Michael
at length, "and I feel it also."
Her voice broke, and her hands felt for his again.
"Michael, where are you?" she cried. "No, don't touch me; I didn't meanthat. Let's face it. For all we know, Hermann might have killed Francis.. . . Whether he did or not, doesn't matter. It might have been. It'slike that."
A minute before Michael, in soul and blood and mind and bones, had saidthat nothing but Sylvia and himself had any real existence. He had clungto her, even as she to him, hoping that this individual love wouldprove itself capable of overriding all else that existed. But it had notneeded that she should speak to show him how pathetically he had erred.Before she had made a concrete instance he knew how hopeless his wishhad been: the silence, the loosening of hands had told him that. Andwhen she spoke there was a brutality in what she said, and worse thanthe brutality there was a plain, unvarnished truth.
There was no question now of her going away at once, as she hadproposed, any more than a boat in the rapids, roared round by breakers,can propose to start again. They were in the middle of it, and soshort a way ahead was the cataract that ran with blood. On each sideat present were fine, green landing-places; he at the oar, she at thetiller, could, if they were of one mind, still put ashore, could runtheir boat in, declining the passage of the cataract with all its risks,its river of blood. There was but a stroke of the oar to be made, a pullon a rope of the rudder, and a step ashore. Here was a way out of thestorm and the rapids.
A moment before, when, by their physical parting they had realisedthe strength of the bonds that held them apart this solution had notoccurred to Sylvia. Now, critically and forlornly hopeful, it flashedon her. She felt, she almost felt--for the ultimate decision rested withhim--that with him she would throw everything else aside, and escape,just escape, if so he willed it, into some haven of neutrality, wherehe and she would be together, leaving the rest of the world, her countryand his, to fight over these irreconcilable quarrels. It did not seem tomatter what happened to anybody else, provided only she and Michael weretogether, out of risk, out of harm. Other lives might be precious, otherideals and patriotisms might be at stake, but she wanted to be with himand nothing else at all. No tie counted compared to that; there was butone life given to man and woman, and now that her individual happiness,the individual joy of her love, was at stake, she felt, even as Michaelhad said, that nothing else mattered, that they would be right torealise themselves at any cost.
She took his hands again.
"Listen to me, Michael," she said. "I can't bear any longer that thesehorrors should keep rising up between us, and, while we are here in themiddle of it all, it can't be otherwise. I ask you, then, to come awaywith me, to leave it all behind. It is not our quarrel. Already Hermannhas gone; I can't lose you too."
She looked up at him for a moment, and then quickly away again, for shefelt her case, which seemed to her just now so imperative, slipping awayfrom her in that glance she got of his eyes, that, for all the love thatburned there, were blank with astonishment. She must convince him; buther own convictions were weak when she looked at him.
"Don't answer me yet," she said. "Hear what I have to say. Don't yousee that while we are like this we are lost to each other? And as youyourself said just now, nothing matters in comparison to our love. Iwant you to take me away, out of it all, so that we can find each otheragain. These horrors thwart and warp us; they spoil the best thing thatthe world holds for us. My patriotism is just as sound as yours, butI throw it away to get you. Do the same, then. You can get out of yourservice somehow. . . ."
And then her voice began to falter.
"If you loved me, you would do it," she said. "If--"
And then suddenly she found she could say no more at all. She had hopedthat when she stated these things she would convince him, and, behold,all she had done was to shake her own convictions so that they fellclattering round her like an unstable card-house. Desperately she lookedagain at him, wondering if she had convinced him at all, and then againshe looked, wondering if she should see contempt in his eyes. After thatshe stood still and silent, and her face flamed.
"Do you despise me, Michael?" she said.
He gave a little sigh of utter content.
"Oh, my dear, how I love you for suggesting such a sweet impossibility,"he said. "But how you would despise me if I consented."
She did not answer.
"Wouldn't you?" he repeated.
She gave a sorrowful semblance of a laugh.
"I suppose I should," she said.
"And I know you would. You would contrast me in your mind, whetheryou wished to or not, with Hermann, with poor Francis, sorely to mydisadvantage."
They sat silent a little, but there was another question Sylvia had toask for which she had to collect her courage. At last it came.
"Have they told you yet when you are going?" she said.
"Not for certain. But--it will be before many days are passed. And thequestion arises--will you marry me before I go?"
She hid her face on his shoulder.
"I will do what you wish," she said.
"But I want to know your wish."
She clung closer to him.
"Michael, I don't think I could bear to part with you if we weremarried," she said. "It would be worse, I think, than it's going to be.But I intend to do exactly what you wish. You must tell me. I'm going toobey you before I am your wife as well as after."
Michael had long debated this in his mind. It seemed to him that ifhe came back, as might easily happen, hopelessly crippled, incurablyinvalid, it would be placing Sylvia in an unfairly difficult position,if she was already his wife. He might be hideously disfigured; she wouldbe bound to but a wreck of a man; he might be utterly unfit to be herhusband, and yet she would be tied to him. He had already talked thequestion over with his father, who, with that curious posthumous anxietyto have a further direct heir, had urged that the marriage should takeplace at once; but with his own feeling on the subject, as well asSylvia's, he at once made up his mind.
"I agree with you," he said. "We will settle it so, then."
She smiled at him.
"How dreadfully business-like," she said, with an attempt at lightness.
"I know. It's rather a good thing one has got to be business-like,when--"
That failed also, and he drew her to him and kissed her.
CHAPTER XVI
Michael was sitting in the kitchen of a French farm-house just outsidethe village of Laires, some three miles behind the English front. Thekitchen door was open, and on the flagged floor was cast an oblong ofprimrose-coloured November sunshine, warm and pleasant, so that thebluebottle flies buzzed hopefully about it, settling occasionally onthe cracked green door, where they cleaned their wings, and generallyfurbished themselves up, as if the warmth was that of a spring day thatpromised summer to follow. They were there in considerable numbers,for just outside in the cobbled yard was a heap of manure, where theyhungrily congregated. Against the white-washed wall of the house therelay a fat sow, basking contentedly, and snorting in her dreams. Theyard, bounded on two sides by the house walls, was shut in on the thirdby a row of farm-sheds, and the fourth was open. Just outside it stooda small copse half flooded with the brimming water of a sluggish streamthat meandered by the side of the farm-road leading out of the yard,which turned to the left, and soon joined the highway. This farm-roadwas partly under water, though not deeply, so that by skirting along itsraised banks it was possible to go dry-shod to the highway underneathwhich the stream passed in a brick culvert.
Through the kitchen window, set opposite the door, could be seen a broadstretch of country of the fenland type, flat and bare, and intersectedwith dykes, where sedges stirred slightly in the southerly breeze. Hereand there were pools of overflowed rivulets, and here and there wereplantations of stunted hornbeam, the russet leaves of which stillclung thickly to them. But in the main it was a bare and empty land,featureless and stolid.
Just below the kitchen window there
was a plot of cultivated ground,thriftily and economically used for the growing of vegetables.Concession, however, was made to the sense of brightness and beauty, foron each side of the path leading up to the door ran a row of Michaelmasdaisies, rather battered by the fortnight of rain which had precededthis day of still warm sun, but struggling bravely to shake off theeffect of the adverse conditions under which they had laboured.
The kitchen itself was extremely clean and orderly. Its flagged floorwas still damp and brown in patches from the washing it had received twohours before; but the draught between open window and open door was fastdrying it. Down the centre of the room was a deal table without a cloth,on which were laid some half-dozen places, each marked with a knife andfork and spoon and a thick glass, ready for the serving of the middaymeal. On the