At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [107]
He had helped her free the accused men from the farmhouse, and that could have cost him his life. It still might, for that matter. Colonel Hook had asked Joseph to find out how the escape had been effected, and he had been so obviously dilatory that Faulkner had insisted he be imprisoned for his collusion.
She turned over in bed carefully as her muscles tweaked with pain. Poor Joseph. He had been so wretched over realizing that Northrup had been shot by his own men, even though this time there was no way he could have avoided it. Mason knew, and that was the end of his chance to conceal it.
The last time she had seen Mason there had been a bitterness in his words, an anger that was not at the Germans just beyond the ridge, or at circumstances that had brought them all here. It was as if he had expected incompetence and futility, and hoped for nothing better. His faith in the world was gone.
She huddled a little tighter, remembering their conversation.
“Do you know Through the Looking Glass?” he had asked wryly.
“Yes, of course I do,” she had answered. She had loved it, possibly even more than Alice in Wonderland. There was an extra absurdity to the logic, and the poetry stayed in her mind, especially the White Knight. “‘…fingers in a pocket full of glue. Or madly pushing my left-hand foot into my right-hand shoe.’” Aloud she had said “Why?”
“‘Walrus and the Carpenter,’” he had replied. “Walking along the beach, ‘wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.’”
She picked it up. “‘If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year. Do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get it clear?’”
“‘I doubt it, said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear,’” he finished. “How many women, in how many factories, their backs aching, feet sore, labor all day and all night, to make the shells that are shattering this land and sending mud into new piles, for someone else to blast all over a slightly different place tomorrow, and tear apart a few more human bodies in the process? That’s real absurdity. A world that makes no sense.”
She had longed for something to say that would explain to him the will to fight, the love of all the remembered sweetness of life: small things like a walk in the woods at bluebell time; lark song early in the morning; sunlight on shaven fields in autumn when the air is gold; and big things like laughter with friends, and faith in tomorrow. But she did not want him to damage her faith with his disbelief, and paint gray over her dreams. They were too precious to risk. Without them she might not survive.
Now there was a darkness in Mason that saw no point in their efforts, almost as if he derided them in his own way. She remembered his words as they had stood together in the dark, talking in between the crashes of mortar fire and the heavy shells exploding less than a mile away. Even in the clouded night they could see the great gouts of earth and mud flying into the air. Judith perceived his anger—not only what he said, it was the edge of despair in his voice.
It was at that moment that she had realized how small a part of his life she was. Yes, he could laugh and need and give like anyone else. But how much courage had he to hope when it was almost impossibly difficult? To lay the soul bare to the darkness, with the knowledge that it might not end? All the intelligence, the imagination, and pity, the moments of tenderness, were not enough without hope as well.
She sank into a kind of sleep at last, and by five o’clock she was awake again in the gray light. A splash of cold water on her face brought