Page:Vailima Letters - Stevenson, Colvin - 1894.djvu/86

60 VAILIMA LETTERS

nature; that at past forty I must adjust this hateful mask for the first time, and rejoice to find it effective ; that the effort of maintaining an external smile should confuse and embitter a man's soul.

To-day I have not weeded; I have written instead from six till eleven, from twelve till two; with the interruption of the interview aforesaid; a damned letter is written for the third time; I dread to read it, for I dare not give it a fourth chance — unless it be very bad indeed. Now I write you from my mosquito curtain, to the song of saws and planes and hammers, and wood clumping on the floor above; in a day of heavenly brightness; a bird twittering near by; my eye, through the open door, commanding green meads, two or three forest trees casting their boughs against the sky, a forest-clad mountainside beyond, and close in by the door-jamb a nick of the blue Pacific. It is March in England, bleak March, and I lie here with the great sliding doors wide open in an undershirt and p'jama trousers, and melt in the closure of mosquito bars, and burn to be out in the breeze. A few torn clouds — not white, the sun has tinged them a warm pink — swim in heaven. In which blessed and fair day, I have to make faces and speak bitter words to a man — who has deceived me, it is true — but who is poor, and older than I, and a kind of a gentleman too. On the whole, I prefer the massacre of weeds.