“I do often think of people who are working as she does and Miss Carruthers did. Think of the care Andrée gives to Edward…as most nannies do give to the children they look after. In time they have to face the fact that those children do not belong to them. I wonder what she will want to do when the war is over? Perhaps go back to Belgium.”

“She was very anxious to get away,” I said.

“There is that brother of hers. I suppose she doesn’t hear anything of him. It must be very sad for her.”

“She is sure he is with the French army.”

“Anything might have happened to him. She’s a strange girl.”

“Do you think so?”

“She seems so…contented.”

“Does that make her strange? She was glad to get away; she did not want to go to her aunt; and she loves Edward dearly. He is such a darling. I can see why she feels contented.”

“But she must worry about her brother.”

“I believe she was not very close to any of her family.”

“I wonder what will happen to her?”

“Who knows what will happen to anyone?”

My mother looked at me sharply. I think she had an inkling of my feelings for Marcus. I was beginning to realize I was rather naive. I had probably betrayed them.

The days passed—one very like another. I spent more time in the hospital now as I had greater leisure without Miss Carruthers’s lessons. I walked a good deal in the forest and I felt very melancholy during those days.

It was December. As my father had prophesied, Lloyd George had taken over the Government. Marcus had not come to Marchlands, in spite of his promise to do so.

I told myself I should have known by now that he did not mean half of what he said. Had he not admitted that to me on one occasion? He had said he told people what they wanted to hear.

We celebrated Christmas at the hospital, and then it was a new year, 1917. And the war was still with us, showing no more sign of ending than it had two years ago.

The days passed slowly. How I missed Marcus! I think many people did. He had added a gaiety to the place. He was right, of course. He said the things people wanted to hear and made them laugh and be happy—as long as they remembered he did not really mean them. He joked about most things and that made life pleasant.

I thought of him continually during those long and dreary winter days.

News filtered through—mostly gloomy and bringing little hope of an imminent victory. There was a gleam of hope with the coming of April when America declared war on Germany. Soon they would be coming to stand beside us.

Everyone was saying that this must be the beginning of the end.

It was late April when news arrived to cheer me. My mother came to me in great excitement.

“What do you think? I’ve heard from Gerald. Robert’s coming here.”

My first thought was, he’s been wounded.

“Is he badly hurt?” I asked.

“It’s his leg. He’s been in hospital in London for about two weeks, Gerald said. He’s well enough to come here to convalesce. Gerald said it will do him good to have a spell with us.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!”

My mother smiled. “Yes, it will be. You’ll enjoy his being here. You two were always special friends, weren’t you? Gerald said Robert can’t wait to get here. He’ll be coming tomorrow.”

My mother was looking at me with that expression of apprehension which I had known over the years. She understood my feelings for Marcus, for I had been simple enough to betray them. So she was delighted that my good friend Robert would be here to cheer me up.

I rose early the next morning. We had discussed where we would put him. “In one of the four-bed wards,” said my mother. “Dear Robert! We must do the best possible for him.”

“As if we don’t for everyone!” I replied.

“Oh, but there is something special about Robert.”

He arrived in the early afternoon. When I saw him standing there with his crutches, I felt overcome with emotion. He had the same grin, but was thinner, which accentuated what Annabelinda had called his disjointed look. He was paler and somehow he looked vulnerable.

I ran to him and threw my arms around him.

“It’s so good to see you, Robert,” I said.

“And for me to see you.”

“We’re so glad you have come.”

“Your uncle said you would be.”

“And he was right.”

My mother came out and kissed him.

“We were so delighted when we heard the news,” she said.

“You can imagine how I felt,” Robert replied. “You both look wonderfully well.”

“It’s the thought of having you at our mercy. We are going to give you the special treatment, aren’t we, Lucinda?”

“We are,” I replied.

I felt I had been lifted out of my melancholy.

The great matter for rejoicing was that he was not badly wounded. He could go out into the garden and did not have to rely completely on the nurses. We found that patients who could help themselves recovered more quickly than the others.

He knew Marchlands well, of course, and it was for him, he said, like coming home.

I was happier now. Robert’s presence had made a great difference. I no longer brooded on my folly. It was wonderful to be with someone as uncomplicated as he—someone I could understand and be sure that he meant what he said.

I could see that my mother was delighted. She could not conceal her feelings from me, any more than I could mine from her. So Robert’s coming had made a difference to us both.

In the afternoons he would sit in the gardens. The spring days were delightful—long and warm, with just a slight nip in the air to remind us that summer was not yet with us.

We used to sit together, but not under the sycamore tree. I did not want to be there with Robert because I still remembered too much of my conversations with Marcus. I said I preferred the seat under the oak on the other side of the lawn, and that was enough for Robert. He always made his way to the seat under the oak.

We talked. We spoke of the old days, recalling incidents which I thought I had forgotten. We laughed a good deal—laughter that meant a happy contentment, because Robert was safely home for a while and we could be together as we had been in the old days.

I looked forward to every day now. I found I was not thinking of Marcus all the time. It was only occasionally that some memory would come back to me with its little pangs of disappointment…of humiliation and longing.

I was anxious because when Robert recovered fully it was very likely that he would have to go to war again. But I learned to live for each day as it came along, which was not easy but which I knew was wise. To think of the future when we could not know what would happen, could result in fearful apprehension. In wartime there was a feeling of fatality. I guessed, from Robert’s attitude, that he had acquired the skill of living in the present, and talking to him of the life out there on the battlefields of France and Belgium, I caught it from him.

So…I was happy during those days with Robert.

He had changed a little. Such experiences as he had had must change anyone. He was more serious than he had been; there was also a certain recklessness—an odd term to apply to Robert. What I mean is that I sensed a determination to savor the pleasures of the moment.

He described his experiences so vividly that I could almost hear the gunfire, see the shells exploding around him; I could feel the claustrophobic atmosphere of trench warfare…the horror of going “over the top”…the monotony of eating canned food.

“I was lucky in a way,” he said. “A lot of my work was done in the field. It was this Morse thing. I didn’t really understand it, but by some fluke I could receive and transmit at a greater speed than most. It was just a knack…some odd method of my own for connecting the dots and dashes with certain landmarks. I won’t attempt to explain, because it is quite dotty. But they thought I was this Morse genius. So my job was to go out with my mechanic, who would fix up the telephone. Then I would spy out the land with my binoculars, discover where the enemy was massing…or where they had set up their guns…and send the message back to our lines. It was quite easy…quite simple. Jim, my mechanic, did all the hard work.”