II

I have been through torture this week--The new man wrenches my shoulder

each day, it will become straight eventually, he says. They have tried

to fit the false leg also, so those two things are going on, but the

socket is not yet well enough for anything to be done to my left eye--so

that has defeated them. It will be months before any real improvement

takes place.

There are hundreds of others who are more maimed than I--in greater

pain--more disgusting--does it give them any comfort to tell the truth

to a journal?--or are they strong enough to keep it all locked up in

their hearts?--I used to care to read, all books bore me now--I cannot

take interest in any single thing, and above all, I loathe myself--My

soul is angry.

Nina came again, to luncheon this time. It was pouring with rain, an

odious day. She told me of her love affairs--as a sister might--Nina a

sister!

She can't make up her mind whether to take Jim Bruce or Rochester

Moreland, they are both Brigadiers now, Jim is a year younger than she

is.

"Rochester is really more my mate, Nicholas," she said, "but then there

are moments when I am with him when I am not sure if he would not bore

me eventually, and he has too much character for me to suppress--Jim

fascinates me, but I only hold him because he is not sure of me--If I

marry him he will be, and then I shall have to watch my looks, and

remember to play the game all the time, and it won't be restful--above

all, I want rest and security."

"You are not really in love with either, Nina?"

"Love?" and she smoothed out the fringe on her silk jersey with her

war-hardened hand--the hand I once loved to kiss--every blue vein on

it!--"I often, wonder what really is love, Nicholas--I thought I loved

you before the war--but, of course, I could not have--because I don't

feel anything now--and if I had really loved you, I suppose it would not

have made any difference."

Then she realized what she had said and got up and came closer to me.

"That was cruel of me, I did not mean to be--I love you awfully as a

sister--always."

"Sister Nina!--well, let us get back to love--perhaps the war has killed

it--or it has developed everything, perhaps it now permits a sensitive,

delicious woman like you to love two men."

"You see, we have become so complicated"--she puffed smoke rings at

me--"One man does not seem to fulfill the needs of every mood--Rochester

would not understand some things that Jim would, and _vice versa_--I do

not feel any glamour about either, but it is rest and certainty, as I

told you, Nicholas, I am so tired of working and going home to Queen

Street alone."

"Shall you toss up?"

"No--Rochester is coming up from the front to-morrow just for the night,

I am going to dine with him at Larue's--alone, I shall sample him all

the time--I sampled Jim when he was last in London a fortnight ago--"

"You will tell me about it when you have decided, won't you, Nina. You

see I have become a brother, and am interested in the psychological

aspects of things."

"Of course I will"--then she went on meditatively, her rather plaintive

voice low.

"I think all our true feeling is used up, Nicholas--our souls--if we

have souls--are blunted by the war agony. Only our senses still feel.

When Jim looks at me with his attractive blue eyes, and I see the D.S.O.

and the M.C., and his white nice teeth--and how his hair is brushed, and

how well his uniform fits, I have a jolly all-overish sensation--and I

don't much listen to what he is saying--he says lots of love--and I

think I would really like him all the time. Then, when he has gone I

think of other things, and I feel he would not understand a word about

them, and because he isn't there I don't feel the delicious all-overish

sensation, so I rather decide to marry Rochester--there would be such

risk--because when you are married to a man, it is possible to get much

fonder of him. Jim is a year younger than I am--It would be a strain,

perhaps in a year or two--especially if I got fond."

"You had better take the richer," I told her--"Money stands by one, it

is an attraction which even the effects of war never varies or lessens,"

and I could hear that there was bitterness in my voice.

"You are quite right," Nina said, taking no notice of it--"but I don't

want money--I have enough for every possible need, and my boy has his

own. I want something kind and affectionate to live with."

"You want a master--and a slave."

"Yes."

"Nina, when you loved me--what did you want?"

"Just you, Nicholas--just you."

"Well, I am here now, but an eye and a leg gone, and a crooked shoulder,

changes me;--so it is true love--even the emotion of the soul, depends

upon material things--"

Nina thought for a while.

