"It's because I'm not very sure of one of the lessons I've learnt: it's because at times I do think it hard that others should not take their fair share that I must get back to that show quick—damn quick.
"I want to be worthy of that old ancestor of yours—now that I'm going to marry one of his family. I know we're all mad—I know the world's mad; but, Syb, dear, you wouldn't have me sane, would you; not for ever? And I shall be if I stay here any longer...."
"I understand, Jim," she answered, after a while. "I understand exactly. And I wouldn't have you sane, except just now for a little while. Because it's a glorious madness, and"—she put both her arms round his neck and kissed him passionately—"and I love you."
Which was quite illogical and inconsequent—but there you are. What is not illogical and inconsequent nowadays?
From which it will be seen that Jim Denver was not of the first of the three types which I have mentioned. He did not love the game for itself alone; my masters, there are not many who do. But there was no job in England in which he would prove invaluable: though there were many which with a little care he might have adorned beautifully.
And just because there is blood in the counting-house, which only requires to be brought out to show itself, he knew that he must go back—he knew that it was his job.
That wild enthusiasm which he had shared with other subalterns in his battalion before they had been over the first time was lacking now; he was calmer—more evenly balanced. He had attained the courage of knowledge instead of the courage of ignorance.
No longer did the men who waited to be fetched excuse him—even though he had "done his bit." No longer was it possible to shelter behind another man's failure, and plead for so-called equality of sacrifice. To him had come the meaning of tradition—that strange, nameless something which has kept regiments in a position, battered with shells, stunned with shock, gassed, brain reeling, mind gone, with nothing to hold them except that nameless something which says to them, "Hold on!" While other regiments, composed of men as brave, have not held. To him had come that quality which has sent men laughing and talking without a quaver to their death; that quality which causes men—eaten with fever, lonely, weary to death, thinking themselves forsaken even of God—to carry on the Empire's work in the uttermost corners of the globe, simply because it is their job.
He had assimilated to a certain extent the ideas of that stern, dead soldier; he had visualised them; he had realised that the destinies of a country are not entrusted to all her children. Many are not worthy to handle them, which makes the glory for the few all the greater....