"Do you think I'm going to funk then?" said poor Colin.
"Funk? Oh, Lord no. You'll stick it till you drop, till you're
paralyzed, till you've lost your voice and memory, till you're an utter
wreck. There'll be enough of 'em, poor devils, without you, Col-Col."
"But why should I go like that more than anybody else?"
"Because you're made that way, because you haven't got a nervous system
that can stand the racket. The noises alone will do for you. You'll be
as right as rain if you keep out of it."
"But Jerrold's coming back. _He_'ll go out at once. How can I stick at
home when he's gone?"
"Heaps of good work to be done at home."
"Not by men of my age."
"By men of your nervous organization. Your going out would be sheer
waste."
"Why not?" Does it matter what becomes of me?"
"No. It doesn't. It matters, though, that you'll be taking a better
man's place."
Now Colin really did want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted
to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a
form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so
worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was
the sacrifice required of him, when he told Queenie what Eliot had said.
"All I can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give
_you_ up. I've no use for men with cold feet."
"Can't you see," said Colin (he almost hated Queenie in that moment),
"what I'm afraid of? Being a damned nuisance. That's what Eliot says
I'll be. I don't know how he knows."
"He doesn't know everything. If _my_ brother tried to stop my going to
the front I'd jolly soon tell him to go to hell. I swear, Colin, if you
back out of it I won't speak to you again. I'm not asking you to do
anything I funk myself."
"Oh, shut up. I'm going all right. Not because you've asked me, but
because I want to."
"If you didn't I should think you'd feel pretty rotten when I'm out with
my Field Ambulance," said Queenie.
"Damn your Field Ambulance!... No, I didn't mean that, old thing; it's
splendid of you to go. But you'd no business to suppose I funked. I
_may_ funk. Nobody knows till they've tried. But I was going all right
till Eliot put me off."
"Oh, if you're put off as easily as all that----"
She was intolerable. She seemed to think he was only going because she'd
shamed him into it.
That evening he sang: "'What are you doing all the day, Rendal, my son?
What are you doing all the day, my pretty one?'"