Title: The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914)
Author: D. H. Lawrence
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914)
Author: D. H. Lawrence
Contents
THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER
THE THORN IN THE FLESH
DAUGHTERS OF THE VICAR
A FRAGMENT OF STAINED GLASS
THE SHADES OF SPRING
SECOND BEST
THE SHADOW IN THE ROSE GARDEN
GOOSE FAIR
THE WHITE STOCKING
A SICK COLLIER
THE CHRISTENING
ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS
THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER
I
They had marched more than thirty kilometres since dawn, along the
white, hot road where occasional thickets of trees threw a moment
of shade, then out into the glare again. On either hand, the
valley, wide and shallow, glittered with heat; dark green patches
of rye, pale young corn, fallow and meadow and black pine woods
spread in a dull, hot diagram under a glistening sky. But right in
front the mountains ranged across, pale blue and very still, snow
gleaming gently out of the deep atmosphere. And towards the
mountains, on and on, the regiment marched between the rye fields
and the meadows, between the scraggy fruit trees set regularly on
either side the high road. The burnished, dark green rye threw off
a suffocating heat, the mountains drew gradually nearer and more
distinct. While the feet of the soldiers grew hotter, sweat ran
through their hair under their helmets, and their knapsacks could
burn no more in contact with their shoulders, but seemed instead to
give off a cold, prickly sensation.
He walked on and on in silence, staring at the mountains ahead,
that rose sheer out of the land, and stood fold behind fold, half
earth, half heaven, the heaven, the barrier with slits of soft
snow, in the pale, bluish peaks.
He could now walk almost without pain. At the start, he had
determined not to limp. It had made him sick to take the first
steps, and during the first mile or so, he had compressed his
breath, and the cold drops of sweat had stood on his forehead. But
he had walked it off. What were they after all but bruises! He
had looked at them, as he was getting up: deep bruises on the backs
of his thighs. And since he had made his first step in the
morning, he had been conscious of them, till now he had a tight,
hot place in his chest, with suppressing the pain, and holding
himself in. There seemed no air when he breathed. But he walked
almost lightly.
The Captain's hand had trembled at taking his coffee at dawn: his
orderly saw it again. And he saw the fine figure of the Captain
wheeling on horseback at the farm-house ahead, a handsome figure in
pale blue uniform with facings of scarlet, and the metal gleaming
on the black helmet and the sword-scabbard, and dark streaks of
sweat coming on the silky bay horse. The orderly felt he was
connected with that figure moving so suddenly on horseback: he
followed it like a shadow, mute and inevitable and damned by it.
And the officer was always aware of the tramp of the company
behind, the march of his orderly among the men.
The Captain was a tall man of about forty, grey at the temples. He
had a handsome, finely knit figure, and was one of the best
horsemen in the West. His orderly, having to rub him down, admired
the amazing riding-muscles of his loins.
For the rest, the orderly scarcely noticed the officer any more
than he noticed himself. It was rarely he saw his master's face:
he did not look at it. The Captain had reddish-brown, stiff hair,
that he wore short upon his skull. His moustache was also cut
short and bristly over a full, brutal mouth. His face was rather
rugged, the cheeks thin. Perhaps the man was the more handsome for
the deep lines in his face, the irritable tension of his brow,
which gave him the look of a man who fights with life. His fair
eyebrows stood bushy over light blue eyes that were always flashing
with cold fire.
He was a Prussian aristocrat, haughty and overbearing. But his
mother had been a Polish Countess. Having made too many gambling
debts when he was young, he had ruined his prospects in the Army,
and remained an infantry captain. He had never married: his
position did not allow of it, and no woman had ever moved him to
it. His time he spent riding--occasionally he rode one of his own
horses at the races--and at the officers' club. Now and then he
took himself a mistress. But after such an event, he returned to
duty with his brow still more tense, his eyes still more hostile
and irritable. With the men, however, he was merely impersonal,
though a devil when roused; so that, on the whole, they feared him,
but had no great aversion from him. They accepted him as the
inevitable.
To his orderly he was at first cold and just and indifferent: he
did not fuss over trifles. So that his servant knew practically
nothing about him, except just what orders he would give, and how
he wanted them obeyed. That was quite simple. Then the change
gradually came.
The orderly was a youth of about twenty-two, of medium height, and
well built. He had strong, heavy limbs, was swarthy, with a soft,
black, young moustache. There was something altogether warm and
young about him. He had firmly marked eyebrows over dark,
expressionless eyes, that seemed never to have thought, only to
have received life direct through his senses, and acted straight
from instinct.
Gradually the officer had become aware of his servant's young,
vigorous, unconscious presence about him. He could not get away
from the sense of the youth's person, while he was in attendance.
It was like a warm flame upon the older man's tense, rigid body,
that had become almost unliving, fixed. There was something so
free and self-contained about him, and something in the young
fellow's movement, that made the officer aware of him. And this
irritated the Prussian. He did not choose to be touched into life
by his servant. He might easily have changed his man, but he did
not. He now very rarely looked direct at his orderly, but kept his
face averted, as if to avoid seeing him. And yet as the young
soldier moved unthinking about the apartment, the elder watched
him, and would notice the movement of his strong young shoulders
under the blue cloth, the bend of his neck. And it irritated him.
To see the soldier's young, brown, shapely peasant's hand grasp the
loaf or the wine-bottle sent a flash of hate or of anger through
the elder man's blood. It was not that the youth was clumsy: it
was rather the blind, instinctive sureness of movement of an
unhampered young animal that irritated the officer to such a
degree.
Once, when a bottle of wine had gone over, and the red gushed out
on to the tablecloth, the officer had started up with an oath, and
his eyes, bluey like fire, had held those of the confused youth for
a moment. It was a shock for the young soldier. He felt something
sink deeper, deeper into his soul, where nothing had ever gone
before. It left him rather blank and wondering. Some of his
natural completeness in himself was gone, a little uneasiness took
its place. And from that time an undiscovered feeling had held
between the two men.
Henceforward the orderly was afraid of really meeting his master.
His subconsciousness remembered those steely blue eyes and the
harsh brows, and did not intend to meet them again. So he always
stared past his master, and avoided him. Also, in a little
anxiety, he waited for the three months to have gone, when his time
would be up. He began to feel a constraint in the Captain's
presence, and the soldier even more than the officer wanted to be
left alone, in his neutrality as servant.
He had served the Captain for more than a year, and knew his duty.
This he performed easily, as if it were natural to him. The
officer and his commands he took for granted, as he took the sun
and the rain, and he served as a matter of course. It did not
implicate him personally.
But now if he were going to be forced into a personal interchange
with his master he would be like a wild thing caught, he felt he
must get away.
But the influence of the young soldier's being had penetrated
through the officer's stiffened discipline, and perturbed the man
in him. He, however, was a gentleman, with long, fine hands and
cultivated movements, and was not going to allow such a thing as
the stirring of his innate self. He was a man of passionate
temper, who had always kept himself suppressed. Occasionally there
had been a duel, an outburst before the soldiers. He knew himself
to be always on the point of breaking out. But he kept himself
hard to the idea of the Service. Whereas the young soldier seemed
to live out his warm, full nature, to give it off in his very
movements, which had a certain zest, such as wild animals have in
free movement. And this irritated the officer more and more.
In spite of himself, the Captain could not regain his neutrality of
feeling towards his orderly. Nor could he leave the man alone. In
spite of himself, he watched him, gave him sharp orders, tried to
take up as much of his time as possible. Sometimes he flew into a
rage with the young soldier, and bullied him. Then the orderly
shut himself off, as it were out of earshot, and waited, with
sullen, flushed face, for the end of the noise. The words never
pierced to his intelligence, he made himself, protectively,
impervious to the feelings of his master.
He had a scar on his left thumb, a deep seam going across the
knuckle. The officer had long suffered from it, and wanted to do
something to it. Still it was there, ugly and brutal on the young,
brown hand. At last the Captain's reserve gave way. One day, as
the orderly was smoothing out the tablecloth, the officer pinned
down his thumb with a pencil, asking:
"How did you come by that?"
The young man winced and drew back at attention.
"A wood axe, Herr Hauptmann," he answered.
The officer waited for further explanation. None came. The
orderly went about his duties. The elder man was sullenly angry.
His servant avoided him. And the next day he had to use all his
will-power to avoid seeing the scarred thumb. He wanted to get
hold of it and--A hot flame ran in his blood.
He knew his servant would soon be free, and would be glad. As yet,
the soldier had held himself off from the elder man. The Captain
grew madly irritable. He could not rest when the soldier was away,
and when he was present, he glared at him with tormented eyes. He
hated those fine, black brows over the unmeaning, dark eyes, he was
infuriated by the free movement of the handsome limbs, which no
military discipline could make stiff. And he became harsh and
cruelly bullying, using contempt and satire. The young soldier
only grew more mute and expressionless.
"What cattle were you bred by, that you can't keep straight eyes?
Look me in the eyes when I speak to you."
And the soldier turned his dark eyes to the other's face, but there
was no sight in them: he stared with the slightest possible cast,
holding back his sight, perceiving the blue of his master's eyes,
but receiving no look from them. And the elder man went pale, and
his reddish eyebrows twitched. He gave his order, barrenly.
Once he flung a heavy military glove into the young soldier's face.
Then he had the satisfaction of seeing the black eyes flare up into
his own, like a blaze when straw is thrown on a fire. And he had
laughed with a little tremor and a sneer.
But there were only two months more. The youth instinctively tried
to keep himself intact: he tried to serve the officer as if the
latter were an abstract authority and not a man. All his instinct
was to avoid personal contact, even definite hate. But in spite of
himself the hate grew, responsive to the officer's passion.
However, he put it in the background. When he had left the Army he
could dare acknowledge it. By nature he was active, and had many
friends. He thought what amazing good fellows they were. But,
without knowing it, he was alone. Now this solitariness was
intensified. It would carry him through his term. But the officer
seemed to be going irritably insane, and the youth was deeply
frightened.
The soldier had a sweetheart, a girl from the mountains, independent
and primitive. The two walked together, rather silently. He went
with her, not to talk, but to have his arm round her, and for the
physical contact. This eased him, made it easier for him to ignore
the Captain; for he could rest with her held fast against his chest.
And she, in some unspoken fashion, was there for him. They loved
each other.
The Captain perceived it, and was mad with irritation. He kept the
young man engaged all the evenings long, and took pleasure in the
dark look that came on his face. Occasionally, the eyes of the two
men met, those of the younger sullen and dark, doggedly unalterable,
those of the elder sneering with restless contempt.
The officer tried hard not to admit the passion that had got hold
of him. He would not know that his feeling for his orderly was
anything but that of a man incensed by his stupid, perverse
servant. So, keeping quite justified and conventional in his
consciousness, he let the other thing run on. His nerves, however,
were suffering. At last he slung the end of a belt in his
servant's face. When he saw the youth start back, the pain-tears
in his eyes and the blood on his mouth, he had felt at once a
thrill of deep pleasure and of shame.
But this, he acknowledged to himself, was a thing he had never done
before. The fellow was too exasperating. His own nerves must be
going to pieces. He went away for some days with a woman.
It was a mockery of pleasure. He simply did not want the woman.
But he stayed on for his time. At the end of it, he came back in
an agony of irritation, torment, and misery. He rode all the
evening, then came straight in to supper. His orderly was out.
The officer sat with his long, fine hands lying on the table,
perfectly still, and all his blood seemed to be corroding.
At last his servant entered. He watched the strong, easy young
figure, the fine eyebrows, the thick black hair. In a week's time
the youth had got back his old well-being. The hands of the
officer twitched and seemed to be full of mad flame. The young man
stood at attention, unmoving, shut off.
The meal went in silence. But the orderly seemed eager. He made a
clatter with the dishes.
"Are you in a hurry?" asked the officer, watching the intent, warm
face of his servant. The other did not reply.
"Will you answer my question?" said the Captain.
"Yes, sir," replied the orderly, standing with his pile of deep
Army plates. The Captain waited, looked at him, then asked again:
"Are you in a hurry?"
"Yes, sir," came the answer, that sent a flash through the
listener.
"For what?"
"I was going out, sir."
"I want you this evening."
There was a moment's hesitation. The officer had a curious
stiffness of countenance.
"Yes, sir," replied the servant, in his throat.
"I want you to-morrow evening also--in fact, you may consider your
evenings occupied, unless I give you leave."
The mouth with the young moustache set close.
"Yes, sir," answered the orderly, loosening his lips for a moment.
He again turned to the door.
"And why have you a piece of pencil in your ear?"
The orderly hesitated, then continued on his way without answering.
He set the plates in a pile outside the door, took the stump of
pencil from his ear, and put it in his pocket. He had been copying
a verse for his sweetheart's birthday card. He returned to finish
clearing the table. The officer's eyes were dancing, he had a
little, eager smile.
"Why have you a piece of pencil in your ear?" he asked.
The orderly took his hands full of dishes. His master was standing
near the great green stove, a little smile on his face, his chin
thrust forward. When the young soldier saw him his heart suddenly
ran hot. He felt blind. Instead of answering, he turned dazedly
to the door. As he was crouching to set down the dishes, he was
pitched forward by a kick from behind. The pots went in a stream
down the stairs, he clung to the pillar of the banisters. And as
he was rising he was kicked heavily again, and again, so that he
clung sickly to the post for some moments. His master had gone
swiftly into the room and closed the door. The maid-servant
downstairs looked up the staircase and made a mocking face at the
crockery disaster.
