With Most Gentle Wishes - Chapter 3

Author’s Note:

Fiction doesn’t tend to perform as well as other types of content - something which I am starting to come to terms with. It’s really not about the numbers for me, it’s about sharing a story that is close to my heart. For those sticking around to hear Mabel and Henry’s story - I am endlessly grateful for you.

Dear Henry,

It is wonderful to hear that you found your flowers to be both beautiful and useful, and I am glad that you are able to take your tea despite the weakened appetite. I am especially tickled that you persist in the notion that the flowers were intended solely for tea. I am most surprised that a florist would be so timid in receiving his own bouquet, although I suppose you were always particularly concerned with propriety. I imagine you eyeing them first with suspicion, as though they might accuse you of vanity.

I wonder if you still take your tea whilst reading, as we did in those years when we were neither children nor quite grown, just before I left home. I have often thought of those moments, seated on your mother’s back porch, or lazing beneath the trees at the bottom of the garden. You would insist we bring along a blanket and apples in case we grew hungry, as though the kitchen were much too distant to return to. And yet you would fetch the tea in those mismatched cups your mother kept hidden away - the ones too chipped for guests, but perfectly suited to us. You always made such an occasion of the smallest things. I suppose you likely still do.

You mentioned finding some comfort in the small and ordinary routines of your day, and I was glad to hear it. Yesterday afternoon I spent some hours airing the linens and setting the kitchen shelves to rights, a task I find oddly soothing, though it leaves one lightly dusted with flour and allsorts by the end. I had the window open, and the sound of the village drifted in - the distant calls of the vendors, the clatter of a cart passing by - and for a while it felt quite enough simply to be occupied in that way. I thought you might understand the pleasure of it, the mind resting while the hands remain busy.

Do you still read, Henry? I find myself reading more frequently than ever. Arthur keeps an admirable collection of classics, and I have been working my way through them one by one, though I confess I am often guilty of hurrying, so eager am I to begin the next. Do not be vexed with me, but I fell into the trap of reading ‘Depths of the Meadow’ - the very one you always insisted was too childish and common, and not nearly challenging enough for us. It is wonderful, almost magical. I suspect I am meant to have outgrown it, though I see no particular virtue in that. I do wish you would read it. It would, I think, provide a welcome escape for you just now.

I noted that you offered little account of your condition in your last letter, and I hope I may take that as a sign of improvement rather than cause for unease. I was struck, too, by your recollection of me, and by the care of its particulars. I had not realised that you remembered me so clearly in those years when we were neither children nor quite grown. It is a curious thing, to learn oneself again through another’s memory, and I find I have been thinking often of how little we know, at the time, what marks we leave upon others. If my letters bring you even a small measure of company in these quiet days, then I am glad of them, and would not have you hesitate to receive them. There is no burden in being remembered, nor in remembering in return.

If the days feel long, I hope you will allow my letters to occupy a small space within them. I take comfort in the act of writing and in the thought that they may reach you at the right moment. Until you are fully restored, I am content to write, and to offer what small constancy I can in this simple way.

With most gentle wishes,
Mabel Harrington

If you wish to further immerse yourself in the world of Mabel and Henry, you can do so here, on my ever-growing Pinterest board.