The fever may last, they say, for a week longer, or even a
fortnight--but it _decreases_. Yet he is hot still, and very weak.
To to-morrow!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, October 17, 1845.]
Do tell me what you mean precisely by your 'Bells and Pomegranates'
title. I have always understood it to refer to the Hebraic priestly
garment--but Mr. Kenyon held against me the other day that your
reference was different, though he had not the remotest idea how. And
yesterday I forgot to ask, for not the first time. Tell me too why you
should not in the new number satisfy, by a note somewhere, the Davuses
of the world who are in the majority ('Davi sumus, non Oedipi') with a
solution of this one Sphinx riddle. Is there a reason against it?
Occy continues to make progress--with a pulse at only eighty-four this
morning. Are you learned in the pulse that I should talk as if you
were? _I_, who have had my lessons? He takes scarcely anything yet but
water, and his head is very hot still--but the progress is quite
sure, though it may be a lingering case.
Your beautiful flowers!--none the less beautiful for waiting for water
yesterday. As fresh as ever, they were; and while I was putting them
into the water, I thought that your visit went on all the time. Other
thoughts too I had, which made me look down blindly, quite blindly, on
the little blue flowers, ... while I thought what I could not have
said an hour before without breaking into tears which would have run
faster then. To say now that I never can forget; that I feel myself
bound to you as one human being cannot be more bound to another;--and
that you are more to me at this moment than all the rest of the world;
is only to say in new words that it would be a wrong against _myself_,
to seem to risk your happiness and abuse your generosity. For _me_ ...
though you threw out words yesterday about the testimony of a 'third
person,' ... it would be monstrous to assume it to be necessary to
vindicate my trust of you--_I trust you implicitly_--and am not too
proud to owe all things to you. But now let us wait and see what this
winter does or undoes--while God does His part for good, as we know. I
will never fail to you from any human influence whatever--_that_ I
have promised--but you must let it be different from the other sort of
promise which it would be a wrong to make. May God bless you--you,
whose fault it is, to be too generous. You _are_ not like other men,
as I could see from the beginning--no.
Shall I have the proof to-night, I ask myself.
And if you like to come on Monday rather than Tuesday, I do not see
why there should be a 'no' to that. Judge from your own convenience.
Only we must be wise in the general practice, and abstain from too
frequent meetings, for fear of difficulties. I am Cassandra you know,
and smell the slaughter in the bath-room. It would make no difference
in fact; but in comfort, much.