Part 42 (2/2)
”I want to go instead of him.”
”You can't go instead of me. n.o.body can go instead of me.”
”I can go with you.”
”You can't.”
”Larry, if you take Michael to Ireland, Anthony and Frances will never forgive you. _I_'ll never forgive you.”
”I'm not taking Michael to Ireland, I'm telling you. There's no reason why Michael should go to Ireland at all. It isn't _his_ country.”
”You needn't rub _that_ in,” said Michael.
”It isn't _yours_,” said Vera. ”Ireland doesn't want you. The Nationalists don't want you. You said yourself they've turned you out of Ireland. When you've lived in England all these years why should you go back to a place that doesn't want you?”
”Because if Carson gets a free hand I see some chance of Ireland being a free country.”
Vera wailed and entreated. She said it showed how much he cared for her.
It showed that he was tired of her. Why couldn't he say so and have done with it?
”It's not,” she said, ”as if you could really do anything. You're a dreamer. Ireland has had enough of dreamers.” And Stephen's eyes looked over her head, into the high branches of the tree of Heaven, as if he saw his dream s.h.i.+ning clear through them like a moon.
The opportunist could see nothing but his sublime opportunity.
Michael went back with him to dine and talk it over. There was to be civil war in Ireland then?
He thought: If only Lawrence would let him go with him. He wanted to go to Ireland. To join the Nationalists and fight for Ireland, fight for the freedom he was always dreaming about--_that_ would be a fine thing.
It would be a finer thing than writing poems about Ireland.
Lawrence Stephen went soberly and steadily through the affair of the _Review_, explaining things to Michael. He wanted this done, and this.
And over and over again Michael's voice broke through his instructions.
Why couldn't he go to Ireland instead of Lawrence? Or, if Lawrence wouldn't let him go instead of him, he might at least take him with him.
He didn't want to stay at home editing the _Review_. Ellis or Mitch.e.l.l or Monier-Owen would edit it better than he could. Even the wretched Wadham would edit it just as well. He wanted to go to Ireland and fight.
But Lawrence wouldn't let him go. He wasn't going to have the boy's blood on his hands. His genius and his youth were too precious.
Besides, Ireland was not his country.
It was past ten o'clock. Frances was alone in the drawing-room. She sat by the open window and waited and watched.
The quiet garden lay open to her sight. Only the inner end of the farther terrace, under the orchard wall, was hidden by a high screen of privet.
It seemed hours to Frances since she had seen Nicky and Veronica go down the lawn on to the terrace.
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