[Postmark: July 22, 1846]
Wednesday Morning.
I did not go out yesterday, and was very glad not to
have a command laid on me to go out, the wind blew so
full of damp and dreariness. Then it was pleasanter to lie
on the sofa and think of you, which I did, till at last I
actually dreamed of you, falling asleep for that purpose.
As to Flush, he came upstairs with a good deal of shame
in the bearing of his ears, and straight to me — no indeed !
I would not speak to him — then he went up to Arabel . .
‘ naughty Flush, go away ‘ . . and Wilson, . . who had
whipped him before, ‘ because it was right,’ she said . . in a
fit of poetical justice, . . did not give him any consolation.
So he lay down on the floor at my feet looking from under
his eyebrows at me. I did not forgive him till nearly
eight o’clock however. And I have not yet given him your
cakes. Almost I am inclined to think now that he has not
a soul. To behave so to you ! It is nearly as bad as if
I had thrown the coffee-cup ! Wicked Flush ! — Do you
imagine that I scolded Wilson when she confessed to having
whipped him ? I did not. It was done with her hand, and
not very hardly perhaps, though ‘he cried,’ she averred to
me — and if people, like Flush, choose to behave like dogs
savagely, they must take the consequences indeed, as dogs
usually do ! And you, so good and gentle to him ! Anyone
but you, would have said ‘ hasty words ‘ at least. I
think I shall have a muzzle for him, to make him harmless
while he learns to know you. Would it not be a good
plan ?
But nobody heard yesterday of either your visit or of
Flush’s misdoings . . so Wilson was discreet, I suppose, as
she usually is, by the instinct of her vocation. Of all the
persons who are not in our confidence, she has the most
certain knowledge of the truth. Dearest, we shall be able
to have Saturday. There will be no danger in it.
Perhaps in the days to come we shall look back on these
days as covetable things. Will you do so, because you
were loved in them as a beginning, or because you were
free ? (Am I not as bad as Flush, to ask such questions ?)
I shall look back on these days gratefully and gladly, because
the good in them has overcome the evil, for the first time in
days of mine. Yet my position is worse than yours on some
accounts — now. Henrietta has had a letter from Capt.
Surtees Cook who says in it, she says, . . ‘ I hope that poor
Ba will have courage to the end.’ There’s a generous sympathy !
Tell me that there is none in the world !
Will you let me know how you are ? Such a letter
you wrote to me on Sunday ! Ah ! — to be anything to
you . . . what is the colour of ambition afterwards ? When
I look forwards I can see no work and no rest, but what is
for you and in you. Even Duty seems to concentrate
itself into one Debt — Dearest !
Yet it will be a little otherwise perhaps ! — not that ever
I shall love you otherwise or less — No.
You shall see some day at Pisa what I will not show you
now. Does not Solomon say that ‘ there is a time to read
what is written.’ If he doesn’t, he ought.
Your very own BA.