“You needn’t go into details,” I said. “I can guess.”
“I’m only telling you this,” said Daintree, “because all the stuff lying about seems to have interested Simcox. It’s odd the feelings men have at these times. Simcox says the thing he chiefly wanted to do was to tidy up. He had a kind of strong desire to pick things up and put them away somewhere. Of course he couldn’t; but he did pick up one thing, a cigarette case. He showed it to me. It was one of those long-shaped, flat white metal cases which fellows carry because they hold about thirty cigarettes. Simcox says he doesn’t know why he picked it up. He didn’t want it in the least. He just saw it lying there on the ground and stuffed it into his pocket. Almost immediately after that he was hit. Bit of shrapnel under the knee.”
“I remember hearing about that business,” I said. “We were driven out again, weren’t we?”
“Exactly. And Simcox was left behind. He couldn’t walk, of course. But he crawled into a shell hole, and there he lay. Well, for the next two days that wood wasn’t healthy for either side. The Germans couldn’t get back, because we were sprinkling the whole place with shrapnel. We couldn’t advance for similar reasons. Simcox just lay in his shell hole. He tied up his leg somehow. He had some brandy in a flask as well as his iron rations. But he hadn’t much tobacco. There were only two cigarettes in his own case. However, he had the other case, the one he picked up. There were nearly twenty in it Also there was--I say, at this point the story gets sloppy.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Go on. What else was in the cigarette case? A farewell letter to a loving wife? Love to little Willie and a text of Scripture?”
“Not so bad as that. A photo of a girl. He showed it to me when he told me the story.”
“Very. Large eyes--sort of tender, you know, and appealing; and a gentle, innocent face, and a mouth----”
“I suppose,” I said, “that these raptures are necessary if I’m to understand the story. Otherwise, you may skip them.”
“Can’t possibly skip them,” said Daintree. “The whole point of the story depends on your realizing the sort of girl she was. Pathetic--that’s the word I want. Looked at you out of the photo as if she was a poor, lonely, but uncommonly fetching little thing, who wanted a strong, true man to shelter her from the evil world. She was got up in some sort of fancy dress which kind of heightened the effect. I don’t altogether profess to understand what happened, though my wife says she does. But Simcox in a sort of way fell in love with her. That’s not the way he put it. He didn’t feel that she was just an ordinary girl--the sort one falls in love with. She was--well, he didn’t think of her as flesh and blood--more a kind of vision--spiritual, you know.”