1
There is something that mankind can never destroy in spite of an
unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that
integral part of its very being. The ageing and the cynical may make
wars, but the young and the idealistic must fight them, and thus there
are bound to come quick reactions, blind impulses not always
comprehended. Men will curse as they kill, yet accomplish deeds of
self-sacrifice, giving their lives for others; poets will write with
their pens dipped in blood, yet will write not of death but of life
eternal; strong and courteous friendships will be born, to endure in the
face of enmity and destruction. And so persistent is this urge to the
ideal, above all in the presence of great disaster, that mankind, the
wilful destroyer of beauty, must immediately strive to create new
beauties, lest it perish from a sense of its own desolation; and this
urge touched the Celtic soul of Mary.
For the Celtic soul is the stronghold of dreams, of longings come down
the dim paths of the ages; and within it there dwells a vague
discontent, so that it must for ever go questing. And now as though
drawn by some hidden attraction, as though stirred by some irresistible
impulse, quite beyond the realms of her own understanding, Mary turned
in all faith and all innocence to Stephen. Who can pretend to interpret
fate, either his own fate or that of another? Why should this girl have
crossed Stephen’s path, or indeed Stephen hers, if it came to that
matter? Was not the world large enough for them both? Perhaps not—or
perhaps the event of their meeting had already been written upon tablets
of stone by some wise if relentless recording finger.
An orphan from the days of her earliest childhood, Mary had lived with a
married cousin in the wilds of Wales; an unwanted member of a none too
prosperous household. She had little education beyond that obtained from
a small private school in a neighbouring village. She knew nothing of
life or of men and women; and even less did she know of herself, of her
ardent, courageous, impulsive nature. Thanks to the fact that her cousin
was a doctor, forced to motor over a widely spread practice, she had
learnt to drive and look after his car by filling the post of an unpaid
chauffeur—she was, in her small way, a good mechanic. But the war had
made her much less contented with her narrow life, and although at its
outbreak Mary had been not quite eighteen, she had felt a great longing
to be independent, in which she had met with no opposition. However, a
Welsh village is no field for endeavour, and thus nothing had happened
until by a fluke she had suddenly heard of the Breakspeare Unit via the
local parson, an old friend of its founder—he himself had written to
recommend Mary. And so, straight from the quiet seclusion of Wales, this
girl had managed the complicated journey that had finally got her over
to France, then across a war-ravaged, dislocated country. Mary was
neither so frail nor so timid as Mrs. Breakspeare had thought her.
Stephen had felt rather bored just at first at the prospect of teaching
the new member her duties, but after a while it came to pass that she
missed the girl when she was not with her. And after a while she would
find herself observing the way Mary’s hair grew, low on the forehead,
the wide setting of her slightly oblique grey eyes, the abrupt sweep
back of their heavy lashes; and these things would move Stephen, so that
she must touch the girl’s hair for a moment with her fingers. Fate was
throwing them continually together, in moments of rest as in moments of
danger; they could not have escaped this even had they wished to, and
indeed they did not wish to escape it. They were pawns in the ruthless
and complicated game of existence, moved hither and thither on the board
by an unseen hand, yet moved side by side, so that they grew to expect
each other.
‘Mary, are you there?’
A superfluous question—the reply would be always the same.
‘I’m here, Stephen.’
Sometimes Mary would talk of her plans for the future while Stephen
listened, smiling as she did so.
‘I’ll go into an office, I want to be free.’
‘You’re so little, you’d get mislaid in an office.’
‘I’m five foot five!’
‘Are you really, Mary? You feel little, somehow.’
‘That’s because you’re so tall. I do wish I could grow a bit!’
‘No, don’t wish that, you’re all right as you are—it’s you, Mary.’
Mary would want to be told about Morton, she was never tired of hearing
about Morton. She would make Stephen get out the photographs of her
father, of her mother whom Mary thought lovely, of Puddle, and above all
of Raftery. Then Stephen must tell her of the life in London, and
afterwards of the new house in Paris; must talk of her own career and
ambitions, though Mary had not read either of her novels—there had
never been a library subscription.
