FOOTNOTES:[1]Sharm, a stain of dishonour that can only be obliterated in blood. The conception that underlies the blood-feud.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]Sharm, a stain of dishonour that can only be obliterated in blood. The conception that underlies the blood-feud.
[1]Sharm, a stain of dishonour that can only be obliterated in blood. The conception that underlies the blood-feud.
THE OTHER SIDE
A deepsilence brooded over No. 3 Ward, Officers. It was late afternoon in October, but the room was as yet unillumined from within. The two long lines of windows that confronted one another—the ward was a temporary hut-building—did so in a contrast of lights, the eastern windows, backed by grey obscurity, reflecting broken beams of the glory of gold and purple and fiery red that streamed in from the west. The two lines of beds, the indistinct greys and whites of the ward, were delicately touched by the warm glow where they rose into its radiance. It picked out the short curves of the turned-back sheet, humped with the recumbent form beneath, in an imponderable caress upon the broken humanity that lay, desperately finite, under the splendour that knows no final setting. A mingled odour of disinfectant and anæsthetic hung in the air, explanatory of the dead quiet, of the heavy breathing that was part of the silence. This was a ward of the severely wounded, recently arrived. From the utmost climax of human effort, thunderous to the ear, dreadful to the eye, maddening to the soul whether it exulted triumphant over the menace of instant extinction or shrank appalled and paralysed in the horror of brutal death, from the fierce superiority of the unscathed killer, from the sudden shock, these men had come, many of them unconsciously, by train and ship and train and car to the white and green hospital on the empty moorland, to the hushed screened peace of the bed-ranked ward.
At the further end of the ward a Medical Officer stood in murmured conversation with a Sister. He was outlined black against the radiance of the sunset, but on her the glow fell fully illuminant, rosy upon the starched whiteness of the coif and apron, touching the pale face into faint colour. Her large, serious eyes rested upon him, attentive to his instructions, glanced away to the patient in the end bed as he spoke.
"Number Ten must be very carefully watched, Sister," he said, the little smile upon his face indicative only of his confidence in the quiet young woman before him, in no way minimising the gravity of his words. "I am afraid we are going to have a very hard fight for him. But we mustn't let him slip through our fingers. We'll keep him on this side if we can."
She assented with a nod of the head, and a long deep breath that was clearly a sigh. He scrutinised her sharply.
"You have something on your mind, Sister. No bad news, I hope?" His voice was very kind. "Captain Hershaw is all right?"
The Sister's engagement was generally known in the hospital.
The large eyes opened, revealing a mute, long-suffered anxiety.
"It is more than a week since I heard from him, Doctor. I am afraid—horribly afraid," she said in a low voice. "This terrible fighting——!"
"The post is sometimes held up during active operations, Sister. You must not be prematurely anxious. A week is not very long. You must believe in his luck. He has had a charmed life so far," the M.O.'s kindly smile emphasised his reassuring tone.
"He has—he has. And life always seems so—so vivid in him. I cannot imagine him"—her voice sank almost to inaudibility—"dead."
"Don't!" He smiled, full of sympathy. "Believe in his star." His tone changed to the professional. "Would you like to go off duty, Sister? I will speak to the Matron. A car is going into town. Go and look at the shops."
"No—no, Doctor, thank you very much. I won't leave my dear boys here. Poor lads! it does me good to fight for them—almost as if——" she stopped, turned away.
"Very well, Sister. Send for me if any change occurs in Number Ten."
The M.O. walked down the ward, throwing little glances at the silent patients, and departed.
For some little time the Sister busied herself noiselessly about the ward. Then Number Ten stirred uneasily in his bed.
"Sister!" he called in a faint voice.
She was by his side in an instant.
"A drink, please!"
She gave it him, looked down on the young, strongly masculine features as he drank, with an interest thatwas subtly, unconsciously more than professional. From the moment of his arrival in the ward—even in his silences—Number Ten had been a personality. Though powerless in bed there was a curious hint of brute force in him.
"Now you must go to sleep again, Captain Lavering," she said, smoothing his pillow.
"I can't, Sister." His eyes closed and opened again in a spasm of pain. "I—I want to feel someone near me," his voice was very weak, "to get hold of life again. Sister, sit beside me—for a moment, please."
She glanced at him irresolutely, smoothed the hair from his hot forehead with a cool hand, and then acceded to his request, seated herself on the chair by the bed.
"But you mustn't talk!" she warned him.
"I won't, Sister!" He was quiet for a moment. "Sister! I'm very bad, I know—but I'm not going to die! I won't die—I won't let myself die!" Despite his weakness, there was intense will-power in his tone.
"Hush, hush! Of course you are not going to die." Involuntarily, she laid her hand upon the bed as if to transfuse some of her own life-force into him.
He reached out a hand, grasped hers, resisted her attempt at withdrawal.
"Please!—please!" he murmured. "I want to hold on to life—there's so much——" His eyes closed sleepily. "I feel life flowing into me," he said. The grip on her hand was tight.
For a long time she sat thus, her hand clasped inhis. Number Ten slept, with heavy breathing. It seemed to her that his fever diminished. She feared to withdraw herself lest she should awaken him. The long ward was deathly still.
Presently there was a noise of footsteps. An orderly approached, changing his gait to a clumsy tip-toe in obedience to her gesture.
"A telegram for you, Sister," he said.
She glanced at the patient, essayed to release her hand. It was firmly held in the sleeper's grasp.
"Open the telegram, Thomson," she said in a whisper.
The orderly obeyed, handed her the drab piece of paper.
She took it, glanced at it, nodded a speechless dismissal to the orderly.
"The War Office reports that Ronald is missing believed killed Hershaw."
The words branded themselves into her brain as she sat there fixed, immobile. She could hear them in the wailing cry of the widowed mother who had written the telegram, but her own voice seemed to her for ever dumb, never to break this crushing silence. She stared—with dry eyes—straight before her. The obsequial lights of the departed sun, framed by the window opposite, were extinguished one after another. She did not stir, was unconscious that her hand was still in the grasp of the wounded man. "The War Office reports——" It was like staring at a high, closed door.
An immeasurable time passed before an orderly entered, switched on the electric light, drew theblinds. She roused herself, found the grip upon her hand relaxed. She rose—with tight lips and burning eyes, went about her duties.
That evening it was by an effort of will, sternly administered, that she sat at table in the Sisters' messroom. She scarcely ate, was deaf to the feminine chatter around her. One of the sisters, a notorious flirt, joked her upon her loverlike posture with Number Ten. The orderly had evidently talked. Sister Braithwaite did not reply. As soon as possible she fled to her little matchboarded cubicle.
By her bedside was a photograph of a clean-featured young man, with intellectual eyes, more than ordinarily vivid in their expression. She kissed it passionately—"Ronald! Ronald!"—the loved name came from the depths of her. The merciful tears fell fast, her bosom heaved.
She slept with a packet of letters pressed tight against her warm body.
