It was Saturday, the tenth of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp.
The Germans were pressing closer round Ghent; they might march in any
day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years; she had lived a hundred
years under this doom.
But at last she was free of John. Utterly free. His mind would have no
power over her any more. Nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not
been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it
couldn't get away? The struggle had been hard enough when her first flash
came to her; and when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it,
unable to face the truth that did violence to her passion; and when she
had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and
it had hurt her to look at him.
Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow she would get through
to-day without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do
anything awful; he had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition,
taking medical stores to the convent hospital at Bruges and convoying
Gurney, the sick chauffeur, to Ostend for England. Charlotte was to go
out with Sutton, and Gwinnie was to take poor Gurney's place. She was
glad she was going with Billy. Whatever happened Billy would go through
it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work.
And John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom,
talking of death. _His_ death.
They were looking over the last letter from his father which he had asked
her to answer for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were
he would be killed and had asked him whether in this case he would allow
the Roden ambulances to be handed over to McClane. And the old man had
given his consent.
"Isn't it a pity to frighten him?" she said.
"He's no business to be frightened. It's _my_ death. If I can face it, he
can. I'm simply making necessary arrangements."
She could see that. At the same time it struck her that he wanted you to
see that he exposed himself to all the risks of death, to see how he
faced it. She had no patience with that talk about death; that pitiful
bolstering up of his romance.
"If McClane says much more you can tell him."
He was counting on this transfer of the ambulances to get credit with
McClane; to silence him.
There were other letters which he had told her to answer. As soon as he
had started she went into his room to look for them. If they were not on
the chimneypiece they would be in the drawer with his razors and
pockethandkerchiefs.
It was John's room, after she had gone through it, that showed her what
he was doing.
Sutton looked in before she had finished. She called to him, "Billy, you
might come here a minute."
He came in, eyebrows lifted at the inquisition.
"What's up?"
"I'm afraid John isn't coming back."
"Not coming back? Of course he's coming back."
"No. I think he's--got off."
"You mean he's--"
"Yes. Bolted."
"What on earth makes you think that?"
"He's taken all sorts of things--pyjamas, razors, all his
pockethandkerchiefs... I _had_ to look through his drawers to find those
letters he told me to answer."
Sutton had gone through into the slip of white tiled lavatory beyond. She
followed him.
"My God," he said, "yes. He's taken his toothbrush and his sleeping
draught.... You know he tried to get leave yesterday and they wouldn't
give it him?"
"No. That makes it simply awful."
"Pretty awful."
"Billy--we must get him back."
"I--I don't know about that. He isn't much good, is he? I think we'd
better let him go."
"Don't you see how awful it'll be for the Corps?"
"The Corps? Does that matter? McClane would take us all on to-morrow."
"I mean for _us_. You and me and Gwinnie. He's our Corps, and we're it."
"Sharlie--with the Germans coming into Ghent do you honestly believe
anybody'll remember what he did or didn't do?"
"Yes. We're going to stick on with the Belgian Army. It'll be remembered
against _us_. Besides, it'll kill his father."
"He'll do that any way. He's rotten through and through."
"No. He was splendid in the beginning. He might be splendid some day
again. But if we let him go off and do this he's done for."
"He's done for anyhow. Isn't it better to recognize that he's rotten?
McClane wouldn't have him. He saw what he was."
"He didn't see him at Berlaere. He _was_ splendid there."
"My dear child, don't you know why? He didn't see there was any danger.
He was too stupid to see it."
"I saw it."
"You're not stupid."
"He did see it at the end."
"At the end, yes--When he let you go back for the guns."
She remembered. She remembered his face, the little beads of sweat
glittering. He couldn't help that.
"Look here, from the time he realised the danger, did he go out or did he
stay under cover?"
She didn't answer.
"There," he said, "you see."
"Oh, Billy, won't you leave him one shred?"
"No. Not one shred."
Yet, even now, if he could only be splendid--If he could only be it! Why
shouldn't Billy leave him one shred? After all, he didn't know all the
awful things John had done; and she would never tell him.... He did know
two things, the two things she didn't know. She had got to know them. The
desire that urged her to the completion of her knowledge pursued her now.
She would possess him in her mind if in no other way.
"Billy--do you remember that day at Melle, when John lost me? Did you
tell him I was going back with you?"
"No. I didn't."
Then he _had_ left her. And he had lied to both of them.
"Was the boy dead or alive when he left him?"
"He was alive all right. We could have saved him."
He had died--he had died of fright, then.
"You _said_ he was dead."
"I know I did. I lied."