The officer's heart was plunging. He poured himself a glass of
wine, part of which he spilled on the floor, and gulped the
remainder, leaning against the cool, green stove. He heard his man
collecting the dishes from the stairs. Pale, as if intoxicated, he
waited. The servant entered again. The Captain's heart gave a
pang, as of pleasure, seeing the young fellow bewildered and
uncertain on his feet, with pain.
"Schöner!" he said.
The soldier was a little slower in coming to attention.
"Yes, sir!"
The youth stood before him, with pathetic young moustache, and fine
eyebrows very distinct on his forehead of dark marble.
"I asked you a question."
"Yes, sir."
The officer's tone bit like acid.
"Why had you a pencil in your ear?"
Again the servant's heart ran hot, and he could not breathe. With
dark, strained eyes, he looked at the officer, as if fascinated.
And he stood there sturdily planted, unconscious. The withering
smile came into the Captain's eyes, and he lifted his foot.
"I--I forgot it--sir," panted the soldier, his dark eyes fixed on
the other man's dancing blue ones.
"What was it doing there?"
He saw the young man's breast heaving as he made an effort for
words.
"I had been writing."
"Writing what?"
Again the soldier looked up and down. The officer could hear him
panting. The smile came into the blue eyes. The soldier worked
his dry throat, but could not speak. Suddenly the smile lit like a
flame on the officer's face, and a kick came heavily against the
orderly's thigh. The youth moved a pace sideways. His face went
dead, with two black, staring eyes.
"Well?" said the officer.
The orderly's mouth had gone dry, and his tongue rubbed in it as on
dry brown-paper. He worked his throat. The officer raised his
foot. The servant went stiff.
"Some poetry, sir," came the crackling, unrecognizable sound of his
voice.
"Poetry, what poetry?" asked the Captain, with a sickly smile.
Again there was the working in the throat. The Captain's heart had
suddenly gone down heavily, and he stood sick and tired.
"For my girl, sir," he heard the dry, inhuman sound.
"Oh!" he said, turning away. "Clear the table."
"Click!" went the soldier's throat; then again, "click!" and then
the half-articulate:
"Yes, sir."
The young soldier was gone, looking old, and walking heavily.
The officer, left alone, held himself rigid, to prevent himself
from thinking. His instinct warned him that he must not think.
Deep inside him was the intense gratification of his passion, still
working powerfully. Then there was a counter-action, a horrible
breaking down of something inside him, a whole agony of reaction.
He stood there for an hour motionless, a chaos of sensations, but
rigid with a will to keep blank his consciousness, to prevent his
mind grasping. And he held himself so until the worst of the
stress had passed, when he began to drink, drank himself to an
intoxication, till he slept obliterated. When he woke in the
morning he was shaken to the base of his nature. But he had fought
off the realization of what he had done. He had prevented his mind
from taking it in, had suppressed it along with his instincts, and
the conscious man had nothing to do with it. He felt only as after
a bout of intoxication, weak, but the affair itself all dim and not
to be recovered. Of the drunkenness of his passion he successfully
refused remembrance. And when his orderly appeared with coffee,
the officer assumed the same self he had had the morning before.
He refused the event of the past night--denied it had ever been--
and was successful in his denial. He had not done any such thing--
not he himself. Whatever there might be lay at the door of a
stupid, insubordinate servant.
The orderly had gone about in a stupor all the evening. He drank
some beer because he was parched, but not much, the alcohol made
his feeling come back, and he could not bear it. He was dulled, as
if nine-tenths of the ordinary man in him were inert. He crawled
about disfigured. Still, when he thought of the kicks, he went
sick, and when he thought of the threat of more kicking, in the
room afterwards, his heart went hot and faint, and he panted,
remembering the one that had come. He had been forced to say, "For
my girl." He was much too done even to want to cry. His mouth
hung slightly open, like an idiot's. He felt vacant, and wasted.
So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and very slowly and
clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it
difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again.
His limbs, his jaw, were slack and nerveless. But he was very
tired. He got to bed at last, and slept inert, relaxed, in a sleep
that was rather stupor than slumber, a dead night of stupefaction
shot through with gleams of anguish.
In the morning were the manoeuvres. But he woke even before the
bugle sounded. The painful ache in his chest, the dryness of his
throat, the awful steady feeling of misery made his eyes come awake
and dreary at once. He knew, without thinking, what had happened.
And he knew that the day had come again, when he must go on with
his round. The last bit of darkness was being pushed out of the
room. He would have to move his inert body and go on. He was so
young, and had known so little trouble, that he was bewildered. He
only wished it would stay night, so that he could lie still,
covered up by the darkness. And yet nothing would prevent the day
from coming, nothing would save him from having to get up and
saddle the Captain's horse, and make the Captain's coffee. It was
there, inevitable. And then, he thought, it was impossible. Yet
they would not leave him free. He must go and take the coffee to
the Captain. He was too stunned to understand it. He only knew it
was inevitable--inevitable, however long he lay inert.
At last, after heaving at himself, for he seemed to be a mass of
inertia, he got up. But he had to force every one of his movements
from behind, with his will. He felt lost, and dazed, and helpless.
Then he clutched hold of the bed, the pain was so keen. And
looking at his thighs, he saw the darker bruises on his swarthy
flesh and he knew that, if he pressed one of his fingers on one of
the bruises, he should faint. But he did not want to faint--he did
not want anybody to know. No one should ever know. It was between
him and the Captain. There were only the two people in the world
now--himself and the Captain.
Slowly, economically, he got dressed and forced himself to walk.
Everything was obscure, except just what he had his hands on. But
he managed to get through his work. The very pain revived his dull
senses. The worst remained yet. He took the tray and went up to
the Captain's room. The officer, pale and heavy, sat at the table.
The orderly, as he saluted, felt himself put out of existence. He
stood still for a moment submitting to his own nullification--then
he gathered himself, seemed to regain himself, and then the Captain
began to grow vague, unreal, and the younger soldier's heart beat
up. He clung to this situation--that the Captain did not exist--so
that he himself might live. But when he saw his officer's hand
tremble as he took the coffee, he felt everything falling
shattered. And he went away, feeling as if he himself were coming
to pieces, disintegrated. And when the Captain was there on
horseback, giving orders, while he himself stood, with rifle and
knapsack, sick with pain, he felt as if he must shut his eyes--as
if he must shut his eyes on everything. It was only the long agony
of marching with a parched throat that filled him with one single,
sleep-heavy intention: to save himself.
II
He was getting used even to his parched throat. That the snowy
peaks were radiant among the sky, that the whity-green glacier-
river twisted through its pale shoals, in the valley below, seemed
almost supernatural. But he was going mad with fever and thirst.
He plodded on uncomplaining. He did not want to speak, not to
anybody. There were two gulls, like flakes of water and snow, over
the river. The scent of green rye soaked in sunshine came like a
sickness. And the march continued, monotonously, almost like a bad
sleep.
At the next farm-house, which stood low and broad near the high
road, tubs of water had been put out. The soldiers clustered round
to drink. They took off their helmets, and the steam mounted from
their wet hair. The Captain sat on horseback, watching. He needed
to see his orderly. His helmet threw a dark shadow over his light,
fierce eyes, but his moustache and mouth and chin were distinct in
the sunshine. The orderly must move under the presence of the
figure of the horseman. It was not that he was afraid, or cowed.
It was as if he was disembowelled, made empty, like an empty shell.
He felt himself as nothing, a shadow creeping under the sunshine.
And, thirsty as he was, he could scarcely drink, feeling the
Captain near him. He would not take off his helmet to wipe his wet
hair. He wanted to stay in shadow, not to be forced into
consciousness. Starting, he saw the light heel of the officer
prick the belly of the horse; the Captain cantered away, and he
himself could relapse into vacancy.
Nothing, however, could give him back his living place in the hot,
bright morning. He felt like a gap among it all. Whereas the
Captain was prouder, overriding. A hot flash went through the
young servant's body. The Captain was firmer and prouder with
life, he himself was empty as a shadow. Again the flash went
through him, dazing him out. But his heart ran a little firmer.
The company turned up the hill, to make a loop for the return.
Below, from among the trees, the farm-bell clanged. He saw the
labourers, mowing barefoot at the thick grass, leave off their work
and go downhill, their scythes hanging over their shoulders, like
long, bright claws curving down behind them. They seemed like
dream-people, as if they had no relation to himself. He felt as in
a blackish dream: as if all the other things were there and had
form, but he himself was only a consciousness, a gap that could
think and perceive.
The soldiers were tramping silently up the glaring hillside.
Gradually his head began to revolve, slowly, rhythmically.
Sometimes it was dark before his eyes, as if he saw this world
through a smoked glass, frail shadows and unreal. It gave him a
pain in his head to walk.
The air was too scented, it gave no breath. All the lush
greenstuff seemed to be issuing its sap, till the air was deathly,
sickly with the smell of greenness. There was the perfume of
clover, like pure honey and bees. Then there grew a faint acrid
tang--they were near the beeches; and then a queer clattering
noise, and a suffocating, hideous smell; they were passing a flock
of sheep, a shepherd in a black smock, holding his crook. Why
should the sheep huddle together under this fierce sun? He felt
that the shepherd would not see him, though he could see the
shepherd.
At last there was the halt. They stacked rifles in a conical
stack, put down their kit in a scattered circle around it, and
dispersed a little, sitting on a small knoll high on the hillside.
The chatter began. The soldiers were steaming with heat, but were
lively. He sat still, seeing the blue mountains rising upon the
land, twenty kilometres away. There was a blue fold in the ranges,
then out of that, at the foot, the broad, pale bed of the river,
stretches of whity-green water between pinkish-grey shoals among
the dark pine woods. There it was, spread out a long way off. And
it seemed to come downhill, the river. There was a raft being
steered, a mile away. It was a strange country. Nearer, a red-
roofed, broad farm with white base and square dots of windows
crouched beside the wall of beech foliage on the wood's edge.
There were long strips of rye and clover and pale green corn. And
just at his feet, below the knoll, was a darkish bog, where globe
flowers stood breathless still on their slim stalks. And some of
the pale gold bubbles were burst, and a broken fragment hung in the
air. He thought he was going to sleep.
Suddenly something moved into this coloured mirage before his eyes.
The Captain, a small, light-blue and scarlet figure, was trotting
evenly between the strips of corn, along the level brow of the
hill. And the man making flag-signals was coming on. Proud and
sure moved the horseman's figure, the quick, bright thing, in which
was concentrated all the light of this morning, which for the rest
lay a fragile, shining shadow. Submissive, apathetic, the young
soldier sat and stared. But as the horse slowed to a walk, coming
up the last steep path, the great flash flared over the body and
soul of the orderly. He sat waiting. The back of his head felt as
if it were weighted with a heavy piece of fire. He did not want to
eat. His hands trembled slightly as he moved them. Meanwhile the
officer on horseback was approaching slowly and proudly. The
tension grew in the orderly's soul. Then again, seeing the Captain
ease himself on the saddle, the flash blazed through him.
The Captain looked at the patch of light blue and scarlet, and dark
heads, scattered closely on the hillside. It pleased him. The
command pleased him. And he was feeling proud. His orderly was
among them in common subjection. The officer rose a little on his
stirrups to look. The young soldier sat with averted, dumb face.
The Captain relaxed on his seat. His slim-legged, beautiful horse,
brown as a beech nut, walked proudly uphill. The Captain passed
into the zone of the company's atmosphere: a hot smell of men, of
sweat, of leather. He knew it very well. After a word with the
lieutenant, he went a few paces higher, and sat there, a dominant
figure, his sweat-marked horse swishing its tail, while he looked
down on his men, on his orderly, a nonentity among the crowd.
The young soldier's heart was like fire in his chest, and he
breathed with difficulty. The officer, looking downhill, saw three
of the young soldiers, two pails of water between them, staggering
across a sunny green field. A table had been set up under a tree,
and there the slim lieutenant stood, importantly busy. Then the
Captain summoned himself to an act of courage. He called his
orderly.
The flame leapt into the young soldier's throat as he heard the
command, and he rose blindly, stifled. He saluted, standing below
the officer. He did not look up. But there was the flicker in the
Captain's voice.
"Go to the inn and fetch me . . ." the officer gave his commands.
"Quick!" he added.
At the last word, the heart of the servant leapt with a flash, and
he felt the strength come over his body. But he turned in
mechanical obedience, and set off at a heavy run downhill, looking
almost like a bear, his trousers bagging over his military boots.
And the officer watched this blind, plunging run all the way.
But it was only the outside of the orderly's body that was obeying
so humbly and mechanically. Inside had gradually accumulated a
core into which all the energy of that young life was compact and
concentrated. He executed his commission, and plodded quickly back
uphill. There was a pain in his head, as he walked, that made him
twist his features unknowingly. But hard there in the centre of
his chest was himself, himself, firm, and not to be plucked to
pieces.
