"You're not going to be unhappy about him?"
"No. I think I'm glad. It's a sort of relief. I shan't ever have that awful feeling of wondering what he'll do next…. Billy—you were with him, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Was he all right?"
"Would it make you happier to think that he was or to know that he wasn't?"
"Oh—just toknow."
"Well, I'm afraid he wasn't, quite…. He paid for it, Sharlie. If he hadn't turned his back he wouldn't have been shot."
She nodded.
"What? You knew?"
"No. No. I wasn't sure."
She was possessed of this craving to know, to know everything. Short of that she would be still bound to him; she could never get free.
"Billy—what did happen, really? Did heleavethe German?"
"The German?"
"Yes. Was that why he shot him?"
"The German didn't shoot him. He was too far gone, poor devil, to shoot anybody…. It was the Belgian captain that he left…. He was lying there, horribly wounded. His servant was with him; they were calling out to Conway—"
"Callingto him?"
"Yes. And he was going all right when some shrapnel fell—a regular shower bath, quite near, like it did with you and me. That scared him and he just turned and ran. The servant shouted to him to stop, and when he wouldn't he went after him and put a bullet through his back."
"That Belgian boy?"
"Yes. I couldn't do anything. I had the German. It was all over in a second…. When I got there I found the Belgian standing up over him, wiping his bayonet with his pockethandkerchief. Hesaidhis rifle went off by accident."
"Couldn't it? Rifles do."
"Bayonets don't…. I suppose I could get him court martialed if I tried.But I shan't. After all, it was his captain. I don't blame him,Charlotte."
"No…. It was really you and me, Billy. We brought him back to be killed."
"I don't know that we did bring him—that he wasn't coming by himself. He couldn't keep off it. Even if we did, you wouldn't be sorry for that, would you?"
"No. It was the best thing we could do for him."
But at night, lying awake in her bed, she cried. For then she remembered what he had been. On Barrow Hill, on their seat in the beech ring, through the Sunday evenings, when feeding time and milking time were done.
* * * * *
At four o'clock in the morning she was waked by Sutton, standing beside her bed. The orders had come through to evacuate the hospital. Three hours later the ambulances had joined the great retreat.
They had halted in Bruges, and there their wounded had been taken into the Convent wards to rest.
Charlotte and Sutton were sitting out, alone together on the flagged terrace in the closed garden. The nuns had brought out the two chairs again, and set again the little table, covered with the white cloth. Again the silver mist was in the garden, but thinned now to the clearness of still water.
They had been silent after the nuns had left them. Sutton's sad, short-sighted eyes stared out at the garden without seeing it. He was lost in melancholy. Presently he came to himself with a long sigh—
"Charlotte, what are we going to do now? Do you know?"
"Iknow. I'm going into Mac's corps."
"So am I. That isn't what I meant."
For a moment she didn't stop to wonder what he did mean. She was too full of what she was going to do.
"Is that wise? I don't altogether trust old Mac. He'll use you till you drop. He'll wear you to the last shred of your nerves."
"I want to be used till I drop. I want to be worn. Besides, I know I'm safe with Mac."
His cold, hard indifference made her feel safe. She wasn't really safe with Billy. His goodness might disarm her any minute, his sadness might conceivably move her to a tender weakness. But for McClane she would never have any personal feeling, never any fiery affection, any exalted devotion. Neither need she be afraid of any profound betrayal. Small betrayals perhaps, superficial disasters to her vanity, while his egoism rode over it in triumph. He didn't want affection or anything fiery, anything that John had had. He would leave her in her hardness; he would never ask anything but hard, steel-cold loyalty and a willingness to share his risks.
"What else can I do? I should have come out if John hadn't. Of course I was glad we could go together, but you mustn't suppose I only went because of him."
"I don't. I only thought perhaps you wouldn't want to stay on now he's dead."
"More than ever now he's dead. Even if I didn't want to stay I should have to now. To make up."
"For what?"
"For what he did. All those awful things. And for what he didn't do. His dreams. I've got to do what he dreamed. But more than anything I must pay his debt to Belgium. To all those wounded men."
"You're not responsible for his debts, Charlotte."
"No? Sometimes I feel as if I were. As if he and I were tied up together. I could get away from him when he was alive. But now he's dead he's got me."
