And then, when Sunday came, I wrote to Hugo. I had written to him every Sunday since February, when he came home.
‘Hugo, my darling . . . they say that you are dead . . . killed . . . blown to pieces . . . not there anywhere any more. . . . I can’t believe it, for the world is going on . . . it looks just the same now, as it always did . . . and I can’t believe in a world without you in it . . . anywhere at all, for I think, Hugo, that you were the world to me. . .
‘They said: “When the leaves fall, you shall have peace.” Do you remember that? . . . they are falling now. . . .I can see them . . . from the poplar tree at the gate, yellow, dirty leaves that fall in the street . . . but you said that it must not be like that . . . we came away from that picture. . . . Have you got peace Hugo, now? . . . silence and peace, after tremendous noise? . . . I try to think of it like that, but it is difficult. . . . I can only think that you are gone away . . . out of everything . . . that I shall never see you again . . . and then it seems as though some one was laughing at me . . . .some horrible devil, and it can’t be true. . . .’
I addressed the letter and posted it. I don’t know where it went, or what happened to it.
Two days later, a letter came from Hugo. I saw it on the hall floor, where it had fallen through the letter-box.
And I thought:
‘He has answered me. He is not dead at all!’
I broke the envelope open, and I tried to read it, and I could not read it at first . . . the letters swam together, it seemed all blurred and indistinct, and I had to stand still and wait. And then, I tried again, and I read the date: October 8th, 1918. October 8th. That was more than a week ago. That was before he was killed. . . .
I looked at the address, and it told me nothing; illusive, non-committal as the addresses always were, but the writing was Hugo’s:
‘Helen dear,’ it ran, ‘I must write to you to-night, for I think we shall be busy to-morrow. Here it is quiet for the moment, and I have had a happy day. I saw cows and an old woman in a village . . . a piece of a village still . . . and I saw an old orchard that had been destroyed last year . . . and the stumps of the trees had flowered, the broken stumps of the trees . . . they had apples growing on them, round red apples, and there was grass over the stones already, and moss. I was glad to see it. And there were dahlias flowering at one end of the orchard, where there had been a garden, and there was a little tree, the sprout of a tree, where a clump of trees must have been. It was a birch, very tiny, by the edge of a pond, and its leaves were falling, tiny, golden leaves, and floating on the water.