Rare, therefore, the old chess and acrostic evenings and most keenly anticipated, accordingly, this--the first for a fortnight--on the eve of New Year's Eve. It was to have been a real long evening; but it proved not very long. It was to have been one in which the war should be shut out and forgotten in the delights of mental twistings and slowly puffed pipes; it proved to be one in which "this frightful war!" was groaned out of Sabre's spirit in emotion most terrible to him.
At ten o'clock profound gymnastics of the mind in search of a hidden word beginning with e and ending with l were interrupted by the entry of the startled Kate. One hand writhed between her shoulders for the apron string, the other held a note. "Please, Mr. Sabre, I think it's for you, Mr. Sabre. A young boy took it to your house and said you was to have it most particular, and please, your Rebecca sent him on here, please."
He opened it. He did not recognise the writing on the envelope. He had not the remotest idea--It was a jolly evening.... could Enamel be that word in e and l? He unfolded it. Ah!
"_Freddie's killed. Please do come at once. I think she's dying.--E.B._"
He was alone in the room where Mrs. Perch lay,--not even Effie. One o'clock. This war! He had thought to shut it away for a night, and here was the inconceivable occupation to which it had brought him: alone in here--
The doctor had been and was coming again in the morning. There was nothing to be done, he had said; just watch her.
Watch her? How long had he been standing at the foot of the huge bed--the biggest bed he had ever seen--and what was there to watch? She gave no sign. She scarcely seemed to breathe. He would not have recognised her face. It had the appearance of a mask. "Sinking," the doctor had said. In process here before his eyes, but not to be seen by them, awful and mysterious things. Death with practised fingers about his awful and mysterious surgery of separating the spirit from the flesh, the soul from the body, the incorruptible from the corruptible.
It could not be! There was not a sign; there was not a sound; and what should he be doing to be alone here, blind watcher of such a finality? It was not real. It was an hallucination. He was not really here. The morning--and days and weeks and years--would come, and he would know that this never had really happened.
