Shorncliff, August 30th, 1916.
MY DEARESTS:
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....
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....
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.