view, his niece stepped out of the copse with a basket on her arm.
“Well, uncle,” she said, “is there any noos?”
It was then that old Sam became really irritated.
“Noos!” he said. “Noos! drat the girl! What noos should there be?
Sixty-nine year I live in these here parts, hoein’ and weedin’ and
thinnin’, and mindin’ Charlie Dodge’s sheep. Am I one o’ these here
storybook folk havin’ noos ’appen to me all the time? Ain’t it enough,
ye silly dab-faced zany, to earn enough to buy a bite o’ some’at to eat,
and a glass o’ beer, and a place to rest a’s head o’night, without always
wantin’ noos, noos, noos! I tell ’ee, it’s this that leads ’ee to ’alf
the troubles in the world. Devil take the noos!”
And turning his back on her, he went fuming up the hill.
THE BROTHERS
THE BROTHERS
In the twilight of his mind there stirred the dim realization of pain.
He could not account for this nor for his lack of desire to thrust the
pain back. It was moreover mellowed by the alluring embraces of an
enveloping darkness, a darkness which he idly desired to pierce, and yet
which soothed him with its caliginous touch. Some subconscious voice,
too, kept repeating that it was ridiculous, that he really had control,
that the darkness was due to the fact that it was night, and that he was
in his own bed. In the room across the passage his mother was sleeping
peacefully. And yet the pain, which he could not account for, seemed to
press him down and to rack his lower limbs. There was a soothing interval
of utter darkness and forgetfulness, and then the little waves of febrile
consciousness began to lap the shores of distant dreams, and visions of
half-forgotten episodes became clear and pregnant.
He remembered standing by the French window in their own dining-room, his
mother’s dining-room, rapping his knuckles gently on the panes. Beneath
the window was the circular bed of hollyhocks just beginning to flower,
and below the terrace the great avenue of elms nodding lazily in the sun.
He could hear the coffee-urn on its brass tripod humming comfortably
behind him while he waited for his mother to come down to breakfast. He
was alone, and the newspaper in his hand was shaking. War! He could not
grasp the significance of the mad news that lay trembling on the sheets.
His mother entered the room, and as he hurried across to kiss her he
noted the pallor of her cheeks.
They sat down, and she poured him out his coffee as she had done ever
since he could remember. Then, fixing her dark eyes on his and toying
restlessly with the beads upon her breast, she said:
“It’s true, then, Robin?”
He nodded, and his eyes wandered to the disfiguring newspaper. He felt
as though he were in some way responsible for the intrusion of the world
calamity into the sanctity of his mother’s life; he muttered:
“It’s a dreadful business, mother.”
His gaze wandered again out of the window between the row of elms.
Geddes, the steward, was walking briskly, followed by two collies. Beyond
the slope was a hay-cart lumbering slowly in the direction of the farm.
“Parsons is rather late with the clover,” he thought. He felt a desire
to look at things in little bits; the large things seemed overpowering,
insupportable. Above all, his mother must not suffer. It was dreadful
that any one should suffer, but most of all his mother. He must devote
himself to protecting her against the waves of foreboding that were
already evident on her face. But what could he say? He knew what was
uppermost in her mind—Giles! He had no illusions. He knew that his
mother adored his elder brother more passionately than she did himself.
It was only natural. He too adored Giles. Everybody did. Giles was his
hero, his god. Ever since he could remember, Giles had epitomized to him
everything splendid, brave, and chivalrous. He was so glorious to look
at, so strong, so manly. The vision of that morning merged into other
visions of the sun-lit hours with Giles—his pride when quite a little boy
if Giles would play with him; his pride when he saw Giles in flannels,
going in to bat at cricket; the terror in his heart when one day he saw
Giles thrown from a horse, and then the passionate tears of love and
thankfulness when he saw him rise and run laughing after the beast. He
remembered that when Giles went away to school his mother found him
crying, and told him he must not be sentimental. But he could not help
it. He used to visualize the daily life of Giles and write to him long
letters which his brother seldom answered. Of course he did not expect
Giles to answer; he would have no time. He was one of the most popular
boys at school and a champion at every sport.
