The guns in the town of Greinstein were faintly audible. The family of Schnitzelhaaser lived alone there in mourning, an old man and old woman. They never went out or saw any one, for they knew they could not speak as though they did not mourn. They feared that their secret would escape them. They had never cared for the war that the War Lord made. They no longer cared what he did with it. They never read his speeches; they never hung out flags when he ordered flags: they hadn’t the heart to.
They had had four sons.
The lonely old couple would go as far as the shop for food. Hunger stalked behind them. They just beat hunger every day, and so saw evening: but there was nothing to spare. Otherwise they did not go out at all. Hunger had been coming slowly nearer of late. They had nothing but the ration, and the ration was growing smaller. They had one pig of their own, but the law said you might not kill it. So the pig was no good to them.
They used to go and look at that pig sometimes when hunger pinched. But more than that they did not dare to contemplate.
Hunger came nearer and nearer. The war was going to end by the first of July. The War Lord was going to take Paris on this day and that would end the war at once. But then the war was always going to end. It was going to end in 1914, and their four sons were to have come home when the leaves fell. The War Lord had promised that. And even if it did end, that would not bring their four sons home now. So what did it matter what the War Lord said.
It was thoughts like these that they knew they had to conceal. It was because of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves to go out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if by nothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they might imply a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one so hasty. What might one not say? And so they stayed indoors.
But now. What would happen now? The War Lord was coming to Greinstein in order to hear the guns. One officer of the staff was to be billeted in their house. And what would happen now?
They talked the whole thing over. They must struggle and make an effort. The officer would be there for one evening. He would leave in the morning quite early in order to make things ready for the return to Potsdam: he had charge of the imperial car. So for one evening they must be merry. They would suppose, it was Herr Schnitzelhaaser’s suggestion, they would think all the evening that Belgium and France and Luxemburg all attacked the Fatherland, and that the Kaiser, utterly unprepared, quite unprepared, called on the Germans to defend their land against Belgium.
Yes, the old woman could imagine that; she could think it all the evening.
And then,—it was no use not being cheerful altogether,—then one must imagine a little more, just for the evening: it would come quite easy; one must think that the four boys were alive.
Hans too? (Hans was the youngest).
Yes, all four. Just for the evening.
But if the officer asks?
He will not ask. What are four soldiers?
So it was all arranged; and at evening the officer came. He brought his own rations, so hunger came no nearer. Hunger just lay down outside the door and did not notice the officer.
A this supper the officer began to talk. The Kaiser himself, he said, was at the Schartzhaus.
“So,” said Herr Schnitzelhaaser; “just over the way.” So close. Such an honour.
And indeed the shadow of the Schartzhaus darkened their garden in the morning.
It was such an honour, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser too. And they began to praise the Kaiser. So great a War Lord, she said; the most glorious war there had ever been.
Of course, said the officer, it would end on the first of July.
Of course, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser. And so great an admiral, too. One must remember that also. And how fortunate we were to have him: one must not forget that. Had it not been for him the crafty Belgians would have attacked the Fatherland, but they were struck down before they could do it. So much better to prevent a bad deed like that than merely to punish after. So wise. And had it not been for him, if it had not been for him...
The old man saw that she was breaking down and hastily he took up that feverish praise. Feverish it was, for their hunger and bitter loss affected their minds no less than illness does, and the things they did they did hastily and intemperately. His praise of the War Lord raced on as the officer ate. He spoke of him as of those that benefit man, as of monarchs who bring happiness to their people. And now, he said, he is here in the Schartzhaus beside us, listening to the guns just like a common soldier.
Finally the guns, as he spoke, coughed beyond ominous hills. Contentedly the officer went on eating. He suspected nothing of the thoughts his host and hostess were hiding. At last he went upstairs to bed.
As fierce exertion is easy to the fevered, so they had spoken; and it wears them, so they were worn. The old woman wept when the officer went out of hearing. But old Herr Schnitzelhaaser picked up a big butcher’s knife. “I will bear it no more,” he said.
His wife watched him in silence as he went away with his knife. Out of the house he went and into the night. Through the open door she saw nothing; all was dark; even the Schartzhaus, where all was gay to-night, stood dark for fear of aëroplanes. The old woman waited in silence.
When Herr Schnitzelhaaser returned there was blood on his knife.
“What have you done?” the old woman asked him quite calmly. “I have killed our pig,” he said.
She broke out then, all the more recklessly for the long restraint of the evening; the officer must have heard her.
“We are lost! We are lost!” she cried. “We may not kill our pig. Hunger has made you mad. You have ruined us.”
