Friday evenings as they lay about more or less at their ease (but rather
less than more) in Stephen's study.
They had asked each other: "Are _you_ going to fight for your country?"
And Ellis had said he was damned if he'd fight for his country; and
Mitchell had said he hadn't got a country, so there was no point in his
fighting, anyhow; and Monier-Owen that if you could show him a country
that cared for the arts before anything he'd fight for it; but that
England was very far from being that country.
And Michael had sat silent, thinking the same thoughts.
And Stephen had sat silent, thinking other thoughts, not listening to
what was said.
And now people were whining about Louvain and Rheims Cathedral. Michael
said to himself that he could stand these massed war emotions if they
were sincere; but people whined about Louvain and Rheims Cathedral who
had never cared a damn about either before the War.
Anthony looked up over the edge of his morning paper, inquired whether
Michael could defend the destruction of Louvain and Rheims Cathedral?
Michael shrugged his shoulders. "Why bother," he said, "about Rheims
Cathedral and Louvain? From your point of view it's all right. If
Louvain and Rheims Cathedral get in the way of the enemy's artillery
they've got to go. They didn't happen to be in the way of ours,
that's all."
Michael's mind was showing certain symptoms, significant of its malady.
He was inclined to disparage the military achievements of the Allies and
to justify the acts of Germany.
"It's up to the French to defend Paris. And what have we got to do with
Alsace-Lorraine? As if every inteligent Frenchman didn't know that
Alsace-Lorraine is a sentimental stunt. No. I'm not pro-German. I simply
see things as they are."
"I think," Frances would say placably, "we'd better not talk about the
War."
He would remind them that it was not his subject.
And John laughed at him. "Poor old Nick hates the War because it's
dished him. He knows his poems can't come out till it's over."
As it happened, his poems came out that autumn.
After all, the Germans had been held back from Paris. As Stephen pointed
out to him, the Battle of the Marne had saved Michael. In magnificent
defiance of the enemy, the "New Poems" of Michael Harrison, with
illustrations by Austin Mitchell, were announced as forthcoming in
October; and Morton Ellis's "Eccentricities," with illustrations by
Austin Mitchell, were to appear the same month. Even Wadham's poems
would come out some time, perhaps next spring.
Stephen said the advertisements should be offered to the War Office as
posters, to strike terror into Germany and sustain the morale of the
Allied Armies. "If England could afford to publish Michael--"
Michael's family made no comment on the appearance of his poems. The
book lay about in the same place on the drawing-room table for weeks.
When Nanna dusted she replaced it with religious care; none of his
people had so much as taken it up to glance inside it, or hold it in
their hands. It seemed to Michael that they were conscious of it all the
time, and that they turned their faces away from it pointedly. They
hated it. They hated him for having written it.
He remembered that it had been different when his first book had come
out two years ago. They had read that; they had snatched at all the
reviews of it and read it again, trying to see what it was that they
had missed.
They had taken each other aside, and it had been:
"Anthony, do you understand Michael's poems?"
"Dorothy, do you understand Michael's poems?"
"Nicky, do you understand Michael's poems?"
He remembered his mother's apology for not understanding them: "Darling,
I _do_ see that they're very beautiful." He remembered how he had wished
that they would give up the struggle and leave his poems alone. They
were not written for them. He had been amused and irritated when he had
seen his father holding the book doggedly in front of him, his poor old
hands twitching with embarrassment whenever he thought Michael was
looking at him.
And now he, who had been so indifferent and so contemptuous, was
sensitive to the least quiver of his mother's upper lip.
Veronica's were the only eyes that were kind to him; that did not hunt
him down with implacable suggestion and reminder.
Veronica had been rejected too. She was not strong enough to nurse in
the hospitals. She was only strong enough to work from morning to night,
packing and carrying large, heavy parcels for the Belgian soldiers. She
wanted Michael to be sorry for her because she couldn't be a nurse.
Rosalind Jervis was a nurse. But he was not sorry. He said he would very
much rather she didn't do anything that Rosalind did.
"So would Nicky," he said.
And then: "Veronica, do _you_ think I ought to enlist?"
The thought was beginning to obsess him.
"No," she said; "you're different.
"I know how you feel about it. Nicky's heart and soul are in the War. If
he's killed it can only kill his body. _Your_ soul isn't in it. It would
kill your soul."
"It's killing it now, killing everything I care for."
"Killing everything we all care for, except the things it can't kill."
That was one Sunday evening in October. They were standing together on
the long terrace under the house wall. Before them, a little to the
right, on the edge of the lawn, the great ash-tree rose over the garden.
The curved and dipping branches swayed and swung in a low wind that
moved like quiet water.
"Michael," she said, "do look what's happening to that tree."
"I see," he said.
It made him sad to look at the tree; it made him sad to look at
Veronica--because both the tree and Veronica were beautiful.
"When I was a little girl I used to sit and look and look at that tree
till it changed and got all thin and queer and began to move towards me.
"I never knew whether it had really happened or not; I don't know
now--or whether it was the tree or me. It was as if by looking and
looking you could make the tree more real and more alive."
Michael remembered something.
"Dorothy says you saw Ferdie the night he died."
"So I did. But that's not the same thing. I didn't have to look and
look. I just saw him. I _sort_ of saw Frank that last night--when the
call came--only sort of--but I knew he was going to be killed.
"I didn't see him nearly so distinctly as I saw Nicky-"
"Nicky? You didn't see him--as you saw Ferdie?"
"No, no, no! it was ages ago--in Germany--before he married. I saw him
with Desmond."
"Have you ever seen me?"
"Not yet. That's because you don't want me as they did."
"Don't I! Don't I!"
And she said again: "Not yet."
Nicky had had leave for Christmas. He had come and gone.
Frances and Anthony were depressed; they were beginning to be
frightened.
For Nicky had finished his training. He might be sent out any day.
Nicky had had some moments of depression. Nothing had been heard of the
Moving Fortress. Again, the War Office had given no sign of having
received it. It was hard luck, he said, on Drayton.
And John was depressed after he had gone.
"They'd much better have taken me," he said.
"What's the good of sending the best brains in the Army to get pounded?
There's Drayton. He ought to have been in the Ordnance. He's killed.
"And here's Nicky. Nicky ought to be in the engineers or the gunners or
the Royal Flying Corps; but he's got to stand in the trenches and
be pounded.
"Lot they care about anybody's brains. Drayton could have told Kitchener
that we can't win this war without high-explosive shells. So
could Nicky.
"You bet they've stuck all those plans and models in the sanitary
dust-bin behind the War Office back door. It's enough to make Nicky blow
his brains out."
"Nicky doesn't care, really," Veronica said. "He just leaves things--and
goes on."
That night, after the others had gone to bed, Michael stayed behind with
his father.
"It must look to you," he said, "as if I ought to have gone instead of
Nicky."
"I don't say so, Michael. And I'm sure Nicky wouldn't."
"No, but you both think it. You see, if I went I shouldn't be any good
at it. Not the same good as Nicky. He wants to go and I don't. Can't you
see it's different?"
"Yes," said Anthony, "I see. I've seen it for some time."
And Michael remembered the night in August when his brother came to him
in his room.
* * * * *
Beauty--the Forlorn Hope of God--if he cared for it supremely, why was
he pursued and tormented by the thought of the space between him
and Nicky?
XXII
Michael had gone to Stephen's house.
He was no longer at his ease there. It seemed to him that Lawrence's
eyes followed him too; not with hatred, but with a curious
meditative wonder.
To-night Stephen said to him, "Did you know that Réveillaud's killed?"
"Killed? Killed? I didn't even know he was fighting."
Lawrence laughed. "What did you suppose he was doing?"
"No--but how?"
"Out with the patrol and shot down. There you are--"
He shoved the _Times_ to him, pointing to the extract from _Le Matin_:
"It is with regret that we record the death of M. Jules Réveillaud, the
brilliant young poet and critic--"
Michael stared at the first three lines; something in his mind prevented
him from going on to the rest, as if he did not care to read about
Réveillaud and know how he died.
"It is with regret that we record the death. It is with regret that we
record--with regret--"
Then he read on, slowly and carefully, to the end. It was a long
paragraph.
"To think," he said at last, "that this revolting thing should have
happened to him."
"His death?"
"No--_this_. The _Matin_ never mentioned Réveillaud before. None of the
big papers, none of the big reviews noticed his existence except to
sneer at him. He goes out and gets killed like any little bourgeois, and
the swine plaster him all over with their filthy praise. He'd rather
they'd spat on him."
He meditated fiercely. "Well--he couldn't help it. He was conscripted."
"You think he wouldn't have gone of his own accord?"
"I'm certain he wouldn't."
"And I'm certain he would."
"I wish to God we'd got conscription here. I'd rather the Government
commandeered my body than stand this everlasting interference with
my soul."
"Then," said Lawrence, "you'll not be surprised at my enlisting."
"You're not--"
"I am. I'd have been in the first week if I'd known what to do about
Vera."
"But--it's--it's not sane."
"Perhaps not. But it's Irish."
"Irish? I can understand ordinary Irishmen rushing into a European row
for the row's sake, just because they haven't got a civil war to mess
about in. But you--of all Irishmen--why on earth should _you_ be in it?"
"Because I want to be in it."
"I thought," said Michael, "you were to have been a thorn in England's
side?"
"So I was. So I am. But not at this minute. My grandmother was a hard
Ulster woman and I hated her. But I wouldn't be a thorn in my
grandmother's side if the old lady was assaulted by a brutal voluptuary,
and I saw her down and fighting for her honour.
"I've been a thorn in England's side all my life. But it's nothing to
the thorn I'll be if I'm killed fighting for her."
"Why--why--if you want to fight in the civil war afterwards?"
"Why? Because I'm one of the few Irishmen who can reason straight. I was
going into the civil war last year because it was a fight for freedom.
I'm going into this War this year because it's a bigger fight for a
bigger freedom.
"You can't have a free Ireland without a free England, any more than you
can have religious liberty without political liberty. If the Orangemen
understood anything at all about it they'd see it was the Nationalists
and the Sinn Feiners that'll help them to put down Catholicism
in Ireland."
"You think it matters to Ireland whether Germany licks us or we lick
Germany?"
"I think it matters to the whole world."
"What's changed you?" said Michael.
He was angry with Lawrence. He thought: "He hasn't any excuse for
failing us. He hasn't been conscripted."
"Nothing's changed me. But supposing it didn't matter to the whole
world, or even to Europe, and supposing the Allies were beaten in the
end, you and I shouldn't be beaten, once we'd stripped ourselves,
stripped our souls clean, and gone in.
"Victory, Michael--victory is a state of mind."
* * * * *
The opportunist had seen his supreme opportunity.
He would have snatched at it in the first week of the War, as he had
said, but that Vera had made it hard for him. She was not making it easy
now. The dull, dark moth's wings of her eyes hovered about him,
fluttering with anxiety.
When she heard that he was going to enlist she sent for Veronica.
Veronica said, "You must let him go."
"I can't let him go. And why should I? He'll do no good. He's over age.
He's no more fit than I am."
"You'll have to, sooner or later."
"Later, then. Not one minute before I must. If they want him let them
come and take him."
"It won't hurt so much if you let him go, gently, now. He'll tear at you
if you keep him."
"He has torn at me. He tears at me every day. I don't mind his tearing.
I mind his going--going and getting killed, wounded, paralysed, broken
to pieces."
"You'll mind his hating you. You'll mind that awfully."
"I shan't. He's hated me before. He went away and left me once. But he
came back. He can't really do without me."
"You don't know how he'll hate you if you come between him and what he
wants most."
"_I_ used to be what he wanted most."
"Well--it's his honour now."
