With only occasional
week-ends at home he had been away from London since September,
1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the
bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water,
bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking
margarine for butter. He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa
more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army
blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which
tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and
sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy
appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to
sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the
bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery;
shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an
isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the
never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled
him with intense gratitude to Linda.
Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who
had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of
lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know,
though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking
pity on the poor little woman and her two children.
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