The Romantic Part 36

"I brought it all on myself. I ought to have given him up instead of hanging on to him that way. Platonic love--It's all wrong. People aren't really made like that. It was every bit as bad as going to Gibson Herbert.... Worse. That was honest. This was all lying. Lying about myself. Lying about him. Lying about--love."

"Then," he said, "you don't really know what it is."

"I know John's sort. And I know Gibson's sort. And I know there's a heavenly sort, Billy, in between. But I'm spoiled for it. I think I could have cared for you if it hadn't been for John.... I shan't ever get away from him."

"Yes. If you can see it--"

"Of course I see it. I can see everything now. All that war-romancing. I see how awful it was. When I think how we went out and got thrills. Fancy getting thrills out of this horror."

"Oh well--I think you earned your thrill."

"You can't earn anything in this war. At least _I_ can't. It's paying, paying all the time. And I've got more things than John to pay for. There was little Effie."

"Effie?"

"Gibson's wife. I didn't _want_ to hurt her.... Billy, are you sure it makes no difference? What I did."

"I've told you it doesn't.... You mustn't go on thinking about it."

"No. But I can't get over his betraying me. You see, that's the worst thing he did to _me_. The other things--well, he was mad with fright, and he was afraid of me, because I knew. I can't think why he did this."

"Same reason. You knew. He was degraded by your knowing, so you had to be degraded. At least I suppose that's how it was."

She shook her head. He was darker to her than ever and she was no nearer to her peace. She knew everything and she understood nothing. And that was worse than not knowing.

"If only I could understand. Then, I believe, I could bear it. I wouldn't care how bad it was as long as I understood."

"Ask McClane, then. He could explain it to you. It's beyond me."

"McClane?"

"He's a psychotherapist. He knows more about people's souls than I know about their bodies. He probably knows all about Conway's soul."

Silence drifted between them, dim and silvery like the garden mist.

"Charlotte--are we never to get away from him? Is he always to stick between us? That dead man."

"It isn't that."

"What is it, then?"

"All _this_.... I'd give anything to care for you, Billy dear, but I don't care. I _can't_. I can't care for anything but the war."

"The war won't last for ever. And afterwards?"

"I can't see any afterwards."

Sutton smiled.

"And yet," he said, "there will be one."

XVII

The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing of stiff silk.

Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk on their way to England, had been taken on board the naval transport _Victoria_. They were the only pa.s.sengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left them a clear s.p.a.ce on the deck. Charlotte was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when McClane came to her there.

He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something had pleased him.

"I knew," he said, "that some day I should get you three. And that I should get those ambulances."

She couldn't tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted or that he had foreseen John Conway's fate which would ultimately give it him.

"The ambulances--Yes. You always wanted them."

"Not more than I wanted you and Sutton."

He seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without resentment, waiting till it had died down before he spoke again. He was sitting beside her now.

"What are you going to do about Conway?"

"Nothing. Except lie about him to his father."

"That's all right as long as you don't lie about him to yourself."

"I've lied about him to other people. Never to myself. I was in love with him, if that's what you mean. But he finished that. What's finished is finished. I haven't a sc.r.a.p of feeling for him left."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite. I'm not even sorry he's dead."

"You've forgiven him?"

"I'm not always sure about that. But I'm trying to forget him."

McClane looked away.

"Do you ever dream about him, Charlotte?"

"Never. Not now. I used to. I dreamed about him once three nights running."

He looked at her sharply. "Could you tell me what you dreamed?"

She told him her three dreams.