She heard her name called: "Mary! Mary!" in a startlingly familiar voice. She heard herself reply: "Ronald!" It was very dark. Where was she? Ah, by the stream. It seemed queerly natural that she should be by that stream. It was not so dark after all—only twilight. Twilight with dark woods coming down to the stream. Her name was called again: "Mary! Mary!" her lover's voice impatient. Again she heard herself reply: "Ronald! Where are you?" "Here, dear! On the other side! You must cross the stream."
Of course! She must cross the stream—that was quite natural—and there was a little footbridge, offering passage. She went over, not daring to look down. On the other side she waited. He was not yet visible. She wondered what suit he would be wearing, wondered why she wondered. He came towards her, his clothes curiously more conspicuous than his face. He was clad in his old tweed suit, and mysteriously it seemed odd to her. Yet what else should he be wearing? It was the suit he always wore when out for a walk. She glanced at her own clothes with a subtle sense of strangeness, yet it was her old summer frock she wore. This little puzzle about clothes played itself out in cosmic depths of her, receded or was solved, vanished. Her lover was standing at her side, enfolded her.
"Mary! I have been so anxious about you!"
She looked up to eyes that seemed like stars in the twilight.
"I, too, Ronald—I have been worrying about you." There was a sense of something terrible in the background, imminent, and yet she felt it had been with her for a long time. It ceased. "But everything's all right now—I have found you."
A little glimmering something in the depths of her asked why she said that, seemed to repeat doubtfully: "Found you——" in a long, eternally re-echoing voice. She felt eerie. It was as though her existence was a duplicate imperfectly combined, like the double vision, half running into each other, of badly adjusted binoculars.
"I am so glad you are safe, dear," she heard herself say.
"Let us go and hear the nightingales," he said in the voice so ringingly his own. He drew her along the path in the twilight, his arm about her waist.
Nightingales? Now? Of course, why not? The season was early June—what was the silly half-thought submerged beyond the horizon of her mind?
She allowed herself to be impelled by the pressure of his arm. Closely linked, they followed the tenebrous path by the wood, climbed skirting its dark edge. Her lover talked copiously and interestingly as he always did—on a multitude of subjects. He was humorous, satirical, rhapsodic, earnestly eloquent by turns. How like him it was! She admired the wide range of his mind. Much more easily than usual—she realised it in a little glow of self-flattery—she comprehended him all through a long and intricate disquisition. Yet lurking somewhere in her dream-consciousness was the feeling that there was an all-important topic on which he did not touch. A part of her tried to identify that topic and failed. The failure worried her. He talked of travel, of a trip into Germany through the Black Forest, across Lake Constance into Austria and the Tyrol. Of course! That was to be their honeymoon tour. In the days before—before what?—before something—they had often talked about it. They were not even officially engaged then—she remembered how they used to laugh together over these distant projects that were treated as imminent facts. They had evenhad a little quarrel over the choice of two alternative stopping places. She came back to his voice.
"Listen!" he said. "Listen!"
A nightingale was singing with supernatural power. Loud, thrillingly resonant under the stars that now powdered the sky, the song welled out to them. Its burden, mysteriously comprehended by them to esoteric depths, was sorrow—the sorrow of all the world, here completely expressed, transmuted into so strange a beauty that the listener held his breath. The deep sobs, shudderingly repeated, that threw off the magic runs of crystal sound, pervaded the atmosphere about them with a mystic spell, evoked an immense pity in them. They could have wept. Suddenly they were conscious of a perfidy in this magically induced compassion—a danger, common to both, implied in it, imminent. He flung his arms about her to protect her, shielding her from it.
"You are mine, dearest!—mine!—only mine!"
His words went ringing through the stars, passed out of hearing, but were not silenced. She felt kisses of intense fervour upon her mouth—responded.
"I am!" she cried. Her words also rolled away endlessly, as though permuted into imperishable brass. "I am yours alone!"
She half-woke in the feeling of a near presence, then sank again into a sleep that remembers not its dreams.
She awoke in the morning obsessed by the baffling sense of an occurrence she could not recall. Thenthe memory, the realisation of her loss flooded in on her—harshly predominant in those first empty moments as yet unlinked to the distractions of the day. She wept, uncontrollable tears. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried in a low voice, her face buried in the soft pillow. Then she remembered. Her tears were checked. The details of her dream opened one by one, stirred in her a curious, subtle fear she felt unworthy of her. The vividness of it woke an atavistic emotion, the shrinking reaction of primitive humanity from the influence of those dead to this world. Yet a more recent growth in her tried to glory in the contact—impelled by an obscure sentiment of duty. "I do love you, Ronald!" she murmured again to the pillow. "I am yours alone!" The saying of the words seemed to merge her dream-life into unison with the actual.
There was much to do in the long, freshly-aerated ward that morning. As one by one each bed had its sheets turned back, exposing the gashed, perforated or fractured bodies of men who winced with pain, the crude other side of war was laid bare. Into strong relief, too, was thrown the complementary phase of the other side of the vast catastrophe where the noblest are proudly conscious of the wounds they inflict. With tender care, the utmost solicitude not to cause one unnecessary pang of suffering, the khaki-clad doctors, the grey-uniformed, white-coifed and aproned nurses, laboured to save and heal.
Sister Braithwaite thrust herself utterly into her daily task of dressing wounds, of soothing pain, of bringing a cheerful smile on to the face of the sufferer.
So doing, she eluded for quite long periods the obsession which haunted her.
Number Ten was once more the focus of interest in the ward. His condition had grown worse during the night. To-day he was in a dangerous fever. The doctor was grave. Sister Braithwaite watched over him with unremitting care, found herself passionately fighting off death. In the early afternoon the crisis passed. He woke from a quiet sleep, looked up to the Sister standing by his bed.
"You have saved me, Sister," he said in a weak voice. "I could feel it——"
"Hush, Captain Lavering. Go to sleep. We are all trying to get you well."
"It was you," he said faintly, as his eyes closed once more.
The silence of the ward was suddenly broken by a merry peal of bells floating in through the open windows. In the little village church tucked away in a near-by hollow of the moor a wedding was being solemnised. Sudden tears, a strange emotion, surged up in Sister Braithwaite.
A case that had made good progress was removed from the ward, a newly-arrived, severely-wounded man brought in.
"If only it were Ronald!" The neat, prim figure of the Sister, supervising the orderlies busy lifting the casualty into the bed, gave no indication of the desperate agonised prayer.
She dreamed.
"——Mine at last, my beloved—really mine!"The familiar voice thrilled through her, very close, overhead.
"Yours! Always yours!" she heard herself murmur.
She took her head from the darkness that obscured her vision—it was his coat against which she had been nestling; she saw the little white touzled-up hairs of the rough tweed ere her gaze stretched to longer focus. She looked to his face, met his vivid eyes—looked round at her surroundings.
