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; 154i 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 155called 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.
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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 156fellow 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 157very, 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 158together! 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 159be. 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 160and 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, 161only 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.
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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, 162it 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!