"... And before that--when he was with you and Trixie on that
battlefield--Did he--"
"Yes. Then, too ... You see there aren't any shreds. The only thing you
can say is he can't help it. Nobody'd have been hard on him if he hadn't
gassed so much about danger."
"That's the part you can't understand.... But, Billy, why did you lie
about him?"
"Because I didn't want you to know, then. I knew it would hurt you, I
knew it would hurt you more than anything else."
"That was rather wonderful of you."
"Wasn't wonderful at all. I knew because what _you_ think, what _you_
feel, matters more to me than anything else. Except perhaps my job. I
have to keep that separate."
Her mind slid over that, not caring, returning to the object of
its interest.
"Look here, Billy, you may be right. It probably doesn't matter to us.
But it'll be perfectly awful for him."
"They can't do anything to him, Sharlie."
"It's what he'll do to himself."
"Suicide? Not he."
"I don't mean that. Can't you see that when he gets away to England,
safe, and the funk settles down he'll start romancing all over again.
He'll see the whole war again like that; and then he'll remember what
he's done. He'll have to live all his life remembering...."
"He won't. _You'll_ remember--_You'll_ suffer. You're feeling the shame
he ought to feel and doesn't."
"Well, somebody's got to feel it.... And he'll feel it too. He won't be
let off. As long as he lives he'll remember.... I don't want him to have
that suffering."
"He's brought it on himself, Sharlie."
"I don't care. I don't want him to have it. I couldn't bear it if he
got away."
"Of course, if you're going to be unhappy about it--"
"The only thing is, can we go after him? Can we spare a car?"
"Well yes, I can manage that all right. The fact is, the Germans may
really be in to-morrow or Monday, and we're thinking of evacuating all
the British wounded to-day. There are some men here that we ought to take
to Ostend. I've been talking to the President about it."
And in the end they went with their wounded, less than an hour after John
had started.
"I don't say I'll bring him back," said Sutton. "But at any rate we can
find out what he's up to." He meditated.... "We mayn't have to bring him.
I shouldn't wonder if he came back on his own. He's like that. He can't
stand danger yet he keeps on coming back to it. Can't leave it alone."
"I know. He isn't quite an ordinary coward."
"I'm not sure. I've known chaps like that. Can't keep away from
the thing."
But she stuck to it. John's cowardice was not like other people's
cowardice. Other cowards going into danger had the imagination of horror.
He had nothing but the imagination of romantic delight. It was the
reality that became too much for him. He was either too stupid, or too
securely wrapped up in his dream to reckon with reality. It surprised him
every time. And he had no imaginative fear of fear. His fear must have
surprised him.
"He'll have got away from Bruges," she said.
"I don't think so. He'll have to put up at the Convent for a bit, to let
Gurney rest."
They had missed the Convent and were running down a narrow street towards
the Market Place when they found John. He came on across a white bridge
over a canal at the bottom. He was escorted by some Belgian women,
dressed in black; they were talking and pointing up the street.
He said he had been to lunch in the town and had lost himself there and
they were showing him the way back to the Convent.
She had seen all that before somewhere, John coming over the Canal bridge
with the women in black.... She remembered. That was in one of her three
dreams. Only what she saw now was incomplete. There had been something
more in the dream. Something had happened.
It happened half an hour later when she went out to find John in the
Convent garden where he was walking with the nuns. The garden shimmered
in a silver mist from the canal, the broad grass plots, the clipped
hedges, the cones and spikes of yew, the tall, feathery chrysanthemums,
the trailing bowers and arches, were netted and laced and webbed with the
silver mist. Down at the bottom of the path the forms of John and the
three women showed blurred and insubstantial and still.
Presently they emerged, solid and clear; the nuns in their black habits
and the raking white caps like wings that set them sailing along. They
were showing John their garden, taking a shy, gentle, absorbed
possession of him.
And as she came towards him John passed her without speaking. But his
face had turned to her with the look she had seen before. Eyes of hatred,
eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.
The nuns had stopped, courteously, to greet her; she fell behind with one
of them; the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up
his stiff, repudiating air.
The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed. Only in the
dream it had hurt her, and now she was hard and had no pain.
* * * * *
It was in the Convent garden that they played it out, in one final,
astounding conversation.
The nuns had brought two chairs out on to the flagged terrace and set a
small table there covered with a white cloth. Thus invited, John had no
choice but to take his place beside her. Still he retained his mood.
(The nuns had left them. Sutton was in one of the wards, helping with an
operation.)
"I thought," he said, "that I was going to have peace...."
It seemed to her that they had peace. They had been so much at the mercy
of chance moments that this secure hour given to them in the closed
garden seemed, in its quietness, immense.
