An extra chapter today because I'm standing in the airport security line at 5am and could use the smile.
Demosthenes Again
Sent: 25 November 1916
Dranouter, Belgium
Dear Nan,
I am writing this letter in London but I will not send it unless you give me leave to do so. It is dry here, and I have a candle and a real table for a writing desk, as well as rather more time to myself than I expected. Jem sleeps and sleeps and I envy him that sort of oblivion. Even in a warm, dry bed, I lie awake. I can think of no better way to spend my sleepless hours than in writing this letter to you.
I thought perhaps I would write a letter telling you how much I love you. But what would I say? Mere repetition couldn't do it justice, and I am no poet.
Instead, let me tell you how I came to love you. You'll know most of these stories, I expect — at least your half of them. But there is nothing that comforts me here like revisiting mine.
First, let me tell you of a time before I loved you. Do you remember that horrible day in school when somebody painted up our names with a "take notice" and a big crimson heart? Of course you do. I never did find out who did it, though I certainly tried. Well, I wasn't in love with you then — you were only 12, after all! But we had started to be very good friends that fall. I was missing Jem because he was away at Queen's, but I was surprised to find how well we got along. Or didn't. We were always fighting in those days, weren't we? Or debating, you would surely correct me. And I remember thinking that you were the smartest girl in Glen St. Mary, as well as the prettiest.
Then that awful "take notice" went up and you wouldn't even look at me. I tell you, Nan, I never felt so bad over anything before. I went the next day to paint over it, but by the time I got to the schoolhouse, someone had already painted it out. That was a relief, but I was still eaten up with worry that you would be cross with me and we'd never be friends again. Looking back, maybe that was the beginning — when I knew that losing your friendship would be a terrible thing.
I couldn't go to you — that might have made things worse. But miracle of miracles, you came to me. I was sitting by the spring in Rainbow Valley under the maples, fretting, and you appeared on the other side, just as I saw you that day when I woke in no man's land after Ypres. You crossed over and sat beside me and said bold as brass that you didn't care for me "in that way," but you would be very sorry to lose me as a friend. Gosh, Nan, that was brave. How did you get up the courage to do it? I was awfully glad you did.
After that, we were good chums, but I started to notice little things about you. You remember the day you found me studying English history in the old Methodist graveyard? I was studying for the Queen's entrance and having trouble keeping the dates of the various monarchs all sorted out. You came and sat by me and told me I was doing it all wrong. I'll never forget. "Kings and Queens aren't numbers, Jerry," you said. "They're stories!" And then you told me stories about Edward the Confessor and all the various Richards, and always found ways to weave the dates in so that they were easy to remember. You weren't even studying for the exams yet, you just loved to learn and it wasn't work for you.
But I don't think I actually suspected that I felt anything more than friendship for you until I went away to Queen's. Queen's was great fun, especially with Jem as a roommate. He was in his second year and he had the run of that school, I tell you. There was a dance one weekend in the fall term, so we stayed in town instead of going home as we usually did. Jem found us a couple of pretty girls to take to the dance — Jem never had to do anything but stretch out his hand and pretty girls seemed to emerge out of nowhere. And I remember thinking that the dance was very nice and the girl I was escorting was very nice, but I was not having a good time. The whole while, I was glum because I was missing a Saturday evening in the Glen, and it wasn't the manse I was pining for.
I tried to shake that off for a while. I was at Queen's! In town! Why should I be mooning over little Nan Blythe, even if she was the prettiest, smartest girl on the Island. I knew now that you weren't just the prettiest, smartest girl in the Glen, having seen some of what the rest of PEI had to offer. I remember all that fall, I would read something interesting or learn something in class and find myself saving it up to tell you on Saturday.
Then I was off to Redmond and not even home on weekends, and that was worse. How could I remember everything I wanted to tell you until Christmas? Do you remember the first letter I ever sent you? I invented some excuse to ask you a question about something I had read in my history course — just a short note. Demosthenes — do you remember? And a week later, I had one of your famous bullet-stoppers in my hand, detailing all the ways I had framed the question wrong. It was only polite of me to respond.
I won't tell you how much Jem teased me over those letters. I always offered to let him read them, so he could see there wasn't anything in them but "-ologies and -isms." There wasn't either. It was just the fact of them — that you were writing to me, and that my heart would race just to see my name in your handwriting on an envelope. And that pink paper. I remember the sound of it as much as anything.
Do you remember what Cicero said when asked which of Demosthenes' orations was his favorite? "The longest." It's the same with me and your letters, and always has been.
Well, that might have gone on indefinitely, but Jem started threatening to do something drastic to hurry me along. It was all his idea, the set-up at the Queen's convocation dance. But you might have guessed that. What you maybe won't have guessed is how nervous I was. When that ferry was late — I had never been so nauseous in my life. And then you'd promised all your dances, and I was spilling lemonade all over myself . . . I don't know what it looked like to you, but things definitely did not go as I had planned. But then you danced with me on the lawn, all smiling and dressed in gold, and I was a goner.
What can I say about the next year? That I've never been happier than I was that summer, arguing with you about anything and everything? That I started to let myself think about a future with you in it? I'll never forget the time that next Christmas when you fell asleep on my shoulder in the middle of making a point about Oliver Cromwell because that's the moment I knew I had to get up the courage to ask you to marry me someday. I'm only sorry I didn't wake you up and do it right then. It would have been ridiculous and sudden and much too soon, but that's the sort of thinking that's left me leaving things far too late.
I love you, Nan. I don't want to leave you in any doubt about my devotion nor my intentions. If I ever get home, I'll do this properly and ask you face-to-face, as I should have done before I went away. Since that isn't possible right now, I will do the best I can.
Nan Blythe, will you marry me?
Jerry