It seems impossible to associate such a dark and awful tragedy with this slim English boy and his unconquerable air of joyous youth. The Signorina remembers the repeated phrase, “We were all very fond of him,” and she sickens from the thought of that hellish picture of cruelty and agony on one side, of the impotent grief and rage on the other.
To change the subject, she says:
“How were you wounded?”
And then it transpired he had been carrying in the British wounded at the end of that day. He had been hit in the leg without knowing it, and just as he was starting off to help to carry in the German wounded, he collapsed.
To help to carry in the German wounded! Those Germans who had tortured his own comrade all day! Dear Tommy! Dear, straight, noble, simple British soldier! How could one ever have mistrusted your rough justice or your Christian humanity?
Real boy that he is, he warms up to the glee of narrating his audacities when out at night with a party on listening-post duty.
“Rare fun it was,” he declares.
He used to creep up to the enemy’s trench and bayonet what came handy.
“I couldn’t fire, you see, miss, nor do anything likely to make a noise, so it had to be done on the quiet. But I got a good many that way.”
Baby Vivi is tired of her game of cards. For a while past she has been amusing herself by boxing the two sitting soldiers. Very well-delivered vigorous thumps she applies on their chests with her little fists, and they obligingly go over backwards on the grass. She now comes to exercise her powers on the Territorial. He catches her in his arms.