April 18th.
Dear Ginger,--What's the use? What is the use? I do all I can to getright away from New York, and New York comes after me and tracks me downin my hiding-place. A week or so ago, as I was walking down the Strandin an aimless sort of way, out there came right on top of me--who do youthink? Fillmore, arm in arm with Mr. Carmyle! I couldn't dodge. In thefirst place, Mr. Carmyle had seen me; in the second place, it is a day'sjourney to dodge poor dear Fillmore now. I blushed for him. Ginger!Right there in the Strand I blushed for him. In my worst dreams I hadnever pictured him so enormous. Upon what meat doth this our Fillmorefeed that he is grown so great? Poor Gladys! When she looks at him shemust feel like a bigamist.
Apparently Fillmore is still full of big schemes, for he talked airilyabout buying all sorts of English plays. He has come over, as I supposeyou know, to arrange about putting on "The Primrose Way" over here. Heis staying at the Savoy, and they took me off there to lunch, whoopingjoyfully as over a strayed lamb. It was the worst thing that couldpossibly have happened to me. Fillmore talked Broadway without a pause,till by the time he had worked his way past the French pastry and waslolling back, breathing a little stertorously, waiting for the coffeeand liqueurs, he had got me so homesick that, if it hadn't been that Ididn't want to make a public exhibition of myself, I should have brokendown and howled. It was crazy of me ever to go near the Savoy. Ofcourse, it's simply an annex to Broadway. There were Americans at everytable as far as the eye could reach. I might just as well have been atthe Astor.
Well, if Fate insists in bringing New York to England for my specialdiscomfiture, I suppose I have got to put up with it. I just let eventstake their course, and I have been drifting ever since. Two days agoI drifted here. Mr. Carmyle invited Fillmore--he seems to loveFillmore--and me to Monk's Crofton, and I hadn't even the shadow of anexcuse for refusing. So I came, and I am now sitting writing to you inan enormous bedroom with an open fire and armchairs and every other sortof luxury. Fillmore is out golfing. He sails for New York on Saturday onthe Mauretania. I am horrified to hear from him that, in addition to allhis other big schemes, he is now promoting a fight for the light-weightchampionship in Jersey City, and guaranteeing enormous sums to bothboxers. It's no good arguing with him. If you do, he simply quotesfigures to show the fortunes other people have made out of these things.Besides, it's too late now, anyway. As far as I can make out, the fightis going to take place in another week or two. All the same, it makes myflesh creep.
Well, it's no use worrying, I suppose. Let's change the subject. Do youknow Monk's Crofton? Probably you don't, as I seem to remember hearingsomething said about it being a recent purchase. Mr. Carmyle bought itfrom some lord or other who had been losing money on the Stock Exchange.I hope you haven't seen it, anyway, because I want to describe it atgreat length. I want to pour out my soul about it. Ginger, what hasEngland ever done to deserve such paradises? I thought, in my ignorance,that Mr. Faucitt's Cissister place was pretty good, but it doesn't evenbegin. It can't compete. Of course, his is just an ordinary countryhouse, and this is a Seat. Monk's Crofton is the sort of place they usedto write about in the English novels. You know. "The sunset was fallingon the walls of G---- Castle, in B----shire, hard by the picturesquevillage of H----, and not a stone's throw from the hamlet of J----." Ican imagine Tennyson's Maud living here. It is one of the stately homesof England; how beautiful they stand, and I'm crazy about it.
You motor up from the station, and after you have gone about threemiles, you turn in at a big iron gate with stone posts on each side withstone beasts on them. Close by the gate is the cutest little house withan old man inside it who pops out and touches his hat. This is only thelodge, really, but you think you have arrived; so you get all ready tojump out, and then the car goes rolling on for another fifty miles or sothrough beech woods full of rabbits and open meadows with deer in them.Finally, just as you think you are going on for ever, you whizz round acorner, and there's the house. You don't get a glimpse of it till then,because the trees are too thick.
It's very large, and sort of low and square, with a kind of tower atone side and the most fascinating upper porch sort of thing withbattlements. I suppose in the old days you used to stand on this anddrop molten lead on visitors' heads. Wonderful lawns all round, andshrubberies and a lake that you can just see where the ground dipsbeyond the fields. Of course it's too early yet for them to be out, butto the left of the house there's a place where there will be abouta million roses when June comes round, and all along the side of therose-garden is a high wall of old red brick which shuts off the kitchengarden. I went exploring there this morning. It's an enormous place,with hot-houses and things, and there's the cunningest farm at one endwith a stable yard full of puppies that just tear the heart out of you,they're so sweet. And a big, sleepy cat, which sits and blinks inthe sun and lets the puppies run all over her. And there's a lovelystillness, and you can hear everything growing. And thrushes andblackbirds... Oh, Ginger, it's heavenly!
But there's a catch. It's a case of "Where every prospect pleases andonly man is vile." At least, not exactly vile, I suppose, but terriblystodgy. I can see now why you couldn't hit it off with the Family.Because I've seen 'em all! They're here! Yes, Uncle Donald and all ofthem. Is it a habit of your family to collect in gangs, or have I justhappened to stumble into an accidental Old Home Week? When I came downto dinner the first evening, the drawing-room was full to burstingpoint--not simply because Fillmore was there, but because there wereuncles and aunts all over the place. I felt like a small lion in a denof Daniels. I know exactly now what you mean about the Family. They lookat you! Of course, it's all right for me, because I am snowy white clearthrough, but I can just imagine what it must have been like for you withyour permanently guilty conscience. You must have had an awful time.
By the way, it's going to be a delicate business getting this letterthrough to you--rather like carrying the despatches through the enemy'slines in a Civil War play. You're supposed to leave letters on the tablein the hall, and someone collects them in the afternoon and takes themdown to the village on a bicycle. But, if I do that some aunt or uncleis bound to see it, and I shall be an object of loathing, for it is nolight matter, my lad, to be caught having correspondence with a humanJimpson weed like you. It would blast me socially. At least, so I gatherfrom the way they behaved when your name came up at dinner last night.Somebody mentioned you, and the most awful roasting party broke loose.Uncle Donald acting as cheer-leader. I said feebly that I had met youand had found you part human, and there was an awful silence till theyall started at the same time to show me where I was wrong, and howcruelly my girlish inexperience had deceived me. A young and innocenthalf-portion like me, it appears, is absolutely incapable of suspectingthe true infamy of the dregs of society. You aren't fit to speak to thelikes of me, being at the kindest estimate little more than a blot onthe human race. I tell you this in case you may imagine you're popularwith the Family. You're not.
So I shall have to exercise a good deal of snaky craft in smuggling thisletter through. I'll take it down to the village myself if I can sneakaway. But it's going to be pretty difficult, because for some reason Iseem to be a centre of attraction. Except when I take refuge in myroom, hardly a moment passes without an aunt or an uncle popping outand having a cosy talk with me. It sometimes seems as though they wereweighing me in the balance. Well, let 'em weigh!
Time to dress for dinner now. Good-bye.
Yours in the balance,
Sally.
P.S.--You were perfectly right about your Uncle Donald's moustache, butI don't agree with you that it is more his misfortune than his fault. Ithink he does it on purpose.
(Just for the moment) Monk's Crofton, Much Middleford, Salop, England.