“Mona, I have something to suggest to you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s not to be wondered at that people brought up in a little island like this should have these hard feelings and narrow ideas. But the English are not like that. They are a great, great people, and if you are willing to go with me to England....”
“What are you thinking of, Oskar?”
He tells her more about himself than she has ever yet heard. He is an electrical engineer, and before being brought to Knockaloe he had been chief engineer to a big English company on the Mersey, at a salary of a thousand a year. When the war broke out his sympathies had been dead against his own country, chiefly because of “that quack, the Kaiser.”
“Oskar!”
“It’s true. I can’t account for it. I was secretly ashamed of it in those days, but I would have joined up in the British Army if they would have had me. They wouldn’t!”
On the contrary, the authorities had called him up for internment. Then his firm, which had been loathe to lose him, had tried to obtain his exemption. They had failed, and when the time came for him to go the chairman of the company had said: “Heine, we’re sorry you have to leave us, but if you want to come back when the war is over, your place will be waiting for you.”
“But could he ... do you think it possible....”
“Certain! Oh, he’s a great old man, Mona, and if he were to break his word to me I should lose faith in human nature. So I ... I....”