The young men had gone--Morton Ellis, who had said he was damned if he'd fight for his country; and Austin Mitchell who had said he hadn't got a country; and Monier-Owen, who had said that England was not a country you could fight for. George Wadham had gone long ago. That, Michael said, was to be expected. Even a weak gust could sweep young Wadham off his feet--and he had been fairly carried away. He could no more resist the vortex of the War than he could resist the vortex of the arts.
Michael had two pitiful memories of the boy: one of young Wadham swaggering into Stephen's room in uniform (the first time he had it on), flushed and pleased with himself and talking excitedly about the "Great Game"; and one of young Wadham returned from the Front, mature and hard, not talking about the "Great Game" at all, and wincing palpably when other people talked; a young Wadham who, they said, ought to be arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act as a quencher of war-enthusiasms.
The others had gone later, one by one, each with his own gesture: Mitchell and Monier-Owen when Stephen went; Ellis the day after Stephen's death. It had taken Stephen's death to draw him.
Only Michael remained.
He told them they were mistaken if they thought their going would inspire him to follow them. It, and Stephen's death, merely intensified the bitterness he felt towards the War. He was more than ever determined to keep himself pure from it, consecrated to his Forlorn Hope. If they fell back, all the more reason why be should go on.
And, while he waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen's work on theGreen Review. Stephen had left it to him when he went out. Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; but gradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from theReviewand its place was taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that was Michael's mind.
And Michael knew that he was beginning to make himself felt.
But Stephen's staff, such as it was, and nearly all his contributors had gone to the War, one after another, and Michael found himself taking all their places. He began to feel a strain, which he took to be the strain of overwork, and he went down to Renton to recover.
That was on the Tuesday that followed Veronica's Sunday.
He thought that down there he would get away from everything that did him harm: from his father's and mother's eyes; from his sister's proud, cold face; and from his young brother's smile; and from Veronica's beauty that saddened him; and from the sense of Nicky's danger that brooded as a secret obsession over the house. He would fill up the awful empty space. He thought: "For a whole fortnight I shall get away from this infernal War."
But he did not get away from it. On every stage of the journey down he encountered soldiers going to the Front. He walked in the Park at Darlington between his trains, and wounded soldiers waited for him on every seat, shuffled towards him round every turning, hobbled after him on their crutches down every path. Their eyes looked at him with a shrewd hostility. He saw the young Yorkshire recruits drinking in the open spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising his physique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and Réveillaud's, and Stephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard.
At Reyburn Michael's train was switched off to a side platform in the open. Before he left Darlington, a thin, light rain had begun to fall from a shred of blown cloud; and at Reyburn the burst mass was coming down. The place was full of the noise of rain. The drops tapped on the open platform and hissed as the wind drove them in a running stream. They drummed loudly on the station roof. But these sounds went out suddenly, covered by the trampling of feet.
A band of Highlanders with their bagpipes marched into the station. They lined up solemnly along the open platform with their backs to Michael's train and their faces to the naked rails on the other side. Higher up Michael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing, towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof. He could hear the clank of the coupling and the recoil. At that sound the band had their mouths to their bagpipes and their fingers ready on the stops. Two or three officers hurried down from the station doors and stood ready.
The train came on slowly, packed with men; men who thrust their heads and shoulders through the carriage windows, and knelt on the seats, and stood straining over each other's backs to look out; men whose faces were scarlet with excitement; men with open mouths shouting for joy.
The officers saluted as it passed. It halted at the open platform, and suddenly the pipers began to play.
Michael got out of his train and watched.
Solemnly, in the grey evening of the rain, with their faces set in a sort of stern esctasy, the Highlanders played to their comrades. Michael did not know whether their tune was sad or gay. It poured itself into one mournful, savage, sacred cry of salutation and valediction. When it stopped the men shouted; there were voices that barked hoarsely and broke; voices that roared; young voices that screamed, strung up by the skirling of the bagpipes. The pipers played to them again.
And suddenly Michael was overcome. Pity shook him and grief and an intolerable yearning, and shame. For one instant his soul rose up above the music, and was made splendid and holy, the next he cowered under it, stripped and beaten. He clenched his fists, hating this emotion that stung him to tears and tore at his heart and at the hardness of his mind.
As the troop-train moved slowly out of the station the pipers, piping more and more shrilly, swung round and marched beside it to the end of the platform. The band ceased abruptly, and the men answered with shout after shout of violent joy; they reared up through the windows, straining for the last look--and were gone.
Michael turned to the porter who lifted his luggage from the rack. "What regiment are they?" he said.
"Camerons, sir. Going to the Front."
The clear, uncanny eyes of Veronica's father pursued him now.
At last he had got away from it.
In Rathdale, at any rate, there was peace. The hills and their pastures, and the flat river fields were at peace. And in the villages of Morfe and Renton there was peace; for as yet only a few men had gone from them. The rest were tied to the land, and they were more absorbed in the hay-harvest than in the War. Even the old Belgians in Veronica's cottage were at peace. They had forgotten.
For three days Michael himself had peace.
He went up to Veronica's hill and sat on it; and thought how for hundreds of miles, north, south, east and west of him, there was not a soul whom he knew. In all his life he had never been more by himself.
This solitude of his had a singular effect on Michael's mind. So far from having got away from the War he had never been more conscious of it than he was now. What he had got away from was other people's consciousness. From the beginning the thing that threatened him had been, not the War but this collective war-spirit, clamouring for his private soul.
