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Page 12
My mother's seclusion and living apart from us was not on _that_
account. I often saw her: she was very dear and sweet to me, and had
quiet eyes the very reverse of a person mentally deranged. My father, I
know, went to visit her when she lay dying; and I remember we all wore
mourning. My uncle has told me they had a deep regard for each other:
but disagreed, and were independent enough to choose living apart.
I do not remember my father ever speaking of her to us as children: but
I am sure there was no state of health to be concealed.
Last night I was talking to Aunt N---- about her. "A very dear woman,"
she told me, "but your father was never so much alive to her worth as
the rest of us." Of him she said, "A dear, fine fellow: but not at all
easy to get on with." Him, of course, I have a continuous recollection
of, and "a fine fellow" we did think him. My mother comes to me more
rarely, at intervals.
Don't talk me down your mother's throat: but tell her as much as she cares
to know of this. I am very proud of my "stock" which she thinks "poor"!
Dear, how much I have written on things which can never concern us
finally, and so should not ruffle us while they last! Hold me in your
heart always, always; and the world may turn adamant to me for aught I
care! Be in my dreams to-night!
LETTER XVI.
But, Dearest: When I think of you I never question whether what I think
would be true or false in the eyes of others. All that concerns you seems
to go on a different plane where evidence has no meaning or existence:
where nobody exists or means anything, but only we two alone, engaged in
bringing about for ourselves the still greater solitude of two into one.
Oh, Beloved, what a company that will be! Take me in your arms, fasten me
to your heart, breathe on me. Deny me either breath or the light of day: I
am yours equally, to live or die at your word. I shut my eyes to feel your
kisses falling on me like rain, or still more like sunshine,--yet most of
all like kisses, my own dearest and best beloved!
Oh, we two! how wonderful we seem! And to think that there have been
lovers like us since the world began: and the world not able to tell us
one little word of it:--not well, so as to be believed--or only along
with sadness where Fate has broken up the heavens which lay over some
pair of lovers. Oenone's cry, "Ah me, my mountain shepherd," tells us
of the joy when it has vanished, and most of all I get it in that song
of wife and husband which ends:--
"Not a word for you,
Not a lock or kiss,
Good-by.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this:
I must die."
It was a woman wrote that: and we get love there! Is it only when joy is
past that we can give it its full expression? Even now, Beloved, I break
down in trying to say how I love you. I cannot put all my joy into my
words, nor all my love into my lips, nor all my life into your arms,
whatever way I try. Something remains that I cannot express. Believe,
dearest, that the half has not yet been spoken, neither of my love for
you, nor of my trust in you,--nor of a wish that seems sad, but comes in a
very tumult of happiness--the wish to die so that some unknown good may
come to you out of me.
Not till you die, dearest, shall I die truly! I love you now too much for
your heart not to carry me to its grave, though I should die now, and you
live to be a hundred. I pray you may! I cannot choose a day for you to
die. I am too grateful to life which has given me to you to say--if I
were dying--"Come with me, dearest!" Though, how the words tempt me as I
write them!--Come with me, dearest: yes, come! Ah, but you kiss me more, I
think, when we say good-by than when meeting; so you will kiss me most of
all when I have to die:--a thing in death to look forward to! And, till
then,--life, life, till I am out of my depth in happiness and drown in
your arms!
Beloved, that I can write so to you,--think what it means; what you have
made me come through in the way of love, that this, which I could not have
dreamed before, comes from me with the thought of you! You told me to be
still--to let you "worship": I was to write back acceptance of all your
dear words. Are you never to be at my feet, you ask. Indeed, dearest, I do
not know how, for I cannot move from where I am! Do you feel where my
thoughts kiss you? You would be vexed with me if I wrote it down, so I do
not. And after all, some day, under a bright star of Providence, I may
have gifts for you after my own mind which will allow me to grow proud.
Only now all the giving comes from you. It is I who am enriched by your
love, beyond knowledge of my former self. Are _you_ changed, dearest, by
anything I have done?
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