G. H. Q.
Mediterranean Ex: Force
21 – April. 1915.

My dear Gertrude –

I wrote to you last night a very stupid letter thinking it was my last night before starting, and not liking to go without a word however stupid – there were plenty of thoughts however – But today came a storm & our start was postponed for 24 hours to let it pass – and I write another line with nothing in it but thoughts – Last night between cyphers etc I had also to make all sorts of arrangements for my wife and her well being – not as to money – but as to her well being, for I know very well that if I were killed it would be to her a very dreadful bow – she has been talking lately of empty worlds & morphia and such things – not so I have done all I could

But now on the top of that I write to you, the free things of the spirit – you have never realised (because thank god why should you) what these things are like nor what chains they are –

No more of that –

On the eve of any adventure my spirits always have risen – But at the moment hangs about my neck so many memories, my dear queen, of you and your splendid love and your kisses & courage and the wonderful letters you wrote to me from your heart to mine – the letters, some of which I have packed up, like drops of blood –

My dear don’t (this is what weighs me down) don’t do what you talked of – its horrible to me to think of – that’s why I told you about my wife, - how much more for you – don’t do anything so unworthy of so free and brave a spirit – one must walk along the road to the long end of it – when I asked for this ship my joy in it was half strangled by that thing you said, I can’t even name it or talk about it. As we go steaming in under the fort guns in one rotten old collier, shall I still think of it – I am afraid I shall – don’t tie this thing to drown me – You to die for whom the world holds so much! – for whom there is always the pure delight of capability and power well used – don’t do it – or in some far world my ghost will be the sadder – time is nothing, we join up again – but to hurry the pace is unworthy of us after all – Was it perhaps some subtle spirit of foreknowledge that kept us apart in London – as I go now I am sorry and glad, but on the whole glad – the risk to you was too great – the risk to your body, yes, and to your peace of mind and pride of soul – I am so different about those things – to me it is as if I kissed you a thousand ways with all that gives me lige and thought and the sight of those headlands of paradise – My dear, I tell you, passion wants that, or love rather wants it by passion her fiery horse – they nearly never get it, yet they go on wanting – that twin star of desire radiant, yours and mine ashine together – we shall never have it running running in the dancing blood, only in thought which paints it all to glory –

Nor does it matter – nor do I regret it – for even than that we are greater – and no fiery horse can take us farther than our own hearts limits –

I must stop – I am improvising ways of water carrying for the water is to be poisoned – my old trade of long ago – From you to that, useful work as it is, is to come down from the high mountain to plough a furrow – yet I leave my heart in the high places –

I have a presentiment that this affair will be a brilliant success – yet great as are the stakes, and fierce the considerations, I know from the high places, from our garden, that the dust of battle blows away and leaves them smiling –

Now as I write I know also that you will not do anything to yourself – peace upon you – for you have still the garden & the trees to walk under, where there is nothing but peace and understanding -

As you said to me so often – ave valeque –

I shall write to you again by the first post which I hope may go from Gallipoli –

Dick.

[Letter not found in folios.]