13-Aug

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Mrs. Graham and Rachel had left them alone for a while, after dinner, and as he sat, with her at his feet, fondling her hair, she spoke of her feeling for him again.

"I've wondered sometimes," she said, "about your not joining ... it seemed odd ... but I thought that perhaps there was something that would explain it. I'd like you to join, Quinny ... I can't pretend that I wouldn't ... but I don't feel that I ought to ask you to do so. If I were a man I should join, I think, but I'm not a man, and I'm not likely to have to suffer any of the things that a man has to suffer if he goes ... and so I don't say anything. I don't know why I'd like you to go ... I ought to be glad that you haven't gone because I love you and I don't want to lose you ... but all the same I'd like you to go. It isn't just because other men have gone, and I don't feel any desire for revenge because Ninian's been killed ... it's just because England's England, I suppose...." She laughed a little nervously. "I can hardly expect you to feel about England as I do. You're Irish!.."

"I've made that excuse for myself, Mary. Don't you make it for me. I know inside me that the war isn't England's war ... it's the world's war. John Marsh admits that much. He doesn't like English rule in Ireland, but he doesn't pretend that German rule would be better ... not seriously, anyhow. No, dear, I haven't that excuse. I know that if we lose this war, the world will be a worse place to live in than it is. I haven't any conscientious objection ... I don't feel that we are in the wrong ... I feel that we're in the right ... that we never were so right as we are. I'm simply anxious to save my skin. And even if I felt that John Marsh were right in being anti-English, I don't feel that I have any right to take up that attitude. England's done no wrong to my family.... You see, dear, I haven't any excuse that's worth while ... except the wish to preserve my life ... and that's a poor excuse. When I think of being at the Front, I think of myself as dead ... lying out there ... without any of the decencies ... until I'm offensive to the men who were my friends ... until they sicken at the stench of me!..."

"Don't, dear!" she murmured.

"Perhaps I shall conquer this ... this meanness. I want to conquer it. I want to behave as I believe. I believe that there are things one should be glad to fight for and die for ... and I want to feel glad to fight for them and be ready to die for them. But now I feel most that I want to be safe ... to go on living and living and enjoying things...."

"But can you enjoy things if they're not worth dying for, Quinny? If England weren't worthy dying for, would it be worth living in! That's how I feel!"

"That's how I think, Mary, but it isn't how I feel. I feel that I want to be safe no matter what happens ... if civilisation is to go to smash and we're to be driven back to savagery, distrusting and being distrusted ... I feel that I don't care ... that I want to be safe, to go on living, even if I have to live in a cave and hide from everything.... Oh, my dear, don't you see what a poor thing I am!"

"Yes," she said simply.

"And yet you're willing to marry me?"

"Yes. I can't help loving you, any more than I can help loving my country. I can't explain it and I don't want to explain it. If I were a man and England were in the wrong, I'd fight for England just because she's England. Everything makes me feel like that. When Ninian was killed, something went on saying, 'You're English! You mustn't cry! You're English!' And when I look at the trees outside, I feel that they're English, too, and that they're telling me I'm English ... that somehow they're special trees, different from the trees in other countries ... that they've got something that I've got, and that I've got something they've got ... something that a French tree or a German tree hasn't got.... Oh, I know it's silly, but I can't help it ... and when I used to walk about the lanes and fields after Ninian's death ... I felt that the birds and the grass and the ferns and everything were saying 'You're English!' and I wanted to say back to them, 'You're English, too!...' I suppose people feel like that everywhere ... those friends of yours in Ireland must feel like that about Ireland ... and Germans, too!..."

He nodded his head. "It's a madness, this nationality," he said, "but you can't get a cure for it. Even I feel it!"

"Quinny!"

"Yes, Mary!"

There was a nervous note in her voice. She got up, so that she was on her knees, and fingered the lapels of his coat.

"Quinny!" she said again, and he waited for her to proceed. "I ... I want us to get married ... soon! You'll probably go into the Army ... nobody could go on feeling as you do, and not go in ... and I'd like us to ... to have had some time together ... before you go. I don't want to be married to you just ... just a day or two before you go. I ... I want to have lived with you and to ... to have taken care of your house ... with you in it!..."

He folded her in his arms.

"You will, Quinny?" she said.

"Yes," he answered.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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