Bildungsromans; Psychological fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Oh, it would be too lovely to see you again, darling. I can’t seem
to make plans, or think at all. You are alone and you sound as if
you had been so terribly unhappy. Oh, poor darling. Yes, it would
be marvellous to do something together, but what? You know you know
_you know_ what I’m like. Why do you want to be bothered with me
again. Remember how miserable I made you. But I must see you
again--just to set eyes on you again would be heavenly. October
24th. Will that suit you. I will come to our tea-shop where we
always went. Sit in the front room in the corner under the window.
I’ll come for you there about four o’clock. _Don’t wait for me
after 5._ I shall get there by car somehow. I thought if I didn’t
come till the afternoon it would give you time to go out to College
and see people if you want to. _I don’t want to._ Perhaps we could
stay the night somewhere. What do you think. I can’t say anything
more definite than this. I will _try_ to get there punctually. But
if I wasn’t there--(here several words were so thickly inked over
as to be indecipherable--and the letter ended in a
desperate-looking scrawl)--It will be too too lovely to be with you
again.
J.
The other letter made a bulky package. She opened it and saw many sheets
of round unformed handwriting. At the top of the first page some other
hand had written something minutely in pencil: Julian’s hand. She read:
You asked me for news of Mariella. Here it is. I think you guessed
what I was neither perspicacious nor interested enough to suspect;
or did even she fall into the common habit of “telling Judith?”
There is something about this document which has made me feel far
from flattered in my vanity or elevated in my self-esteem. What I
send you is for you and no one else. After you have read it destroy
it. You are discreet; and for some reason you care what becomes of
us; and, last but not least, you have the artistic conscience, a
sense of dramatic values. It seems to me this rounds us off nicely.
Tchehov? Turgenev?
J. F.
And underneath she read in Mariella’s childlike hand:
Dear Julian,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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