He was working on the edge of the common, beyond the small brook that
ran in the dip at the bottom of the garden, carrying the garden path in
continuation from the plank bridge on to the common. He had cut the
rough turf and bracken, leaving the grey, dryish soil bare. But he was
worried because he could not get the path straight, there was a pleat
between his brows. He had set up his sticks, and taken the sights
between the big pine trees, but for some reason everything seemed
wrong. He looked again, straining his keen blue eyes, that had a touch
of the Viking in them, through the shadowy pine trees as through a
doorway, at the green-grassed garden-path rising from the shadow of
alders by the log bridge up to the sunlit flowers. Tall white and
purple columbines, and the butt-end of the old Hampshire cottage that
crouched near the earth amid flowers, blossoming in the bit of shaggy
wildness round about.
There was a sound of children’s voices calling and talking: high,
childish, girlish voices, slightly didactic and tinged with
domineering: “If you don’t come quick, nurse, I shall run out there to
where there are snakes.” And nobody had the _sang-froid_ to reply: “Run
then, little fool.” It was always, “No, darling. Very well, darling. In
a moment, darling. Darling, you _must_ be patient.”
His heart was hard with disillusion: a continual gnawing and
resistance. But he worked on. What was there to do but submit!
The sunlight blazed down upon the earth, there was a vividness of flamy
vegetation, of fierce seclusion amid the savage peace of the commons.
Strange how the savage England lingers in patches: as here, amid these
shaggy gorse commons, and marshy, snake infested places near the foot
of the south downs. The spirit of place lingering on primeval, as when
the Saxons came, so long ago.
Ah, how he had loved it! The green garden path, the tufts of flowers,
purple and white columbines, and great oriental red poppies with their
black chaps and mulleins tall and yellow, this flamy garden which had
been a garden for a thousand years, scooped out in the little hollow
among the snake-infested commons. He had made it flame with flowers, in
a sun cup under its hedges and trees. So old, so old a place! And yet
he had re-created it.
The timbered cottage with its sloping, cloak-like roof was old and
forgotten. It belonged to the old England of hamlets and yeomen. Lost
all alone on the edge of the common, at the end of a wide, grassy,
briar-entangled lane shaded with oak, it had never known the world of
today. Not till Egbert came with his bride. And he had come to fill it
with flowers.
The house was ancient and very uncomfortable. But he did not want to
alter it. Ah, marvellous to sit there in the wide, black, time-old
chimney, at night when the wind roared overhead, and the wood which he
had chopped himself sputtered on the hearth! Himself on one side the
angle, and Winifred on the other.
Ah, how he had wanted her: Winifred! She was young and beautiful and
strong with life, like a flame in sunshine. She moved with a slow grace
of energy like a blossoming, red-flowered bush in motion. She, too,
seemed to come out of the old England, ruddy, strong, with a certain
crude, passionate quiescence and a hawthorn robustness. And he, he was
tall and slim and agile, like an English archer with his long supple
legs and fine movements. Her hair was nut-brown and all in energic
curls and tendrils. Her eyes were nut-brown, too, like a robin’s for
brightness. And he was white-skinned with fine, silky hair that had
darkened from fair, and a slightly arched nose of an old country
family. They were a beautiful couple.
The house was Winifred’s. Her father was a man of energy, too. He had
come from the north poor. Now he was moderately rich. He had bought
this fair stretch of inexpensive land, down in Hampshire. Not far from
the tiny church of the almost extinct hamlet stood his own house, a
commodious old farmhouse standing back from the road across a bare
grassed yard. On one side of this quadrangle was the long, long barn or
shed which he had made into a cottage for his youngest daughter
Priscilla. One saw little blue-and-white check curtains at the long
windows, and inside, overhead, the grand old timbers of the
high-pitched shed. This was Prissy’s house. Fifty yards away was the
pretty little new cottage which he had built for his daughter Magdalen,
with the vegetable garden stretching away to the oak copse. And then
away beyond the lawns and rose trees of the house-garden went the track
across a shaggy, wild grass space, towards the ridge of tall black
pines that grew on a dyke-bank, through the pines and above the sloping
little bog, under the wide, desolate oak trees, till there was
Winifred’s cottage crouching unexpectedly in front, so much alone, and
so primitive.
It was Winifred’s own house, and the gardens and the bit of common and
the boggy slope were hers: her tiny domain. She had married just at the
time when her father had bought the estate, about ten years before the
war, so she had been able to come to Egbert with this for a marriage
portion. And who was more delighted, he or she, it would be hard to
say. She was only twenty at the time, and he was only twenty-one. He
had about a hundred and fifty pounds a year of his own—and nothing else
but his very considerable personal attractions. He had no profession:
he earned nothing. But he talked of literature and music, he had a
passion for old folk-music, collecting folk-songs and folk-dances,
studying the Morris-dance and the old customs. Of course in time he
would make money in these ways.
Meanwhile youth and health and passion and promise. Winifred’s father
was always generous: but still, he was a man from the north with a hard
head and a hard skin too, having received a good many knocks. At home
he kept the hard head out of sight, and played at poetry and romance
with his literary wife and his sturdy, passionate girls. He was a man
of courage, not given to complaining, bearing his burdens by himself.
No, he did not let the world intrude far into his home. He had a
delicate, sensitive wife whose poetry won some fame in the narrow world
of letters. He himself, with his tough old barbarian fighting spirit,
had an almost child-like delight in verse, in sweet poetry, and in the
delightful game of a cultured home. His blood was strong even to
coarseness. But that only made the home more vigorous, more robust and
Christmassy. There was always a touch of Christmas about him, now he
was well off. If there was poetry after dinner, there were also
chocolates and nuts, and good little out-of-the-way things to be
munching.
Well then, into this family came Egbert. He was made of quite a
different paste. The girls and the father were strong-limbed,
thick-blooded people, true English, as holly-trees and hawthorn are
English. Their culture was grafted on to them, as one might perhaps
graft a common pink rose on to a thornstem. It flowered oddly enough,
but it did not alter their blood.
And Egbert was a born rose. The age-long breeding had left him with a
delightful spontaneous passion. He was not clever, nor even “literary”.
No, but the intonation of his voice, and the movement of his supple,
handsome body, and the fine texture of his flesh and his hair, the
slight arch of his nose, the quickness of his blue eyes would easily
take the place of poetry. Winifred loved him, loved him, this
southerner, as a higher being. A _higher_ being, mind you. Not a
deeper. And as for him, he loved her in passion with every fibre of
him. She was the very warm stuff of life to him.
Wonderful then, those days at Crockham Cottage, the first days, all
alone save for the woman who came to work in the mornings. Marvellous
days, when she had all his tall, supple, fine-fleshed youth to herself,
for herself, and he had her like a ruddy fire into which he could cast
himself for rejuvenation. Ah, that it might never end, this passion,
this marriage! The flame of their two bodies burnt again into that old
cottage, that was haunted already by so much by-gone, physical desire.
