“Father, do you really want peace?”
“Goodness sakes, girl, why not?”
“I don’t. I want war and more war until those demons are driven home or wiped out of the world.”
A few days later a letter comes from Robbie. He has been made lieutenant, and is in high spirits. They have had a pretty rotten time thus far, but things are coming round now. He has heard it whispered that there is to be a great offensive soon, and that he himself is to go, for the first time, up to the front trenches. He is in a hurry now, preparations going forward so furiously, but they’ll hear of him again before long.
“So bye-bye for the present, dad, and wish me luck! And, by the way, tell Mona I read a part of her last letter to some of the officers at the mess last night, and when I had finished they all cried out, like one man, ‘My God! That girl’s a stunner!’ And then the major said, ‘If we had a thousand men with the spirit of your sister the war wouldn’t last a month longer.’”
A week has passed since Robbie’s letter, and the newspapers report a wonderful victory—the enemy is on the run. Every evening, at the hour when the postman is expected to arrive at the camp, the old man, who has said nothing, has been out on the paved way in front of the farm-house (the “street,” as the Manx call it), in his sleeve waistcoat, smoking his pipe and with the setting sun from over the sea on his face.
The other letter Robbie promised has not come yet. But this evening through the kitchen window Mona sees the postman striding slowly up the garden path with his head down and a letter in his hand, and something grips at her heart. The postman gives the letter to her father, and goes off without speaking. The old man fumbles it, turning the envelope over and over in his hands. It is a large one, and it has printing across the top. At length, as if making a call on his resolution, he opens it with a trembling hand, tearing the letter as he drags it out of the envelope. He looks at it, seems to be trying to read it and finding himself unable to do so. Mona goes out to him, and he gives her the torn sheet of typewriting.
“Read it, girl,” he says helplessly, and then he lays hold of the trammon tree that grows by the porch. Mona begins, “The Secretary of State for War regrets....”
She stops. There is no need to go farther. Robbie has fallen in action.