They were alone in the first-class compartment of a railway train that rocked and roared. His lips were pressed on hers. "The great day, dearest!" he said. Her mind leaped to the allusion. Their wedding-day! They had been married that morning—she could hear still the joyous peal of bells—were going away on their honeymoon. The tweed suit he wore was quite new—something like the old. She was in a travelling-dress that he had already admired. Of course! It all came back to her as if she had just awakened from a little sleep.
The train rushed on. She lived through all the cinematograph-like pictures of the journey. A halt and descent—little anxieties about the luggage—then—after an interlude which was vague—another train, another long journey—all was a continuous long experience. She thrilled at a surreptitious squeeze of his hand—ah, yes, there were other people in the carriage now—rounded her lips at him in a provoking similitude of a kiss, daringly profiting by the inattention of their fellow-travellers. A yearning for him—induced by the naughty little act—filledher breast, persisted. There was bustle, confusion. They were in a throng of travellers who hurried. Hurry! They must not lose the boat. It lay there before them, only its upper works seen, its two great funnels leaning backward, belching black smoke. The black smoke spread over the sky. It was night. They were on board the boat, cradled in an easy motion, sensible of the throb of the engines. On and on they journeyed, linked in a very close communion of eyes that spoke, of hands that squeezed each other. She tasted a thousand little kindnesses. How good he was! How loving!
And still the journey went on. Yet more trains. She must have slept. She woke to a great city, filled with innumerable inhabitants, all very busy. They spoke a strange language very rapidly to one another. She could not understand a word. But he, Ronald, understood—conversed with them in their foreign tongue. How clever he was! There was music somewhere—from a lighted café that flooded a damp street with radiance.
She was bewildered in a variety of new and strange impressions, leaned on him, soul and body. He led her, sure of himself. Her love for him seemed to increase at this revelation of his unfailing self-reliance. Yet she knew that she loved him with all her being, had always loved him so.
"And how do you like Brussels, dearest?" his ringing voice asked. Brussels? Of course! As though a veil had fallen from her eyes she saw that they were in the middle of the Grand' Place, lights playing, Rembrandtesque, on the carved stoneworkof the ancient buildings. She recognised it at once—how accurate the picture postcards had been! Brussels—the honeymoon journey! She thrilled with happiness, leaning on his strong arm.
The dream continued——.
All through the next day its vividness haunted her. At times she had to will herself to live in the actual world. She scarcely spoke. The Medical Officer in charge of her ward stopped her, asked her if she were all right, his eyes searching her face. He sympathised with her in her loss so kindly and gently that she loved him for it.
Number Ten was still the great preoccupation. He claimed incessant care. But he was in the faint beginnings of good progress. Strangely, it seemed that when she tended him there was a conflict in some obscure part of her. There seemed to be an inarticulate voice, immensely remote, vaguely minatory, not explicit. Captain Lavering insisted that she was his rescuer, his eyes more eloquent than his words. It made her feel awkward, curiously shame-faced. His reiteration threw her out of that smile-armoured impersonal professional relation to the patient which alone makes continuous hospital work possible. She masked her face with a gentle severity. When he slept she was unreasonably glad. But she liked tending him. The contact with actual life, pain-stricken though it was, obliterated to some extent the haunting memory of that dream world from which she shrank, vaguely frightened.
She forced herself to live only in the long, quiet, bright ward; in the chattering society of the Sisters' messroom when off duty.
Her dream linked itself onto its predecessor. The honeymoon was finished. She looked back down a long vista of travel, of happy days. She had really lived through all those experiences. She picked them one by one from her memory like rare pieces from a jewel-case, contemplated them with a smile. Each expanded into a picture. The day they had walked together down the rugged path of the tiny valley imprisoned in the wooded hills, a fierce little stream outpacing them as it dashed against great boulders, and had come upon a sunny meadow where children garlanded with flowers laughed and danced in a ring; a wonderful blue lake on whose shores were yellow houses with red roofs and ancient cypresses on a greensward near the water's edge—the melancholy reiterated note of a church bell beat like a pulse through the scene; an old, old town with gabled houses leaning in close confidence, rich carvings—the grotesque; in all was a pervading peace, rich quiet life that thrives sleepy with well-being from year to year; over all was the ecstasy of mutual love through which they had beheld the world.
Another memory came to her—early morning in the Alps, a sea of wild narcissi all about them and, beyond, the great white peaks glittering in the sun of a blue sky. They went on and on, up and up. The flowers were left behind—and she remembered shehad regretted leaving them, had grudged the effort to climb for the sake of climbing—but he had insisted. They stood at last high up, dazzlingly white snowfields stretching away on every side, a summer sun beating hot upon them. The air was rarefied, induced in them a subtle ecstasy as they stood marvelling at the brilliant austere beauty of the great peaks lifting themselves into the sky, their robes slipping from their rocky shoulders in a miracle of purity. He encircled her waist with his arm, spoke in the voice that stirred mysterious depths in her.
"Dearest," he said. "Not a flower but snow is the true emblem of love. White as the essential soul, how soon on the lower levels it is defiled, disappears! But on the heights it endures stainless for ever, no matter how hot the kiss of the sun."
And she had kissed him, speechlessly.
But all this was past. She was at home now, waiting for him to come back from his work. Their home, the home they had always planned, was all around her. The very pieces of furniture they had regarded in shop windows with longing eyes, had calculated the cost of, were there. That quaint old table in the centre of the room, half covered with the embroidered openwork white linen laid for tea—how covetously they had once looked on it! How depressed they had been at the dealer's price! But it was there, after all. Ronald had bought it, he who never rested until he attained his heart's desire. How purposeful he was! How strong! How loving-kind! She closed her eyes, leaned back in a swimming ecstasy of love.
There he was! She heard his footstep at the other side of the door. He entered, was radiant, enfolded her in that wonderful embrace where she was a surrendered thing. He had a little parcel, handed it to her. Tremblingly she opened it, certain of delight. It was a framed enlargement of a photograph they had taken that morning in the high Alps. With a little happy cry she gazed once more on the long smooth slopes of snow, stretching up to the dark-patched peaks. Once more his arm encircled her, his deep voice spoke.
"So shall we live, darling, always—ever upon the heights."
She lay awake in her bed, ere it was day, and understood in a great tremulous awe. In her dreams she and Ronald were living precisely the life they would have lived had there been no war. The honeymoon—their home—all would have been accomplished ere this. Had there been no war! Exactly as she had dreamed they would have travelled together—his arm would have enfolded her—in long, long happiness they would have lived. She burst into a passion of tears, stifled in the pillow. Then she turned her head, wondering, feeling as if her heart had stopped. Would this dream continue? Was it—in some mysterious way—real? Her lips moved in a prayer, but she scarcely knew what she prayed.
She was glad to escape into the busy actual life of the ward, into the light of day.
From now onwards her life definitely assumed this double phase.
