Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/259

 from Charing Cross to that house of his at Rutland Gate.

"Is the mistress well?" he had asked one of the maids, when his kit was bundled into the hall.

"The mistress is out, sir," said the maid, and he remembered afterwards that she looked queerly at him, with a kind of pity.

There was the usual note waiting for him. Evelyn was "very sorry." She hated causing her husband the grief she knew he would feel, but she and Dick could not do without each other. The war had altered everything, and many wives to many husbands. She hoped Harding would be happy after a bit

Harding was not happy. When he read that note he went a little mad, and roamed round London with an automatic pistol, determined to kill his former friend if he could set eyes on him. Fortunately, he did not find him. Evelyn and Dick had gone off to a village in Devonshire, and after three days with murder in his heart Harding had been very ill, and had gone into a nursing-home. There in his weakness he had, he told me, "thought things out." The result of his meditations amounted to no more than the watchword of many people in years of misery:

"C'est la guerre!"

It was the war which had caused his tragedy. It had put too great a strain on human nature, or at least on human nerves and morals. It had broken down the conventions and traditions of civilised life. The Germans had not only destroyed many towns and villages, but many homes and hearts far from the firing-line. They had let the devil loose.

"Quite a number of my pals," said Harding, "are in the same boat with me. They either couldn't stick to their wives, or their wives couldn't stick them. It gives one a sense of companionship!"