For the first time since August, nineteen-fourteen, he found himself thinking, in perfect freedom and with perfect lucidity, about the War. He had really known, half the time, that it was the greatest War of Independence that had ever been. As for his old hatred of the British Empire, he had seen long ago that there was no such thing, in the continental sense of Empire; there was a unique thing, the rule, more good than bad, of an imperial people. He had seen that the strength of the Allies was in exact proportion to the strength and the enlightenment of their democracies. Reckoning by decades, there could be no deadlock in the struggle; the deadlock meant a ten years' armistice and another war. He could not help seeing these things. His objection to occupying his mind with them had been that they were too easy.
Now that he could look at it by himself he saw how the War might take hold of you like a religion. It was the Great War of Redemption. And redemption meant simply thousands and millions of men in troop-ships and troop-trains coming from the ends of the world to buy the freedom of the world with their bodies. It meant that the very fields he was looking over, and this beauty of the hills, those unused ramparts where no batteries were hid, and the small, silent villages, Morfe and Renton, were bought now with their bodies.
He wondered how at this moment any sane man could be a Pacifist. And, wondering, he felt a reminiscent sting of grief and yearning. But he refused, resolutely, to feel any shame.
His religion also was good; and, anyhow, you didn't choose your religion; it chose you.
And on Saturday the letters came: John's letter enclosing the wire from the War Office, and the letter that Nicky's Colonel had written to Anthony.
Nicky was killed.
Michael took in the fact, and the date (it was last Sunday). There were some official regrets, but they made no impression on him. John's letter made no impression on him. Last Sunday Nicky was killed.
He had not even unfolded the Colonel's letter yet. The close black lines showed through the thin paper. Their closeness repelled him. He did not want to know how his brother had died; at least not yet. He was afraid of the Colonel's letter. He felt that by simply not reading it he could put off the unbearable turn of the screw.
He was shivering with cold. He drew up his chair to the wide, open hearth-place where there was no fire; he held out his hands over it. The wind swept down the chimney and made him colder; and he felt sick.
He had been sitting there about an hour when Suzanne came in and asked him if he would like a little fire. He heard himself saying, "No, thank you," in a hard voice. The idea of warmth and comfort was disagreeable to him. Suzanne asked him then if he had had bad news? And he heard himself saying: "Yes," and Suzanne trying, trying very gently, to persuade him that it was perhaps only that Monsieur Nicky was wounded?
"No?Then," said the old woman, "he is killed." And she began to cry.
Michael couldn't stand that. He got up and opened the door into the outer room, and she passed through before him, sobbing and whimpering. Her voice came to him through the closed door in a sharp cry telling Jean that Monsieur Nicky was dead, and Jean's voice came, hushing her.
Then he heard the feet of the old man shuffling across the kitchen floor, and the outer door opening and shutting softly; and through the windows at the back of the room, he saw, without heeding, as the Belgians passed and went up into the fields together, weeping, leaving him alone.
They had remembered.
It was then that Michael read the Colonel's letter, and learned the manner of his brother's death: "... About a quarter past four o'clock in the afternoon his battalion was being pressed back, when he rallied his men and led them in as gallant an attack as was ever made by so small a number in this War. He was standing on the enemy's parapet when he was shot through the heart and fell. By a quarter to five the trench was stormed and taken, owing to his personal daring and impetus and to the affection and confidence he inspired.... We hear it continually said of our officers and men that 'they're all the same,' and I daresay as far as pluck goes they are. But, if I may say so, we all felt that your son had something that we haven't got...."
Michael lay awake in the bed that had been his brother's marriage bed. The low white ceiling sagged and bulged above him. For three nights the room had been as if Nicky and Veronica had never gone from it. They had compelled him to think of them. They had lain where he lay, falling asleep in each other's arms.
The odd thing had been that his acute and vivid sense of them had in no way troubled him. It had been simply there like some exquisite atmosphere, intensifying his peace. He had had the same feeling he always had when Veronica was with him. He had liked to lie with his head on their pillow, to touch what they had touched, to look at the same things in the same room, to go in and out through the same doors over the same floors, remembering their hands and feet and eyes, and saying to himself: "They did this and this"; or, "That must have pleased them."
It ought to have been torture to him; and he could not imagine why it was not.
And now, on this fourth night, he had no longer that sense of Nicky and Veronica together. The room had emptied itself of its own memory and significance. He was aware of nothing but the bare, spiritual space between him and Nicky. He lay contemplating it steadily and without any horror.
He thought: "This ends it. Of course I shall go out now. I might have known that this would end it.Heknew."
He remembered how Nicky had come to him in his room that night in August. He could see himself sitting on the side of his bed, half-dressed, and Nicky standing over him, talking.
Nicky had taken it for granted even then that he would go out some time. He remembered how he had said, "Not yet."
He thought: "Of course; this must have been what he meant."
And presently he fell asleep, exhausted and at the same time appeased.
It was morning.
Michael's sleep dragged him down; it drowned and choked him as he struggled to wake.
Something had happened. He would know what it was when he came clear out of this drowning.
Now he remembered. Nicky was killed. Last Sunday. He knew that. But that wasn't all of it. There was something else that followed on--
Suddenly his mind leaped on it. He was going out. He would be killed too. And because he was going out, and because he would be killed, he was not feeling Nicky's death so acutely as he should have thought he would have felt it. He had been let off that.
