Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (60 page)

Strange,
how
many
different
things
the
mind
can
think
of
at
the same
time,
how
many
different,
even
opposing,
emotions
it
can
hold simultaneously:
the
nearest
approach
to
four-dimensional
time
and space
we
know,
perhaps.
The
thing
he
had
to
tell
was
so
literally beyond
belief
that
had
he
told
it
a
week,
even
twenty-four
hours, before,
it
must
have
seemed
wholly
beyond
belief,
and
I
should
have
I
bought
him
mad.
Yet
now,
as
I
stared
and
listened,
one
ear
cocked for
the
street
where
shouting,
tumult
and
the
National
Anthem
were si
ill
audible,
I
discovered
that
I
did
not
entirely
disbelieve.
Nor
did I,
as
must
have
been
the
case
even
the
night
before,
regard
my
cousin as
the
victim
of
an
elaborate
hallucination,
his
mind
deranged.
On the
contrary,
I
found
myself
listening
to
something
that
I
felt
was not
necessarily
impossible.
And
the
idea
dawned
upon
me,
then,
that
Ibis
shock
of
the
war,
which
in
my
case
was
profound
and
real,
had worked
in
me
some
swift
curious
change.
I
felt
in
some
way
older, more
developed.
Tire
shock
had
matured
me
abruptly,
as
it
were with
a
jump.
A
new
understanding
of
Mantravers
was
bom
in
me. I
understood,
for
instance,
his
reputation
for
giving
"easy
advice," for
saying
what
the
other
fellow
wanted
to
hear,
rather
than
what
he thought
himself.
His
immense
knowledge
of
life
had
always
brought people
in
trouble
to
him,
young
people
especially.
"Go
and
ask Mantravers,
he'll
tell
you
what
to
do,"
was
a
commonplace,
though it
would
have
been
more
correct
to
say
"he'll
tell
you
what
you
want to
hear."
I
now
realised
suddenly
that
this
was
no
false
friendliness in
him,
nor
lack
of
principle
exactly,
but
was
due
rather
to
his
deep understanding
sympathy.
He
put
himself
so
completely
in
the
other fellow's
shoes
that
he
thought
the
other
fellow's
thoughts
instead of
his
own.
It
was
his
own
power
of
imaginative
sympathy
that
sent him
wrong.

As
my
preoccupation
with
the
war
now
slipped
further
and
further into
the
background
it
flashed
upon
me,
too,
that
after
all
I
did
perhaps
remember
having
heard
of
Defrayne.
I
did
not
know
even
how the
name
was
spelled,
when
suddenly
there
leaped
into
my
mind
the word
"de
Frasne,"
and
I
dimly
recalled
that
a
young
officer
in
my regiment,
of
that
name
pronounced
Defrayne,
had
committed
suicide a
good
many
years
ago.
It
was
well
before
my
time,
but
I
had
heard the
case
spoken
of.
In
trouble
about
money,
a
woman,
questions
of personal
honour
involved,
the
young
subaltern
had
put
a
bullet through
his
temple.
But
he
had
gone
to
see
Mantravers
first.
As
I listened
to
the
tense,
low-pitched
voice
in
the
chair
opposite
to
mine, details
filled
in
the
story
by
degrees.