does me such a lot of harm. Methinks I descry in you a latent tendency to preach; nevertheless, somehow--I can't think how--you've comforted me to-day and so I'm grateful.

"Many happy returns of your twenty-fifth birthday. I am a year older, and feel pleasantly superior.

"Yours sincerely,

"Katrine Beverley.

"PS.--Please go on about `The girl you would fancy' ... I have a fancy to hear!"