Now, dearest, you cannot return me such delectabilities, so must even be content to tell me what happens to-day and what is said and done and surmised—and how you are ... three times over, how you are, dearest dearest! And I will write to-morrow, and kiss you meanwhile, as now as ever. Bless you, love—
Your R.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Saturday Evening.
[Post-mark, August 17, 1846.]
How I thank for your letter, ever beloved. You were made perfectly to be loved—and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long. Did I tell you that before, so often as I have thought it? It is that which makes me take it all as visionary good—for when one’s Ideal comes down to one, and walks beside one suddenly, what is it possible to do but to cry out ... ‘a dream’? You are the best ... best. And if you loved me only and altogether for pity, (and I think that, more than you think, the sentiment operated upon your generous chivalrous nature), and if you confessed it to me and proved it, and I knew it absolutely—what then? As long as it was love, should I accept it less gladly, do you imagine, because of the root? Should I think it less a gift? should I be less grateful, ... or more? Ah—I have my ‘theory of causation’ about it all—but we need not dispute, and will not, on any such metaphysics. Your loving me is enough to satisfy me—and if you did it because I sate rather on a green chair than a yellow one, it would be enough still for me:—only it would not, for you—because your motives are as worthy always as your acts.—Dearest!
So let us talk of the great conference in Mr. Kenyon’s carriage, in which joined himself, Arabel, Flush and I. First he said ... ‘Did Browning stay much longer with you?’ ‘Yes—some time.’ This was as we were going on our way toward some bridge, whence to look at the Birmingham train. As we came back, he said, with an epical leap in medias res ... ‘What an extraordinary memory our friend Browning has.’ ‘Very extraordinary’—said I—‘and how it is raining.’ I give you Arabel’s report of my reply, for I did not myself exactly remember the full happiness of it—and she assured me besides that he looked ... looked at me ... as a man may look ... And this was everything spoken of you throughout the excursion.
But he spoke of me and observed how well I was—on which Arabel said ‘Yes—she considered me quite well; and that nothing was the matter now but sham.’ Then the railroads were discussed in relation to me ... and she asked him—‘Shouldn’t she try them a little, before she undertakes this great journey to Italy?’ ‘Oh’ ... he replied—‘she is going on no great journey.’ ‘Yes, she will, perhaps—Ba is inclined to be a great deal too wild, and now that she is getting well, I do assure you, Mr. Kenyon.’
To sit upon thorns, would express rather a ‘velvet cushion’ than where I was sitting, while she talked this foolishness. I have been upbraiding her since, very seriously; and I can only hope that the words were taken for mere jest—du bout des lèvres.
Moreover Mr. Kenyon is not going away on Thursday—he has changed his plans: he has put off Cambridge till the ‘spring’—he meets Miss Bayley nowhere—he holds his police-station in London. ‘When are you going’ I asked in my despair, trying to look satisfied. He did not know—‘not directly, at any rate’—‘I need not hope to get rid of him,’ he said aside perhaps.
But we saw the great roaring, grinding Thing ... a great blind mole, it looked for blackness. We got out of the carriage to see closer—and Flush was so frightened at the roar of it, that he leapt upon the coach-box. Also it rained,—and I had ever so many raindrops on my gown and in my face even, ... which pleased me nearly as much as the railroad sight. It is something new for me to be rained upon, you know.