The silence of the ward was suddenly broken by a merry peal of bells
floating in through the open windows. In the little village church
tucked away in a near-by hollow of the moor a wedding was being
solemnised. Sudden tears, a strange emotion, surged up in Sister
Braithwaite.
A case that had made good progress was removed from the ward, a
newly-arrived, severely-wounded man brought in.
"If only it were Ronald!" The neat, prim figure of the Sister,
supervising the orderlies busy lifting the casualty into the bed, gave
no indication of the desperate agonised prayer.
* * * * *
She dreamed.
"----Mine at last, my beloved--really mine!" The familiar voice
thrilled through her, very close, overhead.
"Yours! Always yours!" she heard herself murmur.
She took her head from the darkness that obscured her vision--it was
his coat against which she had been nestling; she saw the little white
touzled-up hairs of the rough tweed ere her gaze stretched to longer
focus. She looked to his face, met his vivid eyes--looked round at her
surroundings.
They were alone in the first-class compartment of a railway train
that rocked and roared. His lips were pressed on hers. "The great
day, dearest!" he said. Her mind leaped to the allusion. Their
wedding-day! They had been married that morning--she could hear still
the joyous peal of bells--were going away on their honeymoon. The
tweed suit he wore was quite new--something like the old. She was in a
travelling-dress that he had already admired. Of course! It all came
back to her as if she had just awakened from a little sleep.
The train rushed on. She lived through all the cinematograph-like
pictures of the journey. A halt and descent--little anxieties about
the luggage--then--after an interlude which was vague--another
train, another long journey--all was a continuous long experience.
She thrilled at a surreptitious squeeze of his hand--ah, yes, there
were other people in the carriage now--rounded her lips at him in a
provoking similitude of a kiss, daringly profiting by the inattention
of their fellow-travellers. A yearning for him--induced by the naughty
little act--filled her breast, persisted. There was bustle, confusion.
They were in a throng of travellers who hurried. Hurry! They must not
lose the boat. It lay there before them, only its upper works seen, its
two great funnels leaning backward, belching black smoke. The black
smoke spread over the sky. It was night. They were on board the boat,
cradled in an easy motion, sensible of the throb of the engines. On
and on they journeyed, linked in a very close communion of eyes that
spoke, of hands that squeezed each other. She tasted a thousand little
kindnesses. How good he was! How loving!
And still the journey went on. Yet more trains. She must have slept.
She woke to a great city, filled with innumerable inhabitants, all
very busy. They spoke a strange language very rapidly to one another.
She could not understand a word. But he, Ronald, understood--conversed
with them in their foreign tongue. How clever he was! There was music
somewhere--from a lighted café that flooded a damp street with radiance.
She was bewildered in a variety of new and strange impressions, leaned
on him, soul and body. He led her, sure of himself. Her love for him
seemed to increase at this revelation of his unfailing self-reliance.
Yet she knew that she loved him with all her being, had always loved
him so.
"And how do you like Brussels, dearest?" his ringing voice asked.
Brussels? Of course! As though a veil had fallen from her eyes she
saw that they were in the middle of the Grand' Place, lights playing,
Rembrandtesque, on the carved stonework of the ancient buildings. She
recognised it at once--how accurate the picture postcards had been!
Brussels--the honeymoon journey! She thrilled with happiness, leaning
on his strong arm.
The dream continued----.
* * * * *
All through the next day its vividness haunted her. At times she had
to will herself to live in the actual world. She scarcely spoke. The
Medical Officer in charge of her ward stopped her, asked her if she
were all right, his eyes searching her face. He sympathised with her in
her loss so kindly and gently that she loved him for it.
Number Ten was still the great preoccupation. He claimed incessant
care. But he was in the faint beginnings of good progress. Strangely,
it seemed that when she tended him there was a conflict in some obscure
part of her. There seemed to be an inarticulate voice, immensely
remote, vaguely minatory, not explicit. Captain Lavering insisted that
she was his rescuer, his eyes more eloquent than his words. It made
her feel awkward, curiously shame-faced. His reiteration threw her out
of that smile-armoured impersonal professional relation to the patient
which alone makes continuous hospital work possible. She masked her
face with a gentle severity. When he slept she was unreasonably glad.