Then the vision of that morning when the newspaper brought its disturbing
news vanished with the memory of his mother standing by his side, her arm
round his waist, as they gazed together across a field of nodding corn....
Troubled visions, then, of Giles returning post-haste from Oxford, of
himself in the village talking to every one he met about “the dreadful
business,” speaking to the people on the farm, and to old Joe Walters,
the wheelwright, whose voice he could remember saying:
“Ay, tha’ woan’t tak’ thee, Master Robin.”
He remembered talking to Mr. Meads at the general shop, and to the
Reverend Quirk, whose precious voice he could almost hear declaiming:
“I presume your brother will apply for a commission.”
He had wandered then up on to the downs and tried to think about “the
dreadful business” in a detached way, but it made him tremble. He
listened to the bees droning on the heather, and saw the smoke from the
hamlet over by Wodehurst trailing peacefully to the sky. “The dreadful
business” seemed incredible.
It was some days later that he met his friend Jerry Lawson wandering up
there, with a terrier at his heels. Lawson was a sculptor, a queer chap,
whom most people thought a fanatic. Jerry blazed down on him:
“This is hell, Robin. Hell let loose. It could have been avoided. It’s
a trade war. At the back of it all is business, business, business. And
millions of boys will be sacrificed for commercial purposes. Our policy
is just as much at fault as—theirs. Look what we did at—”
For an hour he listened to the diatribe of Lawson, tremulously silent.
He had nothing to reply. He detested politics and the subtleties of
diplomacy. He had left school early owing to an illness which had
affected his heart. He had spent his life upon these downs and among
his books. He could not adjust the gentle impulses of his being to the
violent demands of that foreboding hour. When Lawson had departed, he had
sat there a long time. Was Lawson right?
He wandered home, determining that he would read more history, more
political economy; he would get to the root of “this dreadful business.”
He wanted to talk to Giles, to find out what he really thought, but
the radiant god seemed unapproachable; or rode roughshod over the
metaphysical doubts of his brother, and laughed. Giles had no misgivings.
His conscience was dynamically secure. Besides, there was “the mater.”
“When I go, Rob, you must do all you can to buck the mater up.” He had
looked so splendid when he said that, with his keen, strong face, alert
and vibrant, Robin had not had it in his heart to answer. And then had
come lonely days, reading news books and occasionally talking with
Lawson. When Giles went off to his training he spent more time with his
mother, but they did not discuss the dreadful thing which had come into
their lives. His mother became restlessly busy, making strange garments,
knitting, attending violently to the demands of the household. Sometimes
in the evening he would read to her, and they would sit trying to hide
from each other the sound of the rain pattering on the leaves outside.
He had not dared talk to her of the misgivings in his heart or of his
arguments with Lawson....
And then a vision came of a certain day in October. The wind was blowing
the rain in fitful gusts from the sea. He was in a sullen, perverse mood.
Watching his mother’s face that morning, a sudden fact concerning her had
come home to him. It had aged, aged during those three months, and the
gray hair on that distinguished head had turned almost white. He felt
within him a surging conflict of opposing forces. The hour of climacteric
had arrived. He must see it once and for all clearly and unalterably. He
had put on his mackintosh then and gone out into the rain. He walked up
to the long wall by Gray’s farm, where on a fine day he could see the
sea; but not to-day, it was too wet and misty; but he could be conscious
of it, and feel its breath beating on his temples.
He stood there, then, for several hours, under the protection of the
wall, listening to the wind and to the gulls who went shrieking before
it. He could not remember where he had wandered to after that, except
that for some time he was leaning on a rock, watching the waves crashing
over the point at Youlton Bay. And then in the evening he had written to
Lawson.
“I want to see this thing in its biggest, broadest sense, dear Jerry.”
He knew he had commenced the letter in this way, for it was a phrase he
had repeated to himself at intervals.
“Like you, I hate war and the thought of war. But, good heaven! need
I say that? Every one must hate war, I suppose. I agree with you that
human life is sacred.... But would it be sacred if it stood still?—if it
were stagnant?—if it were just a mass affair? It is only sacred because
it is an expression of spiritual evolution. It must change, go on, lead
somewhere....
