through a foam of tooth-brushing; "I'm not capable of doing anything
of any particular value. It's really all the same whether I lead a
blameless life broking stocks or spend my time getting killed. But for
you, I agree, it's too bloody. . . ."
Guy smoked on in silence, his mind filled with a languid resentment
against circumstance. George put on his pyjamas and crept under the
sheet; he had to curl himself up into a ball, because Guy was lying
across the end of the bed, and he couldn't put his feet down.
"I suppose," said Guy at last, meditatively--"I suppose the only
consolations are, after all, women and wine. I shall really have to
resort to them. Only women are mostly so fearfully boring and wine is
so expensive now."
"But not all women!" George, it was evident, was waiting to get a
confidence off his chest.
"I gather you've found the exceptions."
George poured forth. He had just spent six months at Chelsea--six
dreary months on the barrack square; but there had been lucid
intervals between the drills and the special courses, which he had
filled with many notable voyages of discovery among unknown worlds.
And chiefly, Columbus to his own soul, he had discovered all those
psychological intricacies and potentialities, which only the passions
bring to light. _Nosce teipsum_, it has been commanded; and a
judicious cultivation of the passions is one of the surest roads to
self-knowledge. To George, at barely twenty, it was all so amazingly
new and exciting, and Guy listened to the story of his adventures with
admiration and a touch of envy. He regretted the dismal and cloistered
chastity--broken only once, and how sordidly! Wouldn't he have learnt
much more, he wondered--have been a more real and better human being
if he had had George's experiences? He would have profited by them
more than George could ever hope to do. There was the risk of George's
getting involved in a mere foolish expense of spirit in a waste of
shame. He might not be sufficiently an individual to remain himself in
spite of his surroundings; his hand would be coloured by the dye he
worked in. Guy felt sure that he himself would have run no risk; he
would have come, seen, conquered, and returned intact and still
himself, but enriched by the spoils of a new knowledge. Had he been
wrong after all? Had life in the cloister of his own philosophy been
wholly unprofitable?
He looked at George. It was not surprising that the ladies favoured
him, glorious ephebus that he was.
"With a face and figure like mine," he reflected, "I shouldn't have
been able to lead his life, even if I'd wanted to." He laughed
inwardly.
"You really must meet her," George was saying enthusiastically.
Guy smiled. "No, I really mustn't. Let me give you a bit of perfectly
good advice. Never attempt to share your joys with anyone else. People
will sympathize with pain, but not with pleasure. Good night, George."
He bent over the pillow and kissed the smiling face that was as smooth
as a child's to his lips.
Guy lay awake for a long time, and his eyes were dry and aching before
sleep finally came upon him. He spent those dark interminable hours
thinking--thinking hard, intensely, painfully. No sooner had he left
George's room than a feeling of intense unhappiness took hold of him.
"Distorted with misery," that was how he described himself; he loved
to coin such phrases, for he felt the artist's need to express as well
as to feel and think. Distorted with misery, he went to bed; distorted
with misery, he lay and thought and thought. He had, positively, a
sense of physical distortion: his guts were twisted, he had a hunched
back, his legs were withered. . . .
He had the right to be miserable. He was going back to France
to-morrow, he had trampled on his mistress's love, and he was
beginning to doubt himself, to wonder whether his whole life hadn't
been one ludicrous folly.
He reviewed his life, like a man about to die. Born in another age, he
would, he supposed, have been religious. He had got over religion
early, like the measles--at nine a Low Churchman, at twelve a Broad
Churchman, and at fourteen an Agnostic--but he still retained the
temperament of a religious man. Intellectually he was a Voltairian,
emotionally a Bunyanite. To have arrived at this formula was, he felt,
a distinct advance in self-knowledge. And what a fool he had been with
Marjorie! The priggishness of his attitude--making her read Wordsworth
when she didn't want to. Intellectual love--his phrases weren't always
a blessing; how hopelessly he had deceived himself with words! And now
this evening the crowning outrage, when he had behaved to her like a
hysterical anchorite dealing with a temptation. His body tingled, at
the recollection, with shame.