He lay still a moment, looking at the thing he was going to do, feeling a certain pleasure in its fitness. Drayton and Réveillaud and Lawrence had gone out, and they had been killed. Ellis and Mitchell and Monier-Owen were going out and they would certainly be killed. Wadham had gone out and young Vereker, and they also would be killed.
Last Sunday it was Nicky. Now it must be he.
His mind acknowledged the rightness of the sequence without concern. It was aware that his going depended on his own will. But never in all his life had he brought so little imagination to the act of willing.
He got up, bathed in the river, dressed, and ate his breakfast. He accepted each moment as it arrived, without imagination or concern.
Then his mother's letter came. Frances wrote, among other things: "I know how terribly you will be feeling it, because I know how you cared for him. I wish I could comfort you. We could not bear it, Michael, if we were not so proud of him."
He answered this letter at once. He wrote: "I couldn't bear it either, if I were not going out. But of course I'm going now."
As he signed himself, "Your loving Michael," he thought: "That settles it." Yet, if he had considered what he meant by settling it he would have told himself that he meant nothing; that last night had settled it; that his resolution had been absolutely self-determined and absolutely irrevocable then, and that his signature gave it no more sanctity or finality than it had already. If he was conscript, he was conscript to his own will.
He went out at once with his letter, though he knew that the post did not leave Renton for another five hours.
It was the sliding of this light thing and its fall into the letter-box that shook him into realization of what he had done and of what was before him. He knew now why he was in such a hurry to write that letter and to post it. By those two slight acts, not dreadful nor difficult in themselves, he had put it out of his power to withdraw from the one supremely difficult and dreadful act. A second ago, while the letter was still in his hands, he could have backed out, because he had not given any pledge. Now he would have to go through with it. And he saw clearly for the first time what it was that he would have to go through.
He left the village and went up to Renton Moor and walked along the top for miles, without knowing or caring where he went, and seeing nothing before him but his own act and what must come afterwards. By to-morrow, or the next day at the latest, he would have enlisted; by six months, at the latest, three months if he had what they called "luck," he would be in the trenches, fighting and killing, not because he chose, but because he would be told to fight and kill. By the simple act of sending that letter to his mother he was committed to the whole ghastly business.
And he funked it. There was no use lying to himself and saying that he didn't funk it.
Even more than the actual fighting and killing, he funked looking on at fighting and killing; as for being killed, he didn't think he would really mind that so much. It would come--it must come--as a relief from the horrors he would have to see before it came. Nicky had said that they were unbelievable; he had seemed to think you couldn't imagine them if you hadn't seen them. But Michael could. He had only to think of them to see them now. He could make war-pictures for himself, in five minutes, every bit as terrifying as the things they said happened under fire. Any fool, if he chose to think about it, could see what must happen. Only people didn't think. They rushed into it without seeing anything; and then, if they were honest, they owned that they funked it, before and during and afterwards and all the time.
Nicky didn't. But that was only because Nicky had something that the others hadn't got; that he, Michael, hadn't. It was all very well to say, as he had said last night: "This ends it"; or, as their phrase was, "Everything goes in now." It was indeed, as far as he was concerned, the end of beauty and of the making of beauty, and of everything worth caring for; but it was also the beginning of a life that Michael dreaded more than fighting and killing and being killed: a life of boredom, of obscene ugliness, of revolting contacts, of intolerable subjection. For of course he was going into the ranks as Nicky had gone. And already he could feel the heat and pressure and vibration of male bodies packed beside and around him on the floor; he could hear their breathing; he could smell their fetid bedding, their dried sweat.
Of course he was going through with it; only--this was the thought his mind turned round and round on in horror at itself--he funked it. He funked it so badly that he would really rather die than go through with it. When he was actually killed that would be his second death; months before it could happen he would have known all about it; he would have been dead and buried and alive again in hell.
What shocked Michael was his discovering, not that he funked it now, which was natural, almost permissible, but that he had funked it all the time. He could see now that, since the War began, he had been struggling to keep out of it. His mind had fought every suggestion that he should go in. It had run to cover, like a mad, frightened animal before the thoughts that hunted it down. Funk, pure funk, had been at the bottom of all he had said and thought and done since August, nineteen-fourteen; his attitude to the War, his opinion of the Allies, and of the Government and of its conduct of the War, all his wretched criticisms and disparagements--what had they been but the very subterfuges of funk?
His mother had known it; his father had known it; and Dorothy and John. It was not conceivable that Nicky did not know it.
That was what had made the horror of the empty space that separated them.
Lawrence Stephen had certainly known it.
He could not understand his not knowing it himself, not seeing that he struggled. Yet he must have seen that Nicky's death would end it. Anyhow, itwasended; if not last night, then this morning when he posted the letter.
But he was no longer appeased by this certainty of his. He was going out all right. But merely going out was not enough. What counted was the state of mind in which you went. Lawrence had said, "Victory--Victory is a state of mind."
Well--it was a state that came naturally to Nicky, and did not come naturally to him. It was all very well for Nicky: he had wanted to go. He had gone out victorious before victory. Michael would go beaten before defeat.
He thought: "If this is volunteering, give me compulsion." All the same he was going.
