'See here, Dick. Our main job is to get Ivery back to Allied soil where we can handle him. And there's just the one magnet that can fetch him back. You aren't going to deny that.'
I felt my face getting very red, and that ugly hammer began beating in my forehead. Two grave, patient eyes met my glare.
'I'm damned if I'll allow it!' I cried. 'I've some right to a say in the thing. I won't have Mary made a decoy. It's too infernally degrading.'
'It isn't pretty, but war isn't pretty, and nothing we do is pretty.
I'd have blushed like a rose when I was young and innocent to imagine the things I've put my hand to in the last three years. But have you any other way, Dick? I'm not proud, and I'll scrap the plan if you can show me another ... Night after night I've hammered the thing out, and I can't hit on a better ... Heigh-ho, Dick, this isn't like you,' and he grinned ruefully. 'You're making yourself a fine argument in favour of celibacy - in time of war, anyhow What is it the poet sings? -White hands cling to the bridle rein, Slipping the spur from the booted heel -'
I was as angry as sin, but I felt all the time I had no case. Blenkiron stopped his game of Patience, sending the cards flying over the carpet, and straddled on the hearthrug.
'You're never going to be a piker. What's dooty, if you won't carry it to the other side of Hell? What's the use of yapping about your country if you're going to keep anything back when she calls for it? What's the good of meaning to win the war if you don't put every cent you've got on your stake? You'll make me think you're like the jacks in your English novels that chuck in their hand and say it's up to God, and call that "seeing it through" ... No, Dick, that kind of dooty don't deserve a blessing. You dursn't keep back anything if you want to save your soul.
'Besides,' he went on, 'what a girl it is! She can't scare and she can't soil. She's white-hot youth and innocence, and she'd take no more harm than clean steel from a muck-heap.'
I knew I was badly in the wrong, but my pride was all raw.
'I'm not going to agree till I've talked to Mary.'
'But Miss Mary has consented,' he said gently. 'She made the plan.'
Next day, in clear blue weather that might have been May, I drove Mary down to Fontainebleau. We lunched in the inn by the bridge and walked into the forest. I hadn't slept much, for I was tortured by what I thought was anxiety for her, but which was in truth jealousy of Ivery. I don't think that I would have minded her risking her life, for that was part of the game we were both in, but I jibbed at the notion of Ivery coming near her again. I told myself it was honourable pride, but I knew deep down in me that it was jealousy.
I asked her if she had accepted Blenkiron's plan, and she turned mischievous eyes on me.
'I knew I should have a scene with you, Dick. I told Mr Blenkiron so ... Of course I agreed. I'm not even very much afraid of it. I'm a member of the team, you know, and I must play up to my form. Ican't do a man's work, so all the more reason why I should tackle the thing I can do.'
'But,' I stammered, 'it's such a ... such a degrading business for a child like you. I can't bear ... It makes me hot to think of it.'
Her reply was merry laughter.
'You're an old Ottoman, Dick. You haven't doubled Cape Turk yet, and I don't believe you're round Seraglio Point. Why, women aren't the brittle things men used to think them. They never were, and the war has made them like whipcord. Bless you, my dear, we're the tougher sex now. We've had to wait and endure, and we've been so beaten on the anvil of patience that we've lost all our megrims.'
She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes.
'Look at me, Dick, look at your someday-to-be espoused saint.
I'm nineteen years of age next August. Before the war I should have only just put my hair up. I should have been the kind of shivering debutante who blushes when she's spoken to, and oh! Ishould have thought such silly, silly things about life ... Well, in the last two years I've been close to it, and to death. I've nursed the dying. I've seen souls in agony and in triumph. England has allowed me to serve her as she allows her sons. Oh, I'm a robust young woman now, and indeed I think women were always robuster than men ... Dick, dear Dick, we're lovers, but we're comrades too -always comrades, and comrades trust each other.'
I hadn't anything to say, except contrition, for I had my lesson. Ihad been slipping away in my thoughts from the gravity of our task, and Mary had brought me back to it. I remember that as we walked through the woodland we came to a place where there were no signs of war. Elsewhere there were men busy felling trees, and anti-aircraft guns, and an occasional transport wagon, but here there was only a shallow grassy vale, and in the distance, bloomed over like a plum in the evening haze, the roofs of an old dwelling-house among gardens.
Mary clung to my arm as we drank in the peace of it.
'That is what lies for us at the end of the road, Dick,' she said softly.
And then, as she looked, I felt her body shiver. She returned to the strange fancy she had had in the St Germains woods three days before.
'Somewhere it's waiting for us and we shall certainly find it ...
But first we must go through the Valley of the Shadow ... And there is the sacrifice to be made ... the best of us.'
