Crazy Radio eBooks

Then when he was badly
wounded in some fighting near Festubert, in May 1915, and came home
for two months' leave, he seemed like a stranger, and Beryl had not
known what to be at with him. She was told that he had suffered
very much--it had been a severe thigh wound implicating the sciatic
nerve--and that he had been once, at least, very near to death. But
when she tried to express sympathy with what he had gone through, or
timidly to question him about it, her courage fled, her voice died
in her throat. There was something unapproachable in her old
playfellow, something that held her, and indeed every one else, at
bay.
He was always courteous, and mostly cheerful. But his face in repose
had an absent, haunted look, the eyes alert but fixed on vacancy,
the brow overcast and frowning. In the old days Aubrey's smile had
been his best natural gift. To win a smile from him in her
childhood, Beryl would have done anything--have gone on her knees up
the drive, or offered up the only doll she cared for, or gone
without jam for a week.


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