But she liked tending him. The contact with actual life, pain-stricken
though it was, obliterated to some extent the haunting memory of that
dream world from which she shrank, vaguely frightened.
She forced herself to live only in the long, quiet, bright ward; in the
chattering society of the Sisters' messroom when off duty.
* * * * *
Her dream linked itself onto its predecessor. The honeymoon was
finished. She looked back down a long vista of travel, of happy days.
She had really lived through all those experiences. She picked them one
by one from her memory like rare pieces from a jewel-case, contemplated
them with a smile. Each expanded into a picture. The day they had
walked together down the rugged path of the tiny valley imprisoned in
the wooded hills, a fierce little stream outpacing them as it dashed
against great boulders, and had come upon a sunny meadow where children
garlanded with flowers laughed and danced in a ring; a wonderful blue
lake on whose shores were yellow houses with red roofs and ancient
cypresses on a greensward near the water's edge--the melancholy
reiterated note of a church bell beat like a pulse through the scene;
an old, old town with gabled houses leaning in close confidence, rich
carvings--the grotesque; in all was a pervading peace, rich quiet life
that thrives sleepy with well-being from year to year; over all was the
ecstasy of mutual love through which they had beheld the world.
Another memory came to her--early morning in the Alps, a sea of wild
narcissi all about them and, beyond, the great white peaks glittering
in the sun of a blue sky. They went on and on, up and up. The flowers
were left behind--and she remembered she had regretted leaving them,
had grudged the effort to climb for the sake of climbing--but he had
insisted. They stood at last high up, dazzlingly white snowfields
stretching away on every side, a summer sun beating hot upon them.
The air was rarefied, induced in them a subtle ecstasy as they stood
marvelling at the brilliant austere beauty of the great peaks lifting
themselves into the sky, their robes slipping from their rocky
shoulders in a miracle of purity. He encircled her waist with his arm,
spoke in the voice that stirred mysterious depths in her.
"Dearest," he said. "Not a flower but snow is the true emblem of
love. White as the essential soul, how soon on the lower levels it is
defiled, disappears! But on the heights it endures stainless for ever,
no matter how hot the kiss of the sun."
And she had kissed him, speechlessly.
But all this was past. She was at home now, waiting for him to come
back from his work. Their home, the home they had always planned, was
all around her. The very pieces of furniture they had regarded in shop
windows with longing eyes, had calculated the cost of, were there.
That quaint old table in the centre of the room, half covered with the
embroidered openwork white linen laid for tea--how covetously they
had once looked on it! How depressed they had been at the dealer's
price! But it was there, after all. Ronald had bought it, he who never
rested until he attained his heart's desire. How purposeful he was! How
strong! How loving-kind! She closed her eyes, leaned back in a swimming
ecstasy of love.
There he was! She heard his footstep at the other side of the door.
He entered, was radiant, enfolded her in that wonderful embrace where
she was a surrendered thing. He had a little parcel, handed it to
her. Tremblingly she opened it, certain of delight. It was a framed
enlargement of a photograph they had taken that morning in the high
Alps. With a little happy cry she gazed once more on the long smooth
slopes of snow, stretching up to the dark-patched peaks. Once more his
arm encircled her, his deep voice spoke.
"So shall we live, darling, always--ever upon the heights."
* * * * *
She lay awake in her bed, ere it was day, and understood in a great
tremulous awe. In her dreams she and Ronald were living precisely the
life they would have lived had there been no war. The honeymoon--their
home--all would have been accomplished ere this. Had there been no war!
Exactly as she had dreamed they would have travelled together--his arm
would have enfolded her--in long, long happiness they would have lived.
She burst into a passion of tears, stifled in the pillow. Then she
turned her head, wondering, feeling as if her heart had stopped. Would
this dream continue? Was it--in some mysterious way--_real_? Her lips
moved in a prayer, but she scarcely knew what she prayed.
She was glad to escape into the busy actual life of the ward, into the
light of day.
From now onwards her life definitely assumed this double phase.
