It was the following morning that Vane received a second letter from Margaret. He had written her once--a letter in which he had made no allusion to their last meeting--and she had answered it. Cases were still pouring in and she was very busy. When she did have a moment to herself she was generally so tired that she lay down and went to sleep. It was the letter of a girl obsessed with her work to the exclusion of all outside things.
Of course he admired her for it--admired her intensely. It was so characteristic of her, and she had such a wonderful character. But- somehow . . . he had wished for something a little more basely material. And so with this second one. He read it through once at breakfast, and then, with a thoughtful look in his eyes, he took it with him to a chair on the big verandah which ran along the whole of the front of Rumfold Hall. The awning above it had been specially erected for the benefit of the patients and Vane pulled one of the lounge chairs back from the stone balustrade, so that his face was shaded from the sun. It was a favourite spot of his, and now, with Margaret's letter outspread beside him, and his pipe held between his knees, he commenced to fill the bowl. He was becoming fairly quick at the operation, but long after it was well alight he was still staring at the misty line of distant hills. Away, out there, beyond, the thing called war was in full swing--the game was at its height. And the letter beside him had taken him back in spirit. . . . After a while he picked it up again and commenced to re-read the firm, clear handwriting. . . .
No. 24, STATIONARY HOSPITAL.
MONDAY.
Derek, dear, I've been moved as you see from No. 13. I'm with the men now, and though I hated going at first--yet, now, I think I almost prefer it. With the officers there must always be a little constraint -at least, I have never been able to get rid of the feeling. Perhaps with more experience it would vanish je ne sais pas . . . but with the men it's never there. They're just children, Derek, just dear helpless kiddies; and so wonderfully grateful for any little thing one does. Never a whimper; never the slightest impatience. . . . they're just wonderful. One expects it from the officers; but somehow it strikes one with a feeling almost of surprise when one meets it in the men. There's one of them, a boy of eighteen, with both his legs blown off above the knee. He just lies there silently, trying to understand. He never worries or frets--but there's a look in his eyes--a puzzled, questioning look sometimes--which asks as clearly as if he spoke--"Why has this thing happened to me?" He comes from a little Devonshire fishing village, he tells me; and until the war he'd never been away from it! Can you imagine the pitiful, chaotic, helplessness in his mind? Oh! doesn't it all seem too insensately brutal? . . . It's not even as if there was any sport in it; it's all so utterly ugly and bestial. . . . One feels so helpless, so bewildered, and the look in some of their eyes makes one want to scream, with the horror of it. . . .
But, old man, the object of this letter is not to inflict on you my ideas on war. It is in a sense a continuation, and a development, of our talk on the beach at Paris Plage. I have been thinking a good deal lately about that conversation, and now that I have almost definitely made up my mind as to what I propose to do myself after the war, I consider it only fair to let you know. I said to you then that perhaps my job might only be to help you to fulfil your own destiny, and nothing which I have decided since alters that in any way. If you still want me after the war--if we find that neither of us has made a mistake--I can still help you, Derek, I hope. But, my dear, it won't be quite a passive help, if you understand what I mean. I've got to be up and doing myself--actively; to be merely any man's echo--his complement--however much I loved him, would not be enough. I've come to that, you see.
And so I've decided--not quite definitely as I said, but almost so--to read for Medicine. I'm a little old, perhaps, though I'm only twenty four: but these years in France have at any rate not been wasted. The question of money does not come in luckily, and the work attracts me immensely. Somehow I feel that I might be helping to repair a tiny bit of the hideous destruction and mutilation which we're suffering from now.