"... But first it's Sutton, then it's you."
"We needn't say anything unless you like. There isn't much to be said."
"Oh, isn't there!"
"Not," she said, "if you're coming back."
"Of course I'm coming back.... Look here, Charlotte. You didn't suppose I
was really going to bolt, did you?"
"Were you going to change into your pyjamas at Ostend?"
"My pyjamas? I brought them for Gurney."
"And your sleeping draught was for Gurney?"
"Of course it was."
"And your razors and your toothbrush, too. Oh, John, what's the good of
lying? You forgot that I helped Alice Bartrum to pack Gurney's things.
You forget that Billy knows."
"Do I? I shan't forget your going back on me; your betraying me," he
said.
And for the first time she realised how alone he was; how horribly alone.
He had nobody but her.
"Who have I betrayed you to?"
"To Sutton. To McClane. To everybody you talked to."
"No. No."
"Yes. And you betrayed me in your thoughts. That's worse. People don't
always mean what they say. It's what they think."
"What was I to think?"
"Why, that all the damnable things you said about me weren't true."
"I didn't say anything."
"You've betrayed me by the things you didn't say."
"Why should I have betrayed you?"
"You know why. When a woman betrays a man it's always for one reason."
He threw his head back to strike at her with his eyes, hard and keen,
dark blue like the blade of a new knife ... "Because he hasn't given her
what she wants."
"Oh, what I want--I thought we'd settled that long ago."
"You've never settled it. It isn't in you to settle it."
"I can't talk to you about that. You're too horrible. But I didn't
betray you."
"You listened to people who betrayed me. If you cared for me in any
decent way you'd have stood by me."
"I _have_ stood by you through thick and thin. I've lied your lies. There
isn't one of your lies I haven't backed. I've done everything I could
think of to keep people from knowing about you."
"Yet you go and tell Sutton that I've bolted. That I'm a deserter."
"Yes, when it was all over. If you'd got away everybody'd have known. As
it is, only Billy and I know; and he's safe."
"You insist that I was trying to get away? I own I thought of it. But one
doesn't do everything one thinks of.... No.... Don't imagine I was sick
of the war, or sick of Belgium. It's you I'm sick of."
"Me?"
"Yes, you. You had your warning. I told you what would happen if you let
me see you wanted me."
"You think you've seen that?"
"I've seen nothing else."
"Once, perhaps. Twice. Once when you came to me on Barrow Hill. And when
we were crossing; once. And each time you never saw it."
"Anybody can see. It's in your face. In your eyes and mouth. You can't
hide your lust."
"My--'lust.' Don't you know I only cared for you because I'd done
with that?"
They stopped. The nuns were back again, bringing great cups of hot black
coffee, coming quietly, and going quietly away. It was wonderful, all
that beauty and gentleness and peace existing in the horror of the war,
and through this horror within horror that John had made.
They drank their coffee, slowly, greedily, prolonging this distraction
from their torment. Charlotte finished first.
"You say I want you. I own I did once. But I don't now. Why, I care
more for the scrubbiest little Belgian with a smashed finger than I
do for you."
"I suppose you can satisfy your erotic susceptibilities that way."
"I haven't any, I tell you. I only cared for you because I thought you
were clean. I thought your mind was beautiful. And you aren't clean. And
your mind's the ugliest thing I know. And the cruelest.... Let's get it
right, John. I can forgive your funking. If your nerves are jumpy they're
jumpy. I daresay _I_ shall be jumpy if the Germans come into Ghent before
I'm out of it. I can forgive everything you've done to _me_. I can
forgive your lying. I see there's nothing left for you but to lie.... But
I can't forgive your not caring for the wounded. That's cruel.... You
didn't care for that boy at Melle--"
John's mouth opened as if he were going to say something. He
seemed to gasp.
"--No, you didn't or you wouldn't have left him. Whatever your funk was
like, you couldn't have left him if you'd cared, any more than I could
have left _you_."
"He was dead when I left him."
"He was still warm when I found him. Billy thought you were bringing him
away. He says he wasn't dead."
"He lies, then. But you'll take his word against mine."
"Yes," she said simply. "And he says he _didn't_ tell you I was going
on with him. You don't care for _me_. If you'd cared you couldn't
have left me."
"I thought you said if it was a toss up between you and a wounded man--?
There were wounded men in that car."
"There was a wounded man with me. You left _him_.... Don't imagine I
cared about myself, whether I lived or died. It was because I cared about
you. I cared so awfully."
He jerked out a laugh. One light, short sound of dismissal and contempt.