The Corporal nodded. “It’ll be ’alf-an-’our or more afore they give the signal. Can’t wait for that. You comin’?”
“Where? Back to Leigh?—No, not for the moment. Can you get along by yourself? It isn’t far.”
“Fit as a fiddle,” the other declared. He held out his hand to Richard—“Thank yer, Sonny....”
The boy blurted out, at a reminding prick of the old goad: “I was born in Germany, you know....”
Corporal Plunkett, M.M., was astonished at the inconsequent confession ... some divine impulse prompted him to the speech that healed. “Lord, sir—that don’t matter. You’re one of us all right!”
III
... The obsession was lifted. Corporal Plunkett had done it. Corporal Plunkett had atoned for Mr Gryce. Never again would Richard turn hot and miserable at the mention of German frightfulness ... he had no connection with the things the Germans did. Born in Germany, yes, but—“You’re one of us all right,” the cockney soldier had said. The awful crazed obsession of responsibility was rolled away; and in utter thankfulness Richard lay on the sea-wall that first night of the September air-raids, half-dreaming, content to have heard the guns, content....
He was not going to drown himself. Suicide was surrender without a fighting chance. Richard’s sturdier business instinct rejected the proposition. Suicide was stupid—a refuge for weaklings and decadents—he could wrench out better terms for himself. Now that his spirit was fixed for one land and one people, the fact of continued official ostracism hardly counted. He would have to submit to that as to a fact and a nuisance, but in no way vital.... Internment? That also was only official—“I’ll just have to get through with it.” Richard scowled healthily at the annoying prospect.
But he was out of No Man’s Land at last ... it had been dreary fog-sodden territory, and he was glad, a thousand times glad to be quit of it. Not once again need he set foot there; his love of England was sanctuary. He would love England, not as before, in exacting casual certainty, but with the fierce beating love of a man for the woman who has no love for him, who will never return his love. He would love England in spite of herself, and with a love steadily cognizant of its own hopelessness. And he thought of fireside happiness where passion was mutual and easy ... and rejoiced, in new-found defiance, that his body should stand outside, pressed against hard rains and hard storms and hard swerve of the hills.