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By Root 521 0

effort, he pushed himself to his feet and tottered out of the door and up the hallway to the room at the front of the house. We followed, to a book-lined room whose clammy, stale air testified to the fact that its occupation was only occasional, probably in the summer months. Certainly the books looked well read; the desk was tidy but also showed signs of long use. He went around the desk, pulled open a drawer, and took from the top of it a volume about five inches by seven, bound in once-crimson leather, the edges folded in from a lengthy stay in its owner’s pockets or pack. Hastings held it for a moment, then gave it to Holmes, who opened it just long enough to riffle through the pages before placing it in his pocket. Hastings’ gaze followed the object until it had disappeared from view, then he reached down and slid shut the drawer.

Manners—and more, compassion—demanded that we allow Hastings to assert his hospitality by serving us more of his near-Arabic coffee. With pulses racing, we eventually took our leave, thanking him for all he had done, for us and for Gabriel.

“It is I who need to thank you,” he told us. “For years I have longed to speak of that boy. It was good to say his name, even if your coming has meant that his name is now the only possession of his I have left.”

“The family will, I am sure, wish to thank you themselves.”

“They know where to find me.”

We shook hands and turned to go, but I hesitated, and looked back up at the old man.

“Will you be all right?” I asked. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“There is nothing you can do for me,” he answered gently, and the door closed against us, the house again a faceless presence.

“That is not entirely true,” Holmes muttered to himself, and stopped in the high street to send a long and carefully worded telegram to the parish’s bishop, to the effect that one of his flock was in need of episcopy and succour.

We found the next London train to be in slightly less than an hour, and as one side of the waiting area was occupied by a weary woman with three small children and the other by an aged deaf couple, the noise precluded easy conversation. We retired to a nearby public house, ordered food and alcohol to modify the effects of the coffee that was coursing through our veins, and settled into a private corner with the musings of the young second lieutenant.

Both of us gave but a glancing look at the final pages. The agony of those entries demanded an attitude on the part of the reader that neither Holmes nor I felt capable of summoning at the moment; we were seeking facts, and although there were names there, none were immediately informative. Holmes turned to the entries dated February, skimmed through a self-consciously laconic account of battle and a rather more detailed description of the joys of the behind-the-lines delousing baths, and then went back to the front line to the night before a “push.” The next entry was dated sixteen days later, with the notation, “In hospital.”

Here we were introduced to Hélène, but as an introduction it left a great deal to be desired. The young man had spent a mere two weeks away from his journal, but during that time his life had changed so completely, it would seem that he could scarcely remember his previous existence. A good part of that, no doubt, was the consequence of having all but died in what he had so feelingly called “cream-of-man soup.” His nerves were, as the diary put it, “pretty funk,” and the shaky handwriting, which I had seen earlier on the field post-card, reflected the state of his mind.

Gabriel Hughenfort’s brush with death, however, was only a part of his transformation—or perhaps, was only the act of demolition that cleared the way for the next stage. For by the time he set indelible pencil to paper again, his mind and his heart had already grown up anew around the woman whose face he had first seen bent over his stretcher. He wrote:

It makes me smile, to think that at the first sight of Hélène I thought she was a man. Her back was to me, of course—no-one looking into her eyes would