He got up and stood irresolute.  He knew he was being preposterously unfair to America, and outrageously uncivil to a trusting guest; he knew he had no business now to end the talk in this violent fashion.  But it was an enormous relief.  And to mend matters—­No! He was glad he’d said these things....

He swung a shoulder to Mr. Direck, and walked out of the room....

Mr. Direck heard him cross the hall and slam the door of the little parlour....

Mr. Direck had been stirred deeply by the tragic indignation of this explosion, and the ring of torment in Mr. Britling’s voice.  He had stood up also, but he did not follow his host.

“It’s his boy,” said Mr. Direck at last, confidentially to the writing-desk.  “How can one argue with him?  It’s just hell for him....”

Section 20

Mr. Direck took his leave of Mrs. Britling, and went very slowly towards the little cottage.  But he did not go to the cottage.  He felt he would only find another soul in torment there.

“What’s the good of hanging round talking?” said Mr. Direck.

He stopped at the stile in the lane, and sat thinking deeply.  “Only one thing will convince her,” he said.

He held out his fingers.  “First this,” he whispered, “and then that.  Yes.”

He went on as far as the bend from which one sees the cottage, and stood for a little time regarding it.

He returned still more sorrowfully to the junction, and with every step he took it seemed to him that he would rather see Cecily angry and insulting than not see her at all.

At the post office he stopped and wrote a letter-card.

“Dear Cissie,” he wrote.  “I came down to-day to see you—­and thought better of it.  I’m going right off to find out about Teddy.  Somehow I’ll get that settled.  I’ll fly around and do that somehow if I have to go up to the German front to do it.  And when I’ve got that settled I’ve got something else in my mind—­well, it will wipe out all this little trouble that’s got so big between us about neutrality.  And I love you dearly, Cissie.”

That was all the card would hold.

Section 21

And then as if it were something that every one in the Dower House had been waiting for, came the message that Hugh had been killed.

The telegram was brought up by a girl in a pinafore instead of the boy of the old dispensation, for boys now were doing the work of youths and youths the work of the men who had gone to the war.

Mr. Britling was standing at the front door; he had been surveying the late October foliage, touched by the warm light of the afternoon, when the messenger appeared.  He opened the telegram, hoping as he had hoped when he opened any telegram since Hugh had gone to the front that it would not contain the exact words he read; that it would say wounded, that at the worst it would say “missing,” that perhaps it might even tell of some pleasant surprise, a brief return to home such as the last letter had foreshadowed.  He read the final, unqualified statement, the terse regrets.  He stood quite still for a moment or so, staring at the words....