That was the turning point in Colin's malady. She thought: "If he can talk about Jerrold he's getting well."
The next day a letter came to her from Jerrold. He wrote: "I wish to goodness I could get leave. I don't want it all the time. I'm quite prepared to stick this beastly job for any reasonable period; but a whole year without leave, it's a bit thick…"
"About Colin. Didn't I tell you he'd be all right? And it's all you, Anne. You've made him; you needn't pretend you haven't. I want most awfully to see you again. There are all sorts of things I'd like to say to you, but I can't write 'em."
She thought: "He's got over it at last, then. He won't be afraid of me any more."
Somehow, since the war she had felt that Jerrold would come back to her. It was as if always, deep down and in secret, she had known that he belonged to her and that she belonged to him as no other person could; that whatever happened and however long a time he kept away from her he would come back at some time, in some way. She couldn't distinguish between Jerrold and her sense of Jerrold; and as nothing could separate her from the sense of him, nothing could separate her from Jerrold himself. He had part in the profound and secret life of her blood and nerves and brain.
IX
JERROLD
i
At last, in March, nineteen-sixteen, Jerrold had got leave.
Anne was right; Jerrold had come through because he had had to stand up to the War and face it. He couldn't turn away. It was too stupendous a fact to be ignored or denied or in any way escaped from. And as he had to "take" it, he took it laughing. Once in the thick of it, Jerrold was sustained by his cheerful obstinacy, his inability to see the things he didn't want to see. He admitted that there was a war, the most appalling war, if you liked, that had ever been; but he refused, all the time, to believe that the Allies would lose it; he refused from moment to moment to believe that they could be beaten in any single action; he denied the possibility of disaster to his own men. Disaster to himself—possibly; probably, in theory; but not in practice. Not when he turned back in the rain of the enemy's fire to find his captain who had dropped wounded among the dead, when he swung him over his shoulder and staggered to the nearest stretcher. He knew he would get through. It was inconceivable to Jerrold that he should not get through. Even in his fifth engagement, when his men broke and gave back in front of the German parapet, and he advanced alone, shouting to them to come on, it was inconceivable that they should not come on. And when they saw him, running forward by himself, they gathered again and ran after him and the trench was taken in a mad rush.