I want to live, and find my way back into
that dream.
CHAPTER VII
Padre, you were right. My greatest comfort, as of old, is in turning to
you.
I think you had a glimpse of the future when you left me that last
message: "Write to me, in the old way, just as if I were alive and had
gone on a long journey."
When I lock my door, and get out this journal, it seems as if a second
door--a door in the wall--opened, to show you smiling the good smile
which made your face different from any other. I don't deserve the
smile. Did I ever deserve it? Yet you gave it even when I was at my
worst. Now it seems to say, "In spite of all, I won't turn my back on
you. I haven't given you up."
When I first began to write in this book (the purple-covered journal
which was your last present to me), I meant just to relieve my heart by
putting on paper, as if for you, the story of my wickedness. Now the
story is told, I can't stop. I can't shut the door in the wall! I shall
go on, and on. I shall tell you all that happens, all I feel, and see,
and think. That must have been what you meant me to do.
When Brian and I were away from home a million years ago, before the
war, we wrote you every day, if only a few paragraphs, and posted our
letters at the end of a week. You said those letters were your "magic
carpet," on which you travelled with us. Poor Padre, you'd no time nor
money for other travelling! You never saw France, till the war called
you.
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