All morning and afternoon, as he walked and walked, his thoughts went the same round. And in the evening they began again, but on a new track. He thought: "It's all very well to say I'm going; but howcanI go?" He had Lawrence Stephen's work to do; Lawrence's Life and Letters were in his hands. How could he possibly go and leave Lawrence dead and forgotten? This view seemed to him to be sanity and common sense.
As his mind darted up this turning it was driven back. He saw Lawrence Stephen smiling at him as he had smiled at him when Réveillaud died. Lawrence would have wanted him to go more than anything. He would have chosen to be dead and forgotten rather than keep him.
At night these thoughts left him. He began to think of Nicky and of his people. His father and mother would never be happy again. Nicky had been more to them than he was, or even John. He had been more to Dorothy. It was hard on Dorothy to lose Nicky and Drayton too.
He thought of Nicky and Veronica. Poor little Ronny, what would she do without Nicky? He thought of Veronica, sitting silent in the train, and looking at him with her startling look of spiritual maturity. He thought of Veronica singing to him over and over again:
"London Bridge is broken down--"Build it up with gold so fine--"Build it up with stones so strong-"
He thought of Veronica running about the house and crying, "Where's Nicky? I want him."
Monday was like Sunday, except that he walked up Karva Hill in the morning and up Greffington Edge in the afternoon, instead of Renton Moor. Whichever way he went his thoughts went the same way as yesterday. The images were, if anything, more crowded and more horrible; but they had lost their hold. He was tired of looking at them.
About five o'clock he turned abruptly and went back to the village the same way by which he came.
And as he swung down the hill road in sight of Renton, suddenly there was a great clearance in his soul.
When he went into the cottage he found Veronica there waiting for him. She sat with her hands lying in her lap, and she had the same look he had seen when she was in the train.
"Ronny--"
She stood up to greet him, as if it had been she who was staying there and he who had incredibly arrived.
"They told me you wouldn't be long," she said.
"I? You haven't come because you were ill or anything?"
She smiled and shook her head. "No. Not for anything like that."
"I didn't write, Ronny. I couldn't."
"I know." Their eyes met, measuring each other's grief. "That's why I came. I couldn't bear to leave you to it."
"I'd have come before, Michael, if you'd wanted me."
They were sitting together now, on the settle by the hearth-place.
"I can't understand your being able to think of me," he said.
"Because of Nicky? If I haven't got Nicky it's all the more reason why I should think of his people."
He looked up. "I say--how are they? Mother and Father?"
"They're very brave.
"It's worse for them than it is for me," she said. "What they can't bear is your going."
"Mother got my letter, then?"
"Yes. This morning."
"What did she say?"
"She said: 'Oh, no.NotMichael.'
"It was a good thing you wrote, though. Your letter made her cry. It made even Dorothy cry. They hadn't been able to, before."
"I should have thought if they could stand Nicky's going--"
"That was different. They know it was different."
"Do you supposeIdon't know how different it was? They mean I funked it and Nicky didn't."
"They mean that Nicky got what he wanted when he went, and that there was nothing else he could have done so well, except flying, or engineering."
"It comes to the same thing, Nicky simply wasn't afraid."
"Yes, Michael, hewasafraid."
"Whatof?"
"He was most awfully afraid of seeing suffering."
"Well, so am I. And I'm afraid of suffering myself too. I'm afraid of the whole blessed thing from beginning to end."
"That's because you keep on seeing the whole blessed thing from beginning to end. Nicky only saw little bits of it. The bits he liked. Machine-guns working beautifully, and shells dropping in the right places, and trenches being taken.
"And then, remember--Nicky hadn't so much to give up."
"He had you."
"Oh, no. He knew that was the way to keep me."
"Ronny--if Nicky had been like me could he have kept you?"
She considered it.
"Yes--if he could have been himself too."
"He couldn't, you see. He never could have felt like that."
"I don't say He could."
"Well--the awful thing is 'feeling like that.'"
"And the magnificent thing is 'feeling like that,' and going all the same. Everybody knows that but you, Michael."
"Yes," he said. "I'mgoing. But I'm not going to lie about it and say I don't funk it. Because I do."
"You don'treally."
"I own I didn't the first night--the night I knew Nicky was killed. Because I couldn't think of anything elsebutNicky.
"It was after I'd written to Mother that it came on. Because I knew then I couldn't back out of it. That's what I can't get over--my having to do that--to clinch it--because I was afraid."
"My dear, my dear, thousands of men do that every day for the same reason, only they don't find themselves out; and if they did they wouldn't care. You're finding yourself out all the time, and killing yourself with caring."
"Of course I care. Can't you see it proves that I never meant to go at all?"
"It proves that you knew you'd have to go through hell first and you were determined that even hell shouldn't keep you back."
"Ronny--that's what ithasbeen. Simply hell. It's been inconceivable. Nothing--absolutely nothing out there could be as bad. It went on all yesterday and to-day--till you came."
"I know, Michael. That's why I came."
"To get me out of it?"
"To get you out of it.
"It's all over," she said.
"It may come back--out there."
"It won't. Out there you'll be happy. I saw Nicky on Sunday--the minute before he was killed, Michael. And he was happy."
"He would be." He was silent for a long time.
"Ronny. Did Nicky know I funked it?"
"Never! He knew you wouldn't keep out. All he minded was your missing any of it."
She got up and put on her hat. "I must go. It's getting late. Will you walk up to Morfe with me? I'm sleeping there. In the hotel."
