I have just returned from sending you a cable to let you know that I'm
off to France. The word came out in orders yesterday, and I shall leave
before the end of the week with a draft of officers--I have been in
England just a day over four weeks. My only regret is that I shall miss
the boys who should be travelling up to London about the same time as I
am setting out for the Front. After I have been there for three months I
am supposed to get a leave--this should be due to me about the beginning
of December, and you can judge how I shall count on it. Think of the
meeting with R. and E., and the immensity of the joy.
Selfishly I wish that you were here at this moment--actually I'm glad
that you are away. Everybody goes out quite unemotionally and with very
few good-byes--we made far more fuss in the old days about a week-end
visit.
Now that at last it has come--this privileged moment for which I have
worked and waited--my heart is very quiet. It's the test of a character
which I have often doubted. I shall be glad not to have to doubt it
again. Whatever happens, I know you will be glad to remember that at a
great crisis I tried to play the man, however small my qualifications.
We have always lived so near to one another's affections that this going
out alone is more lonely to me than to most men. I have always had some
one near at hand with love-blinded eyes to see my faults as springing
from higher motives. Now I reach out my hands across six thousand miles
and only touch yours with my imagination to say good-bye. What queer
sights these eyes, which have been almost your eyes, will witness! If my
hands do anything respectable, remember that it is your hands that are
doing it. It is your influence as a family that has made me ready for
the part I have to play, and where I go, you follow me.
Poor little circle of three loving persons, please be tremendously
brave. Don't let anything turn you into cowards--we've all got to be
worthy of each other's sacrifice; the greater the sacrifice may prove to
be for the one the greater the nobility demanded of the remainder. How
idle the words sound, and yet they will take deep meanings when time has
given them graver sanctions. I think gallant is the word I've been
trying to find--we must be gallant English women and gentlemen.
It's been raining all day and I got very wet this morning. Don't you
wish I had caught some quite harmless sickness? When I didn't want to go
back to school, I used to wet my socks purposely in order to catch cold,
but the cold always avoided me when I wanted it badly. How far away the
childish past seems--almost as though it never happened. And was I
really the budding novelist in New York? Life has become so stern and
scarlet--and so brave. From my window I look out on the English Channel,
a cold, grey-green sea, with rain driving across it and a fleet of small
craft taking shelter. Over there beyond the curtain of mist lies
France--and everything that awaits me.
News has just come that I have to start. Will continue from France.
Yours ever lovingly,
Con.