November 12, 1918: Celebrations turn into despair

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The next morning, Anna is up at the crack of dawn in spite celebrating most of the evening the night before, rushing to the field hospital. She knows that it is a slim chance that Maurice will have returned from the front so soon, but she cannot help but to hope, a hope that is only bigger when she sees those from the same company there. She asks where Maurice is, if the soldier knows when he will return, but in stead of answering, the soldier pulls her away from the others.


Once alone he tells her the heartbreaking truth. That Maurice won't be returning at all. He shares a story of a gas attack on one of the last nights of the war. Of how Maurice did not get his gasmask on in time, how death came to the trenches that night and brought three men with him when he left, Maurice among them.


Consoling her, he promises her that she was the last thing on Maurice's mind, shows her his hurried grave among the others next to the field hospital and hands her his final letter:


My dearest beloved! 

If you read this letter, then I am no more and I will have been forced to leave you. Try not to be too sad, for if death takes me; the country demanded my blood; which I voluntarily gave, after so many others. I have done my duty courageously, you can be proud of me, I have not failed at my task of being a good soldier. 

My last kiss, my last thoughts will be for you, my dearest. I welcomed your friendship that has only grown during the long and cruel separation that this war has imposed on us and is forever grateful for the short time we got together. Those weeks were the best of my life, and has sustained me here where I can no longer be with you. 

It breaks my heart to imagine that the two of us will not have the life we dreamed, but I take comfort in knowing that you are still in the world I will now only look down upon. Know that I will be with you in spirit if not in life, and rejoice in your every trip, your every discovery and your every breath while I patiently wait for you to join me in the afterlife. 

Eternal love from Yours for evermore 
Maurice 

As much of a consolation as the letter was supposed to be, for Anna it is only adding to hear heartbreak, for how can she go on when the one she wanted by her side is no longer there? Heartbroken she weeps for her beloved by his newly dug grave, entirely inconsolable.


Later, she writes to her sister: 

What am I to do now? What used to be my dreams became ours, and now they are supposed to be just mine again? I know mother and father will expect me home, but that is something I cannot live with. Miss Bain has asked me to stay on, to work in a proper hospital and live here in Glimmerbrook, but that too is unbearable without Maurice. I have come to love this town, but every tree, every rock, every turn of the river will forever remind me of the happiness I had and lost. 

 I suppose I must return home for Josephine's wedding, which is sure to soon be announced, though how to survive her happiness without spoiling it with my deepest grief I do not know. I weep constantly, unable to eat, to read or to work. I feel as if a cloak of absolute darkness has been pulled over me and it prevents me even from breathing. 

Oh dearest sister, I hope you never suffered like this, and hope you never will. I miss you terribly, and seeing you again is the one thing that brings me any happy thoughts at all at this time. 

Your loving sister, 
Anna

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