"That's what they all say, Michael and Anthony, and Dorothy. They're men
and they don't know. Dorothy's more a man than a woman.
"But you're different. I thought you might help me to keep him--they say
you've got some tremendous secret. And this is the way you go on!"
"I wouldn't help you to keep him if I could. I wouldn't have kept Nicky
for all the world. Aunt Frances wouldn't have kept him. She wants
Michael to go."
"She doesn't. If she says she does she lies. All the women are lying.
Either they don't care--they're just _lumps_, with no hearts and no
nerves in them--or they lie.
"It's this rotten pose of patriotism. They get it from each other,
like--like a skin disease. No wonder it makes Michael sick."
"Men going out--thousands and thousands and thousands--to be cut about
and blown to bits, and their women safe at home, snuffling and
sentimentalizing--
"Lying--lying--lying."
"Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't tell one big, thumping, sacred lie, if it
sends them off happy?"
"But we're not lying. It's the most real thing that ever happened to us.
I'm glad Nicky's going. I shall be glad all my life."
"It comes easy to you. You're a child. You've never grown up. You were a
miserable little mummy when you were born. And now you look as if every
drop of blood was drained out of your body in your teens. If that's
your tremendous secret you can keep it yourself. It seems to be all
you've got."
"If it wasn't for Aunt Frances and Uncle Anthony it _would_ have been
all I've got."
Vera looked at her daughter and saw her for the first time as she really
was. The child was not a child any more. She was a woman, astonishingly
and dangerously mature. Veronica's sorrowful, lucid eyes took her in;
they neither weighed her nor measured her, but judged her, off-hand with
perfect accuracy.
"Poor little Ronny. I've been a beastly mother to you. Still, you can
thank my beastliness for Aunt Frances and Uncle Anthony."
Veronica thought: "How funny she is about it!" She said, "It's your
beastliness to poor Larry that I mind. You know what you're keeping
him for."
* * * * *
She knew; and Lawrence knew.
That night he told her that if he hadn't wanted to enlist he'd be driven
to it to get away from her.
And she was frightened and held her tongue.
Then she got desperate. She did things. She intrigued behind his back to
keep him; and he found her out.
He came to her, furious.
"You needn't lie about it," he said. "I know what you've done. You've
been writing letters and getting at people. You've told the truth about
my age and you've lied about my health. You've even gone round cadging
for jobs for me in the Red Cross and the Press Bureau and the
Intelligence Department, and God only knows whether I'm supposed to have
put you up to it."
"I took care of that, Larry."
"You? You'd no right to interfere with my affairs."
"Hadn't I? Not after living with you seven years?"
"If you'd lived with me seven centuries you'd have had no right to try
to keep a man back from the Army."
"I'm trying to keep a man's brain for my country."
"You lie. It's my body you're trying to keep for yourself. As you did
when I was going to Ireland."
"Oh, then--I tried to stop you from being a traitor to England. They'd
have hanged you, my dear, for that."
"Traitor? It's women like you that are the traitors. My God, if there
was a Government in this country that could govern, you'd be strung up
in a row, all of you, and hanged."
"No wonder you think you're cut out for a soldier. You're cruel enough."
"_You're_ cruel. I'd rather be hanged than live with you a day longer
after what you've done. A Frenchman shot his _wife_ the other day for
less than that."
"What was 'less than that'?" she said.
"She crawled after him to the camp, like a bitch.
"He sent her away and she came again and again. He _had_ to shoot her."
"Was there nothing to be said for her?"
"There was. She knew it was a big risk and she took it. _You_ knew you
were safe while you slimed my honour."
"She loved him, and he shot her, and you think that's a fine thing.
_How_ she must have loved him!"
"Men don't want to be loved that way. That's the mistake you women will
make."
"It's the way you've taught us. I should like to know what other way you
ever want us to love you?"
"The way Veronica loves Nicky, and Dorothy loved Drayton and Frances
loves Anthony."
"Dorothy? She ruined Drayton's life."
"Men's lives aren't ruined that way. And not all women's."
"Well, anyhow, if she'd loved him she'd have married him. And Frances
loves her children better than Anthony, and Anthony knows it."
"Veronica, then."
"Veronica doesn't know what passion is. The poor child's anæmic."
"Another mistake. Veronica, and 'children' like Veronica have more
passion in one eyelash than you have in your whole body."
"It's a pity," she said, "you can't have Veronica and her eyelashes
instead of me. She's young and she's pretty."
He sighed with pain as her nerves lashed into his.
"That's what it all amounts to--your wanting to get out to the Front.
It's what's the matter with half the men who go there and pose as
heroes. They want to get rid of the wives--and mistresses--they're tired
of because the poor things aren't young or pretty any longer."
She dropped into the mourning voice that made him mad with her. "I'm
old--old--old. And the War's making me older every day, and uglier. And
I'm not married to you. Talk of keeping you! How _can_ I keep you when
I'm old and ugly?"
He looked at her and smiled with a hard pity. Compunction always worked
in him at the sight of her haggard face, glazed and stained with crying.
"That's how--by getting older.
"I've never tired of you. You're more to me now than you were when I
first knew you. It's when I see you looking old that I'm sure I
love you."
She smiled, too, in her sad sexual wisdom.
"There may be women who'd believe you, Larry, or who'd say they believe
you; but not me."
"It's the truth," he said. "If you were young and if you were married to
me I should have enlisted months ago.
"Can't you see it's not you, it's this life we lead that I'm sick and
tired of? I tell you I'd rather be hanged than go on with it. I'd rather
be a prisoner in Germany than shut up in this house of yours."
"Poor little house. You used to like it. What's wrong with it now?"
"Everything. Those damned lime-trees all round it. And that damned white
wall round the lime-trees. Shutting me in.
"And those curtains in your bed-room. Shutting me in.
"And your mind, trying to shut mine in.
"I come into this room and I find Phyllis Desmond in it and Orde-Jones,
drinking tea and talking. I go upstairs for peace, and Michael and Ellis
are sitting there--talking; trying to persuade themselves that funk's
the divinest thing in God's universe.
"And over there's the one thing I've been looking for all my life--the
one thing I've cared for. And you're keeping me from it."
They left it. But it began all over again the next day and the next. And
Lawrence went on growing his moustache and trying to train it upwards in
the way she hated.
* * * * *
One evening, towards dinner-time he turned up in khaki, the moustache
stiff on his long upper lip, his lopping hair clipped. He was another
man, a strange man, and she was not sure whether she hated him or not.
But she dried her eyes and dressed her hair, and put on her best gown to
do honour to his khaki.
She said, "It'll be like living with another man."
"You won't have very long to live with him," said Lawrence.
And even then, sombrely, under the shadow of his destiny, her passion
for him revived; his very strangeness quickened it to violence, to
perversity.
And in the morning the Army took him from her; it held him out of her
reach. He refused to let her go with him to the place where he was
stationed.
"What would you do," she said, "if I followed you? Shoot me?"
"I might shoot _myself_. Anyhow, you'd never see me or hear from me
again."
* * * * *
He went out to France three weeks before Nicholas.
She had worn herself out with wondering when he would be sent, till
she, too, was in a hurry for him to go and end it. Now that he had gone
she felt nothing but a clean and sane relief that was a sort of peace.
She told herself that she would rather he were killed soon than that she
should be tortured any longer with suspense.
"If I saw his name in the lists this morning I shouldn't mind. That
would end it."
And she sent her servant to the stationer's to stop the papers for fear
lest she should see his name in the lists.
But Lawrence spared her. He was wounded in his first engagement, and
died of his wounds in a hospital at Dunkirk.
The Red Cross woman who nursed him wrote to Vera an hour before he died.
She gave details and a message.
* * * * *
"7.30. I'm writing now from his dictation. He says you're to forgive him
and not to be too sorry, because it was what he thought it would be (he
means the fighting) only much more so--all except this last bit.
"He wants you to tell Michael and Dicky?--Nicky?--that. He says: 'It's
odd I should be first when he got the start of me.'
"(I think he means you're to forgive him for leaving you to go to the
War.)"
* * * * *
"8.30. It is all over.
"He was too weak to say anything more. But he sent you his love."
* * * * *
Vera said to herself: "He didn't. She made that up."
She hated the Red Cross woman who had been with Lawrence and had seen so
much; who had dared to tell her what he meant and to make up messages.
XXIII
Nicholas had applied for a commission, and he had got it, and Frances
was glad.
She had been proud of him because he had chosen the ranks instead of the
Officers' Training Corps; but she persisted in the belief that, when it
came to the trenches, second lieutenants stood a better chance. "For
goodness' sake," Nicholas had said, "don't tell her that they're over
the parapet first."
That was in December. In February he got a week's leave--sudden,
unforeseen and special leave. It had to be broken to her this time that
leave as special as that meant war-leave.
She said, "Well, if it does, I shall have him for six whole days." She
had learned how to handle time, how to prolong the present, drawing it
out minute by minute; thus her happiness, stretched to the snapping
point, vibrated.
She had a sense of its vibration now, as she looked at Nicholas. It was
the evening of the day he had come home, and they were all in the
drawing-room together. He was standing before her, straight and tall, on
the hearthrug, where he had lifted the Persian cat, Timmy, out of his
sleep and was holding him against his breast. Timmy spread himself
there, softly and heavily, hanging on to Nicky's shoulder by his claws;
he butted Nicky's chin with his head, purring.
"I don't know how I'm to tear myself away from Timmy. I should like to
wear him alive as a waistcoat. Or hanging on my shoulder like a cape,
with his tail curled tight round my neck. He'd look uncommonly _chic_
with all his khaki patches."
"Why don't you take him with you?" Anthony said.
"'Cos he's Ronny's cat."
"He isn't. I've given him to you," Veronica said.
"When?"
"Now, this minute. To sleep on your feet and keep you warm."
Frances listened and thought: "What children--what babies they are,
after all." If only this minute could be stretched out farther.
"I mustn't," Nicky said. "I should spend hours in dalliance; and if a
shell got him it would ruin my morale."
Timmy, unhooked from Nicky's shoulder, lay limp in his arms. He lay on
his back, in ecstasy, his legs apart, showing the soft, cream-white fur
of his stomach. Nicky rubbed his face against the soft, cream-white fur.
"I say, what a heavenly death it would be to die--smothered in Timmies."
"Nicky, you're a beastly sensualist. That's what's the matter with you,"
John said. And they all laughed.
The minute broke, stretched to its furthest.
* * * * *
Frances was making plans now for Nicky's week. There were things they
could do, plays they could see, places they could go to. Anthony would
let them have the big car as much as they wanted. For you could stretch
time out by filling it; you could multiply the hours by what they held.
"Ronny and I are going to get married to-morrow," Nicky said. "We
settled it that we would at once, if I got war-leave. It's the best
thing to do."
"Of course," Frances said, "it's the best thing to do."
But she had not allowed for it, nor for the pain it gave her. That pain
shocked her. It was awful to think that, after all her surrenders,
Nicky's happiness could give her pain. It meant that she had never let
go her secret hold. She had been a hypocrite to herself.
Nicky was talking on about it, excitedly, as he used to talk on about
his pleasures when he was a child.
If Dad'll let us have the racing car, we'll go down to Morfe. We can do
it in a day."
"My dear boy," Anthony said, "don't you know I've lent the house to the
Red Cross, and let the shooting?"
"I don't care. There's the little house in the village we can have. And
Harker and his wife can look after us."
"Harker gone to the War, and his wife's looking after his brother's
children somewhere. And I've put two Belgian refugees into it."
"_They_ can look after us," said Nicky. "We'll stay three days, run
back, and have one day at home before I sail."
Frances gave up her play with time. She was beaten.
