_E.B.B. to R.B._
Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 2, 1846.]
Something, you said yesterday, made me happy--'that your liking for me
did not come and go'--do you remember? Because there was a letter,
written at a crisis long since, in which you showed yourself awfully,
as a burning mountain, and talked of 'making the most of your
fire-eyes,' and of having at intervals 'deep black pits of cold
water'!--and the lava of that letter has kept running down into my
thoughts of you too much, until quite of late--while even yesterday I
was not too well instructed to be 'happy,' you see! Do not reproach
me! I would not have 'heard your enemy say so'--it was your own word!
And the other long word _idiosyncrasy_ seemed long enough to cover it;
and it might have been a matter of temperament, I fancied, that a man
of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings
sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at
half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black
beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most
of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... _where_ did they
gape? who could tell? Oh--but lately I have not been crossed so, of
course, with those fabulous terrors--lately that horror of the burning
mountain has grown more like a superstition than a rational fear!--and
if I was glad ... happy ... yesterday, it was but as a tolerably
sensible nervous man might be glad of a clearer moonlight, showing him
that what he had half shuddered at for a sheeted ghoule, was only a
white horse on the moor. Such a great white horse!--call it the
'mammoth horse'--the '_real_ mammoth,' this time!
Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time? Almost it seems
so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and
that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping
on your purple underneath. _Your_ letter, the letter I answered, was
in my heart ... _is_ in my heart--and all the yeses in the world would
not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel. Also, perhaps,
I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction--and it comes to the
same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of
instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from
your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should,
would, _must_, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter. You
understand--you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like.
On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and
better than all! You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the
whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing
beyond you, nor wish to see it. As to all that was evil and sadness to
me, I do not feel it any longer--it may be raining still, but I am in
the shelter and can scarcely tell. If you _could_ be _too dear_ to me
you would be now--but you could not--I do not believe in those
supposed excesses of pure affections--God cannot be too great.
Therefore it is a conditional engagement still--all the conditions
being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health. And shall
I tell you what is 'not to be put in doubt _ever_'?--your goodness,
_that_ is ... and every tie that binds me to you. 'Ordained, granted
by God' it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you,
and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it
at this present point. Still I _do not_--there seems no necessity yet.