But at moments Stephen’s face would grow clouded because of the things
that she could not tell her; because of the little untruths and evasions
that must fill up the gaps in her strange life-history. Looking down
into Mary’s clear, grey eyes, she would suddenly flush through her tan,
and feel guilty; and that feeling would reach the girl and disturb her,
so that she must hold Stephen’s hand for a moment.
One day she said suddenly: ‘Are you unhappy?’
‘Why on earth should I be unhappy?’ smiled Stephen.
All the same there were nights now when Stephen lay awake even after her
arduous hours of service, hearing the guns that were coming nearer, yet
not thinking of them, but always of Mary. A great gentleness would
gradually engulf her like a soft sea mist, veiling reef and headland.
She would seem to be drifting quietly, serenely towards some blessèd and
peaceful harbour. Stretching out a hand she would stroke the girl’s
shoulder where she lay, but carefully in case she should wake her. Then
the mist would lift: ‘Good God! What am I doing?’ She would sit up
abruptly, disturbing the sleeper.
‘Is that you, Stephen?’
‘Yes, my dear, go to sleep.’
Then a cross, aggrieved voice: ‘Do shut up, you two. It’s rotten of you,
I was just getting off! Why must you always persist in talking!’
Stephen would lie down again and would think: ‘I’m a fool, I go out of
my way to find trouble. Of course I’ve grown fond of the child, she’s so
plucky, almost anyone would grow fond of Mary. Why shouldn’t I have
affection and friendship? Why shouldn’t I have a real human interest? I
can help her to find her feet after the war if we both come through—I
might buy her a business.’ That gentle mist, hiding both reef and
headland; it would gather again blurring all perception, robbing the
past of its crude, ugly outlines. ‘After all, what harm can it do the
child to be fond of me?’ It was so good a thing to have won the
affection of this young creature.
2
The Germans got perilously near to Compiègne, and the Breakspeare Unit
was ordered to retire. Its base was now at a ruined château on the
outskirts of an insignificant village, yet not so very insignificant
either—it was stuffed to the neck with ammunition. Nearly all the hours
that were spent off duty must be passed in the gloomy, damp-smelling
dug-outs which consisted of cellars, partly destroyed but protected by
sandbags on heavy timbers. Like foxes creeping out of their holes, the
members of the Unit would creep into the daylight, their uniforms
covered with mould and rubble, their eyes blinking, their hands cold and
numb from the dampness—so cold and so numb that the starting up of
motors would often present a real problem.
At this time there occurred one or two small mishaps; Bless broke her
wrist while cranking her engine; Blakeney and three others at a Poste de
Secours, were met by a truly terrific bombardment and took cover in what
had once been a brick-field, crawling into the disused furnace. There
they squatted for something over eight hours, while the German gunners
played hit as hit can with the tall and conspicuous chimney. When at
last they emerged, half stifled by brick-dust, Blakeney had got
something into her eye, which she rubbed; the result was acute
inflammation.
Howard had begun to be irritating, with her passion for tending her
beautiful hair. She would sit in the corner of her dug-out as calmly as
though she were sitting at a Bond Street hairdresser’s; and having
completed the ritual brushing, she would gaze at herself in a pocket
mirror. With a bandage over her unfortunate eye, Blakeney looked more
like a monkey than ever, a sick monkey, and her strictly curtailed
conversation was not calculated to enliven the Unit. She seemed almost
entirely bereft of speech these days, as though reverting to species.
Her one comment on life was: ‘Oh, I dunno . . .’ always said with a
jaunty, rising inflexion. It meant everything or nothing as you chose to
take it, and had long been her panacea for the ills of what she
considered a stupid Creation. ‘Oh, I dunno. . . .’ And indeed she did
not; poor, old, sensitive, monosyllabic Blakeney. The Poilu who served
out the Unit’s rations—cold meat, sardines, bread and sour red
Pinard—was discovered by Stephen in the very act of attempting to
unload an aerial bomb. He explained with a smile that the Germans were
sly in their methods of loading: ‘I cannot discover just how it is
done.’ Then he showed his left hand—it was minus one of the fingers:
‘That,’ he told her, still smiling, ‘was caused by a shell, a quite
little shell, which I was also unloading.’ And when she remonstrated
none too gently, he sulked: ‘But I wish to give this one to Maman!’
