Saturday, October 9, 1915. Oh, my journal, my journal! I dreamed of my white-haired boy again! How I wish I never had! If only I had always been able to think of him as I saw him on Wednesday night and Thursday! I was once more at the war. You know what funny things dreams are. In the trenches I again saw Fred and Charlie and Tom the butcher-boy, and the young fellow who used to bring the groceries. But this time they were all in action; when I saw them before they were resting. The air was heavy with battle-smoke; the great guns roared and reverberated; shells screamed and burst about me. It was like night, although I knew that it was daytime. As I stood [160] and watched—looking for somebody—four Red Cross men passed me. They were bearing a stretcher, and on the stretcher was a mangled form. His face was hidden by his arm, half lying across his eyes. A strange impulse seized me. I sprang forward, raised his arm in the semi-darkness; there was a sudden flash caused by I know not what, and in the light of that fearful and revealing flash I recognized my white-haired boy! I trudged beside the stretcher to the hospital, knowing neither what I did nor what I said. And when we reached the hospital, my white-haired boy was dead! My white-haired boy, my white-haired boy, my white-haired boy was dead! Oh that I had never dreamed again!
Sunday, October 10, 1915. I dreamed once more, but not of my white-haired boy. I dreamed of myself; pity me that I had nothing better to dream of! I am only a girl; but in my dream I saw myself an old woman, old and lonely! Oh, so very, very lonely! I was sitting, I thought, in the dusk beside a bright and cheery fire in a neat and cosy little room. Neat and cosy, but oh, so lonely; and I felt sorry for myself, very sorry. For the self that I saw in my dream was a sad old self, a disappointed old self, a self that had fought bravely against being soured, but a self that had, after all, [161] only partly succeeded. It was not a nice dream; the nice dreams that I had earlier in the week will never come again. No, it was not a nice dream, and I awoke feeling uneasy and unhappy; and my head was aching.
* * * * *
Christmas Eve, 1973. And so, with a shaky, withered hand, I have copied into the last pages of my journal the entries that I made in the first of these old volumes. What did they mean, those dreams that came to me so long ago? Was there a white-haired boy at the war, a white-haired boy who, if there had been no war, or if just one cruel shell had failed to explode, would have been the glory of my life and the father of my children? But there was a war, and the fatal shell did burst, and my white-haired boy and I never met, never met. The five happy children—those two fine boys and the three lovely girls—will never now gladden these dim old eyes of mine. Those troops of grandchildren, and those hosts of unborn generations that I saw in my happy fancy, will never leave the land of dreams and alight on this old world. In the days of the war, I remember how people wept with the widows, and sorrowed with the mothers whose brave sons were stricken down. And, God knows, none of that sympathy was wasted. Oh, [162] it was heart-breaking to see the lusty women who would never see their husbands again; and the broken mothers who would never even have the poor consolation of visiting the graves of their fallen sons. And I was only a girl, a girl of nineteen. And nobody wept with me. I did not even weep for myself. Nobody knew about my white-haired boy. I did not know. But I know now. Yes, I know now. And God knows; I pillow my poor tired old head on that, God knows, God knows! And so this, then, is to be my last Christmas! Ah, well, so be it! And perhaps—who can tell?—perhaps, in a world where we women shall know neither wars, nor weddings, nor widowhood, I shall before next Christmas have found the face of my girlish dreams!
[163]
VI
THE RIVER
It is my great good fortune to dwell on the green and picturesque banks of a broad and noble river. ‘Rivers,’ says an old Spanish proverb which Izaak Walton quotes with a fine smack of approval, ‘rivers were made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration.’ Let us beware lest we fall beneath the Spaniard’s lash. For myself, I can at least affirm that I never saunter beside these blue, fast-flowing waters without feeling that the lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places. It is wonderful how, after awhile, the winding river seems to weave itself into the very texture and fabric of one’s life. You stroll by it, bathe in it, row on it, fish in it, until every rock and every bank, every crag and every cliff, every twist and every bay, every deep and every shallow, takes its place among the intimacies and fond familiarities of life. It is one of the wonders of the world that this little island in the southern seas should pour into the Pacific so many fine majestic streams. And here, beside the lordliest of them all, I have made [164] my home. It is good to stand on these green banks, to survey the great expanse of gleaming waters, and to see the stately ships glide in and out. I often think of that early morning when John Forster found Carlyle standing beside the Thames at Chelsea, lost in an evident reverie of admiration. ‘I should as soon have thought of assaulting him as of addressing him,’ says Forster. To be sure! We do lots of things in this life of which we have no reason to be ashamed, things that are indeed altogether to our credit, yet in the performance of which we do not care to be discovered. It would be a sad old world, for example, if love-making went out of fashion; but no man cares to be caught in the act, for all that. Carlyle was caught making love to the Thames, as I have often made love to the Derwent, and he keenly resented the intrusion. ‘He abruptly turned away,’ adds the offender, ‘and moved across the roadway toward Cheyne Row, with that curious slow shuffle habitual with him, and I saw him no more.’
Why, my very Bible seems a new book as I ponder its pages by the banks of the Derwent. What a different story the Old Testament would have had to tell if Jerusalem
had stood by the side of a river like this! The Jews never forgave the frowning Providence that denied to their fair city a river. They heard how Babylon stood proudly surveying [165] the shining waters of the Euphrates, how Nineveh was beautified by the lordly Tigris, how Thebes glittered in stately grandeur on the Nile, and how Rome sat in state beside the Tiber; and they were consumed with envy because no broad river protected them from their foes, and bore to their gates the wealthy merchandise of many lands. I never noticed until I dwelt by these blue waters how all the Psalms and prophecies are coloured by this phase of Judean life. The prophets were for ever dreaming of the river; the psalmists were for ever singing of the river. Nothing delighted the people like a vision, such as visited Ezekiel, of a broad river rushing out from Jerusalem. No greater or more glowing message ever reached the disconsolate and riverless people than when Isaiah proclaimed, ‘The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby!’ Jehovah, that is to say, shall impart to Jerusalem all the advantages of a river without any of its attendant dangers. Many a faithless river, by bearing the destroyer on its bosom to the city gates, had proved the undoing of the people after all. But no such fate shall overwhelm Jerusalem. And, hearing this, the riverless city was comforted.
It is recorded of the Right. Hon. John Burns [166] that, in the days when he was President of the Local Government Board, he found himself strolling on the Terrace of the House of Commons, surveying, with all the transports of a born Londoner, the shining waters of the Thames. His reverie was, however, rudely interrupted by a supercilious American who was inclined to regard with scornful contempt the object of Mr. Burns’ ecstatic admiration. ‘After all,’ the American demanded, ‘what is it but a ditch compared with the Missouri or the Mississippi?’ This was more than even a Cabinet Minister could be expected to stand. ‘The Missouri and the Mississippi!’ Mr. Burns exclaimed in a fine burst of patriotic indignation. ‘The Missouri and the Mississippi are water, sir, and nothing but water; but that,’ pointing to the Thames, ‘that, sir, is liquid history, liquid history!’ Yes, Mr. Burns is quite right