She wavered on her feet. I stepped forward to catch her but she struck aside my hand. Then she seated herself on a bank. I looked away; and when I saw her again she was sitting, her face buried in her hands, while her fragile figure shook with suppressed sobbing.
“Elsa,” I said, “you don’t understand. It’s come upon you suddenly; and you’ve been swept off your feet by it. But it was all for the best. It had to be done.”
She looked up. On her face, still wet with tears, I saw only contempt and bitterness.
“It had to be done?” she echoed. “Do you mean that forty millions of people had to be robbed of their food and left to starve? Can’t you see what it means, or are you made of stone? Think of men seeing their mothers dying; think of lovers watching their sweethearts starve; and the children in their mothers’ arms. And you, you say calmly that ‘It had to be done.’ You aren’t a machine. You had the right to choose. And you chose that!”
“You don’t understand,” I repeated wearily. Somehow the strain of the situation seemed to have robbed me of my forces.
“No, I don’t understand. How can I, when it means that the men I thought most of in the world turn out to be nothing but murderers on a gigantic scale? I can’t believe it, even yet. Is it … is it all a mistake? Oh! I want to wake up out of this nightmare; I want to wake up. Tell me it’s a nightmare and not real.”
Her voice sounded almost like that of a terrified child in the dark.
“It’s no nightmare,” I said. “Try to see what it meant. There wasn’t enough food for us all. Somebody had to die if the rest were to be saved.”
“And so you elected to be one of the rest? I congratulate you. A most laudable decision, I am sure,” she said contemptuously. “It would indeed have been a pity if you had gone short of food in order to save the lives of a mere score of children; tiny, helpless little things that can’t do more than cry as they starve.”
“You don’t understand,” I repeated. “There was no chance of saving them in any case. They were doomed from the start. All we did was to ensure that somebody would survive. If the food had been evenly distributed, we should all have died; but your uncle laid his plans to save millions of people. Surely you can see that?”
She thought for a moment; and then attacked in a fresh direction.
“Who gave you the right to choose among them? You seem to think you are a demigod with the power of life and death in your hands. How could you take the responsibility of the choice? And how could you bear to save yourself when you knew other men, and perhaps better men, had to die? I can’t understand you. You’re so different from what I thought you were. Somehow all my ideals seem to be breaking. You and Uncle Stanley were the two finest men I had met. I never dreamed for a moment that you would turn out to have feet of clay. And now. …”
I tried hard to put our case before her. I explained the state of things at the outbreak of the Famine. I gave her figures to prove that Nordenholt had only worked to save what he could from the disaster. It was all of no avail. I think that the picture of the starving children filled her mind to the exclusion of almost everything else; and that she hardly listened to what I said. Once she whispered to herself, “Poor little mites,” just when I thought I had caught her attention at last. I gave it up in the end. She looked away across the loch, where the first stars were lighting up behind the hills; and we stood in silence, so close in space, so remote from each other in our thoughts. At last she spoke again.
“Still I don’t understand it all. I see your view; but I can’t share it. It seems so cold-blooded, so horrible. But I can’t understand you, just when I thought I knew you through and through. Tell me, how could you talk of Fata Morgana and all our dreams when you knew that this terrible thing was happening? That’s what I don’t grasp.”
“I can’t explain it to you. Probably I keep my mind in compartments. But never mind about me, Elsa; I’m done for now. I don’t matter. But you mustn’t condemn your uncle along with me. He never led you on to dream dreams, so you haven’t that against him. I want you to believe me that he has been a saviour and not a destroyer, as you seem to think. Don’t lose your faith in him until you understand. Don’t prejudge things till you know everything. Speak to him yourself before you come to a conclusion. He depends on you, more than you think, perhaps. And he’s worked himself to the bone to save those few millions that are left to us. Don’t judge him till you know everything.”
She looked at me more kindly than she had done since the beginning.
“That’s just what I should have expected from what I knew of you, Mr. Flint. You think of him first and don’t bother about yourself. You aren’t selfish. I can’t understand you, somehow. You seem such a mixture; and until today I had no idea you were a mixture at all. It’s all so difficult.”
She ended with a choke in her voice and turned towards the car. I followed her and switched on the headlights, ready to start. She climbed into her seat; and I put the rug around her knees. Just as I was on the point of
