He came to with a start. His mouth was dry and hard, his heart beat
heavily, but he had not the energy to get up. His heart beat heavily.
Where was he?—the barracks—at home? There was something knocking. And,
making an effort, he looked round—trees, and litter of greenery, and
reddish, night, still pieces of sunshine on the floor. He did not
believe he was himself, he did not believe what he saw. Something was
knocking. He made a struggle towards consciousness, but relapsed. Then
he struggled again. And gradually his surroundings fell into
relationship with himself. He knew, and a great pang of fear went
through his heart. Somebody was knocking. He could see the heavy, black
rags of a fir tree overhead. Then everything went black. Yet he did not
believe he had closed his eyes. He had not. Out of the blackness sight
slowly emerged again. And someone was knocking. Quickly, he saw the
blood-disgfigured face of his Captain, which he hated. And he held
himself still with horror. Yet, deep inside him, he knew that it was
so, the Captain should be dead. But the physical delirium got hold of
him. Someone was knocking. He lay perfectly still, as if dead, with
fear. And he went unconscious.
When he opened his eyes again, he started, seeing something creeping
swiftly up a tree-trunk. It was a little bird. And the bird was
whistling overhead. Tap-tap-tap—it was the small, quick bird rapping
the tree-trunk with its beak, as if its head were a little round
hammer. He watched it curiously. It shifted sharply, in its creeping
fashion. Then, like a mouse, it slid down the bare trunk. Its swift
creeping sent a flash of revulsion through him. He raised his head. It
felt a great weight. Then, the little bird ran out of the shadow across
a still patch of sunshine, its little head bobbing swiftly, its white
legs twinkling brightly for a moment. How neat it was in its build, so
compact, with pieces of white on its wings. There were several of them.
They were so pretty—but they crept like swift, erratic mice, running
here and there among the beech-mast.
He lay down again exhausted, and his consciousness lapsed. He had a
horror of the little creeping birds. All his blood seemed to be darting
and creeping in his head. And yet he could not move.
He came to with a further ache of exhaustion. There was the pain in his
head, and the horrible sickness, and his inability to move. He had
never been ill in his life. He did not know where he was or what he
was. Probably he had got sunstroke. Or what else?—he had silenced the
Captain for ever—some time ago—oh, a long time ago. There had been
blood on his face, and his eyes had turned upwards. It was all right,
somehow. It was peace. But now he had got beyond himself. He had never
been here before. Was it life, or not life? He was by himself. They
were in a big, bright place, those others, and he was outside. The
town, all the country, a big bright place of light: and he was outside,
here, in the darkened open beyond, where each thing existed alone. But
they would all have to come out there sometime, those others. Little,
and left behind him, they all were. There had been father and mother
and sweetheart. What did they all matter? This was the open land.
He sat up. Something scuffled. It was a little, brown squirrel running
in lovely, undulating bounds over the floor, its red tail completing
the undulation of its body—and then, as it sat up, furling and
unfurling. He watched it, pleased. It ran on friskily, enjoying itself.
It flew wildly at another squirrel, and they were chasing each other,
and making little scolding, chattering noises. The soldier wanted to
speak to them. But only a hoarse sound came out of his throat. The
squirrels burst away—they flew up the trees. And then he saw the one
peeping round at him, half-way up a tree-trunk. A start of fear went
through him, though, in so far as he was conscious, he was amused. It
still stayed, its little, keen face staring at him halfway up the
tree-trunk, its little ears pricked up, its clawey little hands
clinging to the bark, its white breast reared. He started from it in
panic.
Struggling to his feet, he lurched away. He went on walking, walking,
looking for something for a drink. His brain felt hot and inflamed for
want of water. He stumbled on. Then he did not know anything. He went
unconscious as he walked. Yet he stumbled on, his mouth open.
When, to his dumb wonder, he opened his eyes on the world again, he no
longer tried to remember what it was. There was thick, golden light
behind golden-green glitterings, and tall, grey-purple shafts, and
darknesses further off, surrounding him, growing deeper. He was
conscious of a sense of arrival. He was amid the reality, on the real,
dark bottom. But there was the thirst burning in his brain. He felt
lighter, not so heavy. He supposed it was newness.
The air was muttering with thunder. He thought he was walking
wonderfully swiftly and was coming straight to relief—or was it to
water?
Suddenly he stood still with fear. There was a tremendous flare of
gold, immense—just a few dark trunks like bars between him and it. All
the young level wheat was burnished gold glaring on its silky green. A
woman, full-skirted, a black cloth on her head for head-dress, was
passing like a block of shadow through the glistening, green corn, into
the full glare. There was a farm, too, pale blue in shadow, and the
timber black. And there was a church spire, nearly fused away in the
gold. The woman moved on, away from him. He had no language with which
to speak to her. She was the bright, solid unreality. She would make a
noise of words that would confuse him, and her eyes would look at him
without seeing him. She was crossing there to the other side. He stood
against a tree.
When at last he turned, looking down the long, bare grove whose flat
bed was already filling dark, he saw the mountains in a wonder-light,
not far away, and radiant. Behind the soft, grey ridge of the nearest
range the further mountains stood golden and pale grey, the snow all
radiant like pure, soft gold. So still, gleaming in the sky, fashioned
pure out of the ore of the sky, they shone in their silence. He stood
and looked at them, his face illuminated. And like the golden, lustrous
gleaming of the snow he felt his own thirst bright in him. He stood and
gazed, leaning against a tree. And then everything slid away into
space.
During the night the lightning fluttered perpetually, making the whole
sky white. He must have walked again. The world hung livid round him
for moments, fields a level sheen of grey-green light, trees in dark
bulk, and the range of clouds black across a white sky. Then the
darkness fell like a shutter, and the night was whole. A faint mutter
of a half-revealed world, that could not quite leap out of the
darkness!—Then there again stood a sweep of pallor for the land, dark
shapes looming, a range of clouds hanging overhead. The world was a
ghostly shadow, thrown for a moment upon the pure darkness, which
returned ever whole and complete.
And the mere delirium of sickness and fever went on inside him—his
brain opening and shutting like the night—then sometimes convulsions of
terror from something with great eyes that stared round a tree—then the
long agony of the march, and the sun decomposing his blood—then the
pang of hate for the Captain, followed, by a pang of tenderness and
ease. But everything was distorted, born of an ache and resolving into
an ache.
In the morning he came definitely awake. Then his brain flamed with the
sole horror of thirstiness! The sun was on his face, the dew was
steaming from his wet clothes. Like one possessed, he got up. There,
straight in front of him, blue and cool and tender, the mountains
ranged across the pale edge of the morning sky. He wanted them—he
wanted them alone—he wanted to leave himself and be identified with
them. They did not move, they were still and soft, with white, gentle
markings of snow. He stood still, mad with suffering, his hands
crisping and clutching. Then he was twisting in a paroxysm on the
grass.
He lay still, in a kind of dream of anguish. His thirst seemed to have
separated itself from him, and to stand apart, a single demand. Then
the pain he felt was another single self. Then there was the clog of
his body, another separate thing. He was divided among all kinds of
separate beings. There was some strange, agonized connection between
them, but they were drawing further apart. Then they would all split.
The sun, drilling down on him, was drilling through the bond. Then they
would all fall, fall through the everlasting lapse of space. Then
again, his consciousness reasserted itself. He roused on to his elbow
and stared at the gleaming mountains. There they ranked, all still and
wonderful between earth and heaven. He stared till his eyes went black,
and the mountains, as they stood in their beauty, so clean and cool,
seemed to have it, that which was lost in him.