"
CHAPTER XXVII
WAITING
Ingleside,
1st November 1917
"It is November--and the Glen is all grey and brown, except where the
Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in
the sombre landscape, although every other tree has shed its leaves. It
has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late. The Caporetto
disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much
consolation out of the present state of affairs. The rest of us don't
try. Gertrude keeps saying desperately, 'They must not get Venice--they
must not get Venice,' as if by saying it often enough she can prevent
them. But what is to prevent them from getting Venice I cannot see. Yet,
as Susan fails not to point out, there was seemingly nothing to prevent
them from getting to Paris in 1914, yet they did not get it, and she
affirms they shall not get Venice either. Oh, how I hope and pray they
will not--Venice the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic. Although I've
never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did--I've always loved it--
it has always been to me 'a fairy city of the heart.' Perhaps I caught
my love of it from Walter, who worshipped it. It was always one of his
dreams to see Venice. I remember we planned once--down in Rainbow
Valley one evening just before the war broke out--that some time we
would go together to see it and float in a gondola through its moonlit
streets.
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