An idea occurred to him; he would go and see her, tiptoe downstairs to
her room, kneel by her bed, ask for her forgiveness. He lay quite
still imagining the whole scene. He even went so far as to get out of
bed, open the door, which made a noise in the process like a peacock's
scream, quite unnerving him, and creep to the head of the stairs. He
stood there a long time, his feet growing colder and colder, and then
decided that the adventure was really too sordidly like the episode at
the beginning of Tolstoy's _Resurrection_. The door screamed again as
he returned; he lay in bed, trying to persuade himself that his
self-control had been admirable and at the same time cursing his
absence of courage in not carrying out what he had intended.
He remembered a lecture he had given Marjorie once on the subject of
Sacred and Profane Love. Poor girl, how had she listened in patience?
He could see her attending with such a serious expression on her face
that she looked quite ugly. She looked so beautiful when she was
laughing or happy; at the Whites', for instance, three nights ago,
when George and she had danced after dinner and he had sat, secretly
envious, reading a book in the corner of the room and looking
superior. He wouldn't learn to dance, but always wished he could. It
was a barbarous, aphrodisiacal occupation, he said, and he preferred
to spend his time and energies in reading. Salvationist again! What a
much wiser person George had proved himself than he. He had no
prejudices, no theoretical views about the conduct of life; he just
lived, admirably, naturally, as the spirit or the flesh moved him. If
only he could live his life again, if only he could abolish this
evening's monstrous stupidity. . . .
Marjorie also lay awake. She too felt herself distorted with misery.
How odiously cruel he had been, and how much she longed to forgive
him! Perhaps he would come in the dark, when all the house was asleep,
tiptoeing into the room very quietly to kneel by her bed and ask to be
forgiven. Would he come, she wondered? She stared into the blackness
above her and about her, willing him to come, commanding him--angry
and wretched because he was so slow in coming, because he didn't come
at all. They were both of them asleep before two.
Seven hours of sleep make a surprising difference to the state of
mind. Guy, who thought he was distorted for life, woke to find himself
healthily normal. Marjorie's angers and despairs had subsided. The
hour they had together between breakfast and Guy's departure was
filled with almost trivial conversation. Guy was determined to say
something about last's night incident. But it was only at the very
last moment, when the dog-cart was actually at the door, that he
managed to bring out some stammered repentance for what had happened
last night.
"Don't think about it," Marjorie had told him. So they had kissed and
parted, and their relations were precisely the same as they had been
before Guy came on leave.
* * * * *
George was sent out a week or two later, and a month after that they
heard at Blaybury that he had lost a leg--fortunately below the knee.
"Poor boy!" said Mr. Petherton. "I must really write a line to his
mother at once."
Jacobsen made no comment, but it was a surprise to him to find how
much he had been moved by the news. George White had lost a leg; he
couldn't get the thought out of his head. But only below the knee; he
might be called lucky. Lucky--things are deplorably relative, he
reflected. One thanks God because He has thought fit to deprive one of
His creatures of a limb.
"Neither delighteth He in any man's legs," eh? Nous avons changé tout
cela.
George had lost a leg. There would be no more of that Olympian speed
and strength and beauty. Jacobsen conjured up before his memory a
vision of the boy running with his great fawn-coloured dog across
green expanses of grass. How glorious he had looked, his fine brown
hair blowing like fire in the wind of his own speed, his cheeks
flushed, his eyes very bright. And how easily he ran, with long,
bounding strides, looking down at the dog that jumped and barked at
his side!
He had had a perfection, and now it was spoilt. Instead of a leg he
had a stump. _Moignon_, the French called it; there was the right
repulsive sound about _moignon_ which was lacking in "stump." Soignons
le moignon en l'oignant d'oignons.
Often, at night before he went to sleep, he couldn't help thinking of
George and the war and all the millions of _moignons_ there must be in
the world. He had a dream one night of slimy red knobbles, large
polyp-like things, growing as he looked at them, swelling between his
hands--_moignons_, in fact.
