"You salve my conscience as well as my easing my mind." He sat down on the old blanket he had brought and patted it. "Come feast with me, then."
Perfectly happy to, she sat down across from him. Truth to tell, she was rather glad that he had brought most of the tea this time. Without Alison around, there wasn't much bread left, and she had given the old women the last of the cakes yesterday. Her offerings were a bit scanty.
"So how was the school treat?" she asked, conversationally. "Were the children absolute demons?"
"They were rather decent, actually," he replied. "That might have been because we thought of a few more things to keep them out of trouble this year. Swings in the trees, rides in my motor, that sort of thing."
"That was rather kind of you!" she exclaimed, a bit surprised that he had done any such thing with his fast motorcar.
He shrugged, but looked pleased. "Oh, it was just to the gates and back. But they seemed to like it. Played the very devil with my bad leg though. I forgot how much work there would be, what with all the gearing changes and braking. By the end of the day—"
He broke off, a little flushed. Embarrassed? It could be. There were those who would think that, because he wasn't lacking an arm or an eye, he was malingering. "What?" she supplied, trying to sound casual. "You could hardly walk?"
He looked shamefaced. "Something like . . ."
"Then I suspect it's a good thing you found that out driving the children up and down to the gates, and not some other way," she said, trying not to be too specific. "It does seem to me at least that your doctors are right about taking a long time to heal."
"Well, I think you'll be happy about one thing, anyway," he said, sounding as if he was changing the subject. "Listening to the speeches, one of them was—well, rather better than I had any expectation. So Mater and I decided that we're going to put up a scholarship for the village boys to go to Oxford. Father always intended to, so now we shall."
At first, she was irrationally pleased. How many clever boys had she known who could have done very well at university if only they'd been able to go? But then, she thought, All very well for the boys, certainly, but felt a twinge of resentment thinking about the number of equally clever girls who ended up just like their mothers, birthing lambs and babies at nearly equal intervals. "What about girls?" she asked aloud.
"What?" He stared at her as if she had said something startling.
"I said, what about girls?" she repeated, firming her chin stubbornly and daring him to look away. "Why only boys? Don't you think girls from the village ought to be able to go if they're clever enough?"
"But—but—" Now he was really staring at her. "But what are they going to do with a university education? A boy can teach—become an engineer, a scientist, a doctor, a scholar—"
"And a girl can't?" she retorted, now feeling quite angry with him. "What about that lady doctor you were always talking about? Why can't a girl become an engineer or a scientist?"
He looked at her as if she had suddenly begun speaking in Urdu. "But—but—"
"I was going to go to Oxford," she reminded him. "What's more, you told me I should, and that I shouldn't let anyone dissuade me!"
"Yes, but these are just village girls, farmer's daughters, with no expectations!" he said, then continued to make his situation worse with every word. "It's not as if—I mean, you're not the same class as they are—I mean—"
His mouth snapped shut as she flushed, as he realized he had just said something horribly rude. She looked down for a moment at her handmade skirt, then looked defiantly up into his eyes, daring him to make the comparison between the class she was supposed to be in, and the one she was apparently in now. "Maybe they have no expectations because no one ever let them think that they could," she said bitterly. "Maybe, if someone bothered to show them that they could have dreams, they might be able to dream them. Mightn't they? Just because they're shopkeepers' girls and farmers' daughters doesn't mean they don't have minds. Some of them have very good minds. And I think it's a shame and a sin that all they're thought good for is tending babies and putting up jam."
His eyes looked miserable. But she was very angry now. And she wasn't going to let him off the hook.
"Besides," she pointed out, with coldly, poisonously perfect logic. "Someone had better start helping ordinary girls to do things like becoming doctors and teachers. Because thanks to that bloody war, there aren't going to be any doctors and teachers otherwise. And I don't see the pretty young ladies of the proper class rushing off to university to fill the void! Do you? Of course not. It wouldn't be ladylike. It wouldn't be proper."
He made a strangled little sound in the back of his throat, and looked away.
I shouldn't have said that, she thought. And then thought, rebelliously, But I'm right. And I'm not going to apologize.
"You are a truly horrible young woman, you know," he said, very slowly, as if he was weighing and measuring each word, still looking away from her. "Only the truly horrible and the young would dare to tell that much truth."
"Only someone who doesn't have any room for illusions anymore would dare to tell that much truth," she corrected, as the anger slowly faded and cooled to an emotion that was darker and bleaker than that flare of temper. "I can't afford illusions; they are altogether too expensive to maintain. There are a great many of us in that position now."
"Yes," he replied, turning back, slowly. "There are."
They stared at one another, and he finally heaved a great sigh. "That was a very stupid thing to say, wasn't it?"
"It's that whole game," she said, the bitterness back, redoubled. "That whole game of class. It's not going to work, you know! If this wretched war is ever over, it's just not going to work anymore, the whole construction is just going to go smash!"
"Like it did in Russia?" he replied. And managed a wan smile. "You've been listening to Mad Ross Ashley."
"I've been reading," she retorted. She didn't say anything more, but she was thinking a great deal. I don't know what's going to happen, but— well, just look! Even fifty years ago, you had rich American girls with piles of new money coming over to marry a lord with a name but no prospects, and rich tradesmen's boys getting themselves blue-blooded wives out of the Royal Enclosure that were desperate to get themselves out of tumbledown Tudor manors and into a nice London townhouse in the West End! It can't go on, can't you see that! You can't go on playing that silly game of we and they and by now you should know it!
But she didn't say anything. She'd already said more than enough, actually. If he couldn't see this for himself—
But he passed his hand over his eyes, as if his head hurt him. "It's—" He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't even know if we're going to see an end to this, not even with the Americans coming in. Sometimes—" He took his hand away, and looked past her, into the distance, his voice flat. "I don't know if anything matters anymore, because all we are ever going to see is that Juggernaut grinding on and on until there isn't anyone left to fight... so what's the point of anything anymore? Why bother trying to change anything, when there isn't going to be anything left to change?"