Part 60 (1/2)

”I say--did you ever do it to me?”

”Only once, when you wanted it awfully.”

”When? When?”

Now he was interested; he was intrigued; he was on her trail.

”When Desmond did--that awful thing. I wanted you to see that it didn't matter, it wasn't the end.”

”But that's just what I did see, what I kept on telling myself. It looks as if it worked, then?”

”It doesn't always. It comes and goes. But I think with _you_ it would always come; because you're more _me_ than other people; I mean I care more for you.”

She closed and clinched it. ”That's why you're not to bother about me, Nicky. If _the_ most awful thing happened, and you didn't come back, It would come.”

”I wish I knew what It was,” he said.

”I don't know what it is. But it's so real that I think it's G.o.d.”

”That's why _they're_ so magnificently brave--Dorothy and Aunt Frances and all of them. They don't believe in it; they don't know it's there; even Michael doesn't know it's there--yet; and still they go on bearing and bearing; and they were glad to give you up.”

”I know,” he said; ”lots of people _say_ they're glad, but they really _are_ glad.”

He meditated.

”There's one thing. I can't think what you do, unless it's praying or something; and if you're going to turn it on to me, Ronny, I wish you'd be careful; because it seems to me that if there's anything in it at all, there might be hitches. I mean to say, you might work it just enough to keep me from being killed but not enough to keep my legs from being blown off. Or the Boches might get me fair enough and you might bring me back, all paralysed and idiotic.

”That's what I should funk. I should funk it most d.a.m.nably, if I thought about it. Luckily one doesn't think.”

”But, Nicky, I shouldn't try to keep you back then any more than I tried before.”

”You wouldn't? Honour bright?”

”Of course I wouldn't. It wouldn't be playing the game. To begin with, I won't believe that you're not going to get through.

”But if you didn't--if you didn't come back--I still wouldn't believe you'd gone. I should say, 'He hasn't cared. He's gone on to something else. It doesn't end him.'”

He was silent. The long rampart of the hill, as he stared at it, made a pattern on his mind; a pattern that he paid no attention to.

Veronica followed the direction of his eyes. ”Do you mind talking about it?” she said.

”Me? Rather not. It sort of interests me. I don't know whether I believe in your thing or not; but I've always had that feeling, that you go on.

You don't stop; you can't stop. That's why I don't care. They used to think I was trying to be funny when I said I didn't care. But I really didn't. Things, most things, don't much matter, because there's always something else. You go on to it.

”I care for _you_. _You_ matter most awfully; and my people; but most of all you. You always have mattered to me more than anything, since the first time I heard you calling out to me to come and sit on your bed because you were frightened. You always will matter.

”But Desmond didn't a little bit. You need'nt have tried to make me _think_ she didn't. She really didn't. I only married her because she was going to have a baby. And _that_ was because I remembered you and the rotten time you'd had. I believe that would have kept me straight with women if nothing else did.

”Of course I was an idiot about it. I didn't think of marrying you till Vera told me I ought to have waited. Then it was too late.

”That's why I want you most awfully to have a baby.”