Rosamond, you never loved me. I have blinded myself to it. But here, alone in this fort, with death in every breath I draw, many things have become clear to me. This is the truth: you never loved me, but you are still a child. I could have had such patience, oh, my God!—but now I may have no time left for patience.
* * * * *
Rosamond, my rose, I took you before your hour—but I was as one who rides past and sees his flower bloom, and knows that he must pluck it in all haste, to wear on his heart, or leave it for another. I never kissed you but that you turned your cheek. Oh, I could have taken your lips had I wanted to, and I knew it. Now it breaks upon me like a wave, that if God only gave me ten minutes more with you, I could teach you how to love. But no, what is not given is not good to take: I would not rob you of your own gracious gift. Oh, my darling, you wept when I left you, the tears rained down your cheeks into my lips. I kissed your sweet eyes and drank the salt of them, and in that hour of grief you left me your lips at last—but they were open lips, like a child's; what could they give me—who wanted your woman's soul?
* * * * *
The words seemed to spring out of the page; to strike her as she read. She had not loved him. She herself had not known it, but it was true and he had known it. All the blood in her body seemed to rush back to her heart; she felt her cheeks grow cold and stiff in a sudden horror of the discovery. Then, with the reaction, the full tide seemed to turn upon itself and rush tingling through her frame. With a burning face she bent over the lines and read them avidly again—and again. How he had loved her! Ah, she felt what love meant, now! She understood! She was no longer the rigid, self-centered schoolgirl, looking forth on the narrow boundaries of her own ethics and deeming them the limits of life. She was a woman, a woman with a heart for him, for the man who had selected her; a woman with a passion leaping to his own. And he ... he was dead! No, no; he was not dead, he must not be dead! If she only knew how to reach him.... "It is we who make our dead dead." He must be somewhere. By that very craving of her whole being for him he must exist to answer it. And wheresoever he was, the cry of her soul must surely reach him and call him back to her.
Outside, in the winter sunshine, a robin began to pipe. The exultant beating of her heart slowed down; the eddy that had seized her fell away from her. Her spirit, that had seemed about to be caught up into some realm of ecstasy where pain was inextricably blent with joy, sank back into the material bondage. She heaved a great sigh and languidly took up the next sheet.
After his love cry, Harry English, too, had relapsed into the everyday cares; this entry was dated March 23.
My first act as C.O. here has been to reduce the rations one third. The dear old Major could not bring himself to do it. "We'll have as good a time, boys, as can be expected in the circumstances, and then, by George, if they don't come to get us loose we'll make a rush for it. A man can die but once; but we won't die by inches, if I know it." It was a jolly soldier's doctrine in its way, and had a dash of fatalism in it that suited our lads here down to the ground. But now that I have the management of the business, I cannot see my duty in that light. This fort is but a little peg in England's machinery—but lose a peg and who can tell what may happen to the machine! So your husband holds the fort, Rosamond, and will hold it to the last minute of the last hour, to the last pinch of pea-flour and the last bag of gunpowder to blow the last of us up! And to-day we begin to draw in our belts.
* * * * *
Vane's got a touch of fever. He's never really looked up since the Major went. Poor little chap, he'll see plenty more. It has rained three nights, and the men are drenched. Our sick list is increasing. Old Bethune's getting quite fit again, however, and that's a comfort to me. Queer chap, he lies on his back and reads an odd volume of Browning and hasn't a word to throw to a dog; and, with all his poetry, if I know him, not an aspiration or a thought except his men and his work.