You could not be in the dark room for an hour without the influences
coming over you. The hot blood-desire of by-gone yeomen, there in this
old den where they had lusted and bred for so many generations. The
silent house, dark, with thick, timbered walls and the big black
chimney-place, and the sense of secrecy. Dark, with low, little
windows, sunk into the earth. Dark, like a lair where strong beasts had
lurked and mated, lonely at night and lonely by day, left to themselves
and their own intensity for so many generations. It seemed to cast a
spell on the two young people. They became different. There was a
curious secret glow about them, a certain slumbering flame hard to
understand, that enveloped them both. They too felt that they did not
belong to the London world any more. Crockham had changed their blood:
the sense of the snakes that lived and slept even in their own garden,
in the sun, so that he, going forward with the spade, would see a
curious coiled brownish pile on the black soil, which suddenly would
start up, hiss, and dazzle rapidly away, hissing. One day Winifred
heard the strangest scream from the flower-bed under the low window of
the living room: ah, the strangest scream, like the very soul of the
dark past crying aloud. She ran out, and saw a long brown snake on the
flower-bed, and in its flat mouth the one hind leg of a frog was
striving to escape, and screaming its strange, tiny, bellowing scream.
She looked at the snake, and from its sullen flat head it looked at
her, obstinately. She gave a cry, and it released the frog and slid
angrily away.
That was Crockham. The spear of modern invention had not passed through
it, and it lay there secret, primitive, savage as when the Saxons first
came. And Egbert and she were caught there, caught out of the world.
He was not idle, nor was she. There were plenty of things to be done,
the house to be put into final repair after the workmen had gone,
cushions and curtains to sew, the paths to make, the water to fetch and
attend to, and then the slope of the deep-soiled, neglected garden to
level, to terrace with little terraces and paths, and to fill with
flowers. He worked away, in his shirt-sleeves, worked all day
intermittently doing this thing and the other. And she, quiet and rich
in herself, seeing him stooping and labouring away by himself, would
come to help him, to be near him. He of course was an amateur—a born
amateur. He worked so hard, and did so little, and nothing he ever did
would hold together for long. If he terraced the garden, he held up the
earth with a couple of long narrow planks that soon began to bend with
the pressure from behind, and would not need many years to rot through
and break and let the soil slither all down again in a heap towards the
stream-bed. But there you are. He had not been brought up to come to
grips with anything, and he thought it would do. Nay, he did not think
there was anything else except little temporary contrivances possible,
he who had such a passion for his old enduring cottage, and for the old
enduring things of the bygone England. Curious that the sense of
permanency in the past had such a hold over him, whilst in the present
he was all amateurish and sketchy.
Winifred could not criticize him. Town-bred, everything seemed to her
splendid, and the very digging and shovelling itself seemed romantic.
But neither Egbert nor she yet realised the difference between work and
romance.
Godfrey Marshall, her father, was at first perfectly pleased with the
ménage down at Crockham Cottage. He thought Egbert was wonderful, the
many things he accomplished, and he was gratified by the glow of
physical passion between the two young people. To the man who in London
still worked hard to keep steady his modest fortune, the thought of
this young couple digging away and loving one another down at Crockham
Cottage, buried deep among the commons and marshes, near the
pale-showing bulk of the downs, was like a chapter of living romance.
And they drew the sustenance for their fire of passion from him, from
the old man. It was he who fed their flame. He triumphed secretly in
the thought. And it was to her father that Winifred still turned, as
the one source of all surety and life and support. She loved Egbert
with passion. But behind her was the power of her father. It was the
power of her father she referred to, whenever she needed to refer. It
never occurred to her to refer to Egbert, if she were in difficulty or
doubt. No, in all the _serious_ matters she depended on her father.
For Egbert had no intention of coming to grips with life. He had no
ambition whatsoever. He came from a decent family, from a pleasant
country home, from delightful surroundings. He should, of course, have
had a profession. He should have studied law or entered business in
some way. But no—that fatal three pounds a week would keep him from
starving as long as he lived, and he did not want to give himself into
bondage. It was not that he was idle. He was always doing something, in
his amateurish way. But he had no desire to give himself to the world,
and still less had he any desire to fight his way in the world. No, no,
the world wasn’t worth it. He wanted to ignore it, to go his own way
apart, like a casual pilgrim down the forsaken sidetracks. He loved his
wife, his cottage and garden. He would make his life there, as a sort
of epicurean hermit. He loved the past, the old music and dances and
customs of old England. He would try and live in the spirit of these,
not in the spirit of the world of business.
But often Winifred’s father called her to London: for he loved to have
his children round him. So Egbert and she must have a tiny flat in
town, and the young couple must transfer themselves from time to time
from the country to the city. In town Egbert had plenty of friends, of
the same ineffectual sort as himself, tampering with the arts,
literature, painting, sculpture, music. He was not bored.
Three pounds a week, however, would not pay for all this. Winifred’s
father paid. He liked paying. He made her only a very small allowance,
but he often gave her ten pounds—or gave Egbert ten pounds. So they
both looked on the old man as the mainstay. Egbert didn’t mind being
patronized and paid for. Only when he felt the family was a little
_too_ condescending, on account of money, he began to get huffy.
Then of course children came: a lovely little blonde daughter with a
head of thistle-down. Everybody adored the child. It was the first
exquisite blonde thing that had come into the family, a little mite
with the white, slim, beautiful limbs of its father, and as it grew up
the dancing, dainty movement of a wild little daisy-spirit. No wonder
the Marshalls all loved the child: they called her Joyce. They
themselves had their own grace, but it was slow, rather heavy. They had
everyone of them strong, heavy limbs and darkish skins, and they were
short in stature. And now they had for one of their own this light
little cowslip child. She was like a little poem in herself.
But nevertheless, she brought a new difficulty. Winifred must have a
nurse for her. Yes, yes, there must be a nurse. It was the family
decree. Who was to pay for the nurse? The grandfather—seeing the father
himself earned no money. Yes, the grandfather would pay, as he had paid
all the lying-in expenses. There came a slight sense of money-strain.
Egbert was living on his father-in-law.
After the child was born, it was never quite the same between him and
Winifred. The difference was at first hardly perceptible. But it was
there. In the first place Winifred had a new centre of interest. She
was not going to adore her child. But she had what the modern mother so
often has in the place of spontaneous love: a profound sense of duty
towards her child. Winifred appreciated her darling little girl, and
felt a deep sense of duty towards her. Strange, that this sense of duty
should go deeper than the love for her husband. But so it was. And so
it often is. The responsibility of motherhood was the prime
responsibility in Winifred’s heart: the responsibility of wifehood came
a long way second.
Her child seemed to link her up again in a circuit with her own family.
Her father and mother, herself, and her child, that was the human
trinity for her. Her husband—? Yes, she loved him still. But that was
like play. She had an almost barbaric sense of duty and of family. Till
she married, her first human duty had been towards her father: he was
the pillar, the source of life, the everlasting support. Now another
link was added to the chain of duty: her father, herself, and her
child.
Egbert was out of it. Without anything happening, he was gradually,
unconsciously excluded from the circle. His wife still loved him,
physically. But, but—he was _almost_ the unnecessary party in the
affair. He could not complain of Winifred. She still did her duty
towards him. She still had a physical passion for him, that physical
passion on which he had put all his life and soul. But—but—
It was for a long while an ever-recurring _but_. And then, after the
second child, another blonde, winsome touching little thing, not so
proud and flame-like as Joyce; after Annabel came, then Egbert began
truly to realise how it was. His wife still loved him. But—and now the
but had grown enormous—her physical love for him was of secondary
importance to her. It became ever less important. After all, she had
had it, this physical passion, for two years now. It was not this that
one lived from. No, no—something sterner, realer.
