They came away from the old mill with mingled feelings. Barry had to a certain extent recovered from his shock, and had himself somewhat firmly in hand. Cameron was still silent and obviously shaken.
It was grey dawn when they arrived at the camp, physically weary, nervously exhausted, and sick at heart. Barry wakened Hobbs, who greeted them with the news that the battalion was under orders to go up that night. By his own state Barry was able to gauge that of his friend Cameron. The experiences of the last ten hours had been like nothing in his previous life. The desolation wrought by war upon the face of the country, upon the bodies of men, upon their souls, had sickened and unnerved him; and this he remembered was an experience of only a brief ten hours. He was conscious of a profound self-distrust and humiliation, as he thought of those other men, those medical officers, with their orderlies, the ambulance drivers, those wounded soldiers. How could they endure this horror, day in and day out, for weeks and for months? In a few hours he would have to meet his fellow officers and the men. They could not fail to read in his face all this that he carried in his heart.
By his grey, haggard face he knew that the same horror and fear had gone deep into his friend's soul. There came to him the sudden thought that Cameron, too, must meet his fellow officers, and must endure their searching chaff, and that he would reveal himself to his undoing; for no man can ever live down in his battalion the whisper that he is a “quitter.” That very night Cameron would be forced to lead up his platoon into the front line, and must lead them step by step over that same Vlammertinghe road, where the transports were nightly shelled. In the presence of any danger soever, he must not falter. When the shells would begin to fall, he knew well how the eyes of his men would turn to their leader and search his very soul to see of what quality he was. Far better a man should die than falter. He had not failed to notice the startled look in Cameron's eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news. Some way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the steadying of the courage of his friend.
“Come in with me, Cameron,” he said, standing at the door of his hut. “I'm dead beat and so are you. We'll have coffee and some grub, and then sleep for a couple of hours until reveille.”