If Randolph were here I could discuss this with him. Perhaps it is as well he is not-it belongs to my sphere of influence and responsibility.
JUNE
Patience and her brood departed this morning for Dover, all smiles and fluttering handkerchiefs. I hope they had a smooth crossing. I hope they enjoy to the full their seaside pleasures. Another letter is come from Randolph, just as they had set off, full (the letter that is) of sea air and breezes and other delightful free forces. London is brassy hot and heavy-I think we may have a storm. It is unnaturally quiet and sultry. I have resolved to consult Herbert Baulk about Bertha. I felt a headache coming on, and a sense of being flustered by the sudden silence and emptiness of my house again. I retired to my room and slept for two hours, waking somewhat refreshed, though with a vestigial headache
JUNE
Herbert Baulk came and stayed to take tea and talk. I proposed a game of chess-because I thought it might distract him from a too vehement expression of his doubts and certainties, and because I enjoy these miniature campaigns. He was pleased to tell me that I played very well for a lady-I was content to accept this, since I won handsomely.
I asked him about Bertha. He told me of an institution that makes very handsome provision for women in her position to be brought to bed and if at all possible re-established in a useful trade. He said he would inquire if she might be accepted-I was bold enough to engage myself-that is, my dearest Randolph-to contribute to her keep until her lying-in, if that might aid in securing a bed for her. He is told the dormitories are kept spotlessly clean by the exertions of the inmates themselves, and that the food is plain but nourishing, and cooked by the women themselves in the same way.
JUNE
I slept badly and as a result had a strange fragmented dream in which I was playing chess with Herbert Baulk, who had decreed that my Queen could move only one square, as his King did. I knew there was injustice here but could not in my dreaming folly realise that this was to do with the existence of my King who sat rather large and red on the back line and seemed to be incapacitated. I could see the moves She should have made, like errors in a complicated pattern of knitting or lace-but she must only lumpishly shuffle back and forth, one square at a time. Mr Baulk (always in my dream) said calmly, "You see I told you you could not win," and I saw it was so, but was unreasonably agitated and desirous above all of moving my Queen freely across the diagonals. It is odd, when I think of it, that in chess the female may make the large runs and cross freely in all ways-in life it is much otherwise.
Mr Baulk came again in the afternoon and spoke eloquently and at length about the wickedness of imputing fraudulent motives to the New Testament miracles, most especially that of the resurrection of Lazarus. He said inquiries were going on promisingly as to the institution for Bertha. I have not told her of it, lest her hopes be raised only to be dashed. She goes slowly and dully enough about her work, with a puffed face.
JUNE
A surprise! A small package came, containing a gift from my beloved Randolph, with a poem, all for me. He has been to Whitby, a fishing-town, where, he writes, the local people have a highly-developed art of polishing and carving jet which is cast up on their beaches and made by them into useful buttons and also decorative objects and jewellery. He sends me a most exquisite brooch, carved with a wreath of Roses of Yorkshire-all with their thorny twigs entwined and leafage-it is both artistic and wonderfully truthful. It is blacker than soot, and yet every way you turn its facets, it sparkles with light and a kind of angry energy of its own-one of the qualities of jet is that if rubbed it will attract light bodies, as in animal magnetism. It is a form of lignite, R. writes, obviously delighted with the substance, an organic stone, like coal, of course. I have some jet beads, and have seen many of course, but never any to match this for depth of darkness or brilliance of sheen.
I transcribe his poem here, for it is worth more to me than the lovely gift itself. Despite all We have been so happy in our life together, even our separations contribute to the trust and deep affection that is between us.
I love a paradox and so I send
White Yorkshire roses carved in sombre jet
Their summer frailty fixed here without end
A life in death but not funereal yet
As ancient forests in their black deaths warm
Our modern hearths with primal vanished light
So may our love, safe in your heart from harm
Shine on, when we are grey, and make us bright.
JUNE
Not a good day. I told Bertha she must go, and that Herbert Baulk would arrange for her to be received at the Magdalen Home if she consented to it. She answered me not a word but stared and stared, breathing very heavily, and a dark plum-red in colour, as though she was unable to take in what I was saying. I repeated that Mr Baulk had been very kind, and that she was very fortunate, and all I heard was this fierce sighing or panting breath, somehow filling my little sitting-room. I dismissed her, saying I expected an answer when she had thought over the offer; I should have added that I expected her to be away by the end of next week, but could not. What will become of her? The mail brought a whole heap of letters of the kind we are increasingly in receipt of-inclosing poems or parts of poems, pressed flowers for his Bible or Shakespeare, requests for autographs, recommendations (impertinent) for his reading, and humble or sometimes peremptory requests for him to read Epic Poems or treatises or even novels, which their authors believe may interest him, or may be helped by his recommendation. I answer those gently enough, wishing them well, and saying how very busy He is-which is quite true. How do they expect him to continue to "astonish and delight" them with "his recondite ideas," as one put it, if they do not leave him free time to pursue his reading and intricate thought? Among these letters was one requesting an interview with mepersonally in a matter of great importance, the writer said, to me myself. This too is not unusual-many, especially young women-appeal to me in order to come into close quarters with my dear one. I replied civilly that I did not grant personal interviews to strangers, as too many were requested, but that if the writer had anything very particular to communicate I would beg her in the first instance to write to me with some indication of the matter in question. We shall see if this produces anything or nothing, pertinence, or, as I suspect, something vague and crazed.