She began to resent her own passion for Egbert—just a little she began
to despise it. For after all there he was, he was charming, he was
lovable, he was terribly desirable. But—but—oh, the awful looming cloud
of that _but!_—He did not stand firm in the landscape of her life like
a tower of strength, like a great pillar of significance. No, he was
like a cat one has about the house, which will one day disappear and
leave no trace. He was like a flower in the garden, trembling in the
wind of life, and then gone, leaving nothing to show. As an adjunct, as
an accessory, he was perfect. Many a woman would have adored to have
him about her all her life, the most beautiful and desirable of all her
possessions. But Winifred belonged to another school.
The years went by, and instead of coming more to grips with life, he
relaxed more. He was of a subtle, sensitive, passionate nature. But he
simply _would_ not give himself to what Winifred called life, _Work_.
No, he would not go into the world and work for money. No, he just
would not. If Winifred liked to live beyond their small income—well, it
was her look-out.
And Winifred did not really want him to go out into the world to work
for money. Money became, alas, a word like a firebrand between them,
setting them both aflame with anger. But that is because we must talk
in symbols. Winifred did not really care about money. She did not care
whether he earned or did not earn anything. Only she knew she was
dependent on her father for three-fourths of the money spent for
herself and her children, that she let that be the _casus belli_, the
drawn weapon between herself and Egbert.
What did she want—what did she want? Her mother once said to her, with
that characteristic touch of irony: “Well, dear, if it is your fate to
consider the lilies, that toil not, neither do they spin, that is one
destiny among many others, and perhaps not so unpleasant as most. Why
do you take it amiss, my child?”
The mother was subtler than her children, they very rarely knew how to
answer her. So Winifred was only more confused. It was not a question
of lilies. At least, if it were a question of lilies, then her children
were the little blossoms. They at least _grew_. Doesn’t Jesus say:
“Consider the lilies _how they grow_.” Good then, she had her growing
babies. But as for that other tall, handsome flower of a father of
theirs, he was full grown already, so she did not want to spend her
life considering him in the flower of his days.
No, it was not that he didn’t earn money. It was not that he was idle.
He was _not_ idle. He was always doing something, always working away,
down at Crockham, doing little jobs. But, oh dear, the little jobs—the
garden paths—the gorgeous flowers—the chairs to mend, old chairs to
mend!
It was that he stood for nothing. If he had done something
unsuccessfully, and _lost_ what money they had! If he had but striven
with something. Nay, even if he had been wicked, a waster, she would
have been more free. She would have had something to resist, at least.
A waster stands for something, really. He says: “No, I will not aid and
abet society in this business of increase and hanging together, I will
upset the apple-cart as much as I can, in my small way.” Or else he
says: “No, I will _not_ bother about others. If I have lusts, they are
my own, and I prefer them to other people’s virtues.” So, a waster, a
scamp, takes a sort of stand. He exposes himself to opposition and
final castigation: at any rate in story-books.
But Egbert! What are you to do with a man like Egbert? He had no vices.
He was really kind, nay generous. And he was not weak. If he had been
weak Winifred could have been kind to him. But he did not even give her
that consolation. He was not weak, and he did not want her consolation
or her kindness. No, thank you. He was of a fine passionate temper, and
of a rarer steel than she. He knew it, and she knew it. Hence she was
only the more baffled and maddened, poor thing. He, the higher, the
finer, in his way the stronger, played with his garden, and his old
folk-songs and Morris-dances, just played, and let her support the
pillars of the future on her own heart.
And he began to get bitter, and a wicked look began to come on his
face. He did not give in to her; not he. There were seven devils inside
his long, slim, white body. He was healthy, full of restrained life.
Yes, even he himself had to lock up his own vivid life inside himself,
now she would not take it from him. Or rather, now that she only took
it occasionally. For she had to yield at times. She loved him so, she
desired him so, he was so exquisite to her, the fine creature that he
was, finer than herself. Yes, with a groan she had to give in to her
own unquenched passion for him. And he came to her then—ah, terrible,
ah, wonderful, sometimes she wondered how either of them could live
after the terror of the passion that swept between them. It was to her
as if pure lightning, flash after flash, went through every fibre of
her, till extinction came.
But it is the fate of human beings to live on. And it is the fate of
clouds that seem nothing but bits of vapour slowly to pile up, to pile
up and fill the heavens and blacken the sun entirely.
So it was. The love came back, the lightning of passion flashed
tremendously between them. And there was blue sky and gorgeousness for
a little while. And then, as inevitably, as inevitably, slowly the
clouds began to edge up again above the horizon, slowly, slowly to lurk
about the heavens, throwing an occasional cold and hateful shadow:
slowly, slowly to congregate, to fill the empyrean space.
And as the years passed, the lightning cleared the sky more and more
rarely, less and less the blue showed. Gradually the grey lid sank down
upon them, as if it would be permanent.
Why didn’t Egbert do something, then? Why didn’t he come to grips with
life? Why wasn’t he like Winifred’s father, a pillar of society, even
if a slender, exquisite column? Why didn’t he go into harness of some
sort? Why didn’t he take _some_ direction?
Well, you can bring an ass to the water, but you cannot make him drink.
The world was the water and Egbert was the ass. And he wasn’t having
any. He couldn’t: he just couldn’t. Since necessity did not force him
to work for his bread and butter, he would not work for work’s sake.
You can’t make the columbine flowers nod in January, nor make the
cuckoo sing in England at Christmas. Why? It isn’t his season. He
doesn’t want to. Nay, he _can’t_ want to.
And there it was with Egbert. He couldn’t link up with the world’s
work, because the basic desire was absent from him. Nay, at the bottom
of him he had an even stronger desire: to hold aloof. To hold aloof. To
do nobody any damage. But to hold aloof. It was not his season.
Perhaps he should not have married and had children. But you can’t stop
the waters flowing.
Which held true for Winifred, too. She was not made to endure aloof.
Her family tree was a robust vegetation that had to be stirring and
believing. In one direction or another her life _had_ to go. In her own
home she had known nothing of this diffidence which she found in
Egbert, and which she could not understand, and which threw her into
such dismay. What was she to do, what was she to do, in face of this
terrible diffidence?
It was all so different in her own home. Her father may have had his
own misgivings, but he kept them to himself. Perhaps he had no very
profound belief in this world of ours, this society which we have
elaborated with so much effort, only to find ourselves elaborated to
death at last. But Godfrey Marshall was of tough, rough fibre, not
without a vein of healthy cunning through it all. It was for him a
question of winning through, and leaving the rest to heaven. Without
having many illusions to grace him, he still _did_ believe in heaven.
In a dark and unquestioning way, he had a sort of faith: an acrid faith
like the sap of some not-to-be-exterminated tree. Just a blind acrid
faith as sap is blind and acrid, and yet pushes on in growth and in
faith. Perhaps he was unscrupulous, but only as a striving tree is
unscrupulous, pushing its single way in a jungle of others.
In the end, it is only this robust, sap-like faith which keeps man
going. He may live on for many generations inside the shelter of the
social establishment which he has erected for himself, as pear-trees
and currant bushes would go on bearing fruit for many seasons, inside a
walled garden, even if the race of man were suddenly exterminated. But
bit by bit the wall-fruit-trees would gradually pull down the very
walls that sustained them. Bit by bit every establishment collapses,
unless it is renewed or restored by living hands, all the while.
Egbert could not bring himself to any more of this restoring or
renewing business. He was not aware of the fact: but awareness doesn’t
help much, anyhow. He just couldn’t. He had the stoic and epicurean
quality of his old, fine breeding. His father-in-law, however, though
he was not one bit more of a fool than Egbert, realised that since we
are here we may as well live. And so he applied himself to his own tiny
section of the social work, and to doing the best for his family, and
to leaving the rest to the ultimate will of heaven. A certain
robustness of blood made him able to go on. But sometimes even from him
spurted a sudden gall of bitterness against the world and its make-up.
