read the newspaper propped up against the
coffee-pot. So many circumstances connected with Boyce's visit were of
a nature that precluded confidential discussion with Marigold,--that
precluded, indeed, confidential discussion with anyone else. The
suddenness of his departure I learned that afternoon from Mrs. Boyce,
who sent me by hand a miserable letter characteristically rambling.
From it I gathered certain facts. Leonard had come into her bedroom at
seven o'clock, awakening her from the first half-hour's sleep she had
enjoyed all night, with the news that he had been unexpectedly summoned
back. When she came to think of it, she couldn't imagine how he got the
news, for the post did not arrive till eight o'clock, and Mary said no
telegram had been delivered and there had been no call on the
telephone. But she supposed the War Office had secret ways of
communicating with officers which it would not be well to make known.
The whole of this war, with its killing off of the sons of the best
families in the land, and the sleeping in the mud with one's boots on,
to say nothing of not being able to change for dinner, and the way in
which they knew when to shoot and when not to shoot, was all so
mysterious that she had long ago given up hope of understanding any of
its details. All she could do was to pray God that her dear boy should
be spared. At any rate, she knew the duty of an English mother when the
country was in danger; so she had sent him away with a brave face and
her blessing, as she had done before. But, although English mothers
could show themselves Spartans--(she spelt it "Spartians," dear lady,
but no matter)--yet they were women and had to sit at home and weep. In
the meanwhile, her palpitations had come on dreadfully bad, and so had
her neuritis, and she had suffered dreadfully after eating some fish at
dinner which she was sure Pennideath, the fishmonger--she always felt
that man was an anarchist in disguise--had bought out of the condemned
stock at Billingsgate, and none of the doctor's medicines were of the
slightest good to her, and she was heartbroken at having to part so
suddenly from Leonard, and would I spare half an hour to comfort an old
woman who had sent her only son to die for his country and was ready,
when it pleased God, if not sooner, to die in the same sacred cause?

So of course I went. The old lady, propped on pillows in an overheated
room, gave me tea and poured into my ear all the anguish