(no subject)
Title An Epistolary Romance
Author:scribblemusic
Part: 2/2
Rating:Pg-13
Pairing: Poynter/Judd ♥
Beta'd by: Star55 and Burakkupansa (Thank you both so much!)
Summary: An old romance told through a series of love letters.
A/N: This is for the prompt for juddpoynter for picking “Letters”. I really hope you like it. And I’d just like to say that I think this is probably the fic. I’m most proud of!
And if you haven’t already, pick a prompt from my Prompt Table
Disclaimer: Don’t own them.
This song's lyrics match this story perfectly. It's so beautiful, please listen to it!
Part 1
They had one day together.
Harry had planned it all out in a single letter. Since he was rich, he owned a house in a different town just for vacation purposes. Just a place to be away from the people he saw everyday and escape the pressures of life. That was where he planned for the two of them to meet.
8 October 1826
Dougie,
On the morning of Sunday, the tenth of October, there will be a carriage waiting for you by our tree. I will not be in it.
It shall take off precisely at 9.15 A.M, whether or not you decide to get on.
The carriage will then journey about forty-five minutes into the small, but quaint town of Tilbury where I shall be waiting for you, or an empty carriage.
It is your choice, Dougie. I will understand if you choose not to come, but I hope you decide otherwise.
I just want one day together. One day, and one night for us to have the right to hold each other, see one another, and talk; just one candid day to satiate my hunger for you for the rest of my life.
We have too many restrictions put upon us and I want to be able to defy all of them and be myself for once. I wake up everyday and I am forced to be somebody I am not, and love someone I can never love, and just once would I like to be able to be free completely of those chains and be who I truly am, and love who I truly love.
These letters do nothing but tease me with “what if’s” and “never be’s”. I wish to express my feelings to you through audible words and physical touch. To say “I love you” out loud and see your reaction. And to hold and kiss you properly with all the passion I have locked up inside of me.
Just once.
Please consider it.
Waiting for you,
Harold Mark Christopher Judd
The letter after that does not detail anything, of course. It was all far too personal and intimate even to write down. And even if it were, I don’t think I could bring myself to read it. Some things need to be kept a mystery and a secret; and that day together was one.
All I knew was when that carriage took off at 9.15 A.M, Dougie was in it.
And I knew that when Harry opened the door to the carriage to reveal Dougie’s decision, it was the outcome that he had so longed and wished for.
And that was all I needed to know.
I had imagined what it must have been like for them to finally be together that day; tears, tender caresses, and whispers of promises of forever....
I had pictured it all in my head. My young and handsome great, great, great grandfather sitting anxiously inside the carriage as it approached a large and beautiful home sitting on top of a hill-- away from everything else. How nervous he must have felt. In my mind, I saw him wringing his hands together as he stared out the window as the scenery passed by, palms sweating and heart beating faster and faster as the carriage got closer and closer to its destination.
Then, I pictured Harry, a gorgeous man in a tailored suit, making sure to look his best as he stood outside of his house. He paced apprehensively and constantly had his eyes trained on the road that led up to his isolated retirement.
As the carriage came into view, I imagined Harry straightening up and trying to inwardly calm his nerves down and ready himself for the thought that he’d be opening the door to an empty carriage. I could see him nod to the driver, trying not to tip anything off that was unusual, since it was already strange for his chauffeur to be made to pick up a strange common man to bring to another town.
The clicking hooves of the horses stopped, and the moment of truth was just seconds away; just a door away. It played out in my mind that Harry stared at the carriage for a long while, afraid, unsure, and nervous. If it were empty, it would surely break his heart into unfixable pieces. But if Dougie were to really be inside, how was he to react when he came face-to-face with him after so long?
Harry’s heart thumped painfully in his chest, his blood rushed and he could hear it all too loudly in his ears. He started to sweat as he finally got the courage to reach for the handle of the door, pausing just for a second longer. Inhaling and swallowing away the nerves that had somehow formed in his throat, he closed his eyes, opened the door and held his breath.
Slowly, he lifted his eyelids, and to his complete shock, there sat the person that his very heart beats for. He gasped and tears immediately sprung to his eyes as he tried to maintain his composure. He moved forward cautiously towards the man whose tears were sneaking their way down his heated cheeks. Raising a hand, Harry reached out and touched Dougie’s face; the first physical contact they’d had for years. He needed to touch him, feel him to make sure that the vision in front of his wasn’t a hallucination because he’d fantasized about that moment for so long. He wanted to feel the proof underneath his fingertips.
“I did not think you would come,” Harry would have whispered the words so soft that it barely left his lips, tears now flowing freely from his bright eyes.
Putting his own hand on top of Harry’s for reassurance, Dougie smiled. “You thought wrong,” he whispered back.
Eyes locked, and they stared at one another, greedily memorizing and reacquainting each other’s faces. It had been far too long....
