_The Stockbroker_

Another neighbour who interests me is mainly notable for his extraordinary gait. He is a man with a large, round head, a large round, dissolute looking face and fairly broad shoulders, below which everything tapers away to a pair of tiny feet neatly booted. These two little feet are excessively sensitive to road surface--one would say he had special sense organs on his toes, to judge by the manner in which he picks out his path along the country road in short, quick, fussy steps: his feet seem to dissect out the road as if boning a herring. A big bunion is as good as a sense organ, but his feet are too small and elegant.

_September_ 24.

The second nurse arrived to-day. Great air raid last night of which we heard nothing, thank G.o.d!

My nerves are giving way under the strain.... One leg (the left) drags abominably.... We shall want a bath-chair as well as a perambulator.

Crawled up thro' the path-fields to the uplands and sat in a field in the sun with my back against a haystack. I was so immobile in my dejection that Flies and Gra.s.s-hoppers came and perched about me. This made me furious. "I am not dead yet," I said, "get away," and I would suddenly drive them off.... In horrible dejection....

Even my mental powers are disintegrating--that's the rub. Some quite recent incidents I cannot remember even when reminded of them: they seem to have pa.s.sed clean out of my mind--a remarkable sensation this.

My sensibility is dulled too. It chagrins me to find that my present plight by no means overwhelms me with anguish as it would have done once. It only worries me. I am just a worried ox.

_September_ 26.

The numbness in my right hand is getting very trying. ... The Baby puts the lid on it all. Can't you see the sordid picture? I can, and it haunts me. To be paralysed with a wife and child and no money--ugh!

Retribution proceeds with an almost mathematical accuracy of measure. It would necessitate a vernier rather than a chain. There is no mercy in Cause and Effect. It is inhuman clockwork. Every single act expended brings one its precise equivalent in return....

_September_ 28.

Still nothing to report.

I am astonished at the false impression these entries give of myself.

The picture is incomplete anyhow. It represents the cloud of forebodings over my inner self but does not show the outward front I present to others. This is one of almost constant gaiety--unforced and quite natural. Ask E----, who said yesterday I was like a schoolboy.

"Camerade, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? Will you come, travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"

She cut this out of her copy of Walt Whitman and gave it me soon after our engagement. It is very precious to me.

(On Sept. 29th, on the Doctor's advice I went away by the sea alone, my nerves being all unstrung. For an account of the miseries of this journey, see Dec. 12th _infra_).

_October_ 3.

A wire to say Susan arrived 2.15 p.m. All well.

_October_ 5.

Home again with my darling. She is the most wonderful darling woman. Our love is for always. The Baby is a monster.

_October_ 23.

The fact that I can't write, finally bottles me up.[4] d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!

If only I can get my Essay on Journal Writers done. E---- goes on well.

I have a thousand things to say.

_October_ 27.

Still awaiting a reprieve. I hate alarming the Doctor--he's such a cheerful man so I conceal my symptoms, quite a collection by now.

The prospect of breaking the news to her makes me miserable. I hide away as much as possible lest she should see. I _must_ speak when she is well again.

_October_ 28.

Life has been very treacherous to me--this, the greatest treachery of all. But I don't care. I exult over it. Last night I lay awake and listened to the wind in the trees and was full of exultation.

Now I can only talk, but n.o.body to talk to. Shall hire a row of broomsticks. More and more, the War appears to me a tragic hoax.

_November_ 1.

E---- has had a set-back and is in bed again. However sclerotic my nerve tissue, I feel as flaccid as a jelly.

My G.o.d! how I loathe the prospect of death.

_November_ 3.

I must have some music or I shall hear the paralysis creeping. That is why I lie in bed and whistle.

"My dear Brown, what am I to do?"[5] (I like to dramatise myself like that--it is an anodyne).

I feel as if I were living alone on Ascension Island with the tide coming up continuously, up and up and up.

_November_ 6.

She has known _all_ from the beginning! M---- warned her _not_ to marry me. How brave and loyal of her! What an a.s.s I have been. I am overwhelmed with feelings of shame and self-contempt and sorrow for her.

She is quite cheerful and an enormous help.

_November_ 12.

What a wreck my existence has become and--dragging down others with me.

If only I could rest a.s.sured that after I am dead these Journals will be tenderly cared for--as tenderly as this blessed infant! It would be cruel if even after I have paid the last penalty, my efforts and sufferings should continue to remain unknown or disregarded. What I would give to know the effect I shall produce when published! I am tortured by two doubts--whether these MSS. (the labour and hope of many years) will survive accidental loss and whether they really are of any value. I have no faith in either.

_November_ 14.

In fits of panic, I keep saying to myself: "My dear Brown, what am I to do?" But where is Brown? Brown, you devil! where are you?

... To think how I have acted the Prince to her when really I am only a beggar!

_November_ 16.

A little better and more cheerful: altho' my impregnable colon still holds out.

It would be nice if a physician from London one of these days were to gallop up hotspur, tether his horse to the gate post and dash in waving a reprieve--the discovery of a cure!