Mid-June, and still no word! Now that no new letters ever come, I read the old ones over and over. The one I take out oftenest is the one which says, "No matter what happens, you'll go around in the circle of your days, true to your ideals and your sense of duty. You won't go into a cloud of mourning. . . . You will live out your life as it was intended, just like that star."
Always, until to-night, that letter has been a comfort, because it tells of his wonderful rescue, and gives me the feeling that if he could escape so marvelously one time he can another. But re-reading that paragraph a while ago, I suddenly saw something in it that I'd never discovered before. It shows he must have had a presentiment that he'd never get back to me. He knew what was going to happen, else why should he have said "you won't go into a cloud of mourning . . . you'll live out your life as it was intended!" The discovery of that premonition takes away the last little straw that I've been clinging to. He felt what was going to happen. It has happened. It must be so, for it is over two months now since he was first reported missing.
One goes on because one must. We're made that way on purpose, I suppose. When sight fails we still have touch. We can feel our way through the dark with groping fingers.
All the glad incentive for living is gone, but when I look at the star in the little service flag which stands for Richard, every atom of me lifts itself like a drawn sword to pledge itself to greater effort. His sacrifice shall not be in vain!
And when I look at the star that stands for Father, I make the same vow. He is sacrificing himself just as surely as Richard did, though he's giving his life by inches. His health is going, and his strength. Twenty-four hours at a stretch at the operating table is too much for any man, and that's what he's had to endure a number of times recently after the big enemy offensives. Always he's on a strain. One of Mr. Carver's friends who saw him not long ago, wrote home that he has aged terribly. He looks fifteen years older than when we saw him. Tippy says I'm burning the candle at both ends, but I don't care if I can only keep burning till we've put an end to this mad carnage.
The other day when I passed the Figurehead House, Mrs. Tupman called me in and asked me if I'd be willing to tell the story of Richard's rescue and the little Carrier Pigeon's part in it, at the Town Hall this week. There's to be a big rally for selling Thrift Stamps. She wanted me to show the children the tiny aluminum bracelet and cartridge which held the S. O. S. call. She was sure that if they could hear how one little pigeon saved the lives of two officers, they would be impressed with the importance of small things. They would be more interested in saving their pennies if they could think of their stamps as little wings, speeding across the seas to save the lives of our armies.
But I told her I couldn't. I'd do anything impersonal that she might ask, but I couldn't get up before a crowd and speak of anything so intimately connected with Richard. I could have done it gladly when he was alive, but now that little link of aluminum has associations too sacred for me to hold up for the curious public to gape at.
But after supper, out in the row-boat, I saw things differently. I was paddling around near shore, watching the wonderful afterglow reflected in the water, pink and mother-of-pearl and faintest lavender. It was all unspeakably beautiful, as it has been countless times when Richard was out with me. Because of the conviction that we'd never again see it together, the very beauty of it gave me a lonely, hopeless sort of heart-ache. It is one of the most desolate sensations in the world, and it is a poignant pain to remember that "tender grace of a day that is dead," which "can never come back to me."
As those words floated dreamily through my memory, with them came the recollection of the time I had repeated them in this very boat, and Richard's unexpected answer which set Captain Kidd to barking. I could hear again his hearty laugh and the teasing way he said, "That's no way for a good sport to do." It brought him back so plainly that I could almost see him sitting there opposite me in the boat, so big and cheerful and alive. The sense of nearness to him was almost as comforting as if he had really spoken.