Ah, you opposed very rightly, I dare say, the writing that paper I
spoke of! The process should be so much simpler! I most earnestly
_expect_ of you, my love, that in the event of any such necessity as
was then alluded to, you accept at once in my name _any_ conditions
possible for a human will to submit to--there is no imaginable
condition to which you allow me to accede that I will not joyfully
bend all my faculties to comply with. And you know this--but so, also
do you know _more_ ... and yet 'I may tire of you'--'may forget you'!
I will write again, having the long, long week to wait! And one of the
things I must say, will be, that with my love, I cannot lose my pride
in you--that nothing _but_ that love could balance that pride--and
that, blessing the love so divinely, you must minister to the pride as
well; yes, my own--I shall follow your fame,--and, better than fame,
the good you do--in the world--and, if you please, it shall all be
mine--as your hand, as your eyes--
I will write and pray it from you into a promise ... and your promises
I live upon.
May God bless you! your R.B.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday.
[Post-mark, December 13, 1845.]
Do not blame me in your thoughts for what I said yesterday or wrote a
day before, or think perhaps on the dark side of some other days when
I cannot help it ... always when I cannot help it--you could not
blame me if you saw the full motives as I feel them. If it is
distrust, it is not of _you_, dearest of all!--but of myself
rather:--it is not doubt _of_ you, but _for_ you. From the beginning I
have been subject to the too reasonable fear which rises as my spirits
fall, that your happiness might suffer in the end through your having
known me:--it is for _you_ I fear, whenever I fear:--and if you were
less to me, ... _should_ I fear do you think?--if you were to me only
what I am to myself for instance, ... if your happiness were only as
precious as my own in my own eyes, ... should I fear, do you think,
_then_? Think, and do not blame me.
To tell you to 'forget me when forgetting seemed happiest for you,'
... (was it not _that_, I said?) proved more affection than might go
in smoother words.... I could prove the truth of _that_ out of my
heart.
And for the rest, you need not fear any fear of mine--my fear will not
cross a wish of yours, be sure! Neither does it prevent your being all
to me ... all: more than I used to take for all when I looked round
the world, ... almost more than I took for all in my earliest dreams.
You stand in between me and not merely the living who stood closest,
but between me and the closer graves, ... and I reproach myself for
this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different
thing.
As to unfavourable influences, ... I can speak of them quietly, having
foreseen them from the first, ... and it is true, I have been thinking
since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here,
and _should_, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power
would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two
affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties,
I feel, ... since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all.
For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil,--ah, you
do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the
side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder--and
I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with--it is
impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing
and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved
enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the
meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so
many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors,
but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure:--and then, the
one person, by a curious anomaly, _never_ draws an inference of this
order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand,
point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours--and so it is,
at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.
I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with
your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I
cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be
grateful to you.--
But for the paper--no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a
prepared apology for something wrong. And besides--the apology would
be nothing but the offence in another form--unless you said it was all
a mistake--(_will_ you, again?)--that it was all a mistake and you
were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said _that_, it would
be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than
nothing: and would not save me--which you were thinking of, I
know--would not save me the least of the stripes. For
'conditions'--now I will tell you what I said once in a jest....
'If a prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal
descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of
good-behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel, in the other'--?
'Why even _then_,' said my sister Arabel, 'it would not _do_.' And she
was right, and we all agreed that she was right. It is an obliquity of
the will--and one laughs at it till the turn comes for crying. Poor
Henrietta has suffered silently, with that softest of possible
natures, which hers is indeed; beginning with implicit obedience, and
ending with something as unlike it as possible: but, you see, where
money is wanted, and where the dependence is total--see! And when
once, in the case of the one dearest to me; when just at the last he
was involved in the same grief, and I attempted to make over my
advantages to him; (it could be no sacrifice, you know--_I_ did not
want the money, and could buy nothing with it so good as his
happiness,--) why then, my hands were seized and tied--and then and
there, in the midst of the trouble, came the end of all! I tell you
all this, just to make you understand a little. Did I not tell you
before? But there is no danger at present--and why ruffle this present
with disquieting thoughts? Why not leave that future to itself? For
me, I sit in the track of the avalanche quite calmly ... so calmly as
to surprise myself at intervals--and yet I know the reason of the
calmness well.
For Mr. Kenyon--dear Mr. Kenyon--he will speak the softest of words,
if any--only he will think privately that you are foolish and that I
am ungenerous, but I will not say so any more now, so as to teaze you.
There is another thing, of more consequence than _his_ thoughts, which
is often in my mind to ask you of--but there will be time for such
questions--let us leave the winter to its own peace. If I should be
ill again you will be reasonable and we both must submit to God's
necessity. Not, you know, that I have the least intention of being
ill, if I can help it--and in the case of a tolerably mild winter, and
with all this strength to use, there are probabilities for me--and
then I have sunshine from _you_, which is better than Pisa's.
And what more would you say? Do I not hear and understand! It seems to
me that I do both, or why all this wonder and gratitude? If the
devotion of the remainder of my life could prove that I hear, ...
would it be proof enough? Proof enough perhaps--but not gift enough.
May God bless you always.
I have put _some_ of the hair into a little locket which was given to
me when I was a child by my favourite uncle, Papa's only brother, who
used to tell me that he loved me better than my own father did, and
was jealous when I was not glad. It is through him in part, that I am
richer than my sisters--through him and his mother--and a great grief
it was and trial, when he died a few years ago in Jamaica, proving by
his last act that I was unforgotten. And now I remember how he once
said to me: 'Do you beware of ever loving!--If you do, you will not do
it half: it will be for life and death.'
So I put the hair into his locket, which I wear habitually, and which
never had hair before--the natural use of it being for perfume:--and
this is the best perfume for all hours, besides the completing of a
prophecy.