"No, I say--I'm not going to let you turn out for me.I'll sleep at the hotel."
She smiled at him with a sort of wonder, as if she thought: "Has he forgotten, so soon?" And he remembered.
"I can't stop here," she said. "That would be more than evenIcan bear."
He thought: "She's gone through hell herself, to get me out of it."
May, 1916.B.E.F., FRANCE.
DEAREST MOTHER AND FATHER,--Yes, "Captain," please. (I can hardly believe it myself, but it is so.) It was thundering good luck getting into dear old Nicky's regiment. The whole thing's incredible. But promotion's nothing. Everybody's getting it like lightning now. You're no sooner striped than you're starred.
I'm glad I resisted the Adjutant and worked up from the ranks. I own it was a bit beastly at the time--quite as beastly as Nicky said it would be; but it was worth while going through with it, especially living in the trenches as a Tommy. There's nothing like it for making you know your men. You can tell exactly what's going to bother them, and what isn't. You've got your finger on the pulse of their morale--not that it's jumpier than yours; it isn't--and their knowing that they haven't got to stand anything that you haven't stood gives you no end of a pull. Honestly, I don't believe I could have faced them if it wasn't for that. So thatyourmorale's the better for it as well as theirs. You know, if you're shot down this minute it won't matter. The weediest Tommy in your Company can "carry on."
We're a funny crowd in my billet all risen from the ranks except my Senior. John would love us. There's a chap who writes short stories and goes out very earnestly among the corpses to find copy; and there's another who was in the publishing business and harks back to it, now and then, in a dreamy nostalgic way, and rather as if he wanted to rub it into us writing chaps what hecoulddo for us, only he wouldn't; and there's a tailor who swears he could tell a mile off where my tunic came from; and a lawyer's clerk who sticks his cigarette behind his ear. (We used to wonder what he'd do with his revolver till we saw what he did with it.) They all love thinking of what they've been and telling you about it. I almost wish I'd gone into Daddy's business. Then perhaps I'd know what it feels like to go straight out of a shop or an office into the most glorious Army in history.
I forgot the Jew pawnbroker at least wethinkhe's a pawnbroker--who's always inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last idea was machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly as a machine-gun takes in bullets. He says "You'll see them in the next War." When you ask him how he's going to transport and emplace and hide his machine-howitzers, he looks dejected, and says "I never thought ofthat," and has another idea at once, even more impossible.
That reminds me. I've seen the "Tanks" (Nicky's Moving Fortresses) in action. I'd give my promotion if only he could have seen them too. We mustn't call them Fortresses any more--they're most violently for attack. As far as I can make out Nicky's and Drayton's thing was something between these and the French ones; otherwise one might have wondered whether their plans and models really did go where John says they did! I wish I could believe that Nicky and Drayton reallyhadhad a hand in it.
I'm most awfully grieved to hear that young Vereker's reported missing. Do you remember how excited he used to be dashing about the lawn at tennis, and how Alice Lathom used to sit and look at him, and jump if you brought her her tea too suddenly? Let's hope we'll have finished up this damned War before they get little Norris.
Love to Dorothy and Don and Ronny.--Your loving, MICK.
When Frances read that letter she said, "I wonder if he really is all right. He says very little about himself."
And Anthony said, "Then you may be sure he is."
May 31st, 1916.B.E.F., FRANCE.
MY DEAR RONNY,--I'm glad Mummy and Father have got all my letters. They won't mind my writing to you this time. It reallyisyour turn now. Thanks for Wadham's "Poems" (I wish they'd been Ellis's). It's a shame to laugh at Waddy--but--hehasspread himself over Flanders, hasn't he? Like the inundations round Ypres.
I'm most awfully touched at Dad and Mummy wanting to publish mine. Here they all are--just as I wrote them, in our billet, at night or in the early morning, when the others were sleeping and I wasn't. I don't know whether they're bad or good; I haven't had time to think about them. It all seems so incredibly far away. Even last week seems far away. You go on so fast here.
I'd like Ellis and Monier-Owen to see them and to weed out the bad ones. But you mustn't ask them to do anything. They haven't time, either. I think you and Dorothy and Dad will manage it all right among you. If you don't I shan't much care.
Of course I'm glad that they've taken you on at the Hampstead Hospital, if it makes you happier to nurse. And I'm glad Dad put his foot down on your going to Vera. She gave you up to my people and she can't take you back now. I'm sorry for her though; so is he.
Have I had any adventures "by myself"? Only two. (I've given up what Mother calls my "not wanting to go to the party.") One came off in "No Man's Land" the other night. I went out with a "party" and came back by myself--unless you count a damaged Tommy hanging on to me. It began in pleasurable excitement and ended in some perturbation, for I had to get him in under cover somehow, and my responsibility weighed on me--so did he. The other was ages ago in a German trench. I was by myself, because I'd gone in too quick, and the "party" behind me took the wrong turning. I did manage to squeeze a chilly excitement out of going on alone. Then I bumped up against a fat German officer and his revolver. That really was an exquisite moment, and I was beast enough to be glad I had it all to myself. It meant a bag of fifteen prisoners--all my own. But that was nothing; they'd have surrendered to a mouse. There was no reason why they shouldn't, because I'd fired first and there was no more officer to play up to.
