was convinced he was
dead. I didn't want him to be aut of it! God knows how I didn't. I
wanted my dear little Cockney cad back. Oh! most frightfully I wanted
him back.

"I shook him. I was like a scared child. I blubbered and howled
things.... It's all different since he died.

"My dear, dear Father, I am grieving and grieving--and it's altogether
nonsense. And it's all mixed up in my mind with the mess I trod on. And
it gets worse and worse. So that I don't seem to feel anything really,
even for Teddy.

"It's been just the last straw of all this hellish foolery....

"If ever there was a bigger lie, my dear Daddy, than any other, it is
that man is a reasonable creature....

"War is just foolery--lunatic foolery--hell's foolery....

"But, anyhow, your son is sound and well--if sorrowful and angry. We
were relieved that night. And there are rumours that very soon we are to
have a holiday and a refit. We lost rather heavily. We have been
praised. But all along, Essex has done well. I can't reckon to get back
yet, but there are such things as leave for eight-and-forty hours or so
in England....

"I shall be glad of that sort of turning round....

"I'm tired. Oh! I'm tired....

"I wanted to write all about Jewell to his mother or his sweetheart or
some one; I wanted to wallow in his praises, to say all the things I
really find now that I thought about him, but I haven't even had that
satisfaction. He was a Poor Law child; he was raised in one of those
awful places between Sutton and Banstead in Surrey. I've told you of all
the sweethearting he had. 'Soldiers Three' was his Bible; he was always
singing 'Tipperary,' and he never got the tune right nor learnt more
than three lines of it. He laced all his talk with 'b----y'; it was his
jewel, his ruby. But he had the pluck of a robin or a squirrel; I never
knew him scared or anything but cheerful. Misfortunes, humiliations,
only made him chatty. And he'd starve to have something to give away.

"Well, well, this is the way of war, Daddy. This is what war is. Damn
the Kaiser! Damn all fools.... Give my love to the Mother and the
bruddykins and every one...."

Section 19

It was just a day or so over three weeks after this last letter from
Hugh that Mr. Direck reappeared at Matching's Easy. He had had a trip to
Holland--a trip that was as much a flight from Cissie's reproaches as a
mission of inquiry. He had intended to go on into Belgium, where he had
already bee