“We’ll have a word to say to that!
She won’t go!
You wait!”
In Eugene’s fantasy there burned the fixed vision of the great hands clasped across the sea, the flowering of green fields, and the developing convolutions of a faery London — mighty, elfin, old, a romantic labyrinth of ancient crowded ways, tall, leaning houses, Lucullan food and drink, and the mad imperial eyes of genius burning among the swarm of quaint originality.
As the war developed, and the literature of war-enchantment began to appear, Margaret Leonard gave him book after book to read.
They were the books of the young men — the young men who fought to blot out the evil of the world with their blood.
In her trembling voice she read to him Rupert Brooke’s sonnet —“If I should die, think only this of me”— and she put a copy of Donald Hankey’s A Student in Arms into his hand, saying:
“Read this, boy.
It will stir you as you’ve never been stirred before.
Those boys have seen the vision!”
He read it.
He read many others.
He saw the vision.
He became a member of this legion of chivalry — young Galahad–Eugene — a spearhead of righteousness.
He had gone a-Grailing.
He composed dozens of personal memoirs, into which quietly, humorously, with fine-tempered English restraint, he poured the full measure of his pure crusading heart.
Sometimes, he came through to the piping times of peace minus an arm, a leg, or an eye, diminished but ennobled; sometimes his last radiant words were penned on the eve of the attack that took his life.
With glistening eyes, he read his own epilogue, enjoyed his post-mortem glory, as his last words were recorded and explained by his editor.
Then, witness of his own martyrdom, he dropped two smoking tears upon his young slain body.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Ben loped along, scowling, by Wood’s pharmacy.
As he passed the idling group at the tiled entrance, he cast on them a look of sudden fierce contempt.
Then he laughed quietly, savagely.
“Oh, my God!” he said.
At the corner, scowling, he waited for Mrs. Pert to cross from the Post Office.
She came over slowly, reeling.
Having arranged to meet her later in the pharmacy, he crossed over, and turned angularly down Federal Street behind the Post Office.
At the second entrance to the Doctors’ and Surgeons’ Building, he turned in, and began to mount the dark creaking stairs.
Somewhere, with punctual developing monotony, a single drop of water was falling into the wet black basin of a sink.
He paused in the wide corridor of the first floor to control the nervous thudding of his heart.
Then he walked half-way down and entered the waiting-room of Dr. J.
H.
Coker.
It was vacant.
Frowning, he sniffed the air.
The whole building was sharp with the clean nervous odor of antiseptics.
A litter of magazines — Life, Judge, The Literary Digest, and The American — on the black mission table, told its story of weary and distressed fumbling.
The inner door opened and the doctor’s assistant, Miss Ray, came out.
She had on her hat.
She was ready to depart.
“Do you want to see the doctor?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Ben, “is he busy?”
“Come on in, Ben,” said Coker, coming to the door.
He took his long wet cigar from his mouth, grinning yellowly.
“That’s all for today, Laura.
You can go.”
“Good-bye,” said Miss Laura Ray, departing.
Ben went into Coker’s office.
Coker closed the door and sat down at his untidy desk.
“You’ll be more comfortable if you lie down on that table,” he said grinning.