But the things you don't do by yourself are a long way the best. Nothing--not even poetry--can beat an infantry charge when you're leading it. That's because of your men. It feels as if you were drawing them all up after you. Of course you aren't. They're coming on their own, and you're simply nothing, only a little unimportant part of them--even when you're feeling as if you were God Almighty.
I'm afraid itdoeslook awfully as if young Vereker were killed. They may hear, you know, in some roundabout way--through the Red Cross, or some of his men. I've written to them.
Love to everybody. Certainly you may kiss Nanna for me, if she'd like it. I wish I liked Waddy more--when you've given him to me.--Always your affectionate,
MICHAEL.
P.S.--I don't sound pleased about the publication; but I am. I can't get over their wanting to do it. I thought they didn't care.
Ronny--I've been such a beast to them--when Father tried to read my stuff--bless him!--and couldn't, I used to wish to God he'd leave it alone. And now I'd give anything to see his dear old paws hanging on to it and twitching with fright, and his eyes slewing round to see if I'm looking at him.
June 14th, 1916.B.E.F., FRANCE.
MY DEAR RONNY,--I'm glad you like them, and I'm glad Father thinks he "understands Michael's poems" this time, and I'm glad they've made Mother and Dorothy feel happier about me--BUT--they must get it out of their heads that they're my "message," or any putrescent thing of that sort. The bare idea of writing a message, or of being supposed to write a message, makes me sick. I know it's beastly of me, but, really I'd rather they weren't published at all, if there's the smallest chance of their being taken that way.
But if Ellis is doing the introduction there isn't the smallest chance. Thank God for Ellis.
There--I've let off all my beastliness.
And now I'll try to answer your letter. Yes; the "ecstasy" in the last two poemsisNicky's ecstasy. And as Ellis says it strikes him as absolutely real, I take it that some of Nicky's "reality" has got through. It's hard on Ellis that he has to takehisecstasy from me, instead of coming out and getting it for himself.
But you and Nicky and Lawrence are right. Itisabsolutely real. I mean it has to do with absolute reality. With God. It hasn't anything to do with having courage, or not having courage; it's another state of mind altogether. It isn't what Nicky's man said it was--you're not ashamed of it the next day. It isn't excitement; you're not excited. It isn't a tingling of your nerves; they don't tingle. It's all curiously quiet and steady. You remember when you saw Nicky--how everything stood still? And how two times were going on, and you and Nicky were in one time, and Mother was in the other? Well--it's like that. Your body and its nerves aren't in it at all. Your body may be moving violently, with other bodies moving violently round it; butyou're still.
But suppose it is your nerves. Why should they tingle at just that particular moment, the moment that makesanimalsafraid? Why should you be so extraordinarily happy? Why should the moment of extreme danger be always the "exquisite" moment? Why not the moment of safety?
Doesn't it look as if danger were the point of contact with reality, and death the closest point? You're through. Actually you lay hold on eternal life, and you know it.
Another thing--it always comes with that little shock of recognition. It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what it is. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. You may lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was. Nicky knew.
June 19th.
I'm coming back to it--after that interruption--because I want to get the thing clear. I have to put it down as I feel it; there's no other way. But they mustn't think it's something that only Lawrence and Nicky and I feel. The men feel it too, even when they don't know what it is. And some of themdoknow.
Of course we shall be accused of glorifying War and telling lies about it. Well--there's a Frenchman who has told the truth, piling up all the horrors, faithfully, remorselessly, magnificently. But he seems to think people oughtn't to write about this War at all unless they show up the infamy of it, as a deterrent, so that no Government can ever start another one. It's a sort of literary "frightfulness." But who is he trying to frighten? Does he imagine that France, or England, or Russia or Belgium, or Serbia, will want to start another war when this is over? And does he suppose that Germany--if we don't beat her--will be deterred by his frightfulness? Germany's arrogance will be satisfied when she knows she's made a Frenchman feel like that about it.
He's got his truth all right. As Morrie would say: "That's War." But a peaceful earthquake can do much the same thing. And ifourtruth--whatwe've seen--isn't War, at any rate it's what we've got out of it, it's our "glory," our spiritual compensation for the physical torture, and there would be a sort of infamy in trying to take it from us. It isn't the French Government, or the British that's fighting Germany; it's we--all of us. To insist on the world remembering nothing but these horrors is as if men up to their knees in the filth they're clearing away should complain of each other for standing in it and splashing it about.
The filth of War--and the physical torture--Good God! As if the world was likely to forget it. Any more than we're likely to forget whatweknow.
You remember because you've known it before and it all hangs together. It's not as if danger were the only point of contact with reality. You get the same ecstasy, the same shock of recognition, and the same utter satisfaction when you see a beautiful thing. At least to me it's like that. You know what Nicky thought it was like. You know what it was like when you used to sit looking and looking at Mother's "tree of Heaven."
It's odd, Ronny, to have gone all your life trying to get reality, trying to get new beauty, trying to get utter satisfaction; to have funked coming out here because you thought it was all obscene ugliness and waste and frustration, and then to come out, and to find what you wanted.
June 25th.
I wrote all that, while I could, because I want to make them see it. It's horrible that Dorothy should think that Drayton's dead and that Mother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if they really knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believe Nicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about it because they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only gassing, or "making poetry"--as if poetry wasn't the most real thing there is!
If anybody can make them see it, you can.--Always your affectionate,
MICHAEL.
Anthony was going into the house to take back the key of the workshop.