In the hospital she was the Sister Braithwaite that all had known, diligent, bravely smiling, conscientious in her duty. Those about her remarked only that there was sometimes a curious stillness in her mien, spoke pityingly among themselves of the sad loss of her soldier lover. But death in a hospital is no rare catastrophe and none lingered on the topic. There was much to do, a continual stream of new arrivals from the distant conflict, the doubtful fate of many of those already long suffering. There were deaths, recoveries, operations of professional interest.
Number Ten went slowly but steadily towards health. Sister Braithwaite deliberately avoided all contact with him save the professional. When she chatted with a patient in the ward it was not with him. His gaze was reproachful, and she would not see it. Sometimes when she approached him he would, half-jokingly, reiterate that she had saved him. She would not hear. A strange sense of insecurity disturbed her in his presence. She half divined that he nursed a project——. She fled the glance of the steady, resolute eyes in the strong face. When at last he had made such progress that he could be removed to a convalescent ward she was glad at his departure.
At night she passed into another world. There was no war in that life—never had been war. From dream to dream she lived through a continuous existence—the wife of Ronald. It was all vividly real. It was the life they would have led—it playeditself out now in what to her daytime consciousness was a realm of shadows. Not always did she dream, or rather not always did her consciousness register the events through which she passed. But later dreams had dream-memories in them and the record had no gaps. Time passed in that dream-world without relation to the terrestrial days. In one night she frequently lived through long periods. He was always kind to her, always loving. She, too, loved him passionately, with all her soul.
But in the daytime her being shrank from that shadow-life. She was afraid—mysteriously, primitively afraid. She could not mourn as she would have liked to mourn. Sometimes she asked herself whether she was not ceasing to love her dead affianced. She tried to evoke his image—and often, to her distress, succeeded not. The strongly masculine features of Number Ten, Captain Lavering, rose before her mental vision, would not be banished. Then she despised herself bitterly. In remorse she willed herself forward to the night, bade herself not shrink, and when the hour came gave herself to the darkness tremulously, like a slave of the harem who goes into the chamber of her lord. The portal passed she was happy, completely happy—as happy as she would have been the wife of Ronald in the dainty little home that never could be other than the home of her dreams. With strange, almost terrifying, completeness the shadow-life evolved. The house she lived in she knew in all its details, had its rooms that she preferred, views from its windows that she loved or veiled. The presence of her husband was a realitythat filled it. She knew his footsteps, heard his voice. (It rang often in her ears when her eyes unclosed in the little matchboarded cubicle suddenly unfamiliar.) They had long, long conversations together—wonderful little interludes where their always underlying love blossomed into delicate flower. She saw his face clearly, saw that it was changing slightly, growing more set, less boyish. There were difficulties—the difficulties of real life—to be encountered. An anguished struggle with bills and finances that would not meet wrung her soul all one night. She pledged herself to such brave economies! But the difficulties were overcome, the memory of them lost in the embrace of her lover. Rarely, rarely was she unhappy until she woke.
And day by day, not keeping pace with her other life, her life of work in the hospital went on. Week linked into week, month into month. The great open moors around her changed their hue, were often shrouded in mist. In December the first frosts glassed the pools. Many were the patients who had come and gone. The little cemetery under the hill was fuller. Other sufferers were more fortunate. Captain Lavering was fully convalescent, nearing his discharge. She saw him often at a distance, avoided him when he tried to approach her. She could not have explained why, even to herself. Somewhere deep down in her, the virility of his aspect set a chord vibrating. She was always extremely, almost painfully, conscious of his propinquity. For many weeks they had not exchanged a word.
There came a night wonderful above all others.She thrilled with a strange new ecstasy, drawn from deep springs. It was the quiet, speechless ecstasy of some mysterious fulfilment. She was filled with a great tenderness that welled up and overflowed like a source. There was something warm against her heart. She looked down and saw that it was a newborn babe. She was in bed. Then, in a great surge of deeply flowing joy, she understood. She was a mother—the mother of Ronald's child! She could have cried for joy that lacked expression. Her fingers stroked thin silky hair on a tiny head.
Suddenly she was aware that Ronald was looking down on her. She yearned up to him, but as she did so she was conscious that her allegiance was divided. Not all of her, as heretofore, reached out to him undividedly his. There was a dumb insistent claim at her breast. She smiled to disguise it.
But it seemed that he understood. His face was troubled, the vivid eyes reproachful. He leaned over her.
"Dearest," he said. "I cannot share you. The child must never be more than the symbol of our love. You must be mine—always mine. Promise me that you will always be mine alone!"
His jealousy flattered her. A gush of affection for the strong lover admitting her power, mingled with the mother-craving for protection for self and child, was a fresh impulse revivifying the old allegiance:
"Always yours, dearest—always yours!"
He looked at her searchingly, his head seeming like a carven figure of destiny, strangely significant.
"I could annihilate the thing that comes between us," he said, and she was a little frightened at his voice. It rolled away big, superhuman—she harked back, in a flitting thought, to an earlier dream-memory.
He turned to a picture on the wall, pointed to it. It was the Alpine scene.
"You and I," he said. "Always together—alone upon the heights."
"Yes! Yes!" she said, only half understanding. "Always—always yours!"
She woke with a start, her own voice ringing in her ears. Night was still a blackness in the little cubicle. She put out her hand, touched the matchboard wall to assure herself of her surroundings.
When she woke again it was to look through the window and see the world white with snow. She remembered with some pleasure that she was off duty, had the day to herself. She wanted to be alone. Her head was a whirl of troubled thoughts. The emotions of her dream were still in her blood. Her arms felt vacant as though an infant had just been taken from them. A new longing came up in her—a craving for motherhood. She linked it to her dead lover. "Oh, Ronald!" she murmured. "If only we had been married before you went to the war——" she left the thought unfinished. The craving persisted, apart from his memory. She ached for a real, living affection in this world of men and women. Strange thoughts haunted her while she dressed.
As soon as possible she escaped from the hospital, went out upon the moor that stretched in suavecontours of dazzling white. A pale blue sky sank into its mists. A cold wind hurried over it, whirling up little columns of dusty, frozen snow. She walked far into its solitudes, she hardly knew whether to escape from her thoughts or to be alone with them.
At last she turned back. She had climbed out of a little hollow, was descending a featureless slope when suddenly she perceived the figure of a man, dark against the snow. He walked towards her quickly. Simultaneous with her recognition of him was the flush of blood to her face, a peculiar nervous thrill. It was Captain Lavering. She half hesitated. Then she strode forward, an insidiously victorious temptation masquerading as strong will. Why should she not pass him? It was absurd. He might think——. She hoped that she was not blushing, or that the keen wind which fluttered her veil would be the self-evident excuse.
They met. He stopped, made a gesture of salute.
"Good morning, Captain Lavering." She was glad to hear her own voice, had been afraid that she could not bring it to utterance. What was there so troubling about this man? She avoided his eyes. "I'm pleased to see you walking about again." The crisis was successfully surmounted. She made as if to continue her way.