“I will bear it no longer,” he said. “I have killed our pig.”
“But they will never let us eat it,” she cried. “Oh, you have ruined us!”
“If you did not dare to kill our pig,” he said, “why did you not stop me when you saw me go? You saw me go with the knife?”
“I thought,” she said, “you were going to kill the Kaiser.”
As Hindenburg and the Kaiser came down, as we read, from Mont d’Hiver, during the recent offensive, they saw on the edge of a crater two wounded British soldiers. The Kaiser ordered that they should be cared for: their wounds were bound up and they were given brandy, and brought round from unconsciousness. That is the German account of it, and it may well be true. It was a kindly act.
Probably had it not been for this the two men would have died among those desolate craters; no one would have known, and no one could have been blamed for it.
The contrast of this spark of imperial kindness against the gloom of the background of the war that the Kaiser made is a pleasant thing to see, even though it illuminates for only a moment the savage darkness in which our days are plunged. It was a kindness that probably will long be remembered to him. Even we, his enemies, will remember it. And who knows but that when most he needs it his reward for the act will be given him.
For Judas, they say, once in his youth, gave his cloak, out of compassion, to a shivering beggar, who sat shaken with ague, in rags, in bitter need. And the years went by and Judas forgot his deed. And long after, in Hell, Judas they say was given one day’s respite at the end of every year because of this one kindness he had done so long since in his youth. And every year he goes, they say, for a day and cools himself among the Arctic bergs; once every year for century after century.
Perhaps some sailor on watch on a misty evening blown far out of his course away to the north saw something ghostly once on an iceberg floating by, or heard some voice in the dimness that seemed like the voice of man, and came home with this weird story. And perhaps, as the story passed from lip to lip, men found enough justice in it to believe it true. So it came down the centuries.
Will seafarers ages hence on dim October evenings, or on nights when the moon is ominous through mist, red and huge and uncanny, see a lonely figure sometimes on the loneliest part of the sea, far north of where the Lusitania sank, gathering all the cold it can? Will they see it hugging a crag of iceberg wan as itself, helmet, cuirass and ice pale-blue in the mist together? Will it look towards them with ice-blue eyes through the mist, and will they question it, meeting on those bleak seas? Will it answer—or will the North wind howl like voices? Will the cry of seals be heard, and ice floes grinding, and strange birds lost upon the wind that night, or will it speak to them in those distant years and tell them how it sinned, betraying man?
It will be a grim, dark story in that lonely part of the sea, when he confesses to sailors, blown too far north, the dreadful thing he plotted against man. The date on which he is seen will be told from sailor to sailor. Queer taverns of distant harbours will know it well. Not many will care to be at sea that day, and few will risk being driven by stress of weather on the Kaiser’s night to the bergs of the haunted part of sea.
And yet for all the grimness of the pale-blue phantom, with cuirass and helmet and eyes shimmering on deadly icebergs, and yet for all the sorrow of the wrong he did against man, the women drowned and the children, and all the good ships gone, yet will the horrified mariners meeting him in the mist grudge him no moment of the day he has earned, or the coolness he gains from the bergs, because of the kindness he did to the wounded men. For the mariners in their hearts are kindly men, and what a soul gains from kindness will seem to them well deserved.
After John Calleron was hit he carried on in a kind of twilight of the mind. Things grew dimmer and calmer; harsh outlines of events became blurred; memories came to him; there was a singing in his ears like far-off bells. Things seemed more beautiful than they had a while ago; to him it was for all the world like evening after some quiet sunset, when lawns and shrubs and woods and some old spire look lovely in the late light, and one reflects on past days. Thus he carried on, seeing things dimly. And what is sometimes called “the roar of battle,” those aërial voices that snarl and moan and whine and rage at soldiers, had grown dimmer too. It all seemed further away, and littler, as far things are. He still heard the bullets: there is something so violently and intensely sharp in the snap of passing bullets at short ranges that you hear them in deepest thought, and even in dreams. He heard them, tearing by, above all things else. The rest seemed fainter and dimmer, and smaller and further away.
He did not think he was very badly hit, but nothing seemed to matter as it did a while ago. Yet he carried on.
And then he opened his eyes very wide and found he was back in London again in an underground train. He knew it at once by the look of it. He had made hundreds of journeys, long ago, by those trains. He knew by the dark, outside, that it had not yet left London; but what was odder than that, if one stopped to think of it, was that he knew exactly where it was going. It was the train that went away out into the country where he used to live as a boy. He was sure of that without thinking.
When he began to think how he came to be there he remembered the war as a very far-off thing. He supposed he had been unconscious a very long time. He was all right now.
