“No, the trenches have disappointed me.  They are a scene of tiresome domesticity.  They aren’t a patch on our quarters in the rear.  There isn’t the traffic.  I’ve not found a single excuse for firing my rifle.  I don’t believe I shall ever fire my rifle at an enemy—­ever....

“You’ve seen Rendezvous’ fresh promotion, I suppose?  He’s one of the men the young officers talk about.  Everybody believes in him.  Do you remember how Manning used to hide from him?...”

Section 14

Mr. Britling read this through, and then his thoughts went back to Teddy’s disappearance and then returned to Hugh.  The youngster was right in the front now, and one had to steel oneself to the possibilities of the case.  Somehow Mr. Britling had not expected to find Hugh so speedily in the firing line, though he would have been puzzled to find a reason why this should not have happened.  But he found he had to begin the lesson of stoicism all over again.

He read the letter twice, and then he searched for some indication of its date.  He suspected that letters were sometimes held back....

Four days later this suspicion was confirmed by the arrival of another letter from Hugh in which he told of his second spell in the trenches.  This time things had been much more lively.  They had been heavily shelled and there had been a German attack.  And this time he was writing to his father, and wrote more freely.  He had scribbled in pencil.

“Things are much livelier here than they were.  Our guns are getting to work.  They are firing in spells of an hour or so, three or four times a day, and just when they seem to be leaving off they begin again.  The Germans suddenly got the range of our trenches the day before yesterday, and begun to pound us with high explosive....  Well, it’s trying.  You never seem quite to know when the next bang is coming, and that keeps your nerves hung up; it seems to tighten your muscles and tire you.  We’ve done nothing but lie low all day, and I feel as weary as if I had marched twenty miles.  Then ‘whop,’ one’s near you, and there is a flash and everything flies.  It’s a mad sort of smash-about.  One came much too close to be pleasant; as near as the old oil jars are from the barn court door.  It bowled me clean over and sent a lot of gravel over me.  When I got up there was twenty yards of trench smashed into a mere hole, and men lying about, and some of them groaning and one three-quarters buried.  We had to turn to and get them out as well as we could....

“I felt stunned and insensitive; it was well to have something to do....