I am frightened, dearest, I am frightened at death. Not only
for fear it should take me altogether away from you instead of to you,
but for other reasons besides,--instincts which I thought gone but am
not rid of even yet. No healthy body, or body with power of enjoyment in
it, wishes to die, I think: and no heart with any desire still living
out of the past. We know nothing at all really: we only think we
believe, and hope we know; and how thin that sort of conviction gets
when in our extremity we come face to face with the one immovable fact
of our own death waiting for us! That is what I have to go through. Yet
even the fear is a relief: I come upon something that I can meet at
last; a challenge to my courage whether it is still to be found here in
this body I have worn so weak with useless lamentations. If I had your
hand, or even a word from you, I think I should not be afraid: but
perhaps I should. It is all one. Good-by: I am beginning at last to feel
a meaning in that word which I wrote at your bidding so long-ago. Oh,
Beloved, from face to feet, good-by! God be with you wherever you go and
I do not!
LETTER LXXXIV.
Dearest: I am to have news of you. Arthur came to me last night, and told
me that, if I wished, he would bring me word of you. He goes to-morrow. He
put out the light that I might not see his face: I felt what was there.
You should know this of him: he has been the dearest possible of human
beings to me since I lost you. I am almost not unblessed when I have him
to speak to. Yet we can say so little together. I guess all he means. An
endless wish to give me comfort:--and I stay selfish. The knowledge that
he would stolidly die to serve me hardly touches me.
Oh, look kindly in his eyes if you see him: mine will be looking at you
out of his!
LETTER LXXXV.
Good-morning, Beloved; there is sun shining. I wonder if Arthur is with
you yet?
If faith could still remove mountains, surely I should have seen you
long ago. But if I were to see you now, I should fear that it meant you
were dead.
That the same world should hold you and me living and unseen by each
other is a great mystery. Will love ever explain it?
I wish I could bid the sun stand still over your meeting with Arthur so
that I might know. We were so like each other once. Time has worn it
off: but he is like what I was. Will you remember me well enough to
recognize me in him, and to be a little pitiful to my weak longing for a
word this one last time of all? Beloved, I press my lips to yours, and
pray--speak!
LETTER LXXXVI.
Dearest: To-day Arthur came and brought me your message: I have at my
heart your "profoundly grateful remembrances." Somewhere else unanswered
lies your prayer for God to bless me. To answer that, dearest, is not in
His hands but in yours. And the form of your message tells me it will not
be,--not for this body and spirit that have been bound together so long in
truth to you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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