Other people were sitting beside him on the same seat. They all seemed like people he remembered a very long time ago. In the darkness opposite, beyond the windows of the train, he could see their reflections clearly. He looked at the reflections but could not quite remember.
A woman was sitting on his left. She was quite young. She was more like some one that he most deeply remembered than all the others were. He gazed at her, and tried to clear his mind.
He did not turn and stare at her, but he quietly watched her reflection before him in the dark. Every detail of her dress, her young face, her hat, the little ornaments she wore, were minutely clear before him, looking out of the dark. So contented she looked you would say she was untouched by war.
As he gazed at the clear calm face and the dress that seemed neat though old and, like all things, so faraway, his mind grew clearer and clearer. It seemed to him certain it was the face of his mother, but from thirty years ago, out of old memories and one picture. He felt sure it was his mother as she had been when he was very small. And yet after thirty years how could he know? He puzzled to try and be quite sure. But how she came to be there, looking like that, out of those oldest memories, he did not think of at all.
He seemed to be hugely tired by many things and did not want to think. Yet he was very happy, more happy even than tired men just come home all new to comfort.
He gazed and gazed at the face in the dark. And then he felt quite sure.
He was about to speak. Was she looking at him? Was she watching him, he wondered. He glanced for the first time to his own reflection in that clear row of faces.
His own reflection was not there, but blank dark showed between his two neighbours. And then he knew he was dead.
Towards winter’s end on a high, big, bare down, in the south of England, John Plowman was plowing. He was plowing the brown field at the top of the hill, good soil of the clay; a few yards lower down was nothing but chalk, with shallow flinty soil and steep to plow; so they let briars grow there. For generations his forbears had plowed on the top of that hill. John did not know how many. The hills were very old; it might have been always.
He scarcely looked to see if his furrow was going straight. The work he was doing was so much in his blood that he could almost feel if furrows were straight or not. Year after year they moved on the same old landmarks; thorn trees and briars mostly guided the plow, where they stood on the untamed land beyond; the thorn trees grew old at their guiding, and still the furrows varied not by the breadth of a hoof-mark.
John, as he plowed, had leisure to meditate on much besides the crops; he knew so much of the crops that his thoughts could easily run free from them; he used to meditate on who they were that lived in briar and thorn tree, and danced as folk said all through midsummer night, and sometimes blessed and sometimes harmed the crops; for he knew that in Old England were wonderful ancient things, odder and older things than many folks knew. And his eyes had leisure to see much beside the furrows, for he could almost feel the furrows going straight.
One day at his plowing, as he watched the thorn ahead, he saw the whole big hill besides, looking south, and the lands below it; one day he saw in the bright sun of late winter a horseman riding the road through the wide lands below. The horseman shone as he rode, and wore white linen over what was shining, and on the linen was a big red cross. “One of them knights,” John Plowman said to himself or his horse, “going to them crusades.” And he went on with his plowing all that day satisfied, and remembered what he had seen for years, and told his son.
For there is in England, and there always was, mixed with the needful things that feed or shelter the race, the wanderer-feeling for romantic causes that runs deep and strange through the other thoughts, as the Gulf Stream runs through the sea. Sometimes generations of John Plowman’s family would go by and no high romantic cause would come to sate that feeling. They would work on just the same though a little sombrely, as though some good thing had been grudged them. And then the Crusades had come, and John Plowman had seen the Red Cross knight go by, riding towards the sea in the morning, and Jon Plowman was satisfied.
Some generations later a man of the same name was plowing the same hill. They still plowed the brown clay at the top and left the slope wild, though there were many changes. And the furrows were wonderfully straight still. And half he watched a thorn tree ahead as he plowed and half he took in the whole hill sloping south and the wide lands below it, far beyond which was the sea. They had a railway now down in the valley. The sunlight glittering near the end of winter shone on a train that was marked with great white squares and red crosses on them.
John Plowman stopped his horses and looked at the train. “An ambulance train,” he said, “coming up from the coast.” He thought of the lads he knew and wondered if any were there. He pitied the men in that train and envied them. And then there came to him the thought of England’s cause and of how those men had upheld it, at sea and in crumbling cities. He thought of the battle whose echoes reached sometimes to that field, whispering to furrows and thorn trees that had never heard them before. He thought of the accursed tyrant’s cruel might, and of the lads that had faced it. He saw the romantic splendour of England’s cause. He was old but had seen the glamour for which each generation looked. Satisfied in his heart and cheered with a new content he went on with his age-old task in the business of man with the hills.