And still she thought: "At least I shall have him one whole day."
And then she looked across the room to Michael, as if Michael's face
had signalled to her. His clear, sun-burnt skin showed blotches of white
where the blood had left it. A light sweat was on his forehead. When
their eyes met, he shifted his position to give himself an appearance
of ease.
Michael had not reckoned on his brother's marriage, either. It was when
he asked himself: "On what, then, _had_ he been reckoning?" that the
sweat broke out on his forehead.
He had not reckoned on anything. But the sudden realization of what he
might have reckoned on made him sick. He couldn't bear to think of Ronny
married. And yet again, he couldn't bear to think of Nicky not marrying
her. If he had had a hold on her he would have let her go. In this he
knew himself to be sincere. He had had no hold on her, and to talk about
letting her go was idiotic; still, there was a violent pursuit and
possession by the mind--and Michael's mind was innocent of jealousy,
that psychic assault and outrage on the woman he loved. His spiritual
surrender of her was so perfect that his very imagination gave her up
to Nicky.
He was glad that they were going to be married tomorrow. Nothing could
take their three days from them, even when the War had done its worst.
And then, with his mother's eyes on him, he thought: "Does she think I
was reckoning on that?"
* * * * *
Nicholas and Veronica were married the next morning at Hampstead Town
Hall, before the Registrar.
They spent the rest of the day in Anthony's racing car, defying and
circumventing time and space and the police, tearing, Nicky said, whole
handfuls out of eternity by sheer speed. At intervals, with a clear run
before him, he let out the racing car to its top speed on the Great
North Road. It snorted and purred and throbbed like some immense,
nervous animal, but lightly and purely as if all its weight were purged
from it by speed. It flew up and down the hills of Hertfordshire and
Buckinghamshire and out on to the flat country round Peterborough and
Grantham, a country of silver green and emerald green grass and purple
fallow land and bright red houses; and so on to the great plain of York,
and past Reyburn up towards the bare hill country netted with grey
stone walls.
Nicholas slowed the car down for the winding of the road.
It went now between long straight ramparts of hills that showed enormous
and dark against a sky cleared to twilight by the unrisen moon. Other
hills, round-topped, darker still and more enormous, stood piled up in
front of them, blocking the head of Rathdale.
Then the road went straight, and Nicholas was reckless. It was as if,
ultimately, they must charge into the centre of that incredibly high,
immense obstruction. They were thrilled, mysteriously, as before the
image of monstrous and omnipotent disaster. Then the dale widened; it
made way for them and saved them.
The lights of Morfe on its high platform made the pattern of a coronet
and pendants on the darkness; the small, scattered lights of the village
below, the village they were making for, showed as if dropped out of the
pattern on the hill.
One larger light burned in the room that was their marriage chamber.
Jean and Suzanne, the refugees, stood in the white porch to receive
them, holding the lanterns that were their marriage torches. The old
woman held her light low down, lighting the flagstone of the threshold.
The old man lifted his high, showing the lintel of the door. It was so
low that Nicholas had to stoop to go in.
* * * * *
In the morning they read the date cut in the wall above the porch: 1665.
The house was old and bent and grey. Its windows were narrow slits in
the stone mullions. It crouched under the dipping boughs of the ash-tree
that sheltered it. Inside there was just room for Veronica to stand up.
Nicholas had to stoop or knock his head against the beams. It had only
four rooms, two for Nicholas and Veronica, and two for Jean and Suzanne.
And it was rather dark.
But it pleased them. They said it was their apple-tree-house grown up
because they were grown up, and keeping strict proportions. You had to
crawl into it, and you were only really comfortable sitting or lying
down. So they sat outside it, watching old Suzanne through the window as
she moved about the house place, cooking Belgian food for them, and old
Jean as he worked in the garden.
Veronica loved Jean and Suzanne. She had found out all about them the
first morning.
"Only think, Nicky. They're from Termonde, and their house was burnt
behind them as they left it. They saw horrors, and their son was killed
in the War.
"Yet they're happy and at peace. Almost as if they'd forgotten. He'll
plant flowers in his garden."
"They're old, Ronny. And perhaps they were tired already when it
happened."
"Yes, that must be it. They're old and tired."
* * * * *
And now it was the last adventure of their last day. They were walking
on the slope of Renton Moor that looks over Rathdale towards Greffington
Edge. The light from the west poured itself in vivid green down the
valley below them, broke itself into purple on Karva Hill to the north
above Morfe, and was beaten back in subtle blue and violet from the
stone rampart of the Edge.
Nicholas had been developing, in fancy, the strategic resources of the
country. Guns on Renton Moor, guns along Greffington Edge, on Sarrack
Moor. The raking lines of the hills were straight as if they had been
measured with a ruler and then planed.
"Ronny," he said at last, "we've licked 'em in the first round, you and
I. The beastly Boche can't do us out of these three days."
"No. We've been absolutely happy. And we'll never forget it. Never."
"Perhaps it was a bit rough on Dad and Mummy, our carting ourselves up
here, away from them. But, you see, they don't really mind. They're
feeling about it now just as we feel about it. I knew they would."
There had been a letter from Frances saying she was glad they'd gone.
She was so happy thinking how happy they were.
"They're angels, Nicky."
"Aren't they? Simply angels. That's the rotten part of it. I wish--
"I wish I could tell them what I think of them. But you can't, somehow.
It sticks in your throat, that sort of thing."
"You needn't," she said; "they know all right."
She thought: "This is what he wants me to tell them about--afterwards."
"Yes, but--I must have hurt them--hurt them horribly--lots of times. I
wish I hadn't.
"But" he went on, "they're funny, you know. Dad actually thought it
idiotic of us to do this. He said it would only make it harder for us
when I had to go. They don't see that it's just piling it on--going from
one jolly adventure to another.
"I'm afraid, though, what he really meant was it was hard on you;
because the rest of it's all my show."
"But it isn't all your show, Nicky darling. It's mine, and it's
theirs--because we haven't grudged you your adventure."
"That's exactly how I want you to feel about it."
"And they're assuming that I shan't come back. Which, if you come to
think of it, is pretty big cheek. They talk, and they think, as though
nobody ever got through. Whereas I've every intention of getting through
and of coming back. I'm the sort of chap who does get through, who does
come back."
"And even if I wasn't, if they studied statistics they'd see that it's a
thousand chances to one against the Boches getting me--just me out of
all the other chaps. As if I was so jolly important.
"No; don't interrupt. Let's get this thing straight while we can.
Supposing--just supposing I didn't get through--didn't come
back--supposing I was unlike myself and got killed, I want you to think
of _that_, not as a clumsy accident, but just another awfully
interesting thing I'd done.
"Because, you see, you might be going to have a baby; and if you took
the thing as a shock instead of--of what it probably really is, and went
and got cut up about it, you might start the little beggar with a sort
of fit, and shake its little nerves up, so that it would be jumpy
all its life.
"It ought," said Nicky, "to sit in its little house all quiet and comfy
till it's time for it to come out."
He was struck with a sudden, poignant realization of what might be, what
probably would be, what ought to be, what he had wanted more than
anything, next to Veronica.
"It shall, Nicky, it shall be quiet and comfy."
"If _that_ came off all right," he said, "it would make it up to Mother
no end."
"It wouldn't make it up to me."
"You don't know what it would do," he said.
She thought: "I don't want it. I don't want anything but you."
"That's why," he went on, "I'm giving Don as the next of kin--the one
they'll wire to; because it won't take him that way; it'll only make him
madder to get out and do for them. I'm afraid of you or Mummy or Dad, or
Michael being told first."
"It doesn't matter a bit who's _told_ first. I shall _know_ first," she
said. "And you needn't be afraid. It won't kill either me or the baby.
If a shock could kill me I should have died long ago."
"When?"
"When you went to Desmond. Then, when I thought I couldn't bear it any
longer, something happened."
"What?"
"I don't know. I don't know what it _is_ now; I only know what it does.
It always happens--always--when you want it awfully. And when you're
quiet and give yourself up to it."
"It'll happen again."
He listened, frowning a little, not quite at ease, not quite interested;
puzzled, as if he had lost her trail; put off, as if something had come
between him and her.
"You can make it happen to other people," she was saying; "so that when
things get too awful they can bear them. I wanted it to happen to
Dorothy when she was in prison, and it did. She said she was absolutely
happy there; and that all sorts of queer things came to her. And, Nicky,
they were the same queer things that came to me. It was like something
getting through to her."
"I say--did you ever do it to me?"
"Only once, when you wanted it awfully."
"When? When?"
Now he was interested; he was intrigued; he was on her trail.
"When Desmond did--that awful thing. I wanted you to see that it didn't
matter, it wasn't the end."
"But that's just what I did see, what I kept on telling myself. It looks
as if it worked, then?"
"It doesn't always. It comes and goes. But I think with _you_ it would
always come; because you're more _me_ than other people; I mean I care
more for you."
She closed and clinched it. "That's why you're not to bother about me,
Nicky. If _the_ most awful thing happened, and you didn't come back, It
would come."
"I wish I knew what It was," he said.
"I don't know what it is. But it's so real that I think it's God."
"That's why _they're_ so magnificently brave--Dorothy and Aunt Frances
and all of them. They don't believe in it; they don't know it's there;
even Michael doesn't know it's there--yet; and still they go on bearing
and bearing; and they were glad to give you up."
"I know," he said; "lots of people _say_ they're glad, but they really
_are_ glad."
He meditated.
"There's one thing. I can't think what you do, unless it's praying or
something; and if you're going to turn it on to me, Ronny, I wish you'd
be careful; because it seems to me that if there's anything in it at
all, there might be hitches. I mean to say, you might work it just
enough to keep me from being killed but not enough to keep my legs from
being blown off. Or the Boches might get me fair enough and you might
bring me back, all paralysed and idiotic.
"That's what I should funk. I should funk it most damnably, if I thought
about it. Luckily one doesn't think."
"But, Nicky, I shouldn't try to keep you back then any more than I tried
before."
"You wouldn't? Honour bright?"
"Of course I wouldn't. It wouldn't be playing the game. To begin with, I
won't believe that you're not going to get through.
"But if you didn't--if you didn't come back--I still wouldn't believe
you'd gone. I should say, 'He hasn't cared. He's gone on to something
else. It doesn't end him.'"
He was silent. The long rampart of the hill, as he stared at it, made a
pattern on his mind; a pattern that he paid no attention to.
Veronica followed the direction of his eyes. "Do you mind talking about
it?" she said.
"Me? Rather not. It sort of interests me. I don't know whether I believe
in your thing or not; but I've always had that feeling, that you go on.
You don't stop; you can't stop. That's why I don't care. They used to
think I was trying to be funny when I said I didn't care. But I really
didn't. Things, most things, don't much matter, because there's always
something else. You go on to it.
"I care for _you_. _You_ matter most awfully; and my people; but most of
all you. You always have mattered to me more than anything, since the
first time I heard you calling out to me to come and sit on your bed
because you were frightened. You always will matter.
"But Desmond didn't a little bit. You need'nt have tried to make me
_think_ she didn't. She really didn't. I only married her because she
was going to have a baby. And _that_ was because I remembered you and
the rotten time you'd had. I believe that would have kept me straight
with women if nothing else did.
"Of course I was an idiot about it. I didn't think of marrying you till
Vera told me I ought to have waited. Then it was too late.
"That's why I want you most awfully to have a baby."
"Yes, Nicky.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do when I know it's coming. The cottage
belongs to Uncle Anthony, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, I love it. Do you think he'd let me live in it?"
"I think he'd give it to you if you asked him."
