Back from the Chemin des Dames affair to hear of my father’s death in the month of May. I have, of course, expected it from day to day. Yet now that it has come, it brings home to me what will some day come to me, as nothing else has done. Then, too, I have the feeling of suddenly stepping into the front rank and looking into vacancy—a feeling of others crowding at my back—and I ask myself, incredulously, if thirty years is now my allotted span. Strangely enough, I don’t think of what may happen here.
July, In Rest Camp
Letters from home; from Anne, Molly and two from Bernoline. I had almost forgotten the existence of that other world: not its existence, but its power to reach out to me. The Champagne offensive has been a ghastly failure, terrible blunders committed, useless sacrifices. We all feel it and the poilus, too, are not deceived. At the close of a brave, gossipy letter of Bernoline’s about the war frenzy at home, a passage that I have read over three times,—one that I do not comprehend.
When you write me, David, that you can never think of me but as a woman to whom every good act is instinctive,—how sadly you misjudge me. David, this very ideal you have of me makes me examine my conscience so restlessly. Don’t idealize me. See me as I am,—a very human and weak woman, who falls far short of the ideal you raise of her. No, mon ami, the way is not clear before me, nor do I know yet what I shall do. If you knew how I am tortured by remorse at times, I who write to you of duty and sacrifice,—who am I to preach to you! I try to say to myself that whatever God has sent to me in this world, it is His will, as He sees the good of my soul. If He tries me, it is for His purpose. And yet, with all my struggling, I do not accept it. I cannot; God have pity on me!
It is hard to know the right, when others are involved. I should not write down this moment of weakness, when all I should mean to you is courage and fortitude. David, if you ever pray, pray for me in these coming months. Would that I could open my heart to you.
B.
What a terrible disaster it has been in Champagne. And you have been in it! Your last letter spoke of your being attached to General La Pierre’s staff. I have had you in my thoughts every moment.
It is the first time she has written me so. I am quite puzzled. What can such a clear, direct nature know of remorse?
* * * * *
Ben was killed at the front on the eighth of July. He brought down an enemy plane and fell into a trap. His machine came down in flames, near X——. We were not thirty miles away.
* * * * *
Did he do it deliberately, or not? I shall probably never know for, if he did, he would never leave a hint of it. Yet I do not think he deliberately threw his life away. It was not his way of playing the game. Letty is in Paris. I shall have to see her.
I wonder if Ben left a letter behind him and if that letter will tell me what I dread to know at the last.