The Captain had gone up into the wood. The orderly plodded through
the hot, powerfully smelling zone of the company's atmosphere. He
had a curious mass of energy inside him now. The Captain was less
real than himself. He approached the green entrance to the wood.
There, in the half-shade, he saw the horse standing, the sunshine
and the flickering shadow of leaves dancing over his brown body.
There was a clearing where timber had lately been felled. Here, in
the gold-green shade beside the brilliant cup of sunshine, stood
two figures, blue and pink, the bits of pink showing out plainly.
The Captain was talking to his lieutenant.
The orderly stood on the edge of the bright clearing, where great
trunks of trees, stripped and glistening, lay stretched like naked,
brown-skinned bodies. Chips of wood littered the trampled floor,
like splashed light, and the bases of the felled trees stood here
and there, with their raw, level tops. Beyond was the brilliant,
sunlit green of a beech.
"Then I will ride forward," the orderly heard his Captain say. The
lieutenant saluted and strode away. He himself went forward. A
hot flash passed through his belly, as he tramped towards his
officer.
The Captain watched the rather heavy figure of the young soldier
stumble forward, and his veins, too, ran hot. This was to be man
to man between them. He yielded before the solid, stumbling figure
with bent head. The orderly stooped and put the food on a level-
sawn tree-base. The Captain watched the glistening, sun-inflamed,
naked hands. He wanted to speak to the young soldier, but could
not. The servant propped a bottle against his thigh, pressed open
the cork, and poured out the beer into the mug. He kept his head
bent. The Captain accepted the mug.
"Hot!" he said, as if amiably.
The flame sprang out of the orderly's heart, nearly suffocating
him.
"Yes, sir," he replied, between shut teeth.
And he heard the sound of the Captain's drinking, and he clenched
his fists, such a strong torment came into his wrists. Then came
the faint clang of the closing pot-lid. He looked up. The Captain
was watching him. He glanced swiftly away. Then he saw the
officer stoop and take a piece of bread from the tree-base. Again
the flash of flame went through the young soldier, seeing the stiff
body stoop beneath him, and his hands jerked. He looked away. He
could feel the officer was nervous. The bread fell as it was being
broken. The officer ate the other piece. The two men stood tense
and still, the master laboriously chewing his bread, the servant
staring with averted face, his fist clenched.
Then the young soldier started. The officer had pressed open the
lid of the mug again. The orderly watched the lid of the mug, and
the white hand that clenched the handle, as if he were fascinated.
It was raised. The youth followed it with his eyes. And then he
saw the thin, strong throat of the elder man moving up and down as
he drank, the strong jaw working. And the instinct which had been
jerking at the young man's wrists suddenly jerked free. He jumped,
feeling as if it were rent in two by a strong flame.
The spur of the officer caught in a tree-root, he went down
backwards with a crash, the middle of his back thudding sickeningly
against a sharp-edged tree-base, the pot flying away. And in a
second the orderly, with serious, earnest young face, and underlip
between his teeth, had got his knee in the officer's chest and was
pressing the chin backward over the farther edge of the tree-stump,
pressing, with all his heart behind in a passion of relief, the
tension of his wrists exquisite with relief. And with the base of
his palms he shoved at the chin, with all his might. And it was
pleasant, too, to have that chin, that hard jaw already slightly
rough with beard, in his hands. He did not relax one hair's
breadth, but, all the force of all his blood exulting in his
thrust, he shoved back the head of the other man, till there was a
little "cluck" and a crunching sensation. Then he felt as if his
head went to vapour. Heavy convulsions shook the body of the
officer, frightening and horrifying the young soldier. Yet it
pleased him, too, to repress them. It pleased him to keep his
hands pressing back the chin, to feel the chest of the other man
yield in expiration to the weight of his strong, young knees, to
feel the hard twitchings of the prostrate body jerking his own
whole frame, which was pressed down on it.
But it went still. He could look into the nostrils of the other
man, the eyes he could scarcely see. How curiously the mouth was
pushed out, exaggerating the full lips, and the moustache bristling
up from them. Then, with a start, he noticed the nostrils
gradually filled with blood. The red brimmed, hesitated, ran over,
and went in a thin trickle down the face to the eyes.
It shocked and distressed him. Slowly, he got up. The body
twitched and sprawled there, inert. He stood and looked at it in
silence. It was a pity IT was broken. It represented more than
the thing which had kicked and bullied him. He was afraid to look
at the eyes. They were hideous now, only the whites showing, and
the blood running to them. The face of the orderly was drawn with
horror at the sight. Well, it was so. In his heart he was
satisfied. He had hated the face of the Captain. It was
extinguished now. There was a heavy relief in the orderly's soul.
That was as it should be. But he could not bear to see the long,
military body lying broken over the tree-base, the fine fingers
crisped. He wanted to hide it away.
Quickly, busily, he gathered it up and pushed it under the felled
tree-trunks, which rested their beautiful, smooth length either end
on logs. The face was horrible with blood. He covered it with the
helmet. Then he pushed the limbs straight and decent, and brushed
the dead leaves off the fine cloth of the uniform. So, it lay
quite still in the shadow under there. A little strip of sunshine
ran along the breast, from a chink between the logs. The orderly
sat by it for a few moments. Here his own life also ended.
Then, through his daze, he heard the lieutenant, in a loud voice,
explaining to the men outside the wood, that they were to suppose
the bridge on the river below was held by the enemy. Now they were
to march to the attack in such and such a manner. The lieutenant
had no gift of expression. The orderly, listening from habit, got
muddled. And when the lieutenant began it all again he ceased to
hear.
He knew he must go. He stood up. It surprised him that the leaves
were glittering in the sun, and the chips of wood reflecting white
from the ground. For him a change had come over the world. But
for the rest it had not--all seemed the same. Only he had left it.
And he could not go back. It was his duty to return with the beer-
pot and the bottle. He could not. He had left all that. The
lieutenant was still hoarsely explaining. He must go, or they
would overtake him. And he could not bear contact with anyone now.
He drew his fingers over his eyes, trying to find out where he was.
Then he turned away. He saw the horse standing in the path. He
went up to it and mounted. It hurt him to sit in the saddle. The
pain of keeping his seat occupied him as they cantered through the
wood. He would not have minded anything, but he could not get away
from the sense of being divided from the others. The path led out
of the trees. On the edge of the wood he pulled up and stood
watching. There in the spacious sunshine of the valley soldiers
were moving in a little swarm. Every now and then, a man harrowing
on a strip of fallow shouted to his oxen, at the turn. The village
and the white-towered church was small in the sunshine. And he no
longer belonged to it--he sat there, beyond, like a man outside in
the dark. He had gone out from everyday life into the unknown, and
he could not, he even did not want to go back.
Turning from the sun-blazing valley, he rode deep into the wood.
Tree-trunks, like people standing grey and still, took no notice as
he went. A doe, herself a moving bit of sunshine and shadow, went
running through the flecked shade. There were bright green rents
in the foliage. Then it was all pine wood, dark and cool. And he
was sick with pain, he had an intolerable great pulse in his head,
and he was sick. He had never been ill in his life. He felt lost,
quite dazed with all this.
Trying to get down from the horse, he fell, astonished at the pain
and his lack of balance. The horse shifted uneasily. He jerked
its bridle and sent it cantering jerkily away. It was his last
connection with the rest of things.
But he only wanted to lie down and not be disturbed. Stumbling
through the trees, he came on a quiet place where beeches and pine
trees grew on a slope. Immediately he had lain down and closed his
eyes, his consciousness went racing on without him. A big pulse of
sickness beat in him as if it throbbed through the whole earth. He
was burning with dry heat. But he was too busy, too tearingly
active in the incoherent race of delirium to observe.
III
He came to with a start. His mouth was dry and hard, his heart
beat heavily, but he had not the energy to get up. His heart beat
heavily. Where was he?--the barracks--at home? There was
something knocking. And, making an effort, he looked round--trees,
and litter of greenery, and reddish, bright, still pieces of
sunshine on the floor. He did not believe he was himself, he did
not believe what he saw. Something was knocking. He made a
struggle towards consciousness, but relapsed. Then he struggled
again. And gradually his surroundings fell into relationship with
himself. He knew, and a great pang of fear went through his heart.
Somebody was knocking. He could see the heavy, black rags of a fir
tree overhead. Then everything went black. Yet he did not believe
he had closed his eyes. He had not. Out of the blackness sight
slowly emerged again. And someone was knocking. Quickly, he saw
the blood-disfigured face of his Captain, which he hated. And he
held himself still with horror. Yet, deep inside him, he knew that
it was so, the Captain should be dead. But the physical delirium
got hold of him. Someone was knocking. He lay perfectly still, as
if dead, with fear. And he went unconscious.
When he opened his eyes again, he started, seeing something
creeping swiftly up a tree-trunk. It was a little bird. And the
bird was whistling overhead. Tap-tap-tap--it was the small, quick
bird rapping the tree-trunk with its beak, as if its head were a
little round hammer. He watched it curiously. It shifted sharply,
in its creeping fashion. Then, like a mouse, it slid down the bare
trunk. Its swift creeping sent a flash of revulsion through him.
He raised his head. It felt a great weight. Then, the little bird
ran out of the shadow across a still patch of sunshine, its little
head bobbing swiftly, its white legs twinkling brightly for a
moment. How neat it was in its build, so compact, with pieces of
white on its wings. There were several of them. They were so
pretty--but they crept like swift, erratic mice, running here and
there among the beech-mast.
He lay down again exhausted, and his consciousness lapsed. He had
a horror of the little creeping birds. All his blood seemed to be
darting and creeping in his head. And yet he could not move.
He came to with a further ache of exhaustion. There was the pain
in his head, and the horrible sickness, and his inability to move.
He had never been ill in his life. He did not know where he was or
what he was. Probably he had got sunstroke. Or what else?--he had
silenced the Captain for ever--some time ago--oh, a long time ago.
There had been blood on his face, and his eyes had turned upwards.
It was all right, somehow. It was peace. But now he had got
beyond himself. He had never been here before. Was it life, or
not life? He was by himself. They were in a big, bright place,
those others, and he was outside. The town, all the country, a big
bright place of light: and he was outside, here, in the darkened
open beyond, where each thing existed alone. But they would all
have to come out there sometime, those others. Little, and left
behind him, they all were. There had been father and mother and
sweetheart. What did they all matter? This was the open land.
He sat up. Something scuffled. It was a little, brown squirrel
running in lovely, undulating bounds over the floor, its red tail
completing the undulation of its body--and then, as it sat up,
furling and unfurling. He watched it, pleased. It ran on again,
friskily, enjoying itself. It flew wildly at another squirrel,
and they were chasing each other, and making little scolding,
chattering noises. The soldier wanted to speak to them. But only
a hoarse sound came out of his throat. The squirrels burst away--
they flew up the trees. And then he saw the one peeping round at
him, half-way up a tree-trunk. A start of fear went through him,
though, in so far as he was conscious, he was amused. It still
stayed, its little, keen face staring at him halfway up the tree-
trunk, its little ears pricked up, its clawey little hands clinging
to the bark, its white breast reared. He started from it in panic.
Struggling to his feet, he lurched away. He went on walking,
walking, looking for something--for a drink. His brain felt hot
and inflamed for want of water. He stumbled on. Then he did not
know anything. He went unconscious as he walked. Yet he stumbled
on, his mouth open.
When, to his dumb wonder, he opened his eyes on the world again, he
no longer tried to remember what it was. There was thick, golden
light behind golden-green glitterings, and tall, grey-purple
shafts, and darknesses further off, surrounding him, growing
deeper. He was conscious of a sense of arrival. He was amid the
reality, on the real, dark bottom. But there was the thirst
burning in his brain. He felt lighter, not so heavy. He supposed
it was newness. The air was muttering with thunder. He thought he
was walking wonderfully swiftly and was coming straight to relief--
or was it to water?
Suddenly he stood still with fear. There was a tremendous flare of
gold, immense--just a few dark trunks like bars between him and it.
All the young level wheat was burnished gold glaring on its silky
green. A woman, full-skirted, a black cloth on her head for head-
dress, was passing like a block of shadow through the glistening,
green corn, into the full glare. There was a farm, too, pale blue
in shadow, and the timber black. And there was a church spire,
nearly fused away in the gold. The woman moved on, away from him.
He had no language with which to speak to her. She was the bright,
solid unreality. She would make a noise of words that would
confuse him, and her eyes would look at him without seeing him.
She was crossing there to the other side. He stood against a tree.
When at last he turned, looking down the long, bare grove whose
flat bed was already filling dark, he saw the mountains in a
wonder-light, not far away, and radiant. Behind the soft, grey
ridge of the nearest range the further mountains stood golden and
pale grey, the snow all radiant like pure, soft gold. So still,
gleaming in the sky, fashioned pure out of the ore of the sky, they
shone in their silence. He stood and looked at them, his face
illuminated. And like the golden, lustrous gleaming of the snow he
felt his own thirst bright in him. He stood and gazed, leaning
against a tree. And then everything slid away into space.
