To her own amazement she found herself sorry for the forlorn little figure with the eyes haunting and haunted, she had left standing in the road outside the Rectory gate.
A sense of the dramatic vicissitudes of life caught her by the throat. Three weeks ago that little man had been conquering the world with a swagger, the master of circumstance, over-riding destiny, sweeping obstacles aside, a domineer, with all the attributes of his kind—brutal, blatant, sure of himself, indifferent to others, scornful of the humble. Now he stood there at the cross-roads like some old tramp of the world, uncertain which way to turn—a mouse tossed overboard in mid-Atlantic by the cook's boy, the sport of tides and breakers, swimming round and round with ghastly eyes in ever-shortening circle.
The tempest which had all the world in grip, which had snatched Ernie from her arms, and hurled him across the seas, which had set millions of men to killing and being killed, had caught this insignificant gnat too, flying with such a fuss and buzz of wings under ominous skies, and then swaggered on its great way indifferent to the tiny creature it had crushed.
Ruth crossed the links, almost deserted now, and walked along over the crisp smooth turf, her eyes on the township of yellow huts rising out of the green in the great coombe across Summerdown Road.
Then she was aware of Mr. Chislehurst coming swiftly towards her beside the ha-ha of the Duke's Lodge. He looked, Ruth noticed at once, less harassed than he had done since the outbreak of war.
"I am glad I've met you, Mrs. Caspar," he began with the old boyish enthusiasm. "I'm off to-morrow and wasn't sure I should have time to come round and say goodbye to you and the babes."
Ruth stared.
"You're never going out there, sir!"
"Only as military chaplain."
Ruth refused to believe.