‘Is Guy any better?’
She said:
‘Not yet; he may get better.’
Guy did get better, very slowly indeed. He would live, they said,
he would walk again, but he would be lame always. I could not
imagine Guy lame, walking about with a stick.
Cousin Delia said only:
‘I am so glad that he will live.’
There was, it seemed, something unconquerable in Guy.
I saw him in September. He looked ill, and almost old. Guy on
his back, not moving, seemed all wrong; and his hair was turning
grey.
He smiled at me.
He began, at once, to joke.
It was bad luck, he said, to be laid out like this, just at the
very end.
‘I might have been in at the death,’ he said, ‘when I had kept
going so long! Hugo has beaten me, good old Hugo!’
I talked about Hugo, and the letters I had had from him lately,
and of the war ending, and how every one was saying that it must
end very soon.
Then Diana came in. She was a V.A.D. Her eyes danced and sparkled
under her white coif; she was so tall and strong and full of
life, and she moved as though all movement were delight. She
came to bring Guy tea, in a feeding cup, on a tray.
Guy introduced her to me, and she smiled at me, and at him. She
put her arm under his head to raise him up; she gave him his
tea to drink like a little child. She arranged his pillows deftly,
with her strong white hands, and I watched Guy’s eyes as they
followed her about the room, and I thought:
‘Guy is going to marry that girl . . .’
And I thought of Mollie, at Salonika, with George dead.
And I thought:
‘What chance has Mollie, against that joy and youth?’
And I thought:
‘Guy has forgotten Mollie . . .’
And I thought, as I watched her walk:
‘I know what she feels like. . . . I felt like that, once. . . .
I can remember it. . . .’
And then I thought:
‘That is why Walter wanted me . . . do they always want that
in us?’
And then I thought:
‘Guy is like Walter, now, in that way, and he wants her . . .’
Guy smiled at her as one might at a loved child.
‘You see,’ he said to me, ‘I have good care; I ought to get well
very soon, oughtn’t I?’
She said:
‘You are getting well; we are very pleased with you!’
He said:
‘She loves the war; she thinks it is a splendid war, don’t you,
Dinah?’
And she laughed, and her eyes danced.
‘Oh, top hole,’ she said, ‘simply topping!’
Guy said:
‘That is so refreshing. “_A quelqu’un le malheur est bon!_”’
And I thought:
‘She is not horrid; she doesn’t understand.’