In the hospital she was the Sister Braithwaite that all had known,
diligent, bravely smiling, conscientious in her duty. Those about her
remarked only that there was sometimes a curious stillness in her mien,
spoke pityingly among themselves of the sad loss of her soldier lover.
But death in a hospital is no rare catastrophe and none lingered on the
topic. There was much to do, a continual stream of new arrivals from
the distant conflict, the doubtful fate of many of those already long
suffering. There were deaths, recoveries, operations of professional
interest.
Number Ten went slowly but steadily towards health. Sister Braithwaite
deliberately avoided all contact with him save the professional.
When she chatted with a patient in the ward it was not with him. His
gaze was reproachful, and she would not see it. Sometimes when she
approached him he would, half-jokingly, reiterate that she had saved
him. She would not hear. A strange sense of insecurity disturbed her
in his presence. She half divined that he nursed a project----. She
fled the glance of the steady, resolute eyes in the strong face.
When at last he had made such progress that he could be removed to a
convalescent ward she was glad at his departure.
At night she passed into another world. There was no war in that
life--never had been war. From dream to dream she lived through a
continuous existence--the wife of Ronald. It was all vividly real. It
was the life they would have led--it played itself out now in what to
her daytime consciousness was a realm of shadows. Not always did she
dream, or rather not always did her consciousness register the events
through which she passed. But later dreams had dream-memories in them
and the record had no gaps. Time passed in that dream-world without
relation to the terrestrial days. In one night she frequently lived
through long periods. He was always kind to her, always loving. She,
too, loved him passionately, with all her soul.
But in the daytime her being shrank from that shadow-life. She was
afraid--mysteriously, primitively afraid. She could not mourn as
she would have liked to mourn. Sometimes she asked herself whether
she was not ceasing to love her dead affianced. She tried to evoke
his image--and often, to her distress, succeeded not. The strongly
masculine features of Number Ten, Captain Lavering, rose before her
mental vision, would not be banished. Then she despised herself
bitterly. In remorse she willed herself forward to the night, bade
herself not shrink, and when the hour came gave herself to the darkness
tremulously, like a slave of the harem who goes into the chamber of
her lord. The portal passed she was happy, completely happy--as happy
as she would have been the wife of Ronald in the dainty little home
that never could be other than the home of her dreams. With strange,
almost terrifying, completeness the shadow-life evolved. The house she
lived in she knew in all its details, had its rooms that she preferred,
views from its windows that she loved or veiled. The presence of her
husband was a reality that filled it. She knew his footsteps, heard
his voice. (It rang often in her ears when her eyes unclosed in the
little matchboarded cubicle suddenly unfamiliar.) They had long, long
conversations together--wonderful little interludes where their always
underlying love blossomed into delicate flower. She saw his face
clearly, saw that it was changing slightly, growing more set, less
boyish. There were difficulties--the difficulties of real life--to be
encountered. An anguished struggle with bills and finances that would
not meet wrung her soul all one night. She pledged herself to such
brave economies! But the difficulties were overcome, the memory of them
lost in the embrace of her lover. Rarely, rarely was she unhappy until
she woke.
And day by day, not keeping pace with her other life, her life of work
in the hospital went on. Week linked into week, month into month. The
great open moors around her changed their hue, were often shrouded in
mist. In December the first frosts glassed the pools. Many were the
patients who had come and gone. The little cemetery under the hill was
fuller. Other sufferers were more fortunate. Captain Lavering was fully
convalescent, nearing his discharge. She saw him often at a distance,
avoided him when he tried to approach her. She could not have explained
why, even to herself. Somewhere deep down in her, the virility of
his aspect set a chord vibrating. She was always extremely, almost
painfully, conscious of his propinquity. For many weeks they had not
exchanged a word.
There came a night wonderful above all others. She thrilled with
a strange new ecstasy, drawn from deep springs. It was the quiet,
speechless ecstasy of some mysterious fulfilment. She was filled with
a great tenderness that welled up and overflowed like a source. There
was something warm against her heart. She looked down and saw that it
was a newborn babe. She was in bed. Then, in a great surge of deeply
flowing joy, she understood. She was a mother--the mother of Ronald's
child! She could have cried for joy that lacked expression. Her fingers
stroked thin silky hair on a tiny head.
