Brightest and Best: I have a short reprieve, because Dick has had to go away again; not to his mother, this time, but to London. A telegram was forwarded to him from Gloucester, where he had left sending-on instructions; and he knocked at my door early yesterday morning (at Tintern) to say he must leave immediately by the first train. He was excited, because the telegram came from the head of a firm of well-known private detectives with whom he had been in correspondence for some time, trying to buy a junior partnership for a few hundreds left him by his grandmother. There's a chance now that he may get the partnership, only he must be on the spot, as another man is making an offer "more advantageous--in some ways." Dick is wild to get in, and regards this as the opportunity of a lifetime. Doesn't that prove the type of mind he has? Actually yearning to be in business as a detective! Well, he's had good practice lately, and I must say he has made the most of it.
"This call couldn't have come at a worse time, but I must obey it," he pronounced solemnly, while I peeped through my half-open door, in my prettiest Ellaline dressing-gown--far too nice to waste on Dick. Disgusted with life, as I was, I nearly laughed in his face, and at his face; but dared not quite, for fear of enraging him again just when he appeared to be in a comparatively lenient mood.
He had come to explain and apologize, and in his perky conceit really seemed to fancy that I might be hurt at his desertion. So when he asked if I would "bid him good-bye pleasantly, and remember to keep my promise," I had a small inspiration. I would bid him good-bye pleasantly, I bargained, provided he let me off keeping the promise until he should come back; because, I said, it would be humiliating to plead with Sir Lionel on the very day my fiancé turned his back upon me in order to attend to mere business.
"You call this mere business?" sputtered Dick; and I soothed him, but persisted firmly, gently, until at last he agreed to grant the reprieve. I think his own vanity, not my eloquence, obtained the concession, because it pleased him to believe that I leaned upon him in this crisis. And of course I had to promise over again, more earnestly than ever, "not to back out, but to stick to my word."
I must still stick to it, of course (unless a wire or letter from you meanwhile suggests some miraculous, agreeable, honourable alternative); but sufficient for the day is the evil thereof--and the Dick thereof.
This day and several days to come are free from both; for my albatross can't arrange the details of its partnership, sell out some investments in order to pay the money down, and join us again before Chester. There I shall certainly hear from you; and I have such infinite faith in your dove-like serpentineness, that I let myself cling to the ragged edge of hope. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy myself as much as I possibly can, so that, at worst, I shall have more good days to remember when bad days come. For the days will be very bad indeed if I have to bear Sir Lionel's silent scorn, and still remain with him, awaiting release from Ellaline.
I felt like a different human being after Dick had gone, and would have written you at once, but he had delayed me so long that I had to finish dressing at top speed, because we were to make an earlier start than usual. There was Chepstow Castle to see (quite near, and a shame to have missed it), as well as a hundred-and-fifty-mile run to Tenby.
Chepstow was splendidly picturesque and striking; but the country through which we had to pass on the way to Tenby would not have been particularly interesting if it weren't for the legends and history with which it is as full as it is of ruined castles. It is largely coal country now, and after the lovely, winding Wye, playing hide-and-seek with its guardian hills, we might have found the road unattractive as we ran through Newport, Cardiff, Neath, Swansea, and Carmarthen. But it made all the difference in the world to know that Carmarthen was Merlin's birthplace; that stories of Arthur's exploits and knightly deeds leave golden landmarks everywhere; and that it seems quite an ordinary, reasonable thing to the people to name railway engines after Sir Lancelot. Isn't it charming of them? Yet what would Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat, say to such a liberty, I wonder?
We arrived in Tenby too late for anything save an impression, last evening; but it was one of those enchanting, mysterious impressions which one can only have after dusk, when each old ivied wall is purple with romance, and each lamp in a high window is a lovelight.
My first thought as we came in and found Tenby on fire with sunset, was that the place looked like a foreign town set down in England; and so of course it is, for it was founded by a band of Flemish people, who fled from persecution. The huge old city walls and quaint gates put me in mind of a glorified Boulogne, or a bit of old Dinan, under the castle. And the way the town lies, with its beautiful harbour far below, its gray rocks and broken walls by the sea, in golden sands, is like Turner's ideas of historic French fortresses. The Benedictine monks, too, who come across the gleaming stretch of water from Caldy Island in a green-and-red steam yacht, add one more foreign note. And I'm delighted to tell you that the hotel where we stayed is built upon the city wall of which nobody seems to know the date--not even the guide-books. The people we asked rather apologized for having to confess that probably it was no earlier than the twelfth century; for the twelfth century is considered crudely modern for Welsh things.
In front of my bedroom window an old lookout tower, darkly veined with ivy, stood up from the vast foundation of the stone wall; and at night I could gaze down, down, over what seemed in the moon-mist to be a mile of depth, to an almost tropical garden laid out on the wall itself. When the tide comes in and drowns the gold of the sands, the sea breaks against the buttress of rock and stone, and the hotel seems all surrounded with the wash and foam of waters, like a fortified castle of long-ago.
We ought to have stopped more than one night and part of a next day, but there is so much, so much to do; and, as I told you, Sir Lionel's thoughts are already marching on toward home. There are all the beauty spots of Wales before us; and the Lake Country, and the North by the Roman Wall, before we turn south again for Graylees. I say "we"--but you know what I mean.
The run we had to-day, coming through Cardigan to Aberystwith, has begun to show me what Wales can do in the way of beauty when she really puts her soul to it; but Sir Lionel says it is nothing to what we shall see to-morrow. What joy that I have still a to-morrow--and a day after to-morrow--empty of Dick! Do you suppose a condemned person finds his last sip of life the sweetest in the cup? I can imagine it might be so.
You'll be glad to get this, I'm sure, dearest, so I'll send it at once, with loads and loads of love from,
Your Criminal Child.
P. S. I forgot to tell you that Aberystwith isn't nearly as beautiful as Tenby, but it has a castle towering over the sea, built by no one less than Gilbert Strongbow the Cruel, who grabbed all Cardiganshire for himself, and dotted castles about everywhere--or else stole other people's, which saved trouble. I know you like to picture me wherever I am, so I must tell you at least that about Aberystwith, though describing places seems irrelevant in my present mood. I am keyed to the "top notch," and don't feel able to do anything leisurely. I do not expect to sleep to-night, and shall get up as soon as it's light, and dart down to the beach to look for amber, or carnelian, or onyx, which they say can be found here. I asked a chambermaid of the hotel, after we arrived this evening, what all the mysterious, stooping people were doing on the sands, and she said searching for amber, to bring them luck. I hope I may come across a bit--even a tiny bit. I am needing a luck-bringer.
There was another mystery which puzzled me here: droves of pretty girls, between twelve and twenty, flitting past the windows, on "the front," every few minutes; sometimes two by two, sometimes four or five together. I thought I had never seen so many young girls. There were enough for the girl population of a large city, yet here they were all crowded together in this small watering-place. But the chambermaid has swept away the mystery. It's a college, and the girls "live out" in different houses. At the other end of the town is another college for young men. That sounds entertaining, doesn't it?
