I could trump that, I thought!
Looking up at him, I said, "I knew." But this he trumped instead by saying calmly: "I wondered how soon you would! Extraordinary that you didn't tumble to it before, Joan, when everybody here knew I'd only taken my uncle's name. The Prices, Muriel, any of the farm people could have told you. Or Fielding—I suppose, by the way, he did tell you? Yes? So now you know I did write to you, in the spring—letter you threw away, eh? What have you to say about it?"
He took a step nearer to me. I stood my ground, and retorted, "Richard Wynn, why did you write that letter, to begin with?"
"Difficult to explain," he said simply, pulling an ear of corn from the stook nearest to him and nibbling at it as if absently with his strong teeth. "Difficult ... Well! It was when I was feeling pretty rocky and 'down'——"
"Ah! Elizabeth always said it was the effect of shell-shock!"
"Did she?" He laughed, nibbling that ear. "It wasn't altogether, either. I was in hospital, badly hipped. Some of the fellows there were engaged; nice girls coming to visit them, bringing them roses. They'd something to look forward to every afternoon. Bucked to the nines. 'My girl'—'my girl says this'—'my girl and I are doing a show today'—'my girl's brought me so-and-so'—'my fiancée and her governor took me so-and-so'—— That sort of thing the whole time. Here was I"—he threw away the stripped stalk—"back in Blighty and scarcely a soul interested whether I lived or died. Not a woman in my life at all, Joan.... All this sounds awful piffle, perhaps, but that's not a funny thought for any fellow when he's down; not a woman to care——"
His brusque voice sounded boyishly shy. It tore at my heartstrings; but I only said the first thing that came into my head.
"What about the Elveys? What about your aunt and Muriel? They must have known you were in England, wounded."
"Er——" He paused. "Yes. Yes, I suppose they did. But they only wrote much later on, just before I came down here ... Well, then I got to barracks, Millshott. It was still there ... I mean that feeling of being fed because I'd no one to care. One night——"
He stopped. "Ah! Have I got to report all these details?"