8
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.
THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER
1
They were to be married as soon as Lent was over. Mrs. Graham, reluctant to lose Mary, had pleaded for delay, urging that Ballymartin was so far from Boveyhaven that she would seldom see her. "Two days' post," she protested.
"But you'll come and stay with us, mother," Mary declared, "and we'll come and stay with you!"
It would be quite easy for Henry to come to Devonshire, for he could carry his work about with him. Then Mrs. Graham had yielded to them, and it was settled that the marriage was to take place at the beginning of May. Neither Mary nor he had spoken again of the question of enlistment. She had said all that was in her mind about it, and what followed was for him to decide.
He went back to Ballymartin. There were things to be done at home in preparation for the coming of a bride. The house had not known a mistress since his mother's death, and his father had been too preoccupied with his agricultural experiments to bother greatly about the interior of his house. So long as he could find things more or less where he had left them, Mr. Quinn had been content.
"You won't overhaul it too much, Quinny?" Mary said to him, "because I'd like to do some of that!"
He had promised that he would do no more than was immediately necessary; and then he went.
"I shall have to go to Dublin," he had told her. "There'll be a lot of stuff to settle with lawyers!" Her settlement, for example. "I'll go home first, then on to Dublin, and then back here. I shall get to Boveyhayne just after Easter!"