“Don’t you think that we on this island have as great a right to fight
for what we represent as any other nation? With all our faults and poses
and hypocrisies, haven’t we subscribed something to the commonwealth of
humanity?—something of honor, and justice, and equity? I don’t believe
you will deny all this. But even if you did, and even if I agreed with
you, I still should not be convinced that it was not right to fight. As I
walked up by the chalk-pit near Gueldstone Head, and saw the stone-gray
cottages at Lulton nestling in the hollow of the downs, and smelt the
dear salt dampness of it all, and felt the lovely tenderness of the
evening light, I thought of Giles and what he represents, and of my
mother, and what she represents, and of all the people I know and love
with all their faults, and I made up my mind that I would fight for it in
any case, in the same way that I would fight for a woman I loved, even if
I knew she were a harlot....”
Lying there in his bed, these ebullient thoughts reacted on him.
Drowsiness stole over his limbs, and he felt his heart vibrating oddly.
There seemed to be a sound of drums, beating a tattoo, of a train
rumbling along an embankment. And in fancy he was on his way to London
again, with the memory of his mother’s eyes as she had said:
“Come back safely, Robin boy.”
The memory of that day was terrifying indeed. He was wandering about a
vast building near Whitehall, tremulously asking questions, wretchedly
conscious that people looked at him and laughed. And then that long
queue of waiting men! Some were so dirty, so obscene, and he felt that
most of them were sniggering at him. A sergeant spoke sharply, and he
shuddered and spilt some ink on one of the many forms he had to fill up.
Every one seemed rough and violent. After many hours of waiting he was
shown into another room and told to strip. He sat on a form with a row
of other men, feeling incredibly naked and very much ashamed. The window
was open and his teeth chattered with the cold and the nervous tension of
the desperate experience. A doctor spoke kindly to him, and an old major
at a table asked him one or two questions. He was dismissed and waited
interminably in another room. At last an orderly entered and called his
name among some others, and handed him a card. He was rejected.
He returned to Wodehurst that evening shivering and in a mood of
melancholy dejection. He was an outcast among his fellows, a being with a
great instinct towards expression, but without the power to back it up.
The whole thing appeared so utterly unheroic, almost sordid. He wondered
about Giles. If presenting oneself at a recruiting office was such a
terrifying ordeal, what must the actual life of a soldier be? Of course
Giles was different, but—the monotony, the cheerlessness of barrack life!
And then the worse things beyond.
After that he would devour the papers and tramp feverishly on the downs;
he tried to obtain work at a munition factory, and was refused; made
himself ill sewing bandages and doing chaotic odd jobs. And all the time
he thought of Giles, Giles, Giles. What Giles was doing, how Giles was
looking, whether he was unhappy, and whether they spoke to him brusquely,
like the sergeant had to himself in London.
Then came the vision of the day when Giles came and bade farewell, on his
way to France—a terrible day. He could not bring himself to look into
his mother’s eyes. He felt that if he did so he would be a trespasser
peering into the forbidden sanctuary of a holy place. He hovered around
her and murmured little banalities about Giles’s kit, the train he was
to catch, the parcel he was to remember to pick up in London. When it
came to parting time, he left those two alone and fled out to the trap
that was to take his brother to the station. He had waited there till
Giles came, running and laughing and waving his hand. He drove with
him to the station, and dared not look back to see his mother standing
by the window. They were silent till the trap had passed a mile beyond
the village; then Giles had laughed, and talked, and rallied him on his
gloomy face.
“I’ll soon be back, old man. Buck the mater up, won’t you? Whoa, Tommy,
what are you shying at?... By jove! won’t it be grand on the sea
to-night!”
Oh, Giles! Giles! was there ever any one so splendid, so radiant, so
uncrushable? His heart went out to his brother at that moment, and he
could not answer.
So closely were his own sympathies interwoven with the feelings of his
brother that he hardly noticed the moment of actual separation on the
platform. His heart was with Giles all the way up to London, then in the
train again, and upon the sea with him that night.
In his imagination, quickened by a close study of all the literature
he could get hold of on the actual conditions out there, he followed
his brother through every phase of his new life. He was with him at the
base, in rest camps, and in dug-outs, and more especially was he with him
in those zig-zagging trenches smelling of dampness and decay. On dark
nights he would hear the scuttle of rats dashing through the wet holes.
