3 September 1917 – 9 September 1917

My bedroom is on the ground floor as I cannot mount the stairs. But the other day when they were all out, I determined to clamber upstairs if possible, and search in the bedrooms for a half bottle of laudanum, which Mrs. ---- told me she found the other day in a box--a relic of the time when ---- had to take it to relieve pain. I got off the bed on to the floor and crawled around on hands and knees to the door, where I knelt up straight, reached the handle and turned it. Then I crawled across the hall to the foot of the stairs, where I sat down on the bottom step and rested. It is a short flight of only 12 steps and I soon reached the top by sitting down on each and raising myself up to the next one with my hands. Arrived at the top, I quickly decided on the most likely room to search first, and painfully crawled along the passage and thro' the bathroom by the easiest route to the small door--there are two. The handles of all the doors in the house are fixed some way up above the middle, so that only by kneeling with a straight back could I reach them from the floor. This door in addition was at the top of a high but narrow step, and I had to climb on to this, balance myself carefully, and then carefully pull myself up towards the handle by means of a towel hung on the handle. After three attempts I reached the handle and found the door locked on the inside. I collapsed on the floor and could have cried. I lay on the floor of the bathroom resting with head on my arm, then set my teeth and crawled around the passage along two sides of a square, up three more steps to the other door which I opened and then entered. I had only examined two drawers containing only clothes, when a key turned in the front door lock and E---- entered with ---- and gave her usual whistle. I closed the drawers and crawled out of the room in time to hear E---- say in a startled voice to her mother: "Who's that upstairs?" I whistled, and said that being bored I had come up to see the cot: which passed at that time all right. Next morning my darling asked me why I went upstairs. I did not answer, and I think she knows.

I am getting ill again, and can scarcely hold the pen. So good-bye Journal--only for a time perhaps. Have read this blessed old Journal out to E----. It required some courage, and I boggled at one or two bits and left them out.

Leap-frog Some girls up the road spent a very wet Sunday morning playing leap-frog in their pyjamas around the tennis lawn. It makes me envious. To think I never thought of doing that! and now it is too late. They wore purple pyjamas too. I once hugged myself with pride for undressing in a cave by the sea and bathing in the pouring rain, but that seems tame in comparison. Liebestod A perfect autumn morning--cool, fine and still. What sweet music a horse and cart make trundling slowly along a country road on a quiet morning! I listened to it in a happy mood of abstraction as it rolled on further and further away. I put my head out of the window so as to hear it up to the very last, until a Robin's notes relieved the nervous tension and helped me to resign myself to my loss. The incident reminded me of the Liebestod in "Tristan," with the Robin taking the part of the harp. For days past my emotions have been undergoing kaleidoscopic changes, not only from day to day but from hour to hour. For ten minutes at a time I am happy or miserable, or revengeful, venomous, loving, generous, noble, angry, or murderous--you could measure them with a stop-watch. Hell's phantoms course across my chest. If I could lie on this bed as quiet and stony as an effigy on a tomb! But a moment ago I had a sharp spasm at the sudden thought that never, never, never again should I walk thro' the path-fields to the uplands.

My 28th birthday. Dear old R---- (the man I love above all others) has been in a military hospital for months. It is a great hardship to have our intercourse almost completely cut off. Dear old Journal, I love you! Good-bye.