Then he took the boy from the cot and rocked him. The tears poured down his face. This, then, was War!—All his light-heartedness, his detachment, had gone. He was a husband and a father torn brutally away from the warmth and tenderness of the home that was so dear to him, to be tossed into the arena among wild beasts who not long since had been men just like himself, and would be men still but for the evil power of their masters to do by them as his masters had done by him. Then he put the child back and turned to say good-bye to Ruth.
The passionate wife of a few minutes since had changed now into the mother parting from her schoolboy. She took him to her heart and hugged him.
"You'll be back before you know," she told him, cooing, comforting, laughing through her tears. "They all say it'll be over soon, whatever else. A great war like this ca'an't go on. Too much of it, like."
"Please God, so," said Ernie. "It's going to be the beginning of a new life for me—for you—for all of us, as Joe says.... God keep you till we meet again."
Then he walked swiftly down the street with swimming eyes.
The neighbours, who were all fond of Ern, stood in their doors and watched him solemnly.
He was going into IT.
Like as not they would never see him again.
Many of the women had handkerchieves to their lips, as they watched, and over the handkerchieves their eyes showed awed. Some turned away, hands to their hearts. Others munched their aprons and wept. A mysterious rumour in the deeps of them warned them of the horror that had him and them and the world in its grip.
They could not understand, but they could feel.