Sara made the double announcement quite calmly. The two things so often went together—it was the grey and gold warp and waft of war with which people had long since grown pathetically familiar.
“How splendid!” Molly enthused with sparkling eyes, adding quickly, “I hope he's not very badly wounded?”
“Elisabeth doesn't give any particulars in her letter. I can't understand her,” Sara continued, her brows contracting in a puzzled fashion. “She seems so calm about it. She has always hated the idea of Tim's soldiering, yet now, although she's lost her husband and her son is wounded, she's taking it finely.”
Selwyn looked up from filling his pipe.
“She's answering to the call—like every one else,” he observed quietly.
“No.” Sara shook her head. “I don't feel as though it were that. It's something more individual. Perhaps”—thoughtfully—“it's pride of a kind. The sort of impression I have is that she's so proud—so proud of Geoffrey's fine death, and of Tim's winning the Military Cross, that it has compensated in some way.”
“The war's full of surprises,” remarked Molly reflectively. “I never was so astonished in my life as when I found that Lester Kent's wife believed him to be a model of all the virtues! I wrote and told you—didn't I, Sara?—that he was sent to Oldhampton Hospital? He got smashed up, driving a motor ambulance, you know.”
“Yes, you wrote and said that he died in hospital.”
“Well, his wife came to see him, with her little boy. She was the sweetest thing, and so plucky. 'My dear,' she said to me, after it was all over, 'I hope you'll find a husband as dear and good. He was so loyal and true—and now that he's gone, I shall always have that to remember!'” Molly's eyes had grown very big and bright. “Oh! Sara,” she went on, catching her breath a little, “supposing you hadn't brought me home—that night, she would have had no beautiful memory to help her now.”
“And yet the memory is an utterly false one—though I suppose it will help her just the same! It's knowing the truth that hurts, sometimes.” And Sara's lips twisted a little. “What a droll world it is—of shame and truth all mixed up—the ugly and the beautiful all lumped together!”