George was well enough in the late autumn to come home. He had learnt
to hop along on his crutches very skilfully, and his preposterous
donkey-drawn bath-chair soon became a familiar object in the lanes of
the neighbourhood. It was a grand sight to behold when George rattled
past at the trot, leaning forward like a young Phoebus in his chariot
and urging his unwilling beast with voice and crutch. He drove over to
Blaybury almost every day; Marjorie and he had endless talks about
life and love and Guy and other absorbing topics. With Jacobsen he
played piquet and discussed a thousand subjects. He was always gay and
happy--that was what especially lacerated Jacobsen's heart with pity.
IV
THE Christmas holidays had begun, and the Reverend Roger was back
again at Blaybury. He was sitting at the writing-table in the
drawing-room, engaged, at the moment, in biting the end of his pen and
scratching his head. His face wore an expression of perplexity; one
would have said that he was in the throes of literary composition.
Which indeed he was: "Beloved ward of Alfred Petherton . . ." he said
aloud. "Beloved ward . . ." He shook his head doubtfully.
The door opened and Jacobsen came into the room. Roger turned round at
once.
"Have you heard the grievous news?" he said.
"No. What?"
"Poor Guy is dead. We got the telegram half an hour ago."
"Good God!" said Jacobsen in an agonized voice which seemed to show
that he had been startled out of the calm belonging to one who leads
the life of reason. He had been conscious ever since George's
mutilation that his defences were growing weaker; external
circumstance was steadily encroaching upon him. Now it had broken in
and, for the moment, he was at its mercy. Guy dead. . . . He pulled
himself together sufficiently to say, after a pause, "Well, I suppose
it was only to be expected sooner or later. Poor boy."
"Yes, it's terrible, isn't it?" said Roger, shaking his head. "I am
just writing out an announcement to send to the _Times_. One can
hardly say 'the beloved ward of Alfred Petherton,' can one? It doesn't
sound quite right; and yet one would like somehow to give public
expression to the deep affection Alfred felt for him. 'Beloved
ward'--no, decidedly it won't do."
"You'll have to get round it somehow," said Jacobsen. Roger's presence
somehow made a return to the life of reason easier.
"Poor Alfred," the other went on. "You've no idea how hardly he takes
it. He feels as though he had given a son."
"What a waste it is!" Jacobsen exclaimed. He was altogether too deeply
moved.
"I have done my best to console Alfred. One must always bear in mind
for what Cause he died."
"All those potentialities destroyed. He was an able fellow, was Guy."
Jacobsen was speaking more to himself than to his companion, but Roger
took up the suggestion.
"Yes, he certainly was that. Alfred thought he was very promising. It
is for his sake I am particularly sorry. I never got on very well with
the boy myself. He was too eccentric for my taste. There's such a
thing as being too clever, isn't there? It's rather inhuman. He used
to do most remarkable Greek iambics for me when he was a boy. I dare
say he was a very good fellow under all that cleverness and queerness.
It's all very distressing, very grievous."
"How was he killed?"
"Died of wounds yesterday morning. Do you think it would be a good
thing to put in some quotation at the end of the announcement in the
paper? Something like, 'Dulce et Decorum,' or 'Sed Miles, sed Pro
Patria,' or 'Per Ardua ad Astra'?"
"It hardly seems essential," said Jacobsen.
"Perhaps not." Roger's lips moved silently; he was counting.
"Forty-two words. I suppose that counts as eight lines. Poor Marjorie!
I hope she won't feel it too bitterly. Alfred told me they were
unofficially engaged."
"So I gathered."
"I am afraid I shall have to break the news to her. Alfred is too much
upset to be able to do anything himself. It will be a most painful
task. Poor girl! I suppose as a matter of fact they would not have
been able to marry for some time, as Guy had next to no money. These
early marriages are very rash. Let me see: eight times three shillings
is one pound four, isn't it? I suppose they take cheques all right?"
"How old was he?" asked Jacobsen.
"Twenty-four and a few months."
Jacobsen was walking restlessly up and down the room. "Just reaching
maturity! One is thankful these days to have one's own work and
thoughts to take the mind off these horrors."
"It's terrible, isn't it?--terrible. So many of my pupils have been
killed now that I can hardly keep count of the number."
There was a tapping at the French window; it was Marjorie asking to be
let in. She had been cutting holly and ivy for the Christmas
decorations, and carried a basket full of dark, shining leaves.