"I saw you in the distance, Sister," he said bluntly.
She did not find the commonplace remark for which she sought. He blocked her pathway.
"I have been waiting to speak to you for a long time, Sister," he continued, as though he knew there was no necessity for a trite beginning. "Ever since you saved my life. You did—we won't discuss that." She stared at him, speechless. "But I have waited until I was sure that I was quite well again. You know what I am going to say. For a long time you have felt what was in my mind. You must be my wife."
He was strong and real—vividly actual. She felt as she did sometimes when her eyes opened from a dream into the solid surroundings of her cubicle. He barred off the other world.
"No—no," she breathed, dodged past him, hurried over the snow.
He was by her side, keeping pace easily with her.
"You can't escape me like that," he said. There was obvious brute masculinity in his tone. Though she tried to resent it, it did not displease her, and she was angry with herself that it did not. "Listen. I am a plain man. There is no fancy romance about me. I don't want illusions. But I love you." He stated the fact with absolute decision. "I can offer you a good position and all that, but I know that does not affect the matter. The vital thing is that from the moment we set eyes on each other something happened——" for the first time he faltered in his tone. "We both knew it. There it is. I hate being sentimental. But I want you—and I know that you want me."
"No—no!" she said again, almost running. Ablind desire to escape, from herself as much as from him, dominated her. "I—I can't."
"Can't? Why not? You are free. I know you were engaged. But he is—gone. We live in a world of flesh and blood. You can't exist on a memory. Besides," the words came like a slave-driver's whip—she almost obeyed it—"you never loved him as you love me!"
She revolted, stung to burning resentment against herself equally as against this masterful, crude male. She stopped and faced him.
"Captain Lavering, you talk like a sick man." She triumphed in the steadiness of her words. "You have insulted me in the most uncalled-for manner. Let that be enough."
His eyes looked into hers, challenged her sincerity, were assured of it. He went red, looked awkward.
"Forgive me," he mumbled.
She went on without a word, ignored the fact that he accompanied her. They breasted an upward smooth slope of snow that stretched up to a crisp, clear outline against the blue sky. He ventured a sidelong glance at her, a little light of primitive cunning in his eyes.
"Quite Alpine, isn't it?" he said.
As intended—his tone implied a resumption of ordinary commonplace relationship—the words took her off her guard. But he was ignorant of their esoteric significance. In a flash, in a deep convulsion of the soul, she saw the Alpine picture, vivid with symbolism, of her other life. "—On the heights!"In the full poignancy of the emotion it unlocked—her own vow of fidelity ringing in her ears from another world—she found herself struggling in a man's tight grasp, hot breath upon her face, lips seeking her own. "You must! You shall!" he muttered, straining forward to her. She stiffened, fought in a frenzy. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried.
An icy wind swept down the slope, smote upon them like a breath from the grave, shudderingly cold. Captain Lavering uttered a little cry, relaxed his grip, and fell sideways upon the snow.
Sister Braithwaite stared at him in horror. A great fear came upon her, an awe in the presence of unearthly power.She knew!Her soul slipped back into its dream-state, confronted the visage of her lover, stern as destiny. The eyes judged her, forgave. Then, weeping hysterically, she ran towards the hospital. It was not far distant.
They brought in the dead man.
"H'm," said the Medical Officer, looking at him. "Cerebral hæmorrhage. This intense cold—— I was always rather afraid of a lesion. A nasty shock for you, Sister. Well, well, another one finished—very sad, very sad."
An orderly brought Sister Braithwaite her share of the just arrived post. There was a letter from Ronald's mother. It enclosed one from the War Office.
"Dear Madam," it ran. "It is regretted that no further details have come to hand regarding your son. Officially he is still posted as 'missing, believed killed.'"
Sister Braithwaite shut herself in her cubicle, talked to the photograph with the vivid eyes, talked to it as primitive woman talks to the lover who has destroyed his rival. She reached out to the Other Side.
NA NOS!
(A study of Serb infantry in battle, 1914)
Thereis no moon. In black darkness a long file of men stumbles up a stony gully. Precipitous rock-walls keep them to the bed of a vanished stream, where they trip in succession over the same loose boulders. Their curses are hushed instantly by voices not less authoritative because they bark in whispers. Wrapped in long sheepskin coats the figures pass like ghosts of an antique time, whose grimness is accentuated by the incongruity of modern rifles with fixed bayonets that glint under the myriad stars. Presently the head of the file halts in what seems a black pit, the edge of which cuts sharply against the star-powdered bluish darkness of the sky. Those behind arrive continuously, collect in the hollow, are formed into ranks by sergeants who bullysotto vocelike angry conspirators. The company commander is crawling on hands and knees up the wall of the hollow, which is not so precipitous as it appears in the darkness.
The captain peers cautiously over the crest. He sees only blackness which rises all around him from an abyss that reflects no ray in its profundity, and blots out the stars high in the sky with irregularcones and shapeless masses of inky night. From those mountains a wind blows chilly on his face. He fixes his gaze upon a point in the blackness far across the gulf. The point is decided upon after careful reference to a phosphorescent compass in his hand. He stares at this blank darkness until it almost seems that he must be staring against closed lids.
Suddenly in the gloom at which he strains his eyes, he perceives a pin-point of light. It flickers for an instant and then projects itself in a ray of intense brilliance widening from the point of origin, right across the gulf. It falls in a great oval of blinding whiteness upon the hill-side to his right. Its hard white glare is painful in its brutality. Everything outside the ray is swallowed in a blackness where even the stars are lost. The white oval on the hill-side moves slowly. It brings into vivid relief a long line of loosely piled stones behind which lie, in many attitudes, the motionless bodies of men. Some, which have fallen across the heap of stones, throw grotesque shadows, intensely black. The white oval stays its slow progress, vignettes them from the night. In the centre of the picture one of these figures stirs, raises itself upon one elbow and rubs its eyes stupidly like a man wakened from sleep by the sudden glare.
Instantly a group of sharp reports, multiplied by rapidly reiterated echoes, breaks from the distant blackness. The figure sinks quickly, a dark hole visible in the ghastly whiteness of its face. The oval begins to move again, assuring the men who lurk far back in the night that this uncompleted shelter-trench is held only by the dead.
Suddenly the light is cut off. The stars reappear in a sky that seems strangely pallid. The mountain masses silhouette themselves more definitely than before against their tenebrous background, the outlines of the high summits, where some snow still lies, picked out in a grey that has just the faintest tinge of yellow. From the black gulf below eddies of mist boil up like steam from a mighty cauldron, veiling the shrinking stars. A wall of fog rolls along the hill-side, blots out the mountains and the sky.