Their first proper kiss would most likely have been inside the privacy of Harry’s house. I don’t think they would have risked something that intimate out in the open. I imagined how their hands must have trembled when they held each other as their lips finally met. This time, there was no running away. They had time to react and answer, unafraid of the Big Brother society watching them. They were safe and free to do as they pleased for an entire day. Every second together was carried through with a tenderness and love that very few people ever got to experience in their entire lifetime.
They took advantage of every moment of every second, because this was the only chance they’d ever get.
It was probably already suspicious as to why Dougie had left town in the first place, especially on the day of Sabbath when everyone attended church. This was a major risk, a risk they were not going to be able to make twice. They could be killed if they were found out.
And as for the rest of night.... well, I guess that’s all up to your own interpretation and imagination.
On the morning of November 22, 1835, my great great great grandfather, Douglas Lee Poynter, passed away at the age of twenty-nine, just eight days short of his thirtieth birthday.
The letters, of course, stopped.
The last letter Dougie received from Harry before he passed was at the first of the month.
03 November 1835
Dear Dougie,
It has almost been eleven years since we have started writing to one another, and through it all, my heart has remained true.
Yesterday, as I was watching the sun set over the horizon, my mind wandered off and I realised that I never told you when I figured out my feelings for you. Of course, you obviously know where my affections for you lie by now, but you have never known when it all started.
I remember the day I first met you. We were only children, of course. You must have been no more than nine years old, and I, eleven.
That day my father brought me up to the mill factory to show me what I was to eventually “reign”. All I remembered was seeing an enormous building with grayish-black masses of smoke rising up to the heavens, trying to blanket the skies with the sweat of the poor. Entering the factory, all I could see was chaos. Men, women, and children working strenuously; hours upon hours to earn a pence to put into their empty bellies.
I saw a child of the age of five, working alongside his mother, his hands and clothes dirtied with labor and injustice. Looking down at my own hands, I realised that they were far too clean. My hands had never known what it was like to be dirtied.
As my father droned on and on about the mill factory, I desperately tried to find a way to escape from him and what was to be my future. When my father was distracted by a worker, I snuck away from him and into what looked to be a storage room where there were many crates and boxes to hide behind.
Once inside I had smiled happily to myself, thinking that I was alone. I wasn’t, of course. I was seated on a box, looking out the window when I heard a scuffling noise and some sniffling, so I went to investigate.
When I looked around the corner, there you were; small and sitting on the dirty ground, curled up to keep yourself warm. After having watched you for several minutes, I realised that you had come into the room to escape my father also, to escape from work. That was the moment I decided you would become my friend. We had a common fear, and that was this factory.
I had approached you slowly, not wanting to scare you, but I ended up doing so anyway. I remember your lip started to quiver as I tried to shush you so we wouldn’t be found. You eventually saw that I was of no harm and around your age, so you calmed down a bit. Naturally, we started to speak to one another and eventually neither of us could keep quiet. It was a nice change from the “children should be seen and not heard” rule.
Of course we couldn’t hide in there forever. Eventually we had to crawl back out into the real world and face our realities, no matter how pressing it may have been. But somehow, we always made it back into that storage room; our childhood, our safe haven.
I still go into that storage room just to sit in there sometimes, you know. So many things happened in there, so many memories and adventures. Those crates could become anything we wished! It even became the chalkboard for the letters and words I taught you by using a lump of coal we had found on the floor!
I was extra attentive when listening to my lectures and teachings because of you. I would make sure to write down everything so I could tell you all about it and teach you what I had just learned that day. You were so earnest for knowledge; you drank it up greedily and fervently. As we got older, however, our time spent in that storage room became less and less. What would used to be hours spent together, narrowed down to mere half hours, or fifteen minutes.
The first time I noticed that my feelings for you were out of place, was the day we happened to have a pensive conversation over the subject of marriage. I believe you around fifteen and I, seventeen. We knew that within just a matter of a couple more years, we would soon be betrothed. When you spoke of what you believed your marriage would be like and with what ideal women, I had felt so overwhelmingly jealous! Immediately, I began to feel resentment towards whatever women it was that you had envisioned in your mind and I had the strongest urge to find the image of her in your thoughts, find her, and do away with her. My emotions of jealousy began to exaggerate, and from there, I began to wonder why it was that I could not be with you, why I was not enough. It only seemed natural, seeing as how we saw each other almost every day and the things we have been through. You were my best friend, you knew everything about me from the inside, out, and I you. Why couldn’t we be together? And that was when the dead end came. Society will not allow it, simple as that. And from that conclusion, I figured out that my feelings for you were more than me just caring for you as a friend. It had evolved into something far greater; I just had never noticed, never thought about it and never questioned it, because I never had to.
I kept my feelings to myself, locked up. From what I knew, my feelings for you were not normal. It was a sin, I was not right in the mind. Something like this was never heard of. I kept my secret from you and I had felt so guilty about it. With you, there were no secrets, but everything had suddenly changed and now there were. What if I told you and you happened to think exactly what I was afraid you would think? Act how I was afraid you would react and have you hate me? I could not stand the thought of that, so I hid a secret from you. Much to my surprise, however, you felt exactly the same way. And it was even you who told me how you felt about me, a year after I figured how I felt about you.
