The Soldier's Shadow
The boy stared at the flower as though he had never seen one before in his life, his face rigid while his eyes blinked slowly. Then, gradually, he lifted his gaze and finally met Mabel’s eyes for the first time.
Without reason, his heart plummeted. In those empty blue irises, the young girl saw an emotion that was impossible to decipher—a sharp, piercing one that brushed past her.
It was only a flower, after all. Would he not accept it?
Mabel felt a strange embarrassment well up and she fumbled for words.
“Th-this… The bouquet is… a symbol of the courage and conviction you showed on the battlefield.”
Her voice trailed off as she discreetly tucked the boutonniere into the pocket of the uniform jacket dusted with battlefield soil. The flower had harmed no one.
“Irises symbolize hope. May good fortune attend every step you take from now on, Lieutenant.”
Mabel offered him a trembling smile. Then, with the proper deference, she curtsied slightly.
“Welcome home.”
The lieutenant regarded her in silence, his expression unreadable, before stepping backward. He snapped to attention with crisp precision and immediately rejoined the procession.
Right then, at the tail end of the parade, a fleet of open cars carrying wounded soldiers appeared. Mabel scanned them carefully, fearing the worst, and drew in a sharp breath.
One of the vehicles held Arthur.
“Arthur! Arthur Frederick Darlington!”
Mabel called his name and waved desperately. Yet the boy, head bowed and face vacant, seemed not to hear.
“Arthur!”
She raised her voice and moved closer.
“Miss, you cannot interrupt the parade!”
A policeman stepped forward, warning her loudly.
“I’m so sorry!”
Mabel quickly returned to her place and stamped her foot in frustration. At that moment, the lieutenant—irises pinned to his chest—approached one of the open cars. He handed over a small box and pointed in Mabel’s direction.
Mabel bit back the urge to jump and waved at him.
“Welcome home, Arthur!”
Arthur’s eyes widened when he spotted her.
Mabel snatched a camera from her pocket and snapped the moment he passed the corner of Forty-Third Street.
From the open car’s rear seat, Arthur had been following her with his head turned. Now, like a child, his face crumpled and he burst into tears.
***
A week after the parade, Arthur returned to the Darlington estate on Fifth Avenue at Sixty-Fourth Street. The moment he crossed the threshold, he dropped to his knees before the family and servants who watched in stunned silence—and collapsed.
A doctor rushed over to reassure them that it was merely exhaustion from the battlefield and nothing more. He even offered the usual platitudes about celebrating a hero’s return.
For two days Arthur slept only to wake in confusion. He crawled under the bed, pressed his hands over his ears, and trembled. He would not come out.
At first his butler, Harel, dismissed it as childish. When he realized it was serious, he summoned Mildred.
She tried to drag Arthur out, but he shoved her away with eyes full of terror. He sent her sprawling for the first time in his life. She fell unconscious on the spot.
Despite the corset she laced so tightly it made her breathe difficult, Mildred was known to faint at debutante balls. The trend of fainting behind fans had long faded, yet she clung to the image of a gentle, fragile young lady she had learned as a girl. She had never actually lost consciousness before.
Lady’s Maid Lizzie let out a suppressed sigh, as though this were nothing new. Harel gestured toward Mildred, demanding she be taken care of at once.
Lizzie fetched the snuffbox she always carried and raised a fuss.
“Oh, merciful heavens! Mrs. Darlington again! What shall we do? Where did I put the smelling salts…?”
In truth, Mildred preferred to sip whiskey rather than smelling salts. Yet Lizzie had wanted to miss nothing of this spectacle and had gone for the whiskey first.
Mildred would claim a headache from the strong smell even when merely waving the box nearby. This time, though, she did not stir even when the box was held directly beneath her nose.
The servants, sensing something was wrong, erupted in chaos. Harel ordered a footman to fetch the doctor while Lizzie and he carried Mildred to her room.
Meanwhile, Arthur, trembling as he stared at the distant horizon, remained alone beneath the bed.
When Mabel returned from school, she learned the full story from the housekeeper Helen and softly knocked on his door.
“Arthur? It’s Mabel. May I come in?”
There was no answer after a long wait. She worried something terrible had happened.
Mabel considered opening the door but knocked again instead.
“Arthur? Are you asleep? If so, I’ll come back later.”
The door suddenly swung open.
Arthur stared at her with eyes that seemed to see a ghost.
“Sister…? Mabel? Really… is it you?”
The fingers that traced her face trembled like leaves in a winter wind.
Mabel nodded.
“It really is me. Your only cousin, Cornelia Mabel Darlington. Surely you haven’t forgotten me?”
He looked frightened, yet she smiled as though nothing were amiss and teased him with a playful glare.
His cloudy eyes wandered. “Have I… really come home? This isn’t a dream, is it?”
“Yes, it’s real. I’ve missed you so much, Arthur.”
Focus slowly returned to his eyes. The aimless gaze finally settled on Mabel’s face.
“Mabel…”
He said her name as if confirming it.
She answered with a bright smile.
“Yes, Arthur.”
Arthur collapsed against her, sobbing brokenly. “Sister, if this is a dream… please don’t wake me.”
Arthur had changed. The boy who had been the liveliest and bravest of them all had returned from the war a coward.
Ugly scars remained on his limbs where shrapnel had struck, yet the wounds themselves had healed. He looked only a little gaunt and hollow-eyed—otherwise unchanged from before the war.
The uncle and aunt, along with the servants, who had expected the “brave hero” who had survived the Great War’s medal, no longer knew how to greet him.
Mildred summoned a physician from far away, fearing rumors would spread to the neighbors. The doctor diagnosed war neurosis and suggested electric-shock therapy if the symptoms persisted. In the worst case, he warned, she might be sent to a lunatic asylum—and that sent Mildred fainting once more.
Mabel asked Arabella in passing whether she knew anything about similar symptoms.
“Um… it sounds like ‘shell shock’…”
“Shell shock? That’s what the captain told me.”
“No, I heard it from a nurse who served with the Red Cross. The captain… never spoke to me about the war.”
Arabella’s expression grew bitter.
“What exactly are the symptoms of shell shock?”
“I don’t know the details. It happens when the shockwave from an exploding shell damages the brain nerves. I’ve seen soldiers acting strangely because of it on the battlefield.”
Though she did not name Arthur, Arabella had already guessed. She patted the back of Mabel’s hand kindly.
“Why don’t you ask at the Red Cross office? I’ll find that nurse for you.”
The two women visited the Red Cross office, learned about shell shock, and took home pamphlets. Thereafter, whenever Mabel had time, she visited the library, read newspaper articles and medical reports, and copied them down. Yet the electric-shock therapy the doctors recommended to “treat” her broken brain felt far too much like torture.
This is blackmail to make her recover quickly, isn’t it?
The doctors, who needed to return soldiers to the front lines as soon as possible, clearly cared more for short-term results than for the root cause. Moreover, even for soldiers who had never seen the front, they offered no explanation for the same symptoms Arthur exhibited—except malingering or moral decay.
The family felt the same way. They refused to understand the invisible pain Arthur endured.
Walter urged him to stop acting like a coward and act like a man; Mildred wept every time she looked at him.
Mabel wanted to find a way to stop his suffering. She wished for Arthur to return to the bright boy she remembered. That was why she had decided to study psychology at university.