And yet—he had his own will-to-succeed, and this carried him through.
He refused to ask himself what the success would amount to. It amounted
to the estate down in Hampshire, and his children lacking for nothing,
and himself of some importance in the world: and _basta!_—Basta! Basta!
Nevertheless do not let us imagine that he was a common pusher. He was
not. He knew as well as Egbert what disillusion meant. Perhaps in his
soul he had the same estimation of success. But he had a certain acrid
courage, and a certain will-to-power. In his own small circle he would
emanate power, the single power of his own blind self. With all his
spoiling of his children, he was still the father of the old English
type. He was too wise to make laws and to domineer in the abstract. But
he had kept, and all honour to him, a certain primitive dominion over
the souls of his children, the old, almost magic prestige of paternity.
There it was, still burning in him, the old smoky torch or paternal
godhead.
And in the sacred glare of this torch his children had been brought up.
He had given the girls every liberty, at last. But he had never really
let them go beyond his power. And they, venturing out into the hard
white light of our fatherless world, learned to see with the eyes of
the world. They learned to criticize their father, even, from some
effulgence of worldly white light, to see him as inferior. But this was
all very well in the head. The moment they forgot their tricks of
criticism, the old red glow of his authority came over them again. He
was not to be quenched.
Let the psychoanalysts talk about father complex. It is just a word
invented. Here was a man who had kept alive the old red flame of
fatherhood, fatherhood that had even the right to sacrifice the child
to God, like Isaac. Fatherhood that had life-and-death authority over
the children: a great natural power. And till his children could be
brought under some other great authority as girls; or could arrive at
manhood and become themselves centres of the same power, continuing the
same male mystery as men; until such time, willy-nilly, Godfrey
Marshall would keep his children.
It had seemed as if he might lose Winifred. Winifred had _adored_ her
husband, and looked up to him as to something wonderful. Perhaps she
had expected in him another great authority, a male authority greater,
finer than her father’s. For having once known the glow of male power,
she would not easily turn to the cold white light of feminine
independence. She would hunger, hunger all her life for the warmth and
shelter of true male strength.
And hunger she might, for Egbert’s power lay in the abnegation of
power. He was himself the living negative of power. Even of
responsibility. For the negation of power at last means the negation of
responsibility. As far as these things went, he would confine himself
to himself. He would try to confine his own _influence_ even to
himself. He would try, as far as possible, to abstain from influencing
his children by assuming any responsibility for them. “A little child
shall lead them—” His child should lead, then. He would try not to make
it go in any direction whatever. He would abstain from influencing it.
Liberty!—
Poor Winifred was like a fish out of water in this liberty, gasping for
the denser element which should contain her. Till her child came. And
then she knew that she must be responsible for it, that she must have
authority over it.
But here Egbert silently and negatively stepped in. Silently,
negatively, but fatally he neutralized her authority over her children.
There was a third little girl born. And after this Winifred wanted no
more children. Her soul was turning to salt.
So she had charge of the children, they were her responsibility. The
money for them had come from her father. She would do her very best for
them, and have command over their life and death. But no! Egbert would
not take the responsibility. He would not even provide the money. But
he would not let her have her way. Her dark, silent, passionate
authority he would not allow. It was a battle between them, the battle
between liberty and the old blood-power. And of course he won. The
little girls loved him and adored him. “Daddy! Daddy!” They could do as
they liked with him. Their mother would have ruled them. She would have
ruled them passionately, with indulgence, with the old dark magic of
parental authority, something looming and unquestioned and, after all,
divine: if we believe in divine authority. The Marshalls did, being
Catholic.
And Egbert, he turned her old dark, Catholic blood-authority into a
sort of tyranny. He would not leave her her children. He stole them
from her, and yet without assuming responsibility for them. He stole
them from her, in emotion and spirit, and left her only to command
their behaviour. A thankless lot for a mother. And her children adored
him, adored him, little knowing the empty bitterness they were
preparing for themselves when they too grew up to have husbands:
husbands such as Egbert, adorable and null.
Joyce, the eldest, was still his favourite. She was now a quicksilver
little thing of six years old. Barbara, the youngest, was a toddler of
two years. They spent most of their time down at Crockham, because he
wanted to be there. And even Winifred loved the place really. But now,
in her frustrated and blinded state, it was full of menace for her
children. The adders, the poison-berries, the brook, the marsh, the
water that might not be pure—one thing and another. From mother and
nurse it was a guerilla gunfire of commands, and blithe, quicksilver
disobedience from the three blonde, never-still little girls. Behind
the girls was the father, against mother and nurse. And so it was.
“If you don’t come quick, nurse, I shall run out there to where there
are snakes.”
“Joyce, you _must_ be patient. I’m just changing Annabel.”
There you are. There it was: always the same. Working away on the
common across the brook he heard it. And he worked on, just the same.
Suddenly he heard a shriek, and he flung the spade from him and started
for the bridge, looking up like a startled deer. Ah, there was
Winifred—Joyce had hurt herself. He went on up the garden.
“What is it?”
The child was still screaming—now it was—“Daddy! Daddy! Oh—oh, Daddy!”
And the mother was saying:
“Don’t be frightened, darling. Let mother look.”
But the child only cried:
“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
She was terrified by the sight of the blood running from her own knee.
Winifred crouched down, with her child of six in her lap, to examine
the knee. Egbert bent over also.
“Don’t make such a noise, Joyce,” he said irritably. “How did she do
it?”
“She fell on that sickle thing which you left lying about after cutting
the grass,” said Winifred, looking into his face with bitter accusation
as he bent near.
He had taken his handkerchief and tied it round the knee. Then he
lifted the still sobbing child in his arms, and carried her into the
house and upstairs to her bed. In his arms she became quiet. But his
heart was burning with pain and with guilt. He had left the sickle
there lying on the edge of the grass, and so his first-born child whom
he loved so dearly had come to hurt. But then it was an accident—it was
an accident. Why should he feel guilty? It would probably be nothing,
better in two or three days. Why take it to heart, why worry? He put it
aside.
The child lay on the bed in her little summer frock, her face very
white now after the shock, Nurse had come carrying the youngest child:
and little Annabel stood holding her skirt. Winifred, terribly serious
and wooden-seeming, was bending over the knee, from which she had taken
his blood-soaked handkerchief. Egbert bent forward, too, keeping more
_sang-froid_ in his face than in his heart. Winifred went all of a lump
of seriousness, so he had to keep some reserve. The child moaned and
whimpered.
The knee was still bleeding profusely—it was a deep cut right in the
joint.
“You’d better go for the doctor, Egbert,” said Winifred bitterly.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” cried Joyce in a panic.
“Joyce, my darling, don’t cry!” said Winifred, suddenly catching the
little girl to her breast in a strange tragic anguish, the _Mater
Dolorata_. Even the child was frightened into silence. Egbert looked at
the tragic figure of his wife with the child at her breast, and turned
away. Only Annabel started suddenly to cry: “Joycey, Joycey, don’t have
your leg bleeding!”
Egbert rode four miles to the village for the doctor. He could not help
feeling that Winifred was laying it on rather. Surely the knee itself
wasn’t hurt! Surely not. It was only a surface cut.
