She kissed the top of his head and then went back to the trestle table holding the steaming pans of soup. He shut his eyes for a moment, the feeling of nausea the incidents always induced causing him to swallow hard. Dammit, when was he going to feel like a man again? He felt very tired now, exhausted suddenly, but Rose was right. This time had been much shorter. He was getting better, he had to believe that or else he really would go mad. And he wasn’t the only soldier who had come home suffering in this way. Perhaps he was fortunate in that his physical injuries were so obvious, because he had heard stories of soldiers who were physically unimpaired being hounded by the army and civilians alike when they broke down. It made him incensed, and one of the old timers who came to the soup kitchen now and again had related how a young lad in the town, only eighteen years old, had been given a white feather by a bunch of women after he’d been unable to return to the front, and he had gone home and killed himself.

The hall was busy now but as Alexander sat there an idea he’d been mulling over since his return from the war came to the forefront of his mind again. He had broached it with Rose and she’d thought it was splendid, but how his parents would react he wasn’t sure.

He’d like to see Highfield Hall used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, those sick in their minds as well as those physically ill. The extensive grounds were perfect for men to recuperate at their own pace, and there was the farm too for those who wanted to work and get their hands dirty. Being outside in the fresh air could be a tonic in itself, and the farm manager had only been complaining to his father the other day that he was finding it harder to keep things ticking along due to the number of men who’d left to join up.

Old Stubbs could use some assistance too, but he didn’t quite understand why the elderly gardener had dug up all the rose bushes in the rose garden and replanted new ones when he was short of men. His father had told him it was something to do with a disease which had attacked the roses, but it seemed a rather extreme thing to have done. Nevertheless, the pleasure gardens and the grounds were tranquil and peaceful and men could find solace there.