What says the body when they spring
Some monstrous torture-engine's whole
Strength on it? No more says the soul,
and you never wrote anything which _lived_ with me more than _that_.
It is such a dreadful truth. But you knew it for truth, I hope, by
your genius, and not by such proof as mine--I, who could not speak or
shed a tear, but lay for weeks and months half conscious, half
unconscious, with a wandering mind, and too near to God under the
crushing of His hand, to pray at all. I expiated all my weak tears
before, by not being able to shed then one tear--and yet they were
forbearing--and no voice said 'You have done this.'
Do not notice what I have written to you, my dearest friend. I have
never said so much to a living being--I never _could_ speak or write
of it. I asked no question from the moment when my last hope went: and
since then, it has been impossible for me to speak what was in me. I
have borne to do it to-day and to you, but perhaps if you were to
write--so do not let this be noticed between us again--_do not_! And
besides there is no need! I do not reproach myself with such acrid
thoughts as I had once--I _know_ that I would have died ten times over
for _him_, and that therefore though it was wrong of me to be weak,
and I have suffered for it and shall learn by it I hope; _remorse_ is
not precisely the word for me--not at least in its full sense. Still
you will comprehend from what I have told you how the spring of life
must have seemed to break within me _then_; and how natural it has
been for me to loathe the living on--and to lose faith (even without
the loathing), to lose faith in myself ... which I have done on some
points utterly. It is not from the cause of illness--no. And you will
comprehend too that I have strong reasons for being grateful to the
forbearance.... It would have been _cruel_, you think, to reproach me.
Perhaps so! yet the kindness and patience of the desisting from
reproach, are positive things all the same.
Shall I be too late for the post, I wonder? Wilson tells me that you
were followed up-stairs yesterday (I write on Saturday this latter
part) by somebody whom you probably took for my father. Which is
Wilson's idea--and I hope not yours. No--it was neither father nor
other relative of mine, but an old friend in rather an ill temper.
And so good-bye until Tuesday. Perhaps I shall ... not ... hear from
you to-night. Don't let the tragedy or aught else do you harm--will
you? and try not to be 'weary in your soul' any more--and forgive me
this gloomy letter I half shrink from sending you, yet will send.
May God bless you.