The rest, however, I thank God, is not yet silence; though it is high
time to make an end of this long and all too faulty record.
They did various things to me at the hospital, from time to time; they
removed hard substances from me that were distinctly out of place in my
interior; they also removed certain portions of my authentic
anatomy--three fingers of my left hand, among others, and my left leg to
the knee. This was not in itself agreeable, and I shall always regret
their loss; yet those weeks of progressive operation and tardy
recuperation were, up to that period, the happiest, the most fulfilled
weeks of my life. And surely egotism can go no farther! For these weeks
of my triumphant happiness were altogether the darkest, saddest,
cruellest weeks of the war. In a world without light, my heart sang in
my breast, sang hallelujahs, and would not be cast down. Susan loved
me--_me_--had always loved me! Rheims soon might fall, Amiens might
fall, the channel ports, Paris, London, the Seven Seas--the World! What
did it matter! Susan loved me--loved me!
And even now--though Susan is ashamed for me that I can say it--though
I feel that I ought to be ashamed that I can say it--though I wonder
that I am not--though I try to be--well, I am _not_ ashamed!
Final Note, by Susan--_insisted upon_: "But all the same, secretly, he
is ashamed. For there's nobody in the world like Ambo, whether for
dearness or general absurdity. Why shouldn't he have been a little
happy, if he could manage it, throughout those interminable weeks of
physical pain? He suffered day and night, preferring not to be kept
under morphine too constantly. I won't say he was a hero; he _was_, but
there's nothing to be puffed up about nowadays in that. If the war has
proved anything, it is that in nearly every man, when his particular
form of Zero Hour sounds for him, some kind of a self-despising hero is
waiting, and ready to act or endure or be broken and cast away. We all
know that now. It's the cornerstone for a possible Utopia: no, it's more
than that--it's the whole foundation. But I didn't mean to say so when I
started this note.
"All I meant to say was that you must never take Ambo _au pied de la
lettre_. I'm not in the least as he's hymned me--but that, surely,
you've guessed between the lines. What is much more important is that
he's not in the least as he has painted himself. But unless I were to
rewrite his whole book for him--which wouldn't be tactful in an
otherwise spoiled and contented wife--I could never make this clear, or
do my strange, too sensitive man the full justice he deserves. He's--oh,
but what's the use! There isn't anybody in the world like Ambo."