SONIA MARRIED
STEPHEN McKENNA
"As a clownish Fellow was driving his cart along a deep miry lane,the wheel stuck so fast in the clay, that his horse could not drawit out. Upon this he fell a bawling and praying to Hercules to comeand help him. Hercules, looking down from a cloud, bid him not tolie there like an idle, dastardly booby as he was, but get up andwhip his horse, and clap his shoulder stoutly to the wheel, addingthat this was the only way for him to obtain assistance."
The Fables of Æsop: "Hercules and the Carter."
SONIA MARRIED
BY
STEPHEN McKENNA
AUTHOR OF "SONIA," "MIDAS AND SON," "NINETY-SIX
HOURS' LEAVE," ETC.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE METROPOLITAN PUBLICATIONS, INC.
——
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
EPISTLE DEDICATORY
To WALTER FRANCIS ROCH
My dear Roch,
Ever since you read "SONIA" in manuscript, you have been the book's mostgenerous critic. May I mark my gratitude for this and for a friendshipolder than "SONIA" by dedicating its successor to you? Perhaps youremember openly doubting whether in fact the spiritual shock of warcould so change and steady Sonia as to make her a fitting wife for anyman, O'Rane most of all; you may recollect my confessing that such amarriage of hysterical impulse contained the seeds of instant disaster.
Sequels are admittedly failures, but I look on this book less as asequel than as an epilogue or footnote. Sonia was not to know happinessuntil she had suffered, and the sacrifice in the early days of war wasto many a new and heady self-indulgence. It is the length of the war,the sickening repetition of one well-placed blow after another on thesame bruised flesh that has tested the survivors. After a year of warO'Rane could have mustered many followers, when he murmured to himself,"I—all of us who were out there—have seen it. We can't forget. Thecourage, the cold, heart-breaking courage ... and the smile on a dyingman's face.... We must never let it be forgotten, we've earned theright. As long as a drunkard kicks his wife, or a child goes hungry, ora woman is driven through shame to disease and death.... Is it a greatthing to ask? To demand of England to remember that the criminals andloafers and prostitutes are somebody's children, mothers and sisters?And that we've all been saved by a miracle of suffering? Is that toogreat[Pg viii] a strain on our chivalry? I'll go out if need be, but—but mustwe stand at street corners to tell what we've seen? To ask thebystanders—and ourselves—whether we went to war to preserve the rightof inflicting pain?"
After fo