"For my very own. Like the apple-tree house. Very well, he'll give it to
me--I mean to both of us--and I shall come up here where it's all quiet
and you'd never know there was a war at all--even the Belgians have
forgotten it. And I shall sit out here and look at that hill, because
it's straight and beautiful. I won't--I simply won't think of anything
that isn't straight and beautiful. And I shall get strong. Then the baby
will be straight and beautiful and strong, too.
"I shall try--I shall try hard, Nicky--to make him like you."
* * * * *
Frances's one Day was not a success. It was taken up with little things
that had to be done for Nicky. Always they seemed, he and she, to be on
the edge of something great, something satisfying and revealing. It was
to come in a look or a word; and both would remember it afterwards
for ever.
In the evening Grannie, and Auntie Louie, and Auntie Emmeline, and
Auntie Edie, and Uncle Morrie, and Uncle Bartie came up to say good-bye.
And in the morning Nicholas went off to France, excited and happy, as he
had gone off on his wedding journey. And between Frances and her son the
great thing remained unsaid.
Time itself was broken. All her minutes were scattered like fine sand.
_February 27th, 1915._
B.E.F., FRANCE.
Dearest Mother and Dad,--I simply don't know how to thank you all for
the fur coat. It's pronounced the rippingest, by a long way, that's been
seen in these trenches. Did Ronny really choose it because it "looked as
if it had been made out of Timmy's tummy?" It makes me feel as if I
_was_ Timmy. Timmy on his hind legs, rampant, clawing at the Boches.
Just think of the effect if he got up over the parapet!
The other things came all right, too, thanks. When you can't think what
else to send let Nanna make another cake. And those tubes of chutney are
a good idea.
No; it's no earthly use worrying about Michael. If there was no English
and no Allies and no Enthusiasm, and he had this War all to himself, you
simply couldn't keep him out of it. I believe if old Mick could send
himself out by himself against the whole German Army he'd manage to put
in some first rate fancy work in the second or two before they got him.
He'd be quite capable of going off and doing grisly things that would
make me faint with funk, if he was by himself, with nothing but the eye
of God to look at him. And _then_ he'd rather God wasn't there. He
always _was_ afraid of having a crowd with him.
The pity is he's wasting time and missing such a lot. If I were you two,
I should bank on Don. He's the sensiblest of us, though he is
the youngest.
And don't worry about me. Do remember that even in the thickest curtain
fire there _are_ holes; there are more holes than there is stuff; and
the chances are I shall be where a hole is.
Another thing, Don's shell, the shell you see making straight for you
like an express train, isn't likely to be the shell that's going to get
you; so that if you're hit you don't feel that pang of personal
resentment which must be the worst part of the business. Bits of shells
that have exploded I rank with bullets which we knew all about before
and were prepared for. Really, if you're planted out in the open, the
peculiar awfulness of big shell-fire--what is it more than the peculiar
awfulness of being run over by express trains let loose about the sky?
Tell Don that when shrapnel empties itself over your head like an old
tin pail, you might feel injured, but the big shell has a most disarming
air of not being able to help itself, of not looking for anybody in
particular. It's so innocent of personal malice that I'd rather have it
any day than fat German fingers squeezing my windpipe.
That's an answer to his question.
And Dorothy wanted to know what it feels like going into action.
Well--there's a lot of it that perhaps she wouldn't believe in if I told
her--it's the sort of thing she never has believed; but Stephen was
absolutely right. You aren't sold. It's more than anything you could
have imagined. I'm not speaking only for myself.
There's just one beastly sensation when you're half way between your
parapet and theirs--other fellows say they've felt it too--when you're
afraid it (the feeling) should fizzle out before you get there. But it
doesn't. It grows more and more so, simply swinging you on to them, and
that swing makes up for all the rotten times put together. You needn't
be sorry for us. It's waste of pity.
I know Don and Dorothy and Dad and Ronny aren't sorry for us. But I'm
not so sure of Michael and Mother.--Always your loving,
NICKY.
May, 1915.
B.E.F., FRANCE
My Dear Mick,--It's awfully decent of you to write so often when you
loathe writing, especially about things that bore you. But you needn't
do that. We get the news from the other fronts in the papers more or
less; and I honestly don't care a damn what Asquith is saying or what
Lloyd George is doing or what Northcliffe's motives are. Personally, I
should say he was simply trying, like most of us, to save his country.
Looks like it. But you can tell him from me, if he gets them to send us
enough shells out _in time_ we shan't worry about his motives. Anyhow
that sort of thing isn't in your line, old man, and Dad can do it much
better than you, if you don't mind my saying so.
What I want to know is what Don and Dorothy are doing, and the last
sweet thing Dad said to Mother--I'd give a day's rest in my billet for
one of his _worst_ jokes. And I like to hear about Morrie going on the
bust again, too--it sounds so peaceful. Only if it really is anxiety
about me that makes him do it, I wish he'd leave off thinking about me,
poor old thing.
More than anything I want to know how Ronny is; how she's looking and
what she's feeling; you'll be able to make out a lot, and she may tell
you things she won't tell the others. That's why I'm glad you're there
and not here.
And as for that--why go on worrying? I do know how you feel about it. I
think I always did, in a way. I never thought you were a "putrid
Pacifist." Your mind's all right. You say the War takes me like
religion; perhaps it does; I don't know enough about religion to say,
but it seems near enough for a first shot. And when you say it doesn't
take you that way, that you haven't "got" it, I can see that that
expresses a fairly understandable state of mind. Of course, I know it
isn't funk. If you'd happened to think of the Ultimatum first, instead
of the Government, you'd have been in at the start, before me.
Well--there's such a thing as conversion, isn't there? You never can
tell what may happen to you, and the War isn't over yet. Those of us who
are in it now aren't going to see the best of it by a long way. There's
no doubt the very finest fighting'll be at the finish; so that the
patriotic beggars who were in such a hurry to join up will be jolly well
sold, poor devils. Take me, for instance. If I'd got what I wanted and
been out in Flanders in 1914, ten to one I should have been in the
retreat from Mons, like Frank, and never anywhere else. Then I'd have
given my head to have gone to Gallipoli; but _now_, well, I'm just as
glad I'm not mixed up in that affair.
Still, that's not the way to look at it, calculating the fun you can get
out of it for yourself. And it's certainly not the way to win the War.
At that rate one might go on saving oneself up for the Rhine, while all
the other fellows were getting pounded to a splash on the way there. So
if you're going to be converted let's hope you'll be converted quick.
If you are, my advice is, try to get your commission straight away.
There are things you won't be able to stand if you're a Tommy. For
instance, having to pig it on the floor with all your brother Tommies. I
slept for three months next to a beastly blighter who used to come in
drunk and tread on my face and be ill all over me.
Even now, when I look back on it, that seems worse than anything that's
happened out here. But that's because at home your mind isn't adjusted
to horrors. That chap came as a shock and a surprise to me every time.
I _couldn't_ get used to him. Whereas out here everything's shifted in
the queerest way. Your mind shifts. You funk your first and your second
sight, say, of a bad stretcher case; but when it comes to the third and
the fourth you don't funk at all; you're not shocked, you're not a bit
surprised. It's all in the picture, and you're in the picture too.
There's a sort of horrible harmony. It's like a certain kind of beastly
dream which doesn't frighten you because you're part of it, part of the
beastliness.
No, the thing that got me, so far, more than anything was--what d'you
think? A little dog, no bigger than a kitten, that was run over the
other day in the street by a motor-cyclist--and a civilian at that.
There were two or three women round it, crying and gesticulating. It
looked as if they'd just lifted it out of a bath of blood. That made me
sick. You see, the little dog wasn't in the picture. I hadn't
bargained for him.
Yet the things Morrie saw in South Africa--do you remember how he
_would_ tell us about them?--weren't in it with the things that happened
here. Pounding apart, the things that corpses can do, apparently on
their own, are simply unbelievable--what the war correspondents call
"fantastic postures." But I haven't got to the point when I can slap my
thighs, and roar with laughter--if they happen to be Germans.
In between, the boredom is so awful that I've heard some of our men say
they'd rather have things happening. And, of course, we're all hoping
that when those shells come along there won't be quite so much
"between."
Love to Ronny and Mother and all of them.--Your very affectionate,
NICHOLAS.
June 1st, 1915.
B.E.F., FRANCE.
My Darling Ronny,--Yes, I think all your letters must have come, because
you've answered everything. You always tell me just what I want to know.
When I see the fat envelopes coming I know they're going to be
chock-full of the things I've happened to be thinking about. Don't let's
ever forget to put the dates, because I make out that I've always
dreamed about you, too, the nights you've written.
And so the Aunties are working in the War Hospital Supply Depôt? It's
frightfully funny what Dorothy says about their enjoying the War and
feeling so important. Don't let her grudge it them, though; it's all the
enjoyment, or importance, they're ever had in their lives, poor dears.
But I shall know, if a swab bursts in my inside, that it's Auntie
Edie's. As for Auntie Emmeline's, I can't even imagine what they'd be
like--monstrosities--or little babies injured at birth. Aunt Louie's
would be well-shaped and firm, but erring a little on the hard side,
don't you think?
That reminds me, I suppose I may tell you now since it's been in the
papers, that we've actually got Moving Fortresses out here. I haven't
seen them yet, but a fellow who has thinks they must be uncommonly like
Drayton's and my thing. I suspect, from what he says, they're a bit
better, though. We hadn't got the rocking-horse idea.
It's odd--this time last year I should have gone off my head with agony
at the mere thought of anybody getting in before us; and now I don't
care a bit. I do mind rather for Drayton's sake, though I don't suppose
he cares, either. The great thing is that it's been done, and done
better. Anyway we've been lucky. Supposing the Germans had got on to
them, and trotted them out first, and one of our own guns had potted him
or me, _that_ would have been a jolly sell.
What makes you ask after Timmy? I hardly like to tell you the awful
thing that's happened to him. He had to travel down to the base hospital
on a poor chap who was shivering with shell-shock, and--_he never came
back again_. It doesn't matter, because the weather's so warm now that I
don't want him. But I'm sorry because you all gave him to me and it
looks as if I hadn't cared for him. But I did....
June 10th.
Sorry I couldn't finish this last week. Things developed rather
suddenly. I wish I could tell you _what_, but we mustn't let on what
happens, not even now, when it's done happening. Still, there are all
the other things I couldn't say anything about at the time.
If you _must_ know, I've been up "over the top" three times now since I
came out in February. So, you see, one gets through all right.
Well--I tried ages ago to tell Dorothy what it was like. It's been like
that every time (except that I've got over the queer funky feeling
half-way through). It'll be like that again next time, I know. Because
now I've tested it. And, Ronny--I couldn't tell Dorothy this, because
she'd think it was all rot--but when you're up first out of the trench
and stand alone on the parapet, it's absolute happiness. And the charge
is--well, it's simply heaven. It's as if you'd never really lived till
then; I certainly hadn't, not up to the top-notch, barring those three
days we had together.
That's why--this part's mostly for Michael--there's something rotten
about that poem he sent me that somebody wrote, making out that this
gorgeous fight-feeling (which is what I suppose he's trying for) is
nothing but a form of sex-madness. If he thinks that's all there is in
it, he doesn't know much about war, or love either. Though I'm bound to
say there's a clever chap in my battalion who thinks the same thing. He
says he feels the ecstasy, or whatever it is, all right, just the same
as I do; but that it's simply submerged savagery bobbing up to the
top--a hidden lust for killing, and the hidden memory of having killed,
he called it. He's always ashamed of it the next day, as if he had
been drunk.
And my Sergeant-Major, bless him, says there's nothing in it but "a
ration of rum." Can't be that in my case because I always give mine to a
funny chap who _knows_ he's going to have collywobbles as soon as he
gets out into the open.
