But who would take care of all the business he had built up if he fell in this accursed war? Who would comfort Catherine, and who would bring up his son when he grew beyond his mother’s control?
Yet this was England, spread out before his eyes, England in peril calling to him her son who dumbly loved her, to come to her aid.
His eyes filled with tears, and he did not see his wife till she was close beside him, standing in a thin white gown, holding her hat by a long black ribbon, the sunshine on her amber hair.
She was pale, and her very beauty seemed veiled by grief.
She sat down by him, and smiled valiantly at him. Presently she said gently:
“Perhaps in years to come, John, you and I shall sit together on this bench as old people, and Michael will be very kind, but rather critical of us, as quite behind the times.”
And then had come the parting, the crossing, the first sound as of distant thunder; and then interminable days of monotony; and mud, and lack of sleep, and noise unceasing; and a certain gun which blew out the candle in his dug-out every time it fired—and then! a rending of the whole world, and himself standing in the midst of entire chaos and overthrow, with blood running down his face.
“I’m done for,” he said, as he fell forward into an abyss of darkness and silence, beyond the roar of the guns.
Part II