Every one had begun to feel the nerve strain, except perhaps Blakeney,
who had done with all feeling. Shorthanded by two, the remaining members
of the Unit must now work like veritable niggers—on one occasion
Stephen and Mary worked for seventy hours with scarcely a respite.
Strained nerves are invariably followed by strained tempers, and sudden,
hot quarrels would break out over nothing. Bless and Howard loathed each
other for two days, then palled up again, because of a grievance that
had recently been evolved against Stephen. For every one knew that
Stephen and Blakeney were by far the best drivers in the Breakspeare
Unit, and as such should be shared by all the members in turn; but poor
Blakeney was nursing a very sore eye, while Stephen still continued to
drive only with Mary. They were splendidly courageous and great-hearted
women, every one of them, glad enough as a rule to help one another to
shoulder burdens, to be tolerant and kind when it came to friendships.
They petted and admired their youngest recruit, and most of them liked
and respected Stephen, all the same they had now grown childishly
jealous, and this jealousy reached the sharp ears of Mrs. Breakspeare.
Mrs. Breakspeare sent for Stephen one morning; she was sitting at a
Louis Quinze writing-table which had somehow survived the wreck of the
château and was now in her gloomy, official dug-out. Her right hand
reposed on an ordnance map, she looked like a very maternal general. The
widow of an officer killed in the war, and the mother of two large sons
and three daughters, she had led the narrow, conventional life that is
common to women in military stations. Yet all the while she must been
filling her subconscious reservoir with knowledge, for she suddenly
blossomed forth as leader with a fine understanding of human nature. So
now she looked over her ample bosom not unkindly, but rather
thoughtfully at Stephen.
‘Sit down, Miss Gordon. It’s about Llewellyn, whom I asked you to take
on as second driver. I think the time has now arrived when she ought to
stand more on her own in the Unit. She must take her chance like every
one else, and not cling quite so close—don’t misunderstand me, I’m most
grateful for all you’ve done for the girl—but of course you are one of
our finest drivers, and fine driving counts for a great deal these days,
it may mean life or death, as you yourself know. And—well—it seems
scarcely fair to the others that Mary should always go out with you. No,
it certainly is not quite fair to the others.’
Stephen said: ‘Do you mean that she’s to go out with every one in
turn—with Thurloe for instance?’ And do what she would to appear
indifferent, she could not quite keep her voice from trembling.
Mrs. Breakspeare nodded: ‘That’s what I do mean.’ Then she said rather
slowly: ‘These are strenuous times, and such times are apt to breed many
emotions which are purely fictitious, purely mushroom growths that
spring up in a night and have no roots at all, except in our
imaginations. But I’m sure you’ll agree with me, Miss Gordon, in
thinking it our duty to discourage anything in the nature of an
emotional friendship, such as I fancy Mary Llewellyn is on the verge of
feeling for you. It’s quite natural of course, a kind of reaction, but
not wise—no, I cannot think it wise. It savours a little too much of
the schoolroom and might lead to ridicule in the Unit. Your position is
far too important for that; I look upon you as my second in command.’
Stephen said quietly: ‘I quite understand. I’ll go at once and speak to
Blakeney about altering Mary Llewellyn’s time-sheet.’
‘Yes, do, if you will,’ agreed Mrs. Breakspeare; then she stooped and
studied her ordnance map, without looking again at Stephen.
3
If Stephen had been fearful for Mary’s safety before, she was now ten
times more so. The front was in a condition of flux and the Postes de
Secours were continually shifting. An Allied ambulance driver had been
fired on by the Germans, after having arrived at the spot where his
Poste had been only the previous evening. There was very close fighting
on every sector; it seemed truly amazing that no grave casualties had so
far occurred in the Unit. For now the Allies had begun to creep forward,
yard by yard, mile by mile, very slowly but surely; refreshed by a
splendid transfusion of blood from the youthful veins of a great
child-nation.
Of all the anxieties on Mary’s account that now beset Stephen, Thurloe
was the gravest; for Thurloe was one of those irritating drivers who
stake all on their own inadequate judgment. She was brave to a fault,
but inclined to show off when it came to a matter of actual danger. For
long hours Stephen would not know what had happened, and must often
leave the base before Mary had returned, still in doubt regarding her
safety.