But that isn't a bit what I mean. They're all wrong about it, because
they make it turn on killing, and not on your chance of being killed.
_That_--when you realize it--well, it's like the thing you told me about
that you said you thought must be God because it's so real. I didn't
understand it then, but I do now. You're bang up against reality--you're
going clean into it--and the sense of it's exquisite. Of course, while
one half of you is feeling like that, the other half is fighting to kill
and doing its best to keep on _this_ side reality. But I've been near
enough to the other side to know. And I wish Michael's friend would come
out and see what it's like for himself. Or, better still, Mick. _He_'d
write a poem about it that would make you sit up. It's a sin that I
should be getting all this splendid stuff when I can't do anything
with it.
Love to all of them and to your darling self.--Always your loving,
NICKY.
P.S.-I wish you'd try to get some notion of it into Dad and Dorothy and
Mother. It would save them half the misery they're probably
going through.
* * * * *
The gardener had gone to the War, and Veronica was in the garden,
weeding the delphinium border.
It was Sunday afternoon and she was alone there. Anthony was digging in
the kitchen garden, and Frances was with him, gathering green peas and
fruit for the hospital. Every now and then she came through the open
door on to the flagged path of the upper terrace with the piled up
baskets in her arms, and she smiled and nodded to Veronica.
It was quiet in the garden, so that, when her moment came, Veronica
could time it by the striking of the clock heard through the open
doorway of the house: four strokes; and the half-hour; and then, almost
on the stroke, her rush of pure, mysterious happiness.
Up till then she had been only tranquil; and her tranquillity made each
small act exquisite and delightful, as her fingers tugged at the weeds,
and shook the earth from their weak roots, and the palms of her hand
smoothed over the places where they had been. She thought of old Jean
and Suzanne, planting flowers in the garden at Renton, and of that
tranquillity of theirs that was the saddest thing she had ever seen.
And her happiness had come, almost on the stroke of the half-hour, not
out of herself or out of her thoughts, but mysteriously and from
somewhere a long way off.
* * * * *
She turned to nod and smile at Frances who was coming through the door
with her basket, and it was then that she saw Nicholas.
He stood on something that looked like a low wall, raised between her
and the ash-tree; he stood motionless, as if arrested in the act of
looking back to see if she were following him. His eyes shone, vivid and
blue, as they always shone when he was happy. He smiled at her, but
with no movement of his mouth. He shouted to her, but with no sound.
Everything was still; her body and her soul were still; her heart was
still; it beat steadily.
She had started forwards to go to him when the tree thrust itself
between them, and he was gone.
And Frances was still coming through the door as Veronica had seen her
when she turned. She was calling to her to come in out of the sun.
XXIV
The young men had gone--Morton Ellis, who had said he was damned if he'd
fight for his country; and Austin Mitchell who had said he hadn't got a
country; and Monier-Owen, who had said that England was not a country
you could fight for. George Wadham had gone long ago. That, Michael
said, was to be expected. Even a weak gust could sweep young Wadham off
his feet--and he had been fairly carried away. He could no more resist
the vortex of the War than he could resist the vortex of the arts.
Michael had two pitiful memories of the boy: one of young Wadham
swaggering into Stephen's room in uniform (the first time he had it on),
flushed and pleased with himself and talking excitedly about the "Great
Game"; and one of young Wadham returned from the Front, mature and hard,
not talking about the "Great Game" at all, and wincing palpably when
other people talked; a young Wadham who, they said, ought to be arrested
under the Defence of the Realm Act as a quencher of war-enthusiasms.
The others had gone later, one by one, each with his own gesture:
Mitchell and Monier-Owen when Stephen went; Ellis the day after
Stephen's death. It had taken Stephen's death to draw him.
Only Michael remained.
He told them they were mistaken if they thought their going would
inspire him to follow them. It, and Stephen's death, merely intensified
the bitterness he felt towards the War. He was more than ever determined
to keep himself pure from it, consecrated to his Forlorn Hope. If they
fell back, all the more reason why be should go on.
And, while he waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen's
work on the _Green Review_. Stephen had left it to him when he went out.
Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; but
gradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from the _Review_ and its place
was taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that was Michael's mind.
And Michael knew that he was beginning to make himself felt.
But Stephen's staff, such as it was, and nearly all his contributors had
gone to the War, one after another, and Michael found himself taking all
their places. He began to feel a strain, which he took to be the strain
of overwork, and he went down to Renton to recover.
That was on the Tuesday that followed Veronica's Sunday.
He thought that down there he would get away from everything that did
him harm: from his father's and mother's eyes; from his sister's proud,
cold face; and from his young brother's smile; and from Veronica's
beauty that saddened him; and from the sense of Nicky's danger that
brooded as a secret obsession over the house. He would fill up the awful
empty space. He thought: "For a whole fortnight I shall get away from
this infernal War."
But he did not get away from it. On every stage of the journey down he
encountered soldiers going to the Front. He walked in the Park at
Darlington between his trains, and wounded soldiers waited for him on
every seat, shuffled towards him round every turning, hobbled after him
on their crutches down every path. Their eyes looked at him with a
shrewd hostility. He saw the young Yorkshire recruits drinking in the
open spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising his
physique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and Réveillaud's, and
Stephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard.
* * * * *
At Reyburn Michael's train was switched off to a side platform in the
open. Before he left Darlington, a thin, light rain had begun to fall
from a shred of blown cloud; and at Reyburn the burst mass was coming
down. The place was full of the noise of rain. The drops tapped on the
open platform and hissed as the wind drove them in a running stream.
They drummed loudly on the station roof. But these sounds went out
suddenly, covered by the trampling of feet.
A band of Highlanders with their bagpipes marched into the station. They
lined up solemnly along the open platform with their backs to Michael's
train and their faces to the naked rails on the other side. Higher up
Michael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing,
towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof. He
could hear the clank of the coupling and the recoil. At that sound the
band had their mouths to their bagpipes and their fingers ready on the
stops. Two or three officers hurried down from the station doors and
stood ready.
The train came on slowly, packed with men; men who thrust their heads
and shoulders through the carriage windows, and knelt on the seats, and
stood straining over each other's backs to look out; men whose faces
were scarlet with excitement; men with open mouths shouting for joy.
The officers saluted as it passed. It halted at the open platform, and
suddenly the pipers began to play.
Michael got out of his train and watched.
Solemnly, in the grey evening of the rain, with their faces set in a
sort of stern esctasy, the Highlanders played to their comrades. Michael
did not know whether their tune was sad or gay. It poured itself into
one mournful, savage, sacred cry of salutation and valediction. When it
stopped the men shouted; there were voices that barked hoarsely and
broke; voices that roared; young voices that screamed, strung up by the
skirling of the bagpipes. The pipers played to them again.
And suddenly Michael was overcome. Pity shook him and grief and an
intolerable yearning, and shame. For one instant his soul rose up above
the music, and was made splendid and holy, the next he cowered under it,
stripped and beaten. He clenched his fists, hating this emotion that
stung him to tears and tore at his heart and at the hardness of
his mind.
As the troop-train moved slowly out of the station the pipers, piping
more and more shrilly, swung round and marched beside it to the end of
the platform. The band ceased abruptly, and the men answered with shout
after shout of violent joy; they reared up through the windows,
straining for the last look--and were gone.
Michael turned to the porter who lifted his luggage from the rack. "What
regiment are they?" he said.
"Camerons, sir. Going to the Front."
The clear, uncanny eyes of Veronica's father pursued him now.
* * * * *
At last he had got away from it.
In Rathdale, at any rate, there was peace. The hills and their pastures,
and the flat river fields were at peace. And in the villages of Morfe
and Renton there was peace; for as yet only a few men had gone from
them. The rest were tied to the land, and they were more absorbed in the
hay-harvest than in the War. Even the old Belgians in Veronica's cottage
were at peace. They had forgotten.
For three days Michael himself had peace.
He went up to Veronica's hill and sat on it; and thought how for
hundreds of miles, north, south, east and west of him, there was not a
soul whom he knew. In all his life he had never been more by himself.
This solitude of his had a singular effect on Michael's mind. So far
from having got away from the War he had never been more conscious of it
than he was now. What he had got away from was other people's
consciousness. From the beginning the thing that threatened him had
been, not the War but this collective war-spirit, clamouring for his
private soul.
For the first time since August, nineteen-fourteen, he found himself
thinking, in perfect freedom and with perfect lucidity, about the War.
He had really known, half the time, that it was the greatest War of
Independence that had ever been. As for his old hatred of the British
Empire, he had seen long ago that there was no such thing, in the
continental sense of Empire; there was a unique thing, the rule, more
good than bad, of an imperial people. He had seen that the strength of
the Allies was in exact proportion to the strength and the enlightenment
of their democracies. Reckoning by decades, there could be no deadlock
in the struggle; the deadlock meant a ten years' armistice and another
war. He could not help seeing these things. His objection to occupying
his mind with them had been that they were too easy.
Now that he could look at it by himself he saw how the War might take
hold of you like a religion. It was the Great War of Redemption. And
redemption meant simply thousands and millions of men in troop-ships and
troop-trains coming from the ends of the world to buy the freedom of the
world with their bodies. It meant that the very fields he was looking
over, and this beauty of the hills, those unused ramparts where no
batteries were hid, and the small, silent villages, Morfe and Renton,
were bought now with their bodies.
He wondered how at this moment any sane man could be a Pacifist. And,
wondering, he felt a reminiscent sting of grief and yearning. But he
refused, resolutely, to feel any shame.
His religion also was good; and, anyhow, you didn't choose your
religion; it chose you.
And on Saturday the letters came: John's letter enclosing the wire from
the War Office, and the letter that Nicky's Colonel had written
to Anthony.
Nicky was killed.
Michael took in the fact, and the date (it was last Sunday). There were
some official regrets, but they made no impression on him. John's letter
made no impression on him. Last Sunday Nicky was killed.
He had not even unfolded the Colonel's letter yet. The close black lines
showed through the thin paper. Their closeness repelled him. He did not
want to know how his brother had died; at least not yet. He was afraid
of the Colonel's letter. He felt that by simply not reading it he could
put off the unbearable turn of the screw.
He was shivering with cold. He drew up his chair to the wide, open
hearth-place where there was no fire; he held out his hands over it. The
wind swept down the chimney and made him colder; and he felt sick.
He had been sitting there about an hour when Suzanne came in and asked
him if he would like a little fire. He heard himself saying, "No, thank
you," in a hard voice. The idea of warmth and comfort was disagreeable
to him. Suzanne asked him then if he had had bad news? And he heard
himself saying: "Yes," and Suzanne trying, trying very gently, to
persuade him that it was perhaps only that Monsieur Nicky was wounded?
"No? _Then_," said the old woman, "he is killed." And she began to cry.
Michael couldn't stand that. He got up and opened the door into the
outer room, and she passed through before him, sobbing and whimpering.
Her voice came to him through the closed door in a sharp cry telling
Jean that Monsieur Nicky was dead, and Jean's voice came, hushing her.
Then he heard the feet of the old man shuffling across the kitchen
floor, and the outer door opening and shutting softly; and through the
windows at the back of the room, he saw, without heeding, as the
Belgians passed and went up into the fields together, weeping, leaving
him alone.
They had remembered.
It was then that Michael read the Colonel's letter, and learned the
manner of his brother's death: "... About a quarter past four o'clock in
the afternoon his battalion was being pressed back, when he rallied his
men and led them in as gallant an attack as was ever made by so small a
number in this War. He was standing on the enemy's parapet when he was
shot through the heart and fell. By a quarter to five the trench was
stormed and taken, owing to his personal daring and impetus and to the
affection and confidence he inspired.... We hear it continually said of
our officers and men that 'they're all the same,' and I daresay as far
as pluck goes they are. But, if I may say so, we all felt that your son
had something that we haven't got...."
