WARCHESTER,
St. Andrew's Parish House,
October 8th.
You'll never see me again? You'll see me in three days unless you stop
me with a telegram.
I have a curious feeling that all this has happened before--my sitting
here in front of the fire writing to you at one o'clock in the morning.
They say it's one part of the brain working a shade ahead of the rest.
I don't believe that. I do not believe my brain is working at all.
It's spinning around. For days I've been living in the Fourth
Dimension--something like that. It changes the values to have a new
universe whirl up around one. New heavens and a new earth--that's it.
I have given up trying to analyze it. Even if I didn't want to tell
you I couldn't help it. I'm beyond that now, and--helpless. I never
dreamed of its being like this. I never thought much about it, except
vaguely, as anybody does, and here it's come and snatched away the
world.
I don't know how this is going to get itself said. But I can't stop
it. That frightens me, rather; I've been used to ordering myself about
or, at least, to feeling that I could. But that seems to be over. I
don't pretend that I didn't foresee it, or rather that I didn't
recognize it right at the beginning. What I did was to put off
reckoning with it.
I see that I'm going to say things wrong. You have got to overlook
that; I can't help it. I told you my brain wasn't working. For days
I've been in a maze. Then your letter came, late this afternoon, and
that settled it. Do you know what you said? Do you? You said: "If
you were a real man, I wouldn't have exploded like this." A real
man--what do you _think_ I am? That's what I want to know. You'll
find out I'm real enough before you and I are done. Do you suppose
that I have been reading your letters all these weeks--those letters in
which you said yourself you put your soul--as though they were stock
quotations? Did you think you were a numbered "case," that I was
keeping notes about you in that neat filing-cabinet down in the office?
Well, it hasn't been exactly that way.
Do you remember that day you were here? How it rained--how dark it
was? Why, I've never seen you, really. I'm always trying to imagine
your face.
I've got to talk to you--some things can't be written. You won't stop
me. Do you suppose you can? You've got to give me a chance to
talk--that's only square. No, I don't mean all that. I don't quite
know what I'm saying. I mean, you will let me come, won't you? I'll
go away again after; you needn't be afraid. That's fair, isn't it?
You see, it's been strange from the start, and so quick. You, in the
middle of the storm that day--the things you said--the fearful tangle
you were in. And then the letters--the wonderful letters! And we
thought we were keeping it all impersonal. You, with your blazing
individuality--you, impersonal! I can't imagine your face, but you've
stripped the masks and conventions off your soul for me--I've looked at
that. I couldn't help it, could I? I couldn't stop. I can't now. I
can't look at anything else. There isn't anything else--it fills my
world--it's blotted out what used to be reality.
You're hundreds of miles away--what are you doing? Sitting, with your
white dress a rosy blur in the lamplight, reading, thinking,
afraid--frightened at the doctors--shrinking at the thought of that
damned, pawing beast? We'll drop that last--this isn't the time for
that--not yet. Miles away you are--and yet you're here--the real you
that you've sent me in the letters. Always you are here. I listen to
your voice--I've got that--your voice, singing through my days--here in
the silence and the firelight, outside in the night under the stars,
always, everywhere, I hear you--calling me.
You see, my head's gone. Don't think though, that I don't know the
risk this is. But there isn't any other way. Those four weeks you
didn't write, when I thought you had gone under--that was when I began
to see how it was with me. Since then I've gone on, living on your
letters, until now I can't imagine living without them--and more. And
yet I know this may be the end. That's the risk. But I can't go on
like that any more. It's everything now, or nothing. I want to know
what you are going to do about it. What are you thinking--what must
you think--what will you say to me when I see you in your still garden
of miracles? I've got to know. If you meant it--you said I was the
centre of your world--it can't be true that you meant that. I the
centre of your great, clean, wind-swept world of hill-tops and of
visions? I, who haven't got the decent strength to hold my tongue, and
keep my hands. But you did say that--you did! When I come, will you
say it to me again, out loud, that? I can't imagine it--such a thing
couldn't happen to me. But if you shouldn't--if you should tell me not
to come--no, I can't face that. Where is the solution? I see
perfectly that you can't care--why should you?--I see also that you
must be made to. That's just it. I know what I must have and that I
can never have it. No, that isn't so. I know that I shall come and
take you away from what you fear and hate, out of the world we both
know is not real, into reality. I shall tell you why I want you, why
you must come. You will listen and you will answer. You will say why
it's madness and insanity. I shall have to hear all your obvious
reasons, but I shall know that you know they are lies--Do you think--do
you dream, that they can stand between me and you? You can't stop me.
Because I have seen your soul--you said so--you've held it out, in your
two hands, for me to look at. You can't keep me away from you. I know
how you'll fight against it. You won't win--don't count on it.
This isn't insolence--it's the thing that's got me. I can't help it.
A man is that way. I don't half know what I've said; I don't dare read
it. You have got to make it out yourself, somehow.
You've asked me questions. You're troubled, frightened--I know,
it's--hell. Do you think I can sit here any longer and let you go
through that alone? I've been over the whole thing--I've done nothing
else, and out of the maze of it all I'm forced to come to this. It's
the old way and the only one--the answer to it all. What can you do
with your life--your life that is going to be, that is now, all
glorious with loveliness and light? Give it away--that's it--give it
to me, and then we two will set it to music and send it singing through
the world. The old way. You to come home to when the day is
done--your face, your hands, your eyes----
You'll have to overlook this. It's mad to go on. It's mad anyway. If
you knew how I've lied to myself, how I've struggled and fought and
twisted to keep this back from you! And here it is, confused and
grotesque and contradictory and wrong. If I could look at you and say
it, I could get it right. If I could look at you--if I could see you.
Give me a chance. Then I'll go away again--if you say so. I had to
give you warning--it didn't seem square not. And I've bungled it like
this! I tell you I can't help it. It's what you've done to me. I
tried to spare you this, but I waited too long--now it's almighty.
Give me my man's chance--Oh I know I'm not worth it--who is?
Afterwards--
G. McB.
_October 10th_.
Telegram received by the Reverend Geoffrey McBirney, St. Andrews Parish
House, Warchester:
You must not come. Leaving Forest Gate. Sailing for Germany Saturday.
Letter.