Letter to John Williamson

“At 9 o’clock this morning 2nd Lieut. John Williamson, 20 years old, was found dead in his room in Fort Redoubt.  A revolver, from which one shot had been fired, was found lying beside the body.  There was no indication of foul play.

“His fellow officers report that he got up this morning at the usual hour and seemed to be in good spirits.  He went to his room shortly before nine.  A few minutes later a shot was heard and when investigations were made he was found already dead."

I did not know.  You did not tell me, John, I could not guess that there was trouble.

You came to Redoubt a month ago.  It was no distance from my home.  Yet on the one occasion when you came to see me three days ago I had already gone away.  I was careless and blind.  If only I had not missed you, if only I had come to see you, if only you had told me, you would be living now.

Between now and the time that you left school, I saw you only the once, and then at a distance, I was walking among the rocks above the coast road, you were on the road above the sea.  I waved and called to you.  The wind was blowing off the sea and took the sound of my voice from you.  But you saw me and waved.  Then you looked up at the grey sky.  You stood looking out over the water for a few moments.  You turned and walked through the gate­way of the fort, and the birds stopped singing.  You looked lonely, and in the cry of the sea I heard the ache and echo of your sadness.  I said, “I will see him when I get home again.  We have all life before us.”  That was four days ago.  You have finished with sadness now.

At school you were quiet and strong and had a keen eye.  You were gentle for all your strength, and unselfish for all your silence.  You were often light-hearted, but always there was a tear in it, a little veil of tragedy that surrounded you.  You seemed to be alone inside yourself, as though you had once been very sorrowful and the sunlight had never come back.  I think it was in your eyes.

We had known each other a long time before you told me that your father had been killed saving your life.  You told me quietly, as though you were tired or in pain, or as though you were giving me the last little morsel of yourself.

You never led, but you could laugh and were full of courage.  When Gerald fell off the cliff nobody but you would have dived after him.  You did not hesitate.  A hun­dred feet might have been as many inches.  There must have been much of your father in you.

But this morning, John, when you looked to see if your revolver was loaded, did you not remember, did you not think?  Did there not come into your mind a memory of the mornings on the cliffs, the dawning mist over the water, the stillness without wind?  Did you not remember now the cold river pressed about us, and how we stood on the rocks naked and full of young laughter?  Or the starlight in spring, or the boy called Yan?  Did you not remember?  Free to wander in the sunlight and the warm darkness.

Each spring the cawing of the crows seemed more beau­tiful than anything we had ever heard before.  We heard the patter and laughter of loons taxiing, the whirr of the nighthawk, the lament of the whiskered whippoorwill in the evening swamp holding a choir-practice for her young birds and losing patience with them.  We saw the outspread flight-pinions of the osprey taking a fish, saw the down-lustre on new chestnuts, and in the boll of an old apple tree the swallow’s white eggs scarcely visible in their nest lined with white mother-breast feathers.  In the fall we saw the squirrels swimming from the islands to the mainland, their tails floating high in their wake.  We felt the warmth and softness of the little rabbit that, for fear of us, swam across the thaw-pool.  His eyes were wide with fright.  We wrapped him in a sweater and left him under a bush.  He was gone when we came back and the nest in the wool was still warm.  Remember?  We listened to the wind making silk in the pine needles.

John, we treasured these things away against the dark­ness.  Could you not hear?  Could you not see?  If you had told me I could have given you the eyes to see the sun, and the colours, the rich colours: and the ears to hear the birds and the frogs and the pine-needles.

You were alone, desperately alone, shut inside the cold fortress of yourself.  It was autumn over the barren coast. It was barren and grey inside you.  The birds had gone south, and you could see no beauty in the grey-green lichen and the tentacled sea-wrack.

You listened to the sea, and you were of its nature, strong and cold, and hungry with a desperate hunger.  One by one all the lovely things, all the beautiful things, all the precious things dropped away from you.  You stood alone, desolate and empty, the sea’s hunger calling.  This morning the last scrap of beauty fell away from you and left you naked and empty and alone.  The sea cried with an exquisiteness of grief and pain that you thought was joy.  The darkness of deep water filled you.

You took a pistol and killed yourself, hearing the birds no more.