"It doesn't make him different."
"It makesmedifferent. I tell you, I can't get away from him. And I want to. I want to cut myself loose; and this is the way."
"Isn't it the way to tie yourself tighter?"
"No. Not when it'sdone, Billy."
"I can see a much better way…. If you married me."
She turned to him, astonished and a little anxious, as though she thought something odd and dangerous had happened to him.
"Oh, Billy, I—I couldn't do that…. What made you think of it?"
"I've been thinking of it all the time."
"All the time?"
"Well, most of the time, anyhow. But I've loved you all the time. You know I loved you. That was why I stuck to Conway. I couldn't leave you to him. I wouldn't even leave you to McClane."
"I didn't know."
"I should have thought it was pretty, obvious."
"It wasn't. I'd have tried to stop it if I'd known."
"You couldn't have stopped it."
"I'm sorry."
"What about?"
"That. It isn't any good. It really isn't."
"Why isn't it? I know I'm rather a queer chap. And I've got an ugly face—"
"I love yourface…."
She loved it, with its composure and its candour, its slightly flattened features, laid back; its little surprised moustache, its short-sighted eyes and its sadness.
"It's the dearest face. But—"
"I suppose," he said, "it sounds a bit startling and sudden. But if you'd been bottling it up as long as I have—Why, I loved you the first time I saw you. On the boat…. So you see, it's you. It isn't just anything you've done."
"If you knew what Ihavedone, my dear. If you only knew. You wouldn't want to marry me."
She would have to tell him. That would put him off. That would stop him. If she had loved him she would have had to tell him, as she had told John.
"I'm going to tell you…."
* * * * *
She wondered whether he had really listened. A queer smile played about his mouth. He looked as if he had been thinking of something else all the time.
"What are you smiling at?"
"Your supposing that that would make any difference."
"Doesn't it?"
"Not a bit. Not a little bit…. Besides I knew it."
"Who—who told you?"
"The only other person who knew about it, I suppose—Conway."
"He betrayed me?"
"He betrayed you. Is there any vile thing he didn't do?"
And it was as it had been before. The nuns came out again, bringing the great cups of hot black coffee, coming and going gently. Only this time she couldn't drink.
"It's awful of us," she said, "to talk about him this way when he's dead."
"He isn't dead as long as he makes you feel like that. As long as he keeps you from me."
A long pause. And then, "Billy—he wasn't my lover."
"I know that," he said fiercely. "He took good care to tell me."
"I brought it all on myself. I ought to have given him up instead of hanging on to him that way. Platonic love—It's all wrong. People aren't really made like that. It was every bit as bad as going to Gibson Herbert…. Worse. That was honest. This was all lying. Lying about myself. Lying about him. Lying about—love."
"Then," he said, "you don't really know what it is."
"I know John's sort. And I know Gibson's sort. And I know there's a heavenly sort, Billy, in between. But I'm spoiled for it. I think I could have cared for you if it hadn't been for John…. I shan't ever get away from him."
"Yes. If you can see it—"
"Of course I see it. I can see everything now. All that war-romancing. I see how awful it was. When I think how we went out and got thrills. Fancy getting thrills out of this horror."
"Oh well—I think you earned your thrill."
"You can't earn anything in this war. At leastIcan't. It's paying, paying all the time. And I've got more things than John to pay for. There was little Effie."
"Effie?"
"Gibson's wife. I didn'twantto hurt her…. Billy, are you sure it makes no difference? What I did."
"I've told you it doesn't…. You mustn't go on thinking about it."
"No. But I can't get over his betraying me. You see, that's the worst thing he did tome. The other things—well, he was mad with fright, and he was afraid of me, because I knew. I can't think why he did this."
"Same reason. You knew. He was degraded by your knowing, so you had to be degraded. At least I suppose that's how it was."
She shook her head. He was darker to her than ever and she was no nearer to her peace. She knew everything and she understood nothing. And that was worse than not knowing.
"If only I could understand. Then, I believe, I could bear it. I wouldn't care how bad it was as long as I understood."
"Ask McClane, then. He could explain it to you. It's beyond me."
"McClane?"
"He's a psychotherapist. He knows more about people's souls than I know about their bodies. He probably knows all about Conway's soul."
Silence drifted between them, dim and silvery like the garden mist.