During the night the lightning fluttered perpetually, making the
whole sky white. He must have walked again. The world hung livid
round him for moments, fields a level sheen of grey-green light,
trees in dark bulk, and the range of clouds black across a white
sky. Then the darkness fell like a shutter, and the night was
whole. A faint flutter of a half-revealed world, that could not
quite leap out of the darkness!--Then there again stood a sweep of
pallor for the land, dark shapes looming, a range of clouds hanging
overhead. The world was a ghostly shadow, thrown for a moment upon
the pure darkness, which returned ever whole and complete.
And the mere delirium of sickness and fever went on inside him--
his brain opening and shutting like the night--then sometimes
convulsions of terror from something with great eyes that stared
round a tree--then the long agony of the march, and the sun
decomposing his blood--then the pang of hate for the Captain,
followed by a pang of tenderness and ease. But everything was
distorted, born of an ache and resolving into an ache.
In the morning he came definitely awake. Then his brain flamed
with the sole horror of thirstiness! The sun was on his face, the
dew was steaming from his wet clothes. Like one possessed, he got
up. There, straight in front of him, blue and cool and tender, the
mountains ranged across the pale edge of the morning sky. He
wanted them--he wanted them alone--he wanted to leave himself and
be identified with them. They did not move, they were still soft,
with white, gentle markings of snow. He stood still, mad with
suffering, his hands crisping and clutching. Then he was twisting
in a paroxysm on the grass.
He lay still, in a kind of dream of anguish. His thirst seemed to
have separated itself from him, and to stand apart, a single
demand. Then the pain he felt was another single self. Then there
was the clog of his body, another separate thing. He was divided
among all kinds of separate beings. There was some strange,
agonized connection between them, but they were drawing further
apart. Then they would all split. The sun, drilling down on him,
was drilling through the bond. Then they would all fall, fall
through the everlasting lapse of space. Then again, his
consciousness reasserted itself. He roused on to his elbow and
stared at the gleaming mountains. There they ranked, all still and
wonderful between earth and heaven. He stared till his eyes went
black, and the mountains, as they stood in their beauty, so clean
and cool, seemed to have it, that which was lost in him.
IV
When the soldiers found him, three hours later, he was lying with
his face over his arm, his black hair giving off heat under the
sun. But he was still alive. Seeing the open, black mouth the
young soldiers dropped him in horror.
He died in the hospital at night, without having seen again.
The doctors saw the bruises on his legs, behind, and were silent.
The bodies of the two men lay together, side by side, in the
mortuary, the one white and slender, but laid rigidly at rest, the
other looking as if every moment it must rouse into life again, so
young and unused, from a slumber.
THE THORN IN THE FLESH
I
A wind was running, so that occasionally the poplars whitened as if
a flame flew up them. The sky was broken and blue among moving
clouds. Patches of sunshine lay on the level fields, and shadows
on the rye and the vineyards. In the distance, very blue, the
cathedral bristled against the sky, and the houses of the city of
Metz clustered vaguely below, like a hill.
Among the fields by the lime trees stood the barracks, upon bare,
dry ground, a collection of round-roofed huts of corrugated iron,
where the soldiers' nasturtiums climbed brilliantly. There was a
tract of vegetable garden at the side, with the soldiers' yellowish
lettuces in rows, and at the back the big, hard drilling-yard
surrounded by a wire fence.
At this time in the afternoon, the huts were deserted, all the beds
pushed up, the soldiers were lounging about under the lime trees
waiting for the call to drill. Bachmann sat on a bench in the
shade that smelled sickly with blossom. Pale green, wrecked lime
flowers were scattered on the ground. He was writing his weekly
post card to his mother. He was a fair, long, limber youth, good
looking. He sat very still indeed, trying to write his post card.
His blue uniform, sagging on him as he sat bent over the card,
disfigured his youthful shape. His sunburnt hand waited motionless
for the words to come. "Dear mother"--was all he had written.
Then he scribbled mechanically: "Many thanks for your letter with
what you sent. Everything is all right with me. We are just off
to drill on the fortifications--" Here he broke off and sat
suspended, oblivious of everything, held in some definite suspense.
He looked again at the card. But he could write no more. Out of
the knot of his consciousness no word would come. He signed
himself, and looked up, as a man looks to see if anyone has noticed
him in his privacy.
There was a self-conscious strain in his blue eyes, and a pallor
about his mouth, where the young, fair moustache glistened. He was
almost girlish in his good looks and his grace. But he had
something of military consciousness, as if he believed in the
discipline for himself, and found satisfaction in delivering
himself to his duty. There was also a trace of youthful swagger
and dare-devilry about his mouth and his limber body, but this was
in suppression now.
He put the post card in the pocket of his tunic, and went to join a
group of his comrades who were lounging in the shade, laughing and
talking grossly. To-day he was out of it. He only stood near to
them for the warmth of the association. In his own consciousness
something held him down.
Presently they were summoned to ranks. The sergeant came out to
take command. He was a strongly built, rather heavy man of forty.
His head was thrust forward, sunk a little between his powerful
shoulders, and the strong jaw was pushed out aggressively. But the
eyes were smouldering, the face hung slack and sodden with drink.
He gave his orders in brutal, barking shouts, and the little
company moved forward, out of the wire-fenced yard to the open
road, marching rhythmically, raising the dust. Bachmann, one of
the inner file of four deep, marched in the airless ranks, half
suffocated with heat and dust and enclosure. Through the moving of
his comrades' bodies, he could see the small vines dusty by the
roadside, the poppies among the tares fluttering and blown to
pieces, the distant spaces of sky and fields all free with air and
sunshine. But he was bound in a very dark enclosure of anxiety
within himself.
He marched with his usual ease, being healthy and well adjusted.
But his body went on by itself. His spirit was clenched apart.
And ever the few soldiers drew nearer and nearer to the town, ever
the consciousness of the youth became more gripped and separate,
his body worked by a kind of mechanical intelligence, a mere
presence of mind.
They diverged from the high road and passed in single file down a
path among trees. All was silent and green and mysterious, with
shadow of foliage and long, green, undisturbed grass. Then they
came out in the sunshine on a moat of water, which wound silently
between the long, flowery grass, at the foot of the earthworks,
that rose in front in terraces walled smooth on the face, but all
soft with long grass at the top. Marguerite daisies and lady's-
slipper glimmered white and gold in the lush grass, preserved here
in the intense peace of the fortifications. Thickets of trees
stood round about. Occasionally a puff of mysterious wind made the
flowers and the long grass that crested the earthworks above bow
and shake as with signals of oncoming alarm.
The group of soldiers stood at the end of the moat, in their light
blue and scarlet uniforms, very bright. The sergeant was giving
them instructions, and his shout came sharp and alarming in the
intense, untouched stillness of the place. They listened, finding
it difficult to make the effort of understanding.
Then it was over, and the men were moving to make preparations. On
the other side of the moat the ramparts rose smooth and clear in
the sun, sloping slightly back. Along the summit grass grew and
tall daisies stood ledged high, like magic, against the dark green
of the tree-tops behind. The noise of the town, the running of
tram-cars, was heard distinctly, but it seemed not to penetrate
this still place.
The water of the moat was motionless. In silence the practice
began. One of the soldiers took a scaling ladder, and passing
along the narrow ledge at the foot of the earthworks, with the
water of the moat just behind him, tried to get a fixture on the
slightly sloping wall-face. There he stood, small and isolated, at
the foot of the wall, trying to get his ladder settled. At last it
held, and the clumsy, groping figure in the baggy blue uniform
began to clamber up. The rest of the soldiers stood and watched.
Occasionally the sergeant barked a command. Slowly the clumsy blue
figure clambered higher up the wall-face. Bachmann stood with his
bowels turned to water. The figure of the climbing soldier
scrambled out on to the terrace up above, and moved, blue and
distinct, among the bright green grass. The officer shouted from
below. The soldier tramped along, fixed the ladder in another
spot, and carefully lowered himself on to the rungs. Bachmann
watched the blind foot groping in space for the ladder, and he felt
the world fall away beneath him. The figure of the soldier clung
cringing against the face of the wall, cleaving, groping downwards
like some unsure insect working its way lower and lower, fearing
every movement. At last, sweating and with a strained face, the
figure had landed safely and turned to the group of soldiers. But
still it had a stiffness and a blank, mechanical look, was
something less than human.
Bachmann stood there heavy and condemned, waiting for his own turn
and betrayal. Some of the men went up easily enough, and without
fear. That only showed it could be done lightly, and made
Bachmann's case more bitter. If only he could do it lightly, like
that.
His turn came. He knew intuitively that nobody knew his condition.
The officer just saw him as a mechanical thing. He tried to keep
it up, to carry it through on the face of things. His inside
gripped tight, as yet under control, he took the ladder and went
along under the wall. He placed his ladder with quick success, and
wild, quivering hope possessed him. Then blindly he began to
climb. But the ladder was not very firm, and at every hitch a
great, sick, melting feeling took hold of him. He clung on fast.
If only he could keep that grip on himself, he would get through.
He knew this, in agony. What he could not understand was the blind
gush of white-hot fear, that came with great force whenever the
ladder swerved, and which almost melted his belly and all his
joints, and left him powerless. If once it melted all his joints
and his belly, he was done. He clung desperately to himself. He
knew the fear, he knew what it did when it came, he knew he had
only to keep a firm hold. He knew all this. Yet, when the ladder
swerved, and his foot missed, there was the great blast of fear
blowing on his heart and bowels, and he was melting weaker and
weaker, in a horror of fear and lack of control, melting to fall.
Yet he groped slowly higher and higher, always staring upwards with
desperate face, and always conscious of the space below. But all
of him, body and soul, was growing hot to fusion point. He would
have to let go for very relief's sake. Suddenly his heart began to
lurch. It gave a great, sickly swoop, rose, and again plunged in a
swoop of horror. He lay against the wall inert as if dead, inert,
at peace, save for one deep core of anxiety, which knew that it was
NOT all over, that he was still high in space against the wall.
But the chief effort of will was gone.
There came into his consciousness a small, foreign sensation. He
woke up a little. What was it? Then slowly it penetrated him.
His water had run down his leg. He lay there, clinging, still with
shame, half conscious of the echo of the sergeant's voice
thundering from below. He waited, in depths of shame beginning to
recover himself. He had been shamed so deeply. Then he could go
on, for his fear for himself was conquered. His shame was known
and published. He must go on.
Slowly he began to grope for the rung above, when a great shock
shook through him. His wrists were grasped from above, he was
being hauled out of himself up, up to the safe ground. Like a sack
he was dragged over the edge of the earthworks by the large hands,
and landed there on his knees, grovelling in the grass to recover
command of himself, to rise up on his feet.
Shame, blind, deep shame and ignominy overthrew his spirit and left
it writhing. He stood there shrunk over himself, trying to
obliterate himself.
Then the presence of the officer who had hauled him up made itself
felt upon him. He heard the panting of the elder man, and then the
voice came down on his veins like a fierce whip. He shrank in
tension of shame.
"Put up your head--eyes front," shouted the enraged sergeant, and
mechanically the soldier obeyed the command, forced to look into
the eyes of the sergeant. The brutal, hanging face of the officer
violated the youth. He hardened himself with all his might from
seeing it. The tearing noise of the sergeant's voice continued to
lacerate his body.
Suddenly he set back his head, rigid, and his heart leapt to burst.
The face had suddenly thrust itself close, all distorted and
showing the teeth, the eyes smouldering into him. The breath of
the barking words was on his nose and mouth. He stepped aside in
revulsion. With a scream the face was upon him again. He raised
his arm, involuntarily, in self-defence. A shock of horror went
through him, as he felt his forearm hit the face of the officer a
brutal blow. The latter staggered, swerved back, and with a
curious cry, reeled backwards over the ramparts, his hands
clutching the air. There was a second of silence, then a crash to
water.
Bachmann, rigid, looked out of his inner silence upon the scene.
Soldiers were running.
"You'd better clear," said one young, excited voice to him. And
with immediate instinctive decision he started to walk away from
the spot. He went down the tree-hidden path to the high road where
the trams ran to and from the town. In his heart was a sense of
vindication, of escape. He was leaving it all, the military world,
the shame. He was walking away from it.
Officers on horseback rode sauntering down the street, soldiers
passed along the pavement. Coming to the bridge, Bachmann crossed
over to the town that heaped before him, rising from the flat,
picturesque French houses down below at the water's edge, up a
jumble of roofs and chasms of streets, to the lovely dark cathedral
with its myriad pinnacles making points at the sky.
He felt for the moment quite at peace, relieved from a great
strain. So he turned along by the river to the public gardens.
Beautiful were the heaped, purple lilac trees upon the green grass,
and wonderful the walls of the horse-chestnut trees, lighted like
an altar with white flowers on every ledge. Officers went by,
elegant and all coloured, women and girls sauntered in the
chequered shade. Beautiful it was, he walked in a vision, free.
II
But where was he going? He began to come out of his trance of
delight and liberty. Deep within him he felt the steady burning of
shame in the flesh. As yet he could not bear to think of it. But
there it was, submerged beneath his attention, the raw, steady-
burning shame.
It behoved him to be intelligent. As yet he dared not remember
what he had done. He only knew the need to get away, away from
everything he had been in contact with.
But how? A great pang of fear went through him. He could not bear
his shamed flesh to be put again between the hands of authority.
Already the hands had been laid upon him, brutally upon his
nakedness, ripping open his shame and making him maimed, crippled
in his own control.
