And now truly almost,
‘For all my earthly hopes this (year) did kill.’
It is almost dreadful to look back and see how this book opens with a jest. How full of joke and spirit all seems! The ‘deep waters’ have come this year as never before. But it is a strange wild comfort to find in myself so much capacity for suffering. I had always despised myself as a weak shallow nature, to leave others to suffer and escape with a laugh....
(Wrote one last letter to Frid[[23]] tonight—for her birthday tomorrow. Weak? I think not.)
Well, now to ‘take stock’:
The opening of the year, bright, clear, hopeful. Octavia’s visit to the north, but that no real break. Our delight in our new house,—its quiet and peace. Some disappointment is not letting, but that very endurable. No bar to happiness....
Then the return of Frid and Florence. My unwilling acquaintance ripening gradually into love for Frid, called forth perhaps first by her great love for me.
Then our glorious Whitsuntide at Hurst,—Octa and I. The few days (Thursday to Tuesday) pure unmixed heart sunshine. Purer and deeper if possible than that of Wales.
Then the strange double summons on May 21st., she to Mary Harris, I to the O’Briens. Coming like a thunderbolt on our week, but accepted by both obediently and willingly. Together to London. Then my mission to Tufnell Park. The hurried tea, the night mail, the parting hand pressure as the train moved, ‘in the sure and certain hope’—is it blasphemous so to use the words? I think not. There was a glorious churchlike solemnity always on our love. Well!—then the five months’ parting,—hard it seemed then, but painless—heaven—to what came after.
Perhaps I am not yet meant to see the ‘why’ of all that followed.... We seemed so helpful heavenwards to each other. Never seemed our love truer, deeper, purer,—I know though now that mine could be all three.