‘Oh, look! Mariella is crying for the first time in her life....’
In the doorway the dark figure still stood. It turned and all at once had a face; and was not Charlie but Julian. She sprang back thinking: ‘He mustn’t see me here, spying;’ and in the agitation of trying to slip away unobserved, the dream broke.
There was a dream of playing some game among them all in the next door garden, and of Charlie stopping suddenly, and crawling away with a weak fumbling step, his hand on his heart.
‘He’s got a weak heart.’
‘Ah, then he won’t go to the front.’
‘No, he’s quite safe.’
She woke up happy.
But sometimes Charlie had been to the front and had come back with that feebleness and sickness upon him. He was going to die of it. He came all pale into the schoolroom and stopped, leaning against the big oak cupboard. He put his hand on his heart, sighing and moaning, looking about him in appalling distress. He said:
‘I feel ill. I don’t know what it is.... I’d like to consult my brother.’
He had the face of a stranger, an emaciated and elderly man,—nobody in the least like Charlie; but it was he. He shuffled out again, almost too weak to move, looking for Julian, who would not come. In horror-struck groups the others watched him. He was dying beyond a doubt. She woke, aghast.