Fear became an anguish. Almost blindly he was turning in the
direction of the barracks. He could not take the responsibility of
himself. He must give himself up to someone. Then his heart,
obstinate in hope, became obsessed with the idea of his sweetheart.
He would make himself her responsibility.
Blenching as he took courage, he mounted the small, quick-hurrying
tram that ran out of the town in the direction of the barracks. He
sat motionless and composed, static.
He got out at the terminus and went down the road. A wind was
still running. He could hear the faint whisper of the rye, and the
stronger swish as a sudden gust was upon it. No one was about.
Feeling detached and impersonal, he went down a field-path between
the low vines. Many little vine trees rose up in spires, holding
out tender pink shoots, waving their tendrils. He saw them
distinctly and wondered over them. In a field a little way off,
men and women were taking up the hay. The bullock-waggon stood by
on the path, the men in their blue shirts, the women with white
cloths over their heads carried hay in their arms to the cart, all
brilliant and distinct upon the shorn, glowing green acres. He
felt himself looking out of darkness on to the glamorous, brilliant
beauty of the world around him, outside him.
The Baron's house, where Emilie was maidservant, stood square and
mellow among trees and garden and fields. It was an old French
grange. The barracks was quite near. Bachmann walked, drawn by a
single purpose, towards the courtyard. He entered the spacious,
shadowy, sun-swept place. The dog, seeing a soldier, only jumped
and whined for greeting. The pump stood peacefully in a corner,
under a lime tree, in the shade.
The kitchen door was open. He hesitated, then walked in, speaking
shyly and smiling involuntarily. The two women started, but with
pleasure. Emilie was preparing the tray for afternoon coffee. She
stood beyond the table, drawn up, startled, and challenging, and
glad. She had the proud, timid eyes of some wild animal, some
proud animal. Her black hair was closely banded, her grey eyes
watched steadily. She wore a peasant dress of blue cotton sprigged
with little red roses, that buttoned tight over her strong maiden
breasts.
At the table sat another young woman, the nursery governess, who
was picking cherries from a huge heap, and dropping them into a
bowl. She was young, pretty, freckled.
"Good day!" she said pleasantly. "The unexpected."
Emilie did not speak. The flush came in her dark cheek. She still
stood watching, between fear and a desire to escape, and on the
other hand joy that kept her in his presence.
"Yes," he said, bashful and strained, while the eyes of the two
women were upon him. "I've got myself in a mess this time."
"What?" asked the nursery governess, dropping her hands in her lap.
Emilie stood rigid.
Bachmann could not raise his head. He looked sideways at the
glistening, ruddy cherries. He could not recover the normal world.
"I knocked Sergeant Huber over the fortifications down into the
moat," he said. "It was an accident--but--"
And he grasped at the cherries, and began to eat them, unknowing,
hearing only Emilie's little exclamation.
"You knocked him over the fortifications!" echoed Fräulein Hesse in
horror. "How?"
Spitting the cherry-stones into his hand, mechanically, absorbedly,
he told them.
"Ach!" exclaimed Emilie sharply.
"And how did you get here?" asked Fräulein Hesse.
"I ran off," he said.
There was a dead silence. He stood, putting himself at the mercy
of the women. There came a hissing from the stove, and a stronger
smell of coffee. Emilie turned swiftly away. He saw her flat,
straight back and her strong loins, as she bent over the stove.
"But what are you going to do?" said Fräulein Hesse, aghast.
"I don't know," he said, grasping at more cherries. He had come to
an end.
"You'd better go to the barracks," she said. "We'll get the Herr
Baron to come and see about it."
Emilie was swiftly and quietly preparing the tray. She picked it
up, and stood with the glittering china and silver before her,
impassive, waiting for his reply. Bachmann remained with his head
dropped, pale and obstinate. He could not bear to go back.
"I'm going to try to get into France," he said.
"Yes, but they'll catch you," said Fräulein Hesse.
Emilie watched with steady, watchful grey eyes.
"I can have a try, if I could hide till to-night," he said.
Both women knew what he wanted. And they all knew it was no good.
Emilie picked up the tray, and went out. Bachmann stood with his
head dropped. Within himself he felt the dross of shame and
incapacity.
"You'd never get away," said the governess.
"I can try," he said.
To-day he could not put himself between the hands of the military.
Let them do as they liked with him to-morrow, if he escaped to-day.
They were silent. He ate cherries. The colour flushed bright into
the cheek of the young governess.
Emilie returned to prepare another tray
"He could hide in your room," the governess said to her.
The girl drew herself away. She could not bear the intrusion.
"That is all I can think of that is safe from the children," said
Fräulein Hesse.
Emilie gave no answer. Bachmann stood waiting for the two women.
Emilie did not want the close contact with him.
"You could sleep with me," Fräulein Hesse said to her.
Emilie lifted her eyes and looked at the young man, direct, clear,
reserving herself.
"Do you want that?" she asked, her strong virginity proof against
him.
"Yes--yes--" he said uncertainly, destroyed by shame.
She put back her head.
"Yes," she murmured to herself.
Quickly she filled the tray, and went out.
"But you can't walk over the frontier in a night," said Fräulein
Hesse.
"I can cycle," he said.
Emilie returned, a restraint, a neutrality, in her bearing.
"I'll see if it's all right," said the governess.
In a moment or two Bachmann was following Emilie through the square
hall, where hung large maps on the walls. He noticed a child's
blue coat with brass buttons on the peg, and it reminded him of
Emilie walking holding the hand of the youngest child, whilst he
watched, sitting under the lime tree. Already this was a long way
off. That was a sort of freedom he had lost, changed for a new,
immediate anxiety.
They went quickly, fearfully up the stairs and down a long
corridor. Emilie opened her door, and he entered, ashamed, into
her room.
"I must go down," she murmured, and she departed, closing the door
softly.
It was a small, bare, neat room. There was a little dish for holy-
water, a picture of the Sacred Heart, a crucifix, and a prie-Dieu.
The small bed lay white and untouched, the wash-hand bowl of red
earth stood on a bare table, there was a little mirror and a small
chest of drawers. That was all.
Feeling safe, in sanctuary, he went to the window, looking over the
courtyard at the shimmering, afternoon country. He was going to
leave this land, this life. Already he was in the unknown.
He drew away into the room. The curious simplicity and severity of
the little Roman Catholic bedroom was foreign but restoring to him.
He looked at the crucifix. It was a long, lean, peasant Christ
carved by a peasant in the Black Forest. For the first time in his
life, Bachmann saw the figure as a human thing. It represented a
man hanging there in helpless torture. He stared at it, closely,
as if for new knowledge.
Within his own flesh burned and smouldered the restless shame. He
could not gather himself together. There was a gap in his soul.
The shame within him seemed to displace his strength and his
manhood.
He sat down on his chair. The shame, the roused feeling of
exposure acted on his brain, made him heavy, unutterably heavy.
Mechanically, his wits all gone, he took off his boots, his belt,
his tunic, put them aside, and lay down, heavy, and fell into a
kind of drugged sleep.
Emilie came in a little while, and looked at him. But he was sunk
in sleep. She saw him lying there inert, and terribly still, and
she was afraid. His shirt was unfastened at the throat. She saw
his pure white flesh, very clean and beautiful. And he slept
inert. His legs, in the blue uniform trousers, his feet in the
coarse stockings, lay foreign on her bed. She went away.
III
She was uneasy, perturbed to her last fibre. She wanted to remain
clear, with no touch on her. A wild instinct made her shrink away
from any hands which might be laid on her.
She was a foundling, probably of some gipsy race, brought up in a
Roman Catholic Rescue Home. A naïve, paganly religious being, she
was attached to the Baroness, with whom she had served for seven
years, since she was fourteen.
She came into contact with no one, unless it were with Ida Hesse,
the governess. Ida was a calculating, good-natured, not very
straight-forward flirt. She was the daughter of a poor country
doctor. Having gradually come into connection with Emilie, more an
alliance than an attachment, she put no distinction of grade
between the two of them. They worked together, sang together,
walked together, and went together to the rooms of Franz Brand,
Ida's sweetheart. There the three talked and laughed together, or
the women listened to Franz, who was a forester, playing on his
violin.
In all this alliance there was no personal intimacy between the
young women. Emilie was naturally secluded in herself, of a
reserved, native race. Ida used her as a kind of weight to balance
her own flighty movement. But the quick, shifty governess,
occupied always in her dealings with admirers, did all she could to
move the violent nature of Emilie towards some connection with men.
But the dark girl, primitive yet sensitive to a high degree, was
fiercely virgin. Her blood flamed with rage when the common
soldiers made the long, sucking, kissing noise behind her as she
passed. She hated them for their almost jeering offers. She was
well protected by the Baroness.
And her contempt of the common men in general was ineffable. But
she loved the Baroness, and she revered the Baron, and she was at
her ease when she was doing something for the service of a
gentleman. Her whole nature was at peace in the service of real
masters or mistresses. For her, a gentleman had some mystic
quality that left her free and proud in service. The common
soldiers were brutes, merely nothing. Her desire was to serve.
She held herself aloof. When, on Sunday afternoon, she had looked
through the windows of the Reichshalle in passing, and had seen the
soldiers dancing with the common girls, a cold revulsion and anger
had possessed her. She could not bear to see the soldiers taking
off their belts and pulling open their tunics, dancing with their
shirts showing through the open, sagging tunic, their movements
gross, their faces transfigured and sweaty, their coarse hands
holding their coarse girls under the arm-pits, drawing the female
up to their breasts. She hated to see them clutched breast to
breast, the legs of the men moving grossly in the dance.
At evening, when she had been in the garden, and heard on the other
side of the hedge the sexual inarticulate cries of the girls in the
embraces of the soldiers, her anger had been too much for her, and
she had cried, loud and cold:
"What are you doing there, in the hedge?"
She would have had them whipped.
But Bachmann was not quite a common soldier. Fräulein Hesse had
found out about him, and had drawn him and Emilie together. For he
was a handsome, blond youth, erect and walking with a kind of
pride, unconscious yet clear. Moreover, he came of a rich farming
stock, rich for many generations. His father was dead, his mother
controlled the moneys for the time being. But if Bachmann wanted a
hundred pounds at any moment, he could have them. By trade he,
with one of his brothers, was a waggon-builder. The family had the
farming, smithy, and waggon-building of their village. They worked
because that was the form of life they knew. If they had chosen,
they could have lived independent upon their means.
In this way, he was a gentleman in sensibility, though his
intellect was not developed. He could afford to pay freely for
things. He had, moreover, his native, fine breeding. Emilie
wavered uncertainly before him. So he became her sweetheart, and
she hungered after him. But she was virgin, and shy, and needed to
be in subjection, because she was primitive and had no grasp on
civilized forms of living, nor on civilized purposes.
IV
At six o'clock came the inquiry of the soldiers: Had anything been
seen of Bachmann? Fräulein Hesse answered, pleased to be playing a
rôle:
"No, I've not seen him since Sunday--have you, Emilie?"
"No, I haven't seen him," said Emilie, and her awkwardness was
construed as bashfulness. Ida Hesse, stimulated, asked questions,
and played her part.
"But it hasn't killed Sergeant Huber?" she cried in consternation.
"No. He fell into the water. But it gave him a bad shock, and
smashed his foot on the side of the moat. He's in hospital. It's
a bad look-out for Bachmann."
Emilie, implicated and captive, stood looking on. She was no
longer free, working with all this regulated system which she could
not understand and which was almost god-like to her. She was put
out of her place. Bachmann was in her room, she was no longer the
faithful in service serving with religious surety.
Her situation was intolerable to her. All evening long the burden
was upon her, she could not live. The children must be fed and put
to sleep. The Baron and Baroness were going out, she must give
them light refreshment. The man-servant was coming in to supper
after returning with the carriage. And all the while she had the
insupportable feeling of being out of the order, self-responsible,
bewildered. The control of her life should come from those above
her, and she should move within that control. But now she was out
of it, uncontrolled and troubled. More than that, the man, the
lover, Bachmann, who was he, what was he? He alone of all men
contained for her the unknown quantity which terrified her beyond
her service. Oh, she had wanted him as a distant sweetheart, not
close, like this, casting her out of her world.
When the Baron and Baroness had departed, and the young manservant
had gone out to enjoy himself, she went upstairs to Bachmann. He
had wakened up, and sat dimly in the room. Out in the open he
heard the soldiers, his comrades, singing the sentimental songs of
the nightfall, the drone of the concertina rising in accompaniment.
"Wenn ich zu mei . . . nem Kinde geh' . . .
In seinem Au . . . g die Mutter seh'. . . ."
But he himself was removed from it now. Only the sentimental cry
of young, unsatisfied desire in the soldiers' singing penetrated
his blood and stirred him subtly. He let his head hang; he had
become gradually roused: and he waited in concentration, in another
world.
The moment she entered the room where the man sat alone, waiting
intensely, the thrill passed through her, she died in terror, and
after the death, a great flame gushed up, obliterating her. He sat
in trousers and shirt on the side of the bed. He looked up as she
came in, and she shrank from his face. She could not bear it. Yet
she entered near to him.
"Do you want anything to eat?" she said.