He had locked the door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death, and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchard he had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he had thought that he would like to make new ones, and the wood was in the workshop.
Everything in there was as it had been when Nicky finished with his Moving Fortress. The brass and steel filings lay in a heap under the lathe, the handle was tilted at the point where he had left it; pits in the saw-dust showed where his feet had stood. His overalls hung over the bench where he had slipped them off.
Anthony had sat down on the bench and had looked at these things with remembrance and foreboding. He thought of Nicky and of Nicky's pleasure and excitement over the unpacking of his first lathe--the one he had begged for for his birthday--and of his own pleasure and excitement as he watched his boy handling it and showing him so cleverly how it worked. It stood there still in the corner. Nicky had given it to Veronica. He had taught her how to use it. And Anthony thought of Veronica when she was little; he saw Nicky taking care of her, teaching her to run and ride and play games. And he remembered what Veronica's mother had said to him and Frances: "Wait till Nicky has children of his own."
He thought of John. John had volunteered three times and had been three times rejected. And now conscription had got him. He had to appear before the Board of Examiners that afternoon. He might be rejected again. But the standard was not so exacting as it had been--John might be taken.
He thought of his business--John's business and his, and Bartie's. Those big Government contracts had more than saved them. They were making tons of money out of the War. Even when the Government cut down their profits; even when they had given more than half they made to the War funds, the fact remained that they were living on the War. Bartie, without a wife or children, was appallingly rich.
If John were taken. If John were killed--
If Michael died--
Michael had been reported seriously wounded.
He had thought then of Michael. And he had not been able to bear thinking any more. He had got up and left the workshop, locking the door behind him, forgetting what he had gone in for; and he had taken the key back to the house. He kept it in what his children used to call the secret drawer of his bureau. It lay there with Nicky's last letter of June, 1915, and a slab of coromandel wood.
It was when he was going into the house with the key that John met him.
"Have they taken you?"
"Yes."
John's face was hard and white. They went together into Anthony's room.
"It's what you wanted," Anthony said.
"Of course it's what I wanted. I want it more than ever now.
"The wire's come, Father. Mother opened it."
It was five days now since they had heard that Michael had died of his wounds. Frances was in Michael's room. She was waiting for Dorothea and Veronica to help her to find his papers. It was eight o'clock in the evening, and they had to be sorted and laid out ready for Morton Ellis to look over them to-morrow. To-morrow Morton Ellis would come, and he would take them away.
The doors of Michael's and of Nicky's rooms were always kept shut; Frances knew that, if she were to open the door on the other side of the corridor and look in, every thing in Nicky's room would welcome her with tenderness even while it inflicted its unique and separate wound. But Michael's room was bare and silent. He had cleared everything away out of her sight last year before he went. The very books on the shelves repudiated her; reminded her that she had never understood him, that he had always escaped her. His room kept his secret, and she felt afraid and abashed in it, knowing herself an intruder. Presently all that was most precious in it would be taken from her and given over to a stranger whom he had never liked.
Her mind turned and fastened on one object--the stiff, naked wooden chair standing in its place before the oak table by the window. She remembered how she had come to Michael there and found him writing at his table, and how she had talked to him as though he had been a shirker and a coward.
She had borne Nicky's death. But she could not bear Michael's. She stood there in his room, staring, hypnotized by her memory. She heard Dorothea come in and go out again. And then Veronica came in.
She turned to Veronica to help her.
She clung to Veronica and was jealous of her. Veronica had not come between her and Nicky as long as he was alive, but now that he was dead she came between them. She came between her and Michael too. Michael's mind had always been beyond her; she could only reach it through Veronica and through Veronica's secret. Her mind clutched at Veronica's secret, and flung it away as useless, and returned, clutching at it again.
It was as if Veronica held the souls of Michael and Nicholas in her hands. She offered her the souls of her dead sons. She was the mediator between her and their souls.
"I could bear it, Veronica, if I hadn't made him go. I came to him, here, in this room, and bullied him till he went. I said horrible things to him--that he must have remembered.
"He wasn't like Nicky--it was infinitely worse for him. And I was cruel to him. I had no pity. I drove him out--to be killed.
"And I simply cannot bear it."
"But--he didn't go then. He waited till--till he was free. If anybody could have made him, Nicky could. But it wasn't even Nicky. It was himself."
"If he'd been killed as Nicky was--but to die like that, in the hospital--of those horrible wounds."
"He was leading a charge, just as Nicky was. And you know he was happy, just as Nicky was. Every line he's written shows that he was happy."
"It only shows that they were both full of life, that they loved their life and wanted to live.
"It's no use, Ronny, you're saying you know they're there. I don't. I'd give anything to believe it. And yet it wouldn't be a bit of good if I did. I don'twantthem all changed into something spiritual that I shouldn't know if it was there. I want their bodies with me just as they used to be. I want to hear them and touch them, and see them come in in their old clothes.
"To see Nicky standing on the hearthrug with Timmy in his arms. I want things like that, Ronny. Even if you're right, it's all clean gone."
Her lips tightened.
"I'm talking as if I was, the only one. But I know it's worse for you, Ronny. Ihadthem all those years. And I've got Anthony. You've had nothing but your poor three days."
Veronica thought: "How can I tell her that I've got more than she thinks? It's awful that I should have what she hasn't." She was ashamed and beaten before this irreparable, mortal grief.
