Chapter 10

BOOK III

THE TESTAMENT OF MATCHING'S EASY

CHAPTER THE FIRST

MRS. TEDDY GOES FOR A WALK

Section 1

All over England now, where the livery of mourning had been a rare thing
to see, women and children went about in the October sunshine in new
black clothes. Everywhere one met these fresh griefs, mothers who had
lost their sons, women who had lost their men, lives shattered and hopes
destroyed. The dyers had a great time turning coloured garments to
black. And there was also a growing multitude of crippled and disabled
men. It was so in England, much more was it so in France and Russia, in
all the countries of the Allies, and in Germany and Austria; away into
Asia Minor and Egypt, in India and Japan and Italy there was mourning,
the world was filled with loss and mourning and impoverishment and
distress.

And still the mysterious powers that required these things of mankind
were unappeased, and each day added its quota of heart-stabbing messages
and called for new mourning, and sent home fresh consignments of broken
and tormented men.

Some clung to hopes that became at last almost more terrible than black
certainties....

Mrs. Teddy went about the village in a coloured dress bearing herself
confidently. Teddy had been listed now as "missing, since reported
killed," and she had had two letters from his comrades. They said Teddy
had been left behind in the ruins of a farm with one or two other
wounded, and that when the Canadians retook the place these wounded had
all been found butchered. None had been found alive. Afterwards the
Canadians had had to fall back. Mr. Direck had been at great pains to
hunt up wounded men from Teddy's company, and also any likely Canadians
both at the base hospital in France and in London, and to get what he
could from them. He had made it a service to Cissie. Only one of his
witnesses was quite clear about Teddy, but he, alas! was dreadfully
clear. There had been only one lieutenant among the men left behind, he
said, and obviously that must have been Teddy. "He had been prodded in
half-a-dozen places. His head was nearly severed from his body."

Direck came down and told the story to Cissie. "Shall I tell it to her?"
he asked.

Cissie thought. "Not yet," she said....

Letty's face changed in those pitiful weeks when she was denying death.
She lost her pretty colour, she became white; her mouth grew hard and
her eyes had a hard brightness. She never wept, she never gave a sign of
sorrow, and she insisted upon talking about Teddy, in a dry offhand
voice. Constantly she referred to his final return. "Teddy," she said,
"will be surprised at this," or