The Squire sat by the fire, staring into the redness of the logs.  Occasionally nurse or doctor would come and whisper to him.  He scarcely seemed to hear them.  What was the good of talking?  He knew that Desmond was doomed—­that his boy’s noble body was shattered—­and the end could only be a question of days—­possibly a week.  During the first nights of Desmond’s sufferings, the Squire had lived through what had seemed an eternity of torment.  Now there was no more agony.  Morphia could be freely given—­and would be given till all was over.  The boy’s young strength was resisting splendidly, a vitality so superb was hard to beat; but beaten it would be, by the brutality of the bullet which had inflicted an internal injury past repair, against which the energy of the boy’s youth might hold out for a few days—­not more.  That was why he had been allowed to bring his son home—­to die.  If there had been a ray, a possibility of hope, every resource of science would have been brought to bear on saving him, there in that casualty clearing-station, itself a large hospital, where the Squire had found him.

All the scenes, incidents, persons of the preceding days were flowing in one continuous medley through the Squire’s mind—­the great spectacle of the back of the Army, with all its endless movement, its crowded roads and marching men, the hovering aeroplanes, the camouflaged guns, the long trains of artillery waggons and motor-lorries, strange faces of Kaffir boys and Chinese, grey lines of German prisoners.  And then, the hospital.  Nothing very much doing, so he was told.  Yet hour after hour the wounded came in, men shattered by bomb and shell and rifle-bullet, in the daily raids that went on throughout the line.  And scarcely a moan, scarcely a word of complaint!—­men giving up their turn with the surgeon to a comrade—­’Never mind me, sir—­he’s worse nor me!’—­or the elder cheering the younger—­’Stick it, young’un—­this’ll get you to Blighty right enough!’—­or, in the midst of mortal pain, signing a field postcard for the people at home, or giving a message to a padre for mother or wife.  Like some monstrous hand, the grip of the war had finally closed upon the Squire’s volatile, recalcitrant soul.  It was now crushing the moral and intellectual energy in himself, as it had crushed the physical life of his son.  For it was as though he were crouching on some bare space, naked and alone, like a wounded man left behind in a shell-hole by his comrades’ advance.  He was aware, indeed, of a mysterious current of spiritual force—­patriotism, or religion, or both in one—­which seemed to be the support of other men.  He had seen incredible, superhuman proofs of it in those few hospital days.  But it was of no use to him.

There was only one dim glimmer in his mind—­towards which at intervals he seemed to be reaching out.  A woman’s face—­a woman’s voice—­in which there seemed to be some offer of help or comfort.  He had seen her—­she was somewhere in the house.  But there seemed to be insuperable barriers—­closed doors, impassable spaces—­between himself and her.  It was a nightmare, partly the result of fatigue and want of sleep.