"Yes," he answered, and as she stood in the twilight of the room
with him, he could only hear his heart beat heavily. He saw her
apron just level with his face. She stood silent, a little
distance off, as if she would be there for ever. He suffered.
As if in a spell she waited, standing motionless and looming there,
he sat rather crouching on the side of the bed. A second will in
him was powerful and dominating. She drew gradually nearer to him,
coming up slowly, as if unconscious. His heart beat up swiftly.
He was going to move.
As she came quite close, almost invisibly he lifted his arms and
put them round her waist, drawing her with his will and desire. He
buried his face into her apron, into the terrible softness of her
belly. And he was a flame of passion intense about her. He had
forgotten. Shame and memory were gone in a whole, furious flame of
passion.
She was quite helpless. Her hands leapt, fluttered, and closed
over his head, pressing it deeper into her belly, vibrating as she
did so. And his arms tightened on her, his hands spread over her
loins, warm as flame on her loveliness. It was intense anguish of
bliss for her, and she lost consciousness.
When she recovered, she lay translated in the peace of
satisfaction.
It was what she had had no inkling of, never known could be. She
was strong with eternal gratitude. And he was there with her.
Instinctively with an instinct of reverence and gratitude, her arms
tightened in a little embrace upon him who held her thoroughly
embraced.
And he was restored and completed, close to her. That little,
twitching, momentary clasp of acknowledgment that she gave him in
her satisfaction, roused his pride unconquerable. They loved each
other, and all was whole. She loved him, he had taken her, she was
given to him. It was right. He was given to her, and they were
one, complete.
Warm, with a glow in their hearts and faces, they rose again,
modest, but transfigured with happiness.
"I will get you something to eat," she said, and in joy and
security of service again, she left him, making a curious little
homage of departure. He sat on the side of the bed, escaped,
liberated, wondering, and happy.
V
Soon she came again with the tray, followed by Fräulein Hesse. The
two women watched him eat, watched the pride and wonder of his
being, as he sat there blond and naïf again. Emilie felt rich and
complete. Ida was a lesser thing than herself.
"And what are you going to do?" asked Fräulein Hesse, jealous.
"I must get away," he said.
But words had no meaning for him. What did it matter? He had the
inner satisfaction and liberty.
"But you'll want a bicycle," said Ida Hesse.
"Yes," he said.
Emilie sat silent, removed and yet with him, connected with him in
passion. She looked from this talk of bicycles and escape.
They discussed plans. But in two of them was the one will, that
Bachmann should stay with Emilie. Ida Hesse was an outsider.
It was arranged, however, that Ida's lover should put out his
bicycle, leave it at the hut where he sometimes watched. Bachmann
should fetch it in the night, and ride into France. The hearts of
all three beat hot in suspense, driven to thought. They sat in a
fire of agitation.
Then Bachmann would get away to America, and Emilie would come and
join him. They would be in a fine land then. The tale burned up
again.
Emilie and Ida had to go round to Franz Brand's lodging. They
departed with slight leave-taking. Bachmann sat in the dark,
hearing the bugle for retreat sound out of the night. Then he
remembered his post card to his mother. He slipped out after
Emilie, gave it her to post. His manner was careless and
victorious, hers shining and trustful. He slipped back to shelter.
There he sat on the side of the bed, thinking. Again he went over
the events of the afternoon, remembering his own anguish of
apprehension because he had known he could not climb the wall
without fainting with fear. Still, a flush of shame came alight in
him at the memory. But he said to himself: "What does it matter?--
I can't help it, well then I can't. If I go up a height, I get
absolutely weak, and can't help myself." Again memory came over
him, and a gush of shame, like fire. But he sat and endured it.
It had to be endured, admitted, and accepted. "I'm not a coward,
for all that," he continued. "I'm not afraid of danger. If I'm
made that way, that heights melt me and make me let go my water"--
it was torture for him to pluck at this truth--"if I'm made like
that, I shall have to abide by it, that's all. It isn't all of
me." He thought of Emilie, and was satisfied. "What I am, I am;
and let it be enough," he thought.
Having accepted his own defect, he sat thinking, waiting for
Emilie, to tell her. She came at length, saying that Franz could
not arrange about his bicycle this night. It was broken. Bachmann
would have to stay over another day.
They were both happy. Emilie, confused before Ida, who was excited
and prurient, came again to the young man. She was stiff and
dignified with an agony of unusedness. But he took her between his
hands, and uncovered her, and enjoyed almost like madness her
helpless, virgin body that suffered so strongly, and that took its
joy so deeply. While the moisture of torment and modesty was still
in her eyes, she clasped him closer, and closer, to the victory and
the deep satisfaction of both of them. And they slept together, he
in repose still satisfied and peaceful, and she lying close in her
static reality.
VI
In the morning, when the bugle sounded from the barracks they rose
and looked out of the window. She loved his body that was proud
and blond and able to take command. And he loved her body that was
soft and eternal. They looked at the faint grey vapour of summer
steaming off from the greenness and ripeness of the fields. There
was no town anywhere, their look ended in the haze of the summer
morning. Their bodies rested together, their minds tranquil. Then
a little anxiety stirred in both of them from the sound of the
bugle. She was called back to her old position, to realize the
world of authority she did not understand but had wanted to serve.
But this call died away again from her. She had all.
She went downstairs to her work, curiously changed. She was in a
new world of her own, that she had never even imagined, and which
was the land of promise for all that. In this she moved and had
her being. And she extended it to her duties. She was curiously
happy and absorbed. She had not to strive out of herself to do her
work. The doing came from within her without call or command. It
was a delicious outflow, like sunshine, the activity that flowed
from her and put her tasks to rights.
Bachmann sat busily thinking. He would have to get all his plans
ready. He must write to his mother, and she must send him money to
Paris. He would go to Paris, and from thence, quickly, to America.
It had to be done. He must make all preparations. The dangerous
part was the getting into France. He thrilled in anticipation.
During the day he would need a time-table of the trains going to
Paris--he would need to think. It gave him delicious pleasure,
using all his wits. It seemed such an adventure.
This one day, and he would escape then into freedom. What an agony
of need he had for absolute, imperious freedom. He had won to his
own being, in himself and Emilie, he had drawn the stigma from his
shame, he was beginning to be himself. And now he wanted madly to
be free to go on. A home, his work, and absolute freedom to move
and to be, in her, with her, this was his passionate desire. He
thought in a kind of ecstasy, living an hour of painful intensity.
Suddenly he heard voices, and a tramping of feet. His heart gave a
great leap, then went still. He was taken. He had known all
along. A complete silence filled his body and soul, a silence like
death, a suspension of life and sound. He stood motionless in the
bedroom, in perfect suspension.
Emilie was busy passing swiftly about the kitchen preparing the
children's breakfasts when she heard the tramp of feet and the
voice of the Baron. The latter had come in from the garden, and
was wearing an old green linen suit. He was a man of middle
stature, quick, finely made, and of whimsical charm. His right
hand had been shot in the Franco-Prussian war, and now, as always
when he was much agitated, he shook it down at his side, as if it
hurt. He was talking rapidly to a young, stiff Ober-leutnant. Two
private soldiers stood bearishly in the doorway.
Emilie, shocked out of herself, stood pale and erect, recoiling.
"Yes, if you think so, we can look," the Baron was hastily and
irascibly saying.
"Emilie," he said, turning to the girl, "did you put a post card to
the mother of this Bachmann in the box last evening?"
Emilie stood erect and did not answer.
"Yes?" said the Baron sharply.
"Yes, Herr Baron," replied Emilie, neutral.
The Baron's wounded hand shook rapidly in exasperation. The
lieutenant drew himself up still more stiffly. He was right.
"And do you know anything of the fellow?" asked the Baron, looking
at her with his blazing, greyish-golden eyes. The girl looked back
at him steadily, dumb, but her whole soul naked before him. For
two seconds he looked at her in silence. Then in silence, ashamed
and furious, he turned away.
"Go up!" he said, with his fierce, peremptory command, to the young
officer.
The lieutenant gave his order, in military cold confidence, to the
soldiers. They all tramped across the hall. Emilie stood
motionless, her life suspended.
The Baron marched swiftly upstairs and down the corridor, the
lieutenant and the common soldiers followed. The Baron flung open
the door of Emilie's room and looked at Bachmann, who stood
watching, standing in shirt and trousers beside the bed, fronting
the door. He was perfectly still. His eyes met the furious,
blazing look of the Baron. The latter shook his wounded hand, and
then went still. He looked into the eyes of the soldier, steadily.
He saw the same naked soul exposed, as if he looked really into the
MAN. And the man was helpless, the more helpless for his singular
nakedness.
"Ha!" he exclaimed impatiently, turning to the approaching
lieutenant.
The latter appeared in the doorway. Quickly his eyes travelled
over the bare-footed youth. He recognized him as his object. He
gave the brief command to dress.
Bachmann turned round for his clothes. He was very still, silent
in himself. He was in an abstract, motionless world. That the two
gentlemen and the two soldiers stood watching him, he scarcely
realized. They could not see him.
Soon he was ready. He stood at attention. But only the shell of
his body was at attention. A curious silence, a blankness, like
something eternal, possessed him. He remained true to himself.
The lieutenant gave the order to march. The little procession went
down the stairs with careful, respectful tread, and passed through
the hall to the kitchen. There Emilie stood with her face
uplifted, motionless and expressionless. Bachmann did not look at
her. They knew each other. They were themselves. Then the little
file of men passed out into the courtyard.
The Baron stood in the doorway watching the four figures in uniform
pass through the chequered shadow under the lime trees. Bachmann
was walking neutralized, as if he were not there. The lieutenant
went brittle and long, the two soldiers lumbered beside. They
passed out into the sunny morning, growing smaller, going towards
the barracks.
The Baron turned into the kitchen. Emilie was cutting bread.
"So he stayed the night here?" he said.
The girl looked at him, scarcely seeing. She was too much herself.
The Baron saw the dark, naked soul of her body in her unseeing
eyes.
"What were you going to do?" he asked.
"He was going to America," she replied, in a still voice.
"Pah! You should have sent him straight back," fired the Baron.
Emilie stood at his bidding, untouched.
"He's done for now," he said.
But he could not bear the dark, deep nakedness of her eyes, that
scarcely changed under this suffering.
"Nothing but a fool," he repeated, going away in agitation, and
preparing himself for what he could do.
DAUGHTERS OF THE VICAR
I
Mr Lindley was first vicar of Aldecross. The cottages of this tiny
hamlet had nestled in peace since their beginning, and the country
folk had crossed the lanes and farm-lands, two or three miles, to
the parish church at Greymeed, on the bright Sunday mornings.
But when the pits were sunk, blank rows of dwellings started up
beside the high roads, and a new population, skimmed from the
floating scum of workmen, was filled in, the cottages and the
country people almost obliterated.
To suit the convenience of these new collier-inhabitants, a church
must be built at Aldecross. There was not too much money. And so
the little building crouched like a humped stone-and-mortar mouse,
with two little turrets at the west corners for ears, in the fields
near the cottages and the apple trees, as far as possible from the
dwellings down the high road. It had an uncertain, timid look
about it. And so they planted big-leaved ivy, to hide its
shrinking newness. So that now the little church stands buried in
its greenery, stranded and sleeping among the fields, while the
brick houses elbow nearer and nearer, threatening to crush it down.
It is already obsolete.
The Reverend Ernest Lindley, aged twenty-seven, and newly married,
came from his curacy in Suffolk to take charge of his church. He
was just an ordinary young man, who had been to Cambridge and taken
orders. His wife was a self-assured young woman, daughter of a
Cambridgeshire rector. Her father had spent the whole of his
thousand a year, so that Mrs Lindley had nothing of her own. Thus
the young married people came to Aldecross to live on a stipend of
about a hundred and twenty pounds, and to keep up a superior
position.
They were not very well received by the new, raw, disaffected
population of colliers. Being accustomed to farm labourers, Mr
Lindley had considered himself as belonging indisputably to the
upper or ordering classes. He had to be humble to the county
families, but still, he was of their kind, whilst the common people
were something different. He had no doubts of himself.
He found, however, that the collier population refused to accept
this arrangement. They had no use for him in their lives, and they
told him so, callously. The women merely said, "they were throng,"
or else, "Oh, it's no good you coming here, we're Chapel." The men
were quite good-humoured so long as he did not touch them too nigh,
they were cheerfully contemptuous of him, with a preconceived
contempt he was powerless against.
At last, passing from indignation to silent resentment, even, if he
dared have acknowledged it, to conscious hatred of the majority of
his flock, and unconscious hatred of himself, he confined his
activities to a narrow round of cottages, and he had to submit. He
had no particular character, having always depended on his position
in society to give him position among men. Now he was so poor, he
had no social standing even among the common vulgar tradespeople of
the district, and he had not the nature nor the wish to make his
society agreeable to them, nor the strength to impose himself where
he would have liked to be recognized. He dragged on, pale and
miserable and neutral.
At first his wife raged with mortification. She took on airs and
used a high hand. But her income was too small, the wrestling with
tradesmen's bills was too pitiful, she only met with general,
callous ridicule when she tried to be impressive.
Wounded to the quick of her pride, she found herself isolated in an
indifferent, callous population. She raged indoors and out. But
soon she learned that she must pay too heavily for her outdoor
rages, and then she only raged within the walls of the rectory.