* * * * *
Michael lay awake in the bed that had been his brother's marriage bed.
The low white ceiling sagged and bulged above him. For three nights the
room had been as if Nicky and Veronica had never gone from it. They had
compelled him to think of them. They had lain where he lay, falling
asleep in each other's arms.
The odd thing had been that his acute and vivid sense of them had in no
way troubled him. It had been simply there like some exquisite
atmosphere, intensifying his peace. He had had the same feeling he
always had when Veronica was with him. He had liked to lie with his head
on their pillow, to touch what they had touched, to look at the same
things in the same room, to go in and out through the same doors over
the same floors, remembering their hands and feet and eyes, and saying
to himself: "They did this and this"; or, "That must have pleased them."
It ought to have been torture to him; and he could not imagine why it
was not.
And now, on this fourth night, he had no longer that sense of Nicky and
Veronica together. The room had emptied itself of its own memory and
significance. He was aware of nothing but the bare, spiritual space
between him and Nicky. He lay contemplating it steadily and without
any horror.
He thought: "This ends it. Of course I shall go out now. I might have
known that this would end it. _He_ knew."
He remembered how Nicky had come to him in his room that night in
August. He could see himself sitting on the side of his bed,
half-dressed, and Nicky standing over him, talking.
Nicky had taken it for granted even then that he would go out some time.
He remembered how he had said, "Not yet."
He thought: "Of course; this must have been what he meant."
And presently he fell asleep, exhausted and at the same time appeased.
* * * * *
It was morning.
Michael's sleep dragged him down; it drowned and choked him as he
struggled to wake.
Something had happened. He would know what it was when he came clear out
of this drowning.
Now he remembered. Nicky was killed. Last Sunday. He knew that. But that
wasn't all of it. There was something else that followed on--
Suddenly his mind leaped on it. He was going out. He would be killed
too. And because he was going out, and because he would be killed, he
was not feeling Nicky's death so acutely as he should have thought he
would have felt it. He had been let off that.
He lay still a moment, looking at the thing he was going to do, feeling
a certain pleasure in its fitness. Drayton and Réveillaud and Lawrence
had gone out, and they had been killed. Ellis and Mitchell and
Monier-Owen were going out and they would certainly be killed. Wadham
had gone out and young Vereker, and they also would be killed.
Last Sunday it was Nicky. Now it must be he.
His mind acknowledged the rightness of the sequence without concern. It
was aware that his going depended on his own will. But never in all his
life had he brought so little imagination to the act of willing.
He got up, bathed in the river, dressed, and ate his breakfast. He
accepted each moment as it arrived, without imagination or concern.
Then his mother's letter came. Frances wrote, among other things: "I
know how terribly you will be feeling it, because I know how you cared
for him. I wish I could comfort you. We could not bear it, Michael, if
we were not so proud of him."
He answered this letter at once. He wrote: "I couldn't bear it either,
if I were not going out. But of course I'm going now."
As he signed himself, "Your loving Michael," he thought: "That settles
it." Yet, if he had considered what he meant by settling it he would
have told himself that he meant nothing; that last night had settled it;
that his resolution had been absolutely self-determined and absolutely
irrevocable then, and that his signature gave it no more sanctity or
finality than it had already. If he was conscript, he was conscript to
his own will.
He went out at once with his letter, though he knew that the post did
not leave Renton for another five hours.
It was the sliding of this light thing and its fall into the letter-box
that shook him into realization of what he had done and of what was
before him. He knew now why he was in such a hurry to write that letter
and to post it. By those two slight acts, not dreadful nor difficult in
themselves, he had put it out of his power to withdraw from the one
supremely difficult and dreadful act. A second ago, while the letter was
still in his hands, he could have backed out, because he had not given
any pledge. Now he would have to go through with it. And he saw clearly
for the first time what it was that he would have to go through.
He left the village and went up to Renton Moor and walked along the top
for miles, without knowing or caring where he went, and seeing nothing
before him but his own act and what must come afterwards. By to-morrow,
or the next day at the latest, he would have enlisted; by six months, at
the latest, three months if he had what they called "luck," he would be
in the trenches, fighting and killing, not because he chose, but because
he would be told to fight and kill. By the simple act of sending that
letter to his mother he was committed to the whole ghastly business.
And he funked it. There was no use lying to himself and saying that he
didn't funk it.
Even more than the actual fighting and killing, he funked looking on at
fighting and killing; as for being killed, he didn't think he would
really mind that so much. It would come--it must come--as a relief from
the horrors he would have to see before it came. Nicky had said that
they were unbelievable; he had seemed to think you couldn't imagine them
if you hadn't seen them. But Michael could. He had only to think of them
to see them now. He could make war-pictures for himself, in five
minutes, every bit as terrifying as the things they said happened under
fire. Any fool, if he chose to think about it, could see what must
happen. Only people didn't think. They rushed into it without seeing
anything; and then, if they were honest, they owned that they funked it,
before and during and afterwards and all the time.
Nicky didn't. But that was only because Nicky had something that the
others hadn't got; that he, Michael, hadn't. It was all very well to
say, as he had said last night: "This ends it"; or, as their phrase was,
"Everything goes in now." It was indeed, as far as he was concerned,
the end of beauty and of the making of beauty, and of everything worth
caring for; but it was also the beginning of a life that Michael dreaded
more than fighting and killing and being killed: a life of boredom, of
obscene ugliness, of revolting contacts, of intolerable subjection. For
of course he was going into the ranks as Nicky had gone. And already he
could feel the heat and pressure and vibration of male bodies packed
beside and around him on the floor; he could hear their breathing; he
could smell their fetid bedding, their dried sweat.
Of course he was going through with it; only--this was the thought his
mind turned round and round on in horror at itself--he funked it. He
funked it so badly that he would really rather die than go through with
it. When he was actually killed that would be his second death; months
before it could happen he would have known all about it; he would have
been dead and buried and alive again in hell.
What shocked Michael was his discovering, not that he funked it now,
which was natural, almost permissible, but that he had funked it all the
time. He could see now that, since the War began, he had been struggling
to keep out of it. His mind had fought every suggestion that he should
go in. It had run to cover, like a mad, frightened animal before the
thoughts that hunted it down. Funk, pure funk, had been at the bottom of
all he had said and thought and done since August, nineteen-fourteen;
his attitude to the War, his opinion of the Allies, and of the
Government and of its conduct of the War, all his wretched criticisms
and disparagements--what had they been but the very subterfuges
of funk?
His mother had known it; his father had known it; and Dorothy and John.
It was not conceivable that Nicky did not know it.
That was what had made the horror of the empty space that separated
them.
Lawrence Stephen had certainly known it.
He could not understand his not knowing it himself, not seeing that he
struggled. Yet he must have seen that Nicky's death would end it.
Anyhow, it _was_ ended; if not last night, then this morning when he
posted the letter.
But he was no longer appeased by this certainty of his. He was going out
all right. But merely going out was not enough. What counted was the
state of mind in which you went. Lawrence had said, "Victory--Victory is
a state of mind."
Well--it was a state that came naturally to Nicky, and did not come
naturally to him. It was all very well for Nicky: he had wanted to go.
He had gone out victorious before victory. Michael would go beaten
before defeat.
He thought: "If this is volunteering, give me compulsion." All the same
he was going.
All morning and afternoon, as he walked and walked, his thoughts went
the same round. And in the evening they began again, but on a new track.
He thought: "It's all very well to say I'm going; but how _can_ I go?"
He had Lawrence Stephen's work to do; Lawrence's Life and Letters were
in his hands. How could he possibly go and leave Lawrence dead and
forgotten? This view seemed to him to be sanity and common sense.
As his mind darted up this turning it was driven back. He saw Lawrence
Stephen smiling at him as he had smiled at him when Réveillaud died.
Lawrence would have wanted him to go more than anything. He would have
chosen to be dead and forgotten rather than keep him.
At night these thoughts left him. He began to think of Nicky and of his
people. His father and mother would never be happy again. Nicky had been
more to them than he was, or even John. He had been more to Dorothy. It
was hard on Dorothy to lose Nicky and Drayton too.
He thought of Nicky and Veronica. Poor little Ronny, what would she do
without Nicky? He thought of Veronica, sitting silent in the train, and
looking at him with her startling look of spiritual maturity. He thought
of Veronica singing to him over and over again:
"London Bridge is broken down--
* * * * *
"Build it up with gold so fine--
* * * * *
"Build it up with stones so strong--"
He thought of Veronica running about the house and crying, "Where's
Nicky? I want him."
Monday was like Sunday, except that he walked up Karva Hill in the
morning and up Greffington Edge in the afternoon, instead of Renton
Moor. Whichever way he went his thoughts went the same way as yesterday.
The images were, if anything, more crowded and more horrible; but they
had lost their hold. He was tired of looking at them.
About five o'clock he turned abruptly and went back to the village the
same way by which he came.
And as he swung down the hill road in sight of Renton, suddenly there
was a great clearance in his soul.
When he went into the cottage he found Veronica there waiting for him.
She sat with her hands lying in her lap, and she had the same look he
had seen when she was in the train.
"Ronny--"
She stood up to greet him, as if it had been she who was staying there
and he who had incredibly arrived.
"They told me you wouldn't be long," she said.
"I? You haven't come because you were ill or anything?"
She smiled and shook her head. "No. Not for anything like that."
"I didn't write, Ronny. I couldn't."
"I know." Their eyes met, measuring each other's grief. "That's why I
came. I couldn't bear to leave you to it."
* * * * *
"I'd have come before, Michael, if you'd wanted me."
They were sitting together now, on the settle by the hearth-place.
"I can't understand your being able to think of me," he said.
"Because of Nicky? If I haven't got Nicky it's all the more reason why I
should think of his people."
He looked up. "I say--how are they? Mother and Father?"
"They're very brave.
"It's worse for them than it is for me," she said. "What they can't bear
is your going."
"Mother got my letter, then?"
"Yes. This morning."
"What did she say?"
"She said: 'Oh, no. _Not_ Michael.'
"It was a good thing you wrote, though. Your letter made her cry. It
made even Dorothy cry. They hadn't been able to, before."
"I should have thought if they could stand Nicky's going--"
"That was different. They know it was different."
"Do you suppose _I_ don't know how different it was? They mean I funked
it and Nicky didn't."
"They mean that Nicky got what he wanted when he went, and that there
was nothing else he could have done so well, except flying, or
engineering."
"It comes to the same thing, Nicky simply wasn't afraid."
"Yes, Michael, he _was_ afraid."
"What _of_?"
"He was most awfully afraid of seeing suffering."
"Well, so am I. And I'm afraid of suffering myself too. I'm afraid of
the whole blessed thing from beginning to end."
"That's because you keep on seeing the whole blessed thing from
beginning to end. Nicky only saw little bits of it. The bits he liked.
Machine-guns working beautifully, and shells dropping in the right
places, and trenches being taken.
"And then, remember--Nicky hadn't so much to give up."
"He had you."
"Oh, no. He knew that was the way to keep me."
"Ronny--if Nicky had been like me could he have kept you?"
She considered it.
"Yes--if he could have been himself too."
"He couldn't, you see. He never could have felt like that."
"I don't say He could."
"Well--the awful thing is 'feeling like that.'"
"And the magnificent thing is 'feeling like that,' and going all the
same. Everybody knows that but you, Michael."
"Yes," he said. "I'm _going_. But I'm not going to lie about it and say
I don't funk it. Because I do."
"You don't _really_."