Jacobsen unbolted the big window and Marjorie came in, flushed with
the cold and smiling. Jacobsen had never seen her looking so handsome:
she was superb, radiant, like Iphigenia coming in her wedding garments
to the sacrifice.
"The holly is very poor this year," she remarked. "I am afraid we
shan't make much of a show with our Christmas decorations."
Jacobsen took the opportunity of slipping out through the French
window. Although it was unpleasantly cold, he walked up and down the
flagged paths of the Dutch garden, hatless and overcoatless, for quite
a long time.
Marjorie moved about the drawing-room fixing sprigs of holly round the
picture frames. Her uncle watched her, hesitating to speak; he was
feeling enormously uncomfortable.
"I am afraid," he said at last, "that your father's very upset this
morning." His voice was husky; he made an explosive noise to clear his
throat.
"Is it his palpitations?" Marjorie asked coolly; her father's
infirmities did not cause her much anxiety.
"No, no." Roger realized that his opening gambit had been a mistake.
"No. It is--er--a more mental affliction, and one which, I fear, will
touch you closely too. Marjorie, you must be strong and courageous; we
have just heard that Guy is dead."
"Guy dead?" She couldn't believe it; she had hardly envisaged the
possibility; besides, he was on the Staff. "Oh, Uncle Roger, it isn't
true."
"I am afraid there is no doubt. The War Office telegram came just
after you had gone out for the holly."
Marjorie sat down on the sofa and hid her face in her hands. Guy dead;
she would never see him again, never see him again, never; she began
to cry.
Roger approached and stood, with his hand on her shoulder, in the
attitude of a thought-reader. To those overwhelmed by sorrow the touch
of a friendly hand is often comforting. They have fallen into an
abyss, and the touching hand serves to remind them that life and God
and human sympathy still exist, however bottomless the gulf of grief
may seem. On Marjorie's shoulder her uncle's hand rested with a damp,
heavy warmth that was peculiarly unpleasant.
"Dear child, it is very grievous, I know; but you must try and be
strong and bear it bravely. We all have our cross to bear. We shall be
celebrating the Birth of Christ in two days' time; remember with what
patience He received the cup of agony. And then remember for what
Cause Guy has given his life. He has died a hero's death, a martyr's
death, witnessing to Heaven against the powers of evil." Roger was
unconsciously slipping into the words of his last sermon in the school
chapel. "You should feel pride in his death as well as sorrow. There,
there, poor child." He patted her shoulder two or three times.
"Perhaps it would be kinder to leave you now."
For some time after her uncle's departure Marjorie sat motionless in
the same position, her body bent forward, her face in her hands. She
kept on repeating the words, "Never again," and the sound of them
filled her with despair and made her cry. They seemed to open up such
a dreary grey infinite vista--"never again." They were as a spell
evoking tears.
She got up at last and began walking aimlessly about the room. She
paused in front of a little old black-framed mirror that hung near the
window and looked at her reflection in the glass. She had expected
somehow to look different, to have changed. She was surprised to find
her face entirely unaltered: grave, melancholy perhaps, but still the
same face she had looked at when she was doing her hair this morning.
A curious idea entered her head; she wondered whether she would be
able to smile now, at this dreadful moment. She moved the muscles of
her face and was overwhelmed with shame at the sight of the mirthless
grin that mocked her from the glass. What a beast she was! She burst
into tears and threw herself again on the sofa, burying her face in a
cushion. The door opened, and by the noise of shuffling and tapping
Marjorie recognized the approach of George White on his crutches. She
did not look up. At the sight of the abject figure on the sofa, George
halted, uncertain what he should do. Should he quietly go away again,
or should he stay and try to say something comforting? The sight of
her lying there gave him almost physical pain. He decided to stay.
He approached the sofa and stood over her, suspended on his crutches.
Still she did not lift her head, but pressed her face deeper into the
smothering blindness of the cushion, as though to shut out from her
consciousness all the external world. George looked down at her in
silence. The little delicate tendrils of hair on the nape of her neck
were exquisitely beautiful.
"I was told about it," he said at last, "just now, as I came in. It's
too awful. I think I cared for Guy more than for almost anyone in the
world. We both did, didn't we?"