There her feeling was so strong, that she frightened herself. She
saw herself hating her husband, and she knew that, unless she were
careful, she would smash her form of life and bring catastrophe
upon him and upon herself. So in very fear, she went quiet. She
hid, bitter and beaten by fear, behind the only shelter she had in
the world, her gloomy, poor parsonage.
Children were born one every year; almost mechanically, she
continued to perform her maternal duty, which was forced upon her.
Gradually, broken by the suppressing of her violent anger and
misery and disgust, she became an invalid and took to her couch.
The children grew up healthy, but unwarmed and rather rigid. Their
father and mother educated them at home, made them very proud and
very genteel, put them definitely and cruelly in the upper classes,
apart from the vulgar around them. So they lived quite isolated.
They were good-looking, and had that curiously clean, semi-
transparent look of the genteel, isolated poor.
Gradually Mr and Mrs Lindley lost all hold on life, and spent their
hours, weeks and years merely haggling to make ends meet, and
bitterly repressing and pruning their children into gentility,
urging them to ambition, weighting them with duty. On Sunday
morning the whole family, except the mother, went down the lane to
church, the long-legged girls in skimpy frocks, the boys in black
coats and long, grey, unfitting trousers. They passed by their
father's parishioners with mute, clear faces, childish mouths
closed in pride that was like a doom to them, and childish eyes
already unseeing. Miss Mary, the eldest, was the leader. She was
a long, slim thing with a fine profile and a proud, pure look of
submission to a high fate. Miss Louisa, the second, was short and
plump and obstinate-looking. She had more enemies than ideals.
She looked after the lesser children, Miss Mary after the elder.
The collier children watched this pale, distinguished procession of
the vicar's family pass mutely by, and they were impressed by the
air of gentility and distance, they made mock of the trousers of
the small sons, they felt inferior in themselves, and hate stirred
their hearts.
In her time, Miss Mary received as governess a few little daughters
of tradesmen; Miss Louisa managed the house and went among her
father's church-goers, giving lessons on the piano to the colliers'
daughters at thirteen shillings for twenty-six lessons.
II
One winter morning, when his daughter Mary was about twenty years
old, Mr Lindley, a thin, unobtrusive figure in his black overcoat
and his wideawake, went down into Aldecross with a packet of white
papers under his arm. He was delivering the parish almanacs.
A rather pale, neutral man of middle age, he waited while the train
thumped over the level-crossing, going up to the pit which rattled
busily just along the line. A wooden-legged man hobbled to open
the gate, Mr Lindley passed on. Just at his left hand, below the
road and the railway, was the red roof of a cottage, showing
through the bare twigs of apple trees. Mr Lindley passed round the
low wall, and descended the worn steps that led from the highway
down to the cottage which crouched darkly and quietly away below
the rumble of passing trains and the clank of coal-carts in a quiet
little under-world of its own. Snowdrops with tight-shut buds were
hanging very still under the bare currant bushes.
The clergyman was just going to knock when he heard a clinking
noise, and turning saw through the open door of a black shed just
behind him an elderly woman in a black lace cap stooping among
reddish big cans, pouring a very bright liquid into a tundish.
There was a smell of paraffin. The woman put down her can, took
the tundish and laid it on a shelf, then rose with a tin bottle.
Her eyes met those of the clergyman.
"Oh, is it you, Mr Lin'ley!" she said, in a complaining tone. "Go
in."
The minister entered the house. In the hot kitchen sat a big,
elderly man with a great grey beard, taking snuff. He grunted in a
deep, muttering voice, telling the minister to sit down, and then
took no more notice of him, but stared vacantly into the fire. Mr
Lindley waited.
The woman came in, the ribbons of her black lace cap, or bonnet,
hanging on her shawl. She was of medium stature, everything about
her was tidy. She went up a step out of the kitchen, carrying the
paraffin tin. Feet were heard entering the room up the step. It
was a little haberdashery shop, with parcels on the shelves of the
walls, a big, old-fashioned sewing machine with tailor's work lying
round it, in the open space. The woman went behind the counter,
gave the child who had entered the paraffin bottle, and took from
her a jug.
"My mother says shall yer put it down," said the child, and she was
gone. The woman wrote in a book, then came into the kitchen with
her jug. The husband, a very large man, rose and brought more coal
to the already hot fire. He moved slowly and sluggishly. Already
he was going dead; being a tailor, his large form had become an
encumbrance to him. In his youth he had been a great dancer and
boxer. Now he was taciturn, and inert. The minister had nothing
to say, so he sought for his phrases. But John Durant took no
notice, existing silent and dull.
Mrs Durant spread the cloth. Her husband poured himself beer into
a mug, and began to smoke and drink.
"Shall you have some?" he growled through his beard at the
clergyman, looking slowly from the man to the jug, capable of this
one idea.
"No, thank you," replied Mr Lindley, though he would have liked
some beer. He must set the example in a drinking parish.
"We need a drop to keep us going," said Mrs Durant.
She had rather a complaining manner. The clergyman sat on
uncomfortably while she laid the table for the half-past ten lunch.
Her husband drew up to eat. She remained in her little round arm-
chair by the fire.
She was a woman who would have liked to be easy in her life, but to
whose lot had fallen a rough and turbulent family, and a slothful
husband who did not care what became of himself or anybody. So,
her rather good-looking square face was peevish, she had that air
of having been compelled all her life to serve unwillingly, and to
control where she did not want to control. There was about her,
too, that masterful APLOMB of a woman who has brought up and ruled
her sons: but even them she had ruled unwillingly. She had enjoyed
managing her little haberdashery-shop, riding in the carrier's cart
to Nottingham, going through the big warehouses to buy her goods.
But the fret of managing her sons she did not like. Only she loved
her youngest boy, because he was her last, and she saw herself
free.
This was one of the houses the clergyman visited occasionally. Mrs
Durant, as part of her regulation, had brought up all her sons in
the Church. Not that she had any religion. Only, it was what she
was used to. Mr Durant was without religion. He read the
fervently evangelical "Life of John Wesley" with a curious
pleasure, getting from it a satisfaction as from the warmth of the
fire, or a glass of brandy. But he cared no more about John
Wesley, in fact, than about John Milton, of whom he had never
heard.
Mrs Durant took her chair to the table.
"I don't feel like eating," she sighed.
"Why--aren't you well?" asked the clergyman, patronizing.
"It isn't that," she sighed. She sat with shut, straight mouth.
"I don't know what's going to become of us."
But the clergyman had ground himself down so long, that he could
not easily sympathize.
"Have you any trouble?" he asked.
"Ay, have I any trouble!" cried the elderly woman. "I shall end my
days in the workhouse."
The minister waited unmoved. What could she know of poverty, in
her little house of plenty!
"I hope not," he said.
"And the one lad as I wanted to keep by me--" she lamented.
The minister listened without sympathy, quite neutral.
"And the lad as would have been a support to my old age! What is
going to become of us?" she said.
The clergyman, justly, did not believe in the cry of poverty, but
wondered what had become of the son.
"Has anything happened to Alfred?" he asked.
"We've got word he's gone for a Queen's sailor," she said sharply.
"He has joined the Navy!" exclaimed Mr Lindley. "I think he could
scarcely have done better--to serve his Queen and country on the
sea . . ."
"He is wanted to serve ME," she cried. "And I wanted my lad at
home."
Alfred was her baby, her last, whom she had allowed herself the
luxury of spoiling.
"You will miss him," said Mr Lindley, "that is certain. But this
is no regrettable step for him to have taken--on the contrary."
"That's easy for you to say, Mr Lindley," she replied tartly. "Do
you think I want my lad climbing ropes at another man's bidding,
like a monkey--?"
"There is no DISHONOUR, surely, in serving in the Navy?"
"Dishonour this dishonour that," cried the angry old woman. "He
goes and makes a slave of himself, and he'll rue it."
Her angry, scornful impatience nettled the clergyman and silenced
him for some moments.
"I do not see," he retorted at last, white at the gills and
inadequate, "that the Queen's service is any more to be called
slavery than working in a mine."
"At home he was at home, and his own master. _I_ know he'll find a
difference."
"It may be the making of him," said the clergyman. "It will take
him away from bad companionship and drink."
Some of the Durants' sons were notorious drinkers, and Alfred was
not quite steady.
"And why indeed shouldn't he have his glass?" cried the mother.
"He picks no man's pocket to pay for it!"
The clergyman stiffened at what he thought was an allusion to his
own profession, and his unpaid bills.
"With all due consideration, I am glad to hear he has joined the
Navy," he said.
"Me with my old age coming on, and his father working very little!
I'd thank you to be glad about something else besides that, Mr
Lindley."
The woman began to cry. Her husband, quite impassive, finished his
lunch of meat-pie, and drank some beer. Then he turned to the
fire, as if there were no one in the room but himself.
"I shall respect all men who serve God and their country on the
sea, Mrs Durant," said the clergyman stubbornly.
"That is very well, when they're not your sons who are doing the
dirty work.--It makes a difference," she replied tartly.
"I should be proud if one of my sons were to enter the Navy."
"Ay--well--we're not all of us made alike--"
The minister rose. He put down a large folded paper.
"I've brought the almanac," he said.
Mrs Durant unfolded it.
"I do like a bit of colour in things," she said, petulantly.
The clergyman did not reply.
"There's that envelope for the organist's fund--" said the old
woman, and rising, she took the thing from the mantelpiece, went
into the shop, and returned sealing it up.
"Which is all I can afford," she said.
Mr Lindley took his departure, in his pocket the envelope
containing Mrs Durant's offering for Miss Louisa's services. He
went from door to door delivering the almanacs, in dull routine.
Jaded with the monotony of the business, and with the repeated
effort of greeting half-known people, he felt barren and rather
irritable. At last he returned home.
In the dining-room was a small fire. Mrs Lindley, growing very
stout, lay on her couch. The vicar carved the cold mutton; Miss
Louisa, short and plump and rather flushed, came in from the
kitchen; Miss Mary, dark, with a beautiful white brow and grey
eyes, served the vegetables; the children chattered a little, but
not exuberantly. The very air seemed starved.
"I went to the Durants," said the vicar, as he served out small
portions of mutton; "it appears Alfred has run away to join the
Navy."
"Do him good," came the rough voice of the invalid.
Miss Louisa, attending to the youngest child, looked up in protest.
"Why has he done that?" asked Mary's low, musical voice.
"He wanted some excitement, I suppose," said the vicar. "Shall we
say grace?"
The children were arranged, all bent their heads, grace was
pronounced, at the last word every face was being raised to go on
with the interesting subject.
"He's just done the right thing, for once," came the rather deep
voice of the mother; "save him from becoming a drunken sot, like
the rest of them."
"They're not ALL drunken, mama," said Miss Louisa, stubbornly.
"It's no fault of their upbringing if they're not. Walter Durant
is a standing disgrace."
"As I told Mrs Durant," said the vicar, eating hungrily, "it is the
best thing he could have done. It will take him away from
temptation during the most dangerous years of his life--how old is
he--nineteen?"
"Twenty," said Miss Louisa.
"Twenty!" repeated the vicar. "It will give him wholesome
discipline and set before him some sort of standard of duty and
honour--nothing could have been better for him. But--"
"We shall miss him from the choir," said Miss Louisa, as if taking
opposite sides to her parents.
"That is as it may be," said the vicar. "I prefer to know he is
safe in the Navy, than running the risk of getting into bad ways
here."
"Was he getting into bad ways?" asked the stubborn Miss Louisa.
"You know, Louisa, he wasn't quite what he used to be," said Miss
Mary gently and steadily. Miss Louisa shut her rather heavy jaw
sulkily. She wanted to deny it, but she knew it was true.
For her he had been a laughing, warm lad, with something kindly and
something rich about him. He had made her feel warm. It seemed
the days would be colder since he had gone.
"Quite the best thing he could do," said the mother with emphasis.
"I think so," said the vicar. "But his mother was almost abusive
because I suggested it."
He spoke in an injured tone.
"What does she care for her children's welfare?" said the invalid.
"Their wages is all her concern."
"I suppose she wanted him at home with her," said Miss Louisa.
"Yes, she did--at the expense of his learning to be a drunkard like
the rest of them," retorted her mother.
"George Durant doesn't drink," defended her daughter.
"Because he got burned so badly when he was nineteen--in the pit--
and that frightened him. The Navy is a better remedy than that, at
least."
"Certainly," said the vicar. "Certainly."
And to this Miss Louisa agreed. Yet she could not but feel angry
that he had gone away for so many years. She herself was only
nineteen.
III
It happened when Miss Mary was twenty-three years old, that Mr
Lindley was very ill. The family was exceedingly poor at the time,
such a lot of money was needed, so little was forthcoming. Neither
Miss Mary nor Miss Louisa had suitors. What chance had they? They
met no eligible young men in Aldecross. And what they earned was a
mere drop in a void. The girls' hearts were chilled and hardened
with fear of this perpetual, cold penury, this narrow struggle,
this horrible nothingness of their lives.