"I own I didn't the first night--the night I knew Nicky was killed.
Because I couldn't think of anything else _but_ Nicky.
"It was after I'd written to Mother that it came on. Because I knew then
I couldn't back out of it. That's what I can't get over--my having to do
that--to clinch it--because I was afraid."
"My dear, my dear, thousands of men do that every day for the same
reason, only they don't find themselves out; and if they did they
wouldn't care. You're finding yourself out all the time, and killing
yourself with caring."
"Of course I care. Can't you see it proves that I never meant to go at
all?"
"It proves that you knew you'd have to go through hell first and you
were determined that even hell shouldn't keep you back."
"Ronny--that's what it _has_ been. Simply hell. It's been inconceivable.
Nothing--absolutely nothing out there could be as bad. It went on all
yesterday and to-day--till you came."
"I know, Michael. That's why I came."
"To get me out of it?"
"To get you out of it.
"It's all over," she said.
"It may come back--out there."
"It won't. Out there you'll be happy. I saw Nicky on Sunday--the minute
before he was killed, Michael. And he was happy."
"He would be." He was silent for a long time.
"Ronny. Did Nicky know I funked it?"
"Never! He knew you wouldn't keep out. All he minded was your missing
any of it."
She got up and put on her hat. "I must go. It's getting late. Will you
walk up to Morfe with me? I'm sleeping there. In the hotel."
"No, I say--I'm not going to let you turn out for me. _I_'ll sleep at
the hotel."
She smiled at him with a sort of wonder, as if she thought: "Has he
forgotten, so soon?" And he remembered.
"I can't stop here," she said. "That would be more than even _I_ can
bear."
He thought: "She's gone through hell herself, to get me out of it."
May, 1916.
B.E.F., FRANCE.
DEAREST MOTHER AND FATHER,--Yes, "Captain," please. (I can hardly
believe it myself, but it is so.) It was thundering good luck getting
into dear old Nicky's regiment. The whole thing's incredible. But
promotion's nothing. Everybody's getting it like lightning now. You're
no sooner striped than you're starred.
I'm glad I resisted the Adjutant and worked up from the ranks. I own it
was a bit beastly at the time--quite as beastly as Nicky said it would
be; but it was worth while going through with it, especially living in
the trenches as a Tommy. There's nothing like it for making you know
your men. You can tell exactly what's going to bother them, and what
isn't. You've got your finger on the pulse of their morale--not that
it's jumpier than yours; it isn't--and their knowing that they haven't
got to stand anything that you haven't stood gives you no end of a pull.
Honestly, I don't believe I could have faced them if it wasn't for that.
So that _your_ morale's the better for it as well as theirs. You know,
if you're shot down this minute it won't matter. The weediest Tommy in
your Company can "carry on."
_We_'re a funny crowd in my billet all risen from the ranks except my
Senior. John would love us. There's a chap who writes short stories and
goes out very earnestly among the corpses to find copy; and there's
another who was in the publishing business and harks back to it, now and
then, in a dreamy nostalgic way, and rather as if he wanted to rub it
into us writing chaps what he _could_ do for us, only he wouldn't; and
there's a tailor who swears he could tell a mile off where my tunic came
from; and a lawyer's clerk who sticks his cigarette behind his ear. (We
used to wonder what he'd do with his revolver till we saw what he did
with it.) They all love thinking of what they've been and telling you
about it. I almost wish I'd gone into Daddy's business. Then perhaps I'd
know what it feels like to go straight out of a shop or an office into
the most glorious Army in history.
I forgot the Jew pawnbroker at least we _think_ he's a pawnbroker--who's
always inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last idea
was machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly as
a machine-gun takes in bullets. He says "You'll see them in the next
War." When you ask him how he's going to transport and emplace and hide
his machine-howitzers, he looks dejected, and says "I never thought of
_that_," and has another idea at once, even more impossible.
That reminds me. I've seen the "Tanks" (Nicky's Moving Fortresses) in
action. I'd give my promotion if only he could have seen them too. We
mustn't call them Fortresses any more--they're most violently for
attack. As far as I can make out Nicky's and Drayton's thing was
something between these and the French ones; otherwise one might have
wondered whether their plans and models really did go where John says
they did! I wish I could believe that Nicky and Drayton really _had_ had
a hand in it.
I'm most awfully grieved to hear that young Vereker's reported missing.
Do you remember how excited he used to be dashing about the lawn at
tennis, and how Alice Lathom used to sit and look at him, and jump if
you brought her her tea too suddenly? Let's hope we'll have finished up
this damned War before they get little Norris.
Love to Dorothy and Don and Ronny.--Your loving, MICK.
When Frances read that letter she said, "I wonder if he really is all
right. He says very little about himself."
And Anthony said, "Then you may be sure he is."
May 31st, 1916.
B.E.F., FRANCE.
MY DEAR RONNY,--I'm glad Mummy and Father have got all my letters. They
won't mind my writing to you this time. It really _is_ your turn now.
Thanks for Wadham's "Poems" (I wish they'd been Ellis's). It's a shame
to laugh at Waddy--but--he _has_ spread himself over Flanders, hasn't
he? Like the inundations round Ypres.
I'm most awfully touched at Dad and Mummy wanting to publish mine. Here
they all are--just as I wrote them, in our billet, at night or in the
early morning, when the others were sleeping and I wasn't. I don't know
whether they're bad or good; I haven't had time to think about them. It
all seems so incredibly far away. Even last week seems far away. You go
on so fast here.
I'd like Ellis and Monier-Owen to see them and to weed out the bad ones.
But you mustn't ask them to do anything. They haven't time, either. I
think you and Dorothy and Dad will manage it all right among you. If you
don't I shan't much care.
Of course I'm glad that they've taken you on at the Hampstead Hospital,
if it makes you happier to nurse. And I'm glad Dad put his foot down on
your going to Vera. She gave you up to my people and she can't take you
back now. I'm sorry for her though; so is he.
Have I had any adventures "by myself"? Only two. (I've given up what
Mother calls my "not wanting to go to the party.") One came off in "No
Man's Land" the other night. I went out with a "party" and came back by
myself--unless you count a damaged Tommy hanging on to me. It began in
pleasurable excitement and ended in some perturbation, for I had to get
him in under cover somehow, and my responsibility weighed on me--so did
he. The other was ages ago in a German trench. I was by myself, because
I'd gone in too quick, and the "party" behind me took the wrong turning.
I did manage to squeeze a chilly excitement out of going on alone. Then
I bumped up against a fat German officer and his revolver. That really
was an exquisite moment, and I was beast enough to be glad I had it all
to myself. It meant a bag of fifteen prisoners--all my own. But that was
nothing; they'd have surrendered to a mouse. There was no reason why
they shouldn't, because I'd fired first and there was no more officer to
play up to.
But the things you don't do by yourself are a long way the best.
Nothing--not even poetry--can beat an infantry charge when you're
leading it. That's because of your men. It feels as if you were drawing
them all up after you. Of course you aren't. They're coming on their
own, and you're simply nothing, only a little unimportant part of
them--even when you're feeling as if you were God Almighty.
I'm afraid it _does_ look awfully as if young Vereker were killed. They
may hear, you know, in some roundabout way--through the Red Cross, or
some of his men. I've written to them.
Love to everybody. Certainly you may kiss Nanna for me, if she'd like
it. I wish I liked Waddy more--when you've given him to me.--Always your
affectionate,
MICHAEL.
P.S.--I don't sound pleased about the publication; but I am. I can't get
over their wanting to do it. I thought they didn't care.
Ronny--I've been such a beast to them--when Father tried to read my
stuff--bless him!--and couldn't, I used to wish to God he'd leave it
alone. And now I'd give anything to see his dear old paws hanging on to
it and twitching with fright, and his eyes slewing round to see if I'm
looking at him.
June 14th, 1916.
B.E.F., FRANCE.
MY DEAR RONNY,--I'm glad you like them, and I'm glad Father thinks he
"understands Michael's poems" this time, and I'm glad they've made
Mother and Dorothy feel happier about me--BUT--they must get it out of
their heads that they're my "message," or any putrescent thing of that
sort. The bare idea of writing a message, or of being supposed to write
a message, makes me sick. I know it's beastly of me, but, really I'd
rather they weren't published at all, if there's the smallest chance of
their being taken that way.
But if Ellis is doing the introduction there isn't the smallest chance.
Thank God for Ellis.
There--I've let off all my beastliness.
And now I'll try to answer your letter. Yes; the "ecstasy" in the last
two poems _is_ Nicky's ecstasy. And as Ellis says it strikes him as
absolutely real, I take it that some of Nicky's "reality" has got
through. It's hard on Ellis that he has to take _his_ ecstasy from me,
instead of coming out and getting it for himself.
But you and Nicky and Lawrence are right. It _is_ absolutely real. I
mean it has to do with absolute reality. With God. It hasn't anything to
do with having courage, or not having courage; it's another state of
mind altogether. It isn't what Nicky's man said it was--you're not
ashamed of it the next day. It isn't excitement; you're not excited. It
isn't a tingling of your nerves; they don't tingle. It's all curiously
quiet and steady. You remember when you saw Nicky--how everything stood
still? And how two times were going on, and you and Nicky were in one
time, and Mother was in the other? Well--it's like that. Your body and
its nerves aren't in it at all. Your body may be moving violently, with
other bodies moving violently round it; but _you_'re still.
But suppose it is your nerves. Why should they tingle at just that
particular moment, the moment that makes _animals_ afraid? Why should
you be so extraordinarily happy? Why should the moment of extreme danger
be always the "exquisite" moment? Why not the moment of safety?
Doesn't it look as if danger were the point of contact with reality, and
death the closest point? You're through. Actually you lay hold on
eternal life, and you know it.
Another thing--it always comes with that little shock of recognition.
It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what it
is. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. You
may lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was.
Nicky knew.
* * * * *
June 19th.
I'm coming back to it--after that interruption--because I want to get
the thing clear. I have to put it down as I feel it; there's no other
way. But they mustn't think it's something that only Lawrence and Nicky
and I feel. The men feel it too, even when they don't know what it is.
And some of them _do_ know.
Of course we shall be accused of glorifying War and telling lies about
it. Well--there's a Frenchman who has told the truth, piling up all the
horrors, faithfully, remorselessly, magnificently. But he seems to think
people oughtn't to write about this War at all unless they show up the
infamy of it, as a deterrent, so that no Government can ever start
another one. It's a sort of literary "frightfulness." But who is he
trying to frighten? Does he imagine that France, or England, or Russia
or Belgium, or Serbia, will want to start another war when this is over?
And does he suppose that Germany--if we don't beat her--will be deterred
by his frightfulness? Germany's arrogance will be satisfied when she
knows she's made a Frenchman feel like that about it.
He's got his truth all right. As Morrie would say: "That's War." But a
peaceful earthquake can do much the same thing. And if _our_ truth--what
_we_'ve seen--isn't War, at any rate it's what we've got out of it, it's
our "glory," our spiritual compensation for the physical torture, and
there would be a sort of infamy in trying to take it from us. It isn't
the French Government, or the British that's fighting Germany; it's
we--all of us. To insist on the world remembering nothing but these
horrors is as if men up to their knees in the filth they're clearing
away should complain of each other for standing in it and splashing
it about.
The filth of War--and the physical torture--Good God! As if the world
was likely to forget it. Any more than we're likely to forget what
_we_ know.
You remember because you've known it before and it all hangs together.
It's not as if danger were the only point of contact with reality. You
get the same ecstasy, the same shock of recognition, and the same utter
satisfaction when you see a beautiful thing. At least to me it's like
that. You know what Nicky thought it was like. You know what it was like
when you used to sit looking and looking at Mother's "tree of Heaven."