"Charlotte—are we never to get away from him? Is he always to stick between us? That dead man."
"It isn't that."
"What is it, then?"
"Allthis…. I'd give anything to care for you, Billy dear, but I don't care. Ican't. I can't care for anything but the war."
"The war won't last for ever. And afterwards?"
"I can't see any afterwards."
Sutton smiled.
"And yet," he said, "there will be one."
The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing of stiff silk.
Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk on their way to England, had been taken on board the naval transportVictoria. They were the only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left them a clear space on the deck. Charlotte was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when McClane came to her there.
He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something had pleased him.
"I knew," he said, "that some day I should get you three. And that I should get those ambulances."
She couldn't tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted or that he had foreseen John Conway's fate which would ultimately give it him.
"The ambulances—Yes. You always wanted them."
"Not more than I wanted you and Sutton."
He seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without resentment, waiting till it had died down before he spoke again. He was sitting beside her now.
"What are you going to do about Conway?"
"Nothing. Except lie about him to his father."
"That's all right as long as you don't lie about him to yourself."
"I've lied about him to other people. Never to myself. I was in love with him, if that's what you mean. But he finished that. What's finished is finished. I haven't a scrap of feeling for him left."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Quite. I'm not even sorry he's dead."
"You've forgiven him?"
"I'm not always sure about that. But I'm trying to forget him."
McClane looked away.
"Do you ever dream about him, Charlotte?"
"Never. Not now. I used to. I dreamed about him once three nights running."
He looked at her sharply. "Could you tell me what you dreamed?"
She told him her three dreams.
"You don't suppose they meant anything?" she said.
"I do. They meant that part of you was kicking. It knew all the time what he was like and was trying to warn you."
"To keep me off him?"
"To keep you off him."
"I see…. The middle one was funny. Ithappened. The day we were inBruges. But I can't make out the first one with that awful woman in it."
"You may have been dreaming something out of his past. Something he remembered."
"Well anyhow I don't understand the last one."
"Ido."
"But I dreamed he wanted me. Frightfully. And he didn't."
"He did. He wanted you—'frightfully'—all the time. He went to pieces if you weren't there. Don't you know why he took you out with him everywhere? Because if he hadn't he couldn't have driven half a mile out of Ghent."
"That's one of the things I'm trying to forget."
"It's one of the things you should try to remember."
He grasped her arm.
"And, Charlotte, look here. I want you to forgive him. For your own sake."
She stiffened under his touch, his look, his voice of firm, intimate authority. His insincerity repelled her.
"Why should you? You don't care about him. You don't care about me. If I was blown to bits to-morrow you wouldn't care."
He laughed his mirthless, assenting laugh.
"You don't care about people at all. You only care about their diseases and their minds and things."
"I think I care a little about the wounded."
"You don't really. Not aboutthem. You care about getting in more of them and quicker than any other field ambulance on the front. I can't think why you're bothering about me now."
"That's why. If I'm to get in more wounded I can't have anybody in my corps who isn't fit."
"I'mfit. What's the matter with me?"
"Not much. Your body's all right. And your mindwasall right tillConway upset it. Now it's unbalanced."
"Unbalanced?"
"Just the least little bit. There's a fight going on in it between your feeling for Conway and your knowledge of him."
"I've told you I haven't any feeling."
"Your memory of your feeling then. Same thing. You know he was cruel and a liar and a coward. And you loved him. With you those two states are incompatible. They struggle. And that's bad for you. If it goes on you'll break down. If it stops you'll be all right…. The way to stop it is to know thetruthabout Conway. The truth won't clash with your feeling."
"Don't I know it?"
"Not all. Not the part that matters most. You know he was all wrong morally. You don't knowwhy…. Conway was an out and out degenerate. He couldn't helpthat. He suffered from some physical disability. It went through everything. It made him so that he couldn't live a man's life. He was afraid to enter a profession. He was afraid of women."
"He wasn't afraid of me. Not in the beginning."
"Because he felt your strength. You're very strong, Charlotte. You gave him your strength. And he couldfeelpassion, mind you, though he couldn't act it…. I suppose he could feel courage, too, only somehow he couldn't make it work. Have you got it clear?"