A clergyman had to be found for the church work. It so happened
the son of an old friend of Mr Lindley's was waiting three months
before taking up his duties. He would come and officiate, for
nothing. The young clergyman was keenly expected. He was not more
than twenty-seven, a Master of Arts of Oxford, had written his
thesis on Roman Law. He came of an old Cambridgeshire family, had
some private means, was going to take a church in Northamptonshire
with a good stipend, and was not married. Mrs Lindley incurred new
debts, and scarcely regretted her husband's illness.
But when Mr Massy came, there was a shock of disappointment in the
house. They had expected a young man with a pipe and a deep voice,
but with better manners than Sidney, the eldest of the Lindleys.
There arrived instead a small, chétif man, scarcely larger than a
boy of twelve, spectacled, timid in the extreme, without a word to
utter at first; yet with a certain inhuman self-sureness.
"What a little abortion!" was Mrs Lindley's exclamation to herself
on first seeing him, in his buttoned-up clerical coat. And for the
first time for many days, she was profoundly thankful to God that
all her children were decent specimens.
He had not normal powers of perception. They soon saw that he
lacked the full range of human feelings, but had rather a strong,
philosophical mind, from which he lived. His body was almost
unthinkable, in intellect he was something definite. The
conversation at once took a balanced, abstract tone when he
participated. There was no spontaneous exclamation, no violent
assertion or expression of personal conviction, but all cold,
reasonable assertion. This was very hard on Mrs Lindley. The
little man would look at her, after one of her pronouncements, and
then give, in his thin voice, his own calculated version, so that
she felt as if she were tumbling into thin air through a hole in
the flimsy floor on which their conversation stood. It was she who
felt a fool. Soon she was reduced to a hardy silence.
Still, at the back of her mind, she remembered that he was an
unattached gentleman, who would shortly have an income altogether
of six or seven hundred a year. What did the man matter, if there
were pecuniary ease! The man was a trifle thrown in. After
twenty-two years her sentimentality was ground away, and only the
millstone of poverty mattered to her. So she supported the little
man as a representative of a decent income.
His most irritating habit was that of a sneering little giggle, all
on his own, which came when he perceived or related some illogical
absurdity on the part of another person. It was the only form of
humour he had. Stupidity in thinking seemed to him exquisitely
funny. But any novel was unintelligibly meaningless and dull, and
to an Irish sort of humour he listened curiously, examining it like
mathematics, or else simply not hearing. In normal human
relationship he was not there. Quite unable to take part in simple
everyday talk, he padded silently round the house, or sat in the
dining-room looking nervously from side to side, always apart in a
cold, rarefied little world of his own. Sometimes he made an
ironic remark, that did not seem humanly relevant, or he gave his
little laugh, like a sneer. He had to defend himself and his own
insufficiency. And he answered questions grudgingly, with a yes or
no, because he did not see their import and was nervous. It seemed
to Miss Louisa he scarcely distinguished one person from another,
but that he liked to be near her, or to Miss Mary, for some sort of
contact which stimulated him unknown.
Apart from all this, he was the most admirable workman. He was
unremittingly shy, but perfect in his sense of duty: as far as he
could conceive Christianity, he was a perfect Christian. Nothing
that he realized he could do for anyone did he leave undone,
although he was so incapable of coming into contact with another
being, that he could not proffer help. Now he attended assiduously
to the sick man, investigated all the affairs of the parish or the
church which Mr Lindley had in control, straightened out accounts,
made lists of the sick and needy, padded round with help and to see
what he could do. He heard of Mrs Lindley's anxiety about her
sons, and began to investigate means of sending them to Cambridge.
His kindness almost frightened Miss Mary. She honoured it so, and
yet she shrank from it. For, in it all Mr Massy seemed to have no
sense of any person, any human being whom he was helping: he only
realized a kind of mathematical working out, solving of given
situations, a calculated well-doing. And it was as if he had
accepted the Christian tenets as axioms. His religion consisted in
what his scrupulous, abstract mind approved of.
Seeing his acts, Miss Mary must respect and honour him. In
consequence she must serve him. To this she had to force herself,
shuddering and yet desirous, but he did not perceive it. She
accompanied him on his visiting in the parish, and whilst she was
cold with admiration for him, often she was touched with pity for
the little padding figure with bent shoulders, buttoned up to the
chin in his overcoat. She was a handsome, calm girl, tall, with a
beautiful repose. Her clothes were poor, and she wore a black silk
scarf, having no furs. But she was a lady. As the people saw her
walking down Aldecross beside Mr Massy, they said:
"My word, Miss Mary's got a catch. Did ever you see such a sickly
little shrimp!"
She knew they were talking so, and it made her heart grow hot
against them, and she drew herself as it were protectively towards
the little man beside her. At any rate, she could see and give
honour to his genuine goodness.
He could not walk fast, or far.
"You have not been well?" she asked, in her dignified way.
"I have an internal trouble."
He was not aware of her slight shudder. There was silence, whilst
she bowed to recover her composure, to resume her gentle manner
towards him.
He was fond of Miss Mary. She had made it a rule of hospitality
that he should always be escorted by herself or by her sister on
his visits in the parish, which were not many. But some mornings
she was engaged. Then Miss Louisa took her place. It was no good
Miss Louisa's trying to adopt to Mr Massy an attitude of queenly
service. She was unable to regard him save with aversion. When
she saw him from behind, thin and bent-shouldered, looking like a
sickly lad of thirteen, she disliked him exceedingly, and felt a
desire to put him out of existence. And yet a deeper justice in
Mary made Louisa humble before her sister.
They were going to see Mr Durant, who was paralysed and not
expected to live. Miss Louisa was crudely ashamed at being
admitted to the cottage in company with the little clergyman.
Mrs Durant was, however, much quieter in the face of her real
trouble.
"How is Mr Durant?" asked Louisa.
"He is no different--and we don't expect him to be," was the reply.
The little clergyman stood looking on.
They went upstairs. The three stood for some time looking at the
bed, at the grey head of the old man on the pillow, the grey beard
over the sheet. Miss Louisa was shocked and afraid.
"It is so dreadful," she said, with a shudder.
"It is how I always thought it would be," replied Mrs Durant.
Then Miss Louisa was afraid of her. The two women were uneasy,
waiting for Mr Massy to say something. He stood, small and bent,
too nervous to speak.
"Has he any understanding?" he asked at length.
"Maybe," said Mrs Durant. "Can you hear, John?" she asked loudly.
The dull blue eye of the inert man looked at her feebly.
"Yes, he understands," said Mrs Durant to Mr Massy. Except for the
dull look in his eyes, the sick man lay as if dead. The three
stood in silence. Miss Louisa was obstinate but heavy-hearted
under the load of unlivingness. It was Mr Massy who kept her there
in discipline. His non-human will dominated them all.
Then they heard a sound below, a man's footsteps, and a man's voice
called subduedly:
"Are you upstairs, mother?"
Mrs Durant started and moved to the door. But already a quick,
firm step was running up the stairs.
"I'm a bit early, mother," a troubled voice said, and on the
landing they saw the form of the sailor. His mother came and clung
to him. She was suddenly aware that she needed something to hold
on to. He put his arms round her, and bent over her, kissing her.
"He's not gone, mother?" he asked anxiously, struggling to control
his voice.
Miss Louisa looked away from the mother and son who stood together
in the gloom on the landing. She could not bear it that she and Mr
Massy should be there. The latter stood nervously, as if ill at
ease before the emotion that was running. He was a witness,
nervous, unwilling, but dispassionate. To Miss Louisa's hot heart
it seemed all, all wrong that they should be there.
Mrs Durant entered the bedroom, her face wet.
"There's Miss Louisa and the vicar," she said, out of voice and
quavering.
Her son, red-faced and slender, drew himself up to salute. But
Miss Louisa held out her hand. Then she saw his hazel eyes
recognize her for a moment, and his small white teeth showed in a
glimpse of the greeting she used to love. She was covered with
confusion. He went round to the bed; his boots clicked on the
plaster floor, he bowed his head with dignity.
"How are you, dad?" he said, laying his hand on the sheet,
faltering. But the old man stared fixedly and unseeing. The son
stood perfectly still for a few minutes, then slowly recoiled.
Miss Louisa saw the fine outline of his breast, under the sailor's
blue blouse, as his chest began to heave.
"He doesn't know me," he said, turning to his mother. He gradually
went white.
"No, my boy!" cried the mother, pitiful, lifting her face. And
suddenly she put her face against his shoulder, he was stooping
down to her, holding her against him, and she cried aloud for a
moment or two. Miss Louisa saw his sides heaving, and heard the
sharp hiss of his breath. She turned away, tears streaming down
her face. The father lay inert upon the white bed, Mr Massy looked
queer and obliterated, so little now that the sailor with his
sunburned skin was in the room. He stood waiting. Miss Louisa
wanted to die, she wanted to have done. She dared not turn round
again to look.
"Shall I offer a prayer?" came the frail voice of the clergyman,
and all kneeled down.
Miss Louisa was frightened of the inert man upon the bed. Then she
felt a flash of fear of Mr Massy, hearing his thin, detached voice.
And then, calmed, she looked up. On the far side of the bed were
the heads of the mother and son, the one in the black lace cap,
with the small white nape of the neck beneath, the other, with
brown, sun-scorched hair too close and wiry to allow of a parting,
and neck tanned firm, bowed as if unwillingly. The great grey
beard of the old man did not move, the prayer continued. Mr Massy
prayed with a pure lucidity, that they all might conform to the
higher Will. He was like something that dominated the bowed heads,
something dispassionate that governed them inexorably. Miss Louisa
was afraid of him. And she was bound, during the course of the
prayer, to have a little reverence for him. It was like a
foretaste of inexorable, cold death, a taste of pure justice.
That evening she talked to Mary of the visit. Her heart, her veins
were possessed by the thought of Alfred Durant as he held his
mother in his arms; then the break in his voice, as she remembered
it again and again, was like a flame through her; and she wanted to
see his face more distinctly in her mind, ruddy with the sun, and
his golden-brown eyes, kind and careless, strained now with a
natural fear, the fine nose tanned hard by the sun, the mouth that
could not help smiling at her. And it went through her with pride,
to think of his figure, a straight, fine jet of life.
"He is a handsome lad," said she to Miss Mary, as if he had not
been a year older than herself. Underneath was the deeper dread,
almost hatred, of the inhuman being of Mr Massy. She felt she must
protect herself and Alfred from him.
"When I felt Mr Massy there," she said, "I almost hated him. What
right had he to be there!"
"Surely he has all right," said Miss Mary after a pause. "He is
REALLY a Christian."
"He seems to me nearly an imbecile," said Miss Louisa.
Miss Mary, quiet and beautiful, was silent for a moment:
"Oh, no," she said. "Not IMBECILE--"
"Well then--he reminds me of a six months' child--or a five months'
child--as if he didn't have time to get developed enough before he
was born."
"Yes," said Miss Mary, slowly. "There is something lacking. But
there is something wonderful in him: and he is really GOOD--"
"Yes," said Miss Louisa, "it doesn't seem right that he should be.
What right has THAT to be called goodness!"
"But it IS goodness," persisted Mary. Then she added, with a
laugh: "And come, you wouldn't deny that as well."
There was a doggedness in her voice. She went about very quietly.
In her soul, she knew what was going to happen. She knew that Mr
Massy was stronger than she, and that she must submit to what he
was. Her physical self was prouder, stronger than he, her physical
self disliked and despised him. But she was in the grip of his
moral, mental being. And she felt the days allotted out to her.
And her family watched.
IV
A few days after, old Mr Durant died. Miss Louisa saw Alfred once
more, but he was stiff before her now, treating her not like a
person, but as if she were some sort of will in command and he a
separate, distinct will waiting in front of her. She had never
felt such utter steel-plate separation from anyone. It puzzled her
and frightened her. What had become of him? And she hated the
military discipline--she was antagonistic to it. Now he was not
himself. He was the will which obeys set over against the will
which commands. She hesitated over accepting this. He had put
himself out of her range. He had ranked himself inferior,
subordinate to her. And that was how he would get away from her,
that was how he would avoid all connection with her: by fronting
her impersonally from the opposite camp, by taking up the abstract
position of an inferior.
She went brooding steadily and sullenly over this, brooding and
brooding. Her fierce, obstinate heart could not give way. It
clung to its own rights. Sometimes she dismissed him. Why should
he, inferior, trouble her?
Then she relapsed to him, and almost hated him. It was his way of
getting out of it. She felt the cowardice of it, his calmly
placing her in a superior class, and placing himself inaccessibly
apart, in an inferior, as if she, the sensient woman who was fond
of him, did not count. But she was not going to submit. Dogged in
her heart she held on to him.
V
In six months' time Miss Mary had married Mr Massy. There had been
no love-making, nobody had made any remark. But everybody was
tense and callous with expectation. When one day Mr Massy asked
for Mary's hand, Mr Lindley started and trembled from the thin,
abstract voice of the little man. Mr Massy was very nervous, but
so curiously absolute.
"I shall be very glad," said the vicar, "but of course the decision
lies with Mary herself." And his still feeble hand shook as he
moved a Bible on his desk.
The small man, keeping fixedly to his idea, padded out of the room
to find Miss Mary. He sat a long time by her, while she made some
conversation, before he had readiness to speak. She was afraid of
what was coming, and sat stiff in apprehension.