The doctor was out. Egbert left the message and came cycling swiftly
home, his heart pinched with anxiety. He dropped sweating off his
bicycle and went into the house, looking rather small, like a man who
is at fault. Winifred was upstairs sitting by Joyce, who was looking
pale and important in bed, and was eating some tapioca pudding. The
pale, small, scared face of his child went to Egbert’s heart.
“Doctor Wing was out. He’ll be here about half past two,” said Egbert.
“I don’t want him to come,” whimpered Joyce.
“Joyce, dear, you must be patient and quiet,” said Winifred. “He won’t
hurt you. But he will tell us what to do to make your knee better
quickly. That is why he must come.”
Winifred always explained carefully to her little girls: and it always
took the words off their lips for the moment.
“Does it bleed yet?” said Egbert.
Winifred moved the bedclothes carefully aside.
“I think not,” she said.
Egbert stooped also to look.
“No, it doesn’t,” she said. Then he stood up with a relieved look on
his face. He turned to the child.
“Eat your pudding, Joyce,” he said. “It won’t be anything. You’ve only
got to keep still for a few days.”
“You haven’t had your dinner, have you, Daddy?”
“Not yet.”
“Nurse will give it to you,” said Winifred.
“You’ll be all right, Joyce,” he said, smiling to the child and pushing
the blonde hair off her brow. She smiled back winsomely into his face.
He went downstairs and ate his meal alone. Nurse served him. She liked
waiting on him. All women liked him and liked to do things for him.
The doctor came—a fat country practitioner, pleasant and kind.
“What, little girl, been tumbling down, have you? There’s a thing to be
doing, for a smart little lady like you! What! And cutting your knee!
Tut-tut-tut! That _wasn’t_ clever of you, now was it? Never mind, never
mind, soon be better. Let us look at it. Won’t hurt you. Not the least
in life. Bring a bowl with a little warm water, nurse. Soon have it all
right again, soon have it all right.”
Joyce smiled at him with a pale smile of faint superiority. This was
_not_ the way in which she was used to being talked to.
He bent down, carefully looking at the little, thin, wounded knee of
the child. Egbert bent over him.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear! Quite a deep little cut. Nasty little cut. Nasty
little cut. But, never mind. Never mind, little lady. We’ll soon have
it better. Soon have it better, little lady. What’s your name?”
“My name is Joyce,” said the child distinctly.
“Oh, really!” he replied. “Oh, really! Well, that’s a fine name too, in
my opinion. Joyce, eh?—And how old might Miss Joyce be? Can she tell me
that?”
“I’m six,” said the child, slightly amused and very condescending.
“Six! There now. Add up and count as far as six, can you? Well, that’s
a clever little girl, a clever little girl. And if she has to drink a
spoonful of medicine, she won’t make a murmur, I’ll be bound. Not like
_some_ little girls. What? Eh?”
“I take it if mother wishes me to,” said Joyce.
“Ah, there now! That’s the style! That’s what I like to hear from a
little lady in bed because she’s cut her knee. That’s the style—”
The comfortable and prolix doctor dressed and bandaged the knee and
recommended bed and a light diet for the little lady. He thought a week
or a fortnight would put it right. No bones or ligatures
damaged—fortunately. Only a flesh cut. He would come again in a day or
two.
So Joyce was reassured and stayed in bed and had all her toys up. Her
father often played with her. The doctor came the third day. He was
fairly pleased with the knee. It was healing. It was healing—yes—yes.
Let the child continue in bed. He came again after a day or two.
Winifred was a trifle uneasy. The wound seemed to be healing on the
top, but it hurt the child too much. It didn’t look quite right. She
said so to Egbert.
“Egbert, I’m sure Joyce’s knee isn’t healing properly.”
“I think it is,” he said. “I think it’s all right.”
“I’d rather Doctor Wing came again—I don’t feel satisfied.”
“Aren’t you trying to imagine it worse than it really is?”
“You would say so, of course. But I shall write a post-card to Doctor
Wing now.”
The doctor came next day. He examined the knee. Yes, there was
inflammation. Yes, there _might_ be a little septic poisoning—there
might. There might. Was the child feverish?
So a fortnight passed by, and the child _was_ feverish, and the knee
was more inflamed and grew worse and was painful, painful. She cried in
the night, and her mother had to sit up with her. Egbert still insisted
it was nothing, really—it would pass. But in his heart he was anxious.
Winifred wrote again to her father. On Saturday the elderly man
appeared. And no sooner did Winifred see the thick, rather short figure
in its grey suit than a great yearning came over her.
“Father, I’m not satisfied with Joyce. I’m not satisfied with Doctor
Wing.”
“Well, Winnie, dear, if you’re not satisfied we must have further
advice, that is all.”
The sturdy, powerful, elderly man went upstairs, his voice sounding
rather grating through the house, as if it cut upon the tense
atmosphere.
“How are you, Joyce, darling?” he said to the child. “Does your knee
hurt you? Does it hurt you, dear?”
“It does sometimes.” The child was shy of him, cold towards him.
“Well, dear, I’m sorry for that. I hope you try to bear it, and not
trouble mother too much.”
There was no answer. He looked at the knee. It was red and stiff.
“Of course,” he said, “I think we must have another doctor’s opinion.
And if we’re going to have it, we had better have it at once. Egbert,
do you think you might cycle in to Bingham for Doctor Wayne? I found
him very satisfactory for Winnie’s mother.”
“I can go if you think it necessary,” said Egbert.
“Certainly I think it necessary. Even if there _is_ nothing, we can
have peace of mind. Certainly I think it necessary. I should like
Doctor Wayne to come this evening if possible.”
So Egbert set off on his bicycle through the wind, like a boy sent on
an errand, leaving his father-in-law a pillar of assurance, with
Winifred.
Doctor Wayne came, and looked grave. Yes, the knee was certainly taking
the wrong way. The child might be lame for life.
Up went the fire and fear and anger in every heart. Doctor Wayne came
again the next day for a proper examination. And, yes, the knee had
really taken bad ways. It should be X-rayed. It was very important.
Godfrey Marshall walked up and down the lane with the doctor, beside
the standing motor-car: up and down, up and down in one of those
consultations of which he had had so many in his life.
As a result he came indoors to Winifred.
“Well, Winnie, dear, the best thing to do is to take Joyce up to
London, to a nursing home where she can have proper treatment. Of
course this knee has been allowed to go wrong. And apparently there is
a risk that the child may even lose her leg. What do you think, dear?
You agree to our taking her up to town and putting her under the best
care?”
“Oh, father, you _know_ I would do anything on earth for her.”
“I know you would, Winnie darling. The pity is that there has been this
unfortunate delay already. I can’t think what Doctor Wing was doing.
Apparently the child is in danger of losing her leg. Well then, if you
will have everything ready, we will take her up to town tomorrow. I
will order the large car from Denley’s to be here at ten. Egbert, will
you take a telegram at once to Doctor Jackson? It is a small nursing
home for children and for surgical cases, not far from Baker Street.
I’m sure Joyce will be all right there.”
“Oh, father, can’t I nurse her myself!”
“Well, darling, if she is to have proper treatment, she had best be in
a home. The X-ray treatment, and the electric treatment, and whatever
is necessary.”
“It will cost a great deal—” said Winifred.
“We can’t think of cost, if the child’s leg is in danger—or even her
life. No use speaking of cost,” said the elder man impatiently.
