The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 53

I listened to it in a happy mood of abstraction as it rolled on further and further away. I put my head out of the window so as to hear it up to the very last, until a Robin's notes relieved the nervous tension and helped me to resign myself to my loss. The incident reminded me of the Liebestod in "Tristan," with the Robin taking the part of the harp.

For days past my emotions have been undergoing kaleidoscopic changes, not only from day to day but from hour to hour. For ten minutes at a time I am happy or miserable, or revengeful, venomous, loving, generous, n.o.ble, angry, or murderous--you could measure them with a stop-watch.

h.e.l.l's phantoms course across my chest. If I could lie on this bed as quiet and stony as an effigy on a tomb! But a moment ago I had a sharp spasm at the sudden thought that never, never, never again should I walk thro' the path-fields to the uplands.

_September_ 7.

My 28th birthday.

Dear old R---- (the man I love above all others) has been in a military hospital for months. It is a great hards.h.i.+p to have our intercourse almost completely cut off.

Dear old Journal, I love you! Good-bye.

_September_ 29.

I could never have believed so great misery compatible with sanity. Yet I am quite sane. How long I or any man can remain sane in this condition G.o.d knows.... It is a consummate vengeance this inability to write.[4] I cannot help but smile grimly at the astuteness of the thrust. To be sure, how cunning to deprive me of my one secret consolation! How amusing that in this agony of isolation such an aggressive egotist as I should have his last means of self-expression cut off. I am being slowly stifled.

_Later. (In E.'s handwriting.)_

Yesterday we s.h.i.+fted into a tiny cottage at half the rental of the other one, and situated about two miles further out from the village.... A wholly ideal and beautiful little cottage you may say. But a "camouflaged" cottage. For in spite of the happiness of its exterior it contains just now two of the most dejected mortals even in this present sorrow-laden world.

_September_ 30.

Last night, E---- sitting on the bed by me, burst into tears. It was my fault. "I can stand a good deal but there must come a breaking point."

Poor, poor girl, my heart aches for you.

I wept too, and it relieved us to cry. We blew our noses. "People who cry in novels," E---- observed with detachment, "never blow their noses.

They just weep." ... But the thunder clouds soon come up again.

_October_ 1.

The immediate future horrifies me.

_October_ 2.

Poushkin (as we have named the cat) is coiled up on my bed, purring and quite happy. It does me good to see him.

But consider: A paralytic, a screaming infant, two women, a cat and a canary, shut up in a tiny cottage with no money, the war still on, and food always scarcer day by day. "Give us this day, our daily bread."

I want to be loved--above all, I want to love. My great danger is lest I grow maudlin and say petulantly, "n.o.body loves me, n.o.body cares." I must have more courage and more confidence in other people's good-nature.

Then I can love more freely.

_October_ 3.

I am grateful to-day for some happy hours plucked triumphantly from under the very nose of Fate, and spent in the warm sun in the garden.

They carried me out at 12, and I stayed till after tea-time. A Lark sang, but the Swallows--dear things--have gone. E---- picked two Primroses. I sat by some Michaelmas Daisies and watched the Bees, Flies, and b.u.t.terflies.

_October_ 6.

In fits of maudlin self-compa.s.sion I try to visualise Belgium, Armenia, Serbia, etc., and usually cure myself thereby.

_October_ 12.

It is winter--no autumn this year. Of an evening we sit by the fire and enjoy the beautiful sweet-smelling wood-smoke, and the open hearth with its big iron bar carrying pot-hook and hanger. E---- knits warm garments for the Baby, and I play Chopin, Cesar-Franck hymns, Three Blind Mice (with variations) on a mouth-organ, called "The Angels' Choir," and made in Germany.... You would pity me would you? I am lonely, penniless, paralysed, and just turned twenty-eight. But I snap my fingers in your face and with equal arrogance I pity you. I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. Your body has never been flayed into tingling life by hopeless desire to love, to know, to act, to achieve. I do not envy you your absorption in the petty cares of a commonplace existence.

Do you think I would exchange the communion with my own heart for the toy balloons of your silly conversation? Or my curiosity for your flickering interests? Or my despair for your comfortable Hope? Or my present tawdry life for yours as polished and neat as a new three-penny bit? I would not. I gather my mantle around me and I solemnly thank G.o.d that I am not as some other men are.

I am only twenty-eight, but I have telescoped into those few years a tolerably long life: I have loved and married, and have a family; I have wept and enjoyed; struggled and overcome, and when the hour comes I shall be content to die.

_ October_ 14 _to_ 20.

Miserable.

_October_ 21.

Self-disgust.

FINISH.