Grimly, yet with unfailing courage and devotion, Stephen now went about
her duties. Every day the risks that they all took grew graver, for the
enemy, nearing the verge of defeat, was less than ever a respecter of
persons. Stephen’s only moments of comparative peace would be when she
herself drove Mary. And as though the girl missed some vitalizing force,
some strength that had hitherto been hers to draw on, she flagged, and
Stephen would watch her flagging during their brief spells together off
duty, and would know that nothing but her Celtic pluck kept Mary
Llewellyn from a breakdown. And now, because they were so often parted,
even chance meetings became of importance. They might meet while
preparing their cars in the morning, and if this should happen they
would draw close together for a moment, as though finding comfort in
nearness.
Letters from home would arrive for Stephen, and these she would want to
read to Mary. In addition to writing, Puddle sent food, even luxuries
sometimes, of a pre-war nature. To obtain them she must have used
bribery and corruption, for food of all kinds had grown scarce in
England. Puddle, it seemed, had a mammoth war map into which she stuck
pins with gay little pennants. Every time the lines moved by so much as
a yard, out would come Puddle’s pins to go in at fresh places; for since
Stephen had left her to go to the front, the war had become very
personal to Puddle.
Anna also wrote, and from her Stephen learnt of the death of Roger
Antrim. He had been shot down while winning his V.C. through saving the
life of a wounded captain. All alone he had gone over to no-man’s-land
and had rescued his friend where he lay unconscious, receiving a bullet
through the head at the moment of flinging the wounded man into safety.
Roger—so lacking in understanding, so crude, so cruel and remorseless a
bully—Roger had been changed in the twinkling of an eye into something
superb because utterly selfless. Thus it was that the undying urge of
mankind towards the ideal had come upon Roger. And Stephen as she sat
there and read of his passing, suddenly knew that she wished him well,
that his courage had wiped one great bitterness out of her heart and her
life for ever. And so by dying as he had died, Roger, all unknowing, had
fulfilled the law that must be extended to enemy and friend alike—the
immutable law of service.
4
Events gathered momentum. By the June of that year 700,000 United States
soldiers, strong and comely men plucked from their native prairies, from
their fields of tall corn, from their farms and their cities, were
giving their lives in defence of freedom on the blood-soaked
battlefields of France. They had little to gain and much to lose; it was
not their war, yet they helped to fight it because they were young and
their nation was young, and the ideals of youth are eternally hopeful.
In July came the Allied counter-offensive, and now in her moment of
approaching triumph France knew to the full her great desolation, as it
lay revealed by the retreating armies. For not only had there been a
holocaust of homesteads, but the country was strewn with murdered trees,
cut down in their hour of most perfect leafing; orchards struck to the
ground, an orgy of destruction, as the mighty forces rolled back like a
tide, to recoil on themselves—incredulous, amazed, maddened by the
outrage of coming disaster. For mad they must surely have been, since no
man is a more faithful lover of trees than the German.
Stephen as she drove through that devastated country would find herself
thinking of Martin Hallam—Martin who had touched the old thorns on the
hills with such respectful and pitiful fingers: ‘Have you ever thought
about the enormous courage of trees? I have and it seems to me amazing.
The Lord dumps them down and they’ve just got to stick it, no matter
what happens—that must need some courage.’ Martin had believed in a
heaven for trees, a forest heaven for all the faithful; and looking at
those pitiful, leafy corpses, Stephen would want to believe in that
heaven. Until lately she had not thought of Martin for years, he
belonged to a past that was better forgotten, but now she would
sometimes wonder about him. Perhaps he was dead, smitten down where he
stood, for many had perished where they stood, like the orchards. It was
strange to think that he might have been here in France, have been
fighting and have died quite near her. But perhaps he had not been
killed after all—she had never told Mary about Martin Hallam.
All roads of thought seemed to lead back to Mary; and these days, in
addition to fears for her safety, came a growing distress at what she
must see—far more terrible sights than the patient wounded. For
everywhere now lay the wreckage of war, sea-wrack spued up by a
poisonous ocean—putrefying, festering in the sun; breeding corruption
to man’s seed of folly. Twice lately, while they had been driving
together, they had come upon sights that Stephen would have spared her.
