Ah! Why was I living all this over again, just when I had come away to get free of all this awhile, and dream? I had come out to enjoy the sunshine and the peace, just as Jim was enjoying the grass behind me. I listened. There was a slight jingle of the bit now and again, and a creaking of leather, and always that drawing sound, with an occasional purr, as the grass was torn up. I could not help looking round at last. “You pig,” I said; but my tone did not altogether disapprove of complacent piggishness.
In front of me lay the blue water of the Somme Canal, and the pools between it and the river; long parallel rows of pale green poplars stretched along either bank of the canal; and at my feet, half hidden by the slope of the ground, lay the sleepy little village of Etinehem. There was a Sunday afternoon slumber over everything. Was it Sunday? I thought for a moment. No, it was Thursday, and to-morrow we went “in” again. I deliberately switched my thoughts away from the trenches, and they flew to the events of the morning. I could see my fellows lying, so keen—I might almost say so happy—blazing away on the range. One I remembered especially. Private Benjamin, a boy with a delicate eager face, who came out with the last draft: he came from a village close up to Snowdon; he was shooting badly, and very concerned about it. I lay down beside him and showed him how to squeeze the trigger, gradually, ever so gradually. Oh! these boys! Responsibility. Responsibility.
“This is no good,” I said to myself at last, and untied Jim and rode again. I went down into the valley, and along the green track between an avenue of poplars south of the canal until at last I came to Sailly-Laurette, and so back and in to Morlancourt from the south-west. It was six o’clock by the time I stooped my head under the gateway into our garden, and for the last hour or so I had almost forgotten war at last.
“Hullo,” was the greeting I received from Owen. “There’s no tea left.”
“I don’t want any tea,” I answered. “Has the post come?”
There were three letters for me. As I slept at a house a little distance away, I took the letters along with me.
“I’m going over to my room to clean up,” I shouted to Owen, who was reading inside the Mess-room. “What time’s old Jim coming in?”
“Seven o’clock!”
“All right,” I answered. “I’ll be over by seven.”