I’m baggage master for my draft, and have to get on deck now.  You’ll have a long letter from me soon.

Good-bye,
Yours ever,
Con.

IV

Shorncliff, August 19th, 1916.

My DEARESTS: 

We haven’t had any hint of what is going to happen to us—­whether Field Artillery, the Heavies or trench mortars.  There seems little doubt that we are to be in England for a little while taking special courses.

I read father’s letter yesterday.  You are very brave—­you never thought that you would be the father of a soldier and sailors; and, as you say, there’s a kind of tradition about the way in which the fathers of soldiers and sailors should act.  Confess—­aren’t you more honestly happy to be our father as we are now than as we were?  I know quite well you are, in spite of the loneliness and heartache.  We’ve all been forced into a heroism of which we did not think ourselves capable.  We’ve been carried up to the Calvary of the world where it is expedient that a few men should suffer that all the generations to come may be better.

I understand in a dim way all that you suffer—­the sudden divorce of all that we had hoped for from the present—­the ceaseless questionings as to what lies ahead.  Your end of the business is the worse.  For me, I can go forward steadily because of the greatness of the glory.  I never thought to have the chance to suffer in my body for other men.  The insufficiency of merely setting nobilities down on paper is finished.  How unreal I seem to myself!  Can it be true that I am here and you are in the still aloofness of the Rockies?  I think the multitude of my changes has blunted my perceptions.  I trudge along like a traveller between high hedgerows; my heart is blinkered so that I am scarcely aware of landscapes.  My thoughts are always with you—­I make calculations for the differences of time that I may follow more accurately your doings.  I’d love to come down to the study summer-house and watch the blueness of the lake with you—­I love those scenes and memories more than any in the world.

     Good-bye for the present.  Be brave.

                        Yours,
                                Con.

V

Shorncliff, August 19th, 1916.

My Dears: 

It’s not quite three weeks to-day since I came to England, and it seems ages.  The first week was spent on leave, the second I passed my exams in gun drill and gun-laying, and this week I have finished my riding.  Next Monday I start on my gunnery.