And so it was. Poor Joyce, stretched out on a bed in the big closed
motor-car—the mother sitting by her head, the grandfather in his short
grey beard and a bowler hat, sitting by her feet, thick, and implacable
in his responsibility—they rolled slowly away from Crockham, and from
Egbert who stood there bareheaded and a little ignominious, left
behind. He was to shut up the house and bring the rest of the family
back to town, by train, the next day.
Followed a dark and bitter time. The poor child. The poor, poor child,
how she suffered, an agony and a long crucifixion in that nursing home.
It was a bitter six weeks which changed the soul of Winifred for ever.
As she sat by the bed of her poor, tortured little child, tortured with
the agony of the knee, and the still worse agony of these diabolic, but
perhaps necessary modern treatments, she felt her heart killed and
going cold in her breast. Her little Joyce, her frail, brave,
wonderful, little Joyce, frail and small and pale as a white flower!
Ah, how had she, Winifred, dared to be so wicked, so wicked, so
careless, so sensual.
“Let my heart die! Let my woman’s heart of flesh die! Saviour, let my
heart die. And save my child. Let my heart die from the world and from
the flesh. Oh, destroy my heart that is so wayward. Let my heart of
pride die. Let my heart die.”
So she prayed beside the bed of her child. And like the Mother with the
seven swords in her breast, slowly her heart of pride and passion died
in her breast, bleeding away. Slowly it died, bleeding away, and she
turned to the Church for comfort, to Jesus, to the Mother of God, but
most of all, to that great and enduring institution, the Roman Catholic
Church. She withdrew into the shadow of the Church. She was a mother
with three children. But in her soul she died, her heart of pride and
passion and desire bled to death, her soul belonged to her church, her
body belonged to her duty as a mother.
Her duty as a wife did not enter. As a wife she had no sense of duty:
only a certain bitterness towards the man with whom she had known such
sensuality and distraction. She was purely the _Mater Dolorata_. To the
man she was closed as a tomb.
Egbert came to see his child. But Winifred seemed to be always seated
there, like the tomb of his manhood and his fatherhood. Poor Winifred:
she was still young, still strong and ruddy and beautiful like a ruddy
hard flower of the field. Strange—her ruddy, healthy face, so sombre,
and her strong, heavy, full-blooded body, so still. She, a nun! Never.
And yet the gates of her heart and soul had shut in his face with a
slow, resonant clang, shutting him out for ever. There was no need for
her to go into a convent. Her will had done it.
And between this young mother and this young father lay the crippled
child, like a bit of pale silk floss on the pillow, and a little white
pain-quenched face. He could not bear it. He just could not bear it. He
turned aside. There was nothing to do but to turn aside. He turned
aside, and went hither and thither, desultory. He was still attractive
and desirable. But there was a little frown between his brow as if he
had been cleft there with a hatchet: cleft right in, for ever, and that
was the stigma.
The child’s leg was saved: but the knee was locked stiff. The fear now
was lest the lower leg should wither, or cease to grow. There must be
long-continued massage and treatment, daily treatment, even when the
child left the nursing home. And the whole of the expense was borne by
the grandfather.
Egbert now had no real home. Winifred with the children and nurse was
tied to the little flat in London. He could not live there: he could
not contain himself. The cottage was shut-up—or lent to friends. He
went down sometimes to work in his garden and keep the place in order.
Then with the empty house around him at night, all the empty rooms, he
felt his heart go wicked. The sense of frustration and futility, like
some slow, torpid snake, slowly bit right through his heart. Futility,
futility: the horrible marsh-poison went through his veins and killed
him.
As he worked in the garden in the silence of day he would listen for a
sound. No sound. No sound of Winifred from the dark inside of the
cottage: no sound of children’s voices from the air, from the common,
from the near distance. No sound, nothing but the old dark
marsh-venomous atmosphere of the place. So he worked spasmodically
through the day, and at night made a fire and cooked some food alone.
He was alone. He himself cleaned the cottage and made his bed. But his
mending he did not do. His shirts were slit on the shoulders, when he
had been working, and the white flesh showed through. He would feel the
air and the spots of rain on his exposed flesh. And he would look again
across the common, where the dark, tufted gorse was dying to seed, and
the bits of cat-heather were coming pink in tufts, like a sprinkling of
sacrificial blood.
His heart went back to the savage old spirit of the place: the desire
for old gods, old, lost passions, the passion of the cold-blooded,
darting snakes that hissed and shot away from him, the mystery of
blood-sacrifices, all the lost, intense sensations of the primeval
people of the place, whose passions seethed in the air still, from
those long days before the Romans came. The seethe of a lost, dark
passion in the air. The presence of unseen snakes.
A queer, baffled, half-wicked look came on his face. He could not stay
long at the cottage. Suddenly he must swing on to his bicycle and
go—anywhere. Anywhere, away from the place. He would stay a few days
with his mother in the old home. His mother adored him and grieved as a
mother would. But the little, baffled, half-wicked smile curled on his
face, and he swung away from his mother’s solicitude as from everything
else.
Always moving on—from place to place, friend to friend: and always
swinging away from sympathy. As soon as sympathy, like a soft hand, was
reached out to touch him, away he swerved, instinctively, as a harmless
snake swerves and swerves and swerves away from an outstretched hand.
Away he must go. And periodically he went back to Winifred.
He was terrible to her now, like a temptation. She had devoted herself
to her children and her church. Joyce was once more on her feet; but,
alas! lame, with iron supports to her leg, and a little crutch. It was
strange how she had grown into a long, pallid, wild little thing.
Strange that the pain had not made her soft and docile, but had brought
out a wild, almost maenad temper in the child. She was seven, and long
and white and thin, but by no means subdued. Her blonde hair was
darkening. She still had long sufferings to face, and, in her own
childish consciousness, the stigma of her lameness to bear.
And she bore it. An almost maenad courage seemed to possess her, as if
she were a long, thin, young weapon of life. She acknowledged all her
mother’s care. She would stand by her mother for ever. But some of her
father’s fine-tempered desperation flashed in her.
When Egbert saw his little girl limping horribly—not only limping but
lurching horribly in crippled, childish way, his heart again hardened
with chagrin, like steel that is tempered again. There was a tacit
understanding between him and his little girl: not what we would call
love, but a weapon-like kinship. There was a tiny touch of irony in his
manner towards her, contrasting sharply with Winifred’s heavy,
unleavened solicitude and care. The child flickered back to him with an
answering little smile of irony and recklessness: an odd flippancy
which made Winifred only the more sombre and earnest.
The Marshalls took endless thought and trouble for the child, searching
out every means to save her limb and her active freedom. They spared no
effort and no money, they spared no strength of will. With all their
slow, heavy power of will they willed that Joyce should save her
liberty of movement, should win back her wild, free grace. Even if it
took a long time to recover, it should be recovered.
So the situation stood. And Joyce submitted, week after week, month
after month to the tyranny and pain of the treatment. She acknowledged
the honourable effort on her behalf. But her flamy reckless spirit was
her father’s. It was he who had all the glamour for her. He and she
were like members of some forbidden secret society who know one another
but may not recognise one another. Knowledge they had in common, the
same secret of life, the father and the child. But the child stayed in
the camp of her mother, honourably, and the father wandered outside
like Ishmael, only coming sometimes to sit in the home for an hour or
two, an evening or two beside the camp fire, like Ishmael, in a curious
silence and tension, with the mocking answer of the desert speaking out
of his silence, and annulling the whole convention of the domestic
home.
