After lunch Mabel and Colonel Rutherford went on ahead and left the two young people to say their good-bye alone. When they had gone Dick pushed the things in front of him on the table aside, and laid his head down on his hands. "My God!" she heard him say, "I wish I had not got to go."
He had been so pleased before, so excited over his different preparations, so wildly keen to be really on the move at last. Joan ran to him quickly; kneeling on the floor by his side, throwing her arms around him. Her own fears were forgotten in her desire to make him brave again.
"It won't be for long, Dick," she whispered. "I know something right inside my heart tells me that you will come back. It is only like putting aside our happiness for a little. Dear, you would be wretched if you could not go. Just having me would not make up to you for that."
He turned and caught her to him quickly. "If I had had you," he said harshly, "it would be different. It would make going so much easier."
"You will come back," she answered softly. Her eyes held his, their hearts beat close and fast against each other.
"It seems," he said a minute or two later, "that it is you who are helping me not to make a fuss, and not the other way about as we arranged." He stood up, slowly lifting her with him. "It is time we were off, Joan," he said. "And upon my soul, I need some courage, little girl. What can you do for me?"
"Well, if I cry," suggested Joan, her head a little on one side—she must be cheerful, she realized; it was funny, but in this she could be stronger than he, and she must be for his sake—"I am sure you would get so annoyed that the rest would be forgotten."
"If I see you cry," he threatened, "I shall get out even after the train has started, and that will mean all sorts of slurs on my reputation."
They walked across to Victoria Station and came in at once to a scene of indescribable noise and confusion. Besides Dick's unit there was a regiment going. The men stood lined up in the big square yard of the station. Some had women with them, wives and mothers and sweethearts; children clung to the women's skirts, unnoticed and frightened into quietness by the sight and sound of their mothers' grief. Railway officials, looking very important and frightfully overworked, ran in and out of the crowd. The train was standing at the platform, part of it already full, nearly every window had its little group of anxious-faced women, trying to say good-bye to their respective relatives in the carriage.
Dick and Joan walked the length of the train, and found that Dick's man had stowed away his things and reserved a place for his master in one of the front carriages. Then Colonel Rutherford and Mabel joined them and they all talked, trying to keep up an animated conversation as to the weather; would the Channel crossing be very rough; what chance was there of his going to Boulogne instead of to Havre; Joan stood close to Dick, just touching him; there was something rather pathetic in the way she did not attempt to close her hand upon the roughness of his coat, but was content to feel it brushing against her. The regimental band had struck up "Tipperary"; the men were being marshalled to take their places in the train. Joan wondered if the band played so loud and so persistently to drown the noise of the women's crying. One young wife had hysterics, and had to be carried away screaming. They saw the husband, he had fallen out of the ranks to try and hold the girl when the crying first began, now he stood and stared after her as they carried her away. Quite a boy, very white about the face, and with misery in his eyes. Joan felt a wave of resentment against the woman; she had no right, because she loved him, to make his going so much the harder to bear.