It is Christmas Day. Dr. Cliffe, although he has washed his hands of me, tyrannically keeps me indoors of winter nights, so that I cannot, as usual, dine at Wellings Park. To counter the fellow's machinations, however, I have prepared a modest feast to which I have bidden Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore and my dearest Betty.
As to Betty—
Phyllis comes in radiant, her pretty face pink above an absurd panoply of furs. She has had a long letter from Randall from the Lord knows where. He will be home on leave in the middle of January. In her excitement she drops prayer-books and hymn-books all over me. Then, picking them up, reminds me it is time to go to church. I am an old-fashioned fogey and I go to church on Christmas Day. I hope our admirable and conscientious Vicar won't feel it his duty to tell us to love Germans. I simply can't do it.
New Year's Day, 1917.
I must finish off this jumble of a chronicle.
Before us lies the most eventful year in all the old world's history. Thank God my beloved England is strong, and Great Britain and our great Empire and immortal France. There is exhilaration in the air; a consciousness of high ideals; an unwavering resolution to attain them; a thrilling faith in their ultimate attainment. No one has died or lost sight or limbs in vain. I look around my own little circle. Oswald Fenimore, Willie Connor, Reggie Dacre, Leonard Boyce—how many more could I not add to the list? All those little burial grounds in France—which France, with her exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned as British soil for all time—all those burial grounds, each bearing its modest leaden inscription—some, indeed, heart-rendingly inscribed "Sacred to the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in action"—are monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation. From the young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and strength and wisdom—and the vast determination to use that love and strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind. If there is a God of Battles, guiding, in His inscrutable omniscience, the hosts that fight for the eternal verities—for all that man in his straining towards the Godhead has striven for since the world began—the men who have died will come into their glory, and those who have mourned will share exultant in the victory. From before the beginning of Time Mithra has ever been triumphant and his foot on the throat of Ahriman.
It was in February, 1915, that I began to expand my diary into this narrative,—nearly two years ago. We have passed through the darkness. The Dawn is breaking. Sursum corda.
I was going to tell you about Betty when Phyllis, with her furs and happiness and hymn-books, interrupted me. I should like to tell you now. But who am I to speak of the mysteries in the soul of a great woman? But I must try. And I can tell you more now than I could on Christmas Day.
Last night she insisted on seeing the New Year in with me. If I had told Marigold that I proposed to sit up after midnight, he would have come in at ten o'clock, picked me up with finger and thumb as any Brobdingnagian might have picked up Gulliver, and put me straightway to bed. But Betty made the announcement in her airily imperious way, and Marigold, craven before Betty and Mrs. Marigold, said "Very good, madam," as if Dr. Cliffe and his orders had never existed. At half past ten she packed off the happy and, I must confess, the somewhat sleepy Phyllis, and sat down, in her old attitude by the side of my chair, in front of the fire, and opened her dear heart to me.
I had guessed what her proud soul had suffered during the last six months. One who loved her as I did could see it in her face, in her eyes, in the little hardening of her voice, in odd little betrayals of feverishness in her manner. But the outside world saw nothing. The steel in her nature carried her through. She left no duty unaccomplished. She gave her confidence to no human being. I, to whom she might have come, was carried off to the sepulchre above mentioned. Letters were forbidden. But every day, for all her bleak despair, Betty sent me a box of fresh flowers. They would not tell me it was Betty who sent them; but I knew. My wonderful Betty.