The Green Bough

by E. Temple Thurston

"They're all going from here. If I cock on a year or two, they'll take me. I sort of know you'd like me to. Do you know why? Do you remember once my asking you something about a couple of moles the hay knives had chopped? I was thinking of it yesterday, I don't know why, and that made me realize you'd understand. Do you remember what you said about Death, that sometimes it was just a gift when things were worth while? Well--good Lord! It's worth while now, not that the blighters are going to kill me. I've got as much chance as any one of getting through. But you are glad I'm going, aren't you? You're not going to try to stop me. They say the Army's big enough with the French on one side and the Russians on the other to knock Germany into a cocked hat in three months. But I must get out and have one pot at 'em."

All this she had divined as her fingers tore open the envelope, but never had she dared to hope that the impulse of it would have come from his memory of what she had said to him those days when he was in the fashioning of her hands. This, she had made him. She clutched the letter in her hands and held it against her face and thanked God she had not wholly failed. The next two letters came together by the same post on the following day. She knew their handwriting. No envelope could have concealed their contents from her eyes. Liddiard's she opened first.

"MY DEAR MARY--"

"I suppose John has written to you of this preposterous suggestion of his that he should volunteer, and I know you will do all you can to prevent it. To begin with he is not of age. He will have to lie about it before they can accept him and, secondly, War is a job for soldiers and the Army is there to see it through. If they rush him out without proper training as I hear it is likely they may do, it's unfair on him; it's unfair on all of us. We've paid for our Army as a nation and now it's got its work to do. Calling for recruits now as they did in the South African war is not fair to the country. These young boys will go because they're hysterical with excitement for adventure, but where will the country be if they don't come back?

"I rely on you, my dear Mary, to do all you can to dissuade him from this mad project of his. With all the knowledge that one day he is to be master of Wenlock, I know he still looks reliantly towards you in that little farmhouse. Do all you can, my dear. We cannot lose him, neither you nor I."

With a hard line about her lips which, had she seen it, would have reminded her of her sister Jane, she laid the letter down and picked up that from Dorothy.

"Please--please don't let him go," it cried out from the written page to her. "I can't stop him. I've tried. He won't listen to me. I learnt those few days while I stayed at Yarningdale how he will listen to you. He belongs to me. He told me so. Please--please don't let him go."

She picked up the other letter and stood looking at them together, side by side, then dropped them from her hand and from the bosom of her dress drew out the slip of paper John had written on and pressed it once more against her cheek.

Downstairs in the parlor kitchen with the pen and ink that Mr. Peverell used when he kept his farm accounts, Mary sat down and wrote to Liddiard.

"If I could do everything, I would do nothing," she wrote. "This is what I made him. I would not unmake him if I could. You must give. I must give. We must all give now. We've kept too long. Don't you know what this war is? It's not England fighting for her rights or Germany for her needs. It's Nature revolting against man. You've made your chapels and your tithe barns for yourselves. The earth is going to shake them into the dust again. If I could do everything, I would do nothing. He takes my heart with him when he goes. But there is nothing I can do. We must all give now--at last--women as well as men. These things that happen now--these are the consequences of passion."