He walked out to the cemetery, and stood beside his father's grave. There for the first time it came over him that henceforth he must go all the way of his life without the sight of that face, without the touch of that hand on his shoulder, without the cheer of that voice. In floods his sense of loss swept his soul. It took all his manhood to refrain from throwing himself prone upon the little mound and yielding to the agony that flooded his soul, and that wrought in his heart physical pain. By a resolute act of will, he held himself erect. While he blamed and despised himself for his weakness, he was unable to shake it off. He did not know that his mental and emotional state was in large measure a physical reaction from the prolonged period of exhausting strain, his treble tour in the trenches, with its unrelieved sense of impending destruction, that its endless procession of broken, torn bodies, with its nights of sleepless activity, with its eternal struggle against depression, consequent upon the loss of his comrades, its eternal striving after cheeriness and more than all the shock of the train wreck, with its scenes of horror; all this had combined to reduce his physical powers of resistance to the point of utter exhaustion.
As he stood there in that cemetery with its rows of crosses, silently eloquent of heroism and of sacrifice, the spirit of the place seemed to breathe into him new life. As his eyes fell upon the cross bearing his father's name, he seemed to see again that erect and gallant figure, instinct with life and courage. There came to him the memory of a scene he had never forgotten. Again he was with his father in the little home cottage. How dear it had been to him then! How dear to him, today! Once more he felt the strong grip of his father's hand and heard his father's voice:
“Good night, boy. We don't know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering, that part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never need and never shall be ours.”
Unconsciously as if he were in the presence of a superior officer, he lifted his hand in salute, and with a sense of renewal of his vital energies he returned to the boat.
During the crossing his mind was chiefly occupied with the problem of discovering the whereabouts of the V. A. D. or his American friends. He had never learned her London address, if indeed she had one. He remembered that she had told him that her home had been turned into a hospital. He had some slight hope that he might be able to trace her by the aid of her uncle.