"Perhaps not the emotion of the soul--if we have souls?--but what we

know of love now certainly does. I suppose there are people who can love

with the soul, I am not one of them."

"Well, you are honest, Nina."

She had her coffee and liqueur, she was graceful and composed and

refined, either Jim or Rochester will have a very nice wife.

Burton coughed when she had left.

"Out with it, Burton!"

"Mrs. Ardilawn is a kind lady, Sir Nicholas."

"Charming."

"I believe you'd be better with some lady to look after you, Sir--."

"To hell with you. Telephone for Mr. Maurice--I don't want any woman--we

can play piquet."

This is how my day ended--.

Maurice and piquet--then the widow and the divorcée for dinner--and now

alone again! The sickening rot of it all.

* * * * *

_Sunday_--Nina came for tea--she feels that I am a great comfort to her

in this moment of her life, so full of indecision--It seems that Jim has

turned up too, at the Ritz, where Rochester still is, and that his

physical charm has upset all her calculations again.

"I am really very worried Nicholas," she said, "and you, who are a dear

family friend"--I am a family friend now!--"ought to be able to help

me."

"What the devil do you want me to do, Nina?--outset them both, and ask

you to marry me?"

"My dearest Nicholas!" it seemed to her that I had suggested that she

should marry father Xmas! "How funny you are!"

Once it was the height of her desire--Nina is eight years older than I

am--I can see now her burning eyes one night on the river in the June of

1914, when she insinuated, not all playfully, that it would be good to

wed.

"I think you had better take Jim my dear, after all. You are evidently

becoming in love with him and you have proved to me that the physical

charm matters most,--or if you are afraid of that, you had better do as

another little friend of mine does when she is attracted--she takes a

fortnight at the sea!"

"The sea would be awful in this weather! I should send for both in

desperation!" and she laughed and began to take an interest in the

furnishings of my flat. She looked over it, and Burton pointed out all

its merits to her (My crutch hurts my shoulder so much to-day I did not

want to move out of my chair). I could hear Burton's remarks, but they

fell upon unheeding ears--Nina is not cut out for a nurse, my poor

Burton, if you only knew--!

When she returned to my sitting room tea was in, and she poured it out

for me, and then she remarked.

"We have grown so awfully selfish, haven't we, Nicholas, but we aren't

such hypocrites as we were before the war. People still have lovers, but

they don't turn up their eyes so much at other people having them, as

they used. There is more tolerance--the only thing you cannot do is to

act publicly so that your men friends cannot defend you--'You must not

throw your bonnet over the windmills'--otherwise you can do as you

please--."

"You had not thought of taking either Jim or Rochester for a lover to

make certain which you prefer?"

Nina looked unspeakably shocked--.

"What a dreadful idea Nicholas!--I am thinking of both _seriously_, not

only to pass the time of day remember."

"That is all lovers are for, then Nina?--I used to think--."

"Never mind what you thought, there is no reason to insult me."

"Nothing was farther from my desire."

Nina's face cleared, as it had darkened ominously.

"What will you do if, having married Rochester, you find yourself

bored--Will you send for Jim again?"

"Certainly not, that would be disaster. I shan't plunge until I feel

pretty certain I am going to find the water just deep enough, and not

too deep--and if I do make a mistake, well I shall have to stick to it."

"By Jove what a philosopher," and I laughed--She poured out a second cup

of tea, and then she looked steadily at me, as though studying a new

phase of me.

"You are not a bit worse off than Tom Green, Nicholas, and he has not

got your money, and Tom is as jolly as anything, and everybody loves

him, though he is a hopeless cripple, and can't even look decent, as you

will be able to in a year or two. There is no use in having this

sentiment about war heroes that would make one put up with their

tempers, and their cynicism! Everybody is in the same boat, women and

men, we chance being maimed by bombs, and we are losing our looks with

rough work--for goodness sake stop being so soured--."