My memory of that day is quite vivid. I met you in the storage room on one of your breaks. You only had ten minutes and I was avaricious enough to take any time with you, whether it be at the darkest and latest hours of the night, or the earliest hours of the day. I craved those minutes-- needed them.
When I came into the storage room, I was surprised to have found you already seated on one of the crates, waiting patiently with a smile. You had no idea what those smiles did to me. Comfortably approaching you, I took a seat and we began to fill each other in on our day like good mates would. However, you stopped me abruptly as I was telling you about my complaints of the factory and before I knew what you were saying, you said everything! You poured your heart out to me like a sudden explosion, afraid and unafraid at the same time. And just like how I’m doing now, you told me your story from the start. I listened, shocked and taking in your words and letting it sink and settle. I was not quite sure how to react, but my heart spoke for itself; it sped and leapt happily.
And just as abruptly as it started, it stopped. Your words came to its end and hung in the air and you sat there, your time up. All I could do was continue to stare at you with disbelief! When I didn’t say anything, you leaned in, pressed your lips to mine, and before I could react to that, you shied away, got up and ran out of the room and back to work, leaving me in a state of daze and euphoria. That one, single kiss had meant so much, and still does, along with that one day we spent together.
My love for you is unfathomably endless and infinite. I cannot tell you that enough.
This letter is much longer than I intended for it to be and I am up far too late! So I close with saying good-night to you, love. And may you have sweet dreams.
Until your next letter.
Love,
Harold Mark Christopher Judd
That letter marked the end of their epistolary romance, but I felt as if there was truly no ending. It left me feeling so incomplete. How did Harry find out about Dougie’s death? How did he handle it?
Questions flooded my mind after I read the last letter and I began to get obsessed with finding out the answers.
I searched for “Harry Mark Christopher Judd” online and in old library newspapers... I just wanted to find out how the story ended!
I found an obituary of him in a newspaper that dated back to 1849.
Harold Mark Christopher Judd
23 December 1803- 16 June 1849
A loving husband, father, and friend.
Harold Mark Christopher Judd was an ambitious and genuine man with a heart full of love. He was a known activist against child labor, and was able to see his goal pass in Parliament in 1833 and later in 1847 to cut down labor hours for children. A man with a dream and dared to pursue.
He had come down with pneumonia and within two days, passed over to the afterlife.
He will be greatly missed.
He lived to be forty-six years old.
My heart could not rest, even after having read and known when he passed away, so I traveled from my home to find that tree on Bristle Avenue. I knew that my luck was slim, knew that there must be hundreds of trees lining-up that street, but I still had to try.
I spent the entire day walking down Bristle Avenue to every tree I saw, trying to find a hollow. I couldn’t. These trees were not old enough, not big enough or tall enough to have been their tree.
I gave up. I began to walk in the opposite direction when the sun was starting to set, and suddenly, something caught my eye and I turned to look. Far down a hill, I saw it. It was at the very edge of the town, the last landmark. It had to be it! I took off running as fast as my legs could carry me.
When I arrived, I stood in front of it and studied it. I felt so connected to it somehow...
There it was, the hollow of the tree that could have held all of those letters! The middle ground for them.
Breathing in shakily, I tip-toed up and slowly reached my hand into the dark hole, afraid something would bite, but even more afraid that I’d find nothing at all.
My fingers stretched and probed and I was shocked at how large and deep the hollow actually was! I stubbornly kept pawing around and finally... my fingers touched something hard, yet soft. I grabbed it, and pulled it out.
It was a bundle of at least thirty or more letters tied together, all addressed to Douglas Lee Poynter. I ran my fingertips over each envelope, feeling its ridges. They were all so old and weathered, some molded over.
I didn’t read them. I didn’t need to. I had found out what I wanted, which was whether or not he still wrote to Dougie, even after his death. Whether or not it was “’till death do us part”. But even death didn’t stop Harry from writing to him.
Smiling, I memorized the weight and the feel of the letters in my hand before I placed them back into the hollow. I looked up at the towering tree, listened to its rustling leaves.
If only this tree could talk...
Backing away, I walked into the middle of the old road.
And whether or not it was my imagination... I suddenly saw two men appear on either side of the street. To my left, a brunette man wore an old, tailored suit. To my right... my great great great grandfather in his common clothes. Smiling at each other, they stepped off the curb and walked towards each other and met in the middle of the road and stood a couple of feet in front of me, eyes locked on one another and sparkling. The brunette man who I’ve come to know as Harold Mark Christopher Judd, reached out a hand and took Dougie’s. They turned their heads and smiled at me, before turning back around. And together they walked towards the sunset, slowly fading away and leaving behind their tale.
The End.
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