If Winter Comes

VI

Sabre, passed on from the or­deal of the night to the or­deal of the day by this in­ter­lude of the as­ton­ish­ing doc­tor, did not know how over­wrought he was un­til he was at home again and come to Ma­bel seat­ed at break­fast. The thought in his mind as he walked had been the thought in his mind as he had sat on af­ter the death, wait­ing for morn­ing. Af­ter this, af­ter the war had done this, how was he to go on en­dur­ing the war and re­fused part in it? He dread­ed meet­ing Ma­bel. He dread­ed go­ing on to the of­fice and meet­ing For­tune and Twyn­ing. To none of these peo­ple, to no one he could meet, could he ex­plain how he felt about Young Perch and what he had gone through with Mrs. Perch, nor why, be­cause of what he felt, more poignant than ev­er was his need to get in­to the war. And yet with these feel­ings he must go on fac­ing these peo­ple and go on meet­ing the war in ev­ery print­ed page, in ev­ery sight, in ev­ery con­ver­sa­tion. Un­bear­able! He could not.

Ma­bel looked up from her break­fast. “Well, I do think--”

This was the be­gin­ning of it. He felt him­self dig­ging his nails in­to the palms of his hands. “I've been up with old Mrs. Perch--”

“I know you have. I sent around to the Far­gus­es. I must say I do think--”

He felt he could not bear it. “Ma­bel, look here. For good­ness' sake don't say you do think I ought to have let you know. I know I ought but I couldn't. And I'm not in a state to go on nig­gling about it. Young Perch is killed and his moth­er's dead. Now for good­ness' sake, for pity's sake, let it alone. I couldn't send and there's the end of it.”

He went out of the room. He thought, “There you are! Now I've done it!” He went back. “I say, I'm sor­ry for burst­ing out like that; but I've had rather a night of it. It's ter­ri­ble, isn't it, both of them like that? Aren't you aw­ful­ly sor­ry about it, Ma­bel?”

She said, “I'm very sor­ry. Very sor­ry in­deed. But you can't ex­pect me to say much when you speak in that ex­traor­di­nary man­ner.”

“I was with her when she died. It's up­set me a bit.”

“I don't won­der. If you ask me, I think it was very ex­traor­di­nary your be­ing there. If you ask me, I think it was very fun­ny of that Miss Bright send­ing for you at that hour of the night. Whyev­er should she send for you of all peo­ple?”

“I was their great­est friend.”

“Yes, I know you al­ways liked them. But you couldn't be of any use. I must say I do think peo­ple are very fun­ny some­times. If Miss Bright had done the right thing, as we are their near­est neigh­bors, she would have sent and asked me if I could let one of the maids go over and be with her. Then you could have gone up too if you'd wished and could have come back again. I don't think she had any right to send for you.”

He had sat down and was about to pour him­self out some tea. He put down the teapot and got up. “Look here, do me a favour. They're dead, both of them. Don't say any­thing more about them. Don't men­tion the sub­ject again. For God's sake.”

He went out of the house and got his bi­cy­cle and set out for the of­fice. At the top of the Green he passed young Pin­nock, the son of Pin­nock's Stores. Some patch of colour about young Pin­nock caught his eye. He looked again. The colour was a vivid red crown on a kha­ki bras­sard on the young man's arm. The badge of the re­cruits en­rolled un­der the Der­by en­list­ment scheme. He dis­mount­ed. “Hul­lo, Pin­nock. How on earth did you get that arm­let?”

“I've joined up.”

“But I thought you'd been re­ject­ed about forty times. Haven't you got one foot in the grave or some­thing?”

Young Pin­nock grinned huge­ly. “Don't mat­ter if you've got both feet in, or head and shoul­ders nei­ther, over at Chovens­bury to-​day, Mr. Sabre. It's the last day of this yer Der­by scheme, an' there's such a rush of chaps to get in be­fore they make con­scripts of 'em they're fair let­ting any­body through.”

Sabre's heart--that very heart!--bound­ed with an im­mense hope. “D'you think it's the same at Tid­bor­ough?”

“They're say­ing it's the same ev­ery­where. They say they're pass­ing you through if you can breathe. I reck­on that's so at Chovens­bury any­way. Why, they didn't hard­ly look at me.”

Sabre turned his front wheel to the Chovens­bury road. “I'll go there.”