"No?" he said interrogatively.
"If," said the other, "if I had gone back ... it wouldn't have been the same. It couldn't have been.... If you live that way there's two things you can't do without: a good strong body to stand rain and wind and work, and a mind you're not afraid to be alone with. When you're miles from any one, in the woods at night, you want to be good company for yourself. If I'd turned my back on it all, I mightn't have been very good company. I've done plenty of things to set the parsons praying over me if I told 'em; I've been a fool times out of mind and ashamed of it afterwards; but——"
He slid into a silence that lasted until William took up the word; not in answer or argument but irrelevantly, so that he, too, might talk out his heart.
"Do you know what I think I am sometimes? a rat in a trap—or a squirrel spinning round in a cage. Very busy doing nothing.... I'll tell you one of the things I've been doing lately—every word of it truth. I've been typing a long correspondence about a civilian—a worker in one of the religious organizations who came into the town, ten miles by train, to get stores he wanted for his hut. The rule is, civilians mustn't travel by train without a movement order from the A.P.M.; there isn't an A.P.M. in the place he comes from, so he went to the military and got an ordre de service. He came all right, but it's irregular—an ordre de service should only be given to a soldier. One of the M.P.'s on duty at the station reported it—and there's been strafing and strafing and strafing. Reams written about it—I've written 'em. Not only about the ordre de service but about who the correspondence is to go through—the A.P.M.'s office or the Base Commandant or some one else. After three or four weeks it was referred to G.H.Q. and some one there wrote to the secretary of the organization asking for an explanation—and naturally he answered the letter. Well, that was irregular too; he oughtn't to have answered because the matter should have been dealt with locally—'gone through the proper channels.' So more correspondence and strafing.... Sheets of paper—reams of it—and they say it's scarce! And in the end, nothing—just nothing. When the wretched people wrote and asked exactly what they were to do—how they were to get a movement order from an A.P.M. when there wasn't an A.P.M. to give it, we wrote back and said, 'This correspondence must now cease.' I ticked it out on my typewriter."
"I believe you," the other nodded, "I've seen something of that sort myself.... And the papers say, 'Your country wants you'!"
"And it goes on," said William, "day after day. I'm always busy—about nothing. 'Attention is directed to G.R.O. 9999. The Return called for in the form shown as the third appendix——'"
"Good Lord," cried the other, "stop it. That's just what maddens me—I don't want to think of it."
William laughed sullenly with his chin resting on his hand.
"I've not much else to think of," he said.
* * * * *