No, it appears from the reply, nothing can be done.
“Nobody knows? Katy doesn’t know?” the boy asks, at length, in a husky, tremulous voice.
“The surgeon and Lem have known of it only. It was on sister’s account that I wished the matter to be kept quiet. I wanted to spare her the sadness as long as possible. But I must tell her very soon. It will not do for it to come upon her too suddenly. Ah, my Katy!” and another voice is low and tremulous.
“Is it painful ever?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you’ve kept it to yourself all these years! We didn’t know!”
From the chimney corner where he has been lounging Harry gazes once more at the patient face, pallid from silent, secret suffering, at the empty sleeve, at the eyes which cannot see; then he throws himself flat upon the carpet in a fit of weeping—he who so rarely sheds a tear—and his surprise, and grief, and anger, take expression in one passionate outcry against the war which caused all this—that brothers’ war!
But as he lies there sobbing, listening to some calm and soothing words, there comes to him—even to Harry—a remembrance of a face he has somewhere seen pictured. That, too, was a pallid face and patient. It drooped from a cross; and the brow was encircled by thorns; and underneath was written:
IT IS FINISHED.