And, in this moment of all moments, a letter from Letty. Others I had taken and torn to shreds. When this came, I laughed out loud and opened it.
David mio:You love me: you have always loved me, or you could not have hated me so. It is in your blood. I loved you and I love you, or I could never have done the thing I did.Que voulez vous?We are made as we are made. Why struggle, and what is your victory worth?Come back to me. You will find me changed in all but one thing. Yes, I am a little pagan: I am good and bad: I am capricious, changing, cruel, but I love you!Tu te souviens?What is all the rest worth?Viens, pour un jour or pour toujours! A ton plaisir, mon roi!You will not believe me? I sign my name in full.Letty de Tinquerville Littledale.A woman who dares to do thatmustlove you!Letty.
David mio:
You love me: you have always loved me, or you could not have hated me so. It is in your blood. I loved you and I love you, or I could never have done the thing I did.Que voulez vous?We are made as we are made. Why struggle, and what is your victory worth?
Come back to me. You will find me changed in all but one thing. Yes, I am a little pagan: I am good and bad: I am capricious, changing, cruel, but I love you!Tu te souviens?What is all the rest worth?Viens, pour un jour or pour toujours! A ton plaisir, mon roi!
You will not believe me? I sign my name in full.
Letty de Tinquerville Littledale.
A woman who dares to do thatmustlove you!
Letty.
We struggle on and we say to ourselves that we can struggle just so far. Yet we go on struggling until there comes a moment of utter defeat, a moment of terrible weakness, of crushing moral fatigue, when the will cries out that too much has been asked of it and we are ready to throw over everything. Up to such a breaking point we can contend: that reached, everything crumbles and the rest is panic. I know. I have been there.
*****
Thank God I was not in the Paris of Letty at that moment, when I was saying to myself, “Why be tormented by a conscience—why deny one’s self for an ideal—when all it means is this dead loneliness, this blank ache of denial, this laying bare of a hundred nerves to daily pain!”
A sudden hatred swept over me against myself, a scorn and a bitter rebellion. Why couldn’t I be like other men, who close up their hearts, cease dreaming, and avoid the price of great emotions? To take life in little measures, to play in the shallows and avoid the tempestuous depths: other men, most men, live in this tranquil, tolerant attitude; why not I? They may never know the exaltation of a moment but they will not bear the dead despair of years.
Yes, just for that moment—the bitterest in my life—everything in me rebelled against myself. I cursed myself: I ridiculed my compunctions and my sickly conscience, my oversensitive imagination, and my groping after futility. I hated everything I was and everything I had done that had brought me to this living bankruptcy. I broke into a laugh—a laugh of contempt and derision at myself—flung into my things and went riotously into the night, seeking some befuddling oblivion,—some sudden end of this martyrdom of discipline—and, after a quarter of an hour’s blind wandering, I turned abruptly into an open chapel and down on my knees, there to remain inertly until the frenzy had spent itself! But—if it had been Paris—and Letty’s shadowy eyes at myside—
*****
This was two days ago. The storm has passed. Somehow, the struggle has been met anew. I take no credit. That moment of weakness was too real. A man who looks back honestly over his own life is terrified at the things that did not happen,—and not by the strength of his own will, but by the saving quality of circumstance or accident. Few women can understand this: every man will.
*****
Action has cleared my brain—the necessity of going on—of doing some little, appointed thing. The tension is relaxing; the swaying, stumbling conflict has stabilized itself. Arras is saved and we have even counter-attacked the attackers and regained some ground! Many prisoners are coming in.
*****
I have been out with a covering party cleaning up the dugouts and among other discoveries we have made prisoner a fierce-looking old fellow—quite a prize—a Generalvon Holwitz. His left arm was pretty badly shot up. So I was delegated to take him to a dressing station and have it attended to. Brought him back to our post, as he looks pretty much played out, and coffee and a touch of brandy will pull him up amazingly. Even if he is a Boche, he is a gentleman and an officer.
De Saint Omer came in while I was feeding my prisoner, and recognized him as an old acquaintance of pre-war days. Curiously enough, Von Holwitz was visibly upset by the meeting and drew back into his Prussian shell. But that is the way with these war lords,—defeat is something they cannot bear, and I fancy that the humiliation of being made a prisoner is galling to him.
*****
Our dugout is about six miles back of the front lines but as we are in a strategic village the crossroads are heavily bombarded. The cellars are full of refugees. De Saint Omer’s attitude towards his prisoner is strictly courteous but the conversation is along conventional lines, naturally. To-night Von Holwitz sleeps with us; to-morrow he goes to the rear, while we, in all probability, are destined for a forward sector.