Wednesday—5 p.m.
[Post-mark, June 4, 1846].
Then let it be as we meant it should be. And do you forgive me, my own, if I have teazed you ... vexed you. Do I not always tell you that you are too good for me?
Yet the last of my intentions was, this time, to doubt of your attachment for me. Believe that. I will write to-night more fully—but never can be more than at this moment
Your
Ba.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 4, 1846.]
Nothing at all had it to do with your Magna Charta, beloved, that question of mine. After you were gone the other day and I began turning your words over and over, ... (so, I make hay of them to feed the horses of the sun!) it struck me that you had perhaps an instinct of common sense, which, with a hand I did not see and a voice I could not hear, drew you perhaps. So I thought I would ask. For after all, this is rather a serious matter we are upon, and if you think that you are not to have your share of responsibility ... that you are not to consider and arrange and decide, and perform your own part, ... you are as much mistaken as ever I was. ‘Judge what I say.’ For my part, I have done, it seems to me, nearly as much as I can do. I do not, at least, seem to myself to have any power to doubt even, of the path to choose for the future. If for any reason you had seen wisdom in delay, it would have been a different thing—and the seeing was a possible thing, you will admit. I did not ask you if you desired a delay, but if you saw a reason for it. In the meantime I was absolutely yours, I remembered thoroughly, ... and the question went simply to enquire what you thought it best to do with your own.
For me I agree with your view—I never once thought of proposing a delay on my own account. We are standing on hot scythes, and because we do not burn in the feet, by a miracle, we have no right to count on the miracle’s prolongation. Then nothing is to be gained—and everything may be lost—and the sense of mask-wearing for another year would be suffocating. This for me. And for yourself, I shall not be much younger or better otherwise, I suppose, next year. I make no motion, then, for a delay, further than we have talked of, ... to the summer’s end.
My good ... happiness! Have I any that did not come from you, that is not in you, that you should talk of my good apart from yours? I shudder to look back to the days when you were not for me. Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that there seemed no room even for the tears. And it is unexampled generosity of yours, that, having done all for me, you should write as you always do, about my giving ... giving! Among the sons of men there is none like you as I believe and know, ... and every now and then declare to my sisters.