Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

Leda has, though I can't say the thought of that harrows me much.

But why, oh why, must Simon still love Rose his When she has so little in common with him and I have so much his Part of me longs to run after him to Scoatney and cry "Yes, yes, yes!" A few hours ago, when I wrote that I could never mean anything to him, such a chance would have

seemed heaven on earth. And surely I could give him- a sort of

contentment?

That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver.

The daylight is going. I can hardly see what I am writing and my

fingers are cold. There is only one more page left in my beautiful

blue leather manuscript book; but that is as much as I shall need.

I don't intend to go on with this journal; I have grown out of wanting to write about myself. I only began today out of a sense of duty- I

felt I ought to finish Rose's story off tidily. I seem to have

finished my own off, too, which I didn't quite bargain for ...... What a preposterous self-pitying remark--with Simon still in the world, and a car being lent to us and a flat in London! Stephen has a flat there, too, now; just a little one. He wandered about with the goats so

satisfactorily that he is to speak lines in his next picture. If I

stay at the Cottons' flat I can go out with him sometimes and be very, very kind to him, though in a determinedly sisterly way. Now I come to think of it, the winter ought to be very exciting, particularly with

Father so wonderfully cheerful or else so refreshingly violent. And

there are thousands of people to write about who aren't me ...... It

isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not crying, because I am......

Pause to mop up.

Better now.

Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for

life. Liar! It would be heaven.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with "I love you, I love you"--like Father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

There is a light down in the castle kitchen. Tonight I shall have my

bath in front of the fire, with Simon's gramophone playing. Topaz has it on now, much too loud-to bring Father back to earth in time for

tea--but it sounds beautiful from this distance. She is playing the

Berceuse from Stravinsky's "The Firebird." It seems to say, "What shall I do his Where shall I go ?"

You will go in to tea, my girl--and a much better tea than you would

have come by this time last year.

A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is summer mist romantic and

autumn mist just sad?

There was mist on Midsummer "Eve, mist when we drove into the dawn.

He said he would come back.

Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love

you.