Then the doctor sounded Doe’s heart, and, as he did it, all the laughter went out of my life.  I suddenly remembered a scene, wherein I lay in the baths at Kensingtowe, recovering from a faint, and Dr. Chappy looked down upon me and said:  “There may be a weakness at your heart.”  As I remembered it, the first time for years, my heart missed its beats.  I saw rapidly succeeding visions of my rejection by the doctor; my farewell to Doe, as he left for romantic Gallipoli; and my return to the undistinguished career of the Medically Unfit.  I found myself repeating, after the fashion of younger days (though at this wild-colt period I had done with God):  “O God, make him pass me.  O God, make him pass me.”

“All right, get dressed,” the doctor commanded Doe.

“Come here, you,” he said to me, brutally.

My eyes, teeth, and chest satisfied him; and then, like a loathly eavesdropper, he listened at my heart.  I was afraid my nervousness would cause some irregular action of the detestable organ that would finally down me in his eyes.

“All right, get dressed,” he said; and, having put his stethoscope away, he wrote something on two printed Army Forms and sealed them.

“Are we fit, sir?” asked I, in suspense.

“I’ve written my verdict,” he said snappily, looking at me as much as to say:  “You aren’t asked to converse.  This isn’t a conversazione”; but, when he caught my gaze, he seemed, to repent of his harshness, and answered gruffly: 

“Both perfect.”

“Oh, thanks, sir,” said I. I could have kissed the old churl.

And so, before July was out, when Doe and I were at our separate homes on a last leave, we received from the Director-General of Movements our Embarkation Orders.  Marked “SECRET,” the documents informed us that we were to report at Devonport “in service dress uniform,” with a view to proceeding to “the Mediterranean.”  Seemingly we were to take no drafts of men, but travel independently as reinforcements to the First Line at Cape Helles.

My mother turned very white when I showed her the letter.  She had heard ugly things about the Gallipoli Peninsula.  People were saying that the life of a junior subaltern on Helles was working out to an average of fourteen days; and that, in the heat, the flies and dust were scattering broadcast the germs of dysentery and enteric.  And I believe my restless excitement hurt her.  But she only said:  “I’m so proud of it all,” and kissed me.

The last night, however, as she sat in her chair, and I, after walking excitedly about, stood in front of her, she took both my hands and drew me, facing her, against her knees.  I know she found it sweet and poignant to have me in that position, for, when I was a very small boy, it had been thus that she had drawn me to tell me stories of my grandfather, Colonel Ray.  She had dropped the habit, when I was a shy and undemonstrative schoolboy, but had resumed it happily during the last two years, for, by then, I had learnt in my growing mannishness to delight in half-protectingly, half-childishly stroking and embracing her.