We hear them troop away through the little courtyard, laughing and talking. We think, as the small nurse said, that they have had a pleasant time.
One of the small side amusements in life is to hear other people’s reflections upon experiences that one has lived through together, and to measure the distance that lies between different points of view. It makes one realize how extraordinarily difficult it must be to obtain reliable evidence.
A neighbour has obligingly come in to help us with the entertainment. She is the pleasant, middle-aged Irish widow of an Irish doctor, and her good-humour is as pronounced as her brogue. Finding herself alone on the terrace with the Signorina after the departure of the convalescents, she mystified her with the following remark:
The poor old lady? The Signorina was all at sea. There was no one answering to such a description among us to-day.
“The poor old lady,” repeated the other firmly. “Yes, Lady ----. I was talking to her, and oh! anybody could see how terrified she was. Nervous, you know; trembling at the mention of the war, upset, shrinking away. And no wonder, I’m sure,” she concluded genially. “Hasn’t she got a son out there?”
She betook herself down the steps towards her cottage. Our daughter watched the purple-spotted blouse meandering downwards from terrace to terrace till it disappeared. She was too astounded even to be able to remonstrate.
And, indeed, of what use would it have been? That Lady ----, distinguished, humorous, with her figure erect and slender as a girl’s, and her refined, delightful face stamped with genius on the brow, and with the most delicate humour about the mouth; that this incomparable woman, actually in the zenith of her power, personal as well as artistic, a being whom it seems that age can never touch, to whom the years have so far only brought a maturing of all kinds of excellence, should have appeared to anyone as the _poor old lady_! And that she should be further classed among the frightened! She who more than any fighter of them all sees the romance of war, the high lesson of war; who only the day before, speaking of a discontented soldier friend, had said to us in tones of wonder:
“He’s not enjoying war! It seems so strange.”