"What! going away, Eh?" said Mrs. Nancarrow, looking at him searchingly. For days she had been hoping that he would see it his duty to offer himself to his country, and yet all the time dreading the thought of parting from him.
"Where are you going?"
"To Oxford," he replied.
"Then you are not going to enlist?"
He shook his head. "I am going to Oxford," he repeated.
"Bob, my dear, we have not seemed to understand each other just lately. I am afraid I spoke unkindly to you the other day, and as a consequence there has been a lack of trust. Won't you tell me all about it?"
"There is nothing to tell, mother; I simply cannot do what you expect me to, that is all. You see I believe in what my father taught me," and he looked towards the fireplace, over which hung Dr. Nancarrow's picture. "Perhaps it is in my blood, perhaps—— I don't know; anyhow, I think my hand would shrivel up if I tried to sign my name as a soldier."
"But you have a mother, Bob, a mother whose name was Trelawney, and the Trelawneys have never failed in time of need. Are you going to be the first to fail, Bob? Oh, please don't think I do not dread the thought of your going to the front, and perhaps being killed; but I cannot bear the thought that my boy should shirk his duty to his country. Tell me, Bob, why do you want to play the coward?"
"Play the coward! Great God, mother! don't you understand me? I simply long to go. It seems to me as though everything in life worth having depends on my doing what you and others want me to do. But how can I! I hate talking about it, it sounds so pharisaical, but my father wanted me to be a Christian, and you know what Christianity meant to him. As I have said again and again, it comes to this—either war is wrong and hellish, or Christianity is a fable. Both cannot be right. And if I went as a soldier I should have to renounce my Christianity—at least that is how it seems, to me. If I went to a recruiting station I should have to go there over Calvary; that is the whole trouble."
Mrs. Nancarrow sighed.