"And it's worse," Frances said, "for the wretched mothers whose sons haven't fought."
For her pride rose in her again--the pride that uplifted her supernaturally when Nicky died.
"You mustn't think I grudge them. I don't. I don't even grudge John."
The silence of Michael's room sank into them, it weighed on their hearts and they were afraid of each other's voices. Frances was glad when Dorothy came and they could begin their work there.
But Michael had not left them much to do. They found his papers all in one drawer of his writing-table, sorted and packed and labelled, ready for Morton Ellis to take away. One sealed envelope lay in a place by itself. Frances thought: "He didn't want any of us to touch his things."
Then she saw Veronica's name on the sealed envelope. She was glad when Veronica left them and went to her hospital.
And when she was gone she wanted her back again.
"I wish I hadn't spoken that way to Veronica," she said.
"She won't mind. She knows you couldn't help it."
"I could, Dorothy, if I wasn't jealous of her. I mean I'm jealous of her certainty. If I had it, too, I shouldn't be jealous."
"She wants you to have it. She's trying to give it you.
"Mother--how do we know she isn't right? Nicky said she was. And Michael said Nicky was right.
"If it had been only Nicky--hemight have got it from Veronica. But Michael never got things from anybody. And youdoknow things in queer ways. Even I do. At least I did once--when I was in prison. I knew something tremendous was going to happen. I saw it, or felt it, or something. I won't swear I knew it was the War. I don't suppose I did. But I knew Frank was all mixed up with it. And it was the most awfully real thing. You couldn't go back on it, or get behind it. It was as if I'd seen that he and Lawrence and Nicky and Michael and all of them would die in it to save the whole world. Like Christ, only that they reallydiddie and the whole worldwassaved. There was nothing futile about it."
"Well--?"
"Well,theymight see their real thing the same way--in a flash. Aren't they a thousand times more likely to know than we are? What right have we--sitting here safe--to say it isn't when they say it is?"
"But--if there's anything in it--why can't I see it as well as you and Veronica? After all, I'm their mother."
"Perhaps that's why it takes you longer, Mummy. You think of their bodies more than we do, because they were part of your body. Their souls, or whatever it is, aren't as real to you just at first."
"I see," said Frances, bitterly. "You've only got to be a mother, and give your children your flesh and blood, to be sure of their souls going from you and somebody else getting them."
"That's the price you pay for being mothers."
"Was Frank's soul ever more real toyou, Dorothy?"
"Yes. It was once--for just one minute. The night he went away. That's another queer thing that happened."
"It didn't satisfy you, darling, did it?"
"Of course it didn't satisfy me. I want more and more of it. Not just flashes."
"You say it's the price we pay for being mothers. Yet if Veronica had had a child--"
"You needn't be so sorry for Veronica."
"I'm not. It's you I'm sorriest for. You've had nothing. From beginning to end you had nothing.
"I might at least have seen that you had it in the beginning."
"You, Mummy?"
"Yes. Me. Youshallhave it now. Unless you want to leave me."
"I wouldn't leave you for the world, Mummy ducky. Only you must let me work always and all the time."
"Let you? I'll let you do what you like, my dear."
"You always have let me, haven't you?"
"It was the least I could do."
"Poor Mummy, did you think you had to make up because you cared for them more than me?"
"I wonder," said Frances, thoughtfully, "if I did."
"Of course. Of course you did. Who wouldn't?"
"I never meant you to know it, Dorothy."
"Of course I knew it. I must have known it ever since Michael was born. I knew you couldn't help it. You had to. Even when I was a tiresome kid I knew you had to. It was natural."
"Natural or unnatural, many girls have hated their mothers for less. You've been very big and generous.
"Perhaps--if you'd been little and weak--but you were always such an independent thing. I used to think you didn't want me."
"I wanted you a lot more than you thought. But, you see, I've learned to do without."
She thought: "It's better she should have it straight."
"If you'd think less about me, Mother," she said, "and more about Father--"
"Father?"
"Yes. Father isn't independent--though he looks it. He wants you awfully. He always has wanted you. And he hasn't learned to do without."
"Where is he?"
"He's sitting out there in the garden, all by himself, in the dark, under the tree."
Frances went to him there.
"I wondered whether you would come to me," he said.
"I was doing something for Michael."
"Is it done?"
"Yes. It's done."
Five months passed. It was November now.
In the lane by the side door, Anthony was waiting in his car. Rain was falling, hanging from the trees and falling. Every now and then he looked at his watch.
He had still a quarter of an hour before he need start. But he was not going back into the house. They were all in there saying good-bye to John: old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith. And Maurice. And his brother Bartie.
The door in the garden wall opened and they came out: the four women in black--the black they still wore for Michael--and the two men.
They all walked slowly up the lane. Anthony could see Bartie's shoulders hunched irritably against the rain. He could see Morrie carrying his sodden, quivering body with care and an exaggerated sobriety. He saw Grannie, going slowly, under the umbrella, very upright and conscious of herself as wonderful and outlasting.
He got down and cranked up his engine.
Then he sat sternly in his car and waited, with his hands on the steering-wheel, ready.
The engine throbbed, impatient for the start.
John came out very quickly and took his seat beside his father. And the car went slowly towards the high road.
Uncle Morrie stood waiting for it by the gate at the top of the lane. As it passed through he straightened himself and put up his hand in a crapulous salute.
The young man smiled at him, saluted, and was gone