She had been lying in a state of passive abandonment, her swollen wet eyes open, regardless of everything. But those quick movements caught her back to attention. She began to watch the robin, and to note how it glanced sidelong at her and appeared to meditate further approaches. She made an almost imperceptible movement, and straightway the little creature was in a projecting spray of berried hawthorn overhead.
Her tear-washed mind became vaguely friendly. With an unconscious comfort it focused down to the robin. She rolled over, sat up, and imitated his friendly “cheep.”
§ 7
Presently she became aware of footsteps rustling through the grass towards her.
She looked over her shoulder and discovered Mr. Britling approaching by the field path. He looked white and tired and listless, even his bristling hair and moustache conveyed his depression; he was dressed in an old tweed knickerbocker suit and carrying a big atlas and some papers. He had an effect of hesitation in his approach. It was as if he wanted to talk to her and doubted her reception for him.
He spoke without any preface. “Direck has told you?” he said, standing over her.
She answered with a sob.
“I was afraid it was so, and yet I did not believe it,” said Mr. Britling. “Until now.”
He hesitated as if he would go on, and then he knelt down on the grass a little way from her and seated himself. There was an interval of silence.
“At first it hurts like the devil,” he said at last, looking away at Mertonsome spire and speaking as if he spoke to no one in particular. “And then it hurts. It goes on hurting. … And one can’t say much to anyone. …”
He said no more for a time. But the two of them comforted one another, and knew that they comforted each other. They had a common feeling of fellowship and ease. They had been stricken by the same thing; they understood how it was with each other. It was not like the attempted comfort they got from those who had not loved and dreaded. …
She took up a little broken twig and dug small holes in the ground with it.
“It’s strange,” she said, “but I’m glad I know for sure.”
“I can understand that,” said Mr. Britling.
“It stops the nightmares. … It isn’t hopes I’ve had so much as fears. … I wouldn’t admit he was dead or hurt. Because—I couldn’t think it without thinking it—horrible. Now—”
“It’s final,” said Mr. Britling.
“It’s definite,” she said after a pause. “It’s like thinking he’s asleep—for good.”
But that did not satisfy her. There was more than this in her mind. “It does away with the half and half,” she said. “He’s dead or he is alive. …”
She looked up at Mr. Britling as if she measured his understanding.
“You don’t still doubt?” he said.
“I’m content now in my mind—in a way. He wasn’t anyhow there—unless he was dead. But if I saw Teddy coming over the hedge there to me—It would be just natural. … No, don’t stare at me. I know really he is dead. And it is a comfort. It is peace. … All the thoughts of him being crushed dreadfully or being mutilated or lying and screaming—or things like that—they’ve gone. He’s out of his spoilt body. He’s my unbroken Teddy again. … Out of sight somewhere. … Unbroken. … Sleeping.”
She resumed her excavation with the little stick, with the tears running down her face.
Mr. Britling presently went on with the talk. “For me it came all at once, without a doubt or a hope. I hoped until the last that nothing would touch Hugh. And then it was like a black shutter falling—in an instant. …”
He considered. “Hugh, too, seems just round the corner at times. But at times, it’s a blank place. …
“At times,” said Mr. Britling, “I feel nothing but astonishment. The whole thing becomes incredible. Just as for weeks after the war began I couldn’t believe that a big modern nation could really go to war—seriously—with its whole heart. … And they have killed Teddy and Hugh. …
“They have killed millions. Millions—who had fathers and mothers and wives and sweethearts. …”
§ 8
“Somehow I can’t talk about this to Edith. It is ridiculous, I know. But in some way I can’t. … It isn’t fair to her. If I could, I would. … Quite soon after we were married I ceased to talk to her. I mean talking really and simply—as I do to you. And it’s never come back. I don’t know why. … And particularly I can’t talk to her of Hugh. … Little things, little shadows of criticism, but enough to make it impossible. … And I go about thinking about Hugh, and what has happened to him sometimes … as though I was stifling.”
Letty compared her case.
“I don’t want to talk about Teddy—not a word.”
“That’s queer. … But perhaps—a son is different. Now I come to think of it—I’ve never talked of Mary. … Not to anyone ever. I’ve never thought of that before. But I haven’t. I couldn’t. No. Losing a lover, that’s a thing for oneself. I’ve been through that, you see. But a son’s more outside you. Altogether. And more your own making. It’s not losing a thing in you; it’s losing a hope and a pride. … Once when I was a little boy I did a drawing very carefully. It took me a long time. … And a big boy tore it up. For no particular reason. Just out of cruelty. … That—that was exactly like losing Hugh. …”
Letty reflected.
“No,” she confessed, “I’m more selfish than that.”
“It isn’t selfish,” said Mr. Britling. “But it’s a different thing. It’s less intimate, and more personally important.”
“I have just thought, ‘He’s gone. He’s gone.’ Sometimes, do you know, I have felt quite angry with him. Why need he have gone—so soon?”
Mr. Britling nodded understandingly.
“I’m not angry. I’m not depressed. I’m just bitterly hurt by the ending