She began sobbing again. George was overcome with remorse, feeling
that he had somehow hurt her, somehow added to her pain by what he had
said. "Poor child, poor child," he said, almost aloud. She was a year
older than he, but she seemed so helplessly and pathetically young now
that she was crying.
Standing up for long tired him, and he lowered himself, slowly and
painfully, into the sofa beside her. She looked up at last and began
drying her eyes.
"I'm so wretched, George, so specially wretched because I feel I
didn't act rightly towards darling Guy. There were times, you know,
when I wondered whether it wasn't all a great mistake, our being
engaged. Sometimes I felt I almost hated him. I'd been feeling so
odious about him these last weeks. And now comes this, and it makes me
realize how awful I've been towards him." She found it a relief to
confide and confess; George was so sympathetic, he would understand.
"I've been a beast."
Her voice broke, and it was as though something had broken in George's
head. He was overwhelmed with pity; he couldn't bear it that she
should suffer.
"You mustn't distress yourself unnecessarily, Marjorie dear," he
begged her, stroking the back of her hand with his large hard palm.
"Don't."
Marjorie went on remorselessly. "When Uncle Roger told me just now, do
you know what I did? I said to myself, Do I really care? I couldn't
make out. I looked in the glass to see if I could tell from my face.
Then I suddenly thought I'd see whether I could laugh, and I did. And
that made me feel how detestable I was, and I started crying again.
Oh, I have been a beast, George, haven't I?"
She burst into a passion of tears and hid her face once more in the
friendly cushion. George couldn't bear it at all. He laid his hand on
her shoulder and bent forward, close to her, till his face almost
touched her hair. "Don't," he cried. "Don't, Marjorie. You mustn't
torment yourself like this. I know you loved Guy; we both loved him.
He would have wanted us to be happy and brave and to go on with
life--not make his death a source of hopeless despair." There was a
silence, broken only by the agonizing sound of sobbing. "Marjorie,
darling, you mustn't cry."
"There, I'm not," said Marjorie through her tears. "I'll try to stop.
Guy wouldn't have wanted us to cry for him. You're right; he would
have wanted us to live for him--worthily, in his splendid way."
"We who knew him and loved him must make our lives a memorial of him."
In ordinary circumstances George would have died rather than make a
remark like that. But in speaking of the dead, people forget
themselves and conform to the peculiar obituary convention of thought
and language. Spontaneously, unconsciously, George had conformed.
Marjorie wiped her eyes. "Thank you, George. You know so well what
darling Guy would have liked. You've made me feel stronger to bear it.
But, all the same, I do feel odious for what I thought about him
sometimes. I didn't love him enough. And now it's too late. I shall
never see him again." The spell of that "never" worked again: Marjorie
sobbed despairingly.
George's distress knew no bounds. He put his arm round Marjorie's
shoulders and kissed her hair. "Don't cry, Marjorie. Everybody feels
like that sometimes, even towards the people they love most. You
really mustn't make yourself miserable."
Once more she lifted her face and looked at him with a heart-breaking,
tearful smile. "You have been too sweet to me, George. I don't know
what I should have done without you."
"Poor darling!" said George. "I can't bear to see you unhappy." Their
faces were close to one another, and it seemed natural that at this
point their lips should meet in a long kiss. "We'll remember only the
splendid, glorious things about Guy," he went on--"what a wonderful
person he was, and how much we loved him." He kissed her again.
"Perhaps our darling Guy is with us here even now," said Marjorie,
with a look of ecstasy on her face.
"Perhaps he is," George echoed.
It was at this point that a heavy footstep was heard and a hand
rattled at the door. Marjorie and George moved a little farther apart.
The intruder was Roger, who bustled in, rubbing his hands with an air
of conscious heartiness, studiously pretending that nothing untoward
had occurred. It is our English tradition that we should conceal our
emotions. "Well, well," he said. "I think we had better be going in to
luncheon. The bell has gone."
EUPOMPUS GAVE SPLENDOUR TO ART BY NUMBERS
"I HAVE made a discovery," said Emberlin as I entered his room.
"What about?" I asked.