All that day there persisted that sense of complete detachment from all
but her whose body they had laid to rest on the windy hill overlooking
the broad water. His father, Aunt Barbara, the cousins and relations who
thronged the church were no more than inanimate shadows compared with
her whose presence had come last night into his room, and had not left
him since. The affairs of the world, drums and the torch of war, had
passed for those hours from his knowledge, as at the centre of a cyclone
there was a windless calm. To-morrow he knew he would pass out into
the tumult again, and the minutes slipped like pearls from a string,
dropping into the dim gulf where the tempest raged. . . .
He went back to town next morning, after a short interview with his
father, who was coming up later in the day, when he told him that he
intended to go back to his regiment as soon as possible. But, knowing
that he meant to go by the slow midday train, his father proposed to
stop the express for him that went through a few minutes before. Michael
could hardly believe his ears. . . .
CHAPTER XV
It was but a day or two after the outbreak of the war that it was
believed that an expeditionary force was to be sent to France, to help
in arresting the Teutonic tide that was now breaking over Belgium; but
no public and authoritative news came till after the first draft of the
force had actually set foot on French soil.
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