He would hear the shriek of shells, and the tearing and ripping of the
earth. He would start up and try to make his way through the slime of a
battered trench which always seemed to be crumbling, crumbling. In his
nostrils would hang the penetrating smell of gases that had the quality
of imparting terror. So vivid were his impressions of these things
that he could not detach his own suffering from that of his brother.
There were times when he became convinced that either he or Giles was a
chimera. One of them did not exist.... He seemed to stand for an eternity
peering through a slit in a mud wall and gazing at another mud wall,
and feeling the penetrating ooze of dying vegetation creeping into his
body. Above his head would loom dark poles and barbarous entanglements.
It was as though everything had vanished from the world but symbols of
fear and cruelty, which rioted insanely against the heavens, as though
everything that man had ever learnt had been forgotten and destroyed; and
he growled there in the wet earth, flaunting the feral passions of his
remote ancestry. And the cold!—the cold was terrible.... He remembered a
strange thing happening at that time. During some vague respite from the
recurring horror of these imaginings, he had, he believed, been walking
out through the meadows, when a numbness seemed to creep over his lower
limbs. He could not get back. He had lain helpless in a field when George
Carter, one of the farm hands, had found him and helped him home. He
had been very ill then, and his mother had sent for Doctor Ewing. He
could not remember exactly what the doctor said or what treatment he
prescribed, or how long he had lain there in a semi-conscious state, but
he vividly remembered hearing the doctor say one day: “It’s very curious,
madam. I was, as you know, out at the Front for some time with the Red
Cross, and this boy has a fever quite peculiar to the men at the Front.
Has he been out standing in the wet mud?” He could not remember what his
mother answered. He wanted to say: “No, no, it’s not I. It’s Giles,”
but he had not the strength, and afterwards wondered whether it were an
illusion.
He knew that many weeks went by, and still they would not let him walk.
That was his greatest trouble, for walking helped him. When he could
walk, he could sometimes live in a happier world of make-believe, but in
bed the epic tragedy unfolded itself in every livid detail, intensely
real.
Long periods of time went by, and still he was not allowed to leave
his room. His mother would come and sit with him and read him Giles’s
letters. They were wonderful letters, full of amusing stories of “rags”
and tales of splendid feeds obtained under difficult circumstances. Of
the conditions that existed so vividly in Robin’s mind there was not one
word. To read Giles’s letters one would imagine that he was away on a
holiday with a party of young undergraduates, having the time of their
lives. But the letters had no reality to him. _He knew. He had seen it
all._
Time became an unrecognizable factor. Faces came and went. His mother was
always there, and there appeared another kind face whom he believed to be
a nurse; and sometimes Jerry Lawson would come and sit by the bed, and
talk to him about the beauties of the quattrocento and other things he
had forgotten, things which belonged to a dead world....
Lying there in bed, he could not detach these impressions very clearly,
nor determine how long ago they had taken place. There appeared to be an
unaccountable shifting of the folds of darkness, a slipping away of vital
purposes, and a necessity for focusing upon some immediate development.
This necessity seemed, somehow, emphasized by the overpowering pain that
had begun to rack his limbs, more especially his right foot. He wanted
to call out, but some voice told him that it would be useless. The night
was too impenetrable and heavy, his voice would only die away against
its inky pall. There was besides a certain soothing tenderness about
it, as though it were caressing him and telling him that he must wait
in patience, and all would be well. He knew now that he was sleeping
in the open, and that would account for the chilling coldness. At the
same time it was not exactly the open. There were walls about and jagged
profiles, but apparently no roof or distances. The ground was hard like
concrete. He must be infinitely patient and pray for the dawn.... He
began to feel the dawn before he saw it. It came like the caressing sigh
of a woman as she wakes and thinks of her lover in some foreign clime.
Somewhere at hand a bird was twittering, aware too of the coming miracle.
