She was walking slowly, squelching in the mud. “Perhaps you were right about war and peace, and it’s all pointless.”
He pulled her forward and she increased speed without complaining. He could have wept to see the change in her. Only now did he realize it was far more than beauty, it was the inner light of a uniquely precious belief, one person’s heart and vision, which he would miss irrevocably should it be destroyed by the terrible experience of war. That she was wrong that the war was pointless, that she was Joseph Reavley’s sister, did not matter; only that she was alive, and she was in pain.
“I never said it was pointless! I said it was . . .” He could not remember. Anyway, it did not matter. All that mattered was catching some passion in her, any passion at all—anger, hope, love, hate. He would have said anything to free her from the grip of despair. “I said we shouldn’t start a world war over one boundary dispute.”
She looked at him with a slight puckering of her brow. “No, you didn’t. And it wasn’t one boundary dispute. Wars never are.”
He felt a flame of exultation. She was going to argue! “Yes, it was! The kaiser crossed through Belgium. If he’d gone straight across the French frontier we would probably have stayed at home!”
“No, we wouldn’t!” She turned away sharply. “If it hadn’t been Belgium it would have been something else. I don’t know much history, but even I know enough for that. It’s bloody, it’s consuming half Europe, and it’s beginning to stain the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s even senseless now. But it wasn’t ever just a squabble about boundaries, and you can’t be stupid enough to think it was.”
Was he losing her again? He looked at the weary slope of her shoulders. She was trudging along, too exhausted in body to do more than barely pick up her feet. But it was her heart he needed to reach, her will. She needed to believe there would be something left to win, no matter how hard it was or how long it took. He was not sure that he believed it himself.
“Perhaps I’m too close to it,” he said, although it was a pointless observation.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked.
It was broad daylight now and the rain had eased off. There would soon be other traffic, even though this was not a main road and it was too badly cratered for convoy use.
“Verdun,” he answered.
She turned to look at him. “Was it bad?”
“Yes.”
“Poor devils.”
He needed to think of something else to say, but for a moment memory of Verdun drove out everything else. He did not realize that she was still looking at him.
“Don’t tell people they’re losing,” she said firmly. “It might be true for the moment, but it would be a betrayal. They need our faith.”
He stared at her incredulously.
She gave a tiny, twisted smile. “You have to have faith, even to die well,” she explained.
It was there! The old fire, just a tiny light, but the grace and the courage he loved. He seized hold of her, ignoring her bandaged arm, and hugged her, half lifting her off her feet and swinging her around. She was wet and cold, and her skin smelled of antiseptic and engine oil, but the warmth inside him was enough to make all of it sweet to him.
He put her down on the rutted road again and went forward, increasing his speed, willing to drag her if necessary. They had to reach an outpost, one of the field dressing stations, a command dugout, anyplace where she could get warm and dry and eat something.
Two hours later she was asleep and Mason had eaten the usual frontline breakfast of stale bread, beef stew, and strong tea. Then a corporal brought up the mail, and ten minutes after that the major in command of the station handed Mason a sealed letter.
He tore it open and began reading. The handwriting was clear and strong, the wording casual, as any man might use to a friend. However, the message within was anything but ordinary. It was from the man he knew as the Peacemaker and, masked by pleasantries, contained the information that he had heard about the social unrest in Russia—the vast possibilities of relieving the Eastern Front and stopping the slaughter there. Which would in turn alter the balance on the Western Front, and perhaps bring an early end to the war.
It was all couched in terms of village politics, but Mason knew enough of what it meant for his interest to be held as if in a vise. When he finished reading the letter, he put it in his pocket and sat crouched on an ammunition box, his feet on duckboards awash with rainwater, the weak spring sun thawing some of the chill out of his flesh. He could hear the sounds of men moving about. Someone was singing a bawdy song. There was a burst of laughter, and then others joined in. There was a kind of desperate courage in the singing that he admired with a passion so intense he found his hands were shaking on the tin mug he was holding, slopping the tea over. Anything that would save them was worth trying. Tired, beaten, bereaved, afraid—none of them were excuses for not trying. Pride was not even the beginning of an excuse. He would go back and listen to the Peacemaker, see if there was anything worth attempting. Then men like these around him could go home, and a woman like Judith could drive ordinary cars crazily along country roads instead of carrying the bleeding and the dead through this carnage.
He was on his way back to London anyway. He had only come through Ypres in the hope of seeing Judith. He was startled and a little afraid how much it had mattered to him. He was not at all certain it was what he wanted, not now, not when nothing could be held on to, treasured, promised for life.
But there should be life, for all these tens of thousands of men around him, its possibilities and hopes and chances for good or ill.
He drank the rest of the tea and climbed to his feet. He could not afford to stay here any longer. He must leave before the night’s bombardment began, and cadge a lift toward the train.
Mason arrived on a troop train in London and climbed out onto the platform at Waterloo station, stiff and cold. He heard the doors open and men call out, the clatter of boots, the whistle and hiss of steam as the engine belched. The platform was crowded, people pushing and jostling together, all straining eagerly to catch sight of a particular face, and growing more and more desperate if they didn’t. There were nurses in long, gray uniforms, always busy, too much to do, too little time; porters with luggage, men too old to fight, or not fit enough; and multitudes of men in khaki with white bandages, some spotted with blood.
Outside the station most of the people waiting in the taxi line were wounded. Though Mason was stiff and cold, he was unhurt so he walked to the nearest stop and waited for an omnibus. It could even end up being quicker in the end.
London looked drabber and more exhausted than Mason had remembered it. The women wore smart, elegant jackets, skirts to the midcalf with often a longer one beneath, but there was no color, no extravagance. There were no lace parasols as there used to be before the war, no hats with big flowers on them.
The street was alive with both horse-drawn carriages and automobiles and contained all the familiar advertisements, all the noise and the movement—but it looked dirty in the sun.
Since the last time he had been to Marchmont Street, he had reported not only from the Western Front and Gallipoli again, but also the desperate Italian resistance to Austria and the fighting in the Balkans. His emotions were raw with the bitter sameness of the loss. And now Judith’s face, blank with misery, haunted his mind. He wanted to hear her laugh again, to see her walk with a lift in her stride, with the energy, passion, and even arrogance that had caught his eye before.
The horns and the traffic brought him back to the present and the street again. The bus came and he boarded it, glad to find a seat.
He alighted while he was still half a mile from Marchmont Street. It was easier and certainly faster to walk the rest of the way than wait for another bus.
He recalled the first time he had come here, before the war. He had been full of hope and the belief that they really could make a difference; the horror of the Boer War need never happen again. Their ideals had been vast, a new age of peace and progress for mankind. Of course there was a price—nothing came without one, least of all change. But it had seemed then to be infinitely worth doing. How long ago that was now!
He reached the door he was looking for and rang the bell. He was shown upstairs by a manservant. Here
