The Romantic

since they ha

of stiff silk. For a moment, after the excited rushing and hooting of the ambulance car, there had been something

she

of the war mostly in two pictures: one very distant, hanging in the air to her right, colourless as an illustration in the papers, grey figures tumbled in a grey field, white puff-bursts of shrapnel in a grey sky: and one very near;

ood; but she didn't see it; she saw white, very white bandages, and greyish white, sallow-white faces that had no features that she knew. She hadn't really thought so very much about the war; there had been too many other things to think about. Their seven weeks' training at Coventry, the long days

a hidden illness, their impatience, the

volunteers they wanted afterwards; and all the cars, his father would send out any number. She suspected John of not really wanting the volunteers, of not even wanting Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton. She could see he would have liked to have gone with her alone. Queer, that so long as she had thought he would be going without her, she had been afraid; she had felt certain he would be killed or die of wounds. The one unbearable thing was that John sh

is father, who had ma

ht look as though he were sorry about something-oh, but unbearably sorry about something he'd thought or said or done. He was

at her when he said to John, "Mind you take care of her," and John's "No fear," and her own "That's not what he's goin

not she would have had to go, so keen that she hated th

the engines her imp

he British Red Cross wouldn't look at them and their field ambulance, but the Belgians, poo

round her to hide her knees. Gwinnie looked stolid and good, with her face, the face of an innocent, intelligent routing animal, stuck out be

s she had plodded through her tr

n. His head leaned forward a little from his heavy shoulders in a perpetual short-sighted endeavour to look closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of hi

listened, or stood brooding, his face kept still all the time

outs in capes and tilted caps with tassels bobbing over their foreheads; they tramped the d

e, six, seven men, three young, four middle-aged, rather shy and awkward, on its fringe. In its centre two wome

s smooth, innocent pink face carried its moustache like an accident, a mistake. Once, when he turned, she m

time set, the predatory poise of an enormous bird. But the other one was-rather charming. Her features had a curious, sweet bluntness; her eyes were decorations, dee

were and decided that

lief in Belgium,

ted, of being satisfied, appeased. Even Sutton had it, lying on the top of his

are of John Conway as he walked the de

and walke

they passed. One, the tall one,

ees show awful

Gwinnie's do. She doesn't

own at her

k as if you were sailing fast against a head

ide to the rail of the boat's stern. They stood there, watching the wake boiling and

atter with hi

on his mind. It's no u

ate tragedy ... How ar

-except wanting to get there. And w

idn't feel it was the most romantic thing that ever happened to me.... To have let everything go, to know that nothing matters, that it

turning and held her with

, my father calls it. Jolly little romance about him. He'll simply

im to give us those two am

put in the papers about himself: 'His second son, Mr. John Roden Conway, is taking out two Roden field ambulance cars wh

the old man, the poor, kind man. Perhaps he

of mind. A state of mind can't be false or true. It simply exists. It hasn't any rel

es

t take things in. Her fatheadedness. It was easy not to say things if you didn't feel them. The more John felt them the more he

r brain. She wondered with a sort of terror whether he would see it in her face, whether if she spoke he would hear it thickening her throat. He would loathe her if he knew. She would loathe herself if she thought she was going into the war because of that, because of him. Women did. She remembered Gibson

at Sutton as

e a surgeon," he said.

ed to be

he number of Army Medical men killed and missing? Out of all proportion.

if we've any luck, any luck at a

s. If it was only being k

is right to kill. It's the same for the other johnnie. If your life doesn't matter a

f he h

better

ling anything, from a sense of duty. That would be

s duty's his romance. Yo

N

g, sick? Frightened. Well, of course it would be there to

ck, and had to be pushed on, by bayonets

wouldn't. He couldn't see th

"the chaps who come out t

unk on his chest, his hands folded on his stomach. He had taken off his green velv

*

inge of red wine spilt on a white cloth; a highway of gold a

nd, the sunk lines o

, the Commission people standing apart with their air of arrogance and distinction. The little man in tweeds had waked up from his sleep

nto his face, searching his thoughts there. Suddenly from somewhere in the bows a song spurted and dropped and spurted again and shot up in the stillnes

te look