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general dislocation of the first
weeks, as sounder men could. The terror of ruin broke him down--and
he was dead before Christmas, nominally of bronchitis and heart failure.
Nelly had worn mourning for him up to her wedding day. She had been
very sorry for 'poor papa'--and very fond of him; whereas Bridget had
been rather hard on him always. For really he had done his best. After
all he had left them just enough to live upon. Nelly's conscience, grown
tenderer than of old under the touch of joy, pricked her as she thought
of her father. She knew he had loved her best of his two daughters. She
would always remember his last lingering hand-clasp, always be
thankful for his last few words--'God bless you, dear.' But had she
cared for him enough in return?--had she really tried to understand him?
Some vague sense of the pathos of age--of its isolation--its dumb
renouncements--gripped her. If he had only lived longer! He would
have been so proud of George.
She roused herself.
'You did really make up your mind--_then_?' she asked him, just for the
pleasure of hearing him confess it again.
'Of course I did! But what was the good?'
She knew that he meant it had been impossible to speak while his
mother was still alive, and he, her only child, was partly dependent
upon her. But his mother had died not long after Nelly's father, and her
little income had come to her son. So now what with Nelly's small
portion, and his mother's two hundred and fifty a year in addition to his
pay, the young subaltern thought himself almost rich--in comparison
with so many others. His father, who had died while he was still at
school, had been a master at Harrow, and he had been brought up in a
refined home, with high standards and ideals. A scholarship at Oxford
at one of the smaller colleges, a creditable degree, then an opening in
the office of a well-known firm of solicitors, friends of his father, and a
temporary commission, as soon as war broke out, on his record as a

keen and diligent member of the Harrow and Oxford O.T.C.'s:--these
had been the chief facts of his life up to August 1914;--that August
which covered the roads leading to the Aldershot headquarters, day by
day, with the ever-renewed columns of the army to be, with masses of
marching men, whose eager eyes said one thing
only--'_Training_!--_training_!'
The war, and the causes of the war, had moved his nature, which was
sincere and upright, profoundly; all the more perhaps because of a
certain kindling and awakening of the whole man, which had come
from his first sight of Nelly Cookson in the previous June, and from his
growing friendship with her--which he must not yet call love. He had
decided however after three meetings with her that he would never
marry anyone else. Her softness, her yieldingness, her delicate beauty
intoxicated him. He rejoiced that she was no 'new woman,' but only a
very girlish and undeveloped creature, who would naturally want his
protection as well as his love. For it was his character to protect and
serve. He had protected and served his mother--faithfully and well. And
as she was dying, he had told her about Nelly--not before; only to find
that she knew it all, and that the only soreness he had ever caused her
came from the secrecy which he had tenderly thought her due.
But for all his sanity and sweet temper there was a hard tough strain in
him, which had made war so far, even through the horrors of it, a great
absorbing game to him, for which he knew himself fitted, in which he
meant to excel. Several times during the fighting that led up to Neuve
Chapelle he had drawn the attention of his superiors, both for bravery
and judgment; and after Neuve Chapelle, he had been mentioned in
despatches. He had never yet known fear in the field--never even such a
shudder at the unknown--which was yet the possible!--as he had just
been conscious of. His nerves had always been strong, his nature was in
the main simple. Yet for him, as well as for so many other 'fellows' he
knew, the war had meant a great deal of this new and puzzled
thinking--on problems of right and wrong, of 'whence' and 'whither,' of
the personal value of men--this man, or that man. By George, war
brought them out!--these personal values. And the general result for
him, up to now,--had he been specially lucky?--had been a vast increase

of faith in his fellow men, yes, and faith in himself, modest as he was.
He was proud to be an English soldier--proud to the roots of his being.