There had been that shattered German gun-carriage with its stiff, dead
horses and its three dead gunners—horrible death, the men’s faces had
been black like the faces of negroes, black and swollen from gas, or was
it from putrefaction? There had been the deserted and wounded charger
with its fore-leg hanging as though by a rag. Near by had been lying a
dead young Uhlan, and Stephen had shot the beast with his revolver, but
Mary had suddenly started sobbing: ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! It was dumb—it
couldn’t speak. It’s so awful somehow to see a thing suffer when it
can’t ask you why!’ She had sobbed a long time, and Stephen had not
known how to console her.
And now the Unit was creeping forward in the wake of the steadily
advancing Allies. Billets would be changed as the base was moved on
slowly from devastated village to village. There seldom seemed to be a
house left with a roof, or with anything much beyond its four walls, and
quite often they must lie staring up at the stars, which would stare
back again, aloof and untroubled. At about this time they grew very
short of water, for most of the wells were said to have been poisoned;
and this shortage of water was a very real torment, since it strictly
curtailed the luxury of washing. Then what must Bless do but get herself
hit while locating the position of a Poste de Secours which had most
inconsiderately vanished. Like the Allied ambulance driver she was shot
at, but in her case she happened to stop a bullet—it was only a flesh
wound high up in the arm, yet enough to render her useless for the
moment. She had had to be sent back to hospital, so once again the Unit
was short-handed.
It turned hot, and in place of the dampness and the cold, came days and
nights that seemed almost breathless; days when the wounded must lie out
in the sun, tormented by flies as they waited their turn to be lifted
into the ambulances. And as though misfortunes attracted each other, as
though indeed they were hunting in couples, Stephen’s face was struck by
a splinter of shell, and her right cheek cut open rather badly. It was
neatly stitched up by the little French doctor at the Poste de Secours,
and when he had finished with his needle and dressings, he bowed very
gravely: ‘Mademoiselle will carry an honourable scar as a mark of her
courage,’ and he bowed yet again, so that in the end Stephen must also
bow gravely. Fortunately, however, she could still do her job, which was
all to the good for the short-handed Unit.
5
On an autumn afternoon of blue sky and sunshine, Stephen had the Croix
de Guerre pinned on her breast by a white-haired and white-moustached
general. First came the motherly Mrs. Claude Breakspeare, whose tunic
looked much too tight for her bosom, then Stephen and one or two other
members of that valiant and untiring Unit. The general kissed each one
in turn on both cheeks, while overhead hovered a fleet of Aces; troops
presented arms, veteran troops tried in battle, and having the set look
of war in their eyes—for the French have a very nice taste in such
matters. And presently Stephen’s bronze Croix de Guerre would carry
three miniature stars on its ribbon, and each star would stand for a
mention in despatches.
That evening she and Mary walked over the fields to a little town not
very far from their billets. They paused for a moment to watch the
sunset, and Mary stroked the new Croix de Guerre; then she looked
straight up into Stephen’s eyes, her mouth shook, and Stephen saw that
she was crying. After this they must walk hand in hand for a while. Why
not? There was no one just then to see them.
Mary said: ‘All my life I’ve been waiting for something.’
‘What was it, my dear?’ Stephen asked her gently.
And Mary answered: ‘I’ve been waiting for you, and it’s seemed such a
dreadful long time, Stephen.’
The barely healed wound across Stephen’s cheek flushed darkly, for what
could she find to answer?
‘For me?’ she stammered.
Mary nodded gravely: ‘Yes, for you. I’ve always been waiting for you;
and after the war you’ll send me away.’ Then she suddenly caught hold of
Stephen’s sleeve: ‘Let me come with you—don’t send me away, I want to
be near you. . . . I can’t explain . . . but I only want to be near you,
Stephen. Stephen—say you won’t send me away. . . .’
Stephen’s hand closed over the Croix de Guerre, but the metal of valour
felt cold to her fingers; dead and cold it felt at that moment, as the
courage that had set it upon her breast. She stared straight ahead of
her into the sunset, trembling because of what she would answer.
Then she said very slowly: ‘After the war—no, I won’t send you away
from me, Mary.’