It was more real, he felt that now, to sit and look at Lydia over her tea than to parch on Eastern sands and shiver in Western trenches; from the mere fact that the one experience became a nightmare while the other was as natural as waking at dawn. Horrors became the dropped stitches of life; and though if there were too many of them they would destroy the stocking, the stocking itself was made up of tea-table talks and walks in the woods with Nancy. He had just come from Coldbrooks.
So he put it, trivially, to himself, and he felt the need of clinging to triviality. The dropped stitches had been almost too much for him and the nightmare, at times, had seemed the only reality. At times he had known a final despair of life and even now he remembered that the worst might still come. One might be called upon to face the death of the whole order of civilization. Faith required one, perhaps, to recognize that the human spirit was bound up, finally, with no world order and unless one could face its destruction as one had to face the death of a loved individual, one was not secure of the spiritual order that transcended all mundane calamity. He believed, or hoped, that during these last three years, in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, when, to the last fibre, he had felt his faiths tested, he had learned to be ready for the great relinquishment, should it be required of him; and it was therefore the easier to doff that consciousness, as he might have doffed a sword, and think of Lydia and of the order that still survived and that she still stood for.
Lydia did not look the worse for the war; indeed she looked the better. She looked as if, in spite of long days in the hospital, she digested better and, in spite of air-raids, slept better, and as they talked, finding their way back to intimacy by the comparing of such superficialities, she told him that for years she hadn’t been so strong or well. “Nothing is so good for you, I’ve found out, as to feel that you are being used; being used by something worth while. People like myself must keep still about our experiences, for we’ve had none that bear talking of. But even the others, even the people bereaved unspeakably, are strangely lifted up. And I believe that the populace enjoys the air-raids rather than the reverse; they give them a chance of feeling that they are enduring something, too; with good-humour and pluck. If anyone is pessimistic about the effect of war on average human nature, I should only ask them to come and talk to our men at the hospital. Of course, under it all, there’s the ominous roar in one’s ears all the time.”
“Do you mean the air-raids?” he asked her and, shaking her head, showing him that she, too, had seen with him and, he believed, with him accepted: “No; I mean the roar of nation after nation collapsing into the abyss. A sort of tumbril roar of civilization, Roger. And, for that, there’s always the last resource of going gallantly to the guillotine. But all the same, I believe we shall pull through.”
It was the spring of 1918 and one needed faith to believe it. She asked him presently about his friends at Coldbrooks. He had gone to Coldbrooks for three days of his one week’s leave. After this he went to France.
“What changes for you there, poor Roger,” said Mrs. Aldesey.
“Yes. Terrible changes. Palgrave dead and Barney broken. Yet, do you know, it’s not as sad as it was. Something’s come back to it. Nancy sits by him and holds his hand and is his joy and comfort.”
“Will he recover?”
“Not in the sense of being really mended. He’ll go on crutches, always, if he gets up. But the doctors now hope that the injury to the back isn’t permanent.”
“And Meg’s married,” said Mrs. Aldesey after a little pause. “Have you seen her?”