Chapter 6
Boylan and Peter sat together in the ante-room of headquarters. They did not speak. Peter was getting down to the quick. He thought many things which a man never tells another man, and seldom tells a woman; yet they were matters of truth and reason, no sentiment about them. He recalled many incidents of early years in which his mother had tried to teach him sensitiveness and mercy. Until now her effort seemed to have been wasted. It had been more simple and appealing to him to follow his father's picture of manhood. Possibly his mother had wearied of pitting her will against his. He had grown up under his father's control and ideal. As it looked to him now, he had become all that was obvious and average and easy; while his mother's passion had been for him to become one of the singular and precious and elect.... He would never have seen this so clearly had it not been for Berthe Wyndham. She had given him a kind of new birth, taken up the work wherein his mother had failed....
Dabnitz came in. The young staff-officer was handsome, soldierly, black-eyed. His manner was one of enfolding cheerfulness. He had proved fair and kindly, temperate in his tastes and delicate in his appreciations of humor and natural effects. He could express himself fluently in Russian, German, English and French, but was a caste-man to the core, a militarist and autocrat. As such he proved rather appalling to Peter Mowbray on this day.
“Is General Kohlvihr out with the fronts?” Boylan asked.
“He's in the field, but not at the front. We got the point yesterday, you see. I'd rather be in the van every day than left to these matters of clean-up—”
Peter looked up at him. “Is there much of this to do?”
“I'm afraid so. They work among the hospitals. You don't catch many of them in the ranks—”
“Perhaps they would rather tend the wounded than to make the wounds.”