The captain turns instantly and calls down an order in a carefully restrained voice. The company in the hollow springs up and over the crest with the agility of born mountaineers. They follow their captain at a quick pace into the bank of fog. Behind them is a murmur of voices. The other companies of the battalion are coming up, deploying rapidly into line when they reach the crest. The first company has halted for a moment to allow time for their arrival. Seconds are precious. At any moment the cloud may roll away, expose them to the glare of hostile searchlights and a storm of bullets. In two long lines the battalion moves briskly down the hill, leaving the unfinished shelter-trench upon its right. Behind, another battalion is coming up in support.
Some way down the slope the infantry breaks out of the mist. They open their files and slacken pace, dodging nimbly from one to another of the boulders which glimmer in the twilight. Overhead the searchlights move uneasily in long pale bands against the paling sky and fall upon the fog-belt in white circles as upon a magic-lantern screen. The infantry is notyet discovered. It works stealthily but quickly forward, aiming at a lower ridge that rises before them. They seem alone in the narrow mountain-valley that begins to reveal itself in the dawn, but their officers know that to right and left of them other battalions are likewise creeping forward. They reach the ridge, halt and lie down upon its slope, wisps and wreaths of mist blowing over them.
The searchlights are extinguished—when, it is hard to say. The sky is now a translucent ultramarine where no stars are left, and against which the mountain peaks stand out in vivid orange. White fog patches wander over the dark lower faces of the hills. The infantry creeps cautiously up to the summit of its ridge and, like one man, peeps over. In front of them is a mountain-wall that goes back at an angle, leaving a great gap. Another ridge, parallel to their own, starts from the mountain-side and drops away to the left. Its foot is lost in a sea of fog. Between them and that ridge the ground drops into a ravine and then mounts in a smoothglacisto the further crest. A little below its summit the loose boulders, which are everywhere sown over the ground, are disposed in a long regular grey line. The officers of the battalion give the range to that line—750 yards. The infantrymen snuggle down behind boulders and inequalities on the crest and adjust their sights. There is a general loosening of sheepskin coats, a tinkle of cartridge-clips laid in readiness, and then the line lies still, waiting, its bayoneted rifles slid back out of view.
Far back the infantry brigade commander is lyingupon his stomach upon the height to the left of the wrecked shelter-trench. The fog-belt has moved off. He has a clear view from ridge to ridge. Suddenly he takes his field-glasses from his eyes and picks up a telephone receiver at the end of a long line trailing over the ground. He speaks a few words into it, replies shortly to mysterious enquiries that emanate from the far distance, suggests a number of metres in thousands. Almost immediately the shriek of a shell passes overhead and the report of a cannon-shot comes echoing along the valley, arrives in a succession of distinct shocks to the ear. Ere the echoes have died away another shell screams past, followed by its series of reverberations. The infantry brigadier is watching the distant ridge through his binoculars. The line of boulders is faintly visible. The first shell bursts above it and beyond; the second bursts short. The bracket is too wide. The brigadier speaks again through the telephone. Another shell wakes weird noises from the mountains as an accompaniment to its own shriek. It bursts just in front of the line of boulders above it. Through his glasses the brigadier sees the splash of shrapnel bullets upon the rocks like twinkles in quick whiffs of dust. He speaks two brief words into the telephone. A flight of shells rushes overhead like a covey of screaming spirits and with an enormous roll of thunder arrives the roar of a battery in rapid action. Its reverberations roll and clash endlessly, surging from side to side of the valley in confused waves of violent sound. The long line of boulders is suddenly whelmed in a cloud of dust that renews itself as fast as it drifts into the air.From one end of that cloud spurt tiny points of flame, and shriek crosses shriek in the air above, whilst a series of sharp crashes mingles with the continuous roar. Quick puffs of white smoke appear in groups against the blue sky. In the unfinished shelter-trench spurts of dust leap up around the bodies of the dead men who lie behind the boulders. A battery of guns has been pushed up into the infantry line over there on the hostile ridge and, unobservant of the menace close at hand, is spending its fury upon the trench that it wrecked overnight.
The firing line upon the intervening ridge lies quiet in its concealment. Its officers have no wish to provoke arafalefrom a battery protected by tall stone sangars. Intently they watch the sheets of dust that spurt up high over the line of boulders like the beat of a rough sea against a breakwater. They mark where the long thin tongues of flame shoot out ceaselessly in reply, spitting at a distant target far behind them. They communicate these observations to the battalion commander who is smoking a cigarette in an attitude of ease a little way down the slope. A man close to him commences a series of quick, jerky gesticulations with a pair of flags held stiffly at arm's length. No flags wave in reply, but, far back, the brigadier at the telephone speaks. A great shell rushes overhead with the roar of an express train. A moment later the officers upon the ridge see a sudden eruption of flame and rocks in the centre of the line of boulders. They send another message down to the signaller. Another shell hurtles through the air, another explosion shoots upward, this timenearer to the spitting guns. Where the fumes drift off, great holes, in which there is a scurry of tiny figures, are visible in the shelter trench. Wide grins open on the faces of the Serbian firing-line as they draw their rifles close to them and finger the triggers. They understand fully the value of artillery support. Again and again the volcanic eruptions spout into the air with an appalling detonation that breaks heavily into the rolling echoes which fill the valley. Two of them leap up suddenly from the very midst of the dust-cloud where the battery is at work. There is a fountain of flying rocks dark in the centre of the flame, and in the colossal roar of the explosion a brief, acute note of human agony comes like a high-pitched discord mingled with a thunderous bass. A moment later the line of guns is revealed, naked to attack. A few men are seen darting with short movements about them. Three out of the six eject a tongue of flame at short intervals. While they fire, a pale gleam flickers along the Serbian ridge as the bayoneted rifles are thrust forward, and with a long dry crackle a sheet of bullets leaps out at the wrecked battery. The sun rises over a shoulder of the mountains and a band of golden light spreads downwards, illuminates the flying clouds of dust in which figures can just be seen frantically endeavouring to turn the guns in the new direction. They are picked off one by one with deadly aim. Above the trench the shrapnel bursts incessantly, a new shower starting ere its predecessor has reached earth.
Along the Serbian ridge the sheepskin-clad figures lie in snug safety and pull trigger with chuckles ofsatisfaction. There is no excitement, only a keen savouring of primeval emotions that can now be given rein. About them dance quick spurts of dust and bright splashes of nickel appear upon the rocks. An irregular rifle fire is coming from the hostile ridge. One or two shells burst overhead and then the guns fall silent, are forgotten. The company on the right starts suddenly to its feet, dashes over the crest and down the slope. The rifle fire from the other ridge changes in character, welcomes them with rapid, violent claps. A couple of machine-guns strike into the din with a continued rapid and resonant hammering, nerve-racking in its persistency. Men in the running line throw up their arms or pitch forward here and there, but the company is lost to sight almost immediately on the rock-strewn hill-side. The men dart forward from boulder to boulder. Behind them on their left other companies are descending in quick succession towards the ravine.
