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V
AN OLD MAID’S DIARY
Christmas Eve, 1973. Christmas-time once more! The season strangely stirs the memory, and the ghosts of Christmases long gone by haunt my solitary soul to-night. Somehow, a feeling creeps over me that this Christmas will be my last. Am I sorry? Yes, one cannot help feeling sorry, for life is very sweet. On the whole, I have been happy, and have, I think, done good. But oh, the loneliness! And every year has made it more unbearable. The friends of my girlhood have married, or gone away, or died, and each Christmas has made this desperate loneliness more hard to endure. Did God mean women to come into the world, to feel as I have felt, to long as I have longed, and then, after all, to die as I must die? None of the things for which women seem to be made have come to me. And now I have no husband to shelter me; no daughters to close my eyes; no tall sons to bear this poor body to its burial. I have pretended to satisfy myself by mothering other people’s children; but it was cruel comfort, and often only made my heart to ache the more. And now it is nearly over; [154] I have come to my very last Christmas. I have always loved to sit by the fire for a few minutes before lighting the lamp; and to-night as I do so something reminds me of the old days long gone by.
This little room, neat and cosy, but so quiet and so lonely, somehow brings back to my mind a dream that I had as a girl. Was it one dream, or was it several? Dear me, how the memory begins to piece it all together when once it gets a start! I wonder if I can trace it in my journal? I have always kept a journal—just for company. It runs into several big volumes now, and the handwriting has strangely altered with the years. I shall tear them all up and burn them to-morrow; it will be one way of spending my last Christmas! I have said things to this old journal of mine that a woman could not say to any soul alive. It has done me good just to tell these old books all about it. But my dream or dreams; when did they come? It must be sixty years ago, although, despite my loneliness, it really does not seem so long. But it can be no less, for it was in the days of the Great War. The war broke out in 1914—I was eighteen then!—but my dream came months afterwards when things were at their worst. It must have been in 1915. I remember that I had been watching the men in khaki. Everybody seemed to be going to the front. My brothers went; the tradesmen who [155] called for orders; the men who served us in the shops; everybody was enlisting. All our menfolk had become soldiers. And, thinking about all this, I dreamed. I wonder if I entered it in my journal? And, if so, I wonder if I can find it? Yes; here it is. Ah, I thought so. It was a series of dreams; night after night for a week, Sunday alone excepted. I don’t know why no dream came on Sunday. I will copy these six entries here, so that I can destroy the old volumes with their secrets without making an end of this. The dreams began on Monday.
* * * * *
Tuesday, October 5, 1915. I had such a strange dream last night. I thought I was at the front. Whether I was a nurse or not I have no idea; but you never know such things in dreams. Anyhow, I was there. I saw Fred and Charlie in the trenches as plainly as I have ever seen anything, and Tom the butcher-boy, and the young fellow who used to bring the groceries. And with them, and evidently on the best of terms with them, I saw a tall fellow with fair hair—such a gentlemanly fellow!—and after I had seen him I seemed to have no eyes for the others. If I looked to Fred, he only pointed to the boy with the fair hair. If I turned to Charlie, he nodded to the lad with the fair hair. Tom and the grocer’s assistant did the same. And then the [156] fellow with the fair hair looked up, and I saw his face—such a handsome face! He smiled—such a lovely smile!—and I felt myself blush. My confusion awoke me; and I knew it was a dream.
Wednesday, October 6, 1915. Would you believe
it, you credulous old journal, I dreamed of my
white-haired boy again last night! Isn’t it silly?
He was home from the war, wounded, but well again.
And we were being married; only think of it!
I can see it all now as plainly as I can see the white
page before me as I write. The commotion at
home; the drive to the church; the church itself;
the ceremony; how plain it all was! Fred was
best man; my white-haired boy evidently had no
brothers. Jessie, my own sweet little sister, was
my bridesmaid, although she looked a good deal
older. It seemed funny to see her with her hair
up, and with long skirts. The church seemed full
of soldiers. Everybody who had known him, served
with him, camped with him, or fought with him,
simply worshipped him. At weddings I have always
looked at the bride, and taken very little notice of
the bridegroom. But at our wedding everybody
was looking at my white-haired boy—so tall, so
handsome, so fine—like a knight out of one of the
tales of chivalry. And I was glad that they were
all looking at him. And I was so happy, oh, so
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very, very happy! I was happy to think that
everybody was so proud of my white-haired boy.
And I was still more happy to think that my white-haired
boy was mine, my very, very own. I was
so happy that I cried, cried as though my heart
would break for joy and pride and thankfulness.
And my crying must have awakened me, for when
I sat up and stared round my old bedroom in surprise
there were tears in my eyes still. I wonder if I
shall ever dream of my bridegroom again?
Thursday, October 7, 1915. I did; I really did!
I dreamed of him again! I saw the home in which
we lived, a beautiful, beautiful home. I do not
mean that it was big, but that it was sweet and
comfortable, and everything so nice! I thought
that he was walking with me on the lawn. He
was older, a good bit older; I should think twice
as old as when I first saw him in the trenches. But
he was still the same, still tall, still fair, and oh, such
a perfect gentleman! What care he took of me!
