“Thanks awfully, Gordy. It's most frightfully decent of you,” and turned
again to the Marriage Service. He could make out some of it. In places
it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer. About obeying, for
instance. If you loved anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey
you. If you loved them and they loved you, there couldn't ever be any
question of obeying, because you would both do the things always of your
own accord. And if they didn't love you, or you them, then—oh! then
it would be simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a
person you didn't love or who didn't love you. But of course SHE
didn't love his tutor. Had she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that
studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up before him. You could
not love them; and yet—he was really very decent. A feeling as of pity,
almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor. It was queer to
feel so, since the last time they had talked together out there, on the
terrace, he had not felt at all like that.
The noise of the bureau top sliding down aroused him; Mr. Heatherley was
closing in the remains of the artificial flies. That meant he would be
going out to fish. And the moment he heard the door shut, Mark sprang
up, slid back the bureau top, and began to write his letter. It was hard
work.
“DEAR MRS. STORMER,
“My guardian wishes me to beg you and Mr. Stormer to pay us a visit as
soon as you come back from the Tyrol. Please tell Mr. Stormer that only
the very best fishermen—like him—can catch our trout; the rest catch our
trees. This is me catching our trees (here followed a sketch). My sister
is going to be married to-morrow, and it will be disgusting afterwards
unless you come. So do come, please. And with my very best greetings,
“I am,
“Your humble servant,
“M. LENNAN.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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