At the other side of the ridge, in rear, the second line of the battalion is coming up in support, and behind them the other battalions of the brigade are streaming forward, unhindered as yet by artillery fire. It is a brief respite, however. In a moment or two a distant, unseen battery has got their range, flings shell after shell to burst over their heads and fall in a spreading cone of bullets. The brigade advances with quick onward dashes by battalions that spring up, race a hundred yards and disappear for a breathing space among the boulders. Gradually they draw into the shelter of the intervening ridge, and battalion after battalion tops it andmoves down to the aid of those in front. A strong firing-line remains on the crest, keeps up a steady stream of bullets against the long grey line still whelmed in dust by an unceasing hail of shrapnel. The brigadier ensconces himself in a rock shelter at the end of this firing-line, the telephone receiver still ready to his hand.
The first line of the attack has now reached the ravine. The men seize hold of tiny shrubs that grow out at overhanging angles and swing themselves down, scrambling over loose stones and sliding sand. A hail of bullets is beating upon them from the trench above and from a line of supports that has come into action higher still. The machine-guns hammer with an appalling energy that knows not fatigue. Where their aim is directed the sand spouts up as though struck by an air-blast from a hose. In that ravine the first line is more than decimated. Men stumble and fall upon their own bayonets. Corpses, hanging limply, weigh down the shrubs. With fierce shouts the survivors scramble onward. The second line has caught them up, is mingled with them. The battle-madness seethes in every head; each bullet that strikes harmlessly upon the earth is a shock of stimulation to already hyper-excited nerves. They lose their identity, lose the instinct of self-preservation in the flood of an older instinct which blinds them to all but the hazards of the ground, and sweeps them forward like demented animals frantic to assuage a thirst that consumes their tissues. A savage cry breaks automatically from every throat; the blood-congested brains, thatpermit the action of the muscles, unconscious of it. They reach the bottom of the ravine, not very deep, and clamber up in the comparative security of the other side.
At the foot of the smooth slope which reaches to the dust-whelmed boulder-line, their officers halt them by orders, entreaties. The men lie down and open a rapid, irregular fire against the trench. More men arrive behind them, frenzied with excitement. They attempt to rush upward, are pulled back by officers, or are struck down quickly in the rain of bullets from the trench. The rifle-fire up there comes now in one long rolling crackle through the cloud of dust that flurries in answer to the continuous crashing of the shrapnel. The fire of the attack increases in sporadic bursts.
On the ridge behind, the brigadier speaks a few brief words into the telephone. A minute later the shrapnel ceases to burst over the trench.
In the disordered crowd of men that lies at the foot of the slope is a commotion that defies the efforts of the officers. In vain do they, knowing what is about to occur, endeavour to form a regular line of attack up the ravine, as, from those who are still swarming down the other side, arises one hoarse, savage cry that dominates the crash of rifle-volleys. It is the battle-cry of a primitive people that spontaneously clutches its primitive weapon in this awakening of its oldest instincts, this plunge into the æon-old chaos where man thirsts for the blood of man. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" comes the cry from a thousand throats, reiterated endlessly by frenzied men whosefaces are deathly white or inflamed with blood. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" from parched mouths, from dry, cracked lips the shout issues, overpowering the orders of the officers. The bloodshot eyes that protrude with wild hatred at the trench no longer see those officers. It is a savage horde merely, in which the modern military hierarchy is lost, obliterated by an intensely individual lust to slay as their ancestors slew. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" "With the knife! With the knife!" What matters it that the knife is at the end of a rifle? It is still a knife, the primordial weapon. With an angry roar, the mass, no longer to be restrained, rushes madly up the slope.
With an answering crash the rifle-fire from the trench leaps to a climax. The men up there are firing for their lives. In the horde upon the slope is an appalling massacre. Heedless of it, blind to it, the mass surges upward, happily forgetful of the cartridges in their own rifles, mindful only of the blade that gleams at the muzzle. They see a line of faces, white behind countless spurts of flame. With one fierce roar they hurl themselves upon them. Men in grey-blue spring up and dash away or turn and run at them bayonet to bayonet. The attacking line howls in the joy of butchery—"Na Nos!"
PER LA PIÙ GRANDE ITALIA!
Thehot sun of a morning in early summer beat down upon the narrow street of a little North Italian town. Down the long, confined vista of colonnaded shopfronts, hung with striped awnings of warm hue, the air quivered above the cobbles, troubled the view of an arched, square-turreted gateway which barred the street. The sky above was a long strip of intense azure. Sharp to the left, near at hand, was the roughly-paved piazza, white-fronted Venetian-shuttered houses looking out to the large round basin, the weather-worn Triton, of the fountain where the pigeons, flashing in the sun, circled down to drink. A group of girls, bare-armed, black-haired, skirts turned up over vividly-coloured petticoats, water-jars underneath the gush from the Triton's mouth, or poised already upon the graceful head, stood laughing and chattering about the fountain. Their gaze was unanimously turned towards the large building, the wordsPalazzo Municipaleover its arcaded front, which occupied one side of the square. Carved on that front, beneath the clock, defaced but not entirely obliterated, might yet be made out the double-eagle of Austria—a memento of a tyranny that had fled before a passionate patriotism, to entrench itself, not far distant, high on the crag and glacier of theeagles' haunts, ready to swoop. But not to that did the merry, whispering girls dart their flirtatious glances. The two grey-uniformed Bersagliere sentries, strutting up and down before the building, superb under the drooping cocks' feathers of their grey-covered tilted hats, were for once immune. A handsome young officer, black-moustached, dark-eyed, who stood, one foot upon the running-board of a car that hummed ready to start, in conversation with another officer, was the point of interest. Both officers, clad in the grey field-service uniform, wore upon their arm the brassard which indicated that they were of the Staff. The officer on the point of departure wore the badges of captain; he who was giving him his final instructions was atenente colonello(lieutenant-colonel).
"You quite understand what the General wants, don't you, Ricci?" he said, using the familiar "tu," universal between Italian officers. "As soon as possible after the position is captured, a report on its possibilities for field artillery if we can advance to the covering ridge. The General thinks it will command the valley road up from the railway. You will see. Don't get buried under an avalanche!"
"Very good, colonel. I quite understand." He saluted—a quick movement of the hand horizontally below the peak of the képi, palm downwards, as though shading the sight, in the Italian fashion—and jumped into the car. He pushed to one side a heavy fur coat, settled himself. A moment later the car was humming out of the square, spinning down the long colonnaded street.
In front of him loomed the heavy mediæval gateway, square above its arch. Its ordinarily forbidding gloomy aspect was lost in a generous decoration of green boughs, a trophy of Italian flags, red, white and green, above a white-crossed shield, a great inscription—"Per la più grande Italia!"[2]The battle-cry of Italy's greatest modern poet—the cry that had rung beseeching, dominating, inspiring, through dithyramb after dithyramb of the wonderful passionate orations by which he had wakened the glowing soul of the people into flame, was blazoned here as everywhere in Italy. Under that gateway thousands of Italy's sons had marched to conflict with theTedeschi, to the redemption of their brethren; thousands more would march. And those to come would shout as those who had gone had shouted: "Per la più grande Italia! Evviva Italia!" The captain, glancing up at it ere the car shot under the dark arch, carried the inscription marked upon his brain through the obscurity. Familiar enough, he reperceived its meaning with a thrill. What mattered the little individual life he was hurrying to risk? "Per la più grande Italia!"
