And now, Thyrsis, I have no more strength to write. I only wish I had some power to make you know what I have felt this afternoon—I think if I could, you would have no more doubt of me. And I believe it is my God-given right not to doubt myself.
I will write no more—I have written enough to make you answer one of two things. “Come with me,” or, “I would rather go alone.” I know which one it will be, even now in my wretchedness. The sky is so blue this evening, and everything is so beautiful—and I am trying so hard to be right, to feel strong and confident!
XI. Dear Thyrsis:
I have just arisen. I woke in the middle of the night, and there was a spectre sitting by my bedside to frighten me; he succeeded at first, but I managed finally to get rid of him, and to find some peace. Many of your sentences came to me, and I was able to get behind the words, and I saw plainly that the letters were just what you should have written, and that they could not but benefit me. They have accomplished their purpose, I believe—they are burned into my soul, and have placed me rightly in our relation. I shall simply never trust the permission you may give me, in the future, to rest or be satisfied. I shall only hate you, for the pain of some of your words I shall never forget.
The memory of the first two pages of your letter will always put me in mortal terror of you. For the rest, I am very grateful, and I will try to show you how I love your ideal. I can never repay you as long as I live for letting me come with you. Oh Thyrsis, I am sure that I will never think or care whether you love me or not, if only I may go with you and learn how to strive!
I tore up all your love-letters this morning. I kept the last letter—though I do not think I could bear to read it over. I should be afraid of again going through with that despair. Oh, I beg for the time when I shall be obliged to waste none of my minutes—and when I shall have no opportunity of writing you! What time I have spent over your letters and mine!
XII. Dear Thyrsis:
I am restlessly waiting for the supper-bell to ring, and my head is aching intensely, and I am generally topsy-turvy. Alas! alas! the distance that separates us and our understanding!
I received a letter to-day while I was studying—but said I would not open it for a week, that I wanted strength to study. Well, I studied all the afternoon and found it none too easy. When I came home, I thought perhaps it was better to read your letter, which I grimly did.
Do you know, you are keeping me on the rack, literally on the rack, and my flesh and blood do not seem to be able to stand it—my body seems to be the organ that first fails me, my brain is never so tired as my body. I love to think that you are not less merciful to me than you would be to yourself, I feel that you could not have used more cruel whips to yourself. Do you suppose that any disgust, scolding, or malediction to me could, as your wife, hurt me, as your doubt of me hurts me now?
And I just begin to read your letter again, and I tell you, you are a fool. You say you do not know whether you could love any one as you ought—well, I, with all my weakness, know whether I can love, and I love you a thousand times more than you have given me cause to. And you are so hungry! Will you always starve because you are blind? As to being satisfied, how could you be? But you say you will love me as much as I deserve. How much do I deserve—do you know? I sometimes cry out against you and long to get hold of you. If you have genius, why doesn’t it give you some inkling whether you are a man with a heart, not only a stupid boy? And then I see it all plainly, or think I do, and know that you are trying so hard to be right towards us, because you think you love me the way other people love; and you know if I am weak, it would degrade your genius; and you cannot be sure of my character or strength. You cannot know whether I realize the life I am selecting—you have found it hard, and you have every reason to think that I will find it ten times harder; and you love me in a way that is not the highest—but yet you love me enough, thank God, to tell me the whole truth!
I have come to a pass where I can say to myself with truth, that I do not care how much or how little you love me. That depends upon you, as well as myself. I believe the time will come, when you will love me as you ought, and I say this in perfect calm conviction, in all my weakness, and with all my maudlin habits clinging to me. Strangely enough your doubt of me has made me rise up in arms to champion my cause, or else I should lie down forever in the dust, and deny my God.
I wonder whether it is my love for you that makes me believe? I cling to you, as a mother might cling to her child; I cling to you as the embodiment, the promise, of all I will ever find true in life. I look to live in you, to fulfil all my possibilities in you, and if you die or forsake me, all my hope is gone, and I am dead. This is a letter in which I have no scorn or doubt, or ridicule of myself, as formerly.
And then you ask me, “Can a girl brought up in gentleness and sweetness, and innocence of life and of pain, can she say things, feel things like these?” It is the gentleness and sweetness and innocence that are galling to me. I can tolerate no more of them. They have warped me, they have given me no chance. But I have had some pain in my life, and since I have known you I have known more about pain and what it brings, and leaves.—And now I am feeling ill, and I cannot control that. Oh, God!
XIII. Dearest Corydon:
I have a chance to finish the first part of my book to-day, and save myself from Hades; and here I am writing to you—just a line. (Of course it turned out to be six pages!)
Your last letter was very noble; I can only say to you, that the treatment which makes you upbraid me is not done for my sake; that the life which I live is not lived for my sake. You say perhaps you are better than I; it is very possible—I often think so myself; but that is nothing to the point. I should be very wretched if I sat down to think what I am. Oblige me by being better than my ideal—if you can! You must understand, dearest, that behind all that I am doing, there is truth to the soul; and that truth to the soul is love, and the only love. I am seeking for nothing but the privilege of treating you as myself; and rest assured, that if I treat you any differently it will be better than I treat myself! There is no peril in our life except that!
Some day you will understand that I can sometimes feel about myself that I am utterly hateful, utterly false, utterly shallow and bad; and that to get away from myself would be all that I desire in life. I cannot imagine my having such opinion of you; but some dissatisfaction—just a little—I may have. Only let us love perfection, you and I, with all our souls, and I think our love for each other may safely be allowed to take care of itself. Remember the two ships in Clough’s poem, which parted, but sailed by the compass, and reached the same port.
I shall spend no more time comforting you about this.
And dear Corydon, when you are angry at my doubting your power, and say that I do not know you, I can only reply—Why of course I don’t, and neither do you. You find your own self out little by little—why get angry with me because I don’t know it until you tell me? You are a grown woman compared to what you were three months ago; and this character that you ask me to know—well, it takes years of hard labor to prove a character.
XIV. Dearest Corydon:
Do you ever realize how much faith in you I have? As utterly different is your whole life, as if you had been in another world; and through all the wilderness that I have travelled, I hope to drag you. But I cannot carry you, or take you; I must trust in the frenzy of your grip upon me. There is nothing else you could have that I would