Poor Tommy—none of us knew how the blow had taken him, for to none of us had he written since the news reached England, save indeed when, in a brief line to me, he had announced his return next week.
We had all written to him, as our separate natures and feelings had dictated, but no reply had reached us—and how should we know that of all the letters he had received, only one was deemed worthy of preservation—and that written in a round childish hand?
"Dear Tommy—I am so sorry. Your loving Madge."
A damp sorry little note it was, but it remained in Tommy's pocket long after our more stately compositions had been torn up and forgotten.
To us, leading our quiet commonplace peaceful life in this little midland village, the shock had come with double force.
Perhaps we had been apt to dwell so little on the eternal verities of chance and change and life and death as to have become almost oblivious of their existence, at any rate in our own sphere.
Those of the villagers who, year by year, in twos and threes, were gathered to their fathers, were old and wrinkled and ready for death, resting quietly under the good red earth, well content with sleep.
And these we had missed, but scarcely mourned, feeling that, in the fitness of things, it was well that they should cease from toil.
But here was our friend, straight and strong and vigorous, cut down by some robber bullet in an Indian pass—and to us all, I fancy, the shock came with something of terror, and something of awakening in its tragedy. Outwardly we had shown little enough.