been hoarding them and begging buds to wait a few days longer for your coming)—and then down to the night boat. I thought I’d either coax you to land or go with you as far as West Point. And oh! what a sick sunk feeling to see the Mary Powell’s lights already out in the river, going every second farther away! I was distracted. I stood on this landing and wept, and then I walked, and it is only now, two hours later, that I have enough control of myself to huddle here on the bench and write you this by starlight and ask you to forgive me.
I so want to put my arms around my girl of all the girls in the world and tell her that whether I move to New York or stay home, whether she sign herself “Very truly your friend” or “Your ownest of girls,” I love her as wives love their husbands, as friends who have taken each other for life. You believe that love has its tides. Well, there was a strong ebb tide this summer. I can’t explain all that caused it-several things combined—but it only shows me how much you are to me. Little streams don’t have tides, do you mind that?
Now please don’t call yourself truly my friend again. I can stand arguments and scoldings, but—truly your friend! And then to miss you by only that widening gap of water! I should have run, dark lane or no dark lane, and next time shall. As for the chill, I’m a donkey. If I didn’t love you do you suppose I’d care about anything or have ridiculous notions and panics and behave like a fool, and quite break down on this landing? But I feel now as if a storm has passed. I’m going to hang onto your skirts, young woman, genius though you may be. You can’t get away from the love of your faithful
SUB
Like some of Grandmother’s other letters, that one makes me feel like a Peeping Tom. And I don’t know whether to smile or to be obscurely shocked to think of her panting and distracted and tearing her hair on Fishkill Landing, with her ruffle pulled down low to please her girl and a rose wilting in her frantic bosom. If I had to make a guess, I should guess that neither Thomas nor my grandfather ever stirred that amount of turmoil in her breast.
But that episode marked a turning point, and that it did suggests a strength of character in Grandmother that I must admire. Right then, apparently, she put away any pre-emptive right to either Augusta or Thomas. The tide of love, as these romantic girls put it, never came full again in the same way. After her summer of unrest, she relinquished one sort of possibility; and when a month later Augusta and Thomas told her about their engagement, she took the word gamely. I have the note she wrote Thomas.
Do you know, Sir, until you came I believe she loved me almost as girls love their lovers—I know I loved her so. Don’t you wonder that I can bear the sight of you? I don’t know another man who could make it seem right. You must have been born to make her future complete, and she was born to kindle your Genius. Isn’t it wonderful how it flamed up at her touch? It was there, but as unborn crystals are . . .
All right, Grandmother. Generously said. Maybe your emotions and your good-loser response were learned from novels, but they worked, and they lasted. Thenceforward you were a loving sister to Thomas, and dearest friend, without ambiguities, to Augusta. You never expressed to them or to anyone any feeling of betrayal or disappointment. I suspect that you were able to manage yourself so well because by a stroke of luck you were able just then to look at your hole card. The ace-high straight flush you had coming didn’t work out, but at the last minute that buried nine filled a king-high straight.
Within two days after she heard of the engagement of Augusta and Thomas, Oliver Ward wrote that he was coming home from the West.
He arrived on a night of hard rain. She and her brother-in-law John Grant waited in the shelter of the landing and watched the three blurred lights of the ferry creep
I so want to put my arms around my girl of all the girls in the world and tell her that whether I move to New York or stay home, whether she sign herself “Very truly your friend” or “Your ownest of girls,” I love her as wives love their husbands, as friends who have taken each other for life. You believe that love has its tides. Well, there was a strong ebb tide this summer. I can’t explain all that caused it-several things combined—but it only shows me how much you are to me. Little streams don’t have tides, do you mind that?
Now please don’t call yourself truly my friend again. I can stand arguments and scoldings, but—truly your friend! And then to miss you by only that widening gap of water! I should have run, dark lane or no dark lane, and next time shall. As for the chill, I’m a donkey. If I didn’t love you do you suppose I’d care about anything or have ridiculous notions and panics and behave like a fool, and quite break down on this landing? But I feel now as if a storm has passed. I’m going to hang onto your skirts, young woman, genius though you may be. You can’t get away from the love of your faithful
SUB
Like some of Grandmother’s other letters, that one makes me feel like a Peeping Tom. And I don’t know whether to smile or to be obscurely shocked to think of her panting and distracted and tearing her hair on Fishkill Landing, with her ruffle pulled down low to please her girl and a rose wilting in her frantic bosom. If I had to make a guess, I should guess that neither Thomas nor my grandfather ever stirred that amount of turmoil in her breast.
But that episode marked a turning point, and that it did suggests a strength of character in Grandmother that I must admire. Right then, apparently, she put away any pre-emptive right to either Augusta or Thomas. The tide of love, as these romantic girls put it, never came full again in the same way. After her summer of unrest, she relinquished one sort of possibility; and when a month later Augusta and Thomas told her about their engagement, she took the word gamely. I have the note she wrote Thomas.
Do you know, Sir, until you came I believe she loved me almost as girls love their lovers—I know I loved her so. Don’t you wonder that I can bear the sight of you? I don’t know another man who could make it seem right. You must have been born to make her future complete, and she was born to kindle your Genius. Isn’t it wonderful how it flamed up at her touch? It was there, but as unborn crystals are . . .
All right, Grandmother. Generously said. Maybe your emotions and your good-loser response were learned from novels, but they worked, and they lasted. Thenceforward you were a loving sister to Thomas, and dearest friend, without ambiguities, to Augusta. You never expressed to them or to anyone any feeling of betrayal or disappointment. I suspect that you were able to manage yourself so well because by a stroke of luck you were able just then to look at your hole card. The ace-high straight flush you had coming didn’t work out, but at the last minute that buried nine filled a king-high straight.
Within two days after she heard of the engagement of Augusta and Thomas, Oliver Ward wrote that he was coming home from the West.
He arrived on a night of hard rain. She and her brother-in-law John Grant waited in the shelter of the landing and watched the three blurred lights of the ferry creep
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