Do you think me a coward for not doing it? Do you think me a fool?
All kinds of speeches were hot within me—and I kept them back. More correctly, I didn’t keep them back; I simply couldn’t utter them. I couldn’t give pain to this sweet lady sipping her tea so contentedly; I couldn’t give pain to Annette. Annette was enjoying the situation in which we found ourselves; the sweet lady had got compensation for months, for years, of wondering and unhappiness in those seemingly artless words, “She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she didn’t know it.” I knew they were spoken for my benefit. Between the lines, between the syllables, they said, “And if you think she was ever in love with you you’re wrong.” Whether the sweet lady believed her own statements or not made little difference. It would gratify her all her life to remember that she had had the chance of making them.
So I came away, following the line of least resistance, because I didn’t see what else I could do.
I didn’t see what else I could do when Cantyre came into my bedroom late that night.
I knew he would be dining at the Barrys’, and that he would come looking me up after his return. To avoid him I had the choice between staying out and going to bed. My physical condition kept me from staying out very late, and so I took the other alternative. It made no difference, however, since he waked Lovey by pounding on the door, and insisted on coming in.
Dropping into the arm-chair beside my bed, with no light but that which streamed in behind him from the sitting-room, he took me on my weak side by beginning to talk about the war.
I have said that my mission had become unreal and fantastic, but that was only in relation to my personal fitness for the task. That the war was a holy war, to be fought to a holy end, remained the alpha and omega of my convictions. And to Cantyre war of any kind was plainly unholy war, productive of unholy reactions. What I felt as he talked may best be expressed by Lovey’s words next morning when he betrayed the fact that he had been listening.
“Didn’t it get yer goat, Slim, the way the doctor went on last night?”
It did get my goat, and I restrained myself only because I had been warned in London to be patient with Americans. “You must treat them as wise parents treat their sons,” I had been told. “Help them to see for themselves—and when they do that you can trust them.” So the best I could do was to help Cantyre to see for himself; and to make any headway in that I had to pretend to be tolerant.