Suddenly she was aware that Ronald was looking down on her. She yearned
up to him, but as she did so she was conscious that her allegiance was
divided. Not all of her, as heretofore, reached out to him undividedly
his. There was a dumb insistent claim at her breast. She smiled to
disguise it.
But it seemed that he understood. His face was troubled, the vivid eyes
reproachful. He leaned over her.
"Dearest," he said. "I cannot share you. The child must never be more
than the symbol of our love. You must be mine--always mine. Promise me
that you will always be mine alone!"
His jealousy flattered her. A gush of affection for the strong lover
admitting her power, mingled with the mother-craving for protection for
self and child, was a fresh impulse revivifying the old allegiance:
"Always yours, dearest--always yours!"
He looked at her searchingly, his head seeming like a carven figure of
destiny, strangely significant.
"I could annihilate the thing that comes between us," he said,
and she was a little frightened at his voice. It rolled away big,
superhuman--she harked back, in a flitting thought, to an earlier
dream-memory.
He turned to a picture on the wall, pointed to it. It was the Alpine
scene.
"You and I," he said. "Always together--alone upon the heights."
"Yes! Yes!" she said, only half understanding. "Always--always yours!"
She woke with a start, her own voice ringing in her ears. Night was
still a blackness in the little cubicle. She put out her hand, touched
the matchboard wall to assure herself of her surroundings.
When she woke again it was to look through the window and see the world
white with snow. She remembered with some pleasure that she was off
duty, had the day to herself. She wanted to be alone. Her head was a
whirl of troubled thoughts. The emotions of her dream were still in her
blood. Her arms felt vacant as though an infant had just been taken
from them. A new longing came up in her--a craving for motherhood. She
linked it to her dead lover. "Oh, Ronald!" she murmured. "If only we
had been married before you went to the war----" she left the thought
unfinished. The craving persisted, apart from his memory. She ached
for a real, living affection in this world of men and women. Strange
thoughts haunted her while she dressed.
As soon as possible she escaped from the hospital, went out upon the
moor that stretched in suave contours of dazzling white. A pale
blue sky sank into its mists. A cold wind hurried over it, whirling
up little columns of dusty, frozen snow. She walked far into its
solitudes, she hardly knew whether to escape from her thoughts or to be
alone with them.
At last she turned back. She had climbed out of a little hollow,
was descending a featureless slope when suddenly she perceived the
figure of a man, dark against the snow. He walked towards her quickly.
Simultaneous with her recognition of him was the flush of blood to
her face, a peculiar nervous thrill. It was Captain Lavering. She
half hesitated. Then she strode forward, an insidiously victorious
temptation masquerading as strong will. Why should she not pass him? It
was absurd. He might think----. She hoped that she was not blushing, or
that the keen wind which fluttered her veil would be the self-evident
excuse.
They met. He stopped, made a gesture of salute.
"Good morning, Captain Lavering." She was glad to hear her own voice,
had been afraid that she could not bring it to utterance. What
was there so troubling about this man? She avoided his eyes. "I'm
pleased to see you walking about again." The crisis was successfully
surmounted. She made as if to continue her way.
"I saw you in the distance, Sister," he said bluntly.
She did not find the commonplace remark for which she sought. He
blocked her pathway.
"I have been waiting to speak to you for a long time, Sister," he
continued, as though he knew there was no necessity for a trite
beginning. "Ever since you saved my life. You did--we won't discuss
that." She stared at him, speechless. "But I have waited until I was
sure that I was quite well again. You know what I am going to say. For
a long time you have felt what was in my mind. You must be my wife."
He was strong and real--vividly actual. She felt as she did sometimes
when her eyes opened from a dream into the solid surroundings of her
cubicle. He barred off the other world.
"No--no," she breathed, dodged past him, hurried over the snow.
He was by her side, keeping pace easily with her.
"You can't escape me like that," he said. There was obvious brute
masculinity in his tone. Though she tried to resent it, it did not
displease her, and she was angry with herself that it did not. "Listen.
