lent night, unrelenting to
lonely watchers.

Near my gate is a laburnum tree. Once upon a time, on nights of rain such
as this, the shower caught in it would turn to stars, and somehow from
the brightness of that transient constellation I could get my bearings. I
knew where I was. One noticed those small matters in the past, and was
innocently thankful for them. Those lights sufficed us. There was
something companionable even in the street lamp. But what is it now? You
see it, when you are accustomed to the midnight gloom of war, shrouded, a
funeral smear of purple in a black world. No bearing can be got from it
now. What one looks into is the lightless unknown. I peer into the night
and rain for some familiar and reasonable shape to loom--I am permitted
to do this, for so far the police do not object to a citizen cherishing a
hopeful though fatuous disposition--but my usual reward is but the sound
of unseen drainage, as though I were listening to my old landmarks in
dissolution. I feel I should not be surprised, when daylight came, to
find that the appearance of my neighbourhood had become like
Spitzbergen's.

That is why I soon retreat now from my gate, no wiser, bringing in with
me on these nights of rain little more than the certainty that we need
expect no maroons or bombs; and then, because the act is most unpatriotic
in a time of shortage, put on more coal with my fingers, as this makes
less noise than a shovel. I choose a pipe, the one I bought in a hurry at
Amiens. I choose it for that reason, and because it holds more tobacco
than the others; watch the flames, and take stock.

In the winter, as we know, it never rains. It is merely wet weather.
Still, that means only a retirement into winter quarters, into those long
evenings against which we have hoarded our books, light and warmth in
store. Perhaps in the case of the more idle there may be the
consideration, pleasant and prolonged, of that other book, known to no
other man, not yet written, and perhaps destined to perish, a secret
dream. But what are now these books? What now is even that book which is
perfect and unwritten? It, too, has lost its light. I am left staring
into the fire. The newspapers tell us of a common joy at the coming of
Peace. Peace? If she is coming, then we are much obliged to her. I
remember during an earlier and wasted joy at a word in France of the
coming of Peace agreeing with several young soldiers that Brussels would
be the pl