Almost imperceptibly things began to form themselves. He was certainly
behind a wall, but there was a door, with the upper part leaning in. A
phrase occurred to his mind: “The white arm of dawn is creeping over the
door.” A lovely passage! He had read it in some Irish book. The angle at
the top of the door was like a bent elbow. It was very, very like the
white arm—of some Irish queen, perhaps, or of the Mother of men—a white
arm creeping over the door, and in its whiteness delicately touching
the eyelids of the sleeping inmates, whilst a voice in a soft cadence
whispered: “Awake! pull back the door, and let me show you the silver
splendors of the unborn day.”
A heavy dew was falling, and the cold seemed bitter, whilst all around he
became aware of the slow unfolding of desolation; except for the leaning
door, nothing seemed to take a recognizable shape, everything was jagged
and violent in its form and exuded the cloying odors of death. Somewhere
faintly he thought he heard the sound of a cornet, bizarre and fantastic,
and having no connection with the utter stillness of this place of sorrow.
His eye searched the broken darkness in fugitive pursuit of a solution of
the formless void. Quite near him, apparently, was an oblong board which
amidst this wilderness of destruction seemed to have escaped untouched.
As the dim violet light began to reveal certain definite concrete things,
he became aware that on the board were some Roman letters. He looked at
them for some time unseeingly. The word written there stamped itself
without meaning on his brain. The word was: “FILLES.” He repeated it
to himself over and over again. The earth seemed to rock again with
a sullen, vibrating passion, as though irritated that the work of
destruction was not entirely complete. Things already destroyed seemed
to be subjected to further transmutation of formlessness. But still the
board remained intact, and he fixed his eyes on it. It imbued him with a
strange sense of tranquillity. _Filles!_ A little word, but it became to
him a link to cosmic things. The desire to reason passed, as the ability
to suffer passed. Across the mists of time he seemed to hear the laughter
of children. He could almost see them pass. There were Jeannette and
Marie, with long black pigtails and check frocks, and just behind them,
struggling with a heavy satchel, little fair-haired Babette. How they
laughed, those children! and yet he could not determine whether their
laughter came from the years that had passed or from the years that were
to come. But wherever the laughter came from, it seemed the only thing
the powers of darkness could not destroy. He lay then for a long time,
conscious of a peace greater than any he could have conceived. And the
white arm of dawn crept over the door.
* * * * *
The crowd who habitually came down by the afternoon train trickled out of
the station and vanished. The master of Wodehurst came limping through
the doorway. His face was bronzed and perhaps a little thinner, but
his eyes laughed, and his voice rang out to the steward waiting in the
dog-cart:
“Hullo! Sam, how are you?”
He was leaning on two sticks, and a porter followed with his trunks.
“Can I help you up, sir?”
“No, it’s all right, old man; I can manage.”
He pulled himself up and laughed because he hit his knee upon the
mudguard.
“It’s good to be home, Sam.”
“Yes; I expect your mother will be glad, sir,” answered Geddes, touching
up the horse. “And so will we all, I’m thinking.”
They clattered down the road, and the high spirits of the wounded warrior
rose. He asked a thousand questions, and insisted on taking the reins
before they had gone far. It was dusk when they began to draw near
Wodehurst; a sudden silence had fallen on Giles. The steward realized the
reason. He coughed uncomfortably. They were passing within a hundred
yards of Wodehurst Church. Suddenly he said in his deep burr:
“We were all very sorry, sir, about Master Robin.”
The eyes of the soldier softened; he murmured:
“Poor old chap!”
“I feel I ought to tell you, sir. It was a very queer thing. But one day
that young Mr. Lawson—you know, the sculptor—about a week after it all
happened, he must have got up at daybreak, I should say—nobody saw him do
it. He must have gone down there to the churchyard with his tools, and
what do you think? He carved something on the stone—on Mr. Robin’s stone.”
Giles said quickly: “Carved! What?”
“He carved just under the name and date, ‘He died for England.’”
“‘He died for England!’ He carved that on Robin’s grave? What did he
mean?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Really! What a rum chap he must be!”
“We didn’t know what to do about it, sir. I saw it, and I didn’t like
to tell your mother, and nobody likes to interfere with a tombstone, it
seems profane-like. So there it is to this day.”
“Thank you, Sam. I’ll think about it.”
“Have you had much pain with your foot, sir?”
Giles laughed, and flicked the horse.