I am a plain man. There is no fancy romance about me. I don't want
illusions. But I love you." He stated the fact with absolute decision.
"I can offer you a good position and all that, but I know that does not
affect the matter. The vital thing is that from the moment we set eyes
on each other something happened----" for the first time he faltered in
his tone. "We both knew it. There it is. I hate being sentimental. But
I want you--and I know that you want me."
"No--no!" she said again, almost running. A blind desire to escape,
from herself as much as from him, dominated her. "I--I can't."
"Can't? Why not? You are free. I know you were engaged. But he
is--gone. We live in a world of flesh and blood. You can't exist on a
memory. Besides," the words came like a slave-driver's whip--she almost
obeyed it--"you never loved him as you love me!"
She revolted, stung to burning resentment against herself equally as
against this masterful, crude male. She stopped and faced him.
"Captain Lavering, you talk like a sick man." She triumphed in the
steadiness of her words. "You have insulted me in the most uncalled-for
manner. Let that be enough."
His eyes looked into hers, challenged her sincerity, were assured of
it. He went red, looked awkward.
"Forgive me," he mumbled.
She went on without a word, ignored the fact that he accompanied her.
They breasted an upward smooth slope of snow that stretched up to a
crisp, clear outline against the blue sky. He ventured a sidelong
glance at her, a little light of primitive cunning in his eyes.
"Quite Alpine, isn't it?" he said.
As intended--his tone implied a resumption of ordinary commonplace
relationship--the words took her off her guard. But he was ignorant
of their esoteric significance. In a flash, in a deep convulsion of
the soul, she saw the Alpine picture, vivid with symbolism, of her
other life. "--On the heights!" In the full poignancy of the emotion
it unlocked--her own vow of fidelity ringing in her ears from another
world--she found herself struggling in a man's tight grasp, hot
breath upon her face, lips seeking her own. "You must! You shall!" he
muttered, straining forward to her. She stiffened, fought in a frenzy.
"Ronald! Ronald!" she cried.
An icy wind swept down the slope, smote upon them like a breath from
the grave, shudderingly cold. Captain Lavering uttered a little cry,
relaxed his grip, and fell sideways upon the snow.
Sister Braithwaite stared at him in horror. A great fear came upon her,
an awe in the presence of unearthly power. _She knew!_ Her soul slipped
back into its dream-state, confronted the visage of her lover, stern as
destiny. The eyes judged her, forgave. Then, weeping hysterically, she
ran towards the hospital. It was not far distant.
They brought in the dead man.
"H'm," said the Medical Officer, looking at him. "Cerebral hæmorrhage.
This intense cold---- I was always rather afraid of a lesion. A nasty
shock for you, Sister. Well, well, another one finished--very sad, very
sad."
An orderly brought Sister Braithwaite her share of the just arrived
post. There was a letter from Ronald's mother. It enclosed one from the
War Office.
"Dear Madam," it ran. "It is regretted that no further details have
come to hand regarding your son. Officially he is still posted as
'missing, believed killed.'"
Sister Braithwaite shut herself in her cubicle, talked to the
photograph with the vivid eyes, talked to it as primitive woman talks
to the lover who has destroyed his rival. She reached out to the Other
Side.
NA NOS!
(_A study of Serb infantry in battle, 1914_)
There is no moon. In black darkness a long file of men stumbles up a
stony gully. Precipitous rock-walls keep them to the bed of a vanished
stream, where they trip in succession over the same loose boulders.
Their curses are hushed instantly by voices not less authoritative
because they bark in whispers. Wrapped in long sheepskin coats the
figures pass like ghosts of an antique time, whose grimness is
accentuated by the incongruity of modern rifles with fixed bayonets
that glint under the myriad stars. Presently the head of the file halts
in what seems a black pit, the edge of which cuts sharply against
the star-powdered bluish darkness of the sky. Those behind arrive
continuously, collect in the hollow, are formed into ranks by sergeants
who bully _sotto voce_ like angry conspirators. The company commander
is crawling on hands and knees up the wall of the hollow, which is not
so precipitous as it appears in the darkness.