‘For you’—he said at last, ‘and for me——’
And he dropped his hands limply on his knee.
I was astonished at the expression of acute personal sorrow on
his face; he had not seemed to care much for George when he was
alive. I went across to him, and sat beside him on the bed. I
stroked his shoulder, I know, and tried to console him. I don’t
know what I said. It happened like this so often now; these fits
of despondency, almost of remorse, and my attempts to encourage
him. It had become in a sense automatic. It seemed to me, at
times, that I had no more to give; that I was drawing water from
a well that was dry; but to-night it was different; I felt somehow
beyond all that. I did not speak to him of my conviction, of
what I felt myself about George, and George’s death. It was no
use speaking to Walter of things like that, I knew.
We went to bed early on account of Walter’s headache. I, too,
was glad to go.
‘Now I can be quiet and think,’ I said to myself.
And I lay awake a long time after Walter was asleep and looked
up into the darkness.
And I thought:
‘What is it I must do? What is it I am just going to understand?’
It was very quiet in our road. There was no sound of traffic;
only a dog in a garden not far off barked for a little while,
and a cat called somewhere from a roof. A taxi hooted turning
a corner at the end of the road, then it changed gear for going
up the hill; there was a grating, grinding noise as it changed
gear, and then that passed out of hearing. Some one walked past
on the pavement, a man it seemed to be, walking very fast. Then
again there were cats, and again a taxi horn, and after that
for a long time, it was quite quiet.
And as I lay still and listened to the noises in the night, all
my excitement seemed to ebb away, and I understood that I had
discovered nothing, and that there was nothing I could do.
I could not stop the War, and nobody could. We were caught in
it all of us, all nations, all people in the nations; it would
go on, and more and more people would be killed; hundreds and
thousands of people would be killed every day, and I could do
nothing at all, and I understood too that George was dead, and
that I had loved him dearly, and that he who was so full of promise,
such a fine, splendid nature, would do nothing with his life;
he was just at the beginning, and there would be no more.