She nodded. So clear that it seemed to her he was talking about a thing she had known once and had forgotten. All the time she had known John's secret. She knew what would come next: McClane's voice saying, "Well then, think—think," and his excited gestures, bobbing forward suddenly from the hips. He went on.
"The balance had to be righted somehow. His whole life must have been a struggle to right it. Unconscious, of course. Instinctive. His platonics were just a glorifying of his disability. All that romancing was a gorgeous transformation of his funk…. So that his very lying was a sort of truth. I mean it was part of the whole desperate effort after completion. He jumped at everything that helped him to get compensation, to get power. He jumped at your feeling for him because it gave him power. He jumped at the war because the thrill he got out of it gave him the sense of power. He sucked manhood out of you. He sucked it out of everything—out of blood and wounds…. He'd have been faithful to you forever, Charlotte, if you hadn't found him out.Thatupset all his delicate adjustments. The war upset him. I think the sight of blood and wounds whipped up the naked savage in him."
"But—no. He was afraid of that."
"He was afraid of himself. Of what was in him. That fear of his was his protection, like his fear of women. The war broke it down. Then he was cruel to you."
"Yes. He was cruel." Her voice sounded flat and hard, without feeling.She had no feeling; she had exhausted all the emotions of her suffering.And her knowledge of his cruelty was absolute. To McClane's assertion ofthe fact she had no response beyond that toneless acquiescence.
"Taking you into that shed—"
He had roused her.
"How on earth did you know that? I've never told a single soul."
"It was known in the hospital. One of the carpenters saw the whole thing.He told one of our orderlies who told my chauffeur Gurney who told me."
"It doesn't matter what he did tome. I can't get over his not caring for the wounded."
"He was jealous of them, because you cared for them."
"Oh no. He'd left off caring for me by then."
"Hadhe?" He gave a little soft, wise laugh. "What makes you think so?"
"That. His cruelty."
"Love can be very cruel."
"Not as cruel as that," she said.
"Yes. As cruel as that…. Remember, it was at the bottom of the whole business. Of his dreams. In a sense, the real John Conway was the man who dreamed."
"If you're right he was the man who was cruel, too. And it's his cruelty I hate."
"Don't hate it. Don't hate it. I want you to understand his cruelty. It wasn't just savagery. It was something subtler. A supreme effort to get power. Remember, he couldn't help it. Hehadto right himself. Supposing his funk extinguished something in him that could only be revived through cruelty? You'll say he could help betraying you—"
"To you, too?"
"To me, too. When you lost faith in him you cut off his main source of power. You had to be discredited so that it shouldn't count. You mustn't imagine that he did anything on purpose. He was driven. It sounds horrible, but I want you to see it was just his way of saving his soul, the only way open to him. You mustn't think of it as a bad way. Or a good way. It wasn't evenhisway. It was the way of something bigger than he was, bigger than anything he could ever be. Bigger than badness or goodness."
"Did 'it' do cowardly things to 'save' itself?"
"No. If Conway could have played the man 'it' would have been satisfied. It was always urging him." … "Try," he said, and she knew that now at any rate he was sincere; he really wanted to help her; he was giving her his best. His voice was very quiet now, his excited gestures had ceased. "Try and think of it as something more real, more important and necessary than he was; or you and I. Something that is always struggling to be, to go on being. Something that degeneracy is always trying to keep under…. Power. A power in retreat, fighting to get back its lost ground."
Then what she had loved was not John Conway. What she had hated was not he. He was this Something, tremendous and necessary, that escaped your judgment. You couldn't hurt it with your loving or hating or your ceasing to love and hate. Something that tortured you and betrayed you because that was the only way it knew to save itself.
Something that couldn't save itself altogether—that clung to you and called to you to save it.
But thatwaswhat she had loved. Nothing could touch it.
For a moment while McClane was talking she saw, in the flash he gave her, that it was real. And when the flash went it slipped back into her darkness.
But on the deck in front of her she could see John walking up and down. She could see the wide road of gold and purple that stretched from the boat's stern to the sun. John's head was thrown back; he looked at her with his shining, adventurous eyes. He was happy and excited, going out to the war.
And she saw them again: the batteries, the cars and the wagons. Dust like blown smoke, and passing in it the long lines of beaten men, reeling slowly to the footway, passing slowly, endlessly, regiment by regiment, in retreat.