I hope this will soon be over. It’s worse than I thought it would be; but I’m glad I came. I wouldn’t like other fellows to be doing this job for me. But when I get home! It seems like a vision of Paradise—you waiting for me, and my home, and good food and a nice, clean bed, and hot water!
I don’t want you to think that I’ve deteriorated, that I’m always thinking of physical things, because I’m not. When you’re always uncomfortable, you can’t help thinking too much about comfort; but I think much more about other things. I think a lot about what is the best way to use a life. I can see lots of things I’ve done wrong. I look forward awfully to making a fresh start. It will all seem so new, like being born again. Everything will seem remarkable and interesting—all sort of things I didn’t use to notice.
And to think that there was a time when I used to think quite calmly about being married to you! Of course, my dear, I always did look forward to it as the greatest possible happiness, but I more or less took it for granted—the sort of happiness a fellow always expects. But now, Angelica, it seems as wonderful and beautiful and far off as heaven. I can’t even really believe that I’ll see you ever again. I’ve got so used to being a lousy, muddy, hunted animal that I can’t believe it will ever end. I don’t even long for the end; it seems so impossible. I have a damnable conviction—an obsession, I suppose they’d call it—that every one gets killed in the war. So many of the chaps I knew have gone, often killed beside me—and in the hospital, dying so sickeningly! I can’t help imagining that every one in the world is dying. So that the idea of coming home and marrying you is—I can’t describe what it is. Really and literally a dream of heaven.
Angelica, darling, don’t disappoint me again! I couldn’t bear it. Write to me faithfully, as often as possible—even every day. It wouldn’t be much to do, for you who are at home and safe and comfortable.
With all my heart,
Eddie.
Now this letter might have disappointed another girl, but not Angelica. She didn’t at all mind its being so little lover-like, so much concerned with Eddie and his feelings, and so little concerned with herself. She was, in fact, very proud that such a learned and serious young man as Eddie should write to her at all. She was overjoyed, exultant, to see that he still wanted her—with a sort of humility in her joy quite unusual in her.
"I won’t disappoint him ever again!" she cried. "I’ll do my very best. I’ll just live for him! And if it’s like a dream of heaven to him," she reflected, "so it is to me. I’ve suffered, too. It couldn’t have been much worse for any one, anywhere. Oh, won’t it be heaven to be safe—to be his wife, and settled there at Buena Vista, and rich, and every one looking up to me? A motor-car of my own, and lovely clothes, and a beautiful room! I’ll have Miss Sillon and Miss Devery out to see me."
She looked at herself in the mirror.
"I’m getting to look refined," she thought; "not factory any more. When I can have real grand clothes, I’ll be beautiful! Vincent said I lost heaven when I stopped loving him," she reflected. "Well, I’ll get it back again, with Eddie!"