‘Now I can be quiet and think,’ I said to myself.
And I lay awake a long time after Walter was asleep and looked up into the darkness.
And I thought:
‘What is it I must do? What is it I am just going to understand?’
It was very quiet in our road. There was no sound of traffic; only a dog in a garden not far off barked for a little while, and a cat called somewhere from a roof. A taxi hooted turning a corner at the end of the road, then it changed gear for going up the hill; there was a grating, grinding noise as it changed gear, and then that passed out of hearing. Some one walked past on the pavement, a man it seemed to be, walking very fast. Then again there were cats, and again a taxi horn, and after that for a long time, it was quite quiet.
And as I lay still and listened to the noises in the night, all my excitement seemed to ebb away, and I understood that I had discovered nothing, and that there was nothing I could do.
I could not stop the War, and nobody could. We were caught in it all of us, all nations, all people in the nations; it would go on, and more and more people would be killed; hundreds and thousands of people would be killed every day, and I could do nothing at all, and I understood too that George was dead, and that I had loved him dearly, and that he who was so full of promise, such a fine, splendid nature, would do nothing with his life; he was just at the beginning, and there would be no more.
XVIII
The next day, Walter had influenza. He was in bed for a week, and after that the cook got it, and then the housemaid. They were a long time getting better.
News came of a Republic in Ireland; fighting in the Dublin streets, repression, retaliation; then the fall of Kut. Then the Conscription Bill was passed.