Got up early and walked around the Farm before breakfast. Everything promises to be delightful—young calves, broods of ducklings, and turkeys, fowls, cats and dogs. In the yard are two large Cathedral barns, with enormous pent roofs sloping down to within about two feet of the ground and entered by way of great double doors that open with the slowness and solemnity of a Castle’s portal studded with iron knobs. It thrilled me to the marrow on first putting my head outside to be greeted with the grunt of an invisible pig that I found scraping his back on the other side of the garden wall.
In the afternoon, E⸺ and I sat together in the Beech Wood: E⸺ on a deck chair and I on a rug on the ground. In spite of our beautiful surroundings we did not progress very well, but I attributed her slight aloofness to the state of her nerves. She is still far from recovered. These wonderful Beech Woods are quite new to me. The forest beech is a very different plant from the solitary tree. In the struggle to reach the light the Forest Beech grows lean and tall and gives an extraordinary suggestion of wiry powerful strength. On the margins of the wood, Bluebells were mobilised in serried ranks. Great Tits whistled—in the language of our allies—“Bijou, Bijou” and I agreed with every one of them.
Some folk don’t like to walk over Bluebells or Buttercups or other flowers growing on the ground. But it is foolish to try to pamper Nature as if she were a sickly child. She is strong and can stand it. You can stamp on and crush a thousand flowers—they will all come up again next year.
By some labyrinthine way which I cannot now recall, the conversation worked round to a leading question by E.—if in times like these we ought not to cease being in love? She was quite calm and serious. I said “No, of course not, silly.” My immediate apprehension was that she had perceived the coldness in my letters and I was quite satisfied that she was so well able to read the signs in the sky. “But you don’t wish to go on?” she persisted. I persisted that I did, that I had no misgivings, no second thoughts, that I was not merely taking pity on her, etc. The wild temptation to seize this opportunity for a break I smothered in reflecting how ill she was and how necessary to wait first till she was well again. These thoughts passed swiftly, vaguely like wraiths through my mind: I was barely conscious of them. Then I recalled the sonnet about coming in the rearward of a conquered woe and mused thereon. But I took no action.16
Presently with cunning I said that there was no cloud on my horizon whatever—only her “letters disappointed me a little—they were so cold,” but “as soon as I saw you again, darling, those feelings disappeared.”
As soon as they were spoken I knew they were not as they might seem, the words of a liar and hypocrite. They became true. E⸺ looked very sweet and helpless and I loved her again as much as ever.
“It’s funny,” she said, “but I thought your letters were cold. Letters are so horrid.”
The incident shows how impossible is intellectual honesty between lovers. Truth is at times a hound which must to kennel.
“Write as you would speak,” said I. “You know I’m not one to carp about a spelling mistake!”
The latter remark astonished me. Was it indeed I who was speaking? All the week I had been fuming over this. Yet I was honest: the Sun and E.’s presence were dispelling my ill-humours and crochets. We sealed our conversation with a kiss and swore never to doubt each other again. E.’s spell was beginning to act. It is always the same. I cannot resist the actual presence of this woman. Out of her sight, I can in cold blood plan a brutal rupture. I can pay her a visit when the first kiss is a duty and the embrace a formality. But after 5 minutes I am as passionate and devoted as before. It is always thus. After leaving her, I am angry to think that once more I have succumbed.
In the evening we went out into a field and sat together in the grass. It is beautiful. We lay flat on our backs and gazed up at the sky.
S. H. has died of enteric at Malta. In writing to Mrs. H., instead of dwelling on what a splendid fellow he was I belaboured the fact that I still remembered our boyish friendship in every detail and still kept his photo on my mantelpiece and although “in later years” I didn’t suppose we “had a great deal in common I discovered that a friendship even between two small boys cannot wholly disappear into the void.” Discussing myself when I ought to have been praising him! Ugh! She will think what a conceited, puff-breasted Jackanapes. These phrases have rankled in my mind ever since I dropped the letter into the letter-box. “Your Stanley, Mrs. H., was of course a very inferior sort of person and naturally, you could hardly expect me to remain friendly with him but rest assured I hadn’t forgotten him,” etc.
The Luxury of Lunacy
Yesterday, I read a paper at the Zoological Society about lice. There was a goodly baldness of sconce and some considerable length of beard present that listened or appeared to listen to my innocent remarks with great solemnity