His presence was almost an anguish to Winifred. She prayed against it.
That little cleft between his brow, that flickering, wicked, little
smile that seemed to haunt his face, and above all, the triumphant
loneliness, the Ishmael quality. And then the erectness of his supple
body, like a symbol. The very way he stood, so quiet, so insidious,
like an erect, supple symbol of life, the living body, confronting her
downcast soul, was torture to her. He was like a supple living idol
moving before her eyes, and she felt if she watched him she was damned.
And he came and made himself at home in her little home. When he was
there, moving in his own quiet way, she felt as if the whole great law
of sacrifice, by which she had elected to live, were annulled. He
annulled by his very presence the laws of her life. And what did he
substitute? Ah, against that question she hardened herself in recoil.
It was awful to her to have to have him about—moving about in his
shirt-sleeves, speaking in his tenor, throaty voice to the children.
Annabel simply adored him, and he teased the little girl. The baby,
Barbara, was not sure of him. She had been born a stranger to him. But
even the nurse, when she saw his white shoulder of flesh through the
slits of his torn shirt, thought it a shame.
Winifred felt it was only another weapon of his against her.
“You have other shirts—why do you wear that old one that is all torn,
Egbert?” she said.
“I may as well wear it out,” he said subtly.
He knew she would not offer to mend it for him. She _could_ not. And
no, she would not. Had she not her own gods to honour? And could she
betray them, submitting to his Baal and Ashtaroth? And it was terrible
to her, his unsheathed presence, that seemed to annul her and her
faith, like another revelation. Like a gleaming idol evoked against
her, a vivid life-idol that might triumph.
He came and he went—and she persisted. And then the great war broke
out. He was a man who could not go to the dogs. He could not dissipate
himself. He was pure-bred in his Englishness, and even when he would
have killed to be vicious, he could not.
So when the war broke out his whole instinct was against it: against
war. He had not the faintest desire to overcome any foreigners or to
help in their death. He had no conception of Imperial England, and Rule
Britannia was just a joke to him. He was a pure-blooded Englishman,
perfect in his race, and when he was truly himself he could no more
have been aggressive on the score of his Englishness than a rose can be
aggressive on the score of its rosiness.
No, he had no desire to defy Germany and to exalt England. The
distinction between German and English was not for him the distinction
between good and bad. It was the distinction between blue water-flowers
and red or white bush-blossoms: just difference. The difference between
the wild boar and the wild bear. And a man was good or bad according to
his nature, not according to his nationality.
Egbert was well-bred, and this was part of his natural understanding.
It was merely unnatural to him to hate a nation _en bloc_. Certain
individuals he disliked, and others he liked, and the mass he knew
nothing about. Certain deeds he disliked, certain deeds seemed natural
to him, and about most deeds he had no particular feeling.
He had, however, the one deepest pure-bred instinct. He recoiled
inevitably from having his feelings dictated to him by the mass
feeling. His feelings were his own, his understanding was his own, and
he would never go back on either, willingly. Shall a man become
inferior to his own true knowledge and self, just because the mob
expects it of him?
What Egbert felt subtly and without question, his father-in-law felt
also in a rough, more combative way. Different as the two men were,
they were two real Englishmen, and their instincts were almost the
same.
And Godfrey Marshall had the world to reckon with. There was German
military aggression, and the English non-military idea of liberty and
the “conquests of peace”—meaning industrialism. Even if the choice
between militarism and industrialism were a choice of evils, the
elderly man asserted his choice of the latter, perforce. He whose soul
was quick with the instinct of power.
Egbert just refused to reckon with the world. He just refused even to
decide between German militarism and British industrialism. He chose
neither. As for atrocities, he despised the people who committed them
as inferior criminal types. There was nothing national about crime.
And yet, war! War! Just war! Not right or wrong, but just war itself.
Should he join? Should he give himself over to war? The question was in
his mind for some weeks. Not because he thought England was right and
Germany wrong. Probably Germany was wrong, but he refused to make a
choice. Not because he felt inspired. No. But just—war.
The deterrent was, the giving himself over into the power of other men,
and into the power of the mob-spirit of a democratic army. Should he
give himself over? Should he make over his own life and body to the
control of something which he _knew_ was inferior, in spirit, to his
own self? Should he commit himself into the power of an inferior
control? Should he? Should he betray himself?
He was going to put himself into the power of his inferiors, and he
knew it. He was going to subjugate himself. He was going to be ordered
about by petty _canaille_ of non-commissioned officers—and even
commissioned officers. He who was born and bred free. Should he do it?
He went to his wife, to speak to her.
“Shall I join up, Winifred?”
She was silent. Her instinct also was dead against it. And yet a
certain profound resentment made her answer:
“You have three children dependent on you. I don’t know whether you
have thought of that.”
It was still only the third month of the war, and the old pre-war ideas
were still alive.
“Of course. But it won’t make much difference to them. I shall be
earning a shilling a day, at least.”
“You’d better speak to father, I think,” she replied heavily.
Egbert went to his father-in-law. The elderly man’s heart was full of
resentment.
“I should say,” he said rather sourly, “it is the best thing you could
do.”
Egbert went and joined up immediately, as a private soldier. He was
drafted into the light artillery.
Winifred now had a new duty towards him: the duty of a wife towards a
husband who is himself performing his duty towards the world. She loved
him still. She would always love him, as far as earthly love went. But
it was duty she now lived by. When he came back to her in khaki, a
soldier, she submitted to him as a wife. It was her duty. But to his
passion she could never again fully submit. Something prevented her,
for ever: even her own deepest choice.
He went back again to camp. It did not suit him to be a modern soldier.
In the thick, gritty, hideous khaki his subtle physique was
extinguished as if he had been killed. In the ugly intimacy of the camp
his thoroughbred sensibilities were just degraded. But he had chosen,
so he accepted. An ugly little look came on to his face, of a man who
has accepted his own degradation.
In the early spring Winifred went down to Crockham to be there when
primroses were out, and the tassels hanging on the hazel-bushes. She
felt something like a reconciliation towards Egbert, now he was a
prisoner in camp most of his days. Joyce was wild with delight at
seeing the garden and the common again, after the eight or nine months
of London and misery. She was still lame. She still had the irons up
her leg. But she lurched about with a wild, crippled agility.
Egbert came for a week-end, in his gritty, thick, sand-paper khaki and
puttees and the hideous cap. Nay, he looked terrible. And on his face a
slightly impure look, a little sore on his lip, as if he had eaten too
much or drunk too much or let his blood become a little unclean. He was
almost uglily healthy, with the camp life. It did not suit him.
Winifred waited for him in a little passion of duty and sacrifice,
willing to serve the soldier, if not the man. It only made him feel a
little more ugly inside. The week-end was torment to him: the memory of
the camp, the knowledge of the life he led there; even the sight of his
own legs in that abhorrent khaki. He felt as if the hideous cloth went
into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to
serve the _soldier_, when she repudiated the man. And this made the
grit worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing
and calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses
and governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had
all become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge.
He left at dawn on the Monday morning, glad to get back to the realness
and vulgarity of the camp.
Winifred would never meet him again at the cottage—only in London,
where the world was with them. But sometimes he came alone to Crockham
perhaps when friends were staying there. And then he would work awhile
in his garden. This summer still it would flame with blue anchusas and
big red poppies, the mulleins would sway their soft, downy erections in
the air: he loved mulleins: and the honeysuckle would stream out scent
like memory, when the owl was whooing. Then he sat by the fire with the
friends and with Winifred’s sisters, and they sang the folk-songs. He
put on thin civilian clothes and his charm and his beauty and the
supple dominancy of his body glowed out again. But Winifred was not
there.