The car sped along a road on the left side of a pleasant valley. In front, immediately claiming the eye, a range of Alpine peaks, dark rock-scars breaking their dazzling whiteness, exquisitely delicate and fine-drawn as perceived through the warm atmosphere, towered in lofty austerity into the rich unvarying blue of the sky. The road, thick with dust, climbed towards them in long loops and bold curves. Close upon its left, dark woodland descended, masking ever and anon the distant prospect behind a shoulder of the hills. To the right, across the green valley where the cattle stood hock-deep in flowers, village after village—yellow-ochre and burnt-red, its slant-roofed campanile high above the flat houses—clustered itself upon an eminence or nestled low down to the valley stream. Viewing the scene of quiet bucolic prosperity it was difficult to imagine that among the silent peaks in the background lurked the terrors of war; men embattled for mutual destruction.
Along the road creaked and squealed clumsy country-carts drawn by oxen with patient heads bowed to the yoke. They hoofed the dust with the unhurried motion of centuries of tradition in their toil, careless of the goad of the barefootedcontadinacrying them to hasten, to turn aside to allow passage for impatiently hooting motor-lorries. In strange contrast of locomotion, column after column of lumbering mechanical transport rushed down from the mountains in a smother of dust and petrol-fumes. Column after column proceeding upward was overtaken and passed by the captain's car. Ever in front towered the range of glittering peaks, in unshakable, eternal calm. Yet from somewhere among their solitudes came a distant, faint roar that was not the roar of nature's thunder.
The road had climbed high. The valley was narrower. The orchards sloping to its stream were white with fruit-blossoms. The air was rarefied but still hot under the direct rays of the sun. The darkwoods of oak gave place to darker woods of pine. The road swept round in sharp curves on low-parapeted stone bridges above a rushing torrent. Bare green slopes, strewn with grey boulders, opened between the woods. The car overtook a long marching column of Alpini crunching the dust under heavily nailed boots, pack high upon the shoulders, alpenstock as well as rifle, sweating profusely yet pressing upwards with quick step, the eagle's feather in their soft hats still jaunty. It was the rear battalion of a brigade whose units were successively overtaken and passed.
The road swung to the right round the head of the valley which here commenced in a sheer drop. As the car followed it there was a sudden spurt of flame, a drifting tawny smoke, in the dark depths to the right. A tremendous, shattering detonation that re-echoed endlessly down the valley ceased at last, leaving audible the eerie moaning of a great shell speeding upwards over the mountains, already far away. Another such flash and detonation followed the first. Looking over the side of the car, the captain perceived, deep down, the long barrel of a monster gun nosing upwards, men tiny about it. A second gun was depressed, a crane-slung shell hovering near its breech. Once more there was a crash—a series of distracted conflicting echoes that shattered the Alpine silence as thick glass is starred and fractured. In the sky above the valley an eagle beat the air with heavy, violent wings, startled into a vertical climb, and then glided swiftly with outstretched pinions downwards to its crag.
The road still ascended, left the valley, climbed tortuously a rocky spur, thinly grassed. The car took the gradient slowly, noisily, on second speed. In front, struggling on the brow of the spur, a column of "caterpillar" tractors drawing the component parts of a battery of heavy howitzers distributed on trucks rattled and detonated like machine-guns in full action. The battery personnel, harnessed to long ropes, hauled and strained at the leading piece in an effort to facilitate the passage of the steep crest. Before the war the boldest artilleryman would have scouted the possibility of such heavy ordnance at this height among the mountains. But the battery was only entering upon the area of its severest toil.
On the crest of the spur the road turned to the left, climbed at an easier angle. The view, hitherto much masked by closely overhanging slopes, opened out. To right and left the gaze plunged into blue depths, fell on miniature woods and thin white strips that were roads. Far away on either hand the mountain ranges lifted themselves, superb, into the blue sky. But directly in front the higher peaks were not seen. A sheer wall of dark rock barred the view as effectually as it seemed to bar further progress.
At the foot of the precipice was a stationary column of motor-lorries, tiny by comparison with the towering mountain. The road went straight up to it. The captain in the car bestirred himself, picked up his heavy fur coat. Far away and high above was a prolonged rumbling roar that seemed to re-echo from invisible walls in the upper atmosphere. Involuntarily the captain raised his eyes. The blue sky was untroubled.
Upon the face of the rock—which leaned back less precipitously than had appeared—swarmed hundreds of grey-uniformed engineers. They were laying a pathway of heavy timber, erecting huge sheers, arranging a complicated tackle of thick rope and large pulleys. Back along the road the first of the heavy pieces for which this hoisting apparatus was in preparation lumbered already into sight.
This tackle was not the only feature on the precipice. A little further along, at the centre of the line of lorries, a light cantilever steel standard was connected by drooping wire ropes to the summit. Suspended from those ropes by a running-gear of pulleys a little car was gliding steadily upwards, another coming down. It was theTeleferica—the famous wire-rope railway, that, many times multiplied, made modern war possible at these high altitudes.
Ammunition in boxes was being unloaded from the lorries, stacked on the roadside near theTeleferica. The downward-gliding car was seized by a group of waiting men, steadied, stopped, quickly loaded with the boxes.
The staff-captain's motor drew up. He descended, walked towards theTeleferica, exchanged a salute with the dapper little ammunition officer superintending the work.
"Buon' giorno, signor capitano," said the little lieutenant. "Are you going up to see the attack?"
The captain nodded.
"Ah! Some people have all the luck! I neversee anything. My battery never has any casualties—and here am I left supernumerary. I might as well be mountaineering for my pleasure!" He drew a lugubrious grimace of comic, half-sincere self-pity.
The captain struggled into his heavy fur coat, apparently superfluous here in the fierce heat which glowed from the rock in the noonday sun.
"A glass of wine before you ascend,capitano!" said the lieutenant. "Come, I will take no denial!"
He led the way to a little wooden shack close under the lee of the precipice. Within, the walls were decorated with a number of scathingly satirical drawings of theTedeschi; some extremely clever studies of the mountains in their different aspects of light—sunset and dawn, moonlight. The host, perceiving the captain's glance, made a deprecatory gesture.
"What I am reduced to,signor capitano! And I might be blowing the Austrians out of their eyries!" He was typical of that new Italy which, while it cannot cease to be artistic, holds all of small account that is not war against the Austrian. He filled the glasses, raised his own, half turned to a portrait of Gabriele d'Annunzio that shared with the King the honours of the wall. "Per la più grande Italia!"