It's odd, Ronny, to have gone all your life trying to get reality,
trying to get new beauty, trying to get utter satisfaction; to have
funked coming out here because you thought it was all obscene ugliness
and waste and frustration, and then to come out, and to find what
you wanted.
* * * * *
June 25th.
I wrote all that, while I could, because I want to make them see it.
It's horrible that Dorothy should think that Drayton's dead and that
Mother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if they
really knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believe
Nicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about it
because they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only gassing,
or "making poetry"--as if poetry wasn't the most real thing there is!
If anybody can make them see it, you can.--Always your affectionate,
MICHAEL.
XXV
Anthony was going into the house to take back the key of the workshop.
He had locked the door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death,
and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchard
he had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he had
thought that he would like to make new ones, and the wood was in
the workshop.
Everything in there was as it had been when Nicky finished with his
Moving Fortress. The brass and steel filings lay in a heap under the
lathe, the handle was tilted at the point where he had left it; pits in
the saw-dust showed where his feet had stood. His overalls hung over the
bench where he had slipped them off.
Anthony had sat down on the bench and had looked at these things with
remembrance and foreboding. He thought of Nicky and of Nicky's pleasure
and excitement over the unpacking of his first lathe--the one he had
begged for for his birthday--and of his own pleasure and excitement as
he watched his boy handling it and showing him so cleverly how it
worked. It stood there still in the corner. Nicky had given it to
Veronica. He had taught her how to use it. And Anthony thought of
Veronica when she was little; he saw Nicky taking care of her, teaching
her to run and ride and play games. And he remembered what Veronica's
mother had said to him and Frances: "Wait till Nicky has children of
his own."
He thought of John. John had volunteered three times and had been three
times rejected. And now conscription had got him. He had to appear
before the Board of Examiners that afternoon. He might be rejected
again. But the standard was not so exacting as it had been--John
might be taken.
He thought of his business--John's business and his, and Bartie's. Those
big Government contracts had more than saved them. They were making tons
of money out of the War. Even when the Government cut down their
profits; even when they had given more than half they made to the War
funds, the fact remained that they were living on the War. Bartie,
without a wife or children, was appallingly rich.
If John were taken. If John were killed--
If Michael died--
Michael had been reported seriously wounded.
He had thought then of Michael. And he had not been able to bear
thinking any more. He had got up and left the workshop, locking the door
behind him, forgetting what he had gone in for; and he had taken the key
back to the house. He kept it in what his children used to call the
secret drawer of his bureau. It lay there with Nicky's last letter of
June, 1915, and a slab of coromandel wood.
It was when he was going into the house with the key that John met him.
"Have they taken you?"
"Yes."
John's face was hard and white. They went together into Anthony's room.
"It's what you wanted," Anthony said.
"Of course it's what I wanted. I want it more than ever now.
"The wire's come, Father. Mother opened it."
* * * * *
It was five days now since they had heard that Michael had died of his
wounds. Frances was in Michael's room. She was waiting for Dorothea and
Veronica to help her to find his papers. It was eight o'clock in the
evening, and they had to be sorted and laid out ready for Morton Ellis
to look over them to-morrow. To-morrow Morton Ellis would come, and he
would take them away.
The doors of Michael's and of Nicky's rooms were always kept shut;
Frances knew that, if she were to open the door on the other side of the
corridor and look in, every thing in Nicky's room would welcome her with
tenderness even while it inflicted its unique and separate wound. But
Michael's room was bare and silent. He had cleared everything away out
of her sight last year before he went. The very books on the shelves
repudiated her; reminded her that she had never understood him, that he
had always escaped her. His room kept his secret, and she felt afraid
and abashed in it, knowing herself an intruder. Presently all that was
most precious in it would be taken from her and given over to a stranger
whom he had never liked.
Her mind turned and fastened on one object--the stiff, naked wooden
chair standing in its place before the oak table by the window. She
remembered how she had come to Michael there and found him writing at
his table, and how she had talked to him as though he had been a shirker
and a coward.
She had borne Nicky's death. But she could not bear Michael's. She stood
there in his room, staring, hypnotized by her memory. She heard Dorothea
come in and go out again. And then Veronica came in.
She turned to Veronica to help her.
She clung to Veronica and was jealous of her. Veronica had not come
between her and Nicky as long as he was alive, but now that he was dead
she came between them. She came between her and Michael too. Michael's
mind had always been beyond her; she could only reach it through
Veronica and through Veronica's secret. Her mind clutched at Veronica's
secret, and flung it away as useless, and returned, clutching at
it again.
It was as if Veronica held the souls of Michael and Nicholas in her
hands. She offered her the souls of her dead sons. She was the mediator
between her and their souls.
"I could bear it, Veronica, if I hadn't made him go. I came to him,
here, in this room, and bullied him till he went. I said horrible things
to him--that he must have remembered.
"He wasn't like Nicky--it was infinitely worse for him. And I was cruel
to him. I had no pity. I drove him out--to be killed.
"And I simply cannot bear it."
"But--he didn't go then. He waited till--till he was free. If anybody
could have made him, Nicky could. But it wasn't even Nicky. It was
himself."
"If he'd been killed as Nicky was--but to die like that, in the
hospital--of those horrible wounds."
"He was leading a charge, just as Nicky was. And you know he was happy,
just as Nicky was. Every line he's written shows that he was happy."
"It only shows that they were both full of life, that they loved their
life and wanted to live.
"It's no use, Ronny, you're saying you know they're there. I don't. I'd
give anything to believe it. And yet it wouldn't be a bit of good if I
did. I don't _want_ them all changed into something spiritual that I
shouldn't know if it was there. I want their bodies with me just as they
used to be. I want to hear them and touch them, and see them come in in
their old clothes.
"To see Nicky standing on the hearthrug with Timmy in his arms. I want
things like that, Ronny. Even if you're right, it's all clean gone."
Her lips tightened.
"I'm talking as if I was, the only one. But I know it's worse for you,
Ronny. I _had_ them all those years. And I've got Anthony. You've had
nothing but your poor three days."
Veronica thought: "How can I tell her that I've got more than she
thinks? It's awful that I should have what she hasn't." She was ashamed
and beaten before this irreparable, mortal grief.
"And it's worse," Frances said, "for the wretched mothers whose sons
haven't fought."
For her pride rose in her again--the pride that uplifted her
supernaturally when Nicky died.
"You mustn't think I grudge them. I don't. I don't even grudge John."
The silence of Michael's room sank into them, it weighed on their hearts
and they were afraid of each other's voices. Frances was glad when
Dorothy came and they could begin their work there.
But Michael had not left them much to do. They found his papers all in
one drawer of his writing-table, sorted and packed and labelled, ready
for Morton Ellis to take away. One sealed envelope lay in a place by
itself. Frances thought: "He didn't want any of us to touch his things."
Then she saw Veronica's name on the sealed envelope. She was glad when
Veronica left them and went to her hospital.
And when she was gone she wanted her back again.
"I wish I hadn't spoken that way to Veronica," she said.
"She won't mind. She knows you couldn't help it."
"I could, Dorothy, if I wasn't jealous of her. I mean I'm jealous of her
certainty. If I had it, too, I shouldn't be jealous."
"She wants you to have it. She's trying to give it you.
"Mother--how do we know she isn't right? Nicky said she was. And Michael
said Nicky was right.
"If it had been only Nicky--_he_ might have got it from Veronica. But
Michael never got things from anybody. And you _do_ know things in queer
ways. Even I do. At least I did once--when I was in prison. I knew
something tremendous was going to happen. I saw it, or felt it, or
something. I won't swear I knew it was the War. I don't suppose I did.
But I knew Frank was all mixed up with it. And it was the most awfully
real thing. You couldn't go back on it, or get behind it. It was as if
I'd seen that he and Lawrence and Nicky and Michael and all of them
would die in it to save the whole world. Like Christ, only that they
really _did_ die and the whole world _was_ saved. There was nothing
futile about it."
"Well--?"
"Well, _they_ might see their real thing the same way--in a flash.
Aren't they a thousand times more likely to know than we are? What right
have we--sitting here safe--to say it isn't when they say it is?"
"But--if there's anything in it--why can't I see it as well as you and
Veronica? After all, I'm their mother."
"Perhaps that's why it takes you longer, Mummy. You think of their
bodies more than we do, because they were part of your body. Their
souls, or whatever it is, aren't as real to you just at first."
"I see," said Frances, bitterly. "You've only got to be a mother, and
give your children your flesh and blood, to be sure of their souls going
from you and somebody else getting them."
"That's the price you pay for being mothers."
"Was Frank's soul ever more real to _you_, Dorothy?"
"Yes. It was once--for just one minute. The night he went away. That's
another queer thing that happened."
"It didn't satisfy you, darling, did it?"
"Of course it didn't satisfy me. I want more and more of it. Not just
flashes."
"You say it's the price we pay for being mothers. Yet if Veronica had
had a child--"
"You needn't be so sorry for Veronica."
"I'm not. It's you I'm sorriest for. You've had nothing. From beginning
to end you had nothing.
"I might at least have seen that you had it in the beginning."
"_You_, Mummy?"
"Yes. Me. You _shall_ have it now. Unless you want to leave me."
"I wouldn't leave you for the world, Mummy ducky. Only you must let me
work always and all the time."
"Let you? I'll let you do what you like, my dear."
"You always have let me, haven't you?"
"It was the least I could do."
"Poor Mummy, did you think you had to make up because you cared for them
more than me?"
"I wonder," said Frances, thoughtfully, "if I did."
"Of course. Of course you did. Who wouldn't?"
"I never meant you to know it, Dorothy."
"Of course I knew it. I must have known it ever since Michael was born.
I knew you couldn't help it. You had to. Even when I was a tiresome kid
I knew you had to. It was natural."
"Natural or unnatural, many girls have hated their mothers for less.
You've been very big and generous.
"Perhaps--if you'd been little and weak--but you were always such an
independent thing. I used to think you didn't want me."
"I wanted you a lot more than you thought. But, you see, I've learned to
do without."
She thought: "It's better she should have it straight."
"If you'd think less about me, Mother," she said, "and more about
Father--"
"Father?"
"Yes. Father isn't independent--though he looks it. He wants you
awfully. He always has wanted you. And he hasn't learned to do without."
"Where is he?"
"He's sitting out there in the garden, all by himself, in the dark,
under the tree."
Frances went to him there.
"I wondered whether you would come to me," he said.
"I was doing something for Michael."
"Is it done?"
"Yes. It's done."
* * * * *
Five months passed. It was November now.
In the lane by the side door, Anthony was waiting in his car. Rain was
falling, hanging from the trees and falling. Every now and then he
looked at his watch.
He had still a quarter of an hour before he need start. But he was not
going back into the house. They were all in there saying good-bye to
John: old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith. And Maurice.
And his brother Bartie.
The door in the garden wall opened and they came out: the four women in
black--the black they still wore for Michael--and the two men.
They all walked slowly up the lane. Anthony could see Bartie's shoulders
hunched irritably against the rain. He could see Morrie carrying his
sodden, quivering body with care and an exaggerated sobriety. He saw
Grannie, going slowly, under the umbrella, very upright and conscious of
herself as wonderful and outlasting.
He got down and cranked up his engine.
Then he sat sternly in his car and waited, with his hands on the
steering-wheel, ready.
The engine throbbed, impatient for the start.
John came out very quickly and took his seat beside his father. And the
car went slowly towards the high road.
Uncle Morrie stood waiting for it by the gate at the top of the lane. As
it passed through he straightened himself and put up his hand in a
crapulous salute.
The young man smiled at him, saluted, and was gone