How proud and devoted he seemed! And how he
gloried in the children! For I thought we had
children, five of them! The eldest and the youngest
were boys, Arthur, so like his father as I saw him
first, and the youngest, Harry, such a romp! The
three girls, too, were the light of his eyes and the
brightness of his life. What times we all had
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together! I saw him once scampering across the
fields with the children, whilst I sat among the
cowslips knitting and awaiting the return of my
merry madcaps. I saw him sitting with the rest of
us around the fire in winter, whilst he told tales
of the things that he did at the war. How the boys
listened, almost worshipping! And again I saw
him on the Sunday at the church. He sat next the
aisle. I was so happy in being beside him, with
the children on my right. What more, I wondered,
could any woman want to fill her cup up to the
brim? And, wondering, I awoke.
Friday, October 8, 1915. My dreams are getting
to be like parts of a serial story. How real my
white-haired boy seems to be! He has come into
my life, and I cannot believe that he is only a
dream-thing. I went for a walk yesterday with
mother and Jessie, and they said I was silent and
absent-minded. The truth was that I was thinking
about him, yet how could I tell them? Nobody
knows but my journal and myself. And last night—it
seems scarcely possible—I saw him again!
It was not quite so nice, for I thought we were very
old. He was no longer tall and erect, but slightly
bent, though stately still. And I leaned heavily
upon his arm. And the children came, and brought
their children—such a lot of them there seemed to
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be. He grew as young as ever in playing with
these troops of happy little people. And for them
there was no fun like a game with grandpapa. And
as I sat and watched them, I liked to think that all
these boys and girls would have something of him
about them, and would grow up to cherish his dear
memory as their ideal of all that a Christian gentleman
should be. And sometimes I thought of their
children, and their children’s children, till I saw,
floating before my fancy, hundreds and thousands
of children yet to be; and I speculated idly as to
how far his fine influence would carry down these
coming generations. And once more I awoke.
Saturday, October 9, 1915. Oh, my journal, my
journal! I dreamed of my white-haired boy again!
How I wish I never had! If only I had always been
able to think of him as I saw him on Wednesday
night and Thursday! I was once more at the
war. You know what funny things dreams are.
In the trenches I again saw Fred and Charlie and
Tom the butcher-boy, and the young fellow who
used to bring the groceries. But this time they were
all in action; when I saw them before they were
resting. The air was heavy with battle-smoke;
the great guns roared and reverberated; shells
screamed and burst about me. It was like night,
although I knew that it was daytime. As I stood
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and watched—looking for somebody—four Red
Cross men passed me. They were bearing a stretcher,
and on the stretcher was a mangled form. His
face was hidden by his arm, half lying across his
eyes. A strange impulse seized me. I sprang
forward, raised his arm in the semi-darkness;
there was a sudden flash caused by I know not
what, and in the light of that fearful and revealing
flash I recognized my white-haired boy! I trudged
beside the stretcher to the hospital, knowing neither
what I did nor what I said. And when we reached
the hospital, my white-haired boy was dead! My
white-haired boy, my white-haired boy, my white-haired
boy was dead! Oh that I had never
dreamed again!
Sunday, October 10, 1915. I dreamed once more,
but not of my white-haired boy. I dreamed of
myself; pity me that I had nothing better to dream
of! I am only a girl; but in my dream I saw myself
an old woman, old and lonely! Oh, so very, very
lonely! I was sitting, I thought, in the dusk
beside a bright and cheery fire in a neat and cosy
little room. Neat and cosy, but oh, so lonely;
and I felt sorry for myself, very sorry. For the
self that I saw in my dream was a sad old self, a
disappointed old self, a self that had fought bravely
against being soured, but a self that had, after all,
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only partly succeeded. It was not a nice dream;
the nice dreams that I had earlier in the week will
never come again. No, it was not a nice dream, and
I awoke feeling uneasy and unhappy; and my head
was aching.
* * * * *
Christmas Eve, 1973. And so, with a shaky, withered hand, I have copied into the last pages of my journal the entries that I made in the first of these old volumes. What did they mean, those dreams that came to me so long ago? Was there a white-haired boy at the war, a white-haired boy who, if there had been no war, or if just one cruel shell had failed to explode, would have been the glory of my life and the father of my children? But there was a war, and the fatal shell did burst, and my white-haired boy and I never met, never met. The five happy children—those two fine boys and the three lovely girls—will never now gladden these dim old eyes of mine. Those troops of grandchildren, and those hosts of unborn generations that I saw in my happy fancy, will never leave the land of dreams and alight on this old world. In the days of the war, I remember how people wept with the widows, and sorrowed with the mothers whose brave sons were stricken down. And, God knows, none of that sympathy was wasted. Oh, [162] it was heart-breaking to see the lusty women who would never see their husbands again; and the broken mothers who would never even have the poor consolation of visiting the graves of their fallen sons. And I was only a girl, a girl of nineteen. And nobody wept with me. I did not even weep for myself. Nobody knew about my white-haired boy. I did not know. But I know now. Yes, I know now. And God knows; I pillow my poor tired old head on that, God knows, God knows! And so this, then, is to be my last Christmas! Ah, well, so be it! And perhaps—who can tell?—perhaps, in a world where we women shall know neither wars, nor weddings, nor widowhood, I shall before next Christmas have found the face of my girlish dreams!