At the end of the summer he went to Flanders, into action. He seemed
already to have gone out of life, beyond the pale of life. He hardly
remembered his life any more, being like a man who is going to take a
jump from a height, and is only looking to where he must land.
He was twice slightly wounded, in two months. But not enough to put him
off duty for more than a day or two. They were retiring again, holding
the enemy back. He was in the rear—three machine-guns. The country was
all pleasant, war had not yet trampled it. Only the air seemed
shattered, and the land awaiting death. It was a small, unimportant
action in which he was engaged.
The guns were stationed on a little bushy hillock just outside a
village. But occasionally, it was difficult to say from which
direction, came the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and beyond, the
far-off thud of cannon. The afternoon was wintry and cold.
A lieutenant stood on a little iron platform at the top of the ladders,
taking the sights and giving the aim, calling in a high, tense,
mechanical voice. Out of the sky came the sharp cry of the directions,
then the warning numbers, then “Fire!” The shot went, the piston of the
gun sprang back, there was a sharp explosion, and a very faint film of
smoke in the air. Then the other two guns fired, and there was a lull.
The officer was uncertain of the enemy’s position. The thick clump of
horse-chestnut trees below was without change. Only in the far distance
the sound of heavy firing continued, so far off as to give a sense of
peace.
The gorse bushes on either hand were dark, but a few sparks of flowers
showed yellow. He noticed them almost unconsciously as he waited, in
the lull. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the air came chill on his
arms. Again his shirt was slit on the shoulders, and the flesh showed
through. He was dirty and unkempt. But his face was quiet. So many
things go out of consciousness before we come to the end of
consciousness.
Before him, below, was the highroad, running between high banks of
grass and gorse. He saw the whitish muddy tracks and deep scores in the
road, where the part of the regiment had retired. Now all was still.
Sounds that came, came from the outside. The place where he stood was
still silent, chill, serene: the white church among the trees beyond
seemed like a thought only.
He moved into a lightning-like mechanical response at the sharp cry
from the officer overhead. Mechanism, the pure mechanical action of
obedience at the guns. Pure mechanical action at the guns. It left the
soul unburdened, brooding in dark nakedness. In the end, the soul is
alone, brooding on the face of the uncreated flux, as a bird on a dark
sea.
Nothing could be seen but the road, and a crucifix knocked slanting and
the dark, autumnal fields and woods. There appeared three horsemen on a
little eminence, very small, on the crest of a ploughed field. They
were our own men. Of the enemy, nothing.
The lull continued. Then suddenly came sharp orders, and a new
direction of the guns, and an intense, exciting activity. Yet at the
centre the soul remained dark and aloof, alone.
But even so, it was the soul that heard the new sound: the new, deep
“papp!” of a gun that seemed to touch right upon the soul. He kept up
the rapid activity at the machine-gun, sweating. But in his soul was
the echo of the new, deep sound, deeper than life.
And in confirmation came the awful faint whistling of a shell,
advancing almost suddenly into a piercing, tearing shriek that would
tear through the membrane of life. He heard it in his ears, but he
heard it also in his soul, in tension. There was relief when the thing
had swung by and struck, away beyond. He heard the hoarseness of its
explosion, and the voice of the soldier calling to the horses. But he
did not turn round to look. He only noticed a twig of holly with red
berries fall like a gift on to the road below.
Not this time, not this time. Whither thou goest I will go. Did he say
it to the shell, or to whom? Whither thou goest I will go. Then, the
faint whistling of another shell dawned, and his blood became small and
still to receive it. It drew nearer, like some horrible blast of wind;
his blood lost consciousness. But in the second of suspension he saw
the heavy shell swoop to earth, into the rocky bushes on the right, and
earth and stones poured up into the sky. It was as if he heard no
sound. The earth and stones and fragments of bush fell to earth again,
and there was the same unchanging peace. The Germans had got the aim.
Would they move now? Would they retire? Yes. The officer was giving the
last lightning-rapid orders to fire before withdrawing. A shell passed
unnoticed in the rapidity of action. And then, into the silence, into
the suspense where the soul brooded, finally crashed a noise and a
darkness and a moment’s flaming agony and horror. Ah, he had seen the
dark bird flying towards him, flying home this time. In one instant
life and eternity went up in a conflagration of agony, then there was a
weight of darkness.
When faintly something began to struggle in the darkness, a
consciousness of himself, he was aware of a great load and a clanging
sound. To have known the moment of death! And to be forced, before
dying, to review it. So, fate, even in death.
There was a resounding of pain. It seemed to sound from the outside of
his consciousness: like a loud bell clanging very near. Yet he knew it
was himself. He must associate himself with it. After a lapse and a new
effort, he identified a pain in his head, a large pain that clanged and
resounded. So far he could identify himself with himself. Then there
was a lapse.
After a time he seemed to wake up again, and waking, to know that he
was at the front, and that he was killed. He did not open his eyes.
Light was not yet his. The clanging pain in his head rang out the rest
of his consciousness. So he lapsed away from consciousness, in
unutterable sick abandon of life.
Bit by bit, like a doom came the necessity to know. He was hit in the
head. It was only a vague surmise at first. But in the swinging of the
pendulum of pain, swinging ever nearer and nearer, to touch him into an
agony of consciousness and a consciousness of agony, gradually the
knowledge emerged—he must be hit in the head—hit on the left brow; if
so, there would be blood—was there blood?—could he feel blood in his
left eye? Then the clanging seemed to burst the membrane of his brain,
like death-madness.
Was there blood on his face? Was hot blood flowing? Or was it dry blood
congealing down his cheek? It took him hours even to ask the question:
time being no more than an agony in darkness, without measurement.
A long time after he had opened his eyes he realised he was seeing
something—something, something, but the effort to recall what was too
great. No, no; no recall!
Were they the stars in the dark sky? Was it possible it was stars in
the dark sky? Stars? The world? Ah, no, he could not know it! Stars and
the world were gone for him, he closed his eyes. No stars, no sky, no
world. No, No! The thick darkness of blood alone. It should be one
great lapse into the thick darkness of blood in agony.
Death, oh, death! The world all blood, and the blood all writhing with
death. The soul like the tiniest little light out on a dark sea, the
sea of blood. And the light guttering, beating, pulsing in a windless
storm, wishing it could go out, yet unable.
There had been life. There had been Winifred and his children. But the
frail death-agony effort to catch at straws of memory, straws of life
from the past, brought on too great a nausea. No, No! No Winifred, no
children. No world, no people. Better the agony of dissolution ahead
than the nausea of the effort backwards. Better the terrible work
should go forward, the dissolving into the black sea of death, in the
extremity of dissolution, than that there should be any reaching back
towards life. To forget! To forget! Utterly, utterly to forget, in the
great forgetting of death. To break the core and the unit of life, and
to lapse out on the great darkness. Only that. To break the clue, and
mingle and commingle with the one darkness, without afterwards or
forwards. Let the black sea of death itself solve the problem of
futurity. Let the will of man break and give up.
What was that? A light! A terrible light! Was it figures? Was it legs
of a horse colossal—colossal above him: huge, huge?
The Germans heard a slight noise, and started. Then, in the glare of a
light-bomb, by the side of the heap of earth thrown up by the shell,
they saw the dead face.