Changing Winds / A Novel

by St. John G. Ervine

"I'll finish my book first," he said, "and then I'll tell Mary. Perhaps the war will be over!..."

4

Mary wrote to him twice every week. Rachel Carey and her baby were staying at Boveyhayne Manor now, and Mary was glad of their company in the house, for the child gave Mrs. Graham pleasure. She enquired continually about his book. "What a pity," she wrote once, "that it was not finished before Roger went into the Army. Then you could both have gone in together." And he had written, "Yes, it is a pity the book was not done before Roger joined up ... but it'll soon be finished. I'm getting on excellently with it. When it's finished, I'll come over to Boveyhayne, and then we'll settle just when we shall get married!..."

Then came a mood of abasement, and he wrote a long, incoherent letter to her, telling her that he had resolved that he would not go into the Army. "Because I'm a coward, Mary. I've thought the thing over from beginning to end, thought about it until I became dizzy with thinking, and this is the end of it all: I'm a coward. I haven't the pluck to go into the Army. That's the truth, Mary! I make excuses for myself ... I pretend that this is England's war, not Ireland's, and tell myself that an Irishman who joins the British Army should be regarded in the way that an American, who joined, would be regarded ... that Irish soldiers in the British Army are Foreign Legionaries ... and I twist my mind about in an effort to make excuses like that, to convince, not you or any one else, but me. I think I could convince you that I ought not to join, but I can't convince myself. I'm not joining, simply because I'm a damned coward, Mary. I'm not fit to be your husband, dear. I wasn't fit to be the friend of Gilbert and Ninian. I'm a contemptible thing that runs to its burrow when it hears of danger. I'm glad my father is dead. He hated the war, but he'd have hated to know that I was not in it. He took it for granted that I would go ... never dreamed that I wouldn't go. If he'd thought that I wouldn't join, he would never have talked to me about the war in the way he did. My father was a proud man, Mary, as proud as your mother, and I think he'd have died of shame if he'd thought I was funking this. I don't know what you'll think of me. I know what I think of myself. I simply can't face it, Mary ... that bloodiness and groaning and stench and unending horror. That's the truth about me. I'm a coward, and I'm not fit for you. I'd fail you, dear, if you needed me. I fail everybody. I fail everything. I'm rotten through and through...."

5

But he did not send the letter to her. He had read it over before putting it in the envelope. "Hysterical," he said to himself, calmer now that he had vented his feelings. "That's what it is!"

He was about to tear it up, but before he could, do so, his mind veered again. "I'll put it away," he said. "I'll leave it until the morning, and read it again. Perhaps I'll think differently then. I ought to tell Mary. I can't go on just not joining, and letting her gradually suspect. I ought to go to her, and tell her straight out. When my book's done I'll go to her...."

"What sort of a man am I?" he said again. "Analysing myself like this ... turning myself inside out ... poking and probing into my mind!... Fumbling over my life, that's what I'm doing! Why don't I stand up to things? What's the meaning of me? What am I here for?"

If he could only strip himself to the marrow of his mind, if he could only see inside himself and know what was his purpose and discover the content of his being....

"I'm morbid," he said. "I'm too introspective. I ought to look out of myself. But I can't. It isn't my fault that my